As far as this blog is concerned, it has come to this - a limp clip show to end the season. No new retro games were under the tree this year and rightfully so. eBay resellers can bite me. So instead, I offer up the dirty twin of year-end top 10 lists, a 'year in review' article!
Collecting Nintendo got ever more difficult this past year. Prices on the rare and fun games jumped (in some cases by 400%) seemingly out of nowhere. There are way more collectors out there now than even just 3 years ago, and NES-era games are by far the most popular. Some, like me, are nearing the end of a complete NES set, so the last few hard to find titles are getting quite difficult to obtain at a reasonable going rate.
That said, I was able to add 14 NES games to the collection this year. In order:
TMNT: Tournament FightersDragon Warrior IV
Baby Boomer (unlicensed)
Fire 'n Ice
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers 2
Cowboy Kid
Robodemons (unlicensed)
Zombie Nation
Bandit Kings of Ancient China
Stack Up
Dragon Fighter
Godzilla 2
Bonk's Adventure
Stunt Kids (unlicensed)
It's funny to me, because when I first started collecting I could go to the local retro game shop and make use of 'buy 3 get 1 free' deals on $3 games and walk out with a sack of a dozen carts at a time. Now it's taken a whole year to pick up just 14 - goes to show how difficult it is to finish off a set on a budget.
Of the games I acquired, Zombie Nation was probably my favorite for a couple of reasons. First, the story behind the game is weird and fun - fly through cities as the head of a samurai warrior spirit and take down the possessed Statue of Liberty? Yes, please. In addition, I picked up the game off eBay literally only a few days before the price on it somehow tripled. No kidding - sellers online are asking $150 or more for this game when I believe I picked it up for around $50. Just goes to show you the advantage of going after open auctions vs. 'buy it now' options.
With the lack of true-blue NES carts to be had, I expanded the collection in other ways. The 'How to Score More Points' VHS starring video game CHAMPION Skip Rogers is a nostalgic favorite for me and many others my age that were in to Nintendo back in the early '90s.
Speaking of nostalgia, I was reunited with my good 'ol robotic operating buddy, R.O.B. thanks to a sweet Craiglist deal. Sure, he's no fun to play with, but he looks great sitting beside the TV in the nerd cave, which I also took a photographic tour of to mark the first anniversary of Little Gray Squares. Looking at the analytics of the blog itself, the post regarding Universal Game Cases is my most popular - mostly from people Googling the cases and somehow being directed here.
Add in a couple of oddball carts - a Transformers game for the Japanese Famicom (that I still don't have an adapter to play) and a reproduction of the cancelled Star Trek: The Final Frontier game and you've got my NES collecting for 2012. All in all, it was a great year, and I'm very lucky to have the ability to collect something as frivolous as obsolete video games. Hopefully in 2013 I'll have the good fortune to stumble across one of the final four carts I need to finish off the set - maybe under a pile of old magazines in some crazy lady's flea market booth or in some misspelled eBay auction that nobody but me sees.
In the meantime, I'll try my hand at this new Nintendo WiiU...I hear you can play Super Mario Twins on it!
