I work in a school as part of the Information Technology Team. That means August and September are the busiest times of year, and a lot of things get moved to the side a bit. Unfortunately, writing also took a back seat. That said, it’s finally October and things are settling down a bit… so let’s get caught up with how video game collecting has been going.
First, I picked up some games at RetroWorld Expo in September. Tengen’s Tetris for the NES was the “big get”. I had this game for a time when I last had an NES collection (2012-21), but wound up parting with it because of a lack of space in my apartment. Now that I have a house, with a dedicated room for “retro” games, I’ve been rebuilding that NES library and wanted to have this again. To me, Tengen’s Tetris is the superior version of the game over Nintendo’s own. It’s a port of Atari’s Tetris coin-op, and has what I think is a pretty fun progression system. It’s not *just* seeing how many lines you can get; there are intermissions and additional challenging factors that keep the experience interesting. I find the music selections more appealing, too.
There’s a quintet of original PlayStation games here, four of which were games I didn’t have previously. Intelligent Qube is a complete-in-case upgrade to a loose disc copy, while Atlantis: The Lost Empire, MTV Celebrity Deathmatch, Punky Skunk, and The Smurfs are the games I was missing. You’ll wind up seeing, as we move through this Collector’s Log entry, that my focus has shifted again back towards the original PlayStation, so that’s what I had my eyes out for at the convention. I also snagged a new-condition Interactive Demo CD… which, after checking my collection when I returned home, was a disc I had already. Oops!
And then there’s The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The Wii turns 20 years old in November, and I’ve been quietly working on getting the notable launch games so I can talk about the Wii for Anniversary Anecdotes. Twilight Princess is one of the two games I got for Wii at launch– ExciteTruck was the other. Wii Sports doesn’t necessarily count, as it was a pack-in, but I’ll be talking about that one, anyway. Admittedly, I’m not really a big (or even small) Zelda fan, but this game is notable because of its launch window relationship with the Wii. I probably should get around to trying this again. I vaguely remember getting to some part with a wolf or something 20 years ago before moving on, but maybe my memory is shot.
I know what you’re thinking. “A Greatest Hits variant of Final Fantasy Origins? So what?” Well… yes. This variant is one that I did not have until now. But that’s not the bigger deal here. It’s the sports game. Tecmo Super Bowl II: Special Edition for the SNES is a $100 game. Yes, really. As it is so pricey, it had been the missing piece of the Tecmo Super Bowl SNES trilogy in my library… so to land it, finally, was a big deal to me. More notably, I now have the NES Tecmo Super Bowl and the trilogy of TSB games for both the SNES and the Genesis. As the fan of old sports video games that I am, it’s kind of a big deal for me to have them all and be able to not only talk about them, but to also play them.
The original PlayStation trend continues here. The black-label Final Fantasy VII is noteworthy because I didn’t have it before this. I had the game in Greatest Hits form, but not as an original release. I’m also at the point in collecting for the original PlayStation where variants are becoming a bit of a rabbit hole, which we’ll get into a bit later on. Black-label Casper is another, though less significant, example of variants. The other games seen here are new to me and fill holes in my library.
There’s more variety here. This longbox copy of ESPN EXtreme Games is an upgrade to the lower-quality copy I have. Final Fantasy VIII and NASCAR Thunder 2002 are black-label variants that I did not have. (There’s that “v” word again.) Twilight Princess is the Nintendo Selects variant, which I didn’t plan on getting, but wound up with anyway. Extra Innings SNES and Battle For Naboo N64 are replacements for non-working carts. As for Ballistic… that’s the only new-to-me game, and it looks like a Zuma clone? If I’m right, heck yeah– I like Zuma, even though I’m trash at playing it.
These pickups from Retro World Games are more valuable than most recent additions. All of these are new to the library, with Darkstalkers being the only variant-related game. I’ve never played Countdown Vampires before, but word is that it’s a trip. Oh, there’s an AVGN video on it? Now I really need to try it. Paper Mario is a game that I’ve tried to get into before, but struggled in doing so. That said, with Super Mario RPG and Thousand Year Door both getting Switch releases, I’ve been looking to get the original here and try it again. Capcom’s G.I. Joe game isn’t as highly rated as Taxan’s game, but I’ve rarely seen either in the wild… so I snagged this one. Finally, Saturday Night Slam Masters is one of those SNES games that I hear a lot of people talk about every so often, so I wanted to buy it and see for myself.
I guess it’s time to really talk about variants, with this set of additions. What you’re seeing here is another type of variant for original PlayStation games: the Collectors’ Edition variant. There’s really nothing “Collector” about them. These are parts of box sets that were released. If you’re just buying games to play them, any of the variants will do most of the time (I tend to recommend the Greatest Hits variants, as some of these are also slightly updated versions of the original releases)… but sickos like me who fall into the Rabbit Hole of Variants wind up being on the lookout for these Collectors’ Edition versions. I now have three copies of Army Men 3D. I now have four copies of Crash Bandicoot: Warp3d. The Rabbit Hole of Variants runs deep. Oh, and I finally found a complete-in-case copy of Dynasty Warriors! It’s not the type of Dynasty Warriors that most players know today; this is a one-on-one fighting game. Still as a DW fan, I’ve wanted this one for a bit.
Back to some variety here. The Amazing Sea Monkeys and Populous further expand my original PlayStation library, while the Collectors’ Edition of Spyro: Year of the Dragon is another variant find. Knight Rider NES is a game that I’ve been curious about, but it had been tougher than I expected to find a copy at my usual spots. The Sonic Mega Collection is a pickup entirely attributed to Scott Wozniak, aka Scott the Woz. I’ve been watching a lot of his YouTube stuff recently, and hearing him talk about this compilation on Gamecube specifically convinced me to rediscover it. Dynamite Duke is a port of an arcade game that reminds me a bit of Cabal— a game I loved playing back in high school, during the 20th century. I’m big on arcade ports, and really want to give this one a shot.
There’s more arcade game love here. As much as the SNES version of Mortal Kombat is generally hated among fans, it’s the version I originally bought “back in the day”. I’m way more Street Fighter II than Mortal Kombat and always have been; however, if you were a video game fan in the early 1990s, you bought and played both. It’s just what we did. I do think that, presentation-wise, SNES Mortal Kombat looks and sounds closer to the… ummm… “koin-op original”, but I get the blowback over sanitized finishers in a game that was proudly gory. 1943 and Shinobi are games I rarely played in arcades, but that doesn’t take away from my interest in playing these. M.C. Kids is the odd game out here, as it wasn’t an arcade game. It is, however, another AVGN-covered game that I’ve always been curious about but just hadn’t seen for sale much.
Finally, for these last two games, we go back to the late 1990s. I have no real ties to soccer (futbol?), but it’s a sport and I’m that weird fan of old sports video games… so International Superstar Soccer ’98 fits the bill. My interest level recently in Nintendo 64 has been boosted by watching Jeff Gerstmann‘s neverending pursuit of science as he’s been playing and ranking every Nintendo 64 game. As for Medal of Honor? This Collectors’ Edition variant is the third and final one– and the original game is what got me into the first-person shooter genre. It’s a “FuncoLand game”– a game that came out during my tenure as an employee of the retail chain, and a game that I might not have bought if I hadn’t played it at work first. From the amusing Conversational German for the American Soldier attract video to the World War II setting to Michael Giacchino’s awesome soundtrack, the game hooked me when I tried it at the store and bought it that night. Medal of Honor: Frontline (PS2/Xbox/Gamecube) is probably the overall better game, but I’ll always have a big spot in my video gaming soul for the originator here.
We’ll see what the final quarter of 2026 brings. I’m certainly ecstatic with my collection as it is. I have so many games to play and talk about, and that’s really the whole point for me.
See you next time!
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