Sunday Roundup: 6/5/16

It has been a busy couple of weeks! The end of May I went back home to watch my brother get married! It was amazing, of course, and it was the first time I was back home in Indiana in almost two years! The weekend immediately after was Fanime, an anime convention here in California that we’ve gone to for the past few years. We dressed up, we bought stuff, and we had a good time. Following that we had a friend move in with us until he can find a place of his own, and now Laura’s sister is back home for a couple weeks before her job starts! Phew! Thankfully though, a visit home means a ton of new video games I can’t get here in California! Let’s break it down!

 

Flea Market Finds!

This past weekend I was finally able to make it to the De Anza College Flea Market! It is held every first Saturday of the month, and I’ve been consistently coming up with reasons why I can’t make it! Laura and I would literally be planning on going one weekend, and then something would come up and cause us not to make it. Thankfully this month we had the backing of Laura’s sister and our friend who wanted to go too, cementing our trip! I went into the flea market hoping to find games (naturally) but was really looking for something extraordinary to make the whole trip worthwhile. There were some good finds, some busted haggles, and, if you can believe it, an extraordinary find!

 

Sunday Roundup: 3/29/15

Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party 3 Wii Release Date: October 27th, 2009 Purchased at: GameStop (Campbell, CA – $5) I wasn’t expecting much from this trip to GameStop, because the last few times Laura and I made our way out here it wasn’t very fruitful. But this time there was a trio of games I happily waited behind a super slow family trading in an Xbox 360 and a dozen games to buy! After finding Dance Dance Revolution II last week, I kind of thought my next DDR would be Dance Dance Revolution and I’d be looking for Hottest Party 3 for a much longer time. It’s not an expensive game (obviously), but it’s been hard for me to track a copy down in my area. I’m happy I’ve almost completed the Wii DDR library!

Lost in Blue: Shipwrecked Wii Release Date: September 23rd, 2008 Purchased at: GameStop (Campbell, CA – $5) While I was happy to have found Hottest Party 3 at this store, I was even more surprised to also find Lost in Blue on Wii! The GameStop employee said he didn’t even know there was a Lost in Blue on the system, to which I wasn’t surprised or upset: rather, I was kind of impressed he even knew what the Lost In Blue series was, let alone recognized it when I brought up the game. This was a really great find, because it’s not only complete and a great price, but it completes my series collection!

Fossil League: Dino Tournament Championship DS Release Date: January 16th, 2007 Purchased at: GameStop (Campbell, CA – $3) Though I would prefer it to be complete, I couldn’t pass up this one for so cheap! Fossil League is kind of like a dinosaur themed Pokemon game: you collect and train your massive reptiles to do battle, leveling them up along the way, and eventually tracking down every last one. Most reviews draw this comparison to Pokemon, which honestly isn’t bad: the Pokemon series is a wonderful franchise to model your game on, and one that features dinosaurs at its core seems like a winner to me. I also like how this game also has incredibly similar ties to another franchise: Fossil Fighters.

Gears of War: Judgment Xbox 360 Release Date: March 19th, 2013 Purchased at: Target (Sunnyvale, CA – $5) Why yes, I will buy you for just $5, Gears of War: Judgment. I still haven’t gotten through all of Gears of War 2 (let alone GoW3), although Laura and I will occasionally talk about how we still haven’t finished the game. From what I remember during the time of this game’s release, the story and gameplay was average, but was kind of a letdown from the past trilogy. I’ll likely keep this one sealed, since I don’t really have much interest in the game, but couldn’t pass on that deal.

Fighters Megamix Saturn Release Date: December 21st, 1996 Purchased at: eBay (Online – $6) My very first import game! I was really happy when this one arrived: it was well packaged and in perfect condition! Two years ago Laura bought me an Action Replay for my Saturn, which allows the console to play games from any region, including Japan, which has some exclusive games worth playing. Also, some games for the US Saturn are incredibly expensive, while their Japanese counterpart are incredibly cheap (like this game!). I’ll try to stream some of the game later this week if I’m lucky. And to end of a funny note, this was my favorite game on the ill-fated Game.Com system. Yes… I have a Game.Com.

Laters,
Jsick

 

Sunday Roundup: 2/8/15

Good lord, when stores have sales I tend to go crazy! This time around, Space Cat, a local used game store, moved locations to a bigger yet somehow more cramped space, and to commemorate the transition offered 50% off their used games under $9.99! I’m sure you can tell I picked up a lot of titles. What was doubly great about this deal however was the fact that a lot of games I previously passed on during my past visits to the store were still there, and now they’re even cheaper! Those account for a lot of the pickups this week. There was also a random visit to a board game selling couple on Craigslist that lead to a new Wii Fit as well as a very successful trip to Mountain View’s GameStop! And any week I can scrounge up a Sega Saturn game is a good week, so throw that onto the pile for this post as well!

 

Sunday Roundup: 11/9/14

I can officially say the craziness of the eBay auctions has officially ended this week. The last couple of orders have come in, and there is only one more game that I’ve ordered that I’m waiting on (which should have been here by now, because I ordered it well over two weeks ago). This week was also special because a coworker of mine actually gave me some of her old, albeit beat up, Sega Saturn games! And Laura and I made a trip to San Jose we don’t commonly make, and I was able to secure a copy of a game to finish up a DS trilogy. All around a fun week in collecting!

 

Video Review: Die Hard Arcade

My first video using my Sega Saturn! Die Hard Arcade is such a fun game. It alone makes me happy to own the system! Now I want to play Dynamite Cop for the Dreamcast…

Laters,
Jsick

 

Worth Playing vol. 8: The Crossover Collection

Crossovers are the best fan service gamers can get. The blending of popular IPs into one unique game usually gets fans in a fever, finally being able to play as Sonic the Hedgehog in a Mario-themed game. Or finally being able to see who would win between the X-Man Wolverine and the Street Fighter Ryu. The opportunities for creating these scenarios is endless, but despite this we don’t get too many crossover games. Maybe it has something to do with publishing rights, company egos, or (most likely) money, but whatever the culprit may be, there are still a handful of crossover video games that are a hell of a lot of fun to play, and totally worth your time!

 

Sunday Roundup: 6/1/14

Mario Kart 8 Wii U Release Date: May 30th, 2014 Purchased at: Target (Sunnyvale, CA – $60) In case you haven’t been reading anything about video games lately, Mario Kart 8 released this Friday for Wii U! With a truly fantastic promotion that nets you a free video game, there hasn’t been a better time to buy the console! After playing with it this weekend, I can say that it is definitely a wonderfully fun racing game, and feels like Mario Kart. The new stages are quite interesting and fun to play, and I’ve only unlocked a few characters and extra stages! So there are plenty more races in my future! And one more note: I’m happy that my first character unlocked was the Koopaling Ludwig!

Myst Sega Saturn Release Date: 1995 Purchased at: FanimeCon (San Jose, CA – $8) You could imagine my surprise when I was attending this year’s FanimeCon and came across a booth selling retro video games! Strangely enough, it was literally the last booth in the hall, so I was really surprised when I got there! They were an online group that happened to set up shop at the con, but the great thing was their selection, prices, and quality. Most everything they had was complete, with only a few loose Game Boy games and Atari classics. There were some other good titles I thought about grabbing, but only Myst and Silent Scope caught my eye.

Silent Scope 2: Dark Silhouette PS2 Release Date: September 18th, 2001 Purchased at: FanimeCon (San Jose, CA – $5) The only other game I bought from the booth was Silent Scope 2: Dark Silhouette. After putting up my video review of the original Silent Scope on PS2, I have been looking for copies of this game and the third game to complete the trilogy. While they aren’t very expensive games ($5 is probably on the high end), I haven’t been able to find them in my usual used game stores. It seems the most unlikely of places is where I need to start looking now.

Laters,
Jsick

 

Games I Have Somehow Never Played…

Well, this is embarrassing.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has played video game for more than a few years that you just can’t play them all. No matter how hard you have tried, you can’t fit in each video game that releases in a year into your play rotation. Video games aren’t like movies: they can’t be seen and completed in a few short hours (at least most of them). They aren’t as easy to come by in some instances. And sometimes they simply don’t fit into your budget.

For this reason or that, we all have games that we’ve never gotten around to playing. Triple A games, too. The games that may have defined a generation. The games that people are still talking about to this day. The games that you kind of have to just shake your head at when others are discussing around you because you have no idea what is going on.

These are those games. Below you will find the shame of my gaming expertise. These are the games I’ve never played. At least as of yet.

 

Yearly Roundup: 2013

Another full year of game collecting has come to a close. While I don’t think 2013 stacked up as much as 2012 (in terms of amount of games added), 2013 still gave me dozens of great new games to play and cherish. I picked up a brand new console in 2013 with the Wii U, and even managed to snag a few new Sega Saturn and original Xbox games as well. This was also a strong year for downloadable games for me, especially for review on the 3DS, so a lot of games I’d have loved to own I only have in digital form. Sad, but not the worst thing that could happen. Without further adieu, here are the games of 2013: