maxlords

I used to have an entire vintage arcade at one point. I'll have to see if I can dig up some pics. I don't have room for much so I just have a single Taito Egret 29 and a stack of boards and carts now. All the buttons are Sanwas of course. What do you play on?

What's this, what's this? Very cool offer! Probably long expired though! I love my MVS! I don't have any KoF games for it either!

My review for Carrion is up if anyone is interested: https://realotakugamer.com/hey-sexy-mama-wanna-kill-all-humans-carrion-review

If you really want to blow your mind...we didn't have internet when I was a kid. Dial up on local bulletin board systems which were text based. No GUI interfaces, all text only. The web didn't even appear until I was in high school, and even cell phones were almost unheard of until after I graduated from university. No google. No faqs. No videos. You had to buy stuff on VHS or rent it. You had to get information about new games from magazines and read actual physical books to do research. Where I grew up, no cable or satellite either. I spent three months stuck in Zelda: Link to the Past one time because I didn't have a guide and couldn't find what I'd missed. We used to graph out games like Phantasy Star on graph paper because it was the only way to map the dungeons other than memorizing them. I actually memorized EVERY dungeon in Shining in the Darkness and beat the damn game! I could go from the town to the end with no help. On the upside, only a handful of releases a year, you could actually play through most games, and you could finish most games in a few days at most, none of this neverending online crap, no 150 hour games, and no online trash talk or cyberbullying.

Heh. I consider collecting a part of gaming and to me they're pretty much inextricable. As for my collection, I sold a lot of things well before they were valuable. I'm at the age where I only keep the things I like the most and I know there's NO way I can EVER play everything I even have. For example, I sold my complete mint Action 52 for $50 at CGE in the early 2000s, paid $5. Bought a sealed GBC Shantae for $15, sold if for, um, $30. I sold off a fair amount of my complete NES and SNES stuff when I got divorced about 10 years ago, before the new price hikes unfortunately. However, what I have left is a core of pretty solid titles. You'd be surprised what I used to have and what I chose to keep. I've let a lot of things slip through my collection and played almost everything out there that I wanted to so far. I even wrote part of the old Digital Press price guide (way out of date now) and have gotten into reviewing new stuff. Everything evolves, I suppose!

I'd say around 15% of the games I play. I simply don't have enough free time to finish everything, try everything that comes out, play the games I review, and well, life an actual life. Too much comes out too fast now, and half the time, my stuff is still sealed by the time the next generation of games is out.

Anyone excited about Carrion? I was jazzed as soon as I saw the first clip. Old school pixel horror where you play the monster? Sign me up, especially after playing the demo on Steam last month. I figure people here will definitely appreciate this one. I would like to note that I'm just finishing up a review of Carrion and it's fun as hell. I can't talk about it until Thursday though. I want to bring it to people's attention, not as an advertisement, but because it's cool! I'll be buying a physical copy myself! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8nFSVKH0nAQ * Edited the title now that the game is live. I really loved this one! *

I'll buy this physical day, one. I LOVED the first one. I even run the soundtrack in the car sometimes. Thomas Happ is amazing.

Instant buys for me.

I thought it was great, but I like rogue-likes generally. It's challenging and fun,, with well-designed play and good progression overall. This is another one that I got a review copy of, but i write for an indie site and they don't control my content in any way, so everything I write is my own. Here's my review if anyone is interested: https://realotakugamer.com/all-in-the-family-children-of-morta-review

I was quite pleased with Ys Memories of Celceta. I got a review copy and I still bought the physical as well. I'm a big fan of Ys but it's a solid title with a good storyline. Here's my review if anyone is interested: https://realotakugamer.com/the-seminal-adventure-game-remastered-ys-memories-of-celceta-review

Since 1995. In '95, I beat my copy of Final Fantasy III for the SNES for the third time and decided it was time to trade it in. I packed up the whole thing, box, manual, and inserts and took it to the local store to get some cash. I sold it and used the money to buy TMNT IV at the local department store, which I took home and beat in under a day. I was immediately bored with it (still hate that game because of this) and went to buy back my Final Fantasy III. It had already sold. I swore right then that I wouldn't sell another game that I liked just because I wasn't playing it, and I've been collecting ever since.

Yup, as stated above by arch_8ngel, there's a whole line of interactive Mario Legos that just debuted that allow you to make your own levels with sounds and video interactions. It's a bit pricey but I preordered it for $10 off and free shipping, and my son is five and just starting to play games, so he's the perfect age for it. Plus, the expansion sets and various Mario power suit mini sets are all awesome as hell. Here's some detailed info: https://www.pocket-lint.com/games/news/lego/151752-first-super-mario-lego-sets-detailed-including-how-mario-interacts-with-the-bricks

Oddly enough, these are the guys I met at random in a local game store that I mentioned above. I was very put off by them and thought they were ridiculous.

I'm going to come off like a grumpy old man here but I'm being thorough. I'm 42 and I've been in this hobby since I was 15, just for some perspective. I've even had my own retro arcade at one point. I like to read reviews. I read extremely fast and absorb information better that way. In addition, I particularly dislike watching videos of people talking about games, listening for the few things I want to know for X minutes when I could have gotten that information in a few seconds from a written article. I feel like it takes far too much time to watch videos. In terms of retro reviews, honestly, I've played almost everything out there for every retro system I'm interested in, especially NES through to Dreamcast or so, and if there's something I want to see, I only want to see a few non-spoiler gameplay clips without someone yammering in the background. I can't think of a piece of older hardware that I either have already owned, currently own, or am not interested in because I'm familiar with it (like the Pico or original Odyssey for example). I lived through a lot of the history too and mostly read about it as it happened, and I've read several of the main books on the subject. As for speed runs? No interest whatsoever. I despise watching other people play games and find it one of the most boring things in the world, generally. Occasionally it's neat to see someone play something like that in person. I have a buddy that's pro level at shmups and I've watched him play. I appreciate that other people are skilled but I play for personal enjoyment and entertainment. For me, while gaming is a big part of my world, it's not something I have any use for watching videos about. If I'm going to watch something, I'd rather it be a show or movie. I do make exceptions for videos about installing or modding software and hardware, which can be useful. But I rarely need them and would generally rather pay someone as my hardware electronics skills are negligible at best. Software I can manage fine. Whew.

This showed up in the mail yesterday! My son is getting it for his birthday. I couldn't find a discussion about these but the sets available are amazing!

I don't know if it's an age thing or what, but I absolutely loathe YouTube. I won't let my son use it except on rare occasions, and I try to avoid it as much as possible. These days it has so much that other sources are actually atrophying though. A couple of years ago, I met a couple of YouTube game hunting streamers while I was in a store. I tried to talk to them about it but not only were they painfully arrogant, they also honestly didn't know squat about the hobby when I started chatting to them. It was a pretty big turn off to the practice and the changes in the hobby in the last 5-10 years have only made it worse in my opinion.

I can't believe I spaced on Blue Stinger and Eternal Darkness. I am a failure.

Definitely bad. Not only is it driving up the prices like crazy, but all the "hidden gems" that these guys magically discover are pretty much already known to us long time gamers and often we've been talking about them for years...it's just no one would listen. I get that people mostly watch videos these days, but personally I hate it. I prefer to read my articles...and forum responses, and so on. I also prefer guides and faqs to video walkthroughs that can much more easily spoil a game.

And a couple more

Nice to know someone is deep in! My holy grail is the magazine format Tales of Destiny guide. It's the only one I'm actively looking for that has been utterly impossible! Here's a few pics.

I have a fairly substantial strategy guide collection and while I know that guides are mostly a thing of the past, I'm wondering if I'm in the minority here. Prices seem to be completely random and all over the place, and there's no real list of what's out there. Some guides were magazine format only too, making them even harder to identify. I'd love to hear about other guide collections, whether there's a resource for them, and what people think of collecting them!

I've noticed displaying my games has slowly faded some of the spines due to sunlight. Some were already sunfaded from video stores, but it's noticeably becoming more of an issue as the paper fades. I store both vertically and horizontally and i don't find there's a noticeable impact on the condition either way otherwise.

Oh, most likely! It's been a long time since I sold my copy! I sold a lot of stuff like that around 2012 or so! And thank you!