13 to go!!!

So it’s official… my NES collection is down to a mere 14 games.  Of course there are the big 5 very heavy hitters left to acquire:  Little Samson, Flintstones 2, Panic Restaurant, Bonk’s Adventure, and Power Blade 2.  My goal is to get all the other games besides these 5, and sit on my collection for a few years.  I have a strong feeling that the price of these rare retro NES games is trending downwards.  I see them all the time at game shows, but only once have I seen a sale at what I consider these ridiculous prices.  I did see three guys all pony up to buy a copy of Dinosaur Peak… but how does that work… who gets it when… and do any of these dudes truly have this game?!

Please don’t get upset, but I’ve never played the NES version of this Sega classic.  On the Master System I thought Fantasy Zone part 1 and 2 were fantastic games!  Such vibrant colours, interesting music, and surreal (clearly drug induced) graphics… I always thought it would be really cool to design a remake of this game, but with more realistic graphics as opposed to cartoonish.  You know, make Opa-Opa a really bad ass killing machine!  That would be awesome!  And YES I actually did beat this game in front of an audience for verification purposes… exactly the kind of difficulty I look for in a shooter… or any game for that matter… hard but not impossible.  That being said, have you every played the arcade version?  It’s damn near impossible!  The Turbo Grafx 16 version is slightly more forgiving, but also very very difficult!

Jimmy Connor’s Tennis… is thankfully the last of the sports games I needed on the NES.  I bought this game in great condition on Ebay for $55US; expensive as it is kind of rare because it came out near the end of the NES era.  I would definitely say that this game is in the top 10 sports games that only “mostly suck”… which is the best honors a sports game can get (besides Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out which is awesome!).  By no means am I saying this game isn’t a complete turd, but it is playable.  The graphics are very basic and lame, but the music is decent.  The sound FX are like Atari 2600 and there is no voice over which would have been a nice touch.  The controls are pretty good, and the fact that you just have to push a button to serve is nice.   Considering this game came out so late in the NES’s lifespan I think a lot more could have been done here… even for an 8-bit game.

SEGA Corner:  I talked about Fantasy Zone at the beginning of this post… what more do you want?!  Hail Opa-Opa!

Please follow me at #nintendojoe1985

and at #ultimate_megatron on Instagram… my G1 collection is now “complete” in that I have all the toys minus the pretenders, micromasters, and action masters… these were just abominations and were designed when Hasbro was out of ideas!

 

The God’s Must be Crazy!

The Original Flintstones for $440?

Now I know for sure that the video game God’s have gone completely insane… JJgames.com was charging $440USD for the Flintstones:  Rescue of Dino and Hoppy several weeks ago!  The game usually sells for no more than $20, and that’s pushing it as the title isn’t rare, and isn’t that good!

I’d like to say that JJgames got it wrong, and realized their error in that it wasn’t Surprise at Dinosaur Peak, but here we have the reduced price of $90USD for the same game a few weeks later?!  I’ve ordered from these guys before as if you really scan their website there occasionally is a deal to be had… but 99% of the time I feel that they way overcharge… that being said they’ve been around for a long time, and if they are getting their asking price, more power to them!  In fact I no longer see this game on their website… does anyone want my copy of the original Flintstones for an unreasonable price?!

This is a screen shot from Lukiegames.com.  Again I’ve ordered from them before several years ago, but seeing as I only need rare titles for my NES collection I doubt I’ll be doing business with them again.  In the above picture, you can see that they are charging $276.47USD for Bubble Bobble 2.  This is actually a semi-reasonable price considering that it usually goes for around $300USD according to my collectors app, and videogamepricecharting.com.  I sent them a request to check the condition of the label, and they replied that they wouldn’t bother.  I requested again and told them that this isn’t a $5 game we are talking about… and was still rejected (reading between the lines I can infer that it isn’t even worth their effort)?!  WTF?!  Do they not care about customer service even for higher priced items?!  I want to be wined and dined for this kind of cash!

When I was in Miami several years ago I asked if I could see the Lukie Games warehouse, and was told that it wasn’t possible.  Here I am 1,500Km away from home, and they still wouldn’t accommodate me?!  It’s not a difficult decision to cut them off from my business and recommendations!  Suck it Lukie Games!

The trend on retro game prices still seems to be declining though… I can wait for my $400 copy of Little Samson!

Nintendo Joe

Waiting for the Big Score!

First of all, I promise that I won’t mention the NFL in this post.  Even though I love it, and NFL Sundays are my favorite day of the week, I realize that many of you don’t share the same passion.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, my friend Pat the NES Punk predicts that the prices of rare NES games are going to come drastically down.  This is good news because there is no way I’m paying what they want for these few titles.  I also agree with Pat when he says that Little Samson isn’t nearly as “rare” as people claim it is.  I see it at almost every game swap that I go to, and never once have I ever seen a sale.  This tells me that people aren’t interested.  I mean according to Video Game Price Charting, the game goes for over $1400CAN… and JJgames.com is charging $1785US, give me a break dude!  Pat predicts the game will go down to around the $400 mark.  I’m still not happy (and maybe never will be), but at least I don’t have to sell both kidneys to purchase it!  So yeah,  I’m going to hold out for the most expensive games… even if I have to wait several years.  My collection thus far is awesome, and will have to do for the foreseeable future.  I still look forward to going to game swaps and stores, however I will not be bringing in wads of cash.  My soul is for sale though if that means anything to you!

My over the air PVR came in the mail the other day. It is a Mediasonic Homeworx model and cost $80CAN after shipping.  This is just the basic model, but from what I can tell the only thing that separates it from the much more expensive version is that it can’t record more than one show at once.  Who cares as I hardly watch network TV anyways!  It took me a while to set up as the instructions for how to record were very poor.  However thanks to my nerd skills and a couple of beers I was able to figure it out.  I can now watch regular TV on a slight delay and skip the commercials!  I didn’t think it could be done, but Judge Judy just got even better!  Give ’em hell Judith!

The other day I was picking up a package from the post office, and when I got back into my car, this teenage punk started staring at me like he wanted to fight.  He started staring at me… I mean right bloody at me!  Now I’m not one for violence, but at the end of the day I’m just another bloke with a pool cue… (this line was inspired by Francis Begbie from the movie Trainspotting and has been made appropriate for family viewers… the real version is much better though!).  Anyways we traded glares and went on our separate ways.  I don’t think I project the image of as tough guy who wants to fight, but then again I have Scottish/Irish in my blood so who knows?!  I can honestly say that in my 43 years of life, I’ve been lucky enough to never have gotten into a real fight in my personal life (karate doesn’t count as it is controlled).  I just can’t help but wonder why this kid wanted to have anything to do with me?  Teenage angst I suppose.  Anyways it gave me a good rush!

I’m getting pretty tired of YouTube commercials… especially now that they are doubling up in hopes of getting paid subscribers!  That being said, I have released my latest update on an edit to a film that I feel makes it far superior to the original.  My thing is this… Star Wars:  The Last Jedi in my opinion was the absolute WORST of the franchise… even Phantom Menace was better.  This was just pure crap, so what I did was edit out all the bad parts, and although my version is much shorter, I do believe it is superior!  If Disney is looking for some redirection, the Sega Dude and I are ready to quit our jobs and come on over to give you a hand on saving the franchise!

Until next time,

Nintendo Joe

Video Game Swap (Fall 2015)

NOT MY COPY:(

The Sega Dude and I once again made the trek down to Waterloo Ontario to go the the vgcc.ca video game swap meet for the 6th time.  It was a lot of fun hanging out, and wow was the line up to get in huge!  I would like to think I’m partially responsible for that though as I’ve mentioned it several times here on this blog.  The most memorable moment this for me had to be the copy of Flintstones:  Surprise at Dinosaur Peak that two guys bought.  Actually he split the $1,200CAN price tag with one of his friends.  I’m not sure exactly how that arrangement will work but it can’t be good!  What upsets me is that the game wasn’t worth that much… until just now.  I’ve always said that something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it… and now this jack-ass comes in and pays over $450 of what it was previously worth… not to mention the fact that it wasn’t in mint shape.  The label had a few small tears/rips which is to be expected from a Blockbuster exclusive rental game.  This will likely (if ever) be the final game that I purchase for my collection as I just can’t justify that kind of cost for a game that I will barely play (it isn’t that good a game… it’s just really really rare).  At this rate of inflation I’ll never be able to afford the game though:(  It just isn’t worth it to me.

However a game I could afford was Might and Magic III:  Isles of Terra for the SNES.  I was a huge Might and Magic fan on the PC after the release of the Mandate of Heaven… I think that was M&M 6?  Part 7 was not quite as good, but was still an awesome game.  My favourite part was that after you finished the game it gave you a certificate that you could print off.  I think I had it in my resume for a while as it showed how dedicated I can be… Might and Magic games require many many hours to complete.  What made M&M 6 unique (at least at the time) was that the world was completely open, and the first person scrolling was very smooth… unlike previous chapters where the first person scrolling was choppy at best.  So I’m not expecting much in the way of a graphics game here with Might and Magic III, but rather a game that is hopefully playable with a cool story.  My hopes aren’t extremely high though as I played Eye of the Beholder for the SNES one night and had a hard time navigating around with all the choppy scrolling.

The next two games I bought were questionable purchases and I would be a little upset at myself if I didn’t get a good price for the pair.  I paid $65 for a copy of Mario Kart Double Dash and Paper Mario for the Game Cube.  Not a bad price, but the thing is I’ve never played a Game Cube game to date.  I suppose I should remedy this injustice as the system did produce several really cool games.  What makes me upset is that I had made the deal with the guy not realizing that the Paper Mario game was the Player’s Choice edition.  It’s not a big deal for most people, but I only want black labels in my collection.  However a deal is a deal so I paid the dude and went on my merry way.

Then I came across an uncommon game that I have been looking for quite a while now… Robocop 3.  When I was a teenager I loved Robocop.  I thought the arcade video game was amazing for the time as it incorporated actual quotes from the movie and spoke to you.  The NES version of the game was not great, but not that bad either.  I remember it being very difficult and fighting the ED-209 robot (if you could make it that far) was nearly impossible. My Robocop collection for the NES is now complete.  The SNES version of the same game is probably much better though and I’ll have to try that out some day.  This shouldn’t be too difficult as the game is much more common on the SNES. The Puss n Boots was just an added bonus to the deal:)

The last game I picked up was actually not from the video game swap but rather from Chumleighs in Peterborough, Ontario.  I’ve had the game for a while now but I keep forgetting to blog about it.  Honestly, it’s not that great a game when you compare it to some of the NES greats (Mega Man, Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, etc.) but it does have a certain fun factor that often is missing in games…. actually it doesn’t have that either.  It’s a terrible game that Nintendo should be embarrassed for putting out.  I can’t imagine paying full price for this piece of trash where the best thing about it is the cover art.  I think it is a port of an old Commodore 64 game but wow it is just brutal!  All you do is run to the left and find bird seed to eat while trying to avoid Wile E. Coyote… and it has some really annoying music.  So why did I buy it?  I got it for dirt cheap… like $6 which isn’t bad for I’ll be adding it to my collection, but there it will remain, never to see the light of day again.  Hey, Atari made terrible games like E.T…. well this was Nintendo’s E.T…. or at least close to it.  Come to think of it, it isn’t as bad as Spot for the NES.  At least Spot is the first worst game out there at least that I’ve come across.

So ya… I’ll have to plug in my Game Cube one of these days and make a night of it.  I have a handful of games for the system that I’ve wanted to try out now for quite a while now… like Metroid Prime.  Maybe I’ll have a game night sometime and hook it up!

Sega Corner:  In the Sega Dude’s last post he was talking about a game called Skeleton Krew and was mentioning what an expensive game it was.  Wow was he ever right… I was at a store that was charging $45 for the cart only!  I hope it is a good game.  You’ll have to review it some time!

Until next time,

Nintendo Joe:)