star | My Nintendo Dimension

You’ll have to excuse me, but I’m just coming out of surgery and I’m happy to say it was a complete success! In my last post, I had mentioned that we were expecting a special surprise to be delivered in the mail, and last Monday it arrived! This was much quicker than expected, as usually mail from the U.S. takes forever to clear customs. I’ve had instances where it’s taken five weeks to be delivered to my house. The dude I bought it from, Armageddon Potato at Nintendo Age was great at communicating with me, and completely upheld his end of the bargain. I wouldn’t hesitate to do business with him again in the future!

This is it… Cowboy Kid! Don’t be deceived by the label… I must say it looks like that of a pornographic film! This is an RPG-like game that reminds me of a wild west version of River City Ransom. You make your way around, collecting loot, upgrading weapons, and defeating enemies. It’s actually one of the more underrated games on the NES that not that many people have. I can’t blame them though as the price tag was quite high for a piece of plastic from 1992. However Armageddon Potato was willing to part with it for a reasonable price that was far from top dollar… and now it’s in the collection!

There was however a bit of a scare. When I shook the cartridge (as I often do), there was a big rattle. Something was jarred loose, and it made me sick with worry! Was the game going to make it? Only time would tell.

The worst thing was, I didn’t have the necessary tools to perform surgery on this NES cart. I needed to order a 3.8mm retro gaming screwdriver from Amazon… and somehow ended up with an Amazon Prime free trial account. But at least my baby wouldn’t have to suffer for long, as Prime customers get expedited shipping for free. It took two days for these surgical instruments to arrive, and not a moment too soon! Now as this was my first procedure, I didn’t want to practice on an expensive game like Cowboy Kid. As such, I selected a very expendable game from my collection (Wheel of Fortune) and tried out the procedure first on it. It was a success, and I felt confident. I tried it on Cowboy Kid, and I’m happy to say it was a complete success. In fact you can see in the picture above what was causing all the ruckus. A piece that helps to hold in the circuit board had been jarred loose somehow. It wasn’t a big deal, as games can survive with this being removed.

The game is all patched up, and well on it’s way to recovery in my basement! We are all relieved over here, and welcome a new healthy game to our collection.

SEGA Corner: I cam across this video and thought it was kind of funny.

Until next time,

Nintendo Joe

The other day I was downtown and decided to visit the Iceman who owns a video game buy/sell/trade store. His prices are what you would expect from a reseller and nothing to write home about. That being said, a while ago I had traded in some old PS2 games that I didn’t want, and since I had the voucher on me decided to see what he had in stock. There were several titles that I wanted… all over priced, but since I only rarely go downtown I figured I should cash in. One of the titles I picked up was Dragon Warrior II. The stick price was $50 which is hardly a bargain, but since I had a $90 voucher, it didn’t hurt too bad. I haven’t played any of the games in the series yet, though I’ve seen quite a lot of it as a friend in high school ranted and raved about it. It looks like an okay, but unfortunately pales in comparison to Sega’s Phantasy Star. As inappropriate as it is to mention on a blog dedicated to Nintendo, Sega really had out done itself with the PS series (except for part 3 which had potential but was a really big disappointment). In fact I would go so far as to say the most fun I’ve had with a console RPG is Phantasy Star II… but that’s for another blog.

Unfortunately there is not a cover that I can print out on the cover project website. If you have the game, please upload a scan of the cover. My collection just won’t be complete with out it. They have I, II, and IV posted, but not III. So sad:(

Dragon Warrior came out in 1986… which I believe was a year ahead of the Phantasy Star release. For what it was… it seems like an okay game. I’ll update more as I progress through the game however it will be a while as I’m currently playing Metroid Hunters on the DS, and Gothic 3 for the PC. As I get more into the game I think I’m going to hold a contest to see which title (Dragon Warrior or Phantasy Star) had the better slime monster. I’m not holding my breath on the DW version because if I remember correctly there was no monster animation. However the DW slime did have eyes and a smile which was rather frightening. I mean think about it… you are minding your own business when out of nowhere a slime jumps out at you??

]Dragon Warrior Phantasy Star

YIKES!!! What demonic hell-spawn created these foul beasts?! It is these types of monsters that chase me in my dreams and cause me to wake up in a cold sweat! Freddy Kruger has nothing on these slimes.