#748 & #749 - P'Radikus Conflict and Panic Restaurant. Wait. Whaaaa??

P'Radikus Conflict
eBay
I dunno...July 2013? August? Whatever.

Some time last year I bought P'Radikus Conflict off eBay. Once it arrived in the mail I gave it about 10 minutes, didn't much care for what was happening and so it got shelved. I cared so little about it that I didn't update the blog...surely the world has been dying to know the truth!

I really have lost interest in the unlicensed set.

Now this next one...well here's a chilling tale of whimsy and frivolity!

 
Panic Restaurant
GamesPlus - Copperfield
8/22/14

I came home last Friday after a rousing day of inservice meetings and classroom preparation. School was set to start the following Monday, and that night there was to be a lock-in retreat we hold for our advanced level students in the school gym. You haven't lived until you've slept on an air mattress in a high school gymnasium. Luxury in its most pure and highest form.

I was only going to be home for a couple of hours to mentally prepare for what was ahead of me that evening. I cruised Facebook and a game shop that stocks retro wares in town posted up a picture of their recent trade-ins: Bomberman II, Fire 'n Ice and Panic Restaurant. Quite a trio of hard to find NES titles! I had already picked up Fire 'n Ice in a NintendoAge.com deal a couple of years ago and Bomberman II was a $5 pickup at the shadiest flea market in the Houston area.

But that Panic Restaurant. One of the final 3 games I needed to complete my licensed NES set, and the only one of the 3 even remotely in my price range. The cost of the game has more than doubled in the last few years as game prices across the board are skyrocketing. I'm glad I did the bulk of my collecting back when things were a little more sane and fun.

I'd been checking eBay and other places on the web and never felt like a deal was close, even as my 'max offer' kept going up to keep pace. When I saw the picture posted to Facebook, I figured I'd give them a call to feel them out on price and hopefully have them open the cart to check the authenticity of the game's guts. I actually almost bit on a copy on eBay from Mexico a few weeks ago, but an incorrect label was a giveaway that the cartridge was a bootlegged fake. Such a shame that this is even something that has to be considered when shopping for uncommon video games...

The clerk at the store was kind enough to check out the circuit board and authenticate it to my satisfaction, and even offered a 10% discount if I would pick the game up that evening. The store was about 45 minutes away, and I had that lock-in to get to in a couple of hours. I decided to give it a shot, and the game was afoot.

I still didn't want to pay their asking price out of pocket, but I knew I had some surplus games on my shelf that were worth a bit of scratch, as well as a PSP and a Dreamcast that I'd been threatening to break up with for the longest time. So I dumped a bunch of stuff in a box and brought them to trade in the hopes of getting a better deal.

Well, let me just say that I goofed in that regard. The trade-in value I knew would not be what I could get from just selling the games outright, but I was in a rush and wasn't thinking clearly when I accepted what they offered me. To be honest, I left a lot of cash on the table and traded away some valuable games. But what's done is done and it DID lower my total bill by about 30%. I wound up 'spending' far less than I ever would on eBay, but by far the most I'd personally spent on any one single game.

I was late to the lock-in, by the way. Really late.

I played the game after returning home from my night on the gym floor and guess what? Panic Restaurant is a fun little platformer. It's a short one, I beat it in an evening, but it was a good time and quality game. Taito's late era NES titles are well made.

So this leaves Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak and Stadium Events for a complete licensed set. I never expected to own Stadium Events, but until a couple of years ago, Flintstones was not an impossibility. We live in the present, however, and the price of F2 has gone into stupid crazy orbit. That, along with my dissatisfaction with unlicensed collecting, would appear to make this my last little gray square.

I'm not shuttering the blog, even though it has been more than a year since I last posted anything to it. In fact, I am teaching a video game design course this year at school, and part of my curriculum will be to have students write a gaming blog. Maybe this will inspire me to write more than I have been, as I enjoy it and hopefully you enjoy reading it. Until next time, EXCELSIOR!