#746 & 747 - Big Nose Freaks Out & Nobunaga's Ambition 2

  
 #746 - Big Nose Freaks Out
eBay
2/12/13

#747 - Nobunaga's Ambition 2
eBay
7/21/13
 
Well, well, well.  What have we here?  Hello, little blog.  Don't see much of you around here lately...that's ok.  You look marvelous.

Ummm...so. It's been a while, hasn't it?  Well, to be honest, there hasn't been much to write about, nor have I had much of an inclination to write about random whatever stuff, so LGS has gone dormant.  Think of it as an offseason.

I haven't been buying much of anything NES for a while now, mainly because there isn't a whole lot left for me to pick up.  As I mentioned a couple of posts back, the games I've got left to add to the collection are expensive and scarce.  But that's no excuse for not mentioning the Big Nose Freaks Out gold cart I ordered back in February.  Really, I meant to do a little write-up about it, but it's not an interesting story.  I got it on eBay.

In fact, I already had a copy before I got the gold cart.  Camerica (the publisher of this and other unlicensed games, as well as a partner of some kind with Galoob for the ultimate cheater's device known as the Game Genie) had a sort-of-a-good idea on their hands in the form of the Aladdin Deck Enhancer.  The idea was that all NES games have a certain number of physical parts in common, from the circuitry to the plastic case.  So then, why not develop and sell a plastic shell that held these common parts and sell mini-cartridges with different games on them and undercut the fully manufactured games?  Thus the Aladdin Deck Enhancer was born, along with a handful of these mini-cartridges that you could swap out to play the different games.

While it seems like a good idea, the games available were unlicensed and while that doesn't necessarily mean they are bad games, they were doomed to be shoved to less visible markets apart from the Toys 'R Us and Wal-Marts of the day.  Low sales led to the scrapping of the idea and the switch to more conventional cartridges - although these were gold and required some fidgeting with a switch on the back to bypass the NES lockout chip.  Oh, and you still couldn't buy them from a normal store.  Fully sealed Aladdin Decks and mini-cartridges are rather common - evidence of a bulk sell-off of old stock.

I already had the Big Nose Freaks Out mini-cartridge, but if you're going to 'collect them all' then the gold cart must be added to the list.  Check. Done.  Moving along.

Nobunaga's Ambition 2 is a game I've been hunting down for quite some time - longer than I cared to, actually.  It's a strategy/sim game, which I'm discovering I'm no longer TOTALLY against (Fire Emblem: Awakening is a strategy game that I'm enjoying quite a bit, although the mechanics for that game are way different from Nobunaga...see below...).  But really - what DO you do here?  I built some flood protection and cleared land...then my townfolk rebelled against me.  Maybe I shouldn't have sold all their food to the neighbors...?

My inability to wrap my feeble mind around how to play these kinds of games, especially one whose style is cramped by limitations of an 8-bit home console, made Nobunaga 2 a low priority in my early collecting days.  I looked back at some price guides circa 2010 and saw that this game held steady at about $25 a pop, but I had bigger fish to fry back then.

I've mentioned it on this blog before, but one day, as if by some capitalist magic spell, all copies of Nobunaga's Ambition 2 disappeared from the Internet.  Amazon, eBay, half.com...all out of stock.  Suddenly...ONE copy came back into the light - from an eBay seller that regularly overprices their inventory.  What was once available all day long for only $25 was now being listed at $150.  WTF.

So it sat...and sat...and sat.  I don't think anyone ever bought it at that price - but when people who did have copies to throw up on eBay did a search and saw that there was only one copy and it was $150..."Well then," they thought. "This must be a RARE and VALUABLE game...I will also list mine for $150..."

 

And that's the way things have been for the last year or so.  See the price charting screenshot above.  Finally, enough copies have gone up that the relative scarcity of this title has been diminished and enough open auctions have ended at a more realistic price that I was able to launch into some minor bidding wars and nab this copy for what ended up being just over double what it would have been 3 years ago.  Video game collecting is no longer  an inexpensive hobby, folks.  I'm just glad I got most of my NES stuff before the everyone buying and selling threw caution to the wind and inflated the entire market.

If you're a new collector, Frankie says relax.  Have some patience and don't hit every "buy it now" that you see.  Open auctions will always net you a better deal.  Be patient and a good deal will come your way.

There are still piece of shit resellers on eBay trying to get $150 for a copy.  Fuck them.