I remember when I first asked the Sega Dude if he wanted to go game hunting with me, he thought that I wanted kill a deer and eat it. I was shocked when he told me an emphatic “NO!”, but then later realized what he thought I meant. Anyways… So I went to the above three events looking for games and I came out with some pretty cool titles.
First the pic
k ups are from Fan Expo. What’s interesting here is that there was a store represented here called The Blue Gryphon which is a place that I visited in Gatineau, Quebec last year… but at the store their prices seemed a bit high… however at Fan Expo the games were not only at a good price but the owner was also willing to deal with me. Also I finally acquired a title that I’ve been looking for since I started collecting for the NES… Might & Magic: Secret of the Inner Sanctum! I’m a huge fan of the M&M series and as this was the only title on the NES I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to find; I was wrong. In fact I had only seen the game once before at a store called Buy & Sell Kings but they had it complete with the box and that jacked up the price to over $100+tax… even though it is a cool game, it’s just too much. Besides as you know I lik to buy my own boxes thanks to the help of the universal game cases, and thecoverpr
oject.net (which by the way was down for a bit, but is now back up and running business as usually…phew!). Might & Magic is an RPG that is from a first person POV. There are many monsters to defeat, and many items to acquire… I can’t wait to get started as I’ve only played the beginning on an NES emulator for my Mac. So in addition to M&M, I also bought Rollerblade Racer, Rally Bike, Garry Kitchen’s Battle Tank, and Tecmo Baseball, all for $70 cash.
For whatever reason I just didn’t have Tecmo Baseball in my collection… it is such a common game. I sifted through several boxes of games and managed to pick out the few I didn’t already have from his common titles. In his “rare” bin there were a few I needed but just didn’t want to spend the money. One title that I kind of regret not buying was Nobunaga’s Ambition 2 for the NES. The price was fair (I can’t remember how much exactly) but as I said, he wasn’t giving it away for a song:(
We went to Fan Expo on Friday night, and hit up the Barrie Game Exchange the following Sunday. While I didn’t win any of the door prizes (they were actually really terrible prizes) a good time was had. I met up with a few people I knew who were selling games including the Retro Game Bros., Flavio, Fred (my guy in Lakefield ON), and also had a chance to meet SeeJayAre who does a live garage sale pick ups video on youtube (he was just selling games like other vendors but no one knew who he was except me. You should actually check out his channel as it is pretty cool… he was one of the pioneers of the hidden camera at garage sales video (at least up here in Canada). He is actually from a city just outside Toronto… and man does he have lots of luck… but in a way he makes his own luck. You’ll see what I mean.
Anyways the Barrie Game Exchange was bigger than I thought it would be… at least compared to the July exchange last summer it was fairly big… like 90 tables. Still though it was no Waterloo Video Game Swap Meet which puts on the best game exchange in the area. I believe the next one is on May 29th.
Above are the pick ups from the Barrie Game Exchange, the most notable being Rainbow Islands that I picked up for $30 which was a deal as most other dealers had it up for $50. At least I didn’t talk myself up in price this time! Paperboy has been a title that I have wanted, but the price was always too much for the game that it is. I haven’t played it on the NES, but I have played it on the Commodore 64 and I remember thinking it was pretty good. But the $20 most vendors wanted just didn’t seem worth it. I managed to score Paperboy, Paperboy 2, and Jackal for $30 all in. Not bad eh?! F-15 Strike Eagle was part of the Rainbow Islands deal… this s a game that isn’t really worth speaking about so I won’t.
The above carts were traded to me from the Ice Man for the store credit that I had accrued last Christmas. While the credit wasn’t “free”, it sure didn’t feel like I was spending my cold hard cash. If you’ll recall, back last Boxing Day I went into the Ice Man’s store in Peterborough ON, and traded in pretty much all the doubles I had collected in a year… usually I sell these at the game exchange, but the Ice Man gives the best trade in value in town… the downside to this is that his games are also fairly expensive, but if you look hard you can find a deal. The best deal that I found was for a copy of Dusty Diamond All Star Softball which according to RetrowareTV.com is the second most rare sports game on the NES (Stadium Events was not included in this top 10 list but rather as an honourable mention). This is officially the rarest game in my collection. The game normally sells for around $70 – $85CAN, but this carried a $65 price tag. I’ve never seen the game before so jumped at the opportunity to trade for it. Plus when you trade there is no tax on retro games… that’s another 13% savings:) The other titles were fairly pricy… too much for my wallet, but not for trade. To acquire the $450 in store credit, I probably spent about $100… so $4.50 on the dollar isn’t bad and makes these pick ups great as I probably would not have otherwise have gotten them. Anyways the titles are Conan (obviously cool), Mickey’s Adventure in Numberland, and Nigel Mansell’s World Championship.
There is absolutely nothing remarkable about the above two games except that I once owned them and they disappeared. I had the universal game case complete with covers printed, but somehow managed to lose these games. The Sega Dude swears he didn’t steal them… and I believe him… which means they disappeared into thin air which does happen from time to time around these parts. Anyways my North American NES black label collection is now complete:) What is interesting is that this was all I started out collecting. Then it got out of control, but that is a story for another day.
Until next time,
Nintendo Joe
My Nintendo Dimension 