Otaku – Page 34 – Robot Claw

2019 in Games

December 7, 2019

Another year, another ‘Year in Games’ blog post. It’s still my #1 hobby, and in some ways I’m more invested in it than ever. But it’s interesting to see how my spending (and playing) has changed over the years, moving ever-so-slowly more toward replaying old stuff than buying new.

In 2019 the numbers dipped upwards slightly this year, with 57 games bought for 10 systems at an average cost of about $25. The PS4 led in terms of games purchased and total dollars spent, but much like last year a decent amount of my spending was for retired (and in some cases distinctly retro) systems. Here are the charts, in another new format to please my critics:

The above is a proportional plot of games purchased by system. Yes your eyes don’t deceive you: I bought one game each for the Commodore 64 and PC-Engine in 2019. I can’t play either since I don’t own either system, but both were Wizardry games and I collect them so how could I pass them up? In fact more than a third of all my game purchases this year were for retired systems, and even more if you include the 3DS which is very much on the borderline these days.

And that is the breakdown of dollars spent. The 3DS has a large block since I bought an actual new 3DS system this year (which was my sixth…), and you’ll note that even though I bought more GBA games I spent more on the C64 and PCE games. This is because one of the GBA games was a mere ¥65, which is about US$0.60! The average game price remains low since I very rarely buy any new releases these days, instead waiting 6+ months until they inevitably drop in price. On Black Friday I bought nine PS4 games – all released within the last year – at an average cost of $18!

Despite the retro gaming (I’m not mentioning here the hours spent with the NES, SNES, C64 and Genesis Mini) I sunk a massive amount of hours into some extremely high quality new games as well. The following three were amongst my favorites of the year:

Monster Hunter World: Iceborne (PS4)

What can I say? Will there ever be a year a new Monster Hunter game doesn’t make this list? Iceborne – the expansion to world – added a higher difficulty, oodles of new monsters and lots and lots of fun. It was even better than World, and given they’re still adding content I doubt I’m done with it yet!

Nioh (PS4)

Imagine a hybrid of Dark Souls and Monster Hunter and this is what you get. An absolutely fantastic mission-based fuedal Japanese monster hunt, that has incredible amounts of content and oozes flavour. A wonderful, wonderful game and I look very much forward to the upcoming sequel.

Hollow Knight (PS4)

A ‘metroidvania’ set in a world of bugs. At times very difficult, but with a gigantic map and lots to see and do. I got lost in this one for weeks, which wasn’t bad for a digital game that cost me only $5!

I can’t end the year without a final farewell to the 150+ games and consoles that I parted with back in June. I ‘ve not regretted it and don’t miss them, and I very much hope they’ve gone on to new owners and are now featured on someone else’s “2019 in Games” list :

My Collection: Game Boy Advance

December 1, 2019

The Game Boy Advance (GBA) was Nintendo’s follow up to the massively successful Game Boy handheld console, and would continue to cement their dominance in the handheld market. The GBA sold over 80 million units in its lifetime, and is fondly remembered as a fantastic handheld with a very strong game library.

The GBA was released in Japan in March 2001. My first GBA was a Japanese version (in the milky pinky color) that I bought via my Working Designs connections in April, but I didn’t buy any games for it until the US release in June. I initially used it just to play Game Boy games since it was reverse compatible, and I expect when I got my first GBA game I was astonished at how good it was.

That’s my first model on the left, next to two Game Boy Advance SP units (both bought in 2003). The SP update was a landmark in design and is the obvious precursor of the DS. While the initial GBA model lacked a backlit screen and used AA batteries, the SP was rechargeable and had a fully backlit screen. In its day the SP was incredible.

In total I’d own five GBA’s; the three above, a second launch model traded in when the SP was released, and this:

That’s the GBA Micro released in 2005. It’s tiny and can’t play original Game Boy games, but it has an amazing screen, massive battery life and is the most portable handheld console ever made. It also failed since consumers had already moved on to the DS, and GBA Micro’s are worth a pretty penny these days.

All told I bought about 150 GBA games during its lifetime, and still own 145 of them. I took almost all of them out for a look today and here they are:

As I said the game library of the GBA contained some true masterpieces. At the same time though it contained the usual shovelware for kids, and of the >1500 games released for it I’d say easily 1000 are forgettable. But when the games were good they were exceptionally good, and you can bet I owned and played most of those. Some highlights from my collection:

There were lots of Yu-Gi-Oh games released for the system, and not all were translated. But the average quality of the nine that were is extremely high, and by the latter games we were getting annual installments of a very well done simulation of the TCG that featured well over 1000 cards, strong AI and robust story modes. I played these religiously, and always wondered why we never got equally good MTG games?

Megaman continued onto the GBA in the Zero series (which is great) but the original-to-the-system Battle Network series was a great hybrid of action and card game that improved with each of the six installments. I bought them all, and in fact the last game I ever bought for the system was this:

Yes I never opened it! I wonder what it’s worth these days?

The GBA was very similar to the SNES as a console and many games were ported over including most of the Final Fantasy series. Since FFVI is one of my favorite games of all time, it’s unsurprising I consider this one of the gems of the system,

And speaking of gems, it’s difficult to say which of the three Castlevania games for the GBA is best since they’re all incredibly great. So great in fact I’d say these are collectively the top three GBA games, and a must-own for any serious GBA collection. (Sadly they’re all very expensive these days; and if you want boxed copies of all three expect to pay $500+)

Speaking of serious collections, I suspect my GBA collection represents a good chunk of the value of my total collection these days. For starters the system features some very good games that suffered from poor marketing or distribution (most of which I own), and for seconds most people in those days trashed the boxes and just kept the cartridges (but not me). This means I own in near mint condition quite a few games that cost me ~$20-30 almost 20 years ago that are worth quite a lot more now.

In fact almost every game I own seems to be worth more than I paid for it and some much more (one game is >$500). I doubt I’ll ever sell though; the GBA is absolutely one of my favorite consoles of all time and there’s a lot of memories in these games.

As you may know the GBA was replaced in late 2004 by the Nintendo DS and the last piece of GBA software I bought was in 2006. It only reigned for five years, but in its day the GBA was nearly perfect 🙂