NES Pickups - April 1st, 2015

Happy April Fools Day!  It would have been a feeble attempt on my part to use this entry to say that I had got some extremely rare artifact for the NES for next to nothing. Instead I will make a brief entry on something that actually DID happen.  Today I made another visit to my newest game trader's house and this time I picked up Starship Hector and 8 game manuals.  He threw in 3 posters too (most of which is pictured below).

In this mini-lot I, of course, received the cart Starship Hector as well as manuals for: Hogan's Alley, Super Pitfall, Smash TV, Basewars, Robocop, Double Dragon 2, Millipede and Skate or Die.  The generous seller also threw in a few posters as an added bonus:  Smash TV, Double Dragon 2 and a general advertisement for Ultra Games. I don't want to steal the proverbial thunder from a future post, but I will mention that this seller was kind enough to put me in touch with another friend of his and I have a trade lined up that will hopefully take place later in the week.   

Nes Carts:  470

Licensed games: 435/687

Boxes: 50

Game Manuals: 78

63% of the overall licensed game collection

NES Pickups - March 29th, 2015

"Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it." - Ferris Bueller

Sometimes I'm amazed at the speed of life when the internet intervenes.  Less than 24 hours ago I was enjoying a Marilyn Manson concert and bumped into a friend of mine there.  She knows that in addition to loving music I am also a nintendo game collector.  She promised to comment with my name every time she saw someone selling NES games through Facebook and today she did just that.  I looked at the ad she was pointing me to and found that the seller was looking for offers on about a dozen or so NES titles.  Looking at the picture that was posted two titles jumped out right away.  I was happy to see Silk Worm available, but when I saw that he was offering Battletoads I was dumbfounded.

That slippery little sucker has eluded capture by me for a long time.  I have had it on the line before a time or two only for it to wriggle its way off the hook before I could reel it in.  I think 3 or 4 such ads have gone up and I was either a day late or a dollar short on them. I thought for sure when I contacted him he would say it was already sold; in fact my past failed attempts at getting this game have made me think that the only way it would grace my shelves was if I bought it on eBay.

What I found equally shocking was that the seller gave me a great deal on the two games. The whole transaction took place in the doorway of his house and was over quicker than a Mike Tyson bout (during his prime). I walked back to the car a mere 30 seconds later still shaking my head that Battletoads was mine!

Even though my Collection app lists Silk Worm as the more rare title of the two Battletoads seems to be among those upper echelon games like Contra, Zelda and the Megaman Series that resellers know the value of (and quickly snap up) and that even casual NES fans covet highly (and thus hang on to). For these reasons and countless others I thought for certain this game would continue to be a pipe dream.  So glad I was mistaken.

Nes Carts:  469

Licensed games:  434/687

Unlicensed games:  35/90

NES Pickups - March 21st, 2015

Today was a little different than most pickup days because it consisted of two trips to my favorite game seller/trader's house.  The first trip I went with some cash in hand and came home with 5 new games (2 in boxes).  During the first visit I had mentioned, in passing, that I'd really love some of his other boxes and manuals and might have some games at home I would be willing to trade.

A few hours later, armed with about 10 of my doubles, I returned to barter my way to one more boxed game, about 24 loose boxes and 16 game manuals.  There were several stand outs in this lot not the least of was the box, manual and 3-d glasses for the game rad racer.  I also got Jurassic Park which is one I've been on the hunt for for awhile.  With these additions I think I stand at about 48 CIB games now (a collection I haven't really been trying to get but have came across through happenstance here and there).  As with anything that is the better part of 3 decades old there is a varying degree of wear and tear on the boxes and manuals, but I'm going to chalk it up to the proverbial character giving thing. I also got a near mint Gyromite with box and manual! New games acquired are as follows:  F-15 Strike Eagle, Jurassic Park, Wheel of Fortune: Vanna White Edition, Dirty Harry and Smash TV.

Since the boxes and manuals are too numerous to mention here I've provided some pictures below:

 

 

NES Carts:  467
Licensed games:  432/687
Unlicensed games:  35/90

NES pickups - March 5th, 2015

Well another thrift store gauntlet under our belts and I'm beginning to realize that the proprietors of these establishments either know the value of these little gray plastic boxes or collect them too because I have done the local circuit more than a few times in the past months and have come up empty handed.  My wife, seeing my puppy dog woe-is-me eyes, told me we should stop in at a few pawnshops as well and look for carts and so at the 2nd such stop I actually found a few little gems to add to the collection.  Nothing extremely rare in this lot but still nice to find.  I picked up the unlicensed game: Dudes with Attitude, The Great Waldo Search and I think the final WWF wrestling game I was missing for the collection:  WWF Steel Cage Challenge.  The games all show their age in different ways, but despite their flaws they will be welcome additions!

I suppose the irony of these finds compared to my last entry is that I got all 3 games today for about the same price as I paid for the one game in Kamloops (and I didn't travel several hours to get them).

NES Carts:  462
Licensed games:  427/687
Unlicensed games:  35/90

NES pickup February 27th, 2015

If you'll remember from one my last entries (from October of last year) we made a bit of a thrift circuit in the nearby neighboring cities. Yesterday my wife and I decided to leave the kids with my mother-in-law and take another such road trip.  We essentially travelled in a large circle visiting thrift stores in Armstrong, Salmon Arm and Kamloops.  12 hours, 400 kms and a few coffees later we returned with our treasures.  The route took us from Kelowna to Armstrong and Salmon Arm (via Vernon) then on to Kamloops and home to Kelowna (via Merritt).

Although I saw a few artifacts that would have made other retro game system collectors interested such as the Atari Touchpad (aka the Star Raiders controller) and a Colecovision Adam complete with some games on tape, I didn't even get a sniff of anything NES related until Kamloops.

Once we had visited a few of the second hand stores in 'Loops' we went to the local game store: All-A-Board games -- but found it closed. Fortunately they had only relocated and not closed up shop for good. We found their new storefront one street over.  From what I can remember their original location was a lot larger than this one and seemed to have more selection but they had said that a lot of their stuff was still in storage.  Despite that they still had some highly collectible cartridges on display.  Definitely a wish list of sorts with games such as Secret Scout and several of the multi-carts in the display case. Most of your run-of-the-mill cheaper games did not make the move with them and I presume are boxed up in a locker somewhere (waiting for the next season of Storage Wars: British Columbia edition).

Lining the, sparser than I remember, shelves were games priced between $20-80 which ran the gamut from totally worth it to IMO a little overpriced.  They had 2 copies each of a few of the unreleased titles:  King of Kings and Exodus (the former of which I already have), but even though I like the carts that look different than your average joe gray ones I didn't think it was worth the asking price. I almost grabbed Adventures of Lolo 2, but in the end I chose one I had been looking for for awhile: Little Ninja Brothers.  This is a game that satisfied my current game requirements of specialty store purchases: 1) it needs to be a fairly uncommon title and 2) it has to be halfway decent.  There are altogether too many games in the catalog that are rare by virtue of their being monumentally bad. Thankfully this one does not fall into that category and it is a cool looking RPG with above average music and graphics.  I look forward to playing through this game and perhaps posting a review some time down the road.

NES Carts:  459
Licensed games:  425/687
Unlicensed games:  34/90

NES pickups October 4th, 2014

Just a quick update to the collection. After work I picked up 4 more games from Shayne that he had kept aside for me: Alien Syndrome, Genghis Khan, Flying Dragon, and Xexyz.  I can't express how great it has been to meet all these other collectors and NES fans out there who so far have all been very helpful and friendly.  I found another contact that wants to trade games this week and perhaps even buy a few of my doubles.  It is always nice to be able to recoup a little bit of the money that I have put into this hobby, but like most things it usually goes right back into what your passionate about.  So given the contacts I've been making lately I see 500 games on the horizon and maybe not in the too distant future.    Highlights from this lot would be the Tengen game, Alien Syndrome (which I have on my M.A.M.E. machine and play from time to time and Xexyz which is really an underappreciated game in the NES library.

Checking on the score... these additions have the totals at:

Nes carts:  458
Licensed games:  424/687
Unlicensed games:  34/90

NES pickups October 2nd, 2014

Today Missy and I left the kids with Nan and went for a thrifting trip a few towns over.  Like a fool, I forgot my GPS at home so we were left to tracking using google maps and whatever free wifi hotspots I could find along the way.  Even with our technology challenged navigation we managed to find several of the second hand stores I'd made a list of the night before.  The first stop was the best for me as there was a Fantasy/board game specialty store two doors down from the thrift store stop.  While Missy went into her shop I ducked into All a-board Games and found a couple display cases brimming with retro goodness.  There were Retron consoles, a turbo-grafx 16, some n64 titles, snes and then finally I saw the NES section.  Wow.. there were so many great games. I had visions of supermarket sweep and imagined the damage I could do with an empty buggy and 60 seconds on the clock.  This was definitely an example of one of those 'if money was no object' situations.  After perusing the 40 or so cartridges for about 10 mins (while a group of guys behind me sat at a table playing a rousing game of dungeons & dragons or whatever today's equivalent board/dice/card game is) I came up with 3 games that were within my price range.

From this store I got:  Orb-3d,, Ninja Kid, & Vindicators.  Something that I found interesting was the sticker that is still on the back of the Orb-3d game.  It is (what I assume to be) the retail sticker from the original store it could have been purchased and/or rented from.  Not sure what other stops it made along the way, but at least at one point in this game's history you could walk into Rob's Video in Newport, KY slam down $95 and this classic was yours.   I love these stickers.  I like that they warn the renter to *please rewind before returning.  Apparently the Format of this game is Beta?  Hmm... pre-release?  or Betamax?   At any rate I got a chuckle out of that sticker and think I might just leave it on there for nostalgia sake.  If anyone has any idea when this business might have operated feel free to comment on twitter using the hashtag #8bitbobby   the Facebook page I found was:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Robs-Video/117909535002280?sk=info

Anyway back to the blog.  There were a few other stops on our trip that had games, but the one place only had the very common ones and the other that had 1 or 2 I didn't have were asking too much for them so I passed.  I did find a very curious 'nintendo-related' artifact at Value Village though.  It is a Mario's Cement Factory Mini-classic keychain game. (Unopened from 1998).  Not the original LCD handheld unfortunately but a smaller, playable, re-release I presume.   A quick check on ebay showed an average sell price in around the $20-25 mark.  Not sure whether to trade, sell or just display it.  It is a neat little item.

All and all it was a really good day.  We managed to spend all of the money that we had taken with us on the trip and, without a solid backup plan, --night before payday and no plastic with us-- I was tasked with calculating the exact amount of money to hold back for gas to get us home.  At that moment I felt like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, pacing back and forth and repeating.... about $10, yah... $10.  We had a wonderful dinner out @ BP and spent all that we had in our pockets on vintage goodies, save for the slim fuel budget I guessed at.  Needless to say  I shaved it closer than a Quattro razor.  When we got back into town.. literally 2 mins from home, the gas light came on.  Whew.  The perfect end to a fun-filled day!  Stand-outs for today:  The cement factory mini-game, Vindicators (because it's a darker shade of gray) and I guess the sticker on the back of the Orb-3d game that makes for an interesting conversation.  Let's check on the score, shall we?

Nes carts:  454
421/687 Licensed*  
33/90 Unlicensed*

*  = totals are based on my own exclusions from Geekbox's List.