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-Always do 'Buy It Now' only with immediate payment required. I'm on a few subreddits about eBay, and it seems non-payment on auctions is pretty rampant. I also do 'Best Offer' too, though surprisingly few people use it. If you set up or revise the item on a browser, you can set up auto-accept and auto-decline amounts on offers so you don't have to do anything. For example, list a game at BIN $19.99 with Best Offer, auto decline anything $14.99 and under and auto accept anything $15.00 and over. Makes life a lot easier, it just stinks that you can only set the auto-decline on the phone app.
-Always do free shipping and let eBay calculate actual shipping (you'll need to weigh and measure your parcels when you are making the listing). It gives you a range so you'll know the maximum that will come out of the sale, so you just factor that into your price. Another reason to do free shipping is, if you don't, the buyer can give you a star rating on "shipping cost" which is nonsense because you can make it so they can't see what you paid for the label. If you do free shipping, they can't rate you on this.
Continue reading eBay Selling Tips
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I never got into arcade collecting to make friends or meet people; quite the opposite actually. As a lifelong introvert and lover (addict?) of solitude, I'd much prefer to make a few clicks on my favorite money-sync websites and wait for my new treasures to arrive in my mailbox, sans interaction. With console game collecting, this approach works great. However, if you were to get into full-sized, real-deal, space sucking arcade game cabinets, things get a little bit more complicated. Taking a quick look on eBay reveals some hard-to-swallow truths for the burgeoning arcade collector. Shipping prices alone for these massive pieces of memorabilia can easily climb to $500 or more, and local pickup options aren't going to be helpful if you live in Nowhere, USA. Where is an arcade addict to turn for their fix?
Enter craigslist and the thrills therein. Every arcade game I own, barring my starter "fake" SNK NEO GEO cabinet, a chance offer from a local friend was found on the magical world of craigslist. Having collected for the arcade cabinet's little brother, the home console, for near two decades now I am no stranger to the strangers of craigslist. Contrary to the horror stories that pervade discussion on local meetup sites, I have never once had a negative interaction with anyone on craigslist. Even for the most introverted of collectors, setting a price, time, and meetup location to pick up a cardboard box of someone's discarded childhood is fairly simple and painless. Public places like gas stations or truckstops provide relatively safe locations to wheel and deal, and being a 6-foot-tall surly-in-looks-only man doesn't hurt. But, what if the object of your neurotic affections is located in that strangers basement? Or deep in the back of a dimly lit garage or barn? Such is the life and times of an arcade collector.
The siren's call of just one more game to build my arcade empire is a seductive one. My first craiglist arcade adventure came with the classic Namco fighting game Tekken 2. I had never played Tekken, nor was I a fan of fighting games, but the one thing I did have was a hunger for a cheap mate to my first cabinet no matter what the title. Messages were sent and arrangements were made. For the low, low price of $360 my faux NEO GEO could have a friend and I could start a bonifide collection. But like any good introvert, the desire for treasure soon began to clash with the terror of meeting a stranger, in THEIR own home no less! What if this game owner was a weirdo? Even worse, what if I was the weirdo? The siren's call could not be silenced, however; yet this gave way to new fears. It was the final hurdle of any arcade collector: logistics.
Arcade games are less collectables and more pieces of furniture with near-antique electronics inside. The monitors themselves can approach 100 pounds of fragile glass and circuitry. The laminated wooden cabinets, even when gutted, are unwieldy and heavy on the best of days. Trying to muscle a fully loaded arcade game without help is a fool's errand. Sourcing an appliance dolly is in your best interest (as well as the interest of your new trophy), and the help of a second fool, er, friend doesn't hurt. Good old dad helped source the dolly but was unavailable in the muscle department. Now that you have your dolly, the logistics further complicate. Are you going to wheel it all the way home on your discount, Harbor Freight friend? Best to leave wheeling arcade games through heavy traffic to George Costanza. What you need is a larger set of wheels, be that a truck or van. Or your wife's SUV with all the seats torn out, pending her approval, of course. Dad came through as dad's do again by lending me his pickup truck for the day with ramps in tow.
So I nervously made my way across town to meet my new friend, as well as its former owner. The owner seemed nice enough, or at least any Buffalo Bill vibes had not come through the fog of email. With much trepidation and hopeful drooling, I pulled up to the rural-ish home down a long road out of town. What met me as I climbed out of the protection of dad's pickup cab chilled me to my introverted core; an extremely personable and affable man approaching middle age. All joking aside, the guy was very friendly and put me at ease immediately. As soon as you show the strangers of craiglist that you are indeed there to purchase and carry away their old junk and not murder them, they are generally more than happy to chat about the arcade hobby. Or at the very least efficiently and quickly get this junk collector out of their home, which works for this introvert. The owner opened up his detached garage and revealed a mancave of wonders; a fully stocked barcade complete with a full bar, arcade games and slot machines! The owner confided that he was parting with Tekken 2 to purchase a Quarter Pusher machine (put quarter in, get quarters out in the rare event you win). I'm still not sure what use such a machine would be in a private arcade for one, but as a fellow collector of weird ephemera, I won't judge. After a quick demonstration of the game and any special instructions (game has xyz quirks, here's the keys, don't feed after midnight, etc.), we loaded the game up on the dolly and safely secured it to the bed of the truck. Slightly shaking from nerves, I happily shook his hand and was on my way. A call was made to a fellow collector friend on what felt like the longest 5 mile drive home ever to help unload and I was in business. The entire ordeal had more or less gone off without a hitch, accidently tearing off the oversized control panel and almost plummeting to my blood-soaked death while unloading the game notwithstanding. The game proudly stood in its (temporary) new home in the dining room for months, much to my wife's chagrin and my great amusement.
I had not gone into this adventure expecting much more than a thinner wallet and a new toy. Yet the start of my collection brought with it new thoughts and questions. How many people had played on this machine? Was it someone's favorite? Where had it spent it's 25 year life? What fun-filled nights with friends or dates had it seen? I cannot think of any other group of items I own that have been touched literally and figuratively in their life than my stable of arcade games. Along with the haunt of the smell of stale cigarette smoke, this new game was also haunted with a little piece of every person who had ever played it.
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As I've written about a few times, I'm a big fan of selling on eBay. For all of its shortcomings on the seller side, I still find myself able to leverage it to earn enough extra money that it is worth my time. One speed bump I have run into lately is that I am running out of big ticket items in my video game collection to purge, so I had been doing a bit of thrifting in the hopes of finding things to flip for profit, but I was having little success. Recently, I started visiting the Goodwill Outlet Center which is conveniently on my way home from work. It is quite an experience to go there, and I have been able to find some great loot, most of it to flip, some of it to add to my collections.
If you have been to a normal Goodwill store (or any traditional thrift store), you will be greeted with retail furnishings stocked with used clothing and miscellaneous items that have been donated by the general public. A Goodwill Outlet is something completely different. When you walk in, all you will see are big blue bins with people digging vigorously through them looking for treasure. At the particular location I go to, books are five for a dollar, and everything else is weighed and charged $1.49 per pound. Bins are changed out one aisle at a time about once every half hour, and people line up for the fresh bins to be released upon them in a Black Friday style frenzy. I have yet to line up because the action is a bit too much for me, and I like taking my time.
Continue reading Dig and Flip
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Happy New Year! As we head into 2021, we all know it is a different world than even a year ago. Most brick-and-mortar retail, including for video games, has taken a very rough beating. Somewhat surprisingly, even online stores often had a short supply of many new games. If ever there were a catalyst to speed up our medium's transition to primarily digital download, it was 2020. Conversely...
The retro game market spiked in prices, as would be expected. Even PS4s and XBox One systems became hot commodities in some areas, not to mention the Switch. The massive increase in at-home workers using programs like Zoom meant less bandwidth for online play and slow download speeds. If anything, for me the last year was another reminder of why I enjoy collecting physical copies of video games.
Continue reading Thoughts on Gaming and Collecting Going Into 2021
Hi, So im going to try and use this as a basis of my "Collecting"
The name "Fakecollector" is that i dont really collect anymore unless im after a certain personal goal, Currently i want a xbox 360 shelf, and that goal is whatever the outcome on what i get in 2020 But im not collecting physical media like i used to if its not in reach from local stores anymore due to many things, Be it expense, Space, or the fact that i dont want to maintain a full on collection, Anyway, Let me tell you all a story.
So back in 2006 till 2015 I was big into collecting, But only the stuff i wanted and that i played mainly spanning Sega Systems but overall i was on the hunt for arcade games or arcade like experiences and JRPG's across numerous systems, I loved my disc based systems and only really invested a small amount into specific cart systems like the Neo Geo AES, PC Engine, Sega Megadrive, and Portable Cart based systems.
I had a big enough collection at one stage, Over 500 Games total with things i wanted and played, But then i questioned myself, What i wanted and what i want to do to take it to a new personal level.
Like with many people i like having the boxes of games on my shelf, The feeling of having a library to choose from, I was tired of the console setup, and using things "Like the old days" with the CRT monitors or ways to make them feel authentic.
To me i just want to play games, And if the "original" controller is in my hands in some form then emulation is the way for me to go, I Enjoy tinkering with emulation, More ways for me to play the games how I want them to play, The PC is my platform of choice but its easy to get every game you want and then just play, So i want to take it a step further and experiment.
We have Controllers that are 1.1 replicas of originals, Wireless, Modernised, and adapters for originals anyway, I want to make specific PC Builds, Low wattage, for certain consoles, I Like building nice hardware setups with quirks and RGB Lights just to sit and look pretty and do one job for me, Things need to be made hard to make this "Emulation x Collecting thing work" Anyone can grab an old computer together and have many emulators working, but again i want to make it more personal in the things i like.
Then we come to the games themself, My idea is to make my own library of my own collections / complations
of games, And its the most fun part, I can do this via DVD but its likely i want to do this with SD Cards and label them with my own artwork, Having the cases there with my own manuals and art is just gonna be a very personal way of me doing what i want to do, Someone comes to visit, Looks at the game shelf, wants to play something and its already on a computer somewhere.
Now i know its not an authentic experience, or the purist way to play, Far from it, but thats not gonna matter if i just want to enjoy the games and feel i have a collection i put time into.
Thanks for reading, And hopefully we will see how i get on with this in the future.
Hello game collectors. Spoon here with a few tips for those of you who have begun the monumental quest for the rarest of the rare. Yea I know, its a wild goose chase, but the fun is in the search right. Besides, its better than being at home listening to the wife complain! For me, walking into a retail video game store is like pulling teeth. Plus finding something that is actually rare is next to impossible at these places. Most game stores wont even buy back anything more than a few years old anyways. However, there are other places to commence your never-ending search. If youre like me, youre not paying retail for anything! Heres a list of a few places to keep in mind.
#1 Pawn Shops: I get great pleasure scouring pawn shops. Most of the time games are priced the same no matter their value. Good for us, bad for them. If they only knew what I would of paid for that NES Top Loader! I even occasionally pull my nerd card out and call the pawn shops to see if they got any new video games in! Laugh all you want, but you gotta be proactive at this. No matter how big a nerd you are there is always someone out there that trumps you.
#2 Flea Markets: Always beware the overly priced game stands at flea markets. The better bet is finding someone who has acquired a stack of games and just needs a few dollars. Also keep a look out for the little guys. I have a regular that I visit every week. I may only get a couple games per week from him, but guaranteed I got them for rock bottom prices.
#3 Antique Shops: I hate hate hate antique shops, but I have scored some really good finds. Always keep your eyes open or your game collecting ass of a friend will snipe a Vader 2600 right out from under you! Also, be sure to ask the shop owners if they can contact you when they get something in. Ive got several shops that email me when they get video games in.
#4 Crackheads!: For me this kind of ties in with antique shops since theyre in the same neighborhood. Crackheads can be your best friends. Im sorry but I could care less about theyre drug habit if Im getting a PS3 for $20.00. Besides, they can use the cash for food. Its not my fault they would rather get high! My best dealings with crackheads will be discussed in #7.
#5 Home town game shops: These can be the best or worst thing thats ever happened to you. If you get in good with the owner, you can usually score some pretty good deals. Always be sure you know the value of what your buying! For me I keep my iPhone at the ready. There is a decent app called "VGT Price Guide" that shows the current eBay prices for a ton of different games.
#6 Ebay: Im not gonna give away my secrets here. Just keep in mind there are a lot of people out there that dont know what theyre stuff is worth. If youre a quick draw you never know what youll score at 3:00AM.
#7 Online classifieds: There are a few of these on the internet. (Craigslist, Kijiji, etc.) There is a major one I use with great success. Search through the for sale ads often then be proactive. Bring the goods to you, post a want ad. Also be prepared to meet up with the #4s. Late night runs are a bit risky but yield the best rewards. When in doubt bring a gat! Also dont forget the online forums. You will pay more most of the time, but every once and a while you can pick up a great deal (especially if you buy in bulk).
.. ..
Well there you go gamers. There are just a few tips for your pleasure!
Good Gaming!
Spoon
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I planned to make this post a review of the original Xbox version of Dead to Rights. I picked up a copy after I saw it was part of Xbox One's backwards compatibility list. I started to playing the game and immediately was blown away by how good it looked on a modern television. When you put a compatible original Xbox or Xbox 360 game in your Xbox One, it doesn't play the game off the disc but rather downloads the game to your hard drive and uses the disc itself as a form of DRM. Sure, it's just an up-rezed game from the sixth generation, but Dead to Rights looked so clean and sharp it made me really excited to play it. Not to mention, the main gimmick of the game is the main character's dog Shadow, who can be used in certain sequences to rip the throats out of the hapless thugs who were stupid enough to mess with you.
Continue reading Take this Game and Shelve it!
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Folks on this site likely know the feeling; You and three 'friends' are in a heated Super Smash Bros. Melee when someone cries out, "My "R" button isn't working! Hey guys, wait!" Or that heated Joust versus match with the controller that just doesn't 'flap' as fast, or the time you were excited to show off your rare Sega CD Snatcher on one of the four days of the week that the drive tray doesn't want to work...
If you are a retro gamer that plays as well as collects, you know the effort it takes to upkeep your library. Vintage video game collecting is like classic car collecting or pinball machine collecting; it's more than just having space for the stuff and the ability to find and pay for the games and hardware. If it is going to remain playable, there's some know-how and some elbow grease that will become part of the hobby. From notorious controller wear and faulty optical drives, to analog drift and bad capacitors, every retro player/collector has to get comfortable with just how far down the rabbit hole they are going to go. Perhaps you are fortunate enough to have a passion for a console that seems immune to all but psyonic attacks (SNES, Game Boy Color) or maybe you've fallen for a glass snowflake (Famicom Disc System, a Turbo Duo with good sound), but either way there is always some basic maintenance needed.
Continue reading Thoughts On The Upkeep of Retro Game Collecting
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My very first customers lining up on opening day!
At some point during this week, my stint as a game store owner will be coming to an end. It's been right around 5 years since I opened a local store called Game Quest and I'm pretty excited to move on from it at this point in my life.
Continue reading Game Store Chronicles
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This is in its own way a companion piece to the reflections in Zophar53's recent article, What is Nostalgia in 2018? I wanted to respond and take the conversation in a personal direction but I realized I needed the room to let my thoughts breath, so here we are.
Many of our collections, video games and otherwise, are initially based off some form of nostalgia. Mine is no exception. As I've referred to in past write-ups, it started with a simple childhood dream to own every video game so that anyone at our home could play any video game whenever they wanted (myself included!) Many years and a family of my own later, that has transformed into the desire to use the medium of video games integrated in our lives as ways to connect socially, unwind mentally, and develop conversations culturally. I am very pleased to say it has been generally successful. That said, of course there are games and systems I have a special fondness for due to my earlier time spent with them. Over time my greater connection has come from games I played with friends that I now keep in memory after their passing, and I imagine that to continue. I also have no doubt our children are building their own nostalgia from specific titles our family enjoys together.
Continue reading Why Do We Collect Video Games In 2018?
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Through some relatively recent unfortunate financial circumstances, I was compelled to sell off my copy of Stadium Events for the NES. My journey to complete my NES collection and the fact that I'm just a handful of titles away from having all the unlicensed games as well, made it quite a difficult decision to let go of this game. A brief little background for those unfamiliar, but it took me nearly 10 years to gather a copy of each licensed NES game. This journey lead me to meet many friends over the years, some from RFGen, NintendoAge, Facebook, locally and many other areas that helped me reach this achievement. The final game to cap off my collection was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Ubisoft) and it was sent to me as a surprise when a group of amazing buddies on RF Generation pooled their resources to purchase me a copy and send it along with a card signed by each contributor's signature. It was truly the perfect end to a fantastic journey and has held a special place in my home for the last several years. The recent selling of this single game however has me really contemplating what and how I plan to collect going forward. This may have changed my overall approach to collecting.
Continue reading Contemplating a Change in Collecting Style
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"Collections collect collectors. It doesn't work the other way around. A certain object misses its own kind and communicates that
to some person who surrounds it with rhyming items; these become at first a quorum, then a selective, addictive madness."
-Allan Gurganus
iPhones are less than a dozen years old. A type of device that is now ubiquitous to modern civilization is so young that the speed of its transformative power marks a definitive "before and after." Indeed, now it is impossible to imagine a world without smartphones, yet those of us old enough to remember a world before them have watched how quickly and completely they entrenched upon daily life.
Similarly, folks who grew up on Atari and the NES often now have PS4s and Switches, and video games are so culturally embedded that it is a challenge to find someone who doesn't spend some of their time playing a form of one. Culture critics and historians are in a race to reflect upon transitions that happen so fast, they are hardly known (and certainly not fully understood) before the next one stacks on top of it.
Continue reading Thoughts on Collecting and Legacy
Sometimes life is funny. For the last 18 months or so my wife and I have been far more busy than ever before. I like to tell the story of how there was a day a few months ago when the busyness was at it's height were I was able to sit down without anything to do for 45 seconds and that was the longest break I had had for a few weeks. I think things are slowing down, I occasionally come home now and have an hour or two were I can think about the work I should be doing, heh heh. The only reason I've had time to put this together is I've had a cold and only worked a few hours today, so if my prose is all wonky, remember, I'm sick and tired....
Somehow I managed to pick up a few things during all that time being busy. It's been so long since I've posted in the small scores, this is going to look like a lot of stuff, like, Zagnorch and GamerNick levels of stuff, so be prepared.
Lets start with the Cowlitz Gamers for Kids show. This was all the way back in April and is about were I left off posting my finds.
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A smaller show but with lots of vendors that go to PRGE (which we'll get to in a bit). The highlights of this show is the more laid back atmosphere and the chance to hang out with Fokakis all day. We meet up here pretty much every year and wander about, chatting up the other people we know from past shows. There is a pretty good selection of stuff, fun people to talk to and things to look at.
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I made out with these Laser Discs, the middle row was from Fokakis and I was super excited about The Killer and Hard Boiled. Criterion Hard Boiled. That movie is all but impossible to find in the original aspect ratio outside of this version.
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Also from Cowlitz, games! Your going to notice a little bit of a trend with picking up common Xbox titles. Not that it's set up yet, but I've got all the bits for two complete Xbox lan stations. (I keep forgetting I can also do this with GameCube and PS2 now as well, and maybe xbox360....hmmm)
Now for more normal finds:
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There were so many random pickups this year I forgot everything, this is just what I found as I was wrapping up taking all the pictures for this. Wife was really excited to find the Minecraft book set, the 7 year old that hangs around with us is really into them. She studies the books and builds what she sees in the game.
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For awhile now I've really been thinking of the best way, which includes being cheap, of hooking up lots of consoles at once. We all probably have those av selectors which let you plug 4 things into 1 but I'm looking for more, lots more. I finally came across a decent AV receiver for a good price. Rarely do I see used receivers around here other than beat up entry models. Craigslist has $100+ mid-level ones but that's about it. This one is pretty good for my needs, I'm still on the lookout for one of those awesome Denon, top of the line, things from 10 years ago, but this Sony will hold me over for a bit. The matrix switcher was at the thrift next to it. Got them both for ~$25
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Look at those inputs! And outputs too for the switcher. This is a early 90's high end switcher. Something really rich people had at home or small local tv stations might use. I can't find much on it, but saw something saying it was $1000 new and one guy was using it in his quarter million dollar home theater. What I really wonder is if it can run more than one thing at once. It's 7 in and 7 out plus 2 monitors, so can you have 7 consoles hooked up to it and one person on one tv play one of them and another person on a 2nd tv be playing a different console all through this box? It even has a remote, so I could just sit back and switch from console to console without ever leaving my seat!
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You might remember I got to meet techwizard this summer. Knowing he was going to visit Crabmaster shortly before me, we set it up for him to get me free shipping from Canada. It worked out great and I was super happy to get more lan worthy games for fun xbox nights with friends. You'll all have to visit some day so I can show you how to play Halo 
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Some random stuff. Cart is for GBA and is a mp3 device called Advanced Musicplayer. Lets you use your GBA as a portable mp3 machine. Hooks up to a pc via usb. Hard to pass up a plug and play from Avatar the Last Airbender. I'm not one for tv series' or cartoon/anime but Avatar is really good, you should check it out.
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Most of this was from a garage sale. A guy was selling a huge collection of pc games for $1 each. I only bought a few of them though because it was raining really hard and although it was under a tarp, the games were all wet. I thought I was getting ones that were somewhat dry and leaving the soaked ones but most of these were pretty wet too. I didn't see how wet until I got home, they dried out surprisingly well though. Guy had an interesting collection though. 90% war games, flight sims and grand strat, from the early 90's to current.
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More laser discs. Wife has told me several times she thinks it's weird I picked up Harold and Maude, I don't even know what the movie is about, I've heard it was good?
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When techwizard and co. were here, we all went to a Toys r Us. They were closing out on Skylanders stuff so we jumped on that. I'm totally new to the series. This was $20ish I think for all of it.
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I wanted to be able to use the 3DS for Skylanders, needed a portal though. Zagnorch the rescue! I owe him now, big time.
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A pawn shop in town that normally prices things very much in line with ebay actually had some Intellivision games. They had them all under one sku though, named for a common INTV game that only sells for a couple dollars. I think the lot of these was less than $11 and some of those are $15-30 on ebay  I think I have fewer than 40 left in the library now. Not that I ever plan on finishing the whole collection, a few of them are super expensive.
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A new used game shop opened up in town. I've gone in twice now and felt I should buy something even if it pains me to pay what the now expected prices are for NES games. Oh well, support your local game store and all that. At least I've added new NES games to the collection, don't do that as much anymore. Oh, and since we moved sometime in all that busyness, I'm going to try and work in different backgrounds to my posts going forward. We'll see if I follow through with that.
Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2017
PRGE is by all accounts the big retro game show. That's what I hear anyway. Something like 10,000 people showed up last year. Lots of vendors, huge arcade, tons of panels, Tetris World Championships....I've written at least something about it every year for several years now.
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Caught someone doing some filming for his youtube channel.
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When you go to these kind of shows, got to bring the 3DS to get those streetpasses!
Did I say I got to hang out with russlyman? He was there two years ago too, fun times for sure.
[img width=700 height=559]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4554/38455986726_640508a6cb_o.png[/img]
Wife is really into watching the Tetris world championships. This was during qualifying. Really hard to make out but the guy on the top left has a score of 999,999 which he did a second time right after this. These guys are really good. The guy on the top right, Jonas, won it in the end. World champ 7 times now. The guy in the bottom left, Harry, has won it all before and along with Jonas was in that Tetris movie. A few hundred people watch the finals and it's kinda funny but the contestants sit in the crowd with everyone else. My wife was sitting next to Harry and talked to him some about the Twitch stream he was looking at on his phone. I think I was streamed on Twitch, I'm famous now.
[img width=700 height=486]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4543/24639584588_476ba33c9d_o.png[/img]
There was a museum at the show.
[img width=700 height=383]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4585/38479927302_1e8e82586c_o.png[/img]
Dollar bin games I think.
[img width=640 height=853]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4533/38479928362_e60eeb5151_o.png[/img]
Exercise while playing games? What do you know about this crabby? I think this is the one they sold at the auction later on.
[img width=700 height=470]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4545/38479929032_050bf40383_o.png[/img]
Some "Sony-Nintendo" thing they had out to play. A cheap knock off for sure.
[img width=700 height=539]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4519/38479932492_31ed17706b_o.png[/img]
https://flic.kr/p/21CkHiW
The lighting in the vendor area is really bad for taking pictures and I've pretty much given up on that. I did manage this though. I can't say it's typical of anything one way or the other, but if you like looking at this sort of thing....click the link to see it bigger.
[img width=480 height=640]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4585/38479932952_5442d14514_o.png[/img]
I love riding escalators because it makes me feel lazy for a few seconds. This sign though. If the escalators are off, aren't they stairs?
[img width=700 height=561]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4563/38479923032_89522fe8f2_o.png[/img]
What did I actually buy at the show though? Lots of mainstream games. I've been so slack on keeping track of my collection I mostly concentrated on important, popular, games I've missed out on. Prices weren't awesome but a little less than what you'd see in a game store. Eagles laser disc was free because my wife picked it up and the seller said she was the only person to ever show interest in it.
[img width=700 height=532]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4582/24639582368_03505cd251_o.png[/img]
Two more INTV games, yay. Brett Weiss book, he's a member of this site. He was at the show and my wife saw the book and was like, "we need that" He signed the front of it for us. Nintendogs and Cats is for my nephew.
[img width=700 height=525]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4539/24639581828_fcb0fe79bd_o.png[/img]
I have all the US Odyssey2 games, plus a few from other regions. Ed Aerett was the developer/programmer for about half the library. He was at the show. Got him to sign our program and later decided to just pick up a loose O2 game for him to sign too. Really nice guy. Full of laughs and smiles. Signs his name with "KC's dad".
[img width=700 height=596]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4583/38511918581_157653587c_o.png[/img]
Homebrew games are awesome. I love that they exist and am happy for people to get them that want them. I only have a couple though since they're normally priced the same as any new game and I don't normally buy games at 'new game' prices. Near the end of the show I was walking around and came across this. The guy how made it told me all about it, and let me play a bit. It's unique. A homebrew game for the NES Powerpad. Apparently this is only the 3rd homebrew-powerpad game. One of the others wasn't released and the other was similar to the Track and Field gameplay. Tailgate Party is played like that yard party game Cornhole. You have to supply your own beanbags, pick a distance away to stand and toss them at your powerpad. It's not a simple score keeper either, there is interesting gameplay involved. The dev was really thoughtful with the whole game package, lots of good design went into the layouts, characters, 'easter eggs', manual, logos, everything. I recommend looking into it just because it is so interesting of an idea and so well thought out.
A video of Tailgate Party
https://www.facebook.com/orabgames/
A facebook (whatever that is) page for the game.
[img width=700 height=401]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4584/37796222364_ea49f327e8_o.png[/img]
Told a new guy at work I had moved and was hoping to set up a game room sometime soon. He gave me this.
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Bally Lost World. All the parts seem to be there but it needs a lot of work, not the least of which is corrosion on the circuit boards. Supposedly this game is really loved for it's art, not so much for the gameplay which is simple and straight forward. My wife loves pinball and I surprised her by coming home with it, actually I only showed her the backglass first and told her a guy at work gave it to me for my game room, she thought that was awesome. I let it sink in before telling her I had the rest of the machine too
[img width=700 height=591]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4519/38511916621_a7696cb9a4_o.png[/img]
The backglass is awesome for sure. The guy gave it to me.
I think that wraps it up for now, I know I missed some things. Didn't even show the Gamecube and Xbox consoles along with all the main Resident Evil games for GC that someone gave me because it's in a box somewhere since the move. Didn't show all the PC hardware I picked up for new and old PCs. There will be a pc centric post coming at some point, maybe after life slows down a bit.
I nearly put all this in a single post in small scores, that would have been a fun page....
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Is there any better feeling for a collector than adding a new item to your collection? How about simultaneously adding a new item while helping a friend also get something they crave? Lately, I've seen the phrase "Trade is King" used quite often in game collecting groups. I really can't argue with it. Other than perhaps scoring a crazy good deal at a garage sale this is my favorite way to get new games these days. And honestly, it's a lot more likely to happen than a thrift store pick up nowadays.
Continue reading The Art of the Deal - Lining Up That Perfect Trade
If you are into collecting games, you've undoubtedly seen the abbreviation of "CIB" thrown around quite a bit. For the uninitiated, or as a refresher, that's gamer-speak for "Complete In Box." As a collector, you'll have to decide whether or not you want to collect loose games, mostly to play, or complete games, for any number of reasons. You may like the whole package because of the history of games, and the fact that most console games in today's world don't come with manuals. Perhaps you'd like to replicate the experience of being a child, opening the game, and reading through the manual before you play it. Or, maybe it's a pride thing, and having the total package is tantamount to some kind of bragging rights. Whatever the scenario you more closely fit, collecting complete game packages has become a trendy thing to do in gaming circles.
Continue reading Collector Quandry - What Is Complete In Box?
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