#750 - Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak
NintendoAge.com
8/3/15
This is it. This is probably, really, finally it. The last NES game I'll add to my collection. I know I said the same thing last summer when I finally picked up a copy of Panic Restaurant, but this time I mean it. I present to you: Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak.
Earlier in the year I decided to trim some of the fat from my DVD shelves. I have a bad habit of going to resale shops, thrift stores and flea markets and buying up movies and TV shows for a few bucks to watch once and then never touch again. Sometimes I'll even get suckered in by a Barnes & Noble 50% off Criterion sale and come home with films like A Night to Remember. It's a fine movie and all, but not one that I'll rewatch a thousand times. The result is a shelf full of movies that would be better off in someone else's home.
Learning my lesson from low-value store trade-ins in the past, rather than take a box of DVDs to Half Price Books, I threw a bunch of them up on eBay to see if I could squeeze any value out of my lots. It worked to an extent, and what sold netted me a nice little cushion of PayPal funds. I told myself that I'd sit on the money, and if a nice deal for a Flintstones cart came up, I'd make a run at it.
And, so, here we are.
A nice chap from the NintendoAge forums (where I mostly lurk and seldom post) wrote up a seller's thread with his entire collection up for grabs. I checked out his list and noticed a few heavy hitters within, but it was the Flintstones title that grabbed my attention.
On a lark I sent him a message to gauge his price. I hadn't checked in on the price the game was fetching online lately, but I knew it had jumped to be the 2nd or 3rd most expensive game in the licensed set, so I was hesitant that the asking price would be at eBay levels. He messaged me back quickly and we exchanged numbers a couple of times, photos of the cart (the end label is a little chewed, but I didn't mind) and the circuit board (thankfully authentic), finally agreeing on a price that (with my PayPal funds eating some of the cost) made the out-of-pocket hit much more manageable. In the end, I feel I got a pretty fair deal - we didn't even really have to negotiate on price very much. It was certainly better than anything I'd find on eBay. Plus, Flintstones is realistically the last cart I needed for my set, and sometimes you pay a premium to finish things off.
So what does this leave? Well, I'm rather uninterested in the unlicensed games that I've not acquired. If, by some chance, I stumble across one that I need for a good price, I'll snag it, but I'm not actively looking for them. I think I've already got all of the quality unlicensed titles anyway.
Stadium Events, in my mind, is a variant of World Class Track Meet (actually, it's the other way around, WCTM is the variant of SE, but whatever). They are, literally, the same game. While it would be cool to own a copy strictly for completionist/historical/curiosity value, the cost is simply out of this world for a copy of the cartridge. Video Game Price Charts has it trending at $8,000 - which is insane. With the value and demand being where they are, many have taken to producing counterfeit or 'reproduction' copies and passing them off as authentic, so the risk right now is simply too great.
Similarly, I have no intention of going after pseudo-official games like the Nintendo World Championships - I'm way out of the price market for those. Occasionally I find I have an interest in homebrew games such as the Battle Kid series (which are both excellent), so I may pick up some that look to be of the same quality and level of fun.
About a month ago, I picked up a Retron 5 machine. This emulator console is compatible with NES, SNES, Genesis/Mega Drive, Game Boy/Color/Advance...and Famicom/Super Famicom. I've always had a nagging interest in the Famicom, especially for the games that never saw a US release, but are playable by non-Japanese speaking players. Games like Devil World (FC), Binary Land (FC) and Back to the Future Pt 2 (SFC) look fun, and now that I have the Retron 5, I'll be able to easily play them myself.
So, maybe in the future I'll give some Famicom collecting a shot. No need for a 'full set' this time around, as many games are mahjong or slot machine/casino games, are unplayable if you don't speak Japanese, or are also available as standard US NES releases. But, I would like to pry into that world a little to see what it has to offer.
As a quick ending note - yes, I did play (and finish) the Flintstones game. It's a solid platformer that I had fun with for a couple of hours. The last level is a challenge, for sure. Glad I got to play it (finally).
