Month in Review: May 2010
An absolutely storming month for game hunting, enabled by some gorgeous weather for carbooting, a couple of nice charity shop finds and plain good luck all round.
Also, this happens to be my one hundreth blog on GameSpot. Woo! I suppose I should have done something special to mark the occasion, but it's too late now. You'll just have to settle for a super-sized edition of my monthly blog.
There's a lot of pictures in here, so apologies to anyone on a slow connection.
New Acquisitions
Nothing embodies the spirit of retro more than 1970s TV games. In fact, these things are so retro that they are almost antique! This is a Binatone Colour TV Game, Model 01/4850, which features six Pong-like and shooting games. I won't go into too much detail; there's much more information in my previous Retro Revival blog. I picked this up on a carboot for a fiver. The box has seen better days but the machine itself is in splendid condition.
The rest of the haul from this particular carboot sale. Nothing here cost more than a pound and it's all complete in very good to mint condition. The Mega Drive games were picked up solely because I've never seen mint copies of those games before; it's often the really common games that are hardest to find in mint condition! Resident Evil 3 is a budget version, a stand-in until I can track down a cheap big-box version.
A few items from eBay. Secret of Evermore for SNES was an absolute steal and while the box is a little squashed at the bottom the cart and book are in pristine condition. The black cart is Spiritual Warfare, a Wisdom Tree unlicensed game for the NES that really creeps me out for some reason... but hey, it was only £1.50 and you don't see this stuff every day on eBay UK. The big box is an Australian HES game for the NES featuring four games on one cartridge and an unnecessarily large clamshell box that doesn't fit next to all my other NES games.
A whole stack of NES games from various eBay sellers. They are all boxed and complete and for the most part in very good condition. The box for Mike Tyson's Punch-Out is rather tatty, but since I only ended up paying about the same as a cart only version I don't mind too much. The most expensive game in this bunch was Rainbow Islands at just over £8, the rest were all somewhere between £2 and £6 each.
I did it! I managed to track down UK releases for all the GBA NES CIassics. These two were easily the most elusive of the bunch, Dr. Mario always seemed to fetch a high price and Ice Climber hardly ever appeared at all. Bizarrely, just a week or so after watching a similar Ice Climber sell for nearly £20 I snagged this for £3 and change. I'll never understand eBay.
A couple more for my Resident Evil collection. The PC big box of the first game was mint when I bought it, but the damn postman damaged the corner shoving it through the letterbox. Gah!
The first of several decent charity shop hauls this month. These were all £1 each and are all complete. Nothing spectacular there, but some good games. I've wanted Rebel Assault II for a while now. Incidently, Wipeout 2097 was the first game I ever played on a PS1, my friend got the console and the game for his birthday back in '96 or so and I spent many happy hours kicking his ass.
I love big box PC games. They just seem like you're getting so much more, even though in most cases all that's in there is a CD case rattling about and a ten page manual. Alas, the days of the cloth map, sixteen floppy disks and the novel-sized manual were long gone even when these games were new. Anyway, I got all these from a charity shop, some at 49p and some at 99p. They really took me back when I saw them, I used to be a bigger fan of strategy games than I am now and these were the sort of games I played to death.
More games from the same shop. I can only imagine what I looked like walking home with all these boxes stacked in my arms. There's some real gems in this lot: Elite Plus, Hero Quest and UFO are still awesome to play. The KISS game is the Psycho Circus shooter, a game I never knew existed until now. I've given it a quick whirl and it seems to be more or less Quake in greasepaint.
Another 70's TV game, this time a Prinztronic Tournament Ten system featuring ten games, again of the Pong and shooting variety. Once more, some more information on this nice retro system can be found in my previous blog. This one was found at a carboot at my old school and was a bargain at £6. Even more so considering I knocked the seller down from £10!
More finds from my school carboot. The best of the bunch is at the top of the picture. Sinclair items are getting really collectable these days, not just their old computers but their other electronic products such as calculators and this Pocket TV from the early 1980s. It's a lovely item, the first commercial pocket TV. Interestingly, it features a cathode ray screen rather than the LCD screens that came later, but the gun actually fires sideways in order to fit the screen into something that is about the same size as a DS Lite. This example was a real bargain, boxed and complete (with all the paperwork, poly inserts and even an Argos picking ticket from 1984) for a fiver. I've uploaded a picture here, if you're interested.
A return to the charity shop of the many PC games yielded a few more. Worlds of Legend is the ridiculously rare sequel to Legend (also known as The Four Crystals of Trazere) and my jaw fairly dropped when I saw it. The unboxed game is the first Dark Sun game, Shattered Lands, which I've been looking for for ages. I've had the second Dark Sun game for years, but I always put off playing it until I could get the first one. No excuses now.
Two brand new DS games from the clearance section at work. Mystery Dungeon is actually my very first Pokemon game (that I've owned, I've played them before) and was only a fiver. Professor Layton was £13. Not bad when you throw staff discount in on top of that.
More carboot games and really, it makes a nice change to see Nintendo stuff on a carboot. Fighters Destiny and Wetrix are cart only, but they were only 50p each so that's not too bad. Capcom vs. SNK 2 was from a Cash Generator store, I just threw it into the picture to save my camera battery.
Nearly there, and another return to the same charity shop yields yet more PC games. Every time I go in there I practically clear out their PC games and every time I ask if they have any more in the back. They always say no, yet more magically appear after I leave. Maybe they'll get the hint soon. It's pretty obvious all these big box PC games have been donated by the same person (someone who should be ashamed of themselves for clearing out such good stuff). Anyway, the two Civilization add-ons are new to me, I didn't even know there were add-ons for Civ 2... I feel a mammoth Civ session coming on!
Last, but certainly not least, a small haul from yesterday's Bank Holiday carboot. The book is my favourite find of the lot, it's an art book/making of to The Eye, an action-adventure based on Queen music/lyrics that was released in the mid 90s. I've never seen a copy of the game in the wild and a cursory search on eBay reveals it's pretty highly sought-after. Regardless, this book is a nice find. It's glossy and gorgeous and contains a CD-ROM with additional making-of stuff. Even if I never get the game, this will go nicely with my other Queen items. Yeah, I'm a big fan.
Well... looks like I've written too much for GameSpot to handle. May's monthly blog will continue in another post...