Messages

1

General / Re: Top 30 Pick Ups of 2024!

« on: January 04, 2025, 02:47:31 pm »

Looking back on some of the interesting stuff I picked up in 2024, I got:

Blazing Star (Neo Geo MVS)
Last Blade (Neo Geo MVS)
Time Killers (Genesis)
Robocco Wars (Famicom)
Ghostbusters 2 (Famicom)
Final Fantasy VI (Super Famicom) - (bought CIB as more of a "trophy" than anything, I love that game)

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General / Re: Top 30 Pick Ups of 2024!

« on: January 04, 2025, 02:24:48 pm »

Wow, there's some fantastic treasures here! Growl, GigaWing 2, AirZonk, some solid early gen Neo Geo games, and the great Popful Mail?? It's such a fantastic game in a style and era that just doesn't exist anymore.

I'm also a fan of old strategy guides like that. That Final Fantasy III one really takes me back. Not sure what happened to mine!

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Classic Video Games / Re: Konami vs Square Enix (Squaresoft) You can only keep one.

« on: December 28, 2024, 03:38:47 pm »

For the '80s and early '90s, Konami wins pretty easily. From the late '90s and onward, I'd say Square takes it.

This is a battle for the heart of the '90s. Enix wasn't merged with Square yet, so I can't count them. Same with Hudson for Konami.

Does the combined strength of Final Fantasy 4 5 & 6, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, and Chrono Trigger defeat the powerful coalition of Simpsons Arcade, Castlevania Rondo of Blood, Symphony of the Night, Gradius III, Turtles in Time, Contra III, Sunset Riders, and the Gradius Interstellar Assault?

It's a little tough to compare directly, since their best efforts were in completely different types of games. These days, I can go back and easily enjoy Konami's classics since they don't take much time to play. But on the other hand, Square's games from that time remain some of my favorites of all time.

Both companies are shadows of their former greatness. It's a tough choice, but I'm choosing Squaresoft.

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General / Re: Your Top 5 Video Game Sound Tracks

« on: November 19, 2024, 02:26:47 am »

This is tough, there's a lot of great soundtracks I love.

1. Chrono Trigger (SNES)
2. Final Fantasy VI (SNES)
3. Elemental Master (Genesis)
4. Life Force (NES)
5. BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger (PS3)

Some extras:

Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria (PS2)
Earthbound (SNES)
Batman (NES)
Super Metroid (SNES)
Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)

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Modern Video Games / Re: Playstation 5 Pro

« on: September 11, 2024, 01:52:14 pm »

I have a bit of a theory about the PS5 Pro beyond Sony trying to milk more money out of their aging platform. Between the announcement of no disk drive, the high price point, and Gamestop recently announcing they are going to put an emphasis on selling retro games, I think this is a dry run for next generation, at least from Sony's point of view. I think they want to see how well received a digital only, super expensive console will go over with consumers as a way of judging whether or not to continue using discs or not.

I think this is exactly right. It took a few years before I even got a PS5, since they were so hard to find at launch. I can't imagine wanting to replace it already for a Pro version without a disc drive.

I still only have 3 games for it: Elden Ring, Demon's Souls, and RoboCop Rogue City.

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General / Re: Is there any hope for this site?

« on: August 22, 2024, 04:57:59 pm »

I lurk around the forums, but there isn't usually much going on. The site is my go-to collection database though.

I think YouTube has stolen the thunder of forums in general, since each video functions as its own thread with comments.

It could also be because a lot of us already know everything related to retro games.

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Classic Video Games / Re: how would you rank your collecting experience per console

« on: January 19, 2024, 02:32:23 pm »

I've never really considered myself a collector of Switch games, since they're still being made. But man, somehow I've gotten over 100 games for it. It has such an unbelievably good variety of games. It's gotta be Nintendo's best system since the SNES.

About 20 years ago, I got really into Neo Geo AES collecting. Since I never had a Neo growing up, it was like making my own childhood fantasies come true. At $80-$350 a pop, they weren't cheap, so each one was like getting a new treasure. In 2011 or so, the prices started really rising, and I sold them to help pay for my wedding... I kinda wish I didn't sell, I could never get them back now!

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Classic Video Games / Re: Old video game ads.

« on: January 19, 2024, 01:23:25 pm »

That Haunted Castle one is so cringy, I love it!

SNK did a lot of amusingly aggressive ads back in the day:

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fai5xvv08is771.jpg

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fneo-geo-advert-from-gamepro-issue-17-december-1990-v0-vt177e57gju81.jpg%3Fs%3D8010a7c481b54e089380d15af529f42a927c07dc

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Classic Video Games / Re: Is my copy of Link to the Past a repro?

« on: January 19, 2024, 01:12:26 pm »

Buyer protection is quite strong on ebay, if it was a really obvious repro it's usually listed as such and at a cheap price compared to the og. It's quite a waste of time for the seller to sell an obvious repro and trying to fool folks

True, on eBay, a buyer only has to say that an item is defective or inauthentic and they'll instantly win their case. There's pretty much no defense a seller can do against it. It's good for buyers, bad for honest sellers when dealing with underhanded buyers.

This Zelda looks legit to me. As others mentioned, sometimes the back shells become discolored, so people switch them out. Sometimes the back stickers are removed, or had rental stickers over them at one point. My Chrono Trigger has no back sticker because I got it from Blockbuster ages ago and didn't like the rental stickers they had on it. Although now with the mythos around Blockbuster, I should've just kept it on there. 

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Video Game Database Discussion / Re: Possible to view all games for a console?

« on: January 15, 2024, 06:22:24 pm »

Yeah, if you clicked on "NES/Famicom" it could show you all games in your collection tagged to those systems, then if you specifically clicked "NA" or "JP" it could filter by just those consoles. That would be a pretty great feature.

11

Off Topic / Re: You Control The Hackers In Video Games He and She Does Not Control You

« on: January 03, 2024, 01:16:44 pm »

Are you saying that by stomping goombas, we're actively enraging Shigeru Miyamoto and causing him to concoct new diabolical Mario games to get us with?

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Off Topic / Re: What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

« on: December 18, 2023, 07:29:32 pm »

Black Dynamite - When it comes to mimicking the filmmaking style of their subject matter only Young Frankenstein has done it better. It's the commitment to that particular blaxploitation style that mines 90% of the humor here.

It's a great movie! I haven't seen it in awhile, but one of the biggest laughs I got was where Black Dynamite is fighting some henchmen, and one seems to unintentionally hit him for real (as if it were an outtake), he breaks character for a second and the camera jump-cuts to a new take with a different actor as the henchman. 

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Off Topic / Re: Is There Any Evidence There Are People Buying To Dispose Retro?

« on: October 16, 2023, 02:53:09 pm »

It would be insane to buy something with the intent to destroy it and make it more rare. If someone bought 999,999 copies of Mary Kate and Ashley's Meltdown at McDonald's, it's true that they could drive up the cost of the last remaining copy to $1,000,000. But the amount they would have to spend to do this would be way more than $1,000,000. So there would be no reason other than hating both money and fun.

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Off Topic / Re: Un-Allowed Media

« on: August 15, 2023, 06:56:38 pm »

I wasn't allowed to get Warcraft because the name sounded like "witchcraft"... plus there was "clearly" a demon on the box. 

I had Street Fighter II though, which was the coolest game you could have. Took it to a friends house where his mom promptly rooted through my bag and saw green-skinned Blanka on the cover. "You can't play this one. It's demonic." She let us play Mario Paint though!

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General / Re: Fake This! Pokemon is the most faked I've seen.

« on: August 05, 2023, 01:43:01 pm »

I think the bootleg market got started during the Famicom era. The Chinese government at the time wouldn't allow imports of games from Japan, so Chinese groups created bootlegs to sell domestically. It definitely got ramped up during the Pokemon era. I remember going to Frank and Sons (a collectible convention in LA) and marveling at a guy selling Pokemon Diamond! This was in 2001 or so, way before there was a real Pokemon Diamond. I thought it was an exotic game that hadn't been released in the US yet, so I got it... only to discover it was a pirated pachislot game. All the game soundtrack CDs I bought from that guy ended up being fakes too. Doh!