Missy was out with her mom and another family friend on a somewhat regular thrift day a few towns over looking for her kitsch-y treasures but selflessly always on the lookout for my little gray square-shaped gems. She had said that about halfway through the trip she was a little disheartened that she hadn't come across any games at all for me and then... fate intervened.
They couldn't find parking near the store they wished to visit and so they drove around until they could find a spot further down the street. As she tells it, they didn't have any small change between them so they plugged the meter with a large coin giving them ample time to amble about. As luck would have it right by the meter was a store whose wares spilled out onto the street. From the frontage it was difficult to tell if it was a pawnshop, specialty store, thrift store or what, but once inside she found a veritable treasure trove of games, vintage toys and the like.
She called me and at once I was transported back to my hockey card collecting days when I would open up each and every new foil pack, fan them out in front of me and chant the "need it, got it, got it, need it, got it". The difference being that my game doubles wouldn't have worked well in the spokes of my bike.
She rifled off about 20 or 30 titles and was starting to get discouraged as I had all the ones that she listed. After a few turns around the display case she mentioned two titles that I didn't have. The first, Totally Rad, was a little bit pricier than I had hoped, but when combined with the low price of the other it made it more than worth buying.
The second game she told me about absolutely made my day! Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball. As soon as the title came through the phone to my ears I immediately realized that this was one of the harder to find titles in the library. After she had told me some of the other prices of the games I expected this one to be in the $30-50 range. Let's just say I was pleasantly surprised with the asking price and told her to grab the two games which the proprietor gave her a deal on.
I have a feeling that the shop keeper graded the value on popularity alone as some games were on the mark, others were over priced and this one in particular was under valued. Perhaps it was relegated to the bargain bin of doom based on its subject matter? Sports games tend to be the misfits of the library due, in large part, to their sheer number... but his one is different than the others. First off it is the only Softball title for the NES; baseball games are riddled throughout and are varying degrees of great, mediocre and just plain awful. This game takes some of the best facets of the good ones like Baseball Stars and RBI Baseball and mixes in enough original characteristics to separate it from the herd. By virtue of being a softball game it not only offers fast and slo-pitch settings but allows you to choose from several different venues to stage your game. You can play on a cliff (which seems a little odd at first), a school yard or even on a standard field. The game allows you to hand pick your teams like we did as kids for a pickup game. Unlike many of the sports games (Ice Hockey comes to mind) that gave you 3 prototypical body types to choose from this game has a vast array of players with all sorts of different abilities and unique features. This is another one of those games that is a triple threat in that it is somewhat rare, valuable, but also a very solid title with tonnes of replay potential.
Nes Carts: 496
Licensed games: 458/687
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