panic restaurant | My Nintendo Dimension

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?!

Fantasy zone

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!

Tennis

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!

I’ve recently had a bit of luck at Value Village and with Kijiji, but nothing that will blow your socks off.

I picked up these games for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii for $4 each. They aren’t really that big a deal other than I love Mickey Mouse, and though this isn’t the best game, it isn’t the worst either. Pilotwings Resort I purchased because I want to use my 3DS more. I think that it is a fantastic little handheld system… I have the XL unit… no big deal;) I look forward to playing both of these titles, and if they are complete garbage then I can always trade them later.

Another pick up from Value Village. Nothing spectacular other than I don’t have it. Honestly though I’ve never really been into driving/racing games… if I want to drive a car I’ll just go out and do that in real life! Some of my friends are really into these types of games… especially one on the PS4, but I couldn’t care less. This game was complete and in great shape though so I figured what the heck, and spent the $4 they wanted for it. It isn’t worth very much at all… maybe $8??… but I’ll probably trade it anyway.

Now onto the Kijiji hunt. I’m still astounded by how much people want for their retro games on Kijiji/craigslist/Ebay. Every now and then however you stumble across a deal which I suppose is what keeps me coming back regularly. Seeing the same ads though over and over again drives me crazy… if it isn’t selling, then your price is too high dude!

So I came across this one guys ad for a bunch of NES games. I had them all except for Adventure Island 2 and offered the guy $20 for the game (he wanted $25). I think this is a fair price for this title and apparently he did too as he accepted my offer. It’s not the rarest game out there, but it is made by Hudson Soft and is a pretty good platformer. It also completed my Adventure Island trilogy on the NES. I’m not sure why (other than it must have been a licensing issue) they didn’t just call this series Wonderboy as this is exactly the type of games they are?! In fact, on the first title, the only thing different is the sprite of the character you play… everything else is spot on Wonderboy.

Again on Kijiji I came across an ad a guy had for a bunch of Nintendo 64 games. Now I know that I’ve poo pooed the N64 several times in the past but these are actually decent games (a rare thing on the N64 as most games on this system are total crap). Plus it nearly completes my Mario party collection… I’m missing part 9 on the Wii, and 10 on the Wii U. However unless I find these two games at a yard sale I doubt I will ever own them. Come to think of it… I’m missing the disc to Part 6 as well… I purchased a mint case and manuel from a Salvation Army last year for $4. JJgames.com actually has a “disc only copy”, but they want too much for it; like $59US!! The game is okay, but not that good:( To me it is worth $15 – $20 for the disc, and even that is pushing it

I’ve been thinking for a while now though about selling/trading my N64 and games. I just never play it (partly because the system stinks) and there isn’t really that many good games out for it. That being said there is “only” 311 games to collect for the N64 and none of them command the hundreds (or in some cases thousands) of dollars that some NES titles go for… and many are sports titles; there are nine wrestling titles alone! So maybe it’s worth hanging onto the “good” games for now. I mean after all if I am going to ever complete my NES collection, then I’m going to need some major trade bait. No one seems to be giving away Panic Restaurant or Little Sampson for a song:( And this is too bad as I write some pretty awesome music… unfortunately very little of it is appropriate for this site:( I miss recording music with my cousin!

But the real find of the day was a VHS copy of Transformers the Movie! See I needed a $10 bill to make exact change for the deal I made on Kijiji and only had $20 bills. So I went into Value Village on my way to meet this guy, and this was the only thing that I wanted in the entire store. I love G1 Transformers and have a fairly substantial collection, including every episode on DVD and a complete Fortress Maximus, but for some reason I didn’t own a VHS copy of the movie… at least not with this cover art. Anyways it was $1 so I’m not that worried about it. Then again that dollar could have gone towards one of these coveted titles below:(