Buyer's Remorse #4 - Holiday Edition

Welcome back!

It's New Year's Eve and before I drink some shots of Xtabentun (look it up) and dance around like a Mayan Shaman, I figured it was a good time to update RCR with some spoils of the season. My day job does not close it's doors over the holiday season and I was stuck working seven days in a row over Christmas while Tommy sacked the whole city with a mitt full of cash and gift cards. He cackled and twirled his evil mustache as he plundered the Boxing Week sales while I busted my ass at work. I'm not sure if he'll be able to even submit his next collection update as he scored so many games that he's probably lost track of them, or he's lying dead under a huge pile of games that toppled over and pinned him like a coal miner in a cave in.  

My first surprise was a gift of The Last Story on Wii from my lovely wife. I've been wanting to give it a try and I even wrote a letter to Hironobu Santa-guchi asking for it under the tree. The Wii is rattling out it's final breaths and I wanted to give it some love before it joins the other deceased consoles in the retro graveyard. Tommy and I christened December as "Wii Month" and did our best to play some Wii games we've been meaning to get to. We finally got together for a regular chase night on December 28th and did the pawn circuit again as the $5.00 sales continue to bear fruit.

Atelier Iris 2 held a painful secret in it's case...

I finally knocked a few big ones off my want list as I've been looking for the second PS2 Atelier Iris game for a few years now, as I owned the first and third games in the series, but the second one always eluded me. Muramasa on Wii was another one I've been dying to play, but it was terribly overpriced whenever I would see it. The others were $5.00 goodies that were easy purchases to make. 

I sat with my proud pile of new game-children and cleaned them up and removed old price tags before tucking them into their new homes in my collection. I have the craziest OCD when it comes to price tags. I must remove ALL price tags from anything I buy, down to the last speck of gummy sticker residue. Through a combination of packing tape, alcohol swabs, Norwex cloths, and maniacal dedication, I have removed every price tag I have ever tackled. I have even removed old tape from paper inserts and instruction booklets with little or no damage. I tried to put a game in my collection one time that had a price tag on it as I was really sleepy and had to work in the morning, but I ended up not being able to sleep and found myself standing in the basement in my underwear, peeling off the sticker at 1:30 am before I could get back to sleep. If that's not the clinical definition of OCD, I don't know what is...    

Anyways, I saved cleaning Atelier Iris 2 for last as it was the best purchase of the day and I was savoring the feeling of finally putting a spear in a white whale. I opened the case and gazed inside:

Wait for it.......

Yep, the case was empty. FUCK! In fairness to the clerk at the awesome local game store I bought it from, I distracted him while he was ringing me through, as he was a fan of the games I was buying and we were chatting away during the transaction. I did not check inside the case after we left (I usually do!) and did not notice my Atelier Fail until the next day. Tommy drank in my rage and despair like fine wine and felt his soul nourished with my pain. What a prick.

I took the case back the next day and the clerk grabbed my disc for me in no time at all. I had no doubt that it would have a happy ending as this particular store is family owned and always treats it's customers extremely well. I just wanted to highlight the stupid hilarity of me painstakingly removing all the stickers and shining it all up before actually opening the damn thing and finding the disc missing. 

The rest of the week was filled with some fun gaming sessions (I beat Super Mario Galaxy!) and one more small group of scores:

 
Xenosaga II and Gyromite came courtesy of Tommy, as he had duplicate copies and the other games were a package deal at a pawn shop. I love the Sly Cooper games, so I did not mind paying ten bucks for the collection. After all these five dollar victories, I'm starting to turn my nose up when I can't get a game for less than ten. Even walking near a Game Stop makes me shiver when I think of all the poor people paying $19.99 - $49.99 (plus tax!) for the used games inside. 

Well, I guess that's all for now! We're planning to add more content to River City Retro in 2013 in the form of videos, reviews, editorials, and opinion pieces. We may even get back into podcasting at some point!

Oh yeah! I forgot to mention that January is FIGHTING GAME MONTH!!

http://lost-tyrant.deviantart.com/

Happy New Year!

Super Robot Tyson

Buyer's Remorse #3

Welcome back to Buyer's Remorse! Tommy scored big recently with his birthday Neo Geo surprise and some excellent finds, but I also grabbed a decent pile of games in the last week or so. Nothing too exciting, but a few of our favorite pawn shops were having $5.00 game sales, so I stocked up on Xbox 360, Wii, and even a few PS3 games.

Sunday December 16th was a good day to get out of the house as my wife has having a few friends over to bake Christmas goodies, so I knew I needed to make myself scarce. Either I would end up eating too much of the baking, or get roped into helping clean up the smeared chocolate, so I hit the road and picked up Tommy fairly early. We tried the second hand stores and flea markets first and while we were both shocked and horrified to see the decapitated head of Mac Tonight, (See Buyer's Remorse #2) I moved past it to find a nice retro score in the back of the room. 

I can finally do my income tax from 1980!

The boxed Vic-20 was in excellent shape and was a great price! I snapped it up quickly and then later realized that explaining how a 32 year old Commodore computer was a great buy to my wife would be a tall order. I think I mumbled something about how I would use it to archive her vegan recipes before I retreated to the game cave to add it to the family. 

Flea Markets are always hit and miss as you can go every week and roll your eyes at the overpriced junk flaunted by re-sellers, or you might stumble on a crazy deal on a new table or a section you overlooked. I generally prefer pawn shops as they want to move their wares and don't spend 10 minutes checking ridiculous eBay prices before accepting an offer. Flea Market resellers that won't haggle over a few dollars are idiots because instead of getting 60-80% of what you are asking for a dust covered game that has been on your table for 18 months, you are not getting a penny because I'm walking away. I think some people are just hoarders showing off their own disease/collection, instead of actually wanting to sell stuff.

We continued the chase and was surprised to find a lot of our favorite pawn shops open on Sunday! I love $5.00 game sales so much! The owner of one of the shops let us go behind the counter and just root through the whole cabinet as he knew that he'd break his knees squatting down and pulling out each game one by one for us. Here's the pile I got from the pawn shops:

Assassin's Creed DS probably sucks, but $5.00 each? WIN!

My justification engine was running wild (brother!) on these games. Here's how I broke it down:

Hotel Dusk DS: I like noir crime stories and the word "dame" is probably used...
Assassin's Creed DS: Maybe it has touch screen stabbing mini-games? Practicin' my stabbin! 
Disgaea 3: I own Disgaea and Disgaea 2. Must continue chronology...too late now...
Centipede Infestation: Wayforward rules! Take my money!
Lost In Shadow: It was new and sealed. Looks like Ico with shadows and clever platforming. 
Hot Shots Golf 5: I'm a big fan of this series. Take my money!
Fallout: New Vegas: I wanted the Ultimate Edition, but $5.00 was too good. 
Dark Souls: Prepare to die...from saving so much money!! EB Games can eat me!
Vanquish: Platinum Games makes crazy fun stuff. Metal Gear Rising is coming!

After filing these all in the collection and feeling satisfied that I had got my latest game buying fix taken care of, I went about my business for the rest of the week. Today I felt the pangs of collection addiction and went out to buy my wife a Christmas present...and hit a few more pawn shops. The $5.00 sales are still happening but I really had to stretch the limits of my justification abilities. All I walked away with was Battle Fantasia for Xbox 360. It's a quirky fighting game made by Arc System Works who are responsible for the awesome Guilty Gear series of games. I think you can play as a rabbit in a giant hat who kills people with a teddy bear or something. Also, I'm sure some of the characters have boobs. Boobs are awesome...

My final stop was another pawn shop that was not having a big sale, but I still proposed a good offer and picked up a few other things at a nice savings. Here's the haul:

I'm a Tekken nut and I have never in my entire life played a Halo game, so I thought that the remake of the first one would be a good start. It's been a great week of collecting and hopefully Santa will stick something awesome under the tree for me. I'm sure Tommy and myself will be back in a few days to share our holiday stories and maybe blog about our year of gaming in 2012. Contrary to popular belief, we actually play some of these games we buy and I can't wait to talk about the ones I played in the last year. 

He used to get late night fellatio from Birdie...and the Hamburgler...

As I sit here typing this on my Vic-20, I'm filled with the warmth of the season. Happy Holidays everyone!

Super Robot Tyson  

Buyer's Remorse #2

Welcome to another installment of “Buyer’s Remorse”. I don’t think there’s much I need to add in terms of what these posts will be about that Tyson hasn't already touched on. Some of the most fun that Tyson and I have when we’re out chasing for games is the end of the evening recap where we try to recall place by place everything we purchased that night. Especially when we get the opportunity to rib the other guy about something bad he wasted his money on.

Initially I planned on putting this entry up on Monday as Tyson and I made a run out to the flea markets and a few of our other usual stops. But as the week went on I had more and more online purchases arrive at my house. Add in a Kijiji pickup to that and I decided that I would just hold off and put everything together in one post.

The Flea Markets didn't have much to offer on this particular trip. While Tyson was contemplating purchasing a game related item (more on this in Buyer’s Remorse #3) I stood around disappointed that I didn't see anything of interest. The most interesting thing I saw was a real work of art, unfortunately a little out of my price range.

The disembodied head of Mac Tonight

The day actually started off just as an excuse to get out of the house for a few hours but the realization that some of the pawn shops were open turned it into a definite chasing day.  We made our first two stops and I grabbed my first purchases of the day.

Time to break out the sticker removal supplies

Digital Devil Saga 2 was a nice surprise especially at the $5 they had it priced at. Usually I hate buying a sequel before I have the original but in this case it was easy to make an exception. MK vs. DCU was a game I’d been thinking about picking up for awhile. I know there were a lot of complaints because they had to tone down the violence due to the DC licensed characters, but come on, a game where I can be Batman and beat the hell out of Superman…where do I sign up?

The next pickups came at one of our not so regular stops. However this pawn shop was selling everything in the glass case (Wii/PS3/Xbox360) for $5. At that price I'm willing to take a shot at some newer games that haven't been favorably reviewed, but that I've had a bit of interest in.

The highlights in this batch were Batman Brave and the Bold which Tyson has raved about to me in the past and Dead Space: Extraction. I finally picked up a copy of Enchanted Arms on 360 as well. I rented it when it first came out and I remember parts of it being decent but not something that I would pay full price for. Again at $5 even if I play it again for a few hours I'll have got my money's worth.

That concluded the chasing portion of the weekend and I was ready to post this blog on Monday night. But part of me felt like something more was needed. Tyson and I talk about our love for retro/classic games yet installment #2 of "Buyer's Remorse" was about to conclude and the most retro thing we had to show for was a PS2 game? That just didn't seem right. It just so happened that when I came home on Monday that I had a package waiting for me. I had bought a few things from various online sources a couple weeks ago so I decided to include them mainly because until they arrive in the mail, I don't consider them to be part of my collection. I don't even add them to my collection list on GameFaqs until I have it in hand.

Monday was the start of the incoming mail and I also had packages arrive on Tuesday and Wednesday. Here's the accumulation of what came in all those packages:

Kartia on PS1 was something I've always had an interest in playing. I remember always seeing it in magazines and advertised in comic books around its release, but never had a chance to pick it up. Tuesday's arrivals finally marked something a little bit more retro with a boxed copy of Super R-Type on SNES and an empty box for Gradius III (already had the cart). On Wednesday was the arrival of two games for the PS2 Odin Sphere and Magna Carta. As you may have noticed there's a theme with some of my pickups, that being that a lot of these games were published by Atlus. However, this entry is already kind of lengthy so I'll leave the explanation for my love of Atlus for another time. The last two games pictured were from a local pickup. Tyson texted me that a guy was selling a copy of Snowboard Kids on N64. It was more than I was willing to pay, but he had a great deal on the complete copies of Hybrid Heaven and Jet Force Gemini you see above.

I'll close off this session with a quick little story and an item that was purchased for me. This past Wednesday was my birthday, but if you rewind a few weeks ago I got an email from EB Games telling me about an item that was available for pre-order. I knew this item was coming out but the price was high enough that it's not really something I would buy for myself, especially this close to the holiday season. I sent a quick email to a few family members to tell them they should all just chip-in and get me one for my birthday. Usually when I do things like this they've already figured out what to get me, so I didn't put much thought into it after sending the email. Fast forward to my birthday and I open my card and in it is a little note saying that this had been pre-ordered and would be in stock the next day:

Pre-loaded with 20 games. Where to even begin?

Seriously, one of the best birthday surprises I've ever had! My family usually doesn't help feed my game addiction because I have so many different games, so why do I need more? I'm sure some of you know all about the NeoGeo X, but if you don't, check out their website www.neogeox.com I may do a further in-depth review of the product once I've had some time to try it out.

As I sit here writing this, it's 5 days until Christmas and this will probably conclude any pickups until the Boxing Week sales start. So drink some eggnog, hook up those old systems, and play some games that remind you of Christmases past. Until next time, Happy Holidays everyone!

Hitman Tommy

Buyer's Remorse #1

Welcome to the first "Buyer's Remorse" post on River City Retro! This will be an ongoing chronicle of all the game purchases that Tommy and myself make on our adventures game chasing. Buyer's Remorse is a fitting title as we have had many a laugh over our game purchases and whether or not we regret pulling the trigger on some of them. This will be a way for us to go back and remember our best finds, and also to rub salt in the wounds of our lesser acquisitions.

It's fitting that this is the first post as the games I bought today were not the biggest financial win I've had, nor are they rare or retro. It was a bundle I put together when Tommy made me aware of some fresh Kijiji listings last night. They had only been up on Kijiji for a matter of minutes before I responded with an offer on four of the games. The seller accepted and we made plans to meet for today. I did feel a few pangs of remorse as today is the day before payday and I'm sure I have over a thousand other games I could play. 

Tommy and I also employ a strategy we refer to as the "Justification Engine" which is the convoluted process our brains use to determine that we have made a solid purchase. I'm sure I could buy a box full of radioactive scorpions from a seller that lives in an active war zone in Africa, and somehow find a way to convince myself that it was an essential money saving venture that benefits my collection. 

It might inject poison into my scrotum, but at least it was created by Working Designs. 

I had to brave the wilds of Transcona to go get these, and the roads are icy and populated by idiots, but I like to think I saved about 50-60 dollars compared to buying these at retail. Each one is a game that I'm looking forward to playing and first party Nintendo titles never seem to come down in price. Anyways, here's today's pickups:

If it was Kirby: Mass Effect, maybe he could transform into a Krogan.

Not a bad purchase and each game is complete and in excellent shape. Used handheld Nintendo games are often owned by children so you run the risk of them being covered in Sunny D and poop, but these are shiny and new. I'm pretty excited about playing Mario Kart 7 online with Tommy as we get pretty malicious and angry with all the weapon violations we unleash on each other's backsides. Nothing wrong with two dudes violating each other's backsides online, right? Wait...that sounds kinda bad...

Tales of The Abyss was another game that was on my radar as I have not played the PS2 version and I figured that a JRPG with a spiky haired hero who acts like a jerk would be pretty groundbreaking to play in 3D. It might get buried in the fridge for a while before I actually play it as I've been on a bit of a 2D platformer bender on my handheld systems, but I'll sleep better at night knowing that it's safely filed on a shelf under "T" in my 3DS games. I can't wait till I actually play the game and discover that this guy is a playable character:

Black Hole Slam = Ultimate Limit Break

That's all for today! Good luck out there hunting for games, but make sure to leave more for us! Hopefully Tommy will make some purchases that are actually retro and interesting and we can check them out in Buyer's Remorse #2. That sounds like a challenge to me! Tommy?

Super Robot Tyson

Welcome to The River City

If you've stumbled across our little corner of the internet chances are you’re a gamer too, to some degree. This is something that Tyson and I have discussed doing for a while and the time was finally right to share our stories, experiences and memories with all of you. However to kick this off I’d like to share a little bit about my earliest video game related memories to help give a bit of insight on why we do what we do. Obviously in the interest of not boring you to death I'm going to touch on the major highlights of video gaming during my youth. So without further ado:

The first console I ever played was the Colecovision. My parents bought one when I was really young so somewhere around 1984 I guess. My earliest gaming memories are playing Donkey Kong and The Smurfs: Rescue at Gargamel’s Castle and Carnival. Those were the only 3 games we owned for the system. Fortunately one of my mom’s friends had a Coleco too and would frequently lend us a box of about 15 games for it. The only one I can specifically remember is Q-bert, probably because it was the one I played the most.

My parents Colecovision and the only games we owned.

Fast forward several years and I didn't get a new system until 1990 when my parents got my sister and I a NES Action Set and Super Mario 3 for Christmas. Prior to that I had got an opportunity to play one at my friend's place but getting one of my own was obviously a huge turning point. Now I could play the games I wanted to and not have to let my friends decide, because it was their system.

When the next generation of systems came out I was once again relying on my friends so I could have the opportunity to try out newer games. Occasionally my parents would rent me a SNES or Genesis from our local video store, Take 3 Video. But during this time the NES continued to be the staple of my gaming, which suited me just fine. While everyone was playing their copies of NHLPA Hockey ’93 and Tommy Lasorda Baseball, I spent my time with Blades of Steel and Little League World Series.

The first games I remember buying myself. Yes these are my originals

It wasn’t until almost 1998 that I’d own another game system and that was the Playstation 1. This is where I developed my love for RPGs, as one of the first games I played for the system was Final Fantasy VII. It wasn't long before I got hooked on other games like Xenogears and Star Ocean. The Playstation also solidified my love of the Castlevania series. I remember playing the first one on the NES, but after playing Castlevania Symphony of the Night, I went back and revisited the earlier titles and have been playing all the new ones since.

Richter Sketch from C4 Comic Con 2012 by Hugh Rookwood
Check out more of Hugh's work at: http://www.behance.net/hughrookwood

It was in 2007 that I started taking game collecting seriously. Luckily I had never gotten rid of any of my childhood games so I didn't have to go about trying to re-buy the games I played growing up. Since then I've been picking up games I remember renting and discovering systems/games that I was unfamiliar with.

As of the time I write this, I have 1444 games in my collection and these days I'm trying to find a happy medium between taking time to enjoy playing them and of course, finding more. When Tyson and I got more serious into collecting we spent a lot of time hitting the local retail shops and thinking it was okay to pay $14.99 for a game from our childhood. Since then we've ditched the retail outlets for the most part and stuck to the thrift stores, pawn shops and flea markets. Needless to say this has made game collecting way more enjoyable and a lot easier on the wallet.....well some days it does.

That will do it for now! Thanks for taking the time to read this, and remember it’s not hoarding if you alphabetize your games. Till next time!

Hitman Tommy

Manitoba is a Big Province...

That means that there's a lot of games here that need to be rescued from the dust bins of obscurity and given a proper home in our game collections. I think you know how the rest goes, but game chasing really is a way of life.

As of writing this I own 1087 video games for a variety of consoles old and new. Have I played them all? Nope. Do I plan to buy more as soon as I can? Yep.

I'm a video game collector and the weekly (daily?) pursuit of video games is probably my favorite thing to do. Would I openly admit that chasing the games and finding a great deal in the wild is just as exciting as playing the games? I think I would...

A large part of collecting is related to trying to recapture moments from your childhood as nostalgia is a wonderful drug that brings back those feelings of excitement and innocence as you recall the activities and items that shaped your interests and influenced your future personality. Whether you collect comics, toys, music, magazines, cards, video games, or something far more weird, you probably started doing it to recapture a important memory or to surround yourself with a favorite interest.

Me? I'm also crazy cheap. I loathe paying retail price for anything and I'll scour second hand listings on Kijiji, dig through garage sales, flea markets, pawn shops, and second hand stores to save as much money as I can. I'd much rather buy ten video games at $5.00 each from a pawn shop that smells like urine and cigar smoke, than pay $50.00 for one game from the squeaky clean shelves of a Game Stop.

My love of games started in probably around 1983 when the family purchased a Coleco Gemini system, which was an Atari 2600 clone. We hooked it up to the old wooden cabinet TV in the basement and my mind was blown. I used to make forts out of cardboard boxes in the basement, play with our old organ, or mess around with plaster and chemistry sets, but I was a pixel junkie as soon as we got the Gemini. My sister used to make plastic model cars in the basement too and I'm pretty sure being 5-6 years old and high as shit on model airplane glue also made Atari look even more awesome. Poorly ventilated dark basements, plus brain damaging fumes = lifelong addiction to games. 

I still have my original Coleco Gemini.

Mouse Trap, Donkey Kong, River Raid, SwordQuest: Earthworld, Laser Blast, Air/Sea Battle and too many other games to name filled my days. I crossed the rivers of poo logs in SwordQuest. My older brother set a world record score in Laser Blast and sent a picture of the TV to Activision, but we never heard back. My sister and I found all the items in Earthworld, but still had no idea what we were doing. I also remember nearly peeing my pants in excitement when we drove to K-Mart to buy our copy of E.T. I played the shit out of E.T. When you are a kid, you don't even realize when a game is bad, you just keep playing it till you get good at it. 

Crossing The River of Poo...

I was obsessed with Pac-Man and would listen to the Pac-Man vinyl records where he sounded like he was on Quaaludes all the time. I had Pac-Man stuffed animals, TV Trays, Pajamas, and my sister would cut a wedge out of sugar cookies and we would ice them to all look like Pac-Man. Each cookie would have one of the those fucking tooth-shattering silver balls for an eye, too.

Mellow Yellow

When the Red River Ex would come to town, I would wander through the Arcade Tents drinking in the sights and sounds. I also owned a Coleco Pac-Man mini arcade and would play it till my ears nearly bled from the screeching "BEE-YOO BEE-YOO BEE-YOO" noise that it made all the time.

Yeah, I loved games. This is even pre-Nintendo days, so you can imagine the brain-gasm I had when I finally saw the NES. Wow. That story is for another blog entirely.

The reason why we are doing this blog is to share our views on gaming past and present and to highlight the adventures we have scouring the city (and country?) for deals on games. I hope that anyone who reads it will get a laugh or two, and also learn a few things about techniques for saving dollars on their gaming budgets. As long as they don't live here and try to compete with us!

So make sure you have a full tank of gas, a wallet full of cash, and a box of alcohol swabs to get the old price tags and boogers off those pawn shop treasures, and join us in the River City as we build our memories..and our collections. It's not hoarding if you alphabetize...

Super Robot Tyson       

See my collection at GameFaqs under user name "espinz".