Nes pickups September 18th, 2014

For a change of pace this week my wife and I drove one town over to visit the thrift stores, pawn shops etc. in search of games for me and the usual knick knacks that strike her fancy.  She was on a mission as well to find fabric for our kids' halloween costumes and the latest round of handmade dolls that she creates.  [inserting shameless plug]  If you'd like to check out some of her work she can be found at the link below:

Boopsiedaisy on Etsy

After visiting several second hand stores in the area and coming up empty handed I finally picked up a copy of Lego Batman for the PC (lego games have become one of my guilty pleasures of late).  Then at the local comic book and collectibles store, Ebenezer's, I found a few games that tickled my fancy (and separated me from some dollars).

From the name sake of Mr. Scrooge himself I found an employee, who couldn't have been further from that persona, to help me out by opening up the NES display case so I could take a closer look.  I found about a half dozen games that I still need to put into my collection but for today I picked up.... Rollergames (which I believe is an arcade port) and Joshua & the Battle of Jericho (an unlicensed game by Wisdom Tree and manufactured by Color Dreams).

The most humourous feature of this game is the esoteric instructions they give you on the front label;  ** TO START GAME: Please wait up to 9 flashes on TV screen.  ** POWER ON:  Please wait 7 seconds between Power OFF and ON.

Well that's clear as mud (as is the shield on the right side of the picture that tells you that this is designed for use with the nintendo entertainment system... if you didn't know you would need a magnifying glass to read it).  Couple that with the normal blinking of the power button at the best of times and you have the recipe for awesome!

Even though they aren't legit games by Nintendo's standards I have a soft spot for these few that fall outside of the grayish color pallete popularized by the NES.  The Colordreams blue and black carts, the Camerica Gold carts, and the Tengen black carts are all personal favorites.  So it was really a no brainer when I was able to add Joshua to my lineup for less than what my app valued the game at. These two additions put my NES cartridge count up to: 436.  Until next time!  Happy collecting.

NES Pickups September 14th, 2014

It's been a slow month on the collection front...  but today I did manage to find a couple of new games at the flea market.  It was bitter sweet because even though I came home with 2 new carts I found out from my regular vendor that the Flea Market will cease operations in October.  Unless they find a new venue it will be the end of an era (of sorts).

Okay on to the additions:  today I got WWF King of the Ring and Gyruss.  I haven't played this particular wrestling game before, but I spent many hours playing Gyruss.  These two bring my total cart count to 434.

As you can see, Gyruss is in very good shape. The label is clean and the cartridge itself has stood up to the last 25-30 years quite well.  King of the Ring on the other hand is starting to look like it is in the twilight of its career.  It is sporting all of the bumps and bruises of the many piledrivers, bodyslams and suplexes it has likely endured during its lifetime.  Either way it is nice to add these.

Side note: I also picked up a near mint copy of Road Blasters. The label on my original one was starting to peel quite badly.  

She put the NES in happines[s]

Yesterday I received a package in the mail from my friend Jennie!  It took me a day and a half to gather my wits in order to try and write some semblance of a thank you to her for her unreal gift.  She told me several weeks ago that she was cleaning out her closet and came across several bins of N.E.S. related goodness.  Well a package containing many of these goodies showed up on the doorstep.  I was absolutely floored by what was inside this cardboard dwelling and her thoughtfulness has slowly coaxed me out of my shell and prompted me to try my hand at a video blog.

Now I should preface this by saying that I have no experience in video production and I drink nearly a pot of coffee every day so my hands shake badly.  I poked fun at myself so no one else would have to state the obvious in that I broke rule one of the youtube bible: the unnecessary posting of vertical videos.  Link to the video is below, but to keep this blog somewhat succinct I will finish this with the update portion (spoilers for those who want to watch the video)

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Today I received the following:   Codename: Viper (with box), Punisher (with box), Battlechess (CIB), Iron Tank (with box), Startropics (box), Karnov (with box).  In addition, she sent several loose carts:  Gauntlet (the black Tengen version), Legends of the Diamond, Double Strike, The Mafat Conspiracy, Jeopardy Jr. Edition, Double Dragon 3, & 1942.

The standouts for me are: Double Dragon 3 (hands down), 1942 (which replaced my infamous masking tape cartridge - see video for more explanation), and Double Strike.   These wonderful games bring my cartridge total to:   432.  Thanks once again Jennie!  I promise to give them a good home.

Here's a link to my fledgling Vlog/thank you: 

8bitbobby Vlog Episode 01 - Youtube

NES update: July 20th, 2014

Another 10 days has gone by since my last post and I'm happy to say I've reached another mini-milestone with my collection.  With the additions from the Sunday Flea Market today, my visit last week, (and a package slated to arrive tomorrow or Tuesday) I have reached 425 game carts!

The box of goodies from Game Gavel dot com will contain the following:  Dance Aerobics, The Last Ninja, Thunderbirds, and the Untouchables.  Last Sunday (July 13th) I picked up 3 new titles from the 'ol F.M. including:   The Little Mermaid, Bad News Baseball, and one of my all-time favorites Rush n' Attack and today I picked up Magic of Scheherazade and another gem:  Willow.

Have I mentioned yet how fortunate I feel to have continued to acquire new games at an alarming rate? That is 9 games in about as many days.  A special shout out to my wife, Missy, for putting up with my 8bit obsession.

NES Pickups - July 10th, 2014

Last night I got an email from a recent contact I made who is a nes collector/seller.  You'll remember me mentioning him in previous posts as the guy who lives right around the corner from me.  Anyway... Shayne emailed me to let me know he had made a huge trade that landed him with 60 new titles and asked if I wanted the first look at them before he posted them for sale.   My eyes were as big as saucers as I replied that I would love to have a look at the games tomorrow.

I made arrangements to go by his place after 5 pm to take a look at his recent findings and brought along a few of my doubles in the event that he might want to trade.  Unfortunately this trip would be a tad bittersweet.  He had a lot of new games to peruse but, after close inspection with both my mental list and my Ipod app, I concluded that I had all but two of them:  Magic Darts, and Infiltrator.   Long story short I traded him for a pair of my doubles straight across (game for game) and so adding those two new titles to my collection cost me nothing out of pocket today!  The additions of Magic Darts and Infiltrator brings my collection total to:  417 games and 50.61% of the overall collection.  With the exception of some label damage on M.D. the games look pretty clean overall.

As sad as it was that he only acquired two new games (out of the 60 new ones he had) that I was lacking, it is somewhat fulfilling to realize that my collection is beginning to reach a stage where finding new games (without the help of Ebay) is becoming more scarce.

NES pickups - July 2nd, 2014

Got a package in the mail today from Game Gavel Dot Com in it was the following:

The package consisted of 3 carts and 2 manuals:   World Games, Muppets Adventure, 8 Eyes, and manuals for The Karate Kid, and Galaga.  As bad as the game is, it was still rewarding to add the Muppets Adventure game to my library. I played through this game a little bit on my M.A.M.E. machine as a preview and came to the conclusion that this is not really a game for playability but rather a game for collectibility. As for the others,  I had not played World games on the NES, but I played it a lot on the Commodore 64. It was always entertaining in the weightlifting competition to watch the facial expressions of the competitors.  The last game, 8 eyes, looks like the spawn of many like-minded games of the time; most notably Castlevania.

This was my first experience buying from Gamegavel.com and I must say it was flawless.  The seller (Dennis) of FND Collectibles was courteous and professional.  It was such wonderful experience compared to the last few auctions I won from Ebay.

A week or so back (against my better judgement) I added the Game Genie in my collector app and that put me at exactly 50% of the collection.  With these 3 additions I am at 50.36% my cartridge total is:  414

Partial Resto on my Cento part I

This will be a short entry in this journey because tonight was all about ridding the machine of antiquated wiring, loose screws, nails, dust bunnies and the like.  I opened up the back of the machine and unbolted what I have to assume is the power supply.  At first glance it looks like a brick or one of those mouse traps for live catch and release of rodents.  It is surprisingly heavy for the size of it.

As you can see, this is the nerve center. Someone had wired a standard orange extension cord into it and it connected to the light bar behind the marquee as well as the speakers.   All of these cords were trimmed away from the walls of the cabinet and discarded.  It was really difficult to crop them and I felt like I was cutting the umbilical cord in a way, but since this machine will have modern components in it (i.e a computer tower, monitor, and desktop speakers) the need for the outdated wiring is zero. 

From here, I took a shop vac to the inside of the cabinet to get rid of 30 years of dust, cobwebs, fallen screws and God knows what else was lurking in the dark recesses of that hull.

After the back was taken care of I turned my attention to the front of the cabinet (namely the marquee/speaker area).  I took the marquee off and removed the housing for the speaker (which is genius in its design), removed the old school speaker and cleaned the marquee (it had glue all the way around).  Last, but not least, I cleaned both sides of the bezel glass and what was once a dusty weathered looking display area was now clean and vibrant looking once more.

I bought a tube light during our travels today that I had hoped would work behind the marquee, but unfortunately it was a little bit too big and as I do not really want to alter the inside of the cabinet (structurally) I think I'll hold out for one the right size.

Some final notes I want to make about this machine before wrapping this up:  while cleaning the inside of the base of the machine I discovered that the coin catcher was still there and the previous owner had left a quarter behind (maybe for good luck... like not giving a wallet as a gift without some money in it?)  Just for authenticity it was from the early '80s.  On the right wall of the cabinet was a typed note that from the tone of it sounded like a checklist for construction on the cabinet or a primer for what things to look for in a defective cabinet.  And the last little bit of awesomeness was that the coin box had two counters still attached and the combined count (if I am doing the math correctly) implies that this machine made someone about $30,000 in quarters (or a sore thumb from adding credits on free play).  Would love, in an alternate universe, to see a montage of all the action this Centipede game saw in its heyday.

  

For the purpose of score keeping and later scrutiny the stats on this project thus far are as follows:

Hours into the project (1)
$$ into this project   ($120)
Cups of coffee consumed during this project thus far  (2)