Years ago, I was excited to learn you could buy and download classic Nintendo games on the Wii. Now, that joy has become more portable with the NES Classic Edition purchase. Thanks, Christmas money. Thanks, Target.

Overhauled visuals, UI, fewer bugs (I was just playing this and a bad bug stopped my progress dead), but not for $20. But going on sale for $5? Helz yeah.

I owned both for years. Finally got around to playing 3, and really enjoyed it, especially the beginning. As the main plot went on, it got less interesting. Still, the wasteland was cool, and I liked being able to seeing "something" nearby or on the horizon; knowing I could walk there and check it out.

New Vegas, which I'm currently playing and loving, is the opposite. It starts so slowly that I had two mis-starts where I started the game, got bored, and quit. You can't see the next cool place because everything around you is blocked by rocks. But once you get started, and get into the game a few hours, the game is amazing. Mods make it even more so. I'm glad I gave it a third try.

After taking the kids trick-or-treating in the cold rain, I decided to treat myself to some Halloween. Reinstalled Hellgate: London and installed some mods from here: http://www.hellgateaus.info/forum/index.php

Now I'm slashing my way through creepy-crawlies until the late hours.

It only took a few years, but I finally figured out the correct sequence of moves in a fantasy 4x game (Elemental: Fallen Enchantress) that would enable me to beat a sandbox game (against AI) on the easiest of settings. Pathetic, maybe, but figuring it out was fun and I was smart enough to quit for a little while every time my experiment failed.

Just got a new gaming mouse for about $70 from Best Buy (yes, they're still around). Adjustable weight, adjustable dpi on the fly, 8+ buttons, and software that will adjust the mouse based on your mouse pad. I tried Planetside 2 for about an hour with it and it was like playing a whole new game.

Finished I Am Alive over vacation and really enjoyed it. Having started it twice, I realize the first time I attempted it I was moving too slowly, expecting to be attacked at every turn. But this really slowed down the beginning of the game for me, which I should have realized was more of tutorial than anything else.

Really great game, and I'm glad I picked it up during a STEAM sale. I liked that it was different enough to not be a standard space-marine shooter, but also not a zombie-themed post-apocalyptic game.

I've used a Home Server for years. It performs backups for my computers, holds my family's music and pictures, etc. It's great. But Microsoft, in its wisdom, decided that the minimum requirements for the main hard drive be a minimum of 160 GB of space. While this wasn't a problem for years, I noticed that once installed, the OS only took up about 40 GB of space. I recently decided I wanted to put my Server OS on a SSD drive in order to speed up basic server admin actions. So, I had the choice to either find a way to get the server OS to install on a smaller 60 GB SSD, or buy a 160+ GB SSD drive, which would be more expensive. I decided to buy the smaller 60 GB SSD and use the saved money to upgrade the server's motherboard, CPU, and RAM.

After a day or so of researching, I found a method to initiate a unattended installation of the server software while ignoring the 1600 GB hard drive size limitation. It took quite a few tries before I realized that my USB 3.0 ports wouldn't work until I added drivers, and that after a failed attempt you had to edit a file that initiated the unattended installation. Finally, it got installed and the server software is now very responsive.

Then, my SM Bus and USB 3.0 drivers for the new motherboard wouldn't install. After extracting the installation file to a separate folder, and then manually adding support for the OS to the .inf files, Windows finally installed the drivers.

Add to that the derp of attempting to install the printer while forgetting to actually plug the printer into the USB port, and I had quite a few days of solving odd issues.

But, at the end of the day, this reminds me why I love working with PCs and gaming on PCs so much. Sure, I could always use an off-the-shelf solution, and that would have worked and probably worked well. But I enjoy tinkering and exploring my options. In the end, I was able to double my server's CPU performance, quadruple my RAM capacity while upgrading two generations of RAM technology, (probably the biggest upgrade) upgrade the OS's hard drive to a lightning-fast SSD, and move the server's external hard drive backup drive from using USB 2.0 to USB 3.0. The difference is amazing, and the total cost was $200, and I didn't have to deal with another company dictating what I could and couldn't do to improve my performance. I had options.

There is no way I'll accept the three Pecos that Gamestop offers, Goozex has pretty much tried up, and eBay has resulted in only two sold. Are there any other places I can sell some last-gen games for ~$5?

I have so many console games I haven't touched: Ghostbusters, a few Silent Hill games, Metroid Prime Trilogy, etc. I'm wondering if I will ever get the urge to play them again or if I should just sell them. I've had a recent bad run-in with eBay, so that's putting me off.

Thoughts?