RH

Yeah, but now that I'm trying to recall it a bit more, I think it was that first year. I think my parents gave me Alleyway (which meant I would have opened it before the Game Boy) and also bought my brother Motocross Maniacs for that same Christmas. When we opened them, my parents "apologized" for getting games for the wrong system rather than the NES--classic parenting move for when the grandparents come over in the afternoon with their Christmas gifts. Anyway, I think it was 1989 because they would have more options by 1990.

Well, my experience after signing up Saturday hasn't been great. I mean, I love the accessibility of some obscure content I recall as a kid but it's the usability that's been tough. We all know the general issue of finding some thing can be challenging. I don't mind that to much. There are published lists of content online so searching for a title is no big deal... except when it is. On my AppleTV, I use my iPhone as a remote. Ok, so I type in a search in the search box but if I want to make a minor change using the Apple Remote, it won't back out the text. I HAVE to do it on my phone. You might be asking, why use two remotes? Well, the iPhone uses WiFi and for some strange reason, it's a bit laggy. So, I only use my phone when I want to type in text. But, if I want to backspace a chracter or two, I'll use the Apple TV remote... but I can't because the text from the phone doesn't sync to the display. Then, there was the issue of last night, which I assume might have been the most high-traffic night. Plenty of late-coming new subs like myself, plus Sunday night is a BIG night for streaming services. I could stream stuff that was less popular. We watched the first Forkie short and I watched Bao because I hadn't seen it. However, after many, many attempts, I couldn't get The Manadlorian started, and when I let my wife pick, I couldn't watch Noelle either. I think this must have been because to many people must have been trying to access those videos. However, after watching those couple of shorts, I gave The Mandalorian one more try. Well, actually 3x more tries. On the last, and what was going to be my legit final attempt... it worked! To Disney's credit, once it started playing, we never had to buffer and image quality didn't degrade at all. My guess is that they engineered the system to not allow more streamers than can be allowed to output the content at peak bandwidth. So, when I fired up The Mandalorian at 9:00PM, maybe enough people had finished watching the first episode to clear out some of the "pipes" dedicated to that video. Other than that, the experience has been "ok" for a new service. Could be better, could be worse. It's got a lot of content I'm so pumped to finally be able to watch again, but once my free week is up, I'll probably give the service until the new year before paying for it, hoping they'll iron out the hiccups. Regardless, it's a must-purchase streaming service for our house, especially if they maintain the price.

My original titles were Tetris, Alleyway, Motocross Maniacs, Duck Tales, World Cup Soccer, Gargoyles Quest and eventually Final Fantasy Adventure. I wore them all out. A cousin of mine had Link's Awakening and he let me "borrow" it, which meant he let me have it and never cared to get it back. In fact, I think, I did give it back to him, he spilt Pepsi on it and gave it to me to keep if I could fix it. That was my first repair job. I really mangled the game case to get the screw out but once I did, I soaked the cartridge in alcohol (dumb luck move, honestly) I scrubbed it with a toothbrush and then let it set out for a week to dry. Boom it worked, including the battery. I know my grandparents bought all of their grand kids Game Boys, probably in 1989, because I remember it coming in the OG packaging and it felt early. My parents refused to buy another game system after my Mom literally got addicted to Dr. Mario (which is another story) but she allowed my grandparents to buy the Game Boy, and she'd pick up a GB for me each birthday or Christmas after that. After the NES days were over, I had my Game Boy and eventually at Game Gear up until I could afford buying an N64 on my own. My parents also bought me a battery pak, probably for my birthday after the Christmas I got a GB, because I always remember having it. It, of course, doubles as a wall outlet connection and a batter pack. I took my GB everywhere, because we lived in the country and it was also a staple of every single road trip. Now, I'm almost done with my complete NA, Game Boy cart set. When I started collecting, I wanted to choose a system that meant the most to me. NES was top of the list, but considering the legendary status and cost of Stadium Events and even the high costs of Little Samson, I passed it off and thought of either the N64, Game Boy or Game Gear. Not sure why, but I just picked the Game Boy. Not related to this discussion, but if time, money and space in my home were not a problem, I would have probably, actually chosen the PS1. Sooooo many games I had to overlook for that system just because there were to many good games. I still collect for the PS1, but there's no way I'll ever have the desire to go for a legit complete set. I'd love to have it, but I just couldn't feasibly make that happen. The GB has been a much better, realistic option #2.

Any clue what a 100% complete, good copy of the first version of Pac-Man 2 goes for? I know it’s common as dirt, but that’s a lot of inserts, which are obviously easy to lose.

Welcome! It’s a great place here and it’s a good “reboot” of our former community.

This reminds me of old school America's Funniest Home Videos. That show LOVED video walls.

Wow, watch it buddy! Those pixels are sharp! I've always wanted a JVC but since I "dumpster dive" for mine (because I've found at least 10 over the years at the side of the road) I've never seen a JVC. I'd definitely toss/sell my Trinitron for a JVC in good working order, though.

Is this moving to a question of "is this even a phrase", because it definitely is. I can't say I use it all the time, but a "fuddy duddy" is definitely a thing. Basically, it's like being a "stick in the mud" because you're old.

TMNT #1 could/should see huge spikes too.

Is that so? Because IMHO, if you pay to use a tool, you shouldn't have to have "Made with XXX" on your game/software. I get it if it's a free tool. It's a way of saying "hey, you used our stuff to make a game, so give us some free advertising". It makes sense. But if you're paying for that software, who cares if you used it or not.

Any chance you need a Snowboard Kids 2 operation card? PM me if you're interested.

That made only two for the GB. This and Heiankyo Alien.

Thanks splain. Any required difficulty level? As someon who loves but sucks at games, I’m probably going to want to try this on “super easy”.

No, I wish. I had a day off and I simply made my rounds of about 5 game shops and just decided to look for good deals in their piles of paper. I did this all day, and I thumbed through everything. I didn't see many registration cards, especially that might have been of any worth. I definitely would have snatched up a registration card for this!

I went on a manual hunting run a couple months ago and managed to pick this up in a lot. The shop owner just gave me a deal on the stack of probably 20 manuals and a bunch of random inserts. Anyway, I probably paid $20-30 for the lot and this was definitely the gem of the group. Anyway, I’ve found manuals for sale but not just this card. This one is in mint shape. What does it go for? There is one for over $85 and the closest I’ve seen is a related registration card that went for $50. Any idea what I can get for this?

I forgot about Ecco. I've been working down the list, but I like "chill" tunes, mostly, so I might have to bump those up the list in case they have a chill under-the-sea tone like many water levels and games of that era. Thanks!

I just received Mercenary Force in the mail with the manual. I imagine more than a few games have had covers with some metallic printing on it, but as I thumbed through the manual, I was surprised to see that every page had a solid, metallic sheen to it. I just figured I share. I thought it was a nice touch of detail that definitely wasn’t necessary and I doubt it was a cheap addition.

Absolutely, and I'll likely post a photo gallery for documentation sake. I think it's a long shot but we could get lucky.

Well, I fired up Outrun last night because why not. What constitutes a finished game for that? I haven't played it in decades and I wasn't able to finish a race just yet. Do I need to simply finish one race, make it to all endings (A-E) Or do you have to drive it until you reach each path? Actually, I've never beat this game (only played it in the arcade.) Do you continually loop back if you win a race? I also tried Virtual Bart. Loved that one as a kid, but man it was tough. I think that was because of using a switch controller on an emulator on a Mac, though.

Well, it's not just for display. Places like the Smithsonian have practically warehouses of stuff. But, the main concern is care and conservation. There are plenty of collectors that take of their memorabilia, but something like this could be bought by "rich grandpa" and when he passes away, his wealth is distributed, it's lost in the shuffle, thrown in a trunk, moved to a storage shed, etc. Those type of things happen. And this is almost "national treasure" status, in my book. I'd hate to see something like that happen to it in the next 50-75 years.

When available for the 3D JRPGs, I always liked to have a fixed battle perspective, rather than dramatic camera sweeps. Given an option to "pause" the game when a menu is up in battle, yeah, I cut that on. I also love reskinning the menus when that option is there. Whether it's tweaking a color pallet or selecting "vines", riveted metal or wood paneling, I've always appreciated that touch and change the setting when they are there. In fact, this is a great topic because every single time I start an RPG, AS SOON as I get player control, the first thing I do is bring up the menu and fiddle with the settings. If something can be customized, I will. If I can speed up messages, I'll do that too. Just about everything else I'll play around with until I "get it right".

There are very few historical items that I feel shouldn't be in private collections but, rather, taken care of in a museum. This would be one of them, though.

I love this game FOR the soundtrack. It's a legit Blues album and stand well on it's own as a pretty good album.

What are you talking about, you spoony bard!

Ah, I have one because it’s a brag on the community After the whole, low stock debacle that was the NES Classic, the NA community decided to organize and create a list of people that decided to help each other out in getting SNES Classics. The idea was, we kept a first come, first serve list. If you were on the list, and found two SNES Classics, you’d pick up both, and sell one at cost to the person at the top of the list, and we worked our way down. Although the SNES Classic was way more accessible than the NES, I ended up getting my SNES about a month or so before I spotted one. We worked as a team and were fair. In the end, I think about 50 of us helped each other get a cool system at a fair (cough, as in non-scalped) price! Thanks participants! You all were awesome.