Silverfleet

I've gotten a bunch of stuff in the past few weeks: NES: -Baseball -Baseball Stars -Kickle Cubicle -Whomp 'Em Genesis: -Dynamite Headdy (with box) -Star Trek: The Next Generation (with box and instructions) Atari 5200: -Jungle Hunt -Q*Bert (complete with box and instructions, in really nice shape!) All of the above were about $20, between a local flea market and Play N Trade. And my fiance stopped at a Salvation Army today, and she asked me if I wanted any Sega Saturn games. Of course I said yes! Sega Saturn: -Gex -Bug! -Bug Too! -Virtua Fighter Remix (complete in jewel case with instructions) They were $1 each.

I've slowed down a bit on the collecting lately, but I couldn't pass up a NES Advantage, complete in the box with the manuals and everything, for $5 at a flea market yesterday.

The one near me is awesome. When I first started going there, they had a huge selection of really old stuff (2600, INTV, Colecovision, etc.) and the prices were dirt cheap, so I snagged all the good stuff. They also tend to have a really good selection of NES, Genesis, SNES, and other games of that era. The other great thing is the guys there are pretty cool and know their stuff, and they don't and if you just hang out in there and talk for a while about collecting, old games, etc. Not a peep about Modern Warfare or whatever the shooter-du-jour is. Try doing that in a Gamestop these days.

I like the original Xbox a lot, especially since you can pick up games for it right now for practically nothing!!! I actually softmodded one of the ones that I have recently, but I can't figure out how to get files over onto it, like emulators, roms, etc. I've also got a game of Beyond Good and Evil going on it currently. I bought into the hype of how it's a cult classic and all that, and so far, it has been a great game.

I love the PS2. There are so many great games for it, and now's the time to scoop up all the classics while they are still cheap. Right now, I have 4 of them: My original system purchased when the second wave of them came out in march of 2001 (died due to the "disc read error" problem, died even more when I took it apart), a slim I got for Christmas in 2004, another fat that I picked up from a coworker (he said he bought it at launch), and yet another fat with a broken 2nd player controller port I paid $2.50 for at a flea market. The slim and the two other fats that I have other than my original one work perfectly, even that flea market one! Out of all my consoles, I still use the PS2 the most. It's still my main DVD player, and I have a huge library of games for it that I will never get sick of. I was spoiled by my 360's wireless controller, so I had to get a couple of them for the PS2. The Logitech one is great! I'm currently playing Rogue Galaxy on it. It's a great game that can hold a candle to pretty much anything out there currently. I highly recommend it.

Ha, my $2.50 PS2 works! Controller port 2 is messed up and broken, but everything else works great! I cleaned it up and tested it with both DVD and CD-based games and it worked flawlessly. Now, I can sell my boxed fat PS2 that I got a year ago when I bought a huge lot of games from a co-worker and use my cheap flea market score as my spare. BTW, does anyone have any controller ports for a fat PS2 kicking around? I misplaced my old broken PS2.

I had a pretty productive weekend. Yesterday, I hit up a local pawn shop that I usually have good luck at. I picked up the following: -NBA Live 09 for the Xbox 360 -10 Yard Fight for the NES -the original Game and Watch Gallery for the GB Got that all for $14 (nothing spectacular, I know), and then after that, I hit up a Hollywood Video to see what they had left, and I got the following: For the PS2 (ex rentals, but mint discs): -Mega Man X8 -Grandia Xtreme -Driving Emotion Type S -The Mark Of Kri -King of the Fighters: Maximum Impact -Madden 2005 Collector's Edition And for the original Xbox, I snagged Jade Empire Special Edition brand new and sealed. I got all of that for just under $20. And then there was today's adventure at the local flea market I usually hit. I visited a guy who I've been buying from for a while and snagged a CIB copy of Star Trek 25th Anniversary for the NES. I might have overpaid at $12, but I've been trying to find this since I was 9!!! The guy was clearing out his personal collection, and he had a TON of boxed stuff for tons of different systems. I was impressed! I wandered around after that and somehow haggled a junk dealer to sell me a box of about 25 2600 games (a bunch which I didn't have), a NES with a broken door, and a fat PS2 for $15. The systems are probably broken, but I can at least cobble some working ones out of them and a couple of other broken ones I have. My fiance also gave me the nickname of "Hoardie" after she saw me waking with all the crap I bought today. So, how did I do?

Not a thrift story, but I walked into Target last night and went over to the clearance section, as I usually do, and there wasn't much. So, I went over to the regular games section, and to my surprise, there were some games with ridiculous prices on the shelves. I've been waiting particularly for the game Brutal Legend for the Xbox 360 to go down in price, and it was sitting there for $12.97! I hit the buzzer and a girl came over with the keys. She takes the game and it rings up as $59.99. I then point out the tag, and she marks it down to $12.97! Apparently, a employee screwed up and put a bunch of games up with the wrong tags, but she was cool and hooked me up at the tagged price.

It's funny, I went to the AVGN site first and watched the video, and immediately after, I said to myself, "I wonder what the guys and gals on Atari Age would think of this"! Great video. I've been a fan of his stuff for years now. Remember, he's a collector like the rest of us, he just happens to be a filmmaker too. He has a pretty awesome collection of gaming items. Also, it's pretty damn awesome that a fellow member of this site is the guy who has the chalice!

I went out thrifting yesterday and came up with some decent deals. -Sega Game Gear with both battery covers, with the big nylon case, battery charger, 4 games (Sonic 2, NBA Jam, Mortal Kombat, and some baseball game), 3 games had instruction booklets, for $10 -Bionic Commando for the Xbox 360, new, for $8 -Super Off Road for the Genesis, boxed, for $3 (didn't even know it came out for the Genesis) -A few NES games (Wall Street Kid, Ice Hockey, Track and Field, and World Class Track Meet) for about $10 -ATV Off Road Fury 1 and 2 and Dave Mirra BMX 2 for the PS2 for $9 complete and mint -NES Advantage in great shape for $3 And the strangest find of the day... -NES Camerica Freedom Connection wireless controller adapter for $3. I have never seen one of these before! Looks pretty cool.

There have been a number of FYE store closings in my area in the past year. Most of them have been the standalone stores outside of malls. I have gone to a number of them and made some decent scores. One of them had pretty much everything in the store 50-75% off, and I scored a ton of Xbox 360 games and music concert DVD's from Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath for dirt cheap. In the past month, I've scored a bunch of regular Xbox, GBA, Gamecube, and PS2 games at significant discounts. Yeah, there prices sucked, but they are much nicer when they are more than 1/2 off!

I finally found an Atari 5200 in the wild yesterday, and yes, I bought it. It's a 4-port model, and came with a bunch of games, the a/v cables and power supply, and a working controller. It came with the following games: -Galaxian -Real Sports Football -Countermeasure -Pac Man -Qix -River Raid -Space Invaders -Super Breakout -Berzerk -Pole Position (CIB) -Missile Command (CIB) -Star Raiders (CIB) It came with some overlays and instruction manuals as well. I may have overpaid at $60, but I haven't seen one of these in the wild in the 15 years I've been actively collecting, so I had to have it.

Over the weekend, I hit up the local flea market which is usually hit or miss. It was mostly a miss, but I rounded out my Mega Man collection for the NES by buying Mega Man 4 loose from a vendor for $15. FWIW, the cart is absolutely mint. The connectors look brand new. I passed on Final Fantasy III for the SNES loose at $30 and boxed with everything but the instructions for $50. Not much else there this weekend. Tonight, a friend of mine came through with an Atari Jaguar, which I've been hounding him about for years now. I got it with everything to hook it up, Cybermorph, Kasumi Ninja, one controller, and a Jag CD Memory Track cartridge, all for $30. I'm not sure if I overpaid, but a guy at the flea market had one in similar condition with 3 more games for $80, so I think I did ok. I haven't seen one in the wild until the one at the flea market popped up, so I have no clue if I got a good deal. What to you guys think? This friend of mine also has 2 Virtual Boys, a 32X, and a bunch of SNES rpg's I've been trying to snag off of him since high school, and we graduated 10 years ago!

Is the 60gb one the only backwards compatible one? What about the 20gb one?

Return Fire is probably my favorite 3D0 game. It's pretty much capture the flag with military vehicles! Very fun game. Also, the 3D0 has a mean port of Wolfenstein 3D. Some other good games for it: -Samurai Showdown -Super Street Fighter II Turbo -Starblade And just for laughs... Way of the Warrior! It's hilariously bad, but I think it's worth owning. It's fun to pop in every once in a while to see how far games have come in the past 15 years.

I picked this up over the weekend for a whopping $11! I really enjoyed the original back when it was new. I look forward to playing it as soon as I finish Ghostbusters.

I also usually snag them when I see them. I have a few of them from collecting over the years: -Krazy Ivan -Starblade Alpha -Viewpoint -Space Griffon VF-9 -Street Fighter Alpha -Cyber Sled -Descent I might have a few more kicking around, those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head.

I love shooters! These are some of my faves, in random order: Gaiares (Genesis) The "Aleste" series by developer Compile (Zanac, Gun-Nac, Power Strike, Space Megaforce, Blazing Lazers, etc) The Raiden series (great port of Raiden on the Genesis, and The Raiden Project on the PSX) Ikaruga (have the GC version) Gekioh: Shooting King (PSX, love all the ridiculous game modes!) Giga Wing 2 (DC) The Gradius series, especially Life Force for the NES The 194X games, especially 1943 on the NES and 19XX in the arcade Sol-Feace (Sega CD, soundtrack for this game was awesome!) Starblade Alpha (PSX) In The Hunt (PSX) Philosoma (PSX) The Darius series (especially Darius Gaiden in the arcade and Super Nova on the SNES) UN Squadron (SNES) Scramble (arcade) Galaxian (arcade) Galaga (arcade) Galaga '88 (TG16) River Raid (Colecovision) I'm always down for a good shooter.

That bass looks pretty nice! I remember years back that a friend of mine had a Cort strat copy, and it was a huge POS, but that bass looks like a completely different level of quality. That should be an easy fix. Nice score, especially for $30!

I went out today and hit up a few local spots. One was a pawn shop and the other was a new electronics store that has a booth at the local flea market I always go to. At the pawn shop, I picked up the following for about $15: NES: -Yo! Noid -Q*Bert GB: -Kirby's Dream Land 2 N64: -Blast Corps Not the greatest deals, but I haven't seen a Yo! Noid game in ages! The others I just wanted for my collection. The electronics store was very interesting. I walk in, and directly in front of me were 2 working Playchoice-10 arcade cabinets! To my right and in front of me were hundreds of games for just about any system you could think of except for the Vectrex. There must have been about 300-400 NES games alone in that place! Then I saw the prices. Common NES, SNES, Genesis, Atari, Coleco, and INTV games were $5 each!!! I'm talking games that you could find anywhere else for like $0.50! They had a vast collection of the rare ones, like a bunch of Color Dreams games that I haven't even heard of, but they ranged from $40-80 each! They had a few NES games for HUGE money, like Super Team Games for $200, Bubble Bobble 2 for $100, and none of the Mega Man games were under $35. And mind you, they were all LOOSE, CARTRIGE ONLY!!! I had gone there because the guys at the flea market said they had a copy of Chrono Trigger for the SNES there, and I really have been after one locally lately. They had it, and I bought it or $50, which is about what they go for everywhere. Not the greatest deal, but I really needed it for my collection because it's my favorite RPG. I have it for the PSX and the DS, but I really wanted the original SNES cart. I talked to the guy on his pricing, and he goes by Ebay, and adds in shipping costs too. At least the guy was nice, and he is an avid collector that knew his stuff (too well!!!) and I'm pretty sure that he has the store just to show off part of that collection.

I'm going "hunting" this afternoon at a couple of local spots. I have a good feeling that I'm gonna find some good stuff. If anyone local to me wants that CD-I, go for it. It's at the Goodwill in Quincy, MA. It's stacked up with the VCR's. And those 3D0 and Steel Battalion finds look awesome!

For the first time in my life, I found something that I actually voluntarily passed up!!! I wandered into a Goodwill store a few days ago and found a Phillips CD-I. I have never seen one in the wild before. It was $20, and had no controllers, wires to hook it up, or games. I had to pass because it looked kinda beat and there was no way to test it. It's not like I can go to Gamestop (or anywhere else for that matter) and pick that stuff up! And besides, what "games" are good for that thing anyway?

The helicopter flight game Steel Talons was really loud. I remember playing a game next to it back when I was a kid and it kept making these loud sounds that I can't even describe when you crashed. The sound would just pierce your body! They were so damn loud that I couldn't concentrate on the game I was playing! Also, another vote for Zoo Keeper. It has the most insane sounds I've ever heard in a game.

Went to the flea market yesterday and came up with the following: NES: -Mega Man -Rock 'N Ball -Kid Niki: Radical Ninja SMS: Zillion II: The Tri Formation complete in the box and mint Genesis: -Wardner -Steel Empire TG16: -Battle Royale I paid $35 for all of that, the bulk of it was the $20 for Mega Man. I haven't seen it in the wild for a long time for that cheap. Another vendor there was selling one for $40! I only need Mega Man 4 to have the whole set!

Wow, sounds like that place sucks. Reminds me of a guy at a local flea market we have around here that used to also have a brick and mortar store. He has a ton of stuff, but its mostly in ratty condition and WAY overpriced. And knowledge: he had NONE! Back when he used to have the store, I used to go in there and get crazy deals on really rare stuff that he had no clue about. For example, I got a mint copy of Einhander for the PS1, CIB, for $12, and my friend on the same day got Dragon Force for the Saturn for $18. Back then, they were on Ebay all day or $40 and $80+ respectively!!! Meanwhile, he's selling Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt for $14.99 loose, and the regular Super Mario Brothers cart for $24.99 loose! He went out of business for obvious reasons, but still has the booth. For the hell of it, I stopped by his booth at the flea market the other day, and he wanted $60 for a ratty boxed copy of Startropics, Balloon Fight loose, and Super Tecmo Bowl for the SNES. I laughed as I walked away! Also, I am lucky to have a Play-N-Trade around here. They are awesome. The guys there are gamers AND collectors, and the prices are usually great. For Example, I picked up Mega Man 6 there tonight for the NES for $15, which is the cheapest I've ever seen it! Hopefully they expand more, as they do tend to cater to the classic crowd more than anyone else out there in the chain-store business.