Four me? Yes! ...terday I bought.

Yeah is madness, like said on the Quiz I paid £120 for my Fire Emblem on Cube which was a ridiculous amount but now double that.

With series becoming more popular and youtube channels etc saying its collectable and worth X.

I find it more mad that in Nintendo's case at least it could be easily fixed and more profitable for them by just not limiting availability. Stick thier Cube games on Switch as separate paid downloads and they'd go gangbusters.

I don't even know how much that would change things; Pokemon games on 3DS VC didn't impact cartridge price much.

I always remember people panicking that SOTN would lose all value when it arrived on Xbox 360, it was cheaper to buy a 360 but nothing happened.

Even now SOTN on quite a few things but what a £400+ game on PS1.

masofdas wrote:

it was cheaper to buy a 360 but nothing happened.

I had the opposite thing recently; NSMB2 on the eshop was so expensive, it was cheaper to buy a Japanese 3DS and physical copy.

Violet to stream on Twitch, Scarlet for my own sick pleasure, the freebies that came with them, and some Pokemon-themed onigiri jelly donuts.
They were just ordinary flavours in a special packet, I think. They were fine.

All of that was free with the games!? Puts our 1 PIN BADGE or DOUBLE SIDED POSTER to shame.

The two bags, the Pokemon cards and a bunch of codes for extra pokeballs were freebies with the game.
I bought the onigiri and jelly.
That Quaxly folder thing was a freebie with the jelly.

The bags are decent, but any and all tat that isn't a keyring or a plushy gets binned by me anyway so I'm not that jealous. Buska's definitely shown off other more impressive Japanese buys!

I've been to the shops.



My attention was on Sonic Frontiers, but with the new Pokemon out I think I'll just loop back to it nearer Christmas. I’ll keep Bayonetta 3 sealed for the time being – that’ll be my main game when everyone else is wasting their time with Fire Emblem. The Mega Drive Mini II is more or less what you’d expect, and while I don’t think it completely justifies it’s £105 cost it’s nevertheless got enough interesting stuff on it to keep me going.

Supermarket Shriek was less than a fiver delivered off of The Game Collection, and Bubble Bobble 4 Friends finally dropped to the sub-£20 price I’d been waiting for. The Evercade cartridges are exactly that, and that Game Boy Colour game is called Top Gear Pocket – I’d heard Good Things.

The Wii games were two for a quid in a particularly good visit to the charity shop. I got Minecraft, LittleBigPlanet 3, Just Cause 4, WWE 2K20 and Just Dance 2020 for a quid each at the same time, but those were swiftly traded into CEX for £34 credit.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

The Wii games were two for a quid in a particularly good visit to the charity shop. I got Minecraft, LittleBigPlanet 3, Just Cause 4, WWE 2K20 and Just Dance 2020 for a quid each at the same time, but those were swiftly traded into CEX for £34 credit.

Seriously, what servant of Satan did you make a deal with and where to I sign up?

A good Black Friday deal on Need For Speed meant I got it for just under fifteen quid.

The DS Lite was £24.75 in a local charity shop. It's in great condition and it came with everything it would have when I was brand new - as well as with a couple of Brain Training cartridges thrown in. It's a North American model with a colour scheme that never came out in Europe. I thought it was pretty smart (even if I don't have much use for it tbh).

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

I thought it was pretty smart (even if I don't have much use for it tbh).

Get that cookbook game and a reading stand and set it up as a permanent addition in your kitchen.

All the gaming-related stuff I got over the festive break:



That’s yet more Switch games to add to the pile. I’d have my eye on Wreckfest for a while and it dropped to under £18 new, that’s one I’ll definitely make time for. Them’s Fightin’ Herds sounded interesting, has a good critical response and seemed worth a punt at under fifteen quid. Advent Calendar was a fiver delivered, and FIFA 21 is the German version costing £7-odd.

There’s the new Evercade cartridges too. I might scribble some thoughts about these in the retro reviews thread later in 2023 if you can contain your excitement until then.

It was refreshing to see lots of PSone and PS2 games in the local Barnardos, but disappointingly most of it was in really bad condition, and a lot of it I already had. Still, to pick up each of those six PSone games for a pound is good bargain hunting.

I spotted a SEGA Saturn game in my nearby CEX for the first time in ages, and I’d say a fiver for what’s supposed to be one of the system’s best games is money well spent.

Some random PS2 games rounded things out. The Prince of Persia trilogy at £1.49 seemed really decent. I remember Aggressive Inline as being nearly as good as Tony Hawk’s, I’ll see soon if memory serves me right.

Aggressive Inline is just as good as Tony Hawk's in my eyes and probably better in some respects too - I spent ages on it back in the day.

Masofdas wrote:

I paid £120 for my Fire Emblem on Cube

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

The Wii games were two for a quid

Virtua Tennis 4 for 50p is criminally good. And it's definitely 240 times better than Fire Emblem.

I'd love to hear how that Konami Winter X Games is on PS2. Also, had no idea Time Crisis: Project Titan or The Prince of Persia Trilogy existed. Is the latter all three games on one disc?

I’m wanting to play through some of my extreme sports games in the next few months. I’ve got loads of them, they’re usually short games and I’ve typically enjoyed them in the past – they suit me perfectly.

Prince of Persia Trilogy is the three discs with three instruction manuals in a chunky box that’s roughly twice the depth of a normal PS2 game box. I think there’s a few of these – I’ve already got a Rayman one and I remember there being Splinter Cell and Crash Bandicoot sets too.

~

I bought this from Cash Generator yesterday:



My Kiwi-coloured Game Boy Color stopped working at some point last year and I was wanting to replace it as cheaply as I could. This one’s a bit scuffed but the screen and buttons – the most important bits – are perfectly fine. It came with the copy of Pokemon Red, which I didn’t have already. Seeing as an unboxed Grape GBC and an unboxed Pokemon Red go for £75 and £35 each at CEX, getting both together for £39.99 seemed like a good deal in 2023’s retro gaming economy.

Jesus Christ man, how do you do it?
That said, fifteen years ago even what you ended up paying would have been way too much. That market has gone wild.

gjones wrote:

Masofdas wrote:

I paid £120 for my Fire Emblem on Cube

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

The Wii games were two for a quid

Virtua Tennis 4 for 50p is criminally good. And it's definitely 240 times better than Fire Emblem.

I'd love to hear how that Konami Winter X Games is on PS2. Also, had no idea Time Crisis: Project Titan or The Prince of Persia Trilogy existed. Is the latter all three games on one disc?

As Buska says though, the market gone wild that now FE is £200+ and as said on a Podcast with EofGiz along with mentioning it on the TOH Discord, thinking about picking up some 3DS games before Fantasy Life is the price of something like Rune Factory on DS.

That picture of Cappa's Game Boy has me practically crying tears of nostalgia. Just beautiful.

Fun* Fact: The Lady lost her Game Boy Colour in our recent house move, when she got it out to find its batteries had dripped acid all over it and everything else in its box.

Buskalilly wrote:

Jesus Christ man, how do you do it?
That said, fifteen years ago even what you ended up paying would have been way too much. That market has gone wild.

Aye, I’m sure that every car boot sale up and down the country would reguarly have had Game Boy Colors with Pokemon for a fraction of that price. Even that Cash Generator I bought that from is a good indicator of this retro mark-up – that’s the same one where I bought my Kiwi GBC pre-COVID, for under a tenner.

masofdas wrote:

As Buska says though, the market gone wild that now FE is £200+ and as said on a Podcast with EofGiz along with mentioning it on the TOH Discord, thinking about picking up some 3DS games before Fantasy Life is the price of something like Rune Factory on DS.

My local CEX has had a copy of Fire Emblem GameCube in it’s window for a few weeks, priced at £220. That’s 440 Virtua Tennis 4s right there.

It’ll be interesting to see how the 3DS retro market flares up in a few years time. It wasn’t even three years ago when Argos were selling the likes of Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer and Monster Hunter 4 for less than two quid, and a lot of it was readily in stock for a while even after those clearance sales. So much of it’s library was in such high production for years, and some of it was even produced again very recently. There must be more copies of Chibi-Robo Zip Lash than there is population.

Balladeer wrote:

Fun* Fact: The Lady lost her Game Boy Colour in our recent house move, when she got it out to find its batteries had dripped acid all over it and everything else in its box.

If she's got any Isopropyl Alcohol for nail cleaner and a cotton bud or two then there's a chance it might be salvageable. That same thing happened with my Game Boy Pocket, but giving the battery connectors a scrub saved it.

A PS5
Look, I've been nervous about buying one before, because I think there are literally 5 games that are PS5-exclusive, so I couldn't justify needing a new box to play the new whizzy games. But, based on COVID-related game and supply delays finally shifting, and that there is a bigger base, that's probably going to change a lot these next couple of years. And now they actually exist and are in stock, which was the real catalyst - actually available for purchase!
Games I have played so far to enjoy the new graphical fidelity and loading speed are: Tunic.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

Fun* Fact: The Lady lost her Game Boy Colour in our recent house move, when she got it out to find its batteries had dripped acid all over it and everything else in its box.

If she's got any Isopropyl Alcohol for nail cleaner and a cotton bud or two then there's a chance it might be salvageable. That same thing happened with my Game Boy Pocket, but giving the battery connectors a scrub saved it.

Oh no, I don't know why a poorly Game Boy is sad to me, but

@Cappa the Bravely games which Argos had cheap and got a reprint (I think), now £28ish at CEX

Why picked up Fantasy Life now for £20

@Jimbob I got one again (it was broken guys) last month as now the odd exclusive such as Forspoken and feel stuff like Hogwarts Legacy (been delayed on PS4, ONE, NS and I won't be buying) will be a tad iffy on last gen

There are worse games, Tunic looks a bit smeary on Switch.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

Fun* Fact: The Lady lost her Game Boy Colour in our recent house move, when she got it out to find its batteries had dripped acid all over it and everything else in its box.

If she's got any Isopropyl Alcohol for nail cleaner and a cotton bud or two then there's a chance it might be salvageable. That same thing happened with my Game Boy Pocket, but giving the battery connectors a scrub saved it.

Argh, that would have been good to know before we wrote it off as an acid-rendered disaster and threw it out with the electrical waste. Cheers though boss, clearly should have come here with our issues earlier.

Shelter had exactly three computer games in stock yesterday afternoon: Kinect Adventures on the 360, FIFA 17 on the PS4, and...