Big fuckin' post incoming, so don't mind me...
Just finished my Tomb Raider shadowbox. You guys can check out a couple images of it as well as the others I've done in my gallery:
https://vgcollect.com/gallery/Telekill
The TMNT one looks bodacious. Nice job!
Oh wow, now even eBay's seller offer system caught me slippin'. I kinda hate how you get bombarded with offers just for viewing a listing at all. Say, I put a listing on my "watch list" after browsing several copies of the same game. I intend to buy it, but then I move along looking at other stuff. Suddenly... YOU'VE GOT AN OFFER for that game you were looking at! Sweet, they marked the price way down, just for me! SMASH that BIN button!!! 
Oh no, that wasn't the one I was watching. It's the one with a huge scratch on the disc that I nope'd right out of while I was browsing... 
FML.
In other news, I can tell it's going to be a PITA just get the mere opportunity to buy a Retro Tink 5x. I really want one, and I also need to start investing in some of those Retrovision cables to go along with it. Has anyone bought from that Gaming Cables UK site? Is the tax really as ridiculous as it appears to be, or am I reading something wrong?
I have done all that I can to stop getting those emails from Ebay. It seems impossible.
That's GameStop for me. No matter how many times I click unsubscribe.
View the website as a guest and only sign in when you're ready to make a purchase. Works for me every time...although I honestly could care less about spam emails, what little I get.
Quick game collector's rant of the day: If you're selling a pricey or expensive game online, do the buyer the courtesy of sending it via a first-rate and at least insured, method of shipping. Not Media Mail. I can sort get doing that if it's something the seller sold cheap, and they're not making much of anything off of the sale. But if they make a decent chunk of change off of it, they can afford to ship it proper and for the buyer's sake, should.
You sure spit a lot of bunkum in this thread, my boy, and hot, steaming piles of it, too to boot.
Outside of shipping your item in the condition advertised, the seller has no further obligation toward you other than maybe leaving feedback. If the listing stated media mail, then it's foolish to expect the seller to upgrade shipping just on the pretext you bought a pricey item from them. If the listing offered additional shipping options, then you should've shelled the extra cash if media mail was such an inconvenience to you, or messaging the seller that you'd like to upgrade the shipping if there were no options. I'm sure had the roles been reversed, you would've done the same. Now, if the game hadn't arrive in the condition advertised due to poor packaging given the time it sometimes takes media mail to reach its destination, then that would've been a different story.
And regarding the same old media mail discussion: no, you're not supposed to ship video games using media mail; however, nobody other than you knows. The problem I've seen with people that get their mail inspected is that they're too damned sloppy; if you're going to send a video game using media mail, use an appropriately sized box instead of a bubble mailer while making sure the address is legible; it's worth mentioning that badly printed labels can be enough for a package to be inspected if sent through media mail. I've personally sent over a hundred packages using media mail and only once had a package inspected and held with postage due, the reason being I used an oddly shaped box. You're allowed to ship CDs, as well as both DVDs and Blu-rays through medial mail, which is what I say the contents of the package are whenever I have to ship a PS1, PS2 or PS3/PS4 game and I'm asked what I'm shipping, which, for all intents and purposes, is technically correct—the best kind of correct. Again, nobody other than you know what's in the package.
The truth of the matter is that using media mail is an "at your own risk" kind of deal, because, as one of the clerks from my nearest post office once put it: "Yeah, it's cheap, but keep in mind that's exactly how it's going to be treated". Do what you will with that little nugget.
Gamestop.com has been hit or miss. Every time involved purchasing used games. Sometimes the purchases were immediately returned, but there were times the stuff looked close to being fresh out the box.
Yeah, GameStop was a complete mess last holiday season for me, too, far worse than their usual fare. I've gotten used to their screw-ups and rarely if ever get bothered by them since I tend to prepare myself for their possibility whenever I make an order on their website, but this time around what I experienced was outright egregious. As I'm sure many of you did, I made a couple of orders during mid November and around December, and almost everything went wrong. Long story short, here's what happened:
- They sent the wrong game in at least
FOUR separate occasions;
- they sent used copies of games I purchased on sale brand new, and at least half of them came in the dreaded generic black case, although thankfully some did come complete with their respective covers;
- they sent a "brand new" game in a resealable plastic baggy, and the case looked like it had been chewed by a chihuahua at the bottom;
- they sent a couple of brand new games with the cellophane wrapper all torn up;
- they sent the standard version of a game that was supposed to be a steelbook—granted, I don't particularly collect steelbooks, but for the price at the time I thought I might as well get it;
- taking advantage of their "buy 5 or more pre-owned games and get 50% off" deal, I ended up receiving only 2 of the games I ordered because the rest inexplicably remained "awaiting availability" even though these games were in stock and were continuously being put on sale; I ended up contacting support and they in turn notified the warehouse, which went on for more times I'm willing to count, until I eventually had enough and canceled the order—I was told I could call support with the order number to see if they could honor the special offer, but no way in hell I was going to waste my time with maybes;
- I also purchased at least 8 shirts spread throughout different orders and each purchase was canceled because the sizes I chose weren't available, even though the page for each shirt had a dropdown menu with sizes ranging from S to 2XL (the pages were fixed shortly after my orders were canceled);
- on top of all that, some of the orders when notified they had shipped would stay "stuck" for days only showing "label created", seemingly never leaving the warehouse, so I had to contact support on multiple occasions just to "nudge" them out the door;
- to top the last one off, GameStop keeps using UPS Mail Innovations, which fucking sucks, and packages would stay stuck for weeks, where I ended up getting some of my purchases for free, showing up a month after having been refunded;
- and lastly, quite recently with my pre-order of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, the package I was sent came empty, like literally just some cushion bags and bubble wrap, so I ended up contacting support for a replacement. I wasn't the only one, someone I know also pre-ordered the game and got an empty box, too.
All in all, frustration reared its ugly face more than once, and while the experience was a taxing one due to constantly having to contact support having to go through the same narrative in every chat, as well as managing multiple tracking numbers, I ain't complaining; the experience was most rewarding in the end. I mean, it's no wonder GameStop is a paragon of inefficiency and is often "struggling": monkeys are clearly running that joint. Their customer support is great, though; I only had one bad experience among the dozen of times I had to reach out to them.
Something that I noticed during this whole ordeal is that I had the most problems with orders coming from Grapevine, TX compared to Shepherdsville, KY, even down to the way each would package every order, where the latter beat the former by a huge margin. And to thicken the plot even more, the empty box came directly from Grapevine.
Quick question, do you guys think an Amazon Store Card registration is worth a free game? I mean, I kinda hate Amazon, they're the evil empire to me, and I have no intention to actually use such a card... but hell, free game. I believe there's no obligations behind having it, that they make apparent anyway. Worth it, or no?
Ugh, on top of everything else in life... my HOA sent me a violation notice with a picture showing the pepper plants I've been growing in my front yard telling me to remove the weeds and mow. It's winter, so the grass isn't tall and is kind of dead, so it's really them just complaining about my plants.
[...]
Crushed like a pancake yo! I believe sellers are responsible for uninsured packages, but this just hurts to look at no matter the game personally... This was a sealed, new copy. I believe the package has come kind of tread on it, either a tire or a shoe.
Insurance is for the seller, not the buyer. In situations like this, you're covered by eBay, or by simply contacting customer support if this was bought elsewhere; the pics should've been more than enough to prove your case in both instances.
Unless a T-Rex stepped on it, that package seems to have been ran over by a vehicle, and probably the same one that was used to transport it.
Why not just had it modded so you can at least play the games? I'd rather play the games on actual hardware than bother with Saturn emulation.
I don't like going into the grey area of emulation.
[...]
Emulation/ jailbreaking current or last gen I get. but for older stuff to retro when the earnings are non existent you ain't doing any harm to the industry.
Just save your energy, thick-headed people can't be convinced to change their minds, no matter what. Although more often than not they will fervently oppose something while taking part in it, like someone saying they don't watch porn when they in fact do...or the myriad of cases where people say they aren't gay and then turns out they're closeted.
My rage buying lately is becoming a bit irresponsible. Why are there so many damn video games? I've no interest in 2/3rds of the games out there that exist, and still I can never find an end to the ones I want to own. Then you've got new releases taunting me, but I just don't do full blown retail on most games. I can't. That would only make me a responsible person who supports products at launch and only owns as many games as I can actually play, and who wants that? Nobody wants that.
Forbidden West.... even though I haven't played the first one, amazing graphics, awesome combat. I MUST HAVE IT.
Edge of Eternity... JRPG that is not made in Japan, KEWL.
ELIX II... role playing game no one's heard of and still getting neat looking sequel, SIGN ME UP.
RICO London... cell shaded FPS.... NUFF SAID.
Away Survival Series... nature game playing as flying squirrel, NEED IT.
Eternal Cylinder... just look at it, A MUST BUY.
Just a handful of games right there, none of which I've bought yet. Even though I've bought about 30 games since new years. I'm not just collecting these things to collect them, I wanna play them! Just decided to plop down my Amazon gift card on a copy of Kena, because my god that game looks amazing.... and in the process of doing so I found a really cool retro style 3D platformer on the Xbox One called Demon Turf.... PHYSICAL GAME, had to have that too.
How do they expect us to play all of this stuff? It's too damn much!! Just. So. Many. Games.
The worst part of doing "big research" on a thing for this site is that I end up wanting to collect the things I am documenting. Like now that I got out of Yu-Gi-Oh hell, I want to collect those cards.
Self-control, which I reckon is a trait most collector's lack.
[...] I've been using Mercari for selling and so far, it's been a positive experience 100% of the time. A buyer recently PM'd me asking if I'd lower a price on something and/or if I'd be willing to do a trade. That raised a red flag, but before I could respond the admin team deleted the message. The main thing was that trades (as far as I can tell) aren't allowed.
Today, I saw that same person bought the item at full price. As experience teaches us, it's important to look at who you're selling to before shipping something in the mail. The buyer created their account this month (02/2022). They have zero buy/sell history. Another red flag.
So, I messaged the Mercari help desk and that's where we are. Something about this scenario just seems...off. It's hard to explain. I've just been burned before on blindly accepting a sale once on something expensive and don't want to deal with that again. [...]
Like eBay, Mercari has a block list, so the first thing you should've done, almost instinctively given your suspicion, was blocking the user. However, in instances like this, had the Mercari support team not intervened, other than the possibility of dealing with a twit and the frustration that in turn would have caused, you would've been in the clear since support would've been on your side once they saw the user's history. Granted, there's no doubt you would've lost the item if sold, but Mercari would've refunded you fully.
There has been a small influx of these individuals recently on the website ever since eBay fully implemented MP, so stay on the lookout.
Star Fox Adventure technically doesn't count by a lot of people if only because of what the game was supposed to be originally in Dinosaur Planet. Rather than let it be, they changed it to give a Star Fox flair if you will without being a Star Fox games. I would imagine that Assault was for the most part ignored due to the sour taste Adventure left. The fact that Wii never got a Star Fox game was weird though. Motion controls to pilot would I think would have worked well.
Pretty much this. The fact they soft-rebooted the franchise—again—with Zero pretty much tells the tale. I personally equate StarFox with the Predator franchise, in that both are good and full of potential, but slowly rotting away with every passing day.
