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I have a true gamer's "Holy Grail" in my beloved wife, and I'll tell you why.
This year's CCAG (Classic Console and Arcade Gaming) show was the best since I began attending a few years ago. I got to chat with dozens of fellow vendors and collectors, play ancient computer games running on systems I still don't own, support a few home-brewers, actually check for data rot before purchasing (I had to put back over fifty games, including half a dozen different copies of TG16 Addams Family), actually play the pinball table 'Sorcerer' and see if my Pinball Hall of Fame mastery carried over to the real world, (Protip-nudge/tilt button moved to a weird Wii-like waggle maneuver) and best of all, I bought a bunch of games.
Maybe too many games. Way too many games. Like this many games:
Continue reading CCAG and the Best. Fathers. Day. Gift. Ever.
Unless we were independently wealthy, had a successful bank robbing career, or googled 'time machine' in the future so we could learn how to build a time machine so we could go back in time and buy stock in 'Google', most of us gamers in the nineties probably only dreamed of owning a Neo Geo.
Of course, in the nineties I was also dreaming of swimming in two hundred and fifty dollars worth of pudding in the kids swimming pool at Slacker House, but that's another story. And that didn't actually happen until near the end of the nineties anyway.
Activities that make your hair smell terrible aside, I always assumed a Neo Geo was going to be out of my league. Even if I somehow did sell my sister and got the console itself, each game was going to cost more than the Super Nintendo I traded twenty NES games to acquire. And some of those Neo Geo games I could beat in twenty minutes in the arcade- not the kind of staying power my then-current F-Zero and Final Fantasy II (IV) could provide.
While visions of Magician Lord and King of Fighters danced about my bad haircut, I shoved them aloft with the other fanciful "if I get rich" scenarios that accompanied my dreams, like owning KITT from Knight Rider or actually selling my sister.
Well, it's been a decade and a half since then, and things have changed. I didn't get rich, I realized I liked owning a Subaru more than a talking Trans Am, and my sister and I are pretty good friends who no longer try to sell each-other. But my collection still begged for a Neo Geo, and after a little bit of research and realizing I still didn't want to pay hundreds of dollars for so many games in the library, I down-scaled my interests into the CD version. After a few weeks of searching and trades, I am now the proud owner of one Neo Geo CD!!
I already picked up Double Dragon in anticipation last year, and it came with King of Fighters 94,95,96, Fatal Fury 3, and one controller.
Ahem. ONE controller. For a library of 2D fighters. That's like a hermit buying a copy of Atari's Combat to go along with his copy of Pong. Makes as much sense as buying a Jaguar for RPGs.
I've got another controller on order, and hopefully it will arrive before I snap the first one in half over some of the notoriously cheap AI.
And now I've come to the realization that, as much as I always wanted one of these things, with BlazBlue, Street Fighter IV, and Soul Calibur IV on my shelf, and all of my SNK fighter friends moved away, I need a reason to play this thing. I don't even get achievements for tackling Geese Howard or exclusively using Mai. It still belongs here in the collection, but I gotta find some shooters or Final Fight clones fast, or its just going to go back into a box until I build my Gamer Dungeon 2.0, and that's just kinda sad.
I'll hit up the forums and see what people have for sale. Any suggestions?
p.s.
If you do manage, somehow, to get that much pudding in your hair, find a public pool that'll let you in. The chlorine strips out the smell, and then you can take a normal shower to not feel as sticky.
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""""""""The More You Know.............
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This is slackur's Blog.
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