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