Messages

16

Classic Video Games / Re: Name Some Currently Expensive Yet Common Retro Video Games

« on: January 05, 2020, 04:56:44 pm »

^and considering this is an industry that had a fad crash a decade or so earlier in the states... and nintendo was never as popular in europe as overseas... the question of "is it worth playing janitor for 20yrs for a maybe increased market value?" becomes less obviously "yes" and more obviously "do i look like a beanie baby scrub?"

17

General / Re: Top 30 Pick Ups of 2019!

« on: January 04, 2020, 02:23:23 pm »

i don't have much grandiose but hey.

1) some really sturdy OG xbox microsoft-branded component cables. the ones without the external hub. pretty sure you could use these suckers as a weapon like a whip and leave scars. local video game store sold them for an extremely cheap price and help i just looked them up on ebay sold listings. woah! i got these things for $7 or $13, i think the $13 item on the ticket was for KOTOR cause i remember hesitating to buy it lmao. never thought to look up the cables on ebay til now when i was looking for a pic to show them here and the sun shine on my lil local vg store, these things sell for over $40 in the sold listings, damn! i'm not one to be all 'lemme think bout it' and ebay when i am in a store, and anyway, $7 for a pair of OEM cables ain't a bad deal even if they're not rare... plus no shipping or ebay problems.
anyway, not my pic, but same model i have...


2) playstation classic for $20 in july from best buy. i only bought one on the vague idea that people had modded the classic already, i'd heard it was easy and i know how modders go nuts on easily cracked hardware like this. now it's become one of my favourite little things tbh. it's my emulation station now, in a tiny and cute lil package. happy birthday to me tbh

3) hyperdevotion noire and hyperdimension neptunia u on vita for $25 and $30, respectively. i've seen these games, especially hdnU, go for nearly MSRP when used on ebay, so i had a very merry neptunia christmasnepmas this year)))

4) pokemon heartgold, black and black 2 for $105 hurts to be called a good deal, but that's where we are now. going price of all three totals about $120. but with these three games, my pokemon DS collection only needs pearl to be complete, so yey. i can say with 100% certainty, they are all legit copies, not counterfeits... i know because i used them to get a living pokedex on omega ruby))

5) dragon star varnir limited edition for $50 during the iffy's winter sale. i'd been eyeing the LE for this because i am a total sucker for art books which showcase tsunako's art, but $75 is a steep price for a new series. not the best deal, but i'm happy... tbh it's a better LE than the super neptunia RPG one, def a sturdier box for sure.

6) phantom dust (xbox) for $5 at a local thrift store was a super neat find, i'd never heard of the game before but the back of the box made it seem neat. got a decent lil discount on the game vs ebay pricing, and a local used media stuff store is trying to sell it for $17. eyeroll sigh, the store has a huge inventory, but overprices the shit out of stock... anyway, there is damage to the artwork, which is upsetting, but oh well.

7) gaems vanguard portable monitor for $200 on black friday was a fuckin hell of a nab for me, as i needed a portable screen and didn't want to pay $300-350 for it. good timing for me to go on the market for it ig.

8.) sonic mania plus (switch) in a clearance bin for $12.66USD was a nice snatch.

9) a gcn-compatible black wii for $6 bundled with all its paperwork, a wiimote(+) and nunchuck, wii sports and wii sports resort from a secondhand store. bonus points goes to gamestop going nuts for WS and WSR with a $5 extra credit deal on top netting me like $24 trade credit for both of them. got a decent flip and kept the system for mod potential.

10) professor layton and the curious village and diabolic box, both cib for $8 a piece at a local used book store. not sure how good a deal i got, but i've been looking for these games for a while passively, so i was stoked to see them. so glad i saw them before a guy who came over a minute or so later, sat on the floor and started immediately and obviously doing price matching on ebay with his phone.

11) kim hyung tae's oxide2, the art book by the concept artist for magna carta. found at my local book store. i dig the art style of those games for some reason, so i was happy to bring that home. i'm a sucker for art books.

edit: i'm a little too used to cheapass gamer, giving prices everywhere. oops.

also:

4. ps1 rental case
as far as ex rental cases go this might be my favourite one It looks amazing. seen a few in the past damaged or for skyhigh. yet this time around an excellent condition one while nobody was there.

i'm digging this rental case btw. really neat thing to grab. just wanted to say

18

General / Re: January 2020 - Recently Added to Collection/Recently Purchased

« on: January 04, 2020, 12:36:32 pm »

i've been wanting sonic games like crazy.
just got sonic rush off ebay because the portable sonic games are lit.

19

General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2020

« on: January 04, 2020, 11:58:34 am »

o hell yeah, i will join this thread)))
2019: in my personal list, last year i beat 20 games that i could recall. of those 20 games, i beat 11 pokemon games which resulted in a living pokedex up through generation 6 in pokemon (stored on omega ruby currently). from the remainder, i got 3 platinum trophies, 2 on PS4 and 1 on vita. i dropped 5 games that i can recall. aaanyway...


<-- this icon means if i beat the game, i got the platinum trophy or in-game 100% completion if it doesn't have trophy support.

beat/completed:
~~~~~03.01.20~~~~~ final fantasy X HD (PS4)
~~~~~09.01.20~~~~~ sonic generations (PS3)
~~~~~14.01.20~~~~~ sonic advance 2 (GBA) [cream route]
~~~~~16.01.20~~~~~ sonic heroes (PS2) [team rose route]
~~~~~24.01.20~~~~~ sonic adventure dx (PS3) [super sonic ending]
~~~~~24.01.20~~~~~ sonic and all stars racing transformed (PS3) [all characters/maps unlocked/it takes ages trophy unlocked]

~~~~~08.02.20~~~~~ pokemon crystal (3DS VC)
~~~~~10.02.20~~~~~ pokemon yellow (3DS VC)
~~~~~11.02.20~~~~~ pokemon blue (3DS VC) [speedrun in 2:42]

~~~~~06.03.20~~~~~ pokemon mystery dungeon: blue rescue team (DS)

~~~~~01.07.20~~~~~ atelier lydie & suelle ~the alchemists and the mysterious paintings (PS4)
~~~~~22.07.20~~~~~ hyperdimension neptunia (PS3)
~~~~~30.07.20~~~~~ story of seasons: friends of mineral town (NSW)

~~~~~23.09.20~~~~~ pretty soldier sailor moon - another story (SNES)
~~~~~24.09.20~~~~~ pocket monsters 2 (sega MD///taiwanese unlicensed game)

~~~~~03.10.20~~~~~ the 7th saga (SNES) [lejes + esuna]
~~~~~09.10.20~~~~~ phantasy star (master system)

~~~~~09.12.20~~~~~ digimon story hacker's memory (NSw)
~~~~~19.12.20~~~~~ pokemon mystery dungeon: rescue team DX (NSw)

20

Off Topic / Re: How Do You Think You Would Do In A Game Competition Career Discussion

« on: January 04, 2020, 09:49:30 am »

i'm not one to mix hobby and career either, which is why i dropped out of art school and didn't strive to be a concept artist past the age of 18.
that said i have entertained the idea to be a professional grinder lmao. y'know, people give me their saves, i do the mundane level grind, i get paid, they get a lv 80 paladin, win/win.
but never seriously. maybe if i was in a tight spot and needed quick cash for something.

Back when I was a college student, I remember someone telling me that "you should never turn your hobby into a profession as, even in the best case scenario, you'll end up losing a hobby".

This is so true. When a hobby becomes work, it's no longer relaxing. To me, gaming is just one of a few hobbies I have to help me unwind during my free time. That's also why I'm not a "Completionist" when it comes to games. I just play and enjoy, the best I can.

tbf some of us enjoy doing the whole grind and completing everything offered. i mean, for me it depends, but i have some platinum trophies and i enjoyed the games i platinumed.
that said i'm not gonna grind smth i hate, like 200 lightning dodges in FFX. and there is no new game +? sorry lulu, i'm never getting your celestial weapon.

21

General / Re: Your collection since 2010, and what you want your collection to be in 2029

« on: January 04, 2020, 09:16:16 am »

I would lose sleep playing them, or even "forget" to eat. This would be a constant for me for many years, especially with games that I adore like Pokémon, or with games that I was trying to 100% – you just couldn't peel me off the screen.

All of that is swell and all, but things obviously change. Fortunately for me, I'm not time constrained, but I feel I've lost that spark and lately don't seem to care as much for certain things, plus I've become quite lazy and neglectful of my hobbies, too, especially when it comes to my video games. [...] Even though I often have the time to play a game or two, I tend to get easily distracted by anything else, and end up squandering said time; I used to play sporadically, and still do on occasion, but still not as much as I would like to even if just a day a week. I keep getting games that I want to play, and know damn well I will play, even testing them when I get them to see if they work, but for the life of me I just lack the motivation to sit down and outright play the ever loving snot out of them.

So, with that said, that's essentially my goal for at least this year: I will take the time to sit down and play a game or two and enjoy myself doing so. I am a well-disciplined person when it comes to other things, so I'm definitely going to try my hardest to re-discipline myself to stop neglecting this hobby and try to channel a bit of myself when I was kid in that regard.

your current mood was me for most of the past decade if i am being honest, i only got back into it recently. before 2016, i just could not get into shit. yesterday i got woke up by cat, and normally i would just roll back over, but my head was like.
no, we beat FFX tonight. let's get to the grind.
i haven't really felt that way since i played tales of the abyss in 2009 or 2010, and what got me back into games at all, oddly, was sword art online: hollow realisation back in 2016. FF15 was the same distracted shit. but o boy o man, i played SAO for 14 hrs in two days... work days no less.

though having no time restraints and losing interest in all hobbies sounds like depression, fam. you should talk to someone or start looking into that and how to manage it online if so, because it will drain your motivation and desire until you can rope it in. it's a little concerning to hear the state you're in, is all.
that said, tbh, self-discipline can be one of the best methodical cures for breaking it if that is the case, ime, so long as it doesn't manifest in putting yourself down frequently. sorry if i'm being intrusive here... take care of yourself, ok?

anyway, i found that getting trophies on playstation has been extremely good for me with game motivation, whether it is the trophy for completing the game or the platinum trophy. so now i keep an actual list of games i beat per year, and it's been very cool to see it grow. but i am a number grinder in games... so seeing 20 games beat in 2019 was pretty cool, esp since they were mostly all 40+ hr titles. idk if it would help you but yeah, i figured i'd offer the rec.

22

General / Re: Your collection since 2010, and what you want your collection to be in 2029

« on: January 04, 2020, 08:55:32 am »

Just to respond to some of the feelings elicited by these posts, collecting and gaming should go hand-in-hand, collecting just to have things simply takes the joy out of it, or leaves you feeling empty or wasteful. For me, every game has a story, or a feeling, or historical significance. I am attached to much of it for sentimental reasons, however, I won't let it rule my life, or take away from other things I enjoy, or that are a part of who I am.

one of my biggest mistakes was collecting without playing i think. i mean, i do like buying things, i like having the collection, it is super neat, but what isn't is staring down 100 games like... what to play...? i think for me that was the moment i realised that i should wrap up the collecting side for a bit, on top of being like 'what to play next?' but honestly not ready to move on from the game i just beat, as well. partially too it is that i like huge sprawling JRPGs and i enjoy the grind in them, but i also work a job, and i draw for about 20 hours a week and have since aug 2017, except last june, where i also spent the month on the platinum trophy in atelier sophie, vs 2 months for firis's platinum after that. my days off work, though, i split between drawing and gaming, it's p hard to juggle tbh.

Because of the time and energy this hobby can take, I find myself making time for gaming or collecting often at the expense of sleep, so it doesn't take time away from other things. This gets difficult as you get older, or work crazy hours, crazy jobs, on-call, etc. It can be quite hard to regulate your routines, but I realize collecting has become as habitual of a routine, as anything. I'm like a robot sometimes. Anyhow, it might not be for everyone. In my field of work people are very prone to burnout and injury. Sometimes I just want to relax, and gaming should provide that, but collecting can take away from it.

collecting is also habitual for me, sometimes this is fine, like finding cheap games at a secondhand store that maybe i don't have a lot of interest in except rarely... but it's less than a pack of cigs for gran turismo 3 or formula one 2001 and they're cib and in good condition, so like... why not? it's blowout sales where i end up like, is this hobby good for me? spending $150 for a pile of games i won't play for a long time, which all boast dozens or hundreds of hours of gameplay, like, y'know, is this relaxing, or am i just an addict of some kind? but that's a pretty recent 'bad feeling' vibe for me, which is why my post in particular comes off rather gloomy in tone.

my post was gloomy as hell in tone but i am actually very glad to be hitting this point of feeling like i have plenty and considering slowing down and maybe stopping with this generation, i'm glad to be learning how i like to interact with games as an adult because i didn't have that for years, i'm glad to be wondering about the affects of collecting on me so i can do something about it if i feel it has become a problem, and how to manage it in a way that feels more like 'fuck yea, i got phantom dust cib for $5, and it seems like a neat game' and less like 'did i really just blow $150 on b2g1 games i wouldn't have much interest in normally?'. honestly, just typing this out (and erasing and retyping a lot...) has made me realise a few things already, so thanks for this post. i know it was not aimed at me in particular, but thanks.

My games room reno. has been going on for 3-4 years, juggling it with many other demands. It seems like a pipedream or some sort of midlife quest to complete my mancave on a timeline, while I am still young and energetic enough to enjoy it. Is it vanity, or manifest destiny? Having these goals does push me, but sometimes I truly wonder if the time and effort is worth it. Hopefully after the time I put it, the effort is realized by sharing my passion with friends and family, on the site I'm putting together and eventually, through youtube or social media.

i don't think people ever get too old not to enjoy a comfy space dedicated to enjoying the things they like, i wouldn't worry about the age thing. lemme tell you, i talk to a lot of old truckers, cause i work at a warehouse that deals with live loading docks and flatbeds, a lot of these old truckers will be shoulder to shoulder throwing freight with you cause they're paid by distance, not time. but they only go home like once or twice a month, so they're chatty, they haven't talked to someone for an hour in days. it's easy to get them talking, and a lot of them do have dedicated space for their interests at home for their days off. you drive for a living, so most of these folks admit that their at-home days, they don't leave. but they're long-haul, so they have to have hobbies, part of the job is learning to enjoy spending time by yourself. so they set up the cinema experience in their living room, or they set up a music room to make a recording studio a touch envious. i'm sure in the next 10-15 years, a fair number of them will have mancaves and a killer set up for retro games as the 50+ truckers retire and the current 25-35 crowd has taken the reigns on the career.

i don't think gaming is a hobby that is limited by age, either, tbh. it's not like stock car racing or a highly physical pursuit where eventually your body just can't keep up. oh, for sure as we get really old, our reaction speed and shit decrease, so competitive gaming becomes harder*, but there's a ton of games and what you find fun can shift to be less reliant on those skills anyway, and your collection seems very accommodating to any shifts along the way so... i mean, i guess my point is, the only 'waste' of time and effort is if you hate the process, because if listening to truckers about their hobbies has taught me anything, it's that the process never really ends... every cinema set up over 10 years is great except for... every music room is great if it wasn't for that one... y'know, we're our worst critics when it comes to these things we care about.

*tbf too experience can make up for a lot of reaction speed and whatever, otherwise teen kids would dominate competitive gaming leagues but in reality, currently, it's closer to 30 yr olds dominating the field... slower reaction times, maybe, but experience allows for outwitting or outsmarting the young'uns. and i am pretty sure reaction speed is something you can prevent significant loss of by exercising it frequently... brain is like a muscle, you use it or lose it, so 'becoming harder' isn't 'impossible' and as the age of gamers goes up, i am sure leagues will have age categories to accommodate if it does seem to be a significant hindrance. i wouldn't worry about losing your preferred way to play, if competitive is it, tbh.

23

Video Game Database Discussion / Re: Duplicate List 2020

« on: January 03, 2020, 03:58:02 pm »

hyperdimension neptunia re;birth 3: v generation has not one
not two
but three! duplicate entries

north american vita:
original https://vgcollect.com/item/87642
dupe https://vgcollect.com/item/148747
original has correct title, dupe is misspelt Re;Birth 3 V Generation instead of Re;Birth3: V Generation

europe vita:
original: https://vgcollect.com/item/85149
dupe: https://vgcollect.com/item/119815
...both have a wrong name, the full title is 'Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth3: V Generation'

north american PSN vita:
original: https://vgcollect.com/item/89171
dupe: https://vgcollect.com/item/129583
dupe is done better than the original... both are missing the ; in Re;Birth3 tho

24

General / Re: Your collection since 2010, and what you want your collection to be in 2029

« on: January 03, 2020, 02:07:59 pm »

in 2009 i hit 100 games and sold the majority of them because choice paralysis was messing with my anxiety. so the bulk of my collection is from the past decade... i'd say of 430 physical titles, nearly 400 of them are all from the past decade. all my digital games are from the past decade. i don't retro collect much, so the bulk of those games are PS3, PS4, vita and 3DS, with PS3 having the most. i got it in 2011. i would like to break 500 games on physical media eventually... the majority of those 70 will be switch and PS4. my PS3 and vita collections are almost finished, there aren't many more games on them i care for than what i have already.

this comes from a few realisations i've had recently: i hit my original goal of a variety of games to suit any taste in games i have on a whim. and while i stopped playing games a lot last decade (can't remember anything really from 2012-2015 except dragon's dogma, sly 1 and vanquish, and don't recall much from 2016 until final fantasy XV), i have been playing a lot more since 2017... and i've changed since i was a teenager with 100 or less games. i want to replay games i beat, even tho i've become quite the grinder and completionist and often have seen everything and was way overpowered doing it on the first go-round. i beat final fantasy X for the first time a few hours ago and already have the itch to start a new file because i missed a lot of optional content... and i really wanna exploit the tonberry AP trick. i platinum trophied atelier sophie and saw everything in the game... still kinda want to restart it sometimes tho... i spent so many hours in the alchemy puzzle screen i'm surprised the screen doesn't have burn-in. and so it's kind of a guilty feeling now because if i were to restart, well, i have all these untouched games and i'm replaying a game i platinum trophied when...? july 2019...? and i'm replaying pokemon soul silver for the how many-eth time now instead of playing one of the 300+ games i've never even installed to hard drive?

i almost sold my PS4 and all its games last year just to not have to decide what console to play... i didn't, fortunately, but it was only because of considering it that i decided to dedicate more time to playing games than considering what games to buy later. it also helps i got a playstation classic, so i can emulate retro games there... i don't want to be sucked into that expensive trap, as impressive as those collections are. (not judging anyone on this site, it's expensive to my bad income vs my enjoyment and it's a trap because if i started collecting mega drive or SNES games, it's not because i enjoy the consoles but because of a perceived 'social prestige', basically, i'd buy them just to show off and impress others, and that's ridiculous. nostalgia culture and all. i grew up with super mario rpg at home and earthbound at my cousin's, but my heart is with the PS2)

another realisation is that i'm considering a career change to hauling freight, which will limit my time but not my money. i can take the console and portable monitor i already have with me and a CD case of games... i either start considering slowing down now, or i will spend money across the country on games i can't play on systems that don't output HDMI or i don't have the console for with me, that get put in a collection i see once a month or less and maybe get rotated into the CD case i take with me for the hours i'm parked. i think i would regret doing that.

so i guess that's what i hope for this decade: i've started a list of last year and this year's completed games in a notebook already, and i want to keep it up from now on, so i think this decade, i'll hit 500 between the remaining lives of PS4 and switch and the titles to round off vita and PS3, then i'll probably stop collecting games. that doesn't mean i won't get PS5 and the next nintendo console, but it may not be for the purposes of collecting a library of games rather than a specific game like hyperdimension neptunia or animal crossing. basically, i want to focus my collecting mentality away from collecting new games towards 'collecting' beat game saves... and the experiences that come with them.

25

Modern Video Games / Re: Your E3 2019 Top 10 games

« on: August 22, 2019, 10:43:09 am »

animal crossing new horizons
tales of arise
panzer dragoon
psychonauts 2
the last remnant remastered (bought the next day)
ff7 remake

pokemon sw/sh lost me at the pokedex thing. i just completed a living dex earlier this year, and basically for nothing, i'm pretty salty.

26

Modern Video Games / Re: Mario Kart 8: Wii U versus Switch

« on: August 22, 2019, 10:16:33 am »

i have both consoles and am loving the ports, since i prefer handheld consoles over set-top ones and always have. i haven't pulled the switch dock out of the box once, and have rebought some games i already had on PS4 for the switch. i'm all for ports of all kinds of things to the switch, definitely in the 'port every game in existence ever to switch' camp.

that said, i definitely still feel 'punished' for buying into the wii u, and in part, it's that these ports are $60 all over again. and i'd love to box my wii u forever and forget i even made that $300 mistake, but these prices sting.

it's a shame because i feel like there's a good marketing scheme they could have done releasing the ports for $50 or even $40 MSRP. (let's agree that smash ultimate doesn't apply here and is fine at $60.) there is definitely a way to market some of these games as lower price for new console owners, or 'new to nintendo' switch owners, or a 'we missed you, welcome back to the nintendo family' tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement that the wii u was disappointing as hell to consumers and most of them didn't buy it. so there's a family of cheaper games for your nintendo 'fix' that are ports and/or definitive editions of the wii u games, and then the $60 'switch exclusive' experiences. this also would allow people to get used to the jump from paying $40 to paying $60 for handheld games. (the switch can be converted to a telly but let's be real, most people play handheld mode plenty enough to consider it their handheld gaming device.) it would also be a clever hint that another switch exclusive new experience is coming, but HD development takes time, and ports are a nice way to disguise how much time has been taken.

$50 for a version with all DLC and maybe some additional content included or whatever, and $40 for ports with no or very few additions. this is still a bit pricey in a world where the entire spyro trilogy is remade from the ground up and sold for $40 MSRP, but it's at least something.

and the price tiering would be much more palatable to those who got burned by the wii u fiasco, esp after a while when the price finally shaves $10 off MSRP in most retail outlets. instead of being $50 after that, it'd be $30 or $40, and that is way more acceptable.

that said, i am normally one of those 'games are actually pretty cheap when dev cost and hours of entertainment are considered' types. i'm mainly whining cause wii u sucked and ninty games never seem to drop MSRP like other games so 'getting it cheaper in a year or two' doesn't apply. the MSRP applies more to these ports than ports on other consoles. i'm still all for the ports coming over, and definitive editions are always good imo, both to consumers who waited or don't have the money for a base game + all DLC, and as a method to archive, since servers aren't needed for all the content and patches.

27

Modern Video Games / Re: Do you think games are often worth full retail price? (e.g. $60 USD)

« on: February 27, 2019, 03:46:52 pm »

i only pay full for pokemon and the like. most games? nah. better come with some extras like etrian odyssey v with its soundtrack and art book, or radiant historia.

i will totally pay for art books tho.

28

Modern Video Games / Re: How much longer do you think the 3DS has?

« on: February 27, 2019, 03:41:29 pm »

it's already dead except some third parties. it was dead when switch dropped. nintendo always says they'll support an old system when the new comes out and they never do lol.

29

General / Re: I actually don’t like waiting for price drops on games

« on: February 27, 2019, 03:35:29 pm »

i'll buy something full price if it is pokemon or has extras with it. otherwise i have a backlog that it's never a good idea to throw so much cash down.

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Classic Video Games / Re: GameStop Now Accepting Retro Trade-Ins at ALL Locations!

« on: December 17, 2016, 02:11:00 am »

i wish they'd get their shit together tho and, for disc-based old games, demand the original case, art and booklets.
SOME of their retro prices could potentially crash the used ebay market altogether, which is good, but there's always that fear of buying from them online that they're going to give you a generic case, no book, no art and some scratched up piece of garbage.

EDIT: NVM THEY RAISED A LOT OF THE RETRO GAME PRICES TO MATCH THE MARKET DISREGARD THE PRICE COMMENT GOOD FUCKIN JOB GAMESTOP YOU COULDA DONE SOMETHING HELPFUL BUT NAHHHHHHHH