leonemesis

On 6/9/2022 at 6:30 AM, Jeevan said:

Happy Birthday @leonemesis and @fsped09!  Hope you all have a good one!

Thanks man

My interest remains the same, it is just that I´ve been focusing most of my time and money on building a new house for the past year and half, so with the price surges I figured I might as well take a break from collecting entirely. I just keep tabs on a few games I had on watchlist and visit the site from time to time.

Hopefully by next year I have everything on the new house sorted and prices have adjusted a bit, then I can get back to it.

On 5/20/2021 at 9:15 PM, avatar! said:

This is really cool, but was bummed to find out they made the cart blue instead of black like original carts. Would have been nice to have a standard edition release with black cart and a manual, lately these releases seem to be pushing a lot of fluff just for the sake of it.

On 4/11/2021 at 1:10 AM, PapaStu said:

Everything to do with cost. Removing a full cover label and going to a simple black (or white) screen as 99% of GH games have and you've got the simple answer.  When the game has a top price of $20 bucks everything is going to be cost stripped when at all possible. It may not be much per disc, but that adds up when it's a large run of them.

I meant the green label in the front cover, but my fault for not making it clear. The label on the disc I can understand, don´t like it but makes sense as a cost cutting measure.

I wonder who had the idea to make this GH label so ugly, I hate them ever since I first laid eyes on it. 

When I was a kid I used to dislike japanese  games because kanji always looked cryptic to me, but growing up I ended up liking it more and more to the point I decided to study the language, so nowadays I can enjoy a lot of titles I normally wouldn´t have access to. To be honest I´m far from good at it, I´d consider my level to be intermediate at best, I can understand trivial conversations but still struggle with more elaborate conversations, so still have a long ways to go.

Anyway, given the context above, a good part of my collection are imports, not only japanese but european as well. This is also happened because when I started collecting seriously back in 2009, I would usually see a CE or special edition released in a certain region but not elsewhere. If I were to stick to US games exclusively, I´d miss out. Specially when it comes to my Megaten collection.

I don´t have a picture of all the imports, but I used to take pictures of everything I picked up, so I figured I´d post a few interesting ones. Some of them have US games along, so ignore those.

These two above are good examples of region exclusives, Goty version of Bloodborne in english only came out in Europe. The only version of Last of Us Remastered  with a proper slipcase and seal for the steelbook is this german one.

Would love to play the game, but can´t get a PS5 now, other IRL priorities. Saw this State of Play video recently, interesting tidbit is they are using the original code for the game, that´s why it plays exactly like the PS3 version, really great stuff.

On 10/27/2020 at 6:33 PM, dyer said:

Thanks, actually you managed to find the listing I bought!

My thinking is the same as yours! The mystery continues. 

I see, well if you find any info on it please share with us!

Personally I wouldn´t waste time with promo copies of PS1 and PS2 games, much less grading them. Most collectors don´t like them (me included) and I really doubt they will ever sell for more than sealed retail copies. Despite being rarer, it is like other users mentioned, the manual or inserts inside may be damaged, as well as the horrible hole on the outside sticking out like a sore thumb.

The purpose of having sealed games in the first place is to own them in the best condition possible, so a promo game with a hole in it goes against that idea. Anyway, just my my 2¢.

Had a look at YAJ to see if I could find hints to where this is from, and saw this sold listing

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/w422490026

It is listed as bonus for the game, so I´m guessing this is a pre-order bonus from some japanese retailer. Lots of retail stores do this, usually they hand out telephone cards, mini-posters, that kinda thing, but every now and then there was some retailer doing a really unique item.

Either the box is the bonus itself or it held the item. But haven´t found any other listings with this box, so that´s all I can help with for the time being.

59 minutes ago, Littlemacstrainer said:

I'll be honest, I've never played your choice. I YouTubed it to check it out. Seems cool and I'll look into it.

If you like RPG´s, you´re in for a treat, it´s awesome.

For me it´s Valkyrie Profile, no doubt about it. Played it about 7 or 8 times now, would love to enjoy it for the first time again.

SMT Nocturne would be a close second, the atmosphere on that game, oh man, so great. There´s the remaster coming, but it´s fresh on my mind, will probably wait a while till I play it again.

On 10/7/2020 at 11:02 PM, fcgamer said:

I found several games that have SCPS code, yet only have Japanese text, include barcode on the back, etc. Are these also Asian versions?

Regular japanese release, no doubt about it.

Took some pics, should be good reference for you. Asian release on the left and japanese release on the right

As mentioned by Red, you can easily tell by checking the back, there are warnings in english, and it usually says "For Home Use Only", where the japanese versions have "For Japan Only". Some asia releases have a yellow label instead of a white one (where you see the disc and manual languages)

Great thread, thanks for sharing! Just checked all my games, they are all legit, thankfully. Also, I checked some of my japanese DS games and they also share the same traits listed in the thread (matching front-back numbers and rectangle on the top edge), so I reckon it also applies to PAL DS games.

Meant to post this before but didn´t have the pics uploaded.

While my favorite franchise is Shin Megami Tensei, my favorite RPG ever is actually Valkyrie Profile. I have a few collectibles of the series, but the japanese LE for the first game is my personal grail as it is very hard to find in this condition.

I also managed to get this (not very fond of VGA grading but got a good deal a few years ago)

20 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I'd sell high on SMT stuff.  Unless it goes higher when 3 and 5 come out next year.  Who knows.

Or keep and play them because they're awesome games.

I second that!!! Great games!

I was falling into this back when Limited Run started, specially because the first few titles were becoming sought after for their rarity and all... But after a while I realized that I was picking up games that I wasn´t that interested in playing, so it would be best to just pick up what I really wanted to play. Turned out to be a good decision, some of the titles I picked up haven´t been touched to this day, like Breach & Clear for the Vita.

Bloodstained looks pretty neat, been holding off because price kept going down, physical is like 20 bucks now, think I´ll finally bite the bullet.

Hot damn, that´s what I call a steal!!

Outstanding Lunar collection! I´d know about the games for a long time, but only last year that I managed to get both PS1 releases in great condition. The Working Designs boxes are amazing but they get damaged so easily. Not to mention there´s a bunch incomplete copies out there. Anyway, I gotta make up the time to play them, but it´s been difficult with work and other real life stuff.

Now, your Castlevania collection is insane, a level I´d like to reach someday. I regret not looking for the GBA games before, nowadays they are so expensive... By the way, which of the GBA games are considered the best one? Aria of Sorrow?

11 minutes ago, drxandy said:

@leonemesis thank you and yes! I just meant the Gamecube version was jpn exclusive. I really wanted to collect and play all the cube games I missed out on back in the day, big soft spot for that gen.. if you are into jpn cube check out:

I do eventually plan get the Wii collection though. More shmups the better!!!

I´ll check it out later, thanks. I do have a japanese Wii that I can play gamecube games on. For now only have Eternal Darkness and Waverace for it, but haven´t played them yet, have been playing mostly PS games.

Next year, when my finances allow, I´ll hunt down Fire Emblem and the Metroid games for it, would love to check them out.

15 hours ago, drxandy said:

I would normally save this for next week but it came in the mail and im friggin stoked to finally add it to my collection!!

 

One of few shmups on the cube, and a Japan exclusive; radirgy's cel shaded graphics are more on the cute-em-up side and I love that. Cool looking story (I wish I knew Japanese, gonna have to do that one day)

 

Now 26 retail games away from the full jpn exclusive set, not gonna be moving very quick on that until Japan post offers the cheap shipping to the us.. however if anyone out there can find or direct me to a boxed copy of ohenro-san hosshin no dojo with the pedometer and 3 button walking controller I would greatly appreciate it.

Nice pick-up!

In case you don´t know this, Radirgy got released in the US as part of the "Ultimate Shooting Collection" for the Wii. Other games bundled are Karous (which was also japan exclusive release) and Chaos Field.

17 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

 

I enjoyed it despite all the hate it got during release. Not a great FF game, but still a good game in my humble opinion. Though a lot of the criticism it gets is deserved, like the battle system taking forever to open up and the story never really impresses, it´s your standard "save the world" fare. FF XIII-2 managed to shake things up a bit with a better battle system and time related gameplay, but the story went all over the place with more holes than Swiss cheese.

Anyway, give it a shot, if you already own it, don´t see why not.