August 2019 Retro purchases

So last month I only spent £18 on retro games which I said  pretty much an all time low for me. I know I have spent more this month but I wouldnt exactly call it a bountiful month.

 

My retro purchasing started on the 3rd when I went round a bunch of charity shops, I grabbed Red steel 2 complete for the Wii for £1.50 and I got a white and pink original DS without charger for £10 from, my original DS has a broken hinge so I guess this is its replacement even though if I play a DS game im far more likly to play it on my current 2DS.

I did look at a Wii but it was £25 in a charity shop and it was filthy had a minging looking dirty balance board with Wii fit, a probably not working its so scratched Mario kart and a wiimote that looked like it had been up some bodies ass. Amongst all that though with it included in the price was a pristine looking copy of Donkey Kong Country Returns, I offererd them £5 for Donkey Kong but they basically said ''nope we won't sell that separate, we are hoping someone will buy the whole lot just to get that''. , if someone does buy it best of luck to them scrubbing it all up. When I talk about some of my charity shop finds people think I have done great and live in a land with super charity shops full of gems but in truth I dig through a lot of filthy copies of Fifa and trash to find the things I end up with.

I didnt grab anything else then unti the 17th when I grabbed a few cheap games, nothing that old but good for the price. I got Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix for Wii 50p, Prince of Persia rival swords for Wii 50p, Call of Duty 3 for wii for 50p. Little big planet for ps3 for 50p , far cry 2 for ps3 for 50p, resistance fall of man for ps3 for 50p, grand theft auto 4 for ps3 for 50p, and fight night round 3 for ps3 for 50p. I also got a super slim ps3 with all its wires and 2 pads for £5 presuming something's would be up with it and that I would end up just taking the pad and wires and playing with the carcass of it. Well the machine worked a treat it had a 500gig hard drive in itand its now sat under the telly.

On the 19th I got Pokemon gold cart only for the gameboy for £10 from an Indy store. I was certain I had carts of all the old gameboy Pokemon's bar gold, but when I phoned my daughter mega excited she informed me I was wrong its silver I don't have she then backed it up with photo evidence, darn, I guess you cant win them all.

On the 24th I went to a little Indy game shop on the way back from work and got ISS2 for GameCube complete for £1 and then dance stage euro mix, dance stage party edition and who wants to be a millionaire 2nd edition all complete in great condition for 50pence each, I might steal there cases for better games.

On the 27th I visited a small shop and upon asking about SNES games he went in the back and pulled out the following few carts which I purchased, kick off 3, Nigel Mansells world championship racing and Kirby's dream course (jap) for £2 each. Mansell has almost no label though which is a shame, I'm sure some people would print it a new one but that's not something I personally like to do or see done.

My last retro purchase of the month was on the 29th when I grabbed Pokemon red cart only for £10 yesterday from an indy shop. I know I already have red but id had a hard day at work and wanted to grab something to cheer myself up and this ended up being it. I guess not all of my purchases are that smart some are done for silly reasons but oh well I could be spending my money on much worse things.

So if my calculations are correct I spent £50 this month on retro games. If I had to say anything was the best purchase then I guess it would need to be the PS3 I mean that is a pretty silly price for something so cool, but it just goes to show sometimes you need to throw the dice and let lady luck take you home.

The top 5 Retro games in my collection I could never sell

I talk to lots of people who buy or have retro games and we all seem to collect slightly different things, some people are into RPG's or the games of a certain studio or for a set platform, some peoples collections are in the process of growing others have started to downsize, some people have even quit collecting and then started again. On one of the forums I am on I thought it would be a good thing to discuss the games in peoples collections that people simply wouldn't be able to say goodbye to for one reason or another.

I wanted to think of ten games I own that I could simply not get rid  of but this proved tough so I decided Id start with 5 to get the ball rolling and then I could return to this topic in the future.

The number one game I could not get rid of is World of Illusion on the MegaDrive, the reason I couldnt get rid of it is purly sentimental, I dont really think it has that much worth money wise and I dont think its particularly a rare game but to me it holds huge sentimental value.  I can remember getting it for Christmas from my parents, I can remember how excited I  was the first time I played it and I have many happy memories of playing it with my mum who unfortunately passed away about 6 years ago. As silly as it might sound selling it would be like selling part of her, it would be like parting with a family heirloom and its not something I am prepaired or willing to do. I miss my mum a lot all of the time but even playing this game for a few minutes reminds me of how blessed I was to have her in my life and not only what a great mum she was but also how much fun we always had togther.

The second game I wouldnt want to get rid of is Fire Emblem for the GBA. Yes a fully boxed Pal copy of this game might be hard to come by and costly and this does feed into the reason im going to hold on to thid game tightly but theres a little more to it than that.  I got this game from a carboot for £5 complete back when the GBA was pretty current, I have to admit that as far as I remember I didn't have a clue what it was, I played it and instantly fell in love with it, it reminded me of Vandal Hearts  which I had previously rented on PS1 and extremly enjoyed. As far as it goes with this game I love the way it plays I find it extremly replayable, im really happy I didnt pay much for it and it sparked a love for a whole series of games which still burns brightly within me more than this though its the purchase that reminds me of many happy carboot trips and for me is like a symbol of my collection, and of the way I go about collecting games.

Number three is yet another Fire Emblem game, this time it is Fire Emblem Path of Radience , I first played this game when a buddy lent it me not long after release. He basically played it none stop, then lent it to me and I played it none stop and then we talked about the plot and characters loads. It was one of those games that I knew I would play through a whole bunch of times and that I needed to purchse it. So I kept my eyes open and looked for it all over the place, even when it was relativly new it wasnt exactly an easy game to get hold of, eventually I found a second hand copy in a local branch of GameStation and I purchased it for £20 and then a friend stole it, I struggled and struggled to get another copy which cost me £40 , its the game which actually stopped me letting people lend games from me. I guess I have it now and even if I ultimatly paid £60 as I had to buy it twice lots of people have paid a heck of a lot more for this game and with the amount I have played it the game has certainly been worth every penny.

The 4th game is The Punisher on Megadrive, lots and lots of happy memories of playing this with my brother, we were like best friends but we have drifted apart, this reminds me of the good old days. To be honest I wouldnt really want to get rid of any of my walk along beat em up games because its one of my favourate genresbut this is particularly true of the rare ones which would be incredibly hard to get again.

The 5th game I wouldnt ever want to get rid of would be Xcom Enemy Unknown for the PS1 , my whole friend group played this when I was younger and we chatted about it loads. My favourite person to compare notes with now lives in America, playing it is not only enjoyable it makes me think of our friendship.It was really funny as in the early stages of the game id use a certain tactic which would drive him up the wall, he always refered to  it as me cheating. So what did I do that was so bad? Well basically when I was on a mission with a tiny alien spaceship that had landed I would get a solider and make him prime a grenade, I would then have him walk into the alien craft knowing that he would be instantly gunned down but his grenade would then explode at the end of the turn killing the aliens inside, winning me the mission and securing me a tonne of things to sell and research, id sacrafice this one dude and it would really get the ball rolling. My friend would refuse to let anyone purposly die but would meanwhile loose loads of soldiers engaging in fair warfare with the Alien menace, my tactics might have worked better but if theres ever a real alien war id sooner he be my commanding officer than someone like me, just incase im the one holding the grenades.

My Retro Game Purchases for July 2019

So neither my blogging or my YouTubing have got off the ground yet again nor have I been taking photos of things either so once again there are going to be no pictures and in total honesty its not been that thrilling a month purchase wise. I am proberbly going to go a little more in to the real life stories of how I found the stuff I found mostly because people seem to find it strange that I actually find old games that are not like a bizzilion pounds but mostly because I just think that it will make this a more intresting read.

On July the 2nd I went in to a charty shop not to far from my house and I Paid £8 in total for a bunch of complete PS1 games. These games were Toca world touring cars, Toca 2, driver, driver 2 , smackdown, tomb raider the last revelation, die hard trilogy, syphon filter , syphon filter 2, and syphon filter 3 (platinum version). I had actually seen these games in this shop about a week ago but they were £4.99 each which I thought was a lot more than I wanted to pay especially for the Toca games. This day when I went in though I was buying some cheap dvd's to watch and the manager who knows im into old games mentioned that he thought the person who had put out the PS1 stuff had put it a bit high and it wasnt shifting, I said if it was less id have brought them already, next thing I know he tells me to bring them up and he would figure out a price he wanted for them and £8 was what he first said and I thought it was such a low amount he was asking for that it would be distastful to haggle any further.

Around the 6th I visited a small indy game shop and in a glass cabinet I noticed three 3rd party Dreamcast memory cards for £1 each one is a joytech 1mb, ones a joytech 4mb and the others an unnamed 4mb one. I figured this was a cheap asking price and so snapped them all up.

I didnt grab anything else then until the 25th, when I went in a charity shop near to my girlfriends house where there was a bunch of dirty looking copies of Fifa and stuff for one pound each but amongst them I saw a sealed copy of Tokyo Road Race for the PS2 for £1, not the most intresting retro purchase but one of not that many this month.

 

On the 27th I went on a overnight trip to Cottingham near Hull , which is about 90 miles away from me. I was there because my girlfriend was having an operation on her leg by a specialist surgeon. I went to visit her and as I wanted to see her more than one day I stayed over night in a shithole hotel about 5 miles from the hospital in what looked like a demilitarized zone. The hospital wouldn't let visitors in till 2 and I woke up at 9 and didnt want to spend one second more in the hotel than absolutly necesery so I spent like half a day busing and walking looking for charity shops to occupy myself and keep mind busy. I went in about 8 diffrent charity shops two in one area and 6 about another two miles closer to the hospital. It was in one of these that I found Spiderman for GameCube complete with a 3rd party memory card included in the box for £1, Dragonball z budokai boxed but missing manual for £1, Eighteen Wheeler boxed but missing manual for £1, and Rugrats Totally Angelica complete for PS1 for £3. 

 

 So all in all I only spent £18 this month on retro games which is pretty much an all time low for me. I am not dissapointed though I think that I got some decent stuff for my money and id rather spend a little and get decent stuff than over pay buying stuff just to be able to say that I have purchased something. Will I buy more in August who knows, it wouldnt be hard to spend more but then again I know that I am currently quiet busy so dont have quiet as much time to go looking for games, still lets see what the fates bring.