What Did Pete Get? #3

It’s been a busy past few days on the work front, so I haven’t been able to share new things that have arrived— and there’s a lot of things! Without further delay, let’s take a look:

Who else remembers that K-A rating?

Greatest Hits variants for the original PlayStation often don’t have any changes from the original release, but they can sometimes be harder to find than their “black label” counterparts. Case in point is NHL FaceOff ‘97, which I finally found on eBay. This copy is still sealed (for now). In terms of the game itself, NHL FaceOff ‘97 held off EA Sports’ first hockey game in NHL 97 in terms of competition, but it was the last year before EA would turn the tide and begin to dominate on the virtual rink.

Next up:

This one has been a long time coming.

Namco Museum Vol. 5 is the most valuable of the arcade game compilation quintet from the house of Pac. This ran me well over $150, as I had been unable to find this game either in the wild or selling for lower value for years— so I found this very clean copy and snagged it.

For me, Pac-Mania is the main course here. I first remember playing it at a Howard Johnson’s in Greenfield, MA during the late 1980s. I did better with this Pac-Man game than any other before it, so it has a special place in my gaming heart. Dragon Spirit is another quality offering on this disc.

Moving on…

Hey, look! More Greatest Hits!

It’s important to note, for readers who don’t know, that I really enjoy older sports video games. At some point, I will write a separate thing about why this is. For now, though, it’s worth keeping that fact in mind as a fair share of games I find do fall into that genre. After picking up NHL FaceOff ‘97 Greatest Hits, finding NFL Blitz Greatest Hits was a no-brainer addition. I am a HUGE Blitz fan— as I am of all arcade sports games from Midway— and I really wanted to have this.

A Bug’s Life Greatest Hits complements the black-label copy I have. As with several other original PlayStation games that I’ve picked up over the last few months, A Bug’s Life is attributed to watching Caddicarus videos. James Caddick, the mastermind behind them, put together a ton of videos about original PlayStation games. Watching his work really motivated me to focus on building my own library— even if I’ll be doing more writing about the games than making videos about them.

Let’s keep going!

Another sealed game? Yes.

There are more sports games in this set. The notable game here is probably the sealed Madden NFL 98 Greatest Hits, which is a variant that I didn’t yet have. It commands nearly $30 complete, per PriceCharting, so it’s not exactly common. I will be unsealing this, as I do all of my sealed games.

Any time you can land complete-in-box Nintendo 64 games, it’s a plus. The cardboard boxes were so often thrown away back in that time by their owners… and the boxes that weren’t discarded oftentimes degraded as the years went on. J2Games had NHL 99 and NHL Breakaway 98 complete, so I grabbed those (along with everything else here minus the Madden NFL 98). Of the major sports covered by video game versions, hockey is surprisingly my favorite. Having these complete is really nice.

Speaking of complete-in-box Nintendo 64 games:

Two more Midway coin-ops, N64-style!

Retro World Games store visits always mean finding cool things to add to my collection, and a February 28th visit led me to this pair of complete-in-box Nintendo 64 games.

I originally bought Cruis’n USA a few days after its launch in December of 1996, a mere few weeks after the launch of the Nintendo 64. The home version doesn’t add much, and makes obvious compromises when compared to its coin-op counterpart, but I’ll be darned if I didn’t spend hours playing it across dozens of play sessions anyway. As someone who basically grew up in arcades as a kid, and who spent plenty of hours in arcades in his 20s, the dream has always been to play arcade games at home— and that’s exactly what Cruis’n USA did for me. Owning the game in a complete fashion like this, for the first time in almost 30 years, is a happy thing indeed.

As for NFL Blitz, I played hours of this in arcades in 1997. My personal life was kind of a disaster at the time, so video games and arcades provided much-needed solace. Blitz was to football what NBA JAM had been to basketball: over the top, lots of scoring, and highly accessible to any player. When the arcade game came home to consoles in 1998, buying the Nintendo 64 and original PlayStation versions were two of my first purchases in September of 1998… which is when I began my time working for FuncoLand. I haven’t had Blitz for N64 complete like this since then.

These weren’t all I got at Retro World Games, either…

Black-label Crash Bandicoot? Yes, please.

I also grabbed six more original PlayStation games during my visit, highlighted by buying a black-label copy of Crash Bandicoot— which is coming up on its 29th birthday here in 2025. This first Crash release is pretty valuable, commanding almost $70 complete… and it’s also one of only two Crash games I didn’t have before this visit. (Crash Bash Greatest Hits is now the last.)

Bushido Blade and Final DOOM are upgrades to disc-only copies I had, while Twisted Metal III Greatest Hits and Tetris Plus in its black-label form are games I didn’t own before this visit. Tetris Plus, in particular, has personal memories that stand out. I recall playing it quite a bit during the late summer of 1996, when things were really tough in my personal life. My paternal grandmother had been moved to hospice care and I was really struggling to come to grips with things. Video games, like Tetris Plus, gave me short bursts of relief during that time.

WipeOut Greatest Hits came in the mail from DKOldies, also known as the online store everybody loves to hate. Not only did this fill a hole in my library, but I have to say that my experiences with DKOldies have been generally better than most of the internet would suggest. I won’t say that my experiences have all been flawless, but I have found games there that other online sellers haven’t had.

There are some big real-life changes going on (Am I buying a house? Really?), but I hope to keep updates coming as much as I can. In the meantime, thanks for checking out my stuff here.