Not much compared to you other guys. But the start of a hopefully great collection!
Btw, anyone know of a way to get the yellow bits clean, if possible?
Great start to your collection! I would recommend one thing, though: Focus primarily on reacquiring the games that hold some meaning to you (games you used to have, friends had, ones you might have wanted but couldn't afford, etc.), and don't necessarily go down the completionist path and try to acquire EVERYTHING. I think that's just about madness, save for those who can genuinely afford it. (And believe me--the vast majority of hardcore collectors honestly can't and shouldn't.) That's not to say you shouldn't be an opportunist and be willing to pick up a bunch of games with which you have neither a connection nor interest when an excellent deal presents itself. But don't pay eBay prices for an"rare" crappy game just to have it in your collection. Disappointing as it is to realize, these games are extraordinarily unlikely to be our retirement plans. (unless, of course, you just happen across a pallet of NIB Atari Air Raid carts. )
Seriously, though. I totally pwned a yard-sale score today. So check this out:
Tub full of miscellaneous videogame stuff at some frat house's yard sale.
A bunch of random stuff, but right off the bat I see a Dreamcast and two N64s, along with 10 or so N64 titles, including the coveted Zelda:OoT and DK64 carts. So I offer the half-dazed, shirtless 20-year-old $30 for the whole lot. He thinks a second, hesitates, and says he was really wanting to get at least $50 for it. Ultimately, I got him down to $40 and I ended up walking away pretty happy with that price. Got into the car and started going through it, and it seems to have been a pretty good find.
The three consoles (complete except for the DC having no controller), 11 N64 carts that included some of the more sought after commons (SM64 x 2, Mario Golf, DK64, Zelda:OoT, Banjo-Kazooie, Goldeneye, Starfox 64, et. al.), three N64 controllers with 1 Mem-pak, A Mad-Catz light-gun for the original Xbox, an official Xbox Controller S, 2 MadCatz PS2 controllers, a Play Joy (Bootleg TV plug'n'play unit pre-loaded with tons of emulated NES games), and lots of miscellaneous power and video cables.
But I reach the bottom of the bin, and what do I find?
A PSP-1001! Battery's dead, though, so I don't know if it works. And I'm slightly disappointed that there's no charger for it in the tub. But--and I kid you not--guess what I found not 4 yard sale stops later?
That is what religious yard-salers would refer to as "Providence". Couldn't believe it! Saw a small tub labelled "Cell Phone Chargers $2" and decided to go through it on a lark. Sure enough, this baby was down in there just waiting for me to pick it up. Of course, the question still remained as to whether or not the PSP worked. So I get home, plug it in, wait a few minutes, and then...
Voila! As the scantily clad Megan Fox can attest, it works just fine. It's actually been modded and is running a custom firmware. Even better, I check the Memory Stick slot and find...
So I'm super pleased with the purchase over all. Couple that with the fact that I also found my girls a Furreal "Biscuit Lovin' Pup" for $5, and I'd have to say it was one of my better yard sale outings.
Oh, one thing I also thought was kind of cool if not completely useless: there was also a CIB original Xbox Live Starter Kit in the bin.
In fact, the three month subscription card had never even been used.
I know that seems "meh" now. But just think--in 15-20 years, some idiot collector will probably give me $50 for it.
A bit of both. . My normal pattern is to map out and prioritize any yard sales which explicitly advertise having videogames stuff, and then after hitting those, on my way back home I stop at every one I see signs for. If they have games out and it's something I want, then I make a starting offer and negotiate from there. If not, I ask if they have anything I might be intersted in. And if not, then I move on. And yes, sometimes I'm amazed at how serendipitous some of the days finds can be. (Like today with the PSP and charger.)
Just a quickie update to show off what arrived in the mail today:
Preh-shussssss........
FYI, that TurboPad box contains a controller that's never even been used. The cords are still bound and it even has the protective plastic wrap on the face of the pad. How sad is that? But since I have a second loose controller and no multi-tap (the TG-16 only had one controller port, so 2-player is no go unless you buy an extra adapter), I think I'll leave it NIB, at least for now.
Now if I can just find Hucards of Blazing Lazers, Magical Chase, Air Zonk, Bonk III, and Soldier Blade at a reasonable price, the world will be an even more beautiful place.
Jaguar's hopefully going to be arriving later this week. Not as excited about that one, but on the bright side, I did get a copy of Raiden for it super cheap. That should at least make for a few hours of the happy.
Found this today. A bit unexpected.. But always nice with surprises, hehe.
Nice! I love my Genny (Megadrive). It's probably one of the more affordable classic systems to collect for as CIB copies of most games are still relatively plentiful.
Happy to report that my Turbo Express just came out of surgery just fine, and with functioning external audio no less. Hooray! No more headphones when I play my TG-16 games on the go.
Yeah, yeah, I know; CD-i's were legendarily awful. But I've always wanted to pick one upfor nostalgia reasons if I managed to find it for the right price. And turns out I did! Came with a bunch of games too, including three that I've been buying over and over again for the past 20 years--Dragon's Lair I & II, and Space Ace. (I've long suspected that I'm actually a programmed sleeper agent and that, similar to Mel Gibson's character in "Conspiracy Theory", they keep track of me based on my recurring purchases of Don-Bluth-animation-based videogames.)
Nice, clean system. No notable marks or scratches, although I did have to use the Oops! remover on some leftover sticker residue on the front.
I like the way the tray opens up. No ejector mechanism to worry about failing, no muss, no fuss.
But does it work?
Powers up, anyway. What about a game? Pop in a disc and...
Loading screen is up. How about the game proper?
Niiiiiice....
I much prefer this unit over the GARGANTUAN 1st-gen Philips ones. As an added bonus, this one also came with the Digital Video cartridge already installed, so it's pretty much a complete package. I also am SUPER stoked that this one came with not only the Magnavox CD-i gamepad (which closely resembles a standard Genesis 3-button controller), but also with the stock Philips model's re-branded original Gravis-Gamepad-style controller, which both works and feels great.
The only downside about this unit is the funky power supply. It connects to the console via an RJ-45 ethernet-style plug. So that means if the adapter ever goes bad, I'm pretty much out of luck as far as a replacement goes unless I can find ANOTHER one exactly like it. (Good luck doing that at a reasonable cost.)
I actually had a chance to try all the games. The Dragon's Lair/Space Ace games play exactly like you'd expect. Video quality isn't quite up to the DVD standard, but it's a solid step above the CD-ROM releases that were the PC-equivalent at the time. It also came with two other animated-adventure FMV games: Kingdom the Far Reaches and Escape from Cyber City. Kingdom plays pretty much like a choose your own path adventure novel as far as I can tell. Not a lot of timed moves (at least, not as far as I played), but rather lots of choices that determine how your story progresses. Escape from Cyber City, on the other hand, is almost identical in gameplay to the arcade classic Cobra Command. You go through FMV scenes, and while they play, you have to move the cursor around and shoot the enemies that appear. Unfortunately, it's all but impossible to play with the gamepad, so I'll need to start looking for either the mouse or trackpad controller, I think. (Unless it supports the light-gun peripheral that came with Mad Dog Mccree?)
The other games are either subpar or garbage. Video Speedway is complete crap; possibly the worst driving game I've ever played. Alien Gate is an awful shooter, almost seems more like a junior-year CS project than an actual published title. Tetris is an OK port, although controls are painfully sluggish; nice backgrounds and music, though.
I honestly think I most enjoyed playing around with the 1992-era Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia. There's a feature in it called "Time Machine" that makes browsing major events and news from different periods really fun and interesting to peruse. I spent the better part of 15 minutes reading the article on Thomas Edison. Kind of hard to imagine that that was a state of the art research solution before Internet and Wikipedia came along and spoiled us.
Oh and because I know you're wondering, it didn't come with any of the Nintendo-licensed games. But I do have a copy of Hotel Mario (the only one worth playing, as I understand) enroute. I'm determined to find at least ONE game for this system other than a laserdisc rehash that isn't complete fail.
Magazine donation from a buddy of mine from the old Sierra days (who now works at Bungie). He gave me a stack about 50 magazines, and these little gems are in there. Notice that is Issue #5 of Nintendo Fun Club New which became Nintendo Power! That issue of Joystick has tips for Dragons Lair & Star Wars in the arcade. CGW is all about a new Sierra game: Dagger of Amon Ra and gift ideas for Christmas 1983!
Mark also donated his complete C128 collection, which consisted of 3 Commodore 128s, 2 disk drives, a Commodore monitor, printer and loads and loads of software, programming books. Plus...much more.
Some random Atari 2600 & Intellivision games. Some of those 2600 games are kinda hard to find. Paid a $2.50 a game, which is decent.
Mark also donated his complete C128 collection, which consisted of 3 Commodore 128s, 2 disk drives, a Commodore monitor, printer and loads and loads of software, programming books. Plus...much more.
Oh you BASTARD! Hella jealous over that one.
Super, SUPER awesome additions to the man-cave right there.
lock, you haven't posted anything in a while, and this basically started out and stayed your thread for months. Personally, I'd love to see some more shots of your AES and games.
Played through the first ten levels, and I have to say--James (AVGN) got this game totally wrong. It plays great, has some nice production values (aside from the admittedly terrible animated sequences) and is a uniquely fun and addictive Mario game experience. If anything, you might could knock it for being a bit on the hard side (took me about 10 tries to beat the first "boss fight"). But I don't think that's any kind of reason to dismiss the game as trash.
I think it's just that modern-day gamers have gotten spoiled into thinking that skill alone should be enough to beat a game. Not so with the games of yesteryear. True, you had to have some considerable degree of raw twitch skill to beat games like Mike Tyson's PunchOut. But many other games of the era required that you learn and/or memorize the levels. Hotel Mario falls into that latter category. The harder levels generally have a strategy that you need to discover and then flawlessly execute. Like the aforementioned first boss level I got to--once I figured out the pattern I needed to follow in order to get all the doors closed without dying, it was just a matter of executing the strategy without making any stupid mistakes (mis-timed jumps, etc.).
In any case, Hotel Mario is highly recommended by me to anyone insane enough to still own and play a CD-i.
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