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!

 

Link

Well our Spring Break trip to Kingston Ontario was a big success… at least in terms of picking up games for the collection… the weather was cold and rainy the entire time:(  But rain or no shine… there were games to be had!

Our first stop was in Belleville Ontario (about a 45 minute drive on the way to Kingston) as I  remembered from last year that there was a particularly good retro game store called Chumleighs there.  I wasn’t disappointed this time around in the selection, but a bit miffed that I was turned down on an offered price on a game.  More on that later.  Below are the pick ups from Chumleighs:

This first pile of games is nothing special, other than that they are games I didn’t have and were a fairly cheap price; at least for a reseller.  I think I over paid a bit on Rescue: The Embassy Mission, but we are only talking about a couple of bucks here. The Heroes of the Lance title I’m interested in (the best thing about this game is the artwork on the label, but at least it is one of a series of Dungeons & Dragons games on the NES… the others being Pool of Radiance, Hillsfar, Dragon Strike, and Dragons Flame)  The other games pictured are The Untouchables, Laser Invasion (needs the top part of the label cleaned) and Wrestlemania Challenge.

WURM: Journey to the Center of the Earth is a game I’ve been looking for. It is a kind of a shooter, but not really… sorry for the poor description, but those whom have played the game will know what I’m talking about.  Kiwi Kraze I believe is a platformer but I’ve never actually played the game myself.  I’m not sure if it is related to New Zealand Story, but there are a few similarities between the two games.

While I’m not really into GameBoy, I couldn’t resist picking up these two Mega Man titles.  They are both for the GameBoy Color and look like they could be a lot of fun.  The labels are in mint shape and are a welcomed addition to my Mega Man collection.

 

 

On it’s own this title is nothing special, but I’ve been looking for this game for a while now as it is the last Metroid I needed for the collection.  Well that’s technically a lie since I don’t own the Metroid Prime Trilogy on the Wii, nor the Zelda Wind Waker combo disc for the Game Cube… but I don’t count these as I now do own all of the Metroid games.

 

So…the refused offer… what happened was that Chumleighs also had a copy of Earthbound for the SNES.  This is a fairly expensive game… can be over $300, and they wanted $250+tax  for the game.  I offered the guy $200, and much to my wife’s relief he said “No” and “that he paid $150 for the game and there wasn’t enough margin”.  Oh well, I tried.

Another interesting thing that happened on our trip is that when we were at the Belleville Value Village, one of the employees saw me looking at the video games and asked if I knew anything about GameBoy games.  Wow… here was my chance to prove that I was a pro!  Actually the truth is that I don’t know much about Gameboy… and let him know so, but that I was curious and wanted to take a look anyway.  He then brings out several multi-cart games… the one I remember was a 73 in 1.  I tried looking it up, but couldn’t find it.  I told him to put a $15 price tag on it and see if he gets any bites.  I just wasn’t interested for as I mentioned before I’m not into GameBoy games… or should I have been?  Maybe it was some good trade bait?  Anyways I picked up a Gameboy copy of Pokemon Gold for trade.

Sega Corner:  Well I have finally picked up a copy of Wonder Boy 3:  The Dragons Trap for the Sega Master System, and for a pretty good price of $35.  To me this is the second best game on the SMS… next only to Phantasy Star.  I remember when I first got into WB3 that I instantly fell in love with it.  You start the game at the last level of Wonder Boy in Monster Land in a fierce battle with the Mecha-Dragon… though of course this baddie is much easier to defeat in WB3!  After beating the robot dragon, a curse is put on you that changes your character into a small dragon.  You have to defeat a series of other dragons before being restored to your original form but along the way get transformed into several different man-creatures… like mouse-man, piranha-man, lion-man… and I can’t remember the others.  Mouse man was my favourite as it gave you the ability to climb walls.  Anyways I can’t wait to give this game another go!

That’s all for now.  Until next time,

Nintendo Joe

It’s All Mine!!!

Let’s just say that in the end I got mine!  More on that later…

This is a Value Village find.  I picked up this sweet chess set for $15 and am hoping to trade it for something really cool.  I hate eBay, but some people are listing it for nearly a hundred bucks!  Now I realize that this is just an “asking” price, but heck I should get more than my money’s worth… and that is really what this whole thing is all about… finding rare Nintendo games at an exceptional value.  Hopefully my investment pays off.  You’ll be the first to find out:)

I remember this game being a great platformer.  Much better than they Sega Genesis version… at least graphically.  I seem to remember it playing more smoothly as well.  Anyways both games are pretty good and look great on my shelves.  I ended up getting the guy down to $15 for this game.  Not really a big deal, but then it’s better than nothing.  I look forward to playing the game again as it is from one of my favourite movie franchises.  Alien and Aliens are just awesome films.  Alien 3 was disappointing in that there were no weapons on the penal colony the movie took place on.  I mean COME ON… it was the the guns and Colonial Marines that made the previous movie so good… not to mention that it was an excellent horror/action movie.  It scared the crap out of me when I first saw it, and to be honest I occasionally still have nightmares of the xenomorph!  But Alien 3 was nothing compared to the eye garbage that was Alien Resurrection.  This movie was horrible.  I mean when you put human female sex organs onto the Queen alien to give birth to a hybrid human/xenomorph you know you have gone too far.  Besides this abomination… and that’s exactly what Alien Resurrections is… the story and script were just crap.  I actually drove all the way to Buffalo with some friends so that we could see this movie three days before it came out over here.  Lets just say it was a quite car ride back home to Toronto as we all felt like a bunch of chumps.  So even though Alien 3 (let’s try to forget about Alien Resurrection) wasn’t a horrible movie, it paled in comparison to the first two movies in the franchise.  However as I mentioned above, the video game is actually pretty good… they gave us the guns and fire power that was lacking in the movie!  Perhaps the makers of the game should have made this film!

These NES games were purchased from the one and only Flavio.  Some of these (namely G.I. Joe) were titles that I’ve been on the lookout for and for some reason have not found.  But alas my search is over.  Digger T. Rock seems like it could be an okay game, and Kid Kool (a special thanks to the Sega Dude for trading a Sega Master System console for it) I hear is a lot like Psycho Fox on the SMS.  If that’s the case then I’m in for a treat as Psycho Fox was a great game!

But this is what I have been waiting for.  That’s right a copy of the one and only Nintendogs:  Dachshund & Friends complete in the box.  I realize that with such a great game comes great responsibility… this has not been lost on me.  

 

 

What’s really sad is that the person who donated this game to Value Village actually paid nearly $35 from a local game store.  I know this as the receipt was left in the box which I took a picture of and posted:) This game has only one purpose… the case is good to store a GBA game in.  The rest (as awesome as it is!) can be let go.

 

The real find was last Friday at Value Village.  I just walked in there as I usually do and found this little gem.  Now I knew it was worth a mint, but did they know?!  The answer is NO… to them it was just another SNES game for $10… can you say cha-ching!  Holy smokes a copy of R-Type 3!  My app tells me that the game sells for $102 US which would officially make this my most valuable game in my collection.  Super Mario RPG is worth more as it is complete in the box, but the actual cartridge doesn’t carry as high a price tag.  Honestly I’ve never even seen this game, and am proud to now own a copy of it in my collection.  So ya… i got mine in the end!

SEGA Corner:

So I picked up this game on the Sega Dude’s recommendation.  Was it a mistake? I don’t know as I haven’t played it yet.  It looks really stupid if I’m being honest… What the heck is a Chiki Chiki Boy anyway?  At least the cover looks kind of interesting and at the very least I’m assured that I can get my money back if I don’t like it.  Who knows though… maybe the game actually rocks!

That’s all for now.  Next time I’ll be discussing my trip to the video game swap meet in Waterloo.

Nintendo Joe