Wow, it has been a long time since I've done one of these things, but as my wife's time in graduate school comes to an end combined with my two children being on summer vacation, I find myself in possession of that elusive thing called free time, even with taking on more duties at work.  But man alive, it feels good.  All I need to do is figure what to do with it.





The first thing I'd like to do is memorialize a bit.  My faithful PVM friend of only a couple years, Mr. PVM-8041Q, is no more.  Where once an S-Video and composite produced nice looking color video, only monochrome now displays.  Goodbye my friend.


But to be fair, having only an 8-inch screen never really drew me in, as pretty much any composite output would look good on a screen that small.  And apparently it had only 250 lines on the screen, which I guess makes sense considering the size.  Oh well, time to move on:


While wandering around the third warehouse at my work waiting for one of our IP vendors to stop rambling and just apply the dang stupid gateway addressing to their modem (grrr), I found that nice little thing in the above pic.  It is a Sony Trinitron PVM-1271Q, and I likes it,  I likes it a lot.  While the screen is only four inches larger than my older PVM, it seems quite a bit larger, and the picture looks about a million times better.  I quickly worked out a deal:  It needed a place to crash and a stable flow of electricity (which I was more than happy to provide) while I needed something nice to plug some of my consoles into.  An accord was reached and it came home with me that day.


RGB appears to be sync on composite through BNC connectors.  This PVM also has a Sony "Computer" 25-pin DSUB, which if it is the same as the PVM-2030Q DSUB, means I can get a SCART adapter through that as well at some point.  But later, much later, I think.  While time restrictions are easing, the cash-flow part of it is not, and getting into RGB-land (the right way, with good cables) is not cheap, so for the moment I am inclined to put that money towards more games, not more ways to play them.  I'm trying to keep it simple for now, and playing some video game comfort food to while away the summer.  Of course I didn't immediately get to this point (until now recently I was playing next to nothing), but I'll cover that later.  Probably.  More than likely.

With that in mind, I'd like to try something, and I'd like y'all to offer up your opinions (if you will). With all the two nostalgia articles appearing on RFGen last month and all the talk about material-based nostalgia (sorry, not meant to be offensive), I had me an idea.  For a period of one year, I would abstain from purchasing digital games of any kind, and any game purchase would have to be physical.  Of course this was originally meant to be a novelty or something, but when a friend offered me a game that I had written off as unattainable, it might have kind of broken something loose inside of me.  For the first time in years I've picked up my old "2007 Collection Revival" project and dusted it off a bit, heavily edited it and ended up with another list altogether.  I'm overall not sure how far I will take it (I'm wary that my collecting doesn't outstrip my playing), I have to admit it does excite me a bit.

So, to recap, it something that started out as a bit of a novelty project has turned into something serious (ish).  I am still looking for this to be more of a "how the other half live" exercise, but more in the spirit of fun than anything else.  I guess a fun little side note would to mention the price-related shock I've had while updating my "To Get" lists, specifically with the "just for fun" games, such as Wardner and Blades of Vengeance for the Genesis/Mega Drive.  On the other hand, Final Fantasy II on SNES has been quite stable, so not all is bad.  My Turbo CD drive unit crapped out on my years ago, and after checking eBay I am glad.  Seems every game I would want on that platform is high to very high, with some of the regular Hu-Cards being quite exceptional (Neutopia II is the first one I think of).  This must be why so many people love their Turbo Everdrive; it begins saving you money the second you buy the thing.  If I do go that route there is a seller on eBay that makes PC Engine/Turbografx RGBS adapters (output via component, which is how I need my RGBS).  I may end up picking up one of those bad boys.

Which leads me to something else:  More so than the price hikes (and drops), I was the most surprised at the sheer amount of cartridge bootlegs on eBay.  I know, I should probably call them repros or something, but old habits die hard.  I used to scorn them pretty hard, but for the first time I am starting to see the appeal of them when all you want to do is play the game.  Take Soul Blazer on SNES, for example.  This title is part of a near future article, and one that I'd like to play (haven't since 1993).  Rough CIB can go for as little as $80 USD, but for a nice copy it can go as high as $190!  Loose is cheaper, of course, but not that much cheaper (around $60-$75 USD), while a bootleg (or repro) with save function intact is about $20 at the most expensive.  With free or cheap shipping (via ePacket from China) will see the part arrive in my neck of the woods in less than a fortnite, more often than not ten days.

Ehh, I may have bought a "repro" cart with my Father's Day eBay money, I have an issue where I cannot get invested in (read: cannot play) a game that I don't own, so I guess we will see how that one turns out (maybe).  It wasn't much, so if the quality is really bad I can just laugh about it and move on with my life.

Well, that is about it for now, I guess.  I wanted to talk a little bit about the old Budget Game Wall  at my local Toys 'R Us (RIP) and a transition to another series I will use in the near future ("Cool Aunt Chronicles" maybe), but that will have to wait for another time.

Thanks for reading!

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