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!

 

It’s Time to Spend Those Club Nintendo Points!

Nintendo announced a couple weeks back that the loyalty incentive program, Club Nintendo, would be closing down in Summer of 2015, to be followed by a yet-unannounced new program. The Big N also promised dozens of new rewards and games to spend your hard earned Club Nintendo Coins on before the program shuts its doors for good. The company came through on those promises on Monday, releasing a handful of new physical rewards to spend points on, as well as over 100 digital games across all of their current systems! These are the last items to be made available for the entire program, with nothing (assuming Nintendo sticks to what it has stated) being added until the discontinuation of the service in July.

So if you have Club Nintendo points, now is the time to use them!

Now that the rewards catalog has been fully updated, there are still two more important dates to remember:

3/31/2015: Last day to register products with Club Nintendo to earn coins
6/30/2015: Last day to spend Coins on Club Nintendo

Keep in mind these dates and the fact that what’s there now is what’s going to be there through June. Assuming some of those physical rewards don’t get swooped up first, since it is a first come first served basis. Speaking of those physical rewards, there are some cool ones!

Leading the charge is easily the 800-Coin The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask Messenger Bag. Big enough to hold a standard or smaller sized laptop, the sweet bag comes stitched with the Majora’s Mask logo, the Club Nintendo Logo, and a cool rendering of the Skull Kid and the titular Mask. It’s pricey, coming in as the second most expensive item on the entire list, digital or otherwise (for some reason Nintendo thinks Wii Party U is worth 850 Coins. Great game, but really?)., but it’s also a cool item, and one that will surely have huge collector’s value in the future. Also, unique Zelda swag, especially officially licensed from Nintendo swag, is hard to come by that doesn’t also come with a Hot Topic price tag.

The only other new physical items added that I think are worthwhile are the 2016 desktop calendar, which sounds kind of lame but if it’s like the one they’re showing off from 2015 is actually pretty awesome, and the Majora’s Mask Fierce Deity puzzle. I’m not a huge puzzle fan, otherwise I’d fork over the Coins for that too. As far as other physical items go, Club Nintendo has had a nice string of those “Card Case 18” cases that can store your loose DS/3DS games, but this new one isn’t as neat as the others in my opinion.

If you’re like me though, you’ll really want to take a look at those digital games you can download. And man, take a look indeed, because there are over 100 games to download with your Coins. Virtual Console games, eShop games, and even full-blown retail games for the Wii U, 3DS, and the good ol’ Wii are included. Here’s a few highlights:

Nintendo 3DS:

Super Mario 3D Land – 600 Coins
Paper Mario: Sticker Star – 700 Coins
Star Fox 64 3D – 700 Coins
HarmoKnight – 300 Coins (By the creators of the Pokemon series)
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX – 200 Coins
Ketzal’s Corridors – 200 Coins (A fun puzzle game exclusive on the 3DS)
A few dozen other eShop exclusives and Virtual Console games

Wii U:

Golden Sun – 200 Coins
Super Metroid – 200 Coins
EarthBound – 250 Coins
NES Remix – 300 Coins
The Wonderful 101 – 600 Coins
Wii Party U – 850 Coins (Pricey, but if you have 4 friends to play with this is an absolute blast!)

Wii:

Doc Louis’s Punch-Out – 250 Coins (A huge collector’s item which will now plummet in price)
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past – 250 Coins
Super Smash Bros. – 250 Coins (The Nintendo 64 original)
Excitebike: World Rally – 250 Coins (an eShop exclusive sequel to the Excitebike series)
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask – 250 Coins

Those are the games that caught my eye at first, but looking through the list again there are some other really great titles! You should have no problem spending your points between now and July, because there’s both quantity and quality included.

Nintendo really outdid themselves with this final lineup of Club Nintendo content. It makes me wish Club Nintendo was like this all the time: a few dozen games to choose from each month, instead of just six, which were starting to be repeats.

While I’m sad to see Club Nintendo leave (I actually kind of did enjoy doing those silly surveys), I am hoping for bigger and way better things with the next program Nintendo will roll out. I hope to hear some details about it soon since the old program is now terminal. I’m pulling for more physical rewards, but I bet Nintendo will go with a money-incentive based program, meaning if you spend so much/register so much, you’ll get kicked back some spending cash on the eShop. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but not my cup of tea.

So don’t forget to spend those points! Pick up something nice for yourself and wait for the next (hopefully) great thing to come out later this year!

Laters,
Jsick

 

Sunday Roundup: 2/1/15

It’s been a long time since I picked up some games on Craigslist, but this week was too good for me to pass up. Making it even better were three (!) successful trips to three different GameStops. I picked up Wii games, DS games, and even a couple PSP games. Whenever I can get three consoles or more in one week’s Roundup I feel a little bad: maybe I’m spreading myself too thin with all these consoles to possibly buy for, but then I look at the actual games, remember why I want to play/own them, and justify the purchase.

 

Game Hunter’s Journal: The Convenience (and Disadvantage) of eBay

Online auction site eBay can be a real haven for game collectors. Literally everything you could ever want is on the site. That includes games, specific versions of games, very specific inserts and other stuff included with a game but not necessarily the game, and some other things you didn’t even existed (but now must have!). With everything at your fingertips, it’s easy to get drawn into the black hole that is eBay and never look back. As a game collector you can use eBay to get all kinds of stuff you otherwise would never find, but using eBay the proper way can be challenging. Here’s how a game collector should use eBay to their advantage and grow their collection the best, most efficient, way possible.

 

Review: Super Princess Peach

It’s not often Peach gets to steal the limelight from Mario. Even when she can scrape up some screen time it’s almost always while being held captive under Bowser or someone else’s clutches. If you wanted to play as Peach you were limited to romps around the Mushroom Kingdom either riding go karts or playing tennis. But with Super Princess Peach for the original Nintendo DS the eponymous princess steps to the forefront as the game’s hero, saving Mario, Luigi, and countless Toads from certain doom. Although a bit old, the game holds up well and is a welcome addition to the excellent Mario franchise.

 

Sunday Roundup: 1/25/15

A massive haul from several Goodwill’s around the area helped to make this first official Sunday Roundup of 2015 a big one. There isn’t anything extraordinary in the haul this week, but there are some fun titles and some titles I’ve been sitting on for a long time. I also continued the trend of buying the entire Tony Hawk’s series someone keeps donating. Eventually I’ll run out of games/consoles I don’t have yet, so I’ll need to think of something else to do in the meantime. 

 

Top Ten Pick Ups of 2014

In lieu of the usual Yearly Roundup, where I recount every game added to the collection over the past year, this year I’ve decided to do something different. As with every year here on SlickGaming there are many excellent finds and surprising deals on video games each and ever month, and I’ve always had a blast sharing them all with you. But now it’s time to look at the best of the best from 2014. I purchase a lot of games that are, for better or worse, padding to the collection. Now it’s time to look past those and determine the best, most exciting, and generally awesome finds of the last year. The following games (or groups of games) were the most impressive additions to the catalog in 2014. They’re not necessarily the rarest or most hard to find, but rather the most memorable pickups and greatest deals.

 

A Hands on with PlayStation Now

While attending this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, I was able to stop by the Sony booth and get a hands-on demo with PlayStation Now, Sony’s online streaming service for the PlayStation line of products. Having just announced a new subscription service at the beginning of the show, the online streaming service is beginning to become more enticing for price of admission. Before I decide to plop down $20 a month for the service, I was able to demo the service’s capabilities at the show, as well as ask some questions to Jack Buser, the Senior Director of the PlayStation now brand.

 

Sunday Roundup: 12/28/14

I’m late on getting this Christmas themed Sunday Roundup out, but after the holiday itself, and the craziness that was my job, followed by the fun times had on New Year’s Eve, and then a week long vacation in Las Vegas and getting to see the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show, I barley had any time to write! Because of that, I have actually combined the last three weeks into this one Roundup. Honestly, it really just contains the games from the holidays, as I didn’t buy but one game afterward, but to be perfectly fair, you all know. Also, this is the last Roundup of 2014! And I have to say, it was an exceptional way to end the year indeed!

 

Holiday Gaming Memories

With the Holiday season in full swing (nay, almost over), I began reminiscing about past Christmases and all the happy holiday moments I’ve had. As with last year, I’m in California away from my family, but that doesn’t mean I won’t still create new memories that will last a lifetime! Anyway, there have been some truly excellent gaming related Christmas memories that I want to share with you all.