Hitman Tommy's 2015 Goals 2nd Quarter Update

I can't believe how quick 2015 is flying by. It seems like Tyson and I were just heading down to Hopkins for Ring of Honor but all of sudden two more months have gone by since. But I figured it was time for a quick goal update before we get too far into the 3rd quarter of the year. The last three months weren't really about buying games(granted that happened too) but the big focus was on actually sitting down and playing some different titles and not worrying about when the next good deal was going to be coming. I would talk about the trip and a few other reason items but we should be back on the podcast real soon where I'm sure we'll discuss the last 3 months and more. So here's where my goals are now sitting:

1. Find 25 more NES carts for my collection


Progress: 10/25 = 40%


The NES collection is at a bit of a standstill. Not much is coming up locally and the games that do are ones that I’m not in need of. I’m still not in that place where I’m willing to drop $20+ for games that I need there are still lots that I should be able to knock off for the less than that.


2. Complete 5 X-Box 360 games


Progress: 1/5 = 20%


I have finally gotten away from the filthy whore that is WWE Supercard….. well kind of. Okay not really at all but at least I’m also playing some real games again on top of Supercard. Over the last couple months I had tried a few different 360 games to see if one would be the next that I play through all the way. After a couple sub-par titles I finally settled on Batman Arkham City. I had started it about 3 years ago but only played the first hour or two. I believe I was still playing Borderlands at the time which is why I probably gave up on Arkham City so quickly. It felt good to knock it off the backlog, and while it was a good game I still think that Arkham Asylum was better. I was thinking about jumping right into Arkham City Origins but I think I need to play something a little bit different. As of a week ago I started playing Mass Effect 3. Only about two hours in but it was about time that I finally finished that trilogy off.


3. Beat one game for 10 different consoles/handhelds


Progress: 1/10 = 10%


The only game I’ve beaten is Arkham City so now Xbox 360 is off the table. Nine more systems to go before year end. I’ve been playing a bit of Neo Geo Pocket and 3DS lately so a title for one of those may be next to get knocked off.


4. My 5 biggest wants of 2015


Progress: 1/5 = 20%



Knocked Dragon’s Revenge off the list when we were in Minnesota for Ring of Honor. Aside from that no major leads on any of my other wants.

That's all for now. I really have my work cut out for me during the last half of 2015. Until next time!

Two Crudes Dudes - Episode #14 - Batman Soup

What year is it? The Two Crude Dudes have emerged from a 6 month time loop to cause a paradox of stupidity! After a hiatus where Super Robot Tyson had a baby and Hitman Tommy drank alone for a few months, we have united again to terminate your brains by traveling in our new time machine! Episode 14 is packed with retro game chatter, collecting stories, and enough dick jokes to choke a T-800! Will Tyson form the Murdoch Mysteries fan club? Will we talk too much about pro wrestling? We expose Amiibo lies and consider joining the black market of Transformers collecting. Don't forget to fast forward through our latest update on WWE Supercard too! This episode is the longest and drunkest episode of TCD yet! We actually ran out of our favorite beer on air and had to dig a little deeper in the fridge to keep the tsunami of idiocy crashing into the microphone. The reason for the extended episode and long mastering session was due to our main event topic of "What would Tyson and Tommy do if we had a time machine?" We barely scratched the surface of our quantum leaps through the timestream! Who would we kill? What toys or games would we create or steal? Where would we leave a time capsule filled with only our turds? You have to listen to find out! After this episode you'll need a time machine to go back and convince yourself not to listen to it! 
 
Intro track by NESRomancer - Go support him! http://www.nesromancer.com/

Future episodes will always be available here and at http://twocrudedudes.podbean.com/. 

Follow the links on this page to subscribe on iTunes and Stitcher Radio!

 

Hitman Tommy's 2015 Goals 1st Quarter Update

It’s hard to believe that we’re already nearing the end of April. March just kind of blew by and before I knew it, it was time to provide a quick update on how I’m doing with my gaming goals this year. So let’s get to it

1. Find 25 more NES carts for my collection

Progress: 10/25 = 40%

The first part of 2015 has been pretty steady for NES carts and I’ve been able to add a new cart or two to the collection every couple weeks. In a few of these cases I did have to increase what I’d like to pay for some of these games but at the end of the day the 10 I have picked up were well within the range I was willing to go. This past weekend we had the Wonderland Festival in town(Toy & Comic Show) which I was able to pick a few things up, but also gave me the opportunity to familiarize myself with what vendors have other titles I need for when I get back into chasing around the city more. We talked a little bit about the show on the upcoming episode of the Two Crude Dudes podcast so I’ll leave it at that. Upcoming in the next couple months we aren’t hitting the Calgary Expo this year unfortunately but we will be making a trip to Minnesota next week which will involve hitting up some game stores so fingers crossed for some good finds.

2. Complete 5 X-Box 360 games

Progress: 0/5 = 0%

I’m pitching a big fat goose egg to start the year off in this department. Honestly trying to find the time to get some gaming in has been pretty difficult this year. Aside from getting together with Jimmy for a couple Gamecube nights I really haven’t played much at home. As far as X-Box is concerned I did start Tomb Raider like I said I was going to but have only sunk a handful of hours into that so far. As we get into the summer months I’m hoping to have a bit more time to enjoy some gaming. Since my son joined the family I really relied on devoting the late hours of my day to getting some game time in, however I recently subscribed to the WWE Network and I find that I spend my time after everyone goes to bed watching a lot of that. My wife hates wrestling so I have to try and fit it in when she’s not around.

3. Beat one game for 10 different consoles/handhelds

Progress: 0/10 = 0%

I pretty much covered this one off under goal 2, again I’m hoping that the next couple months will be more lucrative with the game play

4. My 5 biggest wants of 2015

Progress: 0/5 = 0%

No luck picking up any of these. I’ve come across Professor Layton and the Last Specter a couple times but once it was without its case and the second time it was way too expensive. Dragon’s Revenge has been near the top of my radar lately. Lots of them out there on ebay but all the shipping costs are garbage and don’t make it worth it. Not to mention the US Exchange rate is awful right now so I’m trying to avoid purchasing anything online right now.


So that’s where everything sits right now. The only thing that I’ve made any progress on is adding to my NES collection so I’ve got a long way to go the rest of the year. As I mentioned were heading on a road trip next week so hopefully I’ll be back with some photos of some awesome new games that I find while I’m away. Also Tyson and I recorded the next episode of the Two Crude Dudes Podcast last night so you can look forward to our return to the airwaves getting posted sometime in the near future.

Buyer's Remorse #40 - Big Daddy Jamma

Holy Shit!

I'm back from the land of fatherhood to show some love to my other children, my video games! As a lot of you know, on January 3rd my beautiful daughter Teagan was born and I've spent the last few months learning the ropes of being an awesome Dad. Turns out you have to buy less games, play a lot less games, and spend a lot of time with your newborn baby. Parenthood is the greatest game anyone can play and every moment with my daughter is awesome. She's a pretty happy and easy baby so that means I can let a little of my previous life creep back in. That means it's time to show all the shit that I bought that eventually I'll need to sell for her tuition or wedding expenses in 20 years. 

Disclaimer: Not my baby, but still a good idea...

Since it's hard to actually leave the house to go look for games, I started trolling Kijiji again and ran into an incredible deal where I scored the Jamma boards for two awesome and rare arcade games. I landed the arcade exclusive Castlevania title Haunted Castle as well as the classic side scrolling action game The Astyanax! I got them for an amazing deal considering the board for Haunted Castle recently sold on ebay for over a thousand dollars. Wow!

Got a cool Taito PCB box too!

The Astyanax!

Haunted Castle is fucking MINT.

I did manage to do some chasing around the city at thrift stores and a few of our usual pawn shop stops and grabbed a few titles in the last few months. Some of these I mentioned on Two Crude Dudes Episode #13, but I'm finally posting the pictures now. Here's a random mix of pickups:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boxed complete Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness was an awesome trade and I got it by swapping an extra copy of Smash Bros. Melee for it straight up. I think I paid $3.99 for the extra SSBM, so it was a brilliant trade. I'm a Castlevania nut, so anything from the series that I don't have is always on my radar. Dracula X on SNES is gonna be a bitch, though. 

We recently had the "Wonderland Festival" in my city which is just a mini comic convention full of mega nerds and washed up actors who used to play Power Rangers on TV, but I did score some vintage Masters of The Universe Toys and a boxed NES game for very little cash. I also got sucked into the new Combiner Wars Transformers and bought some of those to start my quest to built Superion and Menasor again. This next batch of pics is also peppered with some other recent finds.

 

 

1978 Mattel Hockey actually works!

 

 

 

Picked up a sweet reissue Rodimus Prime too.

 

 

That's a lot of cool stuff! Maybe I really didn't take a lot of time off from collecting when the baby arrived. It's hard to pass up a good deal on toys or games, even when you have to be a fiscally responsible parent. She better not touch my toys! I need a lock on the basement...

Stay tuned for a new episode of the Two Crude Dudes podcast coming soon!

Super Robot Tyson

Hitman Tommy's Gaming Goals for 2015

As promised I said I’d be back shortly with my 2015 gaming goals. If you haven’t seen and are interested to see how I did on my 2014 goals please read the post below this. Last year I had a good mix between collecting goals and playing goals. However this year I think will probably be a little bit more about playing the games. So without further ado here are Hitman Tommy’s 2015 Gaming Goals!

1.Find 25 more NES Cartridges for my collection.

This may not seem like very much but again it’s been difficult to find carts that I need in good shape and a good price. It was a real uphill climb to reach last year’s goal of 41, and actually almost half of my pickups from last year were a result of my trip to Calgary to go to the Expo. This year we don’t really have any intention on attending the Calgary Expo mainly due to other responsibilities and so far there hasn’t been anyone announced that will make us drive the 13 hours. That being said regardless of who they have for guests or not the Calgary Expo is a great time so if you’re in the area; buy a ticket and go you won’t regret it. Anyways as I was saying almost half of my 41 came from the trip last year so 25 seems like a good round number to strive for.  It’s about 15% of what I’m missing from my collection and I feel it’s a solid amount to try for. It’s about 2 per month which fits well with my budget as the days of finding carts locally for $3-$5 a piece is long over and I’ll probably have to dump a bit more cash into or resort to online sources.

2.Complete Five X-box 360 games

This is a repeat goal from last year. I only completed 2 Xbox games last year (excluding XBLA games). 2014 was really about the Wii U for me and found more often than not if I found some free time that I’d play it as opposed to the Xbox. I have so many Xbox games that I have never even tried simply cause anything that I could find for a few dollars at a pawn shop I would buy and in 2014 I also corrected that and tried to only pick up things that I thought I would actually play. I also ditched a few titles that I knew would never see the light of day. However I still have so many Xbox games that I tend to suffer from the “I have too much to play” syndrome and usually results in me playing nothing at all. This year I think my tactic is that I’m going to just randomly pick a game, no researching how long it takes to beat or trying to make some convoluted plan on how I’m going to do it. Just pick a game beat it and move on. We’ll see how that goes.

**Note Since I started writing this I decided my first Xbox 360 game of 2015 will be Tomb Raider**

3.Beat one game for 10 different consoles/handhelds

One thing that was definitely missing from my 2014 list was a lack of retro gaming goals. My retro systems get more consistent use than anything else in my arsenal so it makes sense that I should have some type of goal. However I didn’t want to box myself into a corner by making it console specific. If I said beat 10 SNES games that’s all well and good but I know that anytime I went to play something else I’d be like “you should be playing something on Super Nintendo”. While I still want to have some type of goal surrounding this I still want 2015 to be more about playing what I want to play and not feeling like I have to play something. This goal is separate from the X-Box goal so when I beat my first 360 game for the year it doesn’t count towards the 10. I feel like I haven’t played my Sega CD or 3DO in awhile so maybe I’ll start there.

4. Five of my Biggest Wants for 2015

I’ve seen a few other people making a list like this of games they would like to acquire during the year so I figured I would do the same with some of the games I’ve been dying to get so I can play them. I’ll combine the entire list as one goal. So the Top 5 non-NES games I hope to find in 2015 are:

1.Professor Layton and The Last Specter -NDS

2.Secret of Mana -SNES

3.Blazing Lazers -TG16

4.Grandia- PS1

5.Dragon's Revenge- GEN

And that's it I'm only going to name 4 goals this year which is just as well as these will take up the majority of my time and money to complete as it is. Anyways I'm looking forward to another great year in 2015 and hopefully you stick around to see what else we have in store this year. Thanks for reading and Happy New Year everyone!!