Next-town Crusader

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

NES pickups April 7th - 17th

This has been a week with more ups and down than the "dash 3" worlds on SMB... visited my local thrift store which shall remain nameless and went from ecstatic that they had some games that I needed, to flabbergasted that they had raised the prices on their games 600%.   I honestly can't remember the last time I paid more than 3.99 for a game at this 'establishment' so imagine my surprise when I visit them and all of a sudden their games are priced at $24.99 each (even the Super Mario Bros / Duck Hunt cart that came bundled with EVERY freaking Action Set sold).  Either the person in charge of the sticker gun is entirely out to lunch or just plain greedy.  When I questioned the clerk about the recent price hike they tried to play the "they have always been that price" to which I promptly showed them a picture of my purchase there last week for $2.99.   At this point I tried to remind them that most of the items they sell were donated and that charging higher than Pawn Shop prices is ludicrous.  I was disappointed that I couldn't add to my collection at that stop and realized, at that moment, that I would likely have to boycott the store altogether.

Last Sunday I tried to make myself feel better about things by visiting the flea market and found a new seller!!!  Mostly RPG games and some boxed, but a bit more pricey than my cheapass blood could afford.  However, in light of the aforementioned events, I figured I HAD to spend some money here just to show those 'other guys' that it's about principle.  I bought 2 games from the new vendor:  The Last Starfighter (with the Box) and Shenigan the Ruler.

Today capped off the last week and a half on a high note.  A few days back I was scrolling through the local classifieds and then Kijiji ads when I came across a seller in my city that advertised: NES games for sale TOO MANY TO  LIST.   If that didn't sound promising I don't know what did.   I corresponded with the girl who placed the ad a few times and finally setup a time to go and check out the games.  She was a collector herself, but decided to give up on the NES collection to focus on her Gamecube and PS1 collections.  She had a crapload of games and SOOO many titles I didn't have that I was salivating like a Sheepdog on the beach in August.  Yah I know... my poker face sucks!   Anyway she had the games in separate boxes with prices on the flap of each box.   Many of the best games she obviously new the value of from her own collecting days and so quite a few I had to pass up, but she did have a box in the $5-8 range that had several titles that I thumbed through.  Without wanting to waste alot of her time I gathered up 8 titles and asked if she would give me a deal.  In the end she game me 3 games for free.  I told her that I hoped this would be the first of many transactions down the road as there were alot of games she was selling off that have yet to reach my hands.  Just out of curiousity I checked my trusty NES collection APP and was happy to discover that one of the games I picked out was worth the same price as I paid for the whole lot.   This made the 10 day rollercoaster so worth the ride!!!

The standouts from this lot for me are:  Jimmy Conners Tennis (a little less common than most), Tennis because I have a soft spot for the Black Box games and 720 because I used to love that game in the arcade -- "Skate or Die!"  This update brings the collection total to:   389

Until next level...........

NES pickups - April 6th

It was quite fortuitous that I made it to the flea market this morning.  My daughter has been sick with a cold for the last few nights and since she doesn't like to sleep in her own room at the best of times she was bunking with my wife and I last night.  I woke up about 7am to her poor gravelly breathing instead of the usual dissonance of my alarm clock.  Knowing that I couldn't hit the snooze button on her congestion I wiped her nose, tucked her in all warm and cozy and got up.

Arriving early and beating the rush to the flea market this morning I caught my seller before anyone else had picked over his table and came back with 5 new additions to the collection:   Loopz, Dragon Spirit, Hollywood Squares, Magic Johnson's Fast Break, and Stealth.  Not really any standouts to this lot, and some of the carts have certainly seen better days, but I feel sometimes like these games have become orphaned and it's my responsibility as a lover of that time to welcome them back to an appreciative home.  These new titles bring the total count to 379.   

Today was also made remarkable by the fact that my son (who is on the Autism Spectrum)  is not unlike Liam Neeson in the Taken movies... in that both have a very specific set of skills (I'm paraphrasing of course).  No my son isn't going to break the family away from their captors by snapping people's limbs or pinpointing our location with the use of a pencil and shoelace, but he does possess the ability to take a mental picture of how things are supposed to be and can tell you when one thing is out of place.  For example, the other day my wife knocked a few of her pez dispensers off of the wall where they are displayed and, in a hurry, just put them back without realizing they were no longer in character sections (Gargamel had left the "smurf's village and was now flanked by Bert & Ernie).  Well my son took one look at the wall and stopped dead in his tracks... he proceeded to interrogate Melissa as to why they were not in their correct spots.  Much laughter ensued.   This same gift has rendered my NES collection app useless.   He can take one look at my collection and can tell you which games I have and which I do not.  He even went so far today as to correct a blog post I had made more than a year and a half ago.  I had incorrectly listed a pickup as Megaman 3 when it should have been Megaman 6 and when I questioned the validity of it and he insisted, I cross referenced it with a post I'd made on twitter at about the same time and, sure enough, the boy was right.  Well that was a tangent.  I almost missed my stop.  Bye for now!

Nes pickups 2014 (January-March)

When we last left our intrepid collector Bobby, he was closing in on 400 games... though still not at that mark he has taken a few small steps of late......................

   The temperatures are getting warmer and the itch to get back to the flea-market (did I just use itch and fleas in the same sentence?) is upon me.  This past Sunday I went (for the first time since last year) and was NOT disappointed.  There was a vendor outside that had a few games that I did not have:   Predator, The Punisher, Wayne Gretzky Hockey, King of Kings, and Bump n Jump.   After that I ventured inside and my regular dealer had some new titles but the only one I could really swing for was Star Soldier.  In addition to the games I also picked up a few new manuals.  The week before I went to Value Village and under their display case they had several games (all priced between 20-25 dollars.. for what reason I'll never know)... but one lonely game was priced $1.99 and as luck would have it it was one I did not yet have!   Pretty good week all around!   According to my collection APP, my new game total is:   374

I think of this batch the standouts for me were Punisher and King of Kings.  However, that being said, it was exciting to pick up Little League Champs for 2 bucks only to find out that my app lists the game at 4x that price.  The other 6 games were bought for $25 investment and according to the app are worth approximately $50.  Doubled my money on those as well.  I guess it's a little misleading to say that when 1 or both of 2 circumstances would have to occur for that statement to be true. A) I would have to be willing to sell my collection and B) There would have to be someone willing to pay for the games what the value is listed at.  At any rate it's just fun to see what kinds of deals I can find out there... I try to never pay more than what the listing says (even it's a game I really, really want)   Well... that's it until next adventure!!! Keep collecting!

 

1-800-How's my Gaming?

I can sit and watch my 11 year old play Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for hours and it never ceases to amaze me how proficient he has become.  Clearly it didn't always come this easy to him, and that makes me think back to my younger years.  Whereas now companies like Brady Games put out catalogues giving players the in-depth scoop on EVERY aspect of the games and YouTube-rs post video walkthroughs (virtual spoilers if you will) that tell you step-by-step how to beat a game, gamers from MY generation were forced to spend hours trying to figure out the puzzles by ourselves.  In effect, Nintendo and other such companies raised an army of Beta testers.  It was the gamers of the 70s and 80s who exposed every glitch, bug and weakness of the game designs.

When we didn't have time to beat our heads against the wall trying over and over to figure out the obscure puzzles that each game presented (think Castlevania) we had 2 choices:

1)  we had to subscribe to Nintendo Power magazine and hope that they articled our exact dilemma between their pages (or be one of those lucky enough to have this magazine in their supermarket or bookstore so you could peruse its contents on the newsstand).  This would suffice temporarily until the owner caught you "sneaking a peek" and then you might as well have had a men's magazine in your hands for the ire it brought.

OR....

2) as a last ditch effort we called the Nintendo Game Counselor Hotline.  The adverts would always require you to get a parent's permission before calling, but once I placed the call I don't ever remember them asking to speak to my mom before I was connected to one of their "Gurus". It wasn't as though I would call for every little problem I encountered in a game, but I remember all too well the expression on my mom's face when the phone bill arrived...  I could have made a long distance call to Guam during peak hours for less than it cost to defeat the last few palaces of Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link.  Don't get my wrong, despite the invoice amount at the bottom of our phone bill you really couldn't put a price on being able to forge ahead in your game (not to mention the bragging rights you had for being the first person on your block to get that far -- even if you needed help).

Looking back on it now I realize the value these challenges had in terms of making us better problem solvers.  For those that didn't have the option of calling a Hotline they became stronger through trial and error (employing EVERY item in their inventory for EVERY possible purpose regardless of how ludicrous it seemed) and for those who did end up making a call (or several) we became experts at shorthand (furiously jotting game codes, cheats, and secrets into our spiral notebooks like crib notes for an exam) and experienced negotiators when it came time to repaying the debts incurred trying to advance further in our games.

... The New Batch (NES Update: April - July, 2013)

Wow... my last entry was way back in March.  Guess this is why I'll never make a living as a blogger.  Let's see... when we last checked in my collection had grown to 326 carts.

Unfortunately I got caught up in my Arcade cabinet software installations and didn't keep better records of where and when I got my last couple bunches of games, but  as of today my collection now stands at:  366!

My favorites from this last batch of games are the 2 American video carts:  Puzzle and Pyramid, my 2 new black box games:  Gumshoe and Ice Climber and my arcade ports:  Joe and Mac, Xenophobe, Mappy and 1943.  In addition I added Yoshie's Cookie, Gremlins 2, another Camerica Gold cart in Quattro Arcade, and of course a few of the Tengen games: Klax and especially Pacmania!

According to my collection analysis I still have a LONG way to go in obtaining a copy of each game released, but I have collected 44.74% of the complete series thus far.  I thank my luck stars that not only does my wife allow me to house this collection in our dining room but that she picks up games for me when she sees them too and is responsible for a lot of the titles I have managed to procure over the years. Along with the games I picked up a couple of new manuals: Tetris, Breakthru, Tag Team Wrestling, Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout, and Deadly Towers.  I have now gathered 38 unique and complete instruction manuals.  Not all that impressive, but it's nice to get them every now and then without having to fork over money that I'd rather put towards rounding out the cart collection.  Looking forward to the next big milestone which will be reaching the 400 mark.  Any predictions as to when that might happen?  Leave your guesses in the comments below.

Back in the saddle

Wow!  It's really been awhile.  My foray into the arcade cabinet building world behind me now, and the winter months firmly in my rear-view mirror, I can get back to collecting my NES carts.

This past Sunday I returned to the flea market only to find that one of my regular go-to guys for nes games had re-filled his coffers and stocked his table with a bunch of new games that I didn't have.  If money were no object I probably would have slapped down a lot more than I did, but instead I exercised some restraint and only parted with a few bills.  In the end I still think I got a great haul.  Combined with a few games I got here and there since my last collection update I sit currently at:   326 carts

My personal favorite acquisitions from the past little while would be:
The Lone Ranger, Supercars, and Bill & Ted's Excellent adventure.

A couple of quick plugs, I use the app:  Nes Collector to organize my game collection.  It's an easy-to-use app for maintain quick lists of the games you have, the games you want and even allows you to export lists via email.   For more info check out their homepage:

PureGaming.org

and to view my game collection online go to:

8bitbobby's nes collection on puregaming.org