Goodwill Hunting - Pitfall 3D and Game & Watch Gallery

Eh, why not?

Planted firmly in the "it was on sale, so why not?" territory are these two pickups from 2 days ago.  Pitfall 3D was half off at around $1.50, Game & Watch Gallery at it's regular price of $4. Neither have very much value, so this isn't a pickup for the record books.

In other news, It looks like I'll be needing a bit more time on my current game review, so I'll be bumping up the review of the PowerPak to this week.  Look for it soonish!

Famicom Games, A Sega Master System And The Weakest Thrift Trip Yet

So, in response to a Craigslist ad, I took a trip out a bit farther out of the way than I usually go, and picked up an awesome deal.  I'll come back to that.

While I was out, I also took a run to my usual day-trip thrift shops.

I've had a sort of unspoken superstition for a while. In every playlist I make before I head out, I sneak in Sievert's Party Dog, the song I use as the theme for my videos. If the song plays at random during the trip, it'll be a good trip.  Well, today I proved there's some merit to that - the song didn't play before I reached my first shop.

No matter how many stores I went to, it was the same. Common games or no games at all. Every single place, nothing. No consoles, no accessories, and no games.

I even stopped at The Bins (the Goodwill Outlet store) and picked through everything they had.  Nothing.  Nothing at all.  Finally, just as I was about to leave and call the whole trip a bust, I found this hiding in the display case.

My favorite Game Boy game, when I was very young. Also I didn't have a Game Boy.

Yes, it generally goes for about 50 cents less than I paid, but damn it, I conquered the stores tonight. I found something, and therefore I won. So there.

I'm kidding, of course. I love taking these trips, even if I find nothing at all. There's a thrill in the hunt; digging through the trash and finding the hidden treasures.

Next, I received an awesome package from Japan.  4 Famicom games for $26 shipped, from Sean at http://famicomblog.blogspot.com.  None of the markup you usually get on these games... seriously, check eBay.  Anyway:

My first 4 Famicom games - pretty good choices so far.

The games are Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, Tower of Druaga and The Goonies. You can't beat $26 for these games, when you figure how much you're usually charged just for shipping from Japan.

So, on to the big Craigslist score, and the reason for the trip out today.  The listing was for a Sega Master System, several controllers, and some games.  He said he couldn't get it to start up but didn't have the correct AC adapter, so I figured I'd give it a shot, since I've got two of them.  Fired it up when I got it home... and it does not start up.

Looks like I've got a new repair project.

EDIT: A small update - I've found out the original owner tried to start it up with an NES AC adapter, which is a very, very bad idea. The NES adapter puts out AC and is converted internally, whereas the SMS adapter converts to DC. Plugging in an NES adapter will fry your Master System. Just don't do it. I know it fits, but that doesn't mean it works. If you have a Sega Genesis Model 1 AC adapter, that'll work just fine.

Now, we buy a replacement voltage regulator.

One of the controllers is an Epyx joystick, which makes me smile.

The games are the reason I went for it, though.  Well, one, in particular:

Global Defense, Monopoly, Golvellius, Rescue Mission, Missile Defense 3-D and Alf.  Believe it or not, Alf is a very rare and difficult to find game, netting around $40 boxed.

How much did I pay for the whole set?  $25. Even with a non-working Master System, I still win the day.

Yard sale season starts up again soon, though. Get ready, I've got a feeling this year's going to be a great one.

Can't Win Em All - Today's Thrift Run

Today's haul is not great.  Not at all.  But, I really wanted to grab some new games, so here we are.

Harvest Moon!

First stop was Salvation Army, which is always hit or miss where retro games are concerned.  Today was a pretty big hit.  Nine Game Boy games in a plastic bag, marked at $10.99 for the lot.  I'd have passed, but then I saw that Mary-Kate and Ashley game...

...actually, it was the Harvest Moon that pushed me over the edge.

The games are Sports Illustrated Golf Classic (valued at about $1), Buzz Lightyear of Star Command ($1), Harvest Moon GBC ($9), The New Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley ($1), Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers ($4), Centipede ($1), Top Rank Tennis ($1), Ultra Golf ($2), and Space Invaders ($4).  So at around $24, this set is the star, regardless of quality. But hey, I love Harvest Moon games.

And the "meh" collection.

Next, a Goodwill.  Sometimes you're out at a store and just think, "Y'know what? Damnit, I need some N64 games."  Then you grab them all up and overpay like crazy.

Or maybe that's just me.

Anyway, the games are WCW vs NWO World Tour ($1), Hey You, Pikachu ($2) and Rayman 2 ($6).  I paid almost $13.  Yes, yes, I'm ashamed, but you know what?  I don't care at all abut pro wrestling, and normally dislike pro wrestling games as a result.  Wrestling games developed by AKI, though, are in a class of their own.  I don't mind overpaying for that.

Besides, I'm still up around $10 in final value.  So there!

FamiComplex Video Reviews - Home Alone

'Holy Cow' is right, kid.

FamiComplexTV's first Christmas special is here with every Home Alone game! This can't end well.

A Trip Home, A Huge Collection Boost

I've just gotten back a couple of days ago from a trip to visit my family in Iowa for Thanksgiving.  I had a great time, but this isn't a blog about family, so let's talk games.

One of the things I like to stress here is that no matter where you are, you can hunt this stuff down.  I've visited tons of thrift stores and have always, always been able to find some gems... or at least some cheap junk.

In the Cedar Rapids/Marion area, however, I hit up 5 different thrift stores and found almost nothing.  One consignment store had an enormous selection of crappy sports games for at least 5 times their current value, but the rest were completely devoid of anything game-related.

Now, this may have been because I went thrifting shortly after Black Friday, but classic games aren't really a big ticket Christmas item... who knows.

So, thrift stores may not be the way to go, where you are.

That's better.

So, of course, I visited my local Goodwill upon returning home to wash that bad taste out of my mouth.  I left with a copy of Columns for the Game Gear, with a 1/2 off tag at $1.49.  That made me feel better.

That's not to say that the trip was not profitable from a classic gaming standpoint.  Firstly, my brother-in-law's mother found a stack of Genesis games in their storage.  He no longer has a Genesis, so they gave me this:

Neat, DreamWorks.

Wings of Wor for the Sega Genesis.  Next, I raided my parents' basement to retrieve the goodies within, as well as the games they had bought from me back when we needed the financial help.  What follows is a significant portion of my childhood games.

Oh yeah, this is the good stuff, right here.  The NES Action Set I was given for Christmas in one of the best Christmases ever, the badly yellowed SNES which was the first thing I ever bought with my own money, and the Game Boy Color/Camera/Printer I purchased in high school.

Shadowgate Classic and Tetris DX for the Game Boy Color, as well as Pokemon Blue, Castlevania Legends, Metroid II, Final Fantasy Legend III for the Game Boy.

NES games: Shinobi, Karate Champ, Friday The 13th, Demon Sword, The Empire Strikes Back, Kung Fu, Time Lord, Days of Thunder and Legacy of the Wizard.

Bigger ones in this group... Magician, StarTopics, Super Team Games, Dance Aerobics, Ghost Lion, Action 52, Dragon Warrior and Dragon Warrior II.  Once upon a time, I had Dragon Warrior III and IV as well, but they seem to have vanished.  Shame.

SNES games: Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Raiden Trad, Mario World, Zoop, The Adventures of Dr. Franken and Battle Blaze.  Decent haul - but whatever happened to my better games?  A Link To The Past, Donkey Kong Country, Super Metroid?  They've disappeared.

A stack of manuals, mostly for the Game Boy stuff.  Looks like I've got a StarTropics manual, too.  No letter, of course.  I doubt I'll ever find a copy with the letter intact.

Here's something I tend to forget when dealing with retro games - PC games!  Here we have Avoid The Noid, the freeware game Sleuth, Captain Blood, Megaman, and Win, Lose or Draw.  Also, a copy of Prowler that's a hybrid PC/Commodore 64 disk.  Score!

Lastly, we have Drakkhen, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego (a demo, I think), Gauntlet II, Ms. Pac-Man, Moraff's World, Pool of Radiance, The Dark Half, Populous and Populous: The Promised Lands.

With so many PC games, maybe we'll look at doing some DOSBox reviews.  I've also got a nice stack of CD-ROM-era PC games I'd love to tear into again... we'll see.

Goodwill Hunting - Final Fantasy Legend II

Finally, something to play on my Super Game Boy.

When you think back on Square's 8-bit legacy, it's easy to forget that a total of four games were released on the Game Boy, all of which were labeled as Final Fantasy games, but none of which were part of the series proper.

Final Fantasy Legend I-III are actually the first three titles in the SaGa series, followed up by Romancing SaGa games on the Super Famicom and the Saga Frontier games on the Playstation.  At the time, Square was a household name in Japan, and a serious and focused contender in the RPG scene.  In the US, however, the only Square games we'd ever seen were King's Knight, the Rad Racer series, 3D World Runner, and Final Fantasy.  It's easy to see why they latched on to the Final Fantasy name here in order to sell cartridges.

This copy of Final Fantasy Legend II was found at Goodwill for $2.99, hiding under some PC games that had been haphazardly tossed about.  It needs a bit of cleaning, but the cartridge and save battery are working as they should.

Amazon Expeditions - Super Game Boy

The Super Game Boy was released in 1994, allowing you to play your Game Boy games on your SNES console, and 32 built-in color palettes added color to otherwise monochromatic Game Boy titles.  In addition, several of the more popular games had pre-configured color palettes and borders, such as Metroid II and Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.  The Super Game Boy was released prior to the Game Boy Color, and, as such, will not play Game Boy Color exclusive titles.

Mine ran around $6.50 shipped from Amazon.com, and is in great condition, but I don't currently have any Game Boy games on hand to try it out.