spacecadet

Gradius V had tons of buzz and got a lot of good reviews. I think the difference is there's mainstream buzz and then there's hardcore gamer buzz. I don't always think hardcore gamers necessarily have better taste than mainstream gamers (there are a lot of hardcore type games that I can appreciate on some level but don't find all that much fun), but they do like different types of games. Gradius V was developed by Treasure, which automatically assigns it a certain level of hype among the hardcore crowd. And then when it came out, it was actually good for the type of game that it is... which unfortunately is a type of game that mainstream gamers no longer buy in large quantities. But it definitely got some attention in the press and among that core crowd of serious gamers.

It is the Auction Central forum.. Posting nothing but BINs kind of defeats the entire purpose of having an "Auction Central" forum. A BIN is not really even an auction. I bid on this one... it was only $20 when I looked at it. If the value of Chuckwagon really has fallen through the floor as you say, I shouldn't have much of a problem getting it for cheap, right?

The problem is every single one of these has been either re-released or sequelized on another, better system! That makes it not worth even playing the N64 versions. How can you play SSB on the N64 when the GameCube version is so good? Zelda: OOT and Harvest Moon have also appeared on the GameCube (Harvest Moon on the PS2 as well I think), Bomberman's on like every system, Conker's on Xbox (and IMO wasn't very good to begin with), and Road Rash?? I love the original Road Rash but Road Rash 64 was crap (that's the one on this list I'm not sure has been updated since then). This is true of all of the early 3D systems... almost all of their best games have updates or sequels that look and play better on newer systems. You've really gotta dig down for those unique and lesser-known games that never found an audience in order to make these systems worth collecting for.

It's in the FAQ "Atari" is used in general conversation in Japan too, though. Not that often, but you do hear it sometimes, often when playing other games and one person wants to say something like "I win". ("Yatta" is more general-purpose and so more common, but you'd hear someone say "atari!" if they just made a move that killed or cornered you.) It's kinda like how sometimes you hear people say "check-mate" in general conversation here.

I disagree with this. The 5200 had Atari arcade ports, the CV had everything else. I don't think one was necessarily better than the other, but the 5200 definitely had more well-known games. What the CV did have that the 5200 didn't was Donkey Kong as a pack-in, which was one of the most popular arcade games at the time - without that, the CV would have done nothing in the marketplace. It was Coleco's stated goal to find lesser-known arcade games that they could license on the cheap. You think they paid much for titles like Venture, Carnival, etc.? No, they just signed up whatever they could sign up to fill out their library. It worked to an extent - the CV became known as the arcade game system. But it did not generally have the most popular arcade games - the 5200 did. The 5200 shot itself in the foot with those controllers - I really think the 5200's design sold some CV's. But I think it's something of a myth that the CV dramatically outsold the 5200. As I said before, the 5200 had actually pulled ahead of the CV by the time of the crash (according to the 5200 FAQ). As for the CV screenshots posted here, they look great, but a) this is years after the fact, and b) screenshots are one thing, seeing the game in motion is another. I'm still skeptical, but even if SMB plays basically like it did on the NES, it doesn't mean much because nobody could figure out how to get the system to do that in 1982-1984. As I pointed out already, Coleco couldn't even figure out how to get four screens into Donkey Kong.

Well, that's just like, your opinion, man! Compare Super Mario Bros. on the NES to Donkey Kong on the CV (hell, compare Donkey Kong on NES!). I mean it's no contest. There is a generational difference there (despite the NES technically only being a year removed from the CN). Donkey Kong was considered one of the most impressive games on the CV at the time - and it was missing an entire screen! I don't think the CV would have been capable of a game like SMB. From what I've read (in the FAQ) the 5200 was outselling the CV at the time of the crash anyway. And obviously, if the crash hadn't happened, who knows if the NES would have ever even been released here? There are so many what-if's, it's kind of pointless to even ask.

I feel this way too, but there can still be systems that "aren't worth it" even if there's something about them that you like. For example, I can totally appreciate the Neo Geo AES. It's the only system I know of ever that is completely, 100% arcade perfect in every game, down to the exact same ROMs being used in the carts. It's a nice-looking system, the controllers are amazing, and even just holding one of the carts is a beautiful thing. The games themselves are often still a lot of fun and hold up well. But is it worth it? For me, hell no. It's still around $30 for the cheapest used cartridge! I have one game for this system and that's it. I doubt I'll buy any more until the common ones at least hit $10. A couple other systems I have but haven't bothered keeping up with, and the reasons for it: * Coleco Vision - games are just too expensive given its age and how common I remember them all being. My memory of this system and the way it's treated by collectors today is way out of sync. I just can't reconcile paying more than a buck a cart for this system. * Atari Jaguar - not worth it simply because there are so few good games. The few good games that there are are often more expensive than what I want to pay. * N64 - I will buy more games for this system, I'm just waiting for them to really hit rock-bottom. But I actually bought my system new for $129, bought a few games on clearance, and then haven't touched it since. My problem was buying it towards the end of its life, then getting enamored with the Dreamcast. Nowadays, it's past the point where you can really be impressed by it in any way, but not yet to the point where games are truly cheap and the nostalgia kicks in. (I will say that Sin & Punishment is one of the best games for any system, and I'm glad I picked up this system for that game alone.) * SNES - this is a great system, but that's part of why I've steered clear so far. It just seems really daunting; there are so many great games, I don't even know where to start. And I've just got so many other systems I'm collecting for, that I just haven't really felt the need to delve into it yet. That's about it. Most of the rest of my systems I do actively buy games for now and then.

IIRC the 5200 sold around 4.5 million units. Not exactly sure where I read that but I think it was a reprint of a Newsweek article that I found online that had come out just before (or maybe just after) the crash. Don't agree at all there. The 5200 was an Atari 500 computer from four years ago. Which was pretty innovative at the time. Nobody else that I know of to that point had attempted to simply take one of their computers, strip it down and make a game console out of it. This was a new idea at that time that only seems like common practice now - prior to the 5200, though, it was thought you had to design a console from the ground up. The 5200 also has its controllers, which, while horrible, still had some new ideas that could have worked if only they'd been made to center and toughened up. They were definitely a departure from what gamers had used up to that point, though, and a few of the new features they had (like the on-controller pause button) are now standard on all game machines. 7800 sticks I'd say are better but they don't really have any new ideas in them and they're also uncomfortable to use. Mattel had released a keyboard (kicking and screaming) for their system years before, so the 7800 wouldn't have been the first system to have one. I don't know anything about the laser disc system. The high score cart would have been a cool addition but unfortunately it didn't happen until 1999! Well, I just visited the system for the first time about 3 weeks ago I never owned one before that. I've seen plenty of screenshots, read all the FAQs, etc. but I first played one just a few weeks ago and was not that impressed. It's cool to have, and it's the most technically advanced of the classic Atari systems, but if it weren't for the backward compatibility I don't think I'd have much reason to hook it up again.

I don't think desperation as much as make a fast buck. What Warner Atari and Tramiel Atari had in mind for the 7800 were two distinctly different things. Well I should clarify that I meant at the time it was actually released in mass quantities. It really should have just remained shelved, business-wise, although then none of us would have it to play But it was not one of Atari's more successful consoles. Atari's relative creative and commercial success can basically be ranked in chronological order... 2600, 5200, 7800, XEGS, Jaguar... (the Lynx is sort of the black sheep, not sure where it really fits in.) Each successive system was technically superior to the previous model but also further and further behind the competition, often late to market and with fewer and fewer original games as time went on. The 7800 was a technically better system than the 5200 but it was also a less innovative, "safer" system that just felt really conservative and did not have any new ideas in either the system itself or the gameplay of the games Atari released. It was just a progression in graphics and a return to the simpler controller and case designs of their earlier days (literally, in terms of the casing). It felt old the day it hit stores. I don't really know enough about the 7800 to know what was possible and what wasn't. But I've seen comparisons between the same games released on the 7800 and the NES (Double Dragon, for example) and the 7800 version always seems to look like total ass. So I don't really know if there was any real hope for this system whatever games they'd put out for it. It's one thing to look back on it now, when all classic systems sort of blend together and we forget about the specific points in time when individual systems were on the market and competing with each other. I don't remember seeing anything from the 7800 at the time that led me to think it wasn't a generation behind the NES, technology-wise. I'm sure it wasn't really that bad technically but 7800 graphics just never looked all that smooth or detailed to me. It seemed a greater disparity than the NES vs. the SMS or the SNES vs. the Genesis, that's for sure. It seemed more like PSX vs. Dreamcast.

It was more of an act of desperation on Atari's part. It felt old and crusty by the time it was released... this was already 1987, the NES and Sega Master System were already out, and the 7800 still had that pre-crash feel to it. Some people like it but I'd bet most of those people got into it after it was already discontinued. They're looking at it nostalgically, especially considering that it does have some of the best Atari arcade ports for any of Atari's consoles... but that was not what people were looking for in the late 1980's.

One little tidbit related to this: the Japanese still use the generic term "TV Games" rather than "Video Games" - because of these Nintendo machines. Nintendo had a whole line of these that used the "TV Games" moniker and it just stuck as a generic term there.

Ebay is the best source for these two systems. Boxed C64's are still a dime a dozen there and most go for around $10. With a disk drive, maybe $20. Boxed O2's are also surprisingly common on Ebay, and not very expensive (~$40). I guess a lot of people bought these things, played them a couple times and then stuffed them in a closet for 25 years. I have not yet bought either of these systems because it seems like there's an almost endless supply of them, although that's obviously not true and over time they will get harder to find.

Are you kidding? Every Sega system has practically required importation to get the most out of it. Moreso than any other company's systems that I know of. The Saturn was a bit worse in this, the Dreamcast about the same, but there are definitely some good Japanese imports for the Genesis/MegaDrive that weren't available here. SOJ's and SOA's mutual dislike for each other was pretty well-documented over the years.

It's not just mint, it's MINT. Don't you forget it!

To me, it does. If you tested it, it means you opened the box, took the game out, put it in a system and played it. That is pretty much the definition of "used". It doesn't matter if you used it once or a thousand times, you still used it. If I was selling a game like this I'd ask the seller what they preferred ahead of time - I'm sure some people would rather get a tested game, but "tested" and "new" are mutually exclusive terms in this case. I would be pretty annoyed if I got a game that was described as new that somebody had obviously opened before me. Part of the point of buying new is knowing you are the first person to ever open the box; once somebody else has opened the box once, I have no idea where that game has been. You could tell me you only opened it once but how do I know that? You could have kept it lying around bare for the last 20 years, used it 100 times, then cleaned it up and put it back in the box and called it new. "New" is one of those terms that has no wiggle room. It doesn't have to mean shrinkwrapped, because a lot of games were never shrinkwrapped (even today, a lot of Japanese games are not shrinkwrapped). But it does have to mean that the game itself has never seen the light of day since leaving the factory. I also think what EB and Gamestop do with their games is definitely shady too... they seem to think that game stores don't count when it comes to whether or not a game is used. It doesn't matter who is using it, it's still been used!

On the other hand, it can play other games that an older Genesis can't. At least not without modification. One example: Can't do that with an unmodified Genesis 1! I use my Genesis 3 as my primary Genesis for this reason. Sega/Majesco removed all region locks (both physical and electronic). Don't think it'll play PAL MD games, but it'll play Japanese ones.

I do pretty much the same things, the only real difference is I often don't bother doing anything to clean carts unless they're rare or otherwise special. I will generally glue down any wayward labels, whether the game's rare or not, because a) it's an easy fix and looks a lot better, and b) it's a pain when a label falls off and you can't tell what it is anymore (without either picking it up and looking at the big label, or actually having to play it). I do clean systems until they're looking minty, with cotton swabs and toothpicks if necessary. This can take all night for one system.

Pet peeve of mine too - new means new! It doesn't mean some arbitrary definition of what the seller thinks of as "like new" - it means new, never opened, never touched by human hands inside. I've never had what happened to you happen to me but I've seen tons of auctions described as new that obviously weren't. So it unfortunately doesn't surprise me.

I don't have any problem with the control in games like Soul Calibur II, Virtua Fighter 4 or DOA Ultimate... I don't really even see what the difference is. Both 2D and 3D fighting games require a lot of non-intuitive input combinations to pull off various advanced moves, but they can all also be basically button-mashed through just by hitting the punch and kick buttons over and over (not that you'll beat an experienced player that way, but you can still have fun). That's true of Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter alike.

Well, for what it's worth, and it probably ain't worth much, but I never liked Spiderman. In fact, when it came out I was writing video game reviews for a living and while I didn't review it myself, I think I probably have some idea of why it got the good reviews it did... I basically don't trust the gaming press at all. I mean if you learn to read between the lines you can glean some useful info, but there are reasons why the biggest games almost always get good reviews and it has very little to do with the quality of the games themselves. Well I don't know how you really define "the 32 bit era". I'd call it more just the "early 3D" era, though I personally would say the DC is a second-generation 3D system. It's obviously a generation ahead of the Saturn or PSX, and still holds its own with the PS2 and even Xbox today (go back and play Soul Calibur on the DC, then play SC2 on Xbox... there are differences, but they're relatively minor considering how much older Soul Calibur is). In terms of its lifespan, it came out 5 years after the PSX's and Saturn's Japanese release and at about the same time as the PS2's release (not quite a year earlier if I remember right). So I'd say it's more of a current generation system, not in the same class as the Saturn, PSX or even N64... Which is all just my roundabout way of saying I still love my Dreamcast as much as any of my current systems, I still think it has a lot of great games and I don't think its best games have really aged all that much. The best Dreamcast games are still as awesome as they ever were - maybe you're just finally over the hype that came with a lot of big game reviews. I totally notice it with most of the more mainstream PSX, N64 and Saturn games. Especially games that have been sequelized on later systems (go back and try playing the original DOA1 on the Saturn, then play the new DOA in DOA Ultimate on Xbox). The reason is 3D graphics are much more dependent on technology than 2D graphics are - once 2D graphics got to a certain point, it really became much more about art and design than how many sprites the system could push around. 3D graphics, though, can be designed by the best artists around and look fantastic in renderings and drawings but then look like complete ass in the game itself once the coders have to figure out how to actually fit that artwork into just a few polygons and a few K of texture memory. I suppose that's changing over time though and the technology will again eventually get to a point where it's really the art and style that differentiates 3D graphics... The Saturn is aging better than the PSX because it has a better selection of 2D games. It was probably the ultimate 2D system. The PSX, on the other hand, does have a lot of good RPG's, so if you still get into the story it's probably still possible to get into some of them (I played through Final Fantasy 7 again a while back and loved it as much as I did the first time). The Dreamcast, though, is still a fantastic system, IMO. It's barely aged at all so far.

I don't want to monopolize the thread, but since I'm here... In my personal experience, mostly when people try to re-glue things shut they overdo it. So personally, I'd look for signs of that - bubbling in the cardboard (from it being wet with glue), glue that's "bled" over the corner of the box, and flaps that are glued completely shut all the way around. For that last one, you'd have to actually pull gently on the corner of the flap a little and see if there's any "give" to it - since the glue was originally concentrated in the middle (at least it was on my two 2600 boxes), the corners probably wouldn't be completely sealed down in a real sealed unit. I'd personally also be suspicious if it was too tight of a seal. This is 25 year old glue; it's probably not going to hold for much longer. If you pull on it a little bit I'd think you'd probably feel like it was going to give way if you didn't let go if it's a truly new system. Honestly, though, I really think you're gonna have a tough time finding sealed boxes for any of these systems, especially that you can test ahead of buying. Once in a blue moon you see them on Ebay but there's no way to test those seller claims before purchasing, and out in the wild you will probably never, ever find a sealed unit. 2600's may be marginally easier to find than the other two, but it's still going to be really difficult.

Sorry, the 5200 box is actually two separate pieces, not clamshell. The 7800 box is a clamshell. But still, I can't see how glue would have worked.

The 2600 was glued shut. The 7800 and 5200 I'm actually not sure about, because they're sort of "clamshell" box designs that gluing (or stapling) wouldn't really work on. I just haven't looked at mine closely enough to try to figure it out either, but it seems like tape is really the only thing that would have worked on these. As for how to tell if a box has been tampered with, on the 2600 it should be pretty easy to tell if you've got the original glue or not just by looking at the glue patterns. The original stuff is "clumped" in a pretty obvious and consistent manner. If you see any clumps of a different color or in the wrong place (the glue was mostly concentrated towards the middle of the flap), then it's probably been tampered with. I really don't know how to tell with the 5200 and 7800 because I don't know how they were sealed originally.

I wasn't questioning you.. I've got you on ignore, I didn't even know you posted until today...

I had this, but in a regular jewel case... I recommend picking up the original Wipeout - I bought this in a longbox, sold my entire PSX setup, then bought another one later and went on Ebay and specifically looked for another Wipeout in a longbox. It's just so much cooler than the jewel case version, and it's a great game too.