Having traveled not once, but twice out of country this month: first to Pasadena, then a week later to Anaheim, one might think that the opportunity to find games would readily present itself. Not so much... on my first trip I searched up used game stores in close proximity to my hotel only to find that Google had not updated in awhile and the store I was looking for had closed down. I managed to find the Goodwill store nearby, but it was a bust as well. There was actually more selection in my local thrift shops.
The second trip to the state of California was more structured and time didn't really permit the opportunity to poke around their local second hand stores. I was able, of course, to get my 'game on' though with a stop off at the Starcade in Disneyland. There I got up close and personal with the Fix-it Felix Jr. game which looks very much like it hitched a ride in the Delorean and came here from 1985. The paint job looked aged and it screamed retro arcade.
It was actually quite dark in there and my biggest regret was not getting a better picture of the machine before we ran off to the Star Tours fast-pass lineup. Seems really silly to speak of a whirlwind trip to Disneyland and Universal Studios as in any way lacking, but what it lacked in NES game pickups it more than made up for in feeding my 40 yr. old kid brain. This gaming opportunity at Starcade was awesome and my kids went around pressing buttons on every cabinet until they came across one that actually played without any tokens being put in. In here I also got a Wreck-it Ralph souvenir coin and kept a few left over Starcade tokens. Throughout the 4 days we spent on this trip to Cali I encountered many game-related photo ops so it was a wonderful experience all around!
I actually thought my 2 weeks vacation was not going to yield any additions to my collection when my friend contacted me saying he'd found 2 games for me down in Vancouver: Bart Simpson vs. the Space Mutants and Spiderman! If that wasn't enough, today my wife and I took a trip (while the kids were in school) to the next town over and hit every pawn shop, thrift and specialty store we could find. At the specialty store I found a fairly uncommon game called: Galactic Crusader and at one of the Pawn shops here they had a very good boxed RBI baseball 3. This purchase replaced my old cart that had a damaged label. Despite paying a little more for the Galactic Crusader cart than I wanted to, I was happy to have acquired a game that is less common than most, unlicensed, and a groovy looking aqua blue-green color. The game itself is a loosely based Galaga clone, but unlike most unlicensed games is somewhat playable. Even though it isn't one of the most popular NES titles I have an affinity for the oddly colored or shaped carts. I especially like the gold camerica carts, Black Tengen carts and blueish tinged Color Dreams and Bunch carts.
This brings the collection total to: 393 with the addition of 3 new games, 2 new manuals, and a new game box! Didn't want to crosspost this with Twitter, but also aquired Dick Tracy a few weeks back... that's why the jump from 389-393 from last post.
https://twitter.com/8bitbobby/status/460464585326092289
