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!

 

Highway Robbery!!

It’s summer holidays and my wife and I just got back from a trip to the pacific northwest United States.  We flew into Seattle, Washington and drove to San Francisco where we flew home.  We visited several National Parks, including Yosemite, Olympic Rainforest, Kings Canyon, etc..  We also stopped by in Astoria, Oregon to see all the sites from the 80’s classic movie The Goonies.  All in all it was an awesome trip, but of course that’s not really what this blog is about.  Onto the games that I found on our trip!

Firstly, there isn’t much to tell for several reasons… the biggest one being that my bag that contained all my loot was stolen from my car.  Some guy broke our back window and stole our passports AND GAMES:(  This was very upsetting as there were two good ones (well, maybe ‘good’ is a word I should reserve for special games).  Nevertheless I was looking forward to adding to my collection.

The best game that was stolen was Mario’s Time Machine for the NES.  This game was purchased from a store in Portland, Oregon called Video Game Wizards.  The store was difficult to find, and at first glance didn’t look like they had any games that I didn’t already have.  I asked the owner if he had some rare games, and he replied that they only had a copy of Mike Tyson’s Punch Out… a great game, but hardly rare, and was one of the first games I picked up when i decided to collect.  He said I could snoop behind the counter if I wanted as there were some misc titles that haven’t been put out yet, but he warned me that they were all commons so there wasn’t much point.  I did anyways and came up with Mario’s Time Machine.  It is much more uncommon on the NES than it is on the SNES… that being said it isn’t that great a game.  Plus, there was no price tag on it… I hate having to ask for prices as usually the owner will just look it up the inflated prices on Ebay and quote me some nonsense.  But he came back to me with $55.  I offered the guy $50US for the game and he accepted.  I was quite happy with this as according to my app, it sells for around $90CAN.  Even with the American/Canadian exchange rate being so crappy right now, I thought this was a deal.  BUT IT WAS STOLEN… so who cares!

Another game that I’ve been looking for, and found a decent copy of was Wizards & Warriors 3 for the NES.  It is rare that you find this game with an unsoiled label, but I found a good copy at a store called Blue Shell Gaming & Collectibles near Fresno, California.  The owner of this store was very friendly and we talked for a while about games… disagreed about which games were the best to play, then haggled a bit on the price.  We agreed to $50US for a copy of W&W3 and Ninja Crusaders and again I thought this was a rather good deal…. BUT IT WAS STOLEN… so who cares!

Their were a few other commons that are not even worth mentioning THAT WERE ALSO STOLEN!

So all in all, my trip was awesome, but would have been much better if we hadn’t had our car broken into.  The missing passports cost us an additional $1,200US as we had to reroute our flights to Buffalo, New York as this was the closest the airlines could bring us back to Toronto with out proper identity papers.  Personally I thought United Airlines gouged us in our time of need… not to mention gave us the crappiest seats possible for the flight. I’ll never fly with them again!

A special thanks to CDN for picking us up at the airport in Buffalo.  CDN doesn’t follow this blog though so he’ll never know about this shout out to him:(

Hopefully next time I’ll have more games to talk about that weren’t stolen.

SEGA Corner:  No news this post.

Later,

Nintendo Joe

A Little of This A Little of That…

This week has been great for mynintendodimension.  I’ve made many acquisitions for the display cases.  I purchased 36 NES games from a dude named Flavio… perhaps the coolest name I’ve heard in quite some time… I may even name my gold fish after him?!  The other two fish in the tank are Cory and Trevor of Trailer Park Boys fame.  Notable titles that I picked up are The Terminator, Bubble Bobble, Journey to Silus (which apparently was originally supposed to be a Terminator game of which the company lost the license for… the last boss looks exactly like a CSM-101), and Punch out… I already have Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, but not this variation of the same game… probably the best sports game made on the NES… I usually hate sports games.

I also made my way to Peterborough/Lakefield area last weekend and made a major score.  For $40 I got my hands on a great copy of Phantasy Star IV.  Obviously not a Nintendo game, but one of the greatest Sega Genesis games of all time… which was a relief because part III was bloody awful… I still want it though:(

Also purchased from the Lakefield flea market where a copy of Terminator 2, Castelian, Kickle Cubicle, Pinball Quest and Rock ‘n Ball for the NES… the last three of which were thrown in for free as I was buying several games.  Fred (the owner of the booth) is awesome like that and I love doing business with him and hope he stays around for a good long while! I also got a copy of Blazeon for the SNES from him. At $28 it is a lot of money, but not when you consider it is usually listed at $36.  While Fred had two other rare games (Metal Storm, and Mighty Final Fight), I just couldn’t justify spending what he wanted for them… close to $250.  My wife would kill me if I spent this much on two games… even if they are rare and great!

From a store in Peterborough called Chumleighs I managed to score a copy of the elusive Thunder Spirits (which is basically just Thunder Force III on the SNES with two additional levels) which I’m rather excited about.  And at the  Value Village I bought complete copies of Conduit I & II for the Wii… yay!

Yes I’ve been spending a lot of money lately… but I’ve also been selling some stuff for a profit… or loss depending on how you look at it as I reinvest it into my Nintendo display in my basement.  At Value Village my wife found a mini arcade version of Donkey Kong for $25.  I sold it on Kijiji to a guy for $75 which seems to be the going rate.  I’ve also gotten a few bites on an extra N64 I’m trying to get rid of.  It works great and comes with the memory expansion… and is priced at $65 which is far cheaper than any other ad on Kijiji for the same thing.  It isn’t moving though… perhaps people just aren’t interested in the 64… Not that I blame them as the system is my least favourite of all Nintendo consoles.

In other news, I’ve finished modifying all 200 cases and cut out all the covers for my NES games.  This puts me approximately half way finished with my collection to date.  It’s a ton of work, and while not expensive per case (approx. $2 including printing costs) does add up when you are doing so many.  I’ve been trying to do 5 cases a day for the last while, and it is amazing how fast time flies!  After I get some shelving to put all my games on I’ll make another post.

Sega Corner:  There has been a little bit of additions to the honorary Sega department.  The infamous Sega Dude gave me a really good copy of Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System.  Unfortunately I have to hook up my SMS in order to play it and I’m just to darn lazy.  I’ll wait until I get the Power Base Converter for my Retron 5… I’m told this will be expensive though so I may have to rethink my strategy.  I may end up wrapping Phantasy Star up and giving it to myself as a Christmas present from Santa… Somehow he always knows what to give me!  Also purchased from Flavio (the guy mentioned above) was a great copy of the SMS game Golvellius: Valley of Doom, and Fantazy Zone II… both games of which are awesome and I can’t wait to play.

Speaking of Fantasy Zone, I was watching a youtube video of a guy playing the arcade version… and remembered why I didn’t like it much as a kid.  The arcade is WAY more difficult than the Master System version!  You can check it out here at Fantasy Zone and Fantasy Zone II.  I must take my hat off to this guy as clearly he has some major talent!

Until next time,

Nintendo Joe