Messages

16

Classic Video Games / Re: True Lies (SNES): a funny example of 90's Germany's censorship

« on: May 26, 2023, 05:35:03 pm »

That being said, are games like wolfenstein banned in germany? or are they just more rare than everywhere else.

Early releases of the Wolfenstein franchise were actually banned as far as I know. Later Releases came with swastikas replaced with iron crosses, which was commonly used up until a few years ago when censorship in games became slightly less strict. Another example of this method was MoH Frontline on PS2. We actually bought the Netherlands Version in which germans speak German and Americans speak english w. swastikas and stuff in it. Nowadays there are many ways for german gamers to outmaneuver the censorship... by simply buying austrian PEGI versions.

Earlier Wolfenstein games are in fact quite rare in terms of them being purchased by a smaller group of PC gamers back in the days. But it's forbidden status gave it its cult status. Releases from PS3 onwards are quite common to find and low to medium priced. That's as far as Germany goes. I can't speak for other european markets although a mass of game libraries were mostly the same.

I actually own a copy of Castlevania Bloodlines for PAL MegaDrive. I didn.'t know that it was bloodier on Genesis. What I DO know, is that Landstalker in europe lacks a specific sidequest type of cutscene with the female villain being surprised while takin a bath xD they replaced it with some rubbish senseless badly translated conversation during blackscreen

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Classic Video Games / True Lies (SNES): a funny example of 90's Germany's censorship

« on: May 26, 2023, 02:51:40 am »

Hello fellow gamers and collectors,

I'd like to discuss a funny issue, which accured to me while talking w. another collector about Germany's version of the game "True Lies" for the SNES.
A few of you might know, that many games that were free to purchase and play in most parts of europe, were censored in Germany, or completely put on the so called "Index" ... which actually is a list of games/movies/music, that are considered not suitable for younger audiences. A good example for such a game is GoldenEye64, which was retaken from this index just about a year ago.

When it comes to True Lies for SNES, me and my brothers remember to have owned a copy with green blood! 
After asking around in discord servers, we found out, that most of the copies of this game were sold with original red blood in it, even here in Germany, where I live. Almost nobody knows of those versions with green blood in it, but they exist.
Our theory about this is the following: After the first production batch of the game was sold, censorship got aware of the bloodiness of the game and forced the publishers to change the color of blood for further versions to be sold. It seems as if me and my brothers were some of the few people that got their hands on this latter - obviously more scarce - version of True Lies.

Did anybody of you know about this green-blood-version?
I'd like to hear your thoughts on that!

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General / Re: Gamer reviews/ rankings page

« on: May 23, 2023, 06:52:28 am »

Way back when I was playing most of the beloved retro-stuff online, I posted my Reviews about the games I played there ... I like to give quite detailled reviews, beginning with the history of the games development, going over to the games plot and gameplay and also ranked stuff like graphics, sound etc. (in comparison to games from the same era).

I'd love to have a place here on vg collect to post such reviews! Just tell me where exactly and I'll start typing! 

19

General / Re: May 2023 - Recently Added to Collection/Recently Purchased New

« on: May 10, 2023, 06:56:45 am »

Disney's Hercule Action Game (PS1)

Sonic & Knuckles (SMD)
Micromachines Turbo Tournament '96 (SMD) <-- my first J-Card ... fancy! 

Star Wars Rebel Assault (Mega CD)

Controllers for Xbox360 and PS1 each

Aaaaand me and my wife bought us two modded GBA in purple to maximize our GameBoy-fun

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General / Re: Yellowing screens of moderns handhelds?

« on: March 29, 2023, 03:17:06 am »

Sunlight is my first thought for that

plastics are known to yellow over time though I mainly know this happens to epoxy resin

It might also be plausible the backlights are starting to go though I would expect them to dim more then yellow outside of say some form of blue light filter. Which I don't believe any system has.

Maybe broaden your search for answers to more then just handheld. I'd imagine it could also be a problem with phones, tablets, computer screens, etc.

That was my first thought too ... comparable to old plastic cases (NES, SNES) that tend to yellow from UV-Rays (light, aka most plastics enemy), some people even blame temperature to affect plastics like that. Since we are talking about more modern (lcd-)screens in this thread, different intensity of usage may be a cause, but I'm not experienced enough with those systems to be sure about that ...

21

General / Re: How Many Stopped Playing Your Consoles Due To Crashes

« on: March 24, 2023, 07:07:06 am »

I pay 100 euro's to anybody who actually manages to hack my NES Just to see that it can be done via antenna-cable

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General / Re: What video game has the smartest playerbase? Requiring most intelligence to play

« on: March 17, 2023, 04:03:02 am »

I can't come up with any good example of one specific game, that extraordinarilly requires much intelligence to master, but since the thread-opening autor mentioned Final Fantasy, I want to add that many tactical JRPGS or strategic games tend to have quite a smart playerbase. Open-World games containing farming and crafting also appeal to intelligent people, because their brains get stimulated by being challenged. The bigger the game, the more complex parameters and tactical possibilities get, the more appealing it is for smart people. That're my thoughts about it oo ....

23

General / Re: Which game or console (if any) made you fall in love with gaming again?

« on: March 14, 2023, 05:41:26 am »

I had to think a lot about this question before I felt ready to answer it. My first thought was that my "love" for gaming never declined but in fact, there was a time (somewhere in between 2000 and 2015), when I really wasn't all that into gaming ...

... as ridiculous as it may sound, the one game that brought my fascination for gaming back to life was ... try not to laugh: Little Big Planet 2 

My 2010 bought PS3 was accumulating dust until 2013, when I put this game in and was totally flashed by this principle of gamers being a community supplying itself with self-created content. After enjoying this title for about 2-3 years I was totally back at gaming as whole. Thanks MM ! 

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General / Re: The gamer you were when you joined VGcollect vs. the gamer you are now in 2023

« on: March 10, 2023, 04:14:50 am »

I joined VG collect in 2020, when my original collection-database-site retrocollect went down.

Damn, RetroCollect went down? It's buried in my long post but I started there so it did have some importance to me. That is a shame, I wasn't there long because back in the day (maybe this changed in the near decade) it was focused on UK collectors so it kinda sucked for American collections.

I actually don't know if the site ever went up again, I didn't bother to look it up, for my collection's new home is right here

The site is back up again if where talking the database, but the forum is probably not going to return anytime soon.

That being said I always found that database to be quite messy to use. prefer this one. The forum was interesting though so that not making a return is pretty sad.

I liked retrocollect for it's way to display your collection, but after more than 2 years as member of THIS community, I def prefer VG collect, because I can submit and edit data by myself, helping to accumulate as much and as complete data as possible, making this site a really impressive database for games. Mentioning this, I want to shout out a big salute to all of those dedicated members, checking and correcting all those edits submitted, cause they do a great job! :-)

I'm curious what strong points where there for retrocollect in your vision display wise.

Because from my perspective even on the european stuff most items lacked pictures even outside of niche items and you have less info per specific item compared to vgcollect.

One of the few things I'd say it has over vgcollect maybe the looking up part of said database seeing all versions of said games which is a big thing for europe. but most of those would lack pictures and have very limited info. so it's mostly just text.

I simply liked the way of display as it looked like a shelf I agree with you in all other points. That may be also one reason for me to stay here instead of relaunching my profile on retro..

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General / Re: The gamer you were when you joined VGcollect vs. the gamer you are now in 2023

« on: March 09, 2023, 04:25:11 am »

I joined VG collect in 2020, when my original collection-database-site retrocollect went down.

Damn, RetroCollect went down? It's buried in my long post but I started there so it did have some importance to me. That is a shame, I wasn't there long because back in the day (maybe this changed in the near decade) it was focused on UK collectors so it kinda sucked for American collections.

I actually don't know if the site ever went up again, I didn't bother to look it up, for my collection's new home is right here

The site is back up again if where talking the database, but the forum is probably not going to return anytime soon.

That being said I always found that database to be quite messy to use. prefer this one. The forum was interesting though so that not making a return is pretty sad.

I liked retrocollect for it's way to display your collection, but after more than 2 years as member of THIS community, I def prefer VG collect, because I can submit and edit data by myself, helping to accumulate as much and as complete data as possible, making this site a really impressive database for games. Mentioning this, I want to shout out a big salute to all of those dedicated members, checking and correcting all those edits submitted, cause they do a great job! :-)

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General / Re: The gamer you were when you joined VGcollect vs. the gamer you are now in 2023

« on: March 07, 2023, 05:24:49 am »

I joined VG collect in 2020, when my original collection-database-site retrocollect went down.

Damn, RetroCollect went down? It's buried in my long post but I started there so it did have some importance to me. That is a shame, I wasn't there long because back in the day (maybe this changed in the near decade) it was focused on UK collectors so it kinda sucked for American collections.

I actually don't know if the site ever went up again, I didn't bother to look it up, for my collection's new home is right here

27

General / Re: Which games would you be willing to pay $100 to own?

« on: March 07, 2023, 05:21:57 am »

After a few years of collecting, I already own a handful of games that I payed more than 100,- € for ... for example "Street Gangs" (River City Ransom) for NES CIB, or "Legend of Dragoon" for PAL PSX.
Modern Games? Dunno, I would tend to say "Skyrim" for it being a Behemoth of a game regarding size and possible playtime. Generally any huge open-world like game if it's worth playing it for more than 300 hrs ^^ in any other case: NEVER EVER

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General / Re: The gamer you were when you joined VGcollect vs. the gamer you are now in 2023

« on: March 06, 2023, 04:41:15 am »

I joined VG collect in 2020, when my original collection-database-site retrocollect went down. I started collecting about 2017 ... I actually don't collect for value or with the intent to sell anything of my stuff for profit someday, but rather for having a solid gaming-temple with a good library of games for all my fav consoles.
I'm the same type of gamer right now, that I was back in 2017: I try to finish as many games out of my shelfs as possible currently playing PokéMon Silver edition in combination with PokéMon Stadium 2, and a little something of Perfect Dark too ...

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General / Re: March 2023 - Recently Added to Collection/Recently Purchased New

« on: March 02, 2023, 07:46:18 am »

I'm currently saving money for music equipment and devices, so I kinda stopped purchasing lot of games at the time. BUT I managed to assimilate 3 more GameGear Cartridges into my collection:

- NBA Jam
- Home Alone
- Wolfchild

making it the biggest and most-complete part of my collection with now 98 different games in possession. Never dreamed of getting this close to a full deck (50%)

March 11th I will visit a Retro Games Convention in Heidelberg, Germany to hunt for some rarities .) expect me to take a few hundreds with me, hehe ...

EDIT:

RetrogamesCon - Pickups:

(GameBoy):
- Disney's Interactive Adventures feat. Herkules
- Final Fantasy Legend II

(GameBoy Color):
- PoKéMon Gold
- PoKéMon Yellow

(SMS):
- Alex Kidd in Shinobi World

(GameGear):
- Mortal Kombat
- Legend of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse
- James Bond 007 The Duel
- James Pond 2 RoboCod
- Taz in Escape from Mars

(PlayStation:)
- The Adventures of Alundra
- Final Fantasy VI
- Final Fantasy VIII
- Grand Theft Auto 2
- Rayman
- Warcraft II

Today was a good day. Got in contact w. Guy who can hit me up w. 2 modded GBA for me & my lady.

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General / Re: Rarest Items in Game Collection?

« on: February 21, 2023, 06:42:49 am »

Rarest item in my collection is propably my CIB Street Gangs (River City Ransom) for PAL NES.
I bought this one early when I started collecting, paying about 100 Euros for it ...

Another expensive, if not rare, item is a CIB Legend of Dragoon for PSone.

I was told, that my "Arena" for SEGA Game Gear is also quite rare ^^