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My Collection: Genesis

Sunday, September 17th, 2017

Sega released the Sega Megadrive in Japan in late 1988. About a year later it was released in the US as the Sega Genesis. I can recall when the PAL version came out in Australia back in 1990, but was still so entrenched in arcade gaming that I didn’t think much of it.

When I came to America KLS owned one, and that system is still in our possession today. Usually when I do these posts I list all sorts of details about when it was purchased and how much I paid for games and that sort of stuff, but for mysterious reasons virtually all my Genesis games were omitted from my game collection database, so I can only say the bulk of my Genesis games were purchased ‘before 1996’.

The system itself is very large and very black! Ours is a first-generation, which means only RF outputs on the back and quaint additions such as a headphone jack and volume switch right on the console! I don’t have a CRT TV anymore, so I have to connect the RF signal to an LED flatscreen which isn’t ideal… but at least I get a picture! You can see me playing Wonder Boy above, which is a fantastic game. I only wish it were arcade perfect like the Master System version 🙂

The Genesis for me always felt like a strange bridge between Japanese and European gaming. Take Alisia Dragoon for instance, which is a Japanese action-platformer featuring a female protagonist that owes no small debt to Turrican. The box art for the US version is a classic in my opinion, and while (slavishly?) adherent to the game itself suggests a lot more than what’s in the box. The game itself, like all action games of that era, is brutally difficult. I thought I did pretty well in stage one but the game said I was only a ‘worm master’:

The vast majority of my collection are RPGs. KLS and I purchased some of these in 1993, but I suspect others made their way into my collection as I was reviewing for Working Designs. A few have stickers on them that show I bought them used, but many games are near mint condition, obviously bought new. I recall owning (and playing) many more games than what’s in my collection right now, which means some were traded in back during that regretful period in the late 1990s. I wonder how many and which ones?

Here’s my current collection in entirety:

There’s some giants in that box, including Phantasy Star II, III and IV, the first three Shining games, Landstalker, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Shadowrun and Beyond Oasis. All of these games have aged well and are extremely playable today.

Amongst the very few items related to the Genesis that were in my database are the date of the last game purchased (Shadowrun for $20 in 1996) and the purchase of this item in early 1996 for $149:

That’s a Nomad, or portable Genesis. It was a spectacular failure for many reasons including high cost and dreadful battery life (about 2 hours on 6 AAs). Mine is in great condition as you can see, and I could easily sell it for more than I paid for it 21 years ago 🙂

Here’s a closer look at the blue boxes on the bottom of the collection photo above:

That’s my Sega-CD game collection. The Sega-CD was an add-on for the Genesis that was released in 1992. We have the second version released in 1993 that changed the form factor to sit alongside the main console. You can see it on the right in the photo at top. It was an exciting addition way back then since games on CD were very new and promised a lot. Sadly they rarely delivered, and the CD add-on was never much of a success. Mine still works, and I played a few of the games last weekend. I was pleasantly surprised by the fast access speed and short load times, especially compared to what I remember.

Some of my Sega-CD games incidentally are quite valuable. I should get around to the post about my priciest games one of these days…

I was recently watching a Youtube video and they commented the release of the above game, Fatal Labyrinth, was ‘immoral’ since the game itself is so unplayably bad. This gave me an idea, and I am seriously debating visiting this single roguelike game in detail in a future post. Interested?

The Genesis is a classic and important system in the history of home consoles, and was home to a great many absolutely fantastic games. Sadly I own few of them and because of my stubbornness about emulation will forever be deprived from playing them because I’ll not pay $750+ in any hurry for Slap Fight on the Megadrive! But I’m glad I have what I do, and will continue to keep the old Genesis safely tucked away until next time I set it up for some retro fun.

Posted in Games, Otaku, Retro, Time | Comments Closed

I Made This!

Tuesday, September 12th, 2017

It’s been a while since a craft post, so here we go!

BFS sent me this. He’s always sending me these metal kits since he knows they’re a chore to put together and he uses me as his proxy! There seems to be two companies making them, the ‘metal miniatures’ guys (that you see in stores everywhere) and these less common Chinese models, which are more difficult and have slightly lower quality control.

To put it bluntly, this thing was excruciatingly frustrating to assemble. The pieces were miniature and mostly black or very reflective gold – both colours seemingly chosen to make it impossible to see the sub-millimeter tabs and slots with the naked eye! Furthermore the instructions left a lot to be desired.

I struggled on though, cut myself more than once on sharp edges and made two critical structural errors that essentially doomed the thing. But I was able to pose it in a more or less finished state regardless:

Verdict: way way too fiddly. Save this one for when you’ve built all 500 other similar kits 🙂

I bought the above in Japan. It was a new release and as you can see quite cheap for what it is. Which is a Gundam? A girl kit? A girl Gundam?!? Who knows!

I love the colouring and the pearlescent plastic and the soft parts and the fact the manual is – for the first time that I’d seen – printed in both Japanese and English! Look at all those eyes though…

She was an easy build because Bandai has long since mastered these sorts of things. As a bonus she comes with a stand!

She’s a little creepy isn’t she? Maybe it’s just the lack of a pose. She’s got joints everywhere and her wings can spread out fully behind her so I suppose I should make her a little more dynamic. Overall a great kit for under US$20 and a lot of fun to assemble.

We also purchased the above in Japan, and it even cost more than the Gundam! As you can see it’s a ‘Real Scale’ plastic bonsai kit, which seems a bit of a lie since it’s actually quite small.

The instructions are very cute but also very short since the kit itself was only 5 pieces! I was a bit mystified by the manufacturing though: how did they get the tufts of green into the brown plastic like that?

Assembly was trivial and I skipped the painting advice in the instructions. Even so, I think it looks pretty good assembled:

That’s a normal sized Lego guy next to it for scale. See what I mean about small?! This was expensive for what it is but I suspect it may have been partially ‘garage’ built (i.e. handmade) and it’ll look good in our curio so I’m glad I bought it.

I think the next one of these posts may focus on electronic crafts. Look for it in a month or two 🙂

Posted in Crafts, Miscellaneous, Models, Otaku, Toys | Comments Closed

New Hampshire

Tuesday, September 5th, 2017

We went to New Hampshire for a few days! Specifically we stayed at Weirs Beach in the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. It’s a very popular tourist destination with lots to see and do.

On the first day we started by taking a lakeshore ride on our tourist train.

Jim had bought us tickets in the caboose, which meant we could sit in the seats up at roof level for a spectacular view!

The trip was great and the views better. They even served food and I had a delicious sandwich! We were dazzled by the crazy lakeside homes we saw, including one little shack on sale for a cool $900k!

Right after the train we comboed straight into another trip, this time on a boat:

BUT NOT JUST ANY BOAT! You’re looking at the only floating post office in the USA, and we rode on the second mail route of the day to several islands on the lake.

That’s the crowd at Jolly Island, waiting not just for their mail but also the ice-creams sold on the boat. The lake has dozens of islands, many of which have summer homes on them. It’d be a fab place to spend a few weeks in the summer…. if you were rich enough to afford it!

Two minutes walk from our cabin was a boardwalk that had restaurants and gift stores and two arcades. You can bet I visited it nightly 🙂

On the second day we went to a place called Polar Caves. After being (not so) momentarily distracted by the feedable deer, we took the route through their nine glacial caves.

This place was incredible. Self-guided, the caves required a lot of agility and stamina to get through, and we were very often crouching down almost to our knees or contorting ourselves in ways we had forgotten to get past a tight obstacle.

The limited warnings in advance and near total lack of any meaningful safety notice meant we didn’t expect anything like this, and while (a lot of) fun, this was a very strenuous experience!

Easily the best cave system I’ve ever visited, this place is highly recommended to anyone that can still climb ladders, crawl along on your knees and doesn’t suffer from vertigo (since some caves were vertical) or claustrophobia. Beware if you’re a fat man though; you’ll be miserable 😉

And then after the caves came Funspot, the mega arcade we visited last year and the reason for the return trip. It was mobbed with people since the remnants of hurricane Harvey had blown into town and it was very wet, but we endured the crowds for a few hours and had a lot of fun.

There’s probably more I’m forgetting but I’m sure you can tell we had a fun long weekend and a good ‘last hurrah’ to summer. Even though it’s a long drive, I’m sure we’ll return again one day.

Posted in Games, Nature, Otaku, Trip | Comments Closed

Hexenmeister you say?

Monday, July 24th, 2017

In response to B’s comment on this post, I decided it was about time to kick the gamebook collection into the next stage. What’s next when you own all the books in English? You start buying foreign versions!

From the left, those are two French and one German copies of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. The middle (French) one is a reissue from 2003; both others are original imprints.

Le Sorcier de la Montagne de Feu is an interesting version. The paper is thin and glossy, reminding me of a bible, but aside from the translated text the book seems more or less the same.

However when you turn the book over and flip it around it contains a few dozen dense pages of puzzles! From what I can tell they are fantasy themed versions of classic logic and word puzzles and solutions are even included at the end. My copy seems to be a special edition for younger readers (is the text different?); there was also a normal (sans puzzle) version released in France as well.

Der Hexenmeister vom Flammenden Berg is a beautiful book. Trade sized, with rigid card covers and the almost Tolkien-inspired cover my copy is in astonishingly pristine condition considering its 35 years old!

Interestingly the text seems to omit about half of the art! I can only speculate why, but perhaps it was due to it being a children’s book and some images were considered a bit too grisly? Compare entry 275 with the French edition above:

The book seems lacking with so much art missing. I can only hope they reinstated it for later versions!

I also purchased these three:

Two French and one Spanish. The left two are reissues, the right an original. All are in fantastic condition (as new actually). Because of my Japanese copy of Demons I had to get a French one; the other two were bought because they were exotic 🙂

Needless to say finding foreign versions isn’t easy (I bought these online) but I find them very interesting and may try and get a few more languages. (I also got a French Lone Wolf.)

That’s an photo of my FF collection right now. In a week or so it will expand even more due to the brand new books that just came out!

And yes, they’re still good reads. Every time I do a post like this it always takes much longer than expected since I get sidetracked reading through the books. Maybe I should review a few here on the blog?

Posted in Books, Gamebooks, Miscellaneous, Otaku | 1 Comment »

Regret?

Friday, June 30th, 2017

I own about 2000 video games, almost all of which still have their box and manual and are in ‘as-new’ condition. A couple of dozen are even ‘mint’ condition (still in the factory sealed wrapping). About 50 maybe were used. It’s a big collection, and contains some real gems worth many times what I paid for them.

Virtually all of these are recorded in a massive Excel file that I’ve been keeping for over two decades. This arose because I used to have to keep records for my contract reviewing I did years back, but I’ve kept it up ever since. This is what I use for my annual ‘year in review’ posts regarding my collection (as well as the system-specific posts).

I’m pretty pleased with my collection – more so in recent years as I’ve sunk myself more and more into retro gaming. I do believe that one day I’ll set them all up again and be able to play decades worth of games whenever I wish. Very few of these games are what I consider ‘bad’, and I would enjoy replaying almost all of them.

This is one of the reasons why I regret something that happened over an 18 month period from June 2000 until Devember 2001: I traded in for store credit exactly 92 games. I can’t say for sure I regret doing this, but I certainly wish I could go back and tell myself it was a terrible, terrible idea. Granted I got decent money for them (trading in wasn’t as much of a scam then as it is now) with which I purchased many (about 44 actually) new games, but I do still wish I owned every single game I traded in. The principle reason I did this wasn’t for the money, it was because of space (we were in the apartment then). Plus EB Games was trying to move into used game sales and were offering very generous prices in those days (about half new retail cost).

This post discusses these tradeins in detail, including prices, specific game titles, and the ones that I probably should have kept in my collection 🙂

Dreamcast

I traded in only six Dreamcast games, for which I was given approximately $100. Three of these were (bad) RPGs, one was an action game and two were Capcom fighting games. Today, the approximate value of these games would be about $154, which is less than I paid for them back when I bought them.

No regrets therefore from a price point of view, but I would like to play Armada again.

Gameboy Advance

Why did I trade in GBA games? It’s not like they take up much space at all!! The list – only four games – is arbitrary as well. A mystery then, but one not worth spending too much time on since the four games only cost me $63 in total and I got almost $50 in credit for them!

However…. one of those games – Klonoa – cost me only $19.99 new, gave me $12 credit, but can easily fetch $80 today! In fact the four games today are worth over $135, or more than double what I paid. Given the four of them in boxes could have fit anywhere, I probably should have kept them!

Gamecube

I only traded in two games (Pikmin and Super Monkey Ball) and could easily buy both of them today for much less than the trade-in credit I got in 2001 were I interested. Which I’m not 🙂

Nintendo 64

I gutted my Nintendo 64 collection, trading in a whopping 16 games (more than half what I had bought), which gave me about $430 in credit. While Nintendo 64 games haven’t started spiking in price like NES or SNES games, they are creeping up and today these 16 are worth about $550.

One of them is notable, Kirby 64. I bought it with credit, and traded it in only 14 days later for $40! Today it could fetch $80. I don’t particularly miss it, but I do miss games like Doom 64, Jet Force Gemini and a few iconic N64 games such as Starfox, Mario Kart and Paper Mario. Why on earth did I trade in Nintendo first party classics?!?

Sega Saturn

I only traded in three Saturn games, none of which were good. For Baku Baku, Golden Axe The Duel and Winning Post (a horseracing game I actually purchased new for $60!!) I got about $65 in credit. These three games today are worth over $250 combined!

Why so high? It turns out Winning Post was a rare game even when it came out. Coupled with the unusual genre, and the fact it’s apparently a pretty good game, means it commands a high price now – up to $200 in good condition. I probably should have kept that one 🙂

Playstation

Here’s where the regret gets closest to the surface. In those 18 months I traded in 44 Playstation games (from a collection of about 120). This was more than any other system, and I estimate I got about $530 in credit from all these games.

Some were bad, some were middling, many were good. And a few were great. Perhaps more than anything else on this list I can’t easily explain just why I traded some of these in. When I look at how much they have appreciated in the years since the decision to part with them becomes even more inexplicable.

Take the two Tomba games for instance, which were great platformers. Or the three Playstation installments from the Armored Core series – all of which I played to death. Or Koudelka, the first installment in the fantastic Shadow Hearts RPG series. Or Tales Of Destiny 2. Or Tron Bonne. Why oh why didn’t I keep these games?

All 33 today would retail in good condition (with box and manual) for about $1400. A couple are worth more than twice what they cost back in 199x. Tron Bonne alone is a $200+ game… that I traded in for about $9. If only I had known!

Playstation 2

And then we get to the PS2 era, which was a young console during this period. Even so I managed to dispense with 17 games for this system, many within months of buying them. For this I got about $380 in credit, which was good in the day, and on which most was spent getting more PS2 games!

Today… these games are worthless! In fact I could buy back all 17 in good condition complete for probably $150! Only one is ‘worth’ anything (Grandia Extreme, about $30) but I have no desire to own or play it any way!

In other words, I made the right call on the PS2 games I got rid of 🙂

Sega-CD

Here’s a bonus. I actually have seen about 20 additional games leave my collection in the last 24 years. Some of these were returned to the shops, some were given away to family but one special game was sent to Victor Ireland, boss/owner of the company Working Designs who I reviewed games for.

Vic had been very generous to me over the years, sending me lots of free games and even getting me a Japanese N64 before they were out in America (not to mention Pokemon for the gameboy before the USA release). I knew he was attempting to complete a collection of the entire USA Sega-CD library and I actually helped him with this, sending him a few games that I stumbled across that I knew he didn’t have. Some of these games (such as Space Adventure Cobra) I purchased two copies of and kept one. One game though was in my own collection, but had been quite rare, so I just gave it to him. That game was Keio Flying Squadron.

I had bought this game in very late 1994 for the Sega-CD and loved it. It was a shoot-em-up featuring a cute girl and lovely graphics and had a good amount of challenge. I played it a lot and thought it was a great game, especially at the very low price of $20 new.

I kept it for 8 years, and then in 2003 sent it to Vic since I knew his Sega-CD collection lacked only a very few games and this was one of them.

Here’s the reason he never found it: it’s super rare. As a result it’s now easily the most expensive Sega-CD game. In fact it’s worth $1200. Yep, twelve-hundred dollars. And I gave it away…

(But had I kept it would Keio even be my most ‘valuable’ game? Are you interested in the answer to that? Should I do a post on the gems in my collection? Let me know…)

Posted in Games, Otaku | Comments Closed

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