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Last week wasn't great, but this week was just terrible. The worst part is that I have no idea why it was so bad. There were a ton of garage sales open this weekend and the weather could not have been better, but I found virtually nothing the entire weekend. Usually I can attribute a bad weekend with bad weather or a holiday or just not being able to go saling. But none of that was the case for the garage sales on Friday or Saturday.
This week was so bad that I had serious doubts of whether or not I wanted to do a blog entry. As you can see, I decided to go ahead and do one anyway, but with a slight twist.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles '09 - #12
This week wasn't the greatest for me, in fact it was one of the slowest I've had all season. This was mostly due to not being able to go saling at all on Friday and there only being a few sales on Saturday. I didn't get a single system this weekend, which is kind of nice because I really don't need more extra systems laying around, I did manage to find some new games to add to my collection though.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles '09 - #11
Once again, I had spectacular luck this weekend. Almost a 100 more games were added to my collection after the hunting was done for the weekend, and I got a system I've wanted ever since I first heard about it, but I never thought I would find one for a good price.
Also, I've made the images clickable, so you can click on them and view them in their full size so you can actually read some of the game titles now.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles '09 - #10
Another spectacular weekend for finds. Judging from Friday's treasures I thought it was going to be a Sega heavy weekend unlike the last couple weeks which were primarily Nintendo games. But, it turned out to be more of a hardware heavy weekend, in fact, I got 2 new systems, one of which is something I never thought I'd find and is a true piece of gaming history.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles '09 - #9
The past few weekends have been spectacular, a little too spectacular actually. My game room is a mess with stacks of games that need a shelf to call home and there is stuff in places where it doesn't belong. So I'm a little relieved this weekend wasn't so heavy with treasures as it gives me a chance to get caught up on organizing and stocking shelves. But it still wasn't a bad weekend at all, mostly thanks to one huge bargain at a garage sale on Friday.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles '09 - #8
A spectacular weekend this turned out to be. I got a ton of games and the vast majority of them were for my favorite system to collect for, the NES. This weekend was a very busy one for me, I had a different party to go to for each of the 3 days this holiday weekend. The one from Sunday left me impaired Monday which is why I'm just now getting around to posting this.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles '09 - #7
Another great weekend for treasure hunting. I was able to do some saling Friday again, but this time I was alone, so I was able to cover a lot more ground in a shorter amount of time. The sales weren't very good on Friday though, I only bought one thing the entire day. Luckily, Saturday was better, not a lot of stuff, but I got something that I never thought I would find, but had always hoped I would. Sunday at the flea market was freezing, Saturday was close to 80, but Sunday never went above 60 and was about 45 when we went to the flea market. Despite the cold weather, the place was packed and the deals were abundant.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles '09 - #6
Friday was the last day of Spring semester so I got out really early on Friday morning and since my mom, sister and niece were going garage saling Friday morning, I tagged along with them. I learned a couple things that day, the most important is that women take a very long time at garage sales. We spent about 6 hours saling and only went to about 1/3 of the sales that me and my dad could go to in that time. I also learned that saling on Fridays makes the Saturday really short for garage saling. We started at about 8:30 on Saturday and were home by 10:00, which is about 2 hours shorter than what we've been doing lately. I did manage to get some pretty cool stuff this weekend though.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles '09 - #5
It's been a while since the last installment, but for once this year, it's not because of a lack of sales, but because I simply couldn't go to many sales these last few weekends. Last Saturday, I was in Cleveland the entire weekend so I couldn't do any garage saling. I had planned on going to some gaming stores that were only 10 minutes from my hotel, but I had limited Internet connectivity in the hotel and had a tough time getting a map and directions so I wrote down basic instructions on a piece of paper, but it disappeared the morning I was going to go and then I couldn't get back online to get new directions, so I wasn't able to make it. This past Saturday, I spent the first half of Saturday volunteering at our new township park, so I missed the best garage saling times, but did manage to get in a few sales after 1:00, but I didn't find anything. Luckily, I was able to get to the flea market yesterday and found enough stuff to make a worthwhile post.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles '09 - #4
As many of you already know, I dislike eBay, in fact one might say I hate it with a passion. In fact, I refuse to buy any type of gaming device from the site. So, I was extremely pleased when in January of 2008 I read a post on the Digital Press forums from Dragon Warrior Jasen, that he was fed up with eBay and toying with the idea of making his own auction site dedicated to video games with minimal fees. When he came up with a name and made the site public a couple months later, I made sure I was one of the first to join GameGavel.com. I listed numerous auctions but had very little success, but I believed in the theory behind the site of no fees whatsoever and stuck with it. Later on in 2008 I came across another site, ChaseTheChuckwagon.com, with a similar philosophy of only charging a modest final selling fee. I quickly joined that site and have been listing auctions on there since.
[img align=right]http://www.chasingthechuckwagon.com/chuckwagon150.jpg[/img]
However, a couple days ago, I got the email that every other GameGavel member got from Jasen, stating that the site will be closing. Jasen blamed the closure on himself, but I do not believe that it was any one person's fault. I think the failure was the combined result of people not believing that a free auction site could work and sellers were charging the average eBay price instead of taking into account the fact that they're not paying 8%+ fees on their sale as they would with eBay.
[img align=left width=200 height=57]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/repository/07822GG LOGO.jpg[/img]Anyway, yesterday I got an email from GameGavel's Jasen Hicks and one from ChaseTheChuckwagon's Mike Kennedy, about half an hour apart stating that CTCW will be purchasing GameGavel's domain name and will be taking over operations.
Mike's plan is to co-brand both names, keeping the ChaseTheChuckwagon.comn name that some 2,000+ member knows and love and combining it with the more universal name of GameGavel.
So what this means for us, the gamers and collectors of the world, is a bigger and better site than has very modest final selling fees, that was built by gamers/collectors for gamers/collectors.
Well, this week I didn't go out at all, there were a total of 3 garage sales listed for the entire area, and they all looked crappy from their descriptions or were perpetual sales that I've been to already. But, luckily, I've got treasure from last week I didn't have a chance to post, so that's what I'll show you now.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles '09 - #3
Good news everyone! The weather has broken (for a while at least) and it was reasonably comfortable shopping around the flea market for the first time this year. The place was far from packed, but if its any indication of what is to come, this will be another spectacular year. The flea market has been consistently good so far this year, but garage sales are still very slow. Hopefully, April will bring more stuff (actually since this is so late, I KNOW April will be good  )
And I apologize with the tardiness of this post, it should have been up earlier, but with the server move and a really hectic schedule, I didn't have a chance to get it up until now.
And to try and maintain consistency, I'll be posting these on Mondays from now on.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles '09 - March
Well, it's been over a month since my last entry in the Treasure Hunt Chronicles, and I blame that solely on the weather. There just are not any garage sales or flea markets in the frozen tundra Northeast Ohio this time of year. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it's in the 50's today and 60's the next couple days so garage sale season will be here before we know it. Luckily, until then though, I've still got some awesome treasure through some online trading I did through RFGen, Digital Press and GameTZ. So that will be the focus of February's finds.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles '09 - February
It's been almost 3 months since I ended the Treasure Hunt Chronicles series for the 2008 season. And I honestly wasn't expecting to start the 2009 season so soon, but I feel it's time to get it going. And no, garage sale season has not started yet, I'm not that lucky, there's still more than a foot of snow on the ground. I haven't bought much since November, but I have received quite a lot of stuff through trading, and that will be the focus of this post.
So without further ado, the stuff I've received the last couple months.
Oh, and thanks to Dave, I've tweaked the formatting a little. It's probably nothing any one will notice, but the coding is much more simple for me.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles 2009
Random Review: Dead Rising
My last review was a Famicom game, this one is 20 years newer and a totally different experience, but still a blast. Dead Rising was released August 8th 2006 for the Xbox 360 and at the time, was an exclusive for that system. It has since been announced that it will be coming to the Wii as "Dead Rising: Chop 'til You Drop". This game is huge and as my reviewing skills are not top notch yet, I probably will be excluding portions, but I'm trying more for a overall experience review anyway.
[img align=right]http://www.rfgeneration.com/PHP/watermark.php?type=bf;ID=U-115-S-00550-A&sizex=200[/img]
The Plot:
The plot of the game is essentially: you (an independent photojournalist, Frank West) come to a small isolated town via helicopter and after the US military forces your pilot to drop you off on the roof of the mall, you soon realize the town is infested with zombies. All you know is that you want to cover the story and the helicopter will return in 3 days. Through the game, you will uncover the mystery of the zombie outbreak if you do everything correctly, but if you don't finish a mission in time, the facts will be lost to you (and the rest of the world) forever. But, you can still finish the game and get a sub-par ending that inevitably ends in the destruction of the world. In addition to the regular missions, you can embark on numerous "side quests" rescuing survivors and killing psychopaths.
Gameplay:
The gameplay is simple; finish the missions and kill as many of the seemingly infinite zombies as you can before your 72 hours is up. But, there are a few aspects of the game that make it unique. The first is the RPG elements the game uses. As you gain "Prestige Points" in the game (by killing zombies, taking photos, killing psychopaths, rescuing survivors, or the other numerous ways) you gain abilities like increased health capacity, increased storage capacity and new fighting moves. These gained abilities are kept once you finish the game and start again, so you can go through the 72 hour mode as many times as you need to get the abilities to finish with the best ending.
The second feature that sets Dead Rising apart, is the weapons. Of course, there is the standard handgun, rifle and shotgun of any good zombie game, but there are also items like Molotov cocktails, katanas, swords and battle axes. But, that's not all, basically anything you can pick up is a weapon, whether it's a trash can, potted plant, 2' x 4', lead pipe or one of the other 250 items in the mall. Using everyday items to kill zombies is a blast, there's nothing like slicing a zombie down the middle with one fell swoop of your Katana or using a hole digger to skewer and zombie and use his spinning body to kill more zombies. This is definitely the best part of the game for me, on my first playthrough I didn't bother with the missions, I was having too much fun slamming faucets into zombies and watching them bleed out through it and cutting up hoards of them with chainsaws and lawn mowers.
[img align=left]http://www.rfgeneration.com/PHP/watermark.php?type=bf;ID=E-115-S-00180-A&sizex=200[/img]
Sound and Graphics:
The sound effects of the game are top notch. Zombies groans and moans seem to be all around you and the screams of distant survivors make it seem more real. The weapons all have their own sounds and they all sound pretty realistic.
This was my first Xbox 360 game, so the graphics blew me away at first, but after playing more games on the system, the graphics are pretty standard. Nothing super awesome, but everything is smooth and I didn't notice any kind of glitches in the game. There are numerous zombies which is nice (especially if you compare it to a game like RE4 where it seems there are only 5 different "zombies") and at first you may think they are all unique, but after a few hours into the game you'll start recognizing zombies by their appearance.
In conclusion, this is a very, very fun game and is definitely worth a pick up. I got my copy for $20 and it was well worth it. For me, it got a little boring and redundant after my 2nd playthrough, but I can see myself coming back to the game after a while.
I'm giving this game a 95% as it really is worth the money and if you've got a 360, you really do need this game. It's not a game you'll devote your life to playing, but it's good for many hours of play time.
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This is NES_Rules's Blog.
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Welcome to my blog. I started off my blogging career in 2008 with my weekly Treasure Hunt Chronicles which was a huge success. So it's become a staple of RF Generation during the garage sale and flea market season. So be sure to check back each Monday to check out my newest treasures.
I'll also have other blog entries popping up occasionally, so make sure you keep it tuned to Channel 3! |
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