Collector’s Log: Post-Vacation Gets

The only real downside to my vacation was that there really wasn’t an opportunity to do any retro game hunting. While I certainly got to play some video games on the trip, retro game stores really weren’t anywhere close to where I was located… and by the time I was venturing home, I wasn’t feeling up to going off the route to see what there was.

I made up for that with a visit to Retro World Games after my first day back at work. This place has been where a lot of my NES, SNES, and Genesis games have come from over the last three months, and yet the store keeps adding new games for me to find. The only fly in the ointment when game hunting now is the space crunch I have. With room for only a handful more SNES games for now, I’ve been trying to focus more on NES and Genesis while also keeping an eye out for any original PlayStation games I’m missing that don’t break the bank.

The first find was quick– a loose copy of Championship Pro-Am for the Genesis. This is a port of R.C. Pro-Am, which made it a no-brainer for my want list. I have the NES original, of course, so it’ll be interesting to compare the two games myself. It was priced comparably to what I’ve seen it go for on my rotation of online retro stores, so this was the easiest “Yes” on the trip since I saved myself some shipping costs.

While perusing the Genesis games, I stumbled on a complete-in-case copy of Shaq-Fu. I’ve seen this loose in the wild a bunch, but not so much complete like this. I know, I know… it’s a bad game. Next to all of the sports games I get that almost nobody else wants or cares about… there’s something about “bad games” that kind of pulls me in a bit. Shoot, there are some Barbie and Mary-Kate & Ashley games for the original PlayStation that I own because I watched LGR videos on them and laughed so hard that I needed to try them out. What will I think of Shaq-Fu? Time will tell.

One more Genesis game caught my eye, inside of a display case: Rambo III. It wasn’t *complete*, as the manual was missing, but it was the case and– most importantly– the game. I’ve seen Game Sack episodes over the years that have featured this game, but I’ve never owned it and had rarely seen it in the wild up to this point. It was a bit on the higher side, but I bought it anyway, if only to throw a few extra dollars into the store. Perhaps I can source a manual for the game down the road to make it complete… maybe I can find one at RetroWorld Expo in September.

I looked over the original PlayStation games, as I always do. It’s definitely getting harder to find games that I don’t yet own and still want which aren’t fairly expensive. I did spot a few things that piqued my curiosity, but passed on– for now, anyway. One of those things was R-Types, a compilation (of sorts) of the first two R-Type arcade games. I’ve kinda-sorta had my eye on this game online for awhile, but I always bail because I *suck* at R-Type games. It was right near market value, which was the cheapest I’d seen it in a bit, but just couldn’t pull the trigger. There was a black-label Final Fantasy VII that I considered, as I only have the Greatest Hits version currently, but I passed as it was more than $20 over market value. There were some fighting games as well, like Capcom vs. SNK and Marvel vs. Street Fighter, but I couldn’t muster a good argument to get them.

The NES section had lots of games, but many of them that I was interested in were games I had already. I really don’t want to start collecting many complete-in-box NES games, as those require more space to store and space is at a premium, but finds like Felix the Cat and Jackie Chan’s Action Kung-Fu were neat to see… though way outside of my price range at $300+. I considered a copy of Kid Icarus, especially since I had just missed getting one last month, but the price had gone up since that time and I have other ways to play it for now. Tengen’s Tetris is probably my most-wanted game right now, and that’s going to run triple digits. I likely won’t see that in the wild and will probably have to wait for RetroWorld Expo for that one.

There were some Nintendo 64 games I looked at closely. I don’t mind adding complete-in-box games to my library for this console, but owning the game is more important. South Park Rally is one that, in retrospect, I probably should’ve bit on but didn’t. It’s no Mario Kart 64 or whatever, but I have a soft spot for the rough South Park games from Gen5. There was a complete-in-box copy of Beetle Adventure Racing that I also thought about but ultimately left behind… maybe for another time. I honestly feel like I’m in pretty good shape with my Nintendo 64 library right now, kind of like with my PlayStation library, so I’m more selective with what I decide to purchase. (And I don’t at all regret my relatively recent acquisition of Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue, because that’s the best kind of bad.)

Finally, the SNES section. This is the console that I’ve been most excited about collecting for over the last few weeks, but it’s also the console that I currently have the least amount of space for. I really wasn’t going to get anything from here, but two games caught my eye. First, I really didn’t have an excuse for not owning The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past yet, other than the fact that it’s often been sold out in the wild and online store pricing has been well over market value (because Zelda!). Well… spotting a copy in the wild and at market value rendered those excuses moot. It was time. Then , next to it, a copy of Lufia & The Fortress of Doom sat. Reaction to this game over the years has been pretty divisive, but I have nostalgic memories of it from playing 30+ years ago. The sequel is prohibitively expensive, but this one was pretty affordable– so I bit.

All told, I picked up five games: three for Genesis and two for SNES. With the exception of Shaq-Fu, which was more an impulse buy, the other games were on my want list and I was certainly happy to find them. At the same time, I was continuing to support a local retro video game store.

There’s one other thing that I found, which wasn’t a game:

It’s crazy to think that the Nintendo Wii is just a few months away from celebrating its 20th anniversary, but here we are. When I saw this factory-sealed Nunchuk controller, which looks like packaging from early in the Wii’s lifespan, I had to have it. I’ve always loved this early design approach to Wii packaging and it absolutely transports me back to late 2006 and into 2007. While I preferred to use the Wiimote solo (hello, Wii Bowling!), there were games that I absolutely used the Nunchuk for… like Super Mario Galaxy, for example. I’ll talk a lot more about Wii later this year, but this was a cool find that I had to share here.

With my SNES shelves now full, I’ll be spending some time thinking about next steps. I might break down some of my complete-in-case Genesis sports games, as those cases are a bit bulkier, into loose carts and move the boxes to storage. One more SNES shelf makes sense, as there’s still quite a few games I’d like to add. We’ll see if I can make that happen soon. I’m hoping to get my remaining shelving unit built before the end of the summer, though a lot of that is going to be used for N64 games.

That’s it for this Collector’s Log. As always, thanks for reading.