Khromak

I have often felt guilty, especially when talking to some of my friends about the value of some of my items and the amount I've spent on some of them. It does feel a little crazy to own tens of thousands of dollars worth of video games when there are starving children in Africa and yadda yadda. For my part though, I realize that the entire world's problems are not something I can solve by living like a pauper and donating every dime I make to charity, and I try not to take personal responsibility for solving all the world's problems, it's just too overwhelming. As far as comparing myself to other relatively well-off people, I don't feel bad that I am frugal and have saved enough money to be able to afford expensive games; I choose to live below my means so that I can spend money on video games. I don't have any vices, I don't have any kids, and I work really hard to maintain low levels of debt, pay things off, and keep my expenses low. I don't feel guilty that others make different decisions about their priorities to a point where they can't/don't want to buy expensive video games.

Because she's not worth 7k or 9k.

Yeah I spent a good portion of the day yesterday googling pictures of every Indiana jones game after comparing the carts and seeing that it wasn't the same as temple of doom

I beat every level of Lunar Pool by grinding my ass off. Some of them are really absurdly difficult and require some real mastery of the game, which I definitely do not have. It's a fun game and very deterministic, but still very difficult especially when balls get stuck in the corner or there are awkward patterns to the stages. That said, you don't get the credits/congratulations unless you beat the whole thing in 1 CC, so there's very little chance of that happening. I thought about checking this before playing through the levels, but I was enjoying myself so I said screw it and played through it all. I tried going through the whole thing start-to-finish, ran out of lives around level 6 and decided there's no chance in hell I'm beating it all in one shot, unless I dedicate a month of my life to practicing.

Just went to play Lunar Pool and couldn't get it running so I opened it up to clean it. Notice it's a 5-screw and wondered if it was commonly known. NES Cart DB has it as 3 screw and it's not on this list that I see. What gives? Edit: Found some more examples online, maybe it's just a common 5-screw so it's not on this list because this is only rare ones? Is there a list of all known 3-screw and 5-screw variants?

Beat 8 eyes! This was my first time ever playing it for more than a few minutes. I looked up a guide to give me some pointers on the gameplay and some maps for the hidden items, as I typically do with these kinds of games. I just don't have the patience to attack every wall in every room. It was actually a really fun game and I enjoyed the use of the falcon quite a bit. I think the puzzle would've been pretty tough to figure out as a kid, not because of the logic part but because you need to find all the scrolls to know what the riddle is.

Sure, but if your business is to sell video games, maybe you're struggling because you aren't doing a very good job, considering one of the most high-profile and valuable video games in video game collecting came into your store and you put a $2 sticker on it. If a business was selling brand new automobiles for $72 it's not my responsibility to tell them they're running their business into the ground. If a random person has a valuable collectible and no experience with video games, I think it's unethical because of the power imbalance. I'm taking advantage of the fact that I know something they don't know and should have no expectation to know. That's the difference for me though. The business is a professional and their job is to buy, sell, and price items; the individual seller might've just participated in the contest, or their son did. There's no reason they should know the value of it, except bothering to Google a price for every one of the 40 Nintendo tapes their kid left in their attic.

Thanks for the tips nerdy, I'll probably try that one next year and see what I can do with it. Just finished ninja gaiden with sword only for the first time! Screenshot seems silly since unlike sword less zelda there's nothing to show for it, but included nonetheless. This was pretty tough but not all that bad. Took about an hour start to finish, probably helps that I have a good deal of experience with the game. I'm not sure what the intention of sword only was, i did use health refills and the hourglass powerup to stop time, but never used any sub weapons on anything. That was fun and challenging but nowhere near as tough as the megaman buster only imo

I've given my opinion on this already but since it's taken a little bit of a turn here are my opinions on the most recent questions: If it's a business, I don't have any issue buying an item for the price they listed. They're in business, it's their job to price their items and I have no idea what they paid for it ($1 for good will or if it was donated or w/e) so it's up to them to make sure they make a profit, not my business. I would gladly pay $2 for a NWC from a business. When it comes to individuals, I think it comes down to how well you know their financial situation. In cases like Dave's where he knows the guy and what he paid for an item, I think it makes sense to pay them what's appropriate. You realize you're getting deals, he realizes when he gets a deal, even footing, no problem. When dealing with a stranger (ebay, craigslist, swap meets, conventions, whatever) where you don't know their financial situation I personally would struggle to rip someone off. I don't know if there's an exact line for me, but I'd say once you get into 5x or more the price, you're just plain ripping someone off. A NWC worth $40,000 and you pay $20, earning a 2000x profit, is scummy. Sure, they might've gotten the game for free so they still got $20 they didn't have before, but you're still taking $39,800 worth of value from them. You may say "well they might not/don't NEED the money" but unless you know for a fact they're mega-super-ultra rich, how can you make that judgment? Even if you could, I'm not sure it's OK to steal from rich people. Even if you're going to keep the game in your collection forever and never sell it, you still gained an item of value for much less value in money. Everyone will have their limit, maybe to some people there is no limit and you'd take a million dollar gemstone off someone for $1 because they should've known, and to hell with whatever their situation is. Maybe to some people it's 2x, 5x, 10x, 10000x, but I feel like at some point you should decide that taking someone's property for free when it's worth a million dollars is an asshole thing to do, and the fact that "they should've known better" doesn't make it any better. Obviously different people have different opinions and I respect that, but these are mine.

Definitely in again this year, looking forward to it!

Same thing is true in reverse and possibly even shows the difference better: if someone has a $5 piece of fool's gold and offers it for sale to an unsuspecting buyer for $5000, they're a dirtbag because they're exploiting the buyer's lack of knowledge about minerals to make a quick buck off them. If you sell someone an SMB/Duck Hunt for $10,000 because you tell them it's a super rare label variant worth millions, it's their lack of knowledge and research that cost them the money, but you're still not a nice person.

For all this talk of "the seller is responsible to price their items appropriately" I still feel like if you're watching a movie and a character walks up to a garage sale where someone has a brand new Porsche for sale for $50 and the character buys it, turns and winks at the camera, the point is: this person's a scumbag. I guess it's fine to get one over on a moron, but I don't exactly see it as being morally OK. If someone was trying to sell their home and they said hey, IDK what the market is like, I bought it for $50k 50 years ago and you offer them $45k for their $2m home, you're still an asshole in my book. The seller being a moron and the buyer being underhanded are not mutually exclusive and taking advantage of another person's gullibility isn't immediately excusable just because of their own personal responsibility.

I see what you guys are saying, but I think in the real world knowing the intentions of the seller is a bit more nuanced. TBF though, if it were for sale by some giant faceless megacorporation, I'd absolutely buy it for $20. That gets really different when talking about some random person though, and even if they're just selling their games to buy a motorcycle, you're still basically stealing a down payment on a motorcycle from them so you can benefit. This is fine when you're talking about getting a $100 game for $5, but a little different when it's a $30,000 game for $10.

Yeah IDK what I'd do if I ever ran into a NWC or a SE in person, especially with a (potentially) unwitting seller. As I've rehearsed in my head 1000 times I'd probably tell them they have an incredibly valuable item, I can't afford it but I'd really really like to own it, and ask them if we can work out some kind of a payment plan to where I can buy it off them over time. I can't bring myself to steal it or buy a game worth tens of thousands for $20, which might as well be the same as stealing. I also couldn't *not* say anything or make any offer.

This one (the original pixel art) looks like a pillbug/ladybug riding on top of a floating platform dripping goo, to me. Maybe there's a treadmill for him too.

I mean sure, if you host every community on the entire globe, you're going to have some weirdos. The beauty of reddit is that you can pick and choose which communities you choose to engage with. If there are a group of shitty people being dickheads, you just don't subscribe to that subreddit and you'll never know they exist. I've never heard of blackpeopletwitter, or ever had a desire to "join" that sub. I'm sure there are lots of other communities I would find quite abhorrent, that's why I don't follow them or their comments. Nobody's forcing you to send pictures of your forearm to anyone, and if they wanted you to, you could just...not? I'd hesitate to make any broad-reaching statements about Reddit at all, be they positive or negative, since it's a massive website with thousands and thousands of different subreddits and millions of users. It is no one single thing, it's incredibly diverse.

Thanks! Not sure, actually. I've combed over the list a bunch of times and there's not much standing out to me. I could try more of the Koei games, though they don't seem all that similar (except maybe Romance). I could probably beat Ninja Gaiden with sword-only, might be a fun challenge! I still have Attack Animal Gakuen in my Famicom so I might grind that out a bit, but it's pretty unforgiving of mistakes/requires a lot of memorization/practice. That's about all I can think of from this list, it's pretty scant. If anyone has any ideas of games that are left which are fun and not insanely long/difficult/frustrating, I'm open to suggestions.

Well, turns out my cartridge of gemfire had a bad save battery, so I had to start all over again this morning. Thankfully with the lessons learned, it wasn't too bad to get caught up. Gemfire is done! What a fun game, though admittedly not very challenging. The enemies only attacked me maybe once? And I won every battle I attempted. The turn based tactical combat is pretty interesting, though it could definitely be much faster. I enjoyed this, I'd gladly play it again

I'm crushing Gemfire and actually really enjoying playing it. If the other games are similar I may just go on a tear through a bunch of them, this is pretty fun!

This whole list is interesting. What is Clu Clu Land (Sample)? Are there 11 prototypes of Clu Clu Land? Did they hand out samples of this game in test markets or something? Assuming re-grades aren't double counted here, 29 Grey NWC graded is like...1/3 of the entire population of carts? MTPO, Zelda, & SMB3 are so weird...do people just want a case for their favorite childhood game, or do people actually think a loose NES cartridge Nintendo made literally millions of is going to be worth something? Also interesting to see how few of these got significantly above 9.0, or got above 9.0 at all. In any case, who's collecting loose carts encased in acrylic tombs? Even if it was a 10.0, what the hell's the point? Surely nobody's paying top dollar for loose carts with nice labels, right? Right?! If there's a loose cartridge which was mass-produced and it's worth more than the WATA grading services, I don't think I want to live on this planet anymore. edit: excluding carts which were already worth more than that before they were graded.

I watched a video or two last night and read the manual, it seems like maybe the game's systems are forgiving enough that you don't need to be making the perfect decisions with every pop-up and every menu to be successful. Or maybe they were just showing late-game footage, I'm not sure. Either way though, I'm going to take a shot at one of them taking somewhat random guesses at how much food I need to prepare/give away, troops I need to train, where to send them, when to raid/pillage/invade, who to take alliances with, etc. and see how it goes. There are a ton of different commands and stats and things, but ultimately it seems like if you pick the wrong thing you're still likely to be fine and you'll eventually win anyway because the AI isn't that great at taking advantage of your mistakes. We'll see!

Fuck All Pro Basketball, I can't figure it out. I'm like 10 games in and haven't even been close to winning any of them. Going anywhere near any opponents, they instantly steal the ball from me, including while actively running. I try to steal from them and my guy doesn't steal, and can't move while stealing so I just fall behind them while they charge directly at the basket. Then when I get the ball I have to pussy-foot around because if I go anywhere near an opponent, even if they don't steal from me, I get a "charging" foul and they get the ball. Then they score a 3 and I fall even further behind. Fuck that game. Someone tell me about all these strategy games, Koei etc. It all seems pretty incomprehensible. Do they follow similar strategies? How do the resources work, trading, combat, etc? It seems like you need a PhD to understand the mechanics, can I figure it all out on my own just by reading the manuals? Any recommendations on a guide, or advice about generally playing these games? I've got loads of free time, don't mind burning it into longer games and I enjoy strategy games, could be a good fit, but I'm totally lost looking at the UI, resources, maps, opponents, and all the complexity.

This thing isn't for people who want to play exclusively original carts on CRT. You can do that, but it's not going to provide (many) benefits over a stock system. It is for people who: Want a reliable system without dealing with repairs/hunting down good condition Want to display their games on HD TVs, part of the time or all of the time Want to take their system on-the-go, like to a friend's house who may not be set up for retro games Want to play ROMs, but do it without lag, without a computer, and with higher accuracy Probably plenty of other benefits (Game Shark codes, scanline modes, etc.), but those are the big ones in terms of gameplay. I have an RGB N64 and an ultra-hdmi one, so I don't really need this, but might get one anyway just because I'm a collector and for the convenience. I have most of the other major Analogue line of products and I've used them all here-and-there but they aren't my main consoles.

I beat ultima 4: quest of the avatar! I've beaten it once before, it's an alright game but like most games of the era, the spells are not very balanced and combat is kind of rote. Love the idea of the game and the number of locations and secrets is pretty interesting. That said, if you're going to play it you probably want a guide because it's a doozy.

I mean, the OP never mentioned WATA, the first time it was brought up was in a troll comment, so I'm not sure who you're telling to be careful to mention WATA. The only time OP said WATA was that he was worried WATA-level buyers were going to swoop down on this, a statement I took to mean "I hope I (a real collector) get this and that some millionaire investor asshole doesn't outbid me." which seems pretty in line with how most other members of the forum view "WATA-level buyers". I guess what an outrageous bid/sales price is depends on your perspective, but I think the thing most people find abhorrent about the investors vs collectors thing is more the disinterest in the item itself and the focus on the value. Since he said he's never going to sell it, he has the rest of the set, he knows a bunch about it, he's planning to dump it, and he's been looking for it for 8 years, I think it's pretty safe to say OP falls in the category of collector and not investor or WATA buyer. Seemed pretty clear to me from the first post, I don't know how anyone could see his conduct and think he's the bad guy here.