#733 - Baby Boomer (I Love the Smell of Commerce in the Morning!)

Game #733
Baby Boomer
3D Games - The Galleria

Today we went to The Galleria. The Galleria is the enormous shopping mall in the swell part of town. Everything is expensive in The Galleria. The Galleria smells like a mix of men's cologne and pretzels.

The reason we were at this shrine to capitalism was to visit the newly renovated Disney Store. My wife is a Disney nut, and I've been promising her a trip to see the latest in mouse-adorned merchandise. In addition to the little guys in the picture above and a couple of t-shirts, we walked away with a blue Color Dreams NES cart that I didn't already have on my shelf.

Near the escalator was a kiosk called 3D Games. There's another location in a different mall near the apartment we just moved out of, but I had never really found anything in there to buy. The selection was small and skewed to the PS2 and Xbox eras. Today at The Galleria location I noticed a smallish stack of NES in a glass case. I had everything they were selling, but noticed a blue cart on the top of the stack. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "What's the blue game on top?"
Store Guy #1: "Um...Baby Boomer?"
Me: "How much are you selling it for?"
Store Guy #1: "Um...let me look it up..."
Store Guy #2: "Oh that one's $4.99."
Me: "I'll take it."

Not a bad improvement over the $30+ the eBay sellers are asking (and not getting) for it.

Baby Boomer as a game is kind of strange. A baby has gotten loose somehow and mindlessly crawls along the landscape. It's up to you with your controller or Zapper to shoot all the snakes and wolves that are out to eat the baby, or to shoot the clouds to form ice bridges over pits. Umm...yeah. It's weird. Either my Zapper doesn't work with my TV or it doesn't work at all, because I couldn't shoot a damn thing with it. So I used the controller to move the crosshairs around and shoot stuff for a few minutes. I can now say that I've played Baby Boomer and that's good enough for me.

I know in my last post I said I wouldn't be getting games as frequently and would dive into some of the other stuff in my collection - but wouldn't you know it? I've got ANOTHER cart on the way that I'll share with you once it arrives. It's raining Nintendo!

#731 & 732 - Turtles, Dragons and a Guy Named Andy

Games #731 & 732
TMNT: Tournament Fighters & Dragon Warrior IV
eBay & NintendoAge

Arriving in the mail today are the two newest pieces of the collection: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters and Dragon Warrior IV. The Turtles game is a victim of a release date too close to the end of the NES's shelf life. Most people who bought this game got the 16-bit versions for the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis. Many of the games I've had to track down on the back half of my collection have a similar story - limited distribution too late in the game. I do plan to give this one some playtime as it looks to be a competent fighting game...for the NES. I picked it up on eBay for a slightly lower price than the average BIN - but I had some extra funds in the Paypal account after selling off a couple of carts on NintendoAge, so I got it for just a few bucks out of pocket.

Speaking of NA, the DW4 cart comes my way by way of Andy, who is one of the all-star members over there. I've mentioned the NA community on this blog a few times already, and I really do mean it when I say that I enjoy the company over there (even the disproportionally large percentage of Canadian members - you know who you are). Andy is a cool cat, always ready to shave various parts of his body on camera for shits and giggles (and a few bucks). I picked up the Dragon Warrior cart from him in a cash/trade deal that worked out pretty well - no eyebrow removal required. Thanks, Andy!

If my goal for 2012 is to finish off the licensed set (minus the video-jogging-and-jumping game that I already have under a different title) then I'm keeping on pace. Only 12 carts left to go. Since I doubt I'll pick up more than one game a month from here on out, I'll start to dig out some of the rest of the Nintendo collection and show off a few of the goods I've happened across on this little journey. Until next time...

#728-730 - Merry Happy!

Games #728-730
Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball, Uncharted Waters, Rad Racket Deluxe Tennis II
Santa Claus
12/25/11

Happy belated Christmas and an early Merry New Year from LGS (fancy abbreviation for my blog that no one reads)!! Hope you had a good holiday spent doing whatever it is that makes you happy. We had a good time moving into a new house and taking a play out of A Christmas Story by eating Chinese food on Christmas day.

Santa managed to find our new address and drop off 3 NES games to add to the collection shelf. Rad Racket Deluxe Tennis II is one of those funky AVE unlicensed carts - anyone ever heard of Deluxe Tennis I? Neither have I.

Uncharted Waters is a military strategy game that my feeble brain cannot understand, so it's going on the shelf for good.

I was most excited to finally get a hold of Dusty Diamond Softball. It's got a slightly different take on the usual baseball formula. You get to choose your players sandlot style before the game - and these are some funky looking kids (I think I saw Dracula in there somewhere). Each player has slightly different strengths and weaknesses that you can play around with. What's really interesting are the baseball fields themselves - strange locations such as the schoolyard complete with a set of different ground rules for each. There's no outer fence in some of the fields, so players can keep running if the ball bounces or rolls past the outfielders all the way to the buildings. It's a nice touch.

Side note - this is the final baseball game I needed. Ever wonder how many baseball games there were for the NES? Take a look:


We're just a few days away from a new year, so this is likely the last pickup before 2012. I started this blog back in April, and since that time I've added 39 games to the stockpile. There are 38 total games left to complete the full set, but only 15 of the gray licensed carts remain. That will be my goal for 2012 - to get those last 15. OK, so maybe Stadium Events will have to wait. 14 games in 12 months? Let's do this!

#727 - Ms. Pac-Man Deluxe!

Game #727
Ms. Pac-Man (Namco)
eBay
12/2/11

The opportunities have been few and far between for me to show you some poorly lit, grainy phone pics of Nintendo games. Today is your lucky day! You can breathe once again! Behold!

The games pictured above are essentially the same game - Ms. Pac-Man. The one on the right is the unlicensed Tengen version. Common. Get it everywhere for a few bucks. Move along.

The one on the left is the harder to find, licensed version published by Namco, released 2 years after the Super Nintendo in 1993 when the NES was collecting dust in closets everywhere.

You would think these two games would be identical, but you would be wrong. The black Tengen cart offers a spruced up version of the arcade classic with some interesting power ups and maps to play around with, while the gray Namco cart gives you a straight up port of the arcade game. Given the choice, I'd rather play the Tengen version - it offers more variety to what can become a stale game.

I'm really glad to cross this cart off my list - it's been a pain to sift through eBay listings for Ms. Pac-Man. Not only are most of the results the black Tengen cart, but you've also got Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis and just about every other game system to weed through. Ms. Pac-Man gets around. The gray cart usually gets listed in the $20-25 range - I lucked out and found an auction that went unnoticed and snagged it for half that.

The Pac family is finally all here. In addition to the 2 Ms. carts, I've got the 3 versions of the original Pac-Man (same game, 3 carts) and the bastard son that fell a little too far from the family tree - PacMania.



And finally I'll post up a shitty picture of a box. Yes, I bought a box. 25 year old cardboard. But it means something to me - this is the box that the Nintendo Deluxe Set came in. This was the super groovy version of the NES - it came with a Zapper, Duck Hunt, Gyromite and R.O.B., the friendly robot who will sit and very slowly play video games with you. This is the version of the NES that I got for Christmas in 1988. I actually kept my box for years - but somewhere down the line it was purged and probably ended up in a landfill. So now I've got it back - I've already got all the games that I had as a kid back in their boxes - the only things left to get to finish up my personal history collection is a box for the NES Advantage joystick and an actual R.O.B. himself.


That's all for now! Next time I post will hopefully be to show off a new nerd cave. Moving to the new casa in about 2 weeks...

Fellas, Getcha a Good Woman!

Game #726
Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom
eBay (gift)
10/22/11

Even though her interests lie mainly elsewhere, I've taken my wife along for the ride with my Nintendo collection. I've dragged her to numerous flea markets and Goodwills, forced her to stop on the way home so I could rummage through the same used game stores I've been in a million times before and even managed somehow to accidentally (I swear!) set her iPhone up to notify her when my watched auctions are about to end. I've taken over a room in our 2 bedroom apartment to house classic plastic and have plans to take over another when our house is finished.

Through all of this she's managed to build up a little excitement as we close in on the last dozen and a half gray carts to finish off the set. She's given me eBay gift cards and games as birthday/Christmas/Easter gifts. She's even sat down and played Kickle Cubicle with me. And now she's given me another gift - a complete, boxed copy of Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom.

This is a weird text/choose your own adventure game. The main characters are royal vegetables. The villain is a pumpkin. King Broccoli is dead and his daughter (a tomato?) has been kidnapped. The box art for this game is in the running for the best of the entire system's library. Too cool.

18 licensed games to go.

PS - I took my wife out to dinner.

#725 - D-Dub-Three

Game #725
Dragon Warrior III
NintendoAge.com forum
10/3/11

Here we have another pickup of a game that likely won't see much (if any) play time, but I'm glad to cross it off my list. I'm sure there's an RPG fanatic reading this (waitaminute...nobody is reading this - who am I kidding?) that's rather upset that such a gem will go unplayed and unenjoyed. Well, I understand where that sentiment comes from, and I do feel a little guilty, but I'm sure someone else out there is going for a full set that's never played any of MY favorites. So it all evens out in the end. Also, they're video games - no reason to get upset over them, is there?

Of all the RPG's in my collection, the Dragon Warrior series is the one that I would give a fair chance to. Apparently, the first game in the series is very basic and was designed for noobs like me to take a chance on an unfamiliar genre. Nintendo Power magazine even went so far as to give away copies of the game to subscribers. That's one reason why Dragon Warrior I is common as dirt and can be had for a few pennies. The rest of the series gets exponentially more expensive on up to #4, which is A) uncommon and B) highly sought after for its gameplay and C) the last in the series that I need for my set.

I've had some good luck at flea markets lately; unfortunately I haven't scored much in the way of NES games. I did pick up a sweet Playstation 2 light-up store display ($8!) that will go nicely in the new nerd cave once the new house is finished (any month now...), some Game Boy and N64 travel bags and a $4 copy of Banjo-Kazooie for N64. I'd say that if I were to go for another full set after my NES one is complete, the Nintendo 64 would be a tempting choice. The system only saw 299 games released in the U.S. with only a few commanding high-dollar, so a full set would be relatively easy. Plus, I missed out on a lot of the gems outside of the usual Mario, Zelda, Goldeneye and Super Smash Bros.

BUT, the focus right now is on the 19 (!!!) licensed games I have left for the NES set. Anybody out there have a spare Stadium Events that they'll trade for a Doug Drabek autographed baseball?

#723 & 724 - Bubble Bobble Pt 2 & Kid Klown

#723 & 724
Bubble Bobble Pt 2, Kid Klown
eBay & NintendoAge.com
9/14-15/11

All I've got to say is FINALLY! The original Bubble Bobble is in my top 5 games list - it's such a quirky, original, FUN game that I will say I'm pretty good at playing. I've got some good memories of being rescued from awful, long, boring trips to Garden Ridge Pottery by pumping quarters into a BB machine in the food court when I was younger. I can still rack up a decent high score on the NES version. Also - this.

The game has 2 sequels on the NES - Rainbow Islands, which I picked up and blogged a photo of a few months back, and this - one of the Sinister Seven expensive rarities in the licensed cart set. I've seen the price on this mother buck at around $130-$140 in recent months, which has been royally pissing me off. See, I've been sitting on a couple of eBay gift cards since my birthday back in June, and I've limited myself on how much I was willing to spend on the game. I've lost at least a half dozen auctions and let another dozen go by without bidding because the price had jumped so high so quick. I was about to sign off and go to bed one night last week when I decided to throw down a few quick eBay searches in the hopes of finding something I needed. And there it was. Bubble Bobble Pt 2, with a "Buy it Now" price that would be completely covered by my gift cards. Despite the picture in the listing being one of the stock photos, I took a chance, clicked the button and punched in the gift card numbers.

And I immediately got nervous. What if the label was all torn to shreds? What if the cartridge had a big hole it in it? What if this was....the GAME BOY version??? I sent a message to the seller and he reassured me it was what I thought it was and was in great condition. A few days and a trip to the post office to pick up the insured package later, I was the proud new owner of not only a rare and expensive collection piece, but a rather fun and worthy sequel to one of my favorite games - all for the price of FREE (via gift cards). This has been one that I've really been itching to add to the shelf and I couldn't be happier.

My acquisition of Kid Klown in Night Mayor World is a little less dramatic - a cash/trade deal via the Nintendo Age forums. I usually hang on to anything Nintendo, but by sending out a few bucks and my copy of Golf for Virtual Boy I was able to net this pesky bastard. The game itself weirds me out - too many clowns...er...klowns.

Ryan at NA - enjoy your VB game, but remember to take frequent breaks when playing VIRTUAL BOY. You'll go cross-eyed or something.

So I'm sitting here with only 20 licensed carts for a complete set and 3 of the Sinister Seven tackled and tamed. Finding games in the wild has been a chronic bust for what seems like forever and the pace is slowing down - but I'll be sure to add more stories in the coming weeks. Thanks for reading!