River City Coma

Hi everyone!

It's been pretty quiet around here lately, so I just wanted to drop a line to let the world know that we did not die in a tragic video game avalanche. I've been very busy with work and dealing with a family illness and Tommy took a vacation with his family to Chicago! I'm sure he did some game shopping on the trip, so expect a blog from him soon. Two Crude Dudes is still in the works and we just need to find an evening to record. I've also been whoring myself out to another podcast, so that has been a busy project too. Stay tuned!

One of these explosions is Tommy farting deep dish pizza. The rest were from Godzilla...

Super Robot Tyson

Buyer's Remorse #22 - Keep Out of Direct Sunlight

Welcome back!

It's been far too long since I updated the blog, but things have been pretty busy in the Super Robot household lately. Also, since the weather has been beautiful and sunny, I've been making an attempt to stay indoors and play more games!

While we have been doing some of our usual game chasing, it seems that both myself and Tommy have been a little more selective instead of grabbing anything cheap. I touched on the evolution of our collections in my last blog and we have stayed true to form. He's really focused on the NES collecting and I'm going for more quality over quantity. Here's a few pics of some recent scores and then I'll run down some of the things I played.

 
I actually found the complete TurboGrafx-16 games at Value Village for a few bucks and the boxed GBA games were picked up for $7.00 each at a pawn shop. Metroid Zero Mission has been my top GBA want for a long time as I'm a huge fan of Metroid Fusion and never ended up getting Zero Mission. I also really wanted to have it complete in the box too, and my patience paid off. 

I'm tempted to make a "Half Minute Hero" joke about "That's what Tommy's wife calls him", but I guess I'll refrain.

That's about all I picked up, except for a nice score of some more Nintendo Power magazines from a thrift shop. Making a checklist for what I need for NP was an excellent idea. I love checklists. I love alphabetizing. I love organizing. I love color coding things and aligning them by height. Help me...

This makes me upset.

So what have I played recently? Check it out:

Wii U:

I'm pleasantly surprised with my Wii U. The second screen gaming is something you don't really appreciate until you try it. The tablet feels natural and I don't have to wave it around. The Miiverse community is a really positive place for Nintendo fans and after watching Microsoft drive people away with E3 and their retarded Xbone, I'm feeling much more loyal to the big N. Nintendoland is a great amount of fun and a good way to show off the system. I find that I use the word "fun" a lot when describing my Wii U and it just feels easy to pick up and play like my 3DS. When I play Xbox 360 or PS3, it's like I have to plan for it, or hype myself up for it, but the Wii U feels more "part of" my living room. Strange, eh?

Scribblenauts Unlimited: 

This was my first bulk of Wii U gaming. It's pure joy and great fun to watch. My only complaint is that I spent a lot of time staring at the game pad and did not really watch the TV. You also start to get crazy creative and then can feel derailed when the game does not contain a fairly standard adjective or noun. The sounds and music don't have a huge amount of variety, but it looks great in HD. Once you've rode a giant chocolate friendly dancing rainbow Cthulhu, all other arguments are invalid.

Rabbids Rumble: 

Another pleasant surprise! I bought it in a budget dump bin at Giant Tiger as I'd heard it was fun. While the Rabbids are no longer funny, the Pokemon style battles in the game are addicting. You play a lot of minigames to traverse across the maps in the game and then battle a group of three Rabbids to advance. Every time you defeat a group of Rabbids, you can choose one of them to add to your stable. The game has over 100 Rabbids to collect and I ended up with 52 after completing the game and finding some with QR codes and spotpass. The minigames make full use of the 3DS with AR Games, blowing into the mic, tapping, swiping, steering, yelling etc. It's sometimes not the best game to play in bed as you might decide you want to play an AR game and you have to turn on a light, dig out the AR card, and get out of bed. The game is simple and easy, but the paper-rock-scissors battles are great fun and use some strategy. Picking and leveling up your team of Rabbids is also important. In the end my Flaming Farts and Flaming Belches were tough to defend against. Good budget title for some distracting minigames and some engaging battles that don't go on too long. I'd give it a solid 3.5 BWAH! out of 5...

I have also started playing Bioshock Infinite and a little bit of Mario U. Both games are awesome and I'll talk about them in the future. I'm a huge mark for Bioshock and I'm hopelessly in love with Elizabeth from the new game. I'm trying to get my wife into Bioshock cosplay, but it's not working.

Metroid Zero Mission:

Finally! An enhanced remake of the NES version of Metroid with new play mechanics and story scenes. It plays similar to Metroid Fusion or Super Metroid, but is just a perfect balance of the Metroid formula. It's a masterpiece for the GBA and a must own. You can even play as Samus out of her power suit and when you beat the game, you unlock the NES version of Metroid. The length is shorter, but it's replayable with multiple endings and it begs for speed runs. I have beaten Metroid Fusion many, many times and it's a "go-to" title for me. I imagine Zero Mission will be another regular favorite of mine. The "Metroidvania" style of gameplay is one of my favorites. 

I'd also like to close out by advising everyone to go buy Mighty Switch Force HD on their Wii U and their 3DS. Both titles are on sale right now in the e-shops and anything that supports Wayforward and spreads this awesome game is a good thing. I'm addicted to both versions of it and plan to buy Mighty Switch Force 2 very soon. 

Wow! I think this is the least amount of stupid memes and dick jokes I've had in a blog so far! Maybe I'm growing up! 

NOPE!!!!!

He's the Jack-Rabbid. Get it?

Thanks for reading! New episode of Two Crude Dudes should be coming soon. I'm hoping we can do it this weekend. Take care!

Super Robot Tyson

Buyer's Remorse #21 - The New U

Finally back with a brand new Buyer’s Remorse. Initially this entry was planned not to be a Buyer’s Remorse simply because I hadn’t felt like I’d added much to my collection that it would be worth devoting a whole entry to the concept. However as more time elapsed I did pick up a few more things that are worth a quick mention. But as opposed to doing my usual rant of telling you one by one all the things I’ve picked up I have put them into two pictures. One that is older stuff and the other has the new generation items. Then to close off this entry I want to talk a little bit about my first encounter playing the Wii U.

Speaking of the Wii U I’ll start with my recent pickups for the current generation systems. As Tyson talked about his Wii U purchase in his last entry I’ll spare you the details of mine as it was almost exactly the same. We went the same night, traded in lots of games that we had no need for in our collections and made use of a couple promotions that GameStop/EB were offering at the time. If you want more info regarding this please check out Tyson’s last blog right below this one. As a result we both were able to get a good deal on the Wii U system as well use some trade towards a few games. Saying our bundles came with ZombiU and Nintendo Land I didn’t pick up any other Wii U titles that night but instead grabbed the new Tomb Raider and Ni No Kuni, I forgot to include these in the picture below.

I wonder when they'll figure out that Wii U games don't have to have a 'U' in the title

I also went back with another stack of games that I was hoping would meet the criteria for their trade in deal and was able to gain a bunch more store credit which netted me my two other Wii U games Lego Undercover and Super Mario Bros U. I don’t usually trade anything in but considering some of the deals that Tyson and I find this particular offer was great as in most cases we were getting more in trade than we had paid for the game originally and were titles that were really just padding our numbers as opposed to being something that we really wanted to play.

In the picture below are the games I found through a combination of Value Village, pawn shops, retail stores and the flea market. I was very excited to find a couple more NES titles to add to my collection but the big find was definitely the Sega 32X in the box. One of the local retail stores finally had dropped their price on their 32X’s by over half of what they had been selling them for. I walked into one of the locations that I don’t get to too often and they had a boxed one out for the same price as their loose ones so I didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger on it. That particular day sort of turned into Sega 32X Saturday as I also found 3 loose games for it at Value Village for a couple bucks a piece.

I'm going to get drunk one night and Fred Couples and I are going to ride Yoshi's and play golf in Syberia 

Obviously the big pick up this time around was the purchase of the Wii U. I honestly hadn’t expected to pick one of these up anytime soon. Mainly because they were initially a little slow out the gate but Nintendo has really ramped up the amount of announcements and it did start to intrigue me a little more. Factor in that we were able to leverage the EB sale in our favor and suddenly getting one so soon seemed like a no brainer. So far since making this purchase I’ve probably had the time to play around a dozen hours of games for it and just want to share my initial reactions to the experience.

Wii U Console Menu- Found it relatively easy to navigate. I do own a Wii and a 3DS so the learning curve was rather small due to the similarities. Not much to say about it but I did probably spend an hour checking out the options and tailoring my preferences.

Wii U Control/Game Pad- I was very impressed with the feel and layout of both the Pro Controller and the Game Pad. I’ll admit that I was one of the people sneering at the Game Pad when it was first introduced. I just didn’t see the appeal of using a “tablet” to control a video game. However Nintendo did a great job laying out the buttons and so far from what I’ve played the small features that some of the games have built in to enhance the game play using the screen have been neat. I can’t wait to see what developers start using it for once they’ve had more time with the technology.

Nintendo Land- This was the first game that I tried on the console. While it is more or less a tech demo for things the system can do, they did manage to design some very addictive and competitive “Attractions” for the player to try out. I know my wife and I got very competitive at DK Crash Course the first night we tried it. But I’m going to be bias and say that Yoshi’s Fruit Cart was my favorite thing to play in the game.

ZombiU- The reviews this game got early on were rather unfavorable but the longer it’s been out people seemed to have softened their stance. This game was a very pleasant surprise and while I’ve only gotten to spend about an hour with it so far I can’t wait to sit down and have a good solid play through with it. I’ve been very impressed with the overall atmosphere of the game and was a real treat to skulk around the shadows as a survivor during a zombie apocalypse. Most other recent outings that other zombie games have put forth have an emphasis on action as opposed to survival. Sure you could go around killing everything you see but is that really a proper use of supplies? Guess we’ll find out.

Super Mario Bros U- If you’ve read previous entries you’ll know that my wife loves Mario games. In fact the night that I came home with the Wii U her first question was did I buy Mario; needless to say I went back in short order and bought it. I’ve played about two hours and my wife has probably logged about double that. I don’t have a whole lot to say about it. Honestly its Mario if you’ve played one of the recent titles in the series you’ve played this game. They’ve added new levels and a new squirrel? Power up but that aside it’s the same thing that Nintendo has been putting out for this series. That being said if it isn’t broke don’t fix it.

That more or less wraps up all I had to say about my first 10-12 hours with the Wii U. I’m sure as I have more time to spend with it I’ll comment as such in future blogs. I have picked up Lego Undercover recently and do really want to play it but I really want to put more time into ZombiU before I start another new game. Anyways as usual thanks for the taking the time to read this, until next time!

Buyer's Remorse #20 - The Trade Deadline

I can honestly say that this is the first time I've come into a blog post to talk about owning LESS games...

Weird.

Anyways, Tommy and had a discussion recently about the difference between being a "collector" and being a "possessor" of video games. I had read some comments online about this and it boiled down to the difference between owning a large amount of games solely for the reason that you did not have them, and having a collection that shows your personality and interests as a gamer. If there is no theme to your collecting, you're just padding the numbers and collecting by volume instead of quality. We like to joke about hoarding around here, but what's the point of mindlessly accumulating games if you don't plan to play them or you don't like the content of the game. For example: I really fucking hate baseball games, but I own a bunch of them for different systems. Ugh, why?  

A great collection could really show a stranger what you are into, and a little bit of your personality, just by looking through where you focus your collecting energies. I think I'm more proud of the games that I really love than the intimidating shelves of volume. I want someone to be able to pick up one of my games and say "Tell me about this game!" and I can answer their request with more details than just "Uhhh, I got it at Value Village for a buck..."

You have to read this in Morgan Freeman's voice...

To make a long story short, we sat and had a few beers and decided to look through our collections on GameFaqs to make a list of expendable games that we planned to get rid of. This would give a little more purity to our collections and maybe net us a few bucks towards something really cool. Before I downsized some games, I did however get kinda drunk and found myself on eBay one night at around 3am. I really need to stay off eBay when I've been drinking. At least what I bought was awesome and well priced. It was disc only, and I made a case.

Drunk online shopping = still a win!

I then started to make a box full of all the stuff I wanted to get rid of. It was about 20 games to start, mostly PS2 and Original Xbox. I also threw in all my doubles of games, magazines, manuals, etc. I got $40 for the box and never looked back. I also sold a 15 year old laptop for $60 and box of lame hockey cards for $100. I felt clean and redeemed. I was also accumulating cash as "The Trade Deadline" was approaching and I wanted a few extra bucks to seal the deal. What's "The Trade Deadline" you ask? Read on friends, and I'll fill you in...

Before we get to the big trade, I might as well drop a few more pics of some stuff I landed during a few chasing trips with Tommy. Check it out:

Monty Python on CD-i? Awesome!!

The most notable scores from above were my first Sega 32X game, Haunting on Genesis, and the Monty Python CD-i game. I'm a big fan of Haunting on Genesis and have been wanting to land it for a long time. I also grabbed a minty cart of Captain Comic on NES just to piss off Tommy.

The final reveal of the blog is the big trade that I made. I was able to reduce my collection of Xbox 360, Wii, and PS3 games and come home with a great new addition. EB Games was running a promotion where if you traded in 10 games, you got $200 off the purchase of a Wii U! The end of the promotion was fast approaching (The Trade Deadline), so I had to put my strategy together fast. I traded in some games I was "possessing" as well as the cash I made selling other junk and came home with an exciting new console. I also took advantage of the "Trade More, Get More" deal and ended up with another ninety bucks in trade credit as well. All together it cost me less than $20 out of pocket for everything you see below.

Does it really look just like Buddy Holly?

I've been thinking about getting a Wii U, but I knew that I would have to find one cheaply or exploit a promotion like this to acquire one. All the stars aligned and I can't wait to play it! Overall, it was a great week of spring cleaning and I really feel like I purified my collection to the point where even Morgan Freeman would approve...

Super Robot Tyson

Buyer's Remorse #19 - The Long Awaited Return

Hey Everyone!

Hard to believe that it's been almost two months since my last Buyer's Remorse. That being said it's not like I wasn't buying video games during this time. Tyson and I had put a temporary game buying freeze on leading up to the Calgary Expo at the end of May. During our trip we both walked away with somewhere in the ballpark of 40 games each. However within 3 days of our return we were back out there at our local haunts making sure that no deals slipped past us.

If you listened to the Two Crude Dudes podcast (link in post below) we spent the entire episode recapping the convention and all the hijinks that occurred, so I won't waste time retelling you the same stories. Instead I actually am going to try something new. As previously mentioned on this blog we've been wanting to increase our usage of You Tube. Now that said, unfortunately Tyson and I don't have access to some of the fancy toys and programs that many in the You Tube community have purchased for themselves. Long story short, we're not really in the position to drop $400 on a new video camera, especially when that could easily be turned into new games at the flea market or pawn shops. But we make due with what we have and appreciate any and all the support we get from you readers as well as those of you who take the time to listen to our ramblings on Two Crude Dudes.

So what you're about to see is about a 10 minute video of me going through all my pickups from the last two months. As there may be some people who come across the video who do not visit the blog I did spend the first minute or two quickly discussing the premise of Buyer's Remorse and what we do. Once I get past that I try to keep it quick and not having a little story attached to each game that I bought. I felt that the video format would be beneificial for this entry simply due to the sheer volume of titles that I wanted to show off. By my count there's 67 games that appear in this so in order to hold your attention I've tried to keep the pace up the whole way through. Lastly I do apologize for the quality of the video, as stated I'm using a very cheap camera to film this and being inexperienced at visual media I did what I could.

But enough talk........have at you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SutXzNZelus