GPX

On 1/21/2024 at 5:39 AM, Fleck586 said:

I assume Wata is still the go-to, but man! I just looked at pricing and it's going to cost a small fortune to grade what I have ready. Are there any sales they run that I should look out for? Are the alternatives worth looking into?

I haven’t been grading since the pandemic, but I can give some suggestions:

- if you’re looking for the cheapest option, then it’s just a matter of browsing the relevant websites.

- if you’re assuming WATA is going to give better returns if considering a resell, then I don’t think that’s a guarantee in the current market.

- VGA is still an option because it has more serious collectors who give it more trust than the newer companies. Yes, they all have some flaws, but VGA is undoubtedly more reliable as a grading service.

Plot twist: that crack pipe was a limited edition, rarer than the AirZonk!

I don’t think any franchise should retire as all it takes is a refinement with some slight additions and the franchise may well kick into another gear again. Having said that, and despite my Sega affection, I feel the 3D Sonic games have a limit to how far they can stretch, as the maniacal speed running in a 3D platform doesn’t quite translate well into games. I’m fine with future 2D Sonic games if new concepts can be added.

This is interesting to reflect, as I like art but I never really cared about the color to choose in the player design. In fact I can barely remember a game in which I choose a color other than the original one! The only example I can think of is choosing between the red Ken (original SF2) or purple/yellow Ken (revised editions), in which I liked choosing random colors.

On 2/8/2024 at 6:33 PM, Sumez said:

3/10, I was turned off on this game pretty much immediately. It really wants to be Metal Slug, but seems to completely misunderstand everything that makes the gameplay in those games work so well. It's just tedious and unfun.

Castle Crashers however is super enjoyable.

I gave it a 7. However, I actually share similar sentiments to yours. I have it on Xbox Live and played it for a stage or two. I recall enjoying the game but for some reason it never hooked me to keep playing like Contra or Metal Slug. I might give it another go to see how my views have changed.

On 2/6/2024 at 4:43 PM, Grondorr said:

Bearing in mind that my goals have always been aspirational and so was clear it was impossible and would take more than one lifetime.. I’ve now gamified those goals…

Condition	Have	/	Total	Percent	Left
Mint	34		987	3.44%	953
Minty+	56		987	5.67%	931
VGA Gold+	118		987	11.96%	869
VGA Silver+	131		987	13.27%	856
Sealed+	735		987	74.47%	252

Grading costs for VGA need to come down, and I need a better name (than NM+/M+) for the tier that includes 9.8/A++ and 90+ and better. Edit: I’m calling that tier Minty+. 

Also, I do own some non-VGA games but have made an equivalancy table to map them onto one scale. (I know equivalencies are tricky but it’s fine for my external goals since I am planning on upgrading.)

Caveat, things must make some financial sense which will create some blockers or at least slow progress.

Good to see you have a clearer understanding of your goals. Having 90% of them sealed/graded is already a mighty fine effort. Congrats on the achievement so far!

I don’t have an actual inventory so the numbers are my rough estimates:

~ 1200 Nintendo NES/SNES/N64/GameCube/GB/GBA/GBC

~ 1000 Sega MS/MD/MCD/Saturn/Dreamcast/GG

~ 1000 Sony PS1/PS2/PS3 and Xbox Original

~ 100 miscellaneous (eg. PC, 3DO)

The aim is to slowly trim the collection over time, while I constantly review and  figure out my “ultimate collection”, and before I give it up when osteoarthritis and early dementia hits me. 

On 1/27/2024 at 1:56 AM, T-Pac said:

Interesting to hear these different opinions on how heavily our gaming hobby weighs into our identities.

My classic gaming, my art, and my faith are pretty much the core facets that define who I am. It used to bother me that I had such a "nerdy" hobby, but I've since embraced it haha.

[T-Pac]

Embrace your inner nerd!

Thats what helps to keep the fire going. Also, being authentic to yourself is what maintains happiness.

On 2/5/2024 at 8:30 AM, ZeldaFreak said:

1: Oh yeah, I know, I just think what you're bringing up is a totally separate topic of discussion than what my original point was, which is what you responded to. I was talking about someone personally disliking a single game, whereas you're talking about someone who dislikes an entire genre, so is predisposed to not liking any games within that genre, and couldn't be bothered to properly lay out why they dislike the game. That's just a very big leap to make from what I was originally talking about.

2: Oh yeah, I'm not saying you should never question the validity of someone's review, I just think someone disliking a particular genre doesn't, itself, completely invalidate their review or opinion on the game (again, so long as they actually lay out their reasoning.) It just means you have to take what they're saying with a grain of salt since they dislike the genre as a whole. But, I think the same goes for someone who loves a genre and gives a glowing review for a game within that genre. For instance, if I gave a review of a Zelda game. Of course it's going to be positive, because I love the franchise and there isn't a single entry in the mainline series I dislike, so same as with an overly negative review, me giving a glowing, positive review of a Zelda game should also be taken with a grain of salt, since I'm predisposed to liking entries in that series, same as you being predisposed to not liking RPG games.

Plus we're talking about reviews here, for me personally with the game/movie debate polls, a lot of the time I'll just vote in the poll, or vote and give a quick one or two sentence rundown of my thoughts, since I don't really see it as a space for making actual, proper reviews of something, more so just a space to casually discuss it with others. In situations like that, I honestly don't have much of a problem with the examples you gave, since it's more so just a discussion space for something than a place for actual reviews of that thing (again, at least the way I personally see it.)

To be clear, I didn't think you were arguing with me and I wasn't trying to argue with you, I just think you made a big jump from "Someone disliking one game" to "Someone who hates a whole genre and is too lazy to lay out their reasoning as to why they hate a game within that genre," haha. And it confused me a bit at first since you responded to me as if those are the same thing, when like I said I think those are two entirely different situations.

I think our misunderstanding came about from this quote “I think it's also perfectly valid for someone to give a game a 5 (or less) just due to it not personally being their cup of tea, even if objectively it's a very good game.”

”Not personally their cup of tea”, could mean a partial dislike for that particular genre (which is what I agreed with the “yes”); or it could mean a full dislike and avoidance of properly playing all future games of that genre (which is what I added with the “no”). I should have emphasised that the “no” is a very small percentage. 

1 hour ago, TDIRunner said:

After finishing SOTN, I was reading about the other Metroidvania games and decided to give Aria of Sorrow a try.  This game hooked me much quicker than SOTN and I'm really enjoying the small improvements made to the controls and inventory system.  I played about 2 hours in my first evening.  Unfortunately, the next day I went to boot it up and found that the battery in my GBA Everdrive had died and my game save was gone.  I have a new battery on the way, and I guess I'm going to have to start over, but I fell in love with this game almost immediately.  

I’ve played and completed all the Castlevanias on the GBA and DS, and I tend to agree that these ones have a more quicker hook to them. Maybe because a more relatively simplistic formula compared with SOTN? I can’t be entirely sure as my memories are a bit hazy with the portable versions. Although I do recall Portrait of Ruins on the DS was my less preferred as that was more action-oriented than the others.

2 hours ago, ZeldaFreak said:

OK well again, now you're talking about something completely different, a review with only one or two words. In my opinion, ANY review that's comprised of only a small handful of words, positive, negative or neutral, is almost completely worthless. I think a negative review comprised of one word is equally as worthless as a positive review comprised of one word.

I feel like you keep adding all these additional qualifications (Someone who hates an entire genre, someone who only gives a 1-2 word review) when my original point was that if someone doesn't like A game (singular,) it's perfectly valid for them to rate it lower because they PERSONALLY don't like it, even if OBJECTIVELY they can recognize the merits of the game, assuming they actually explain their reasoning, as any good review should. That's it. The stuff you're talking about is a different point of discussion entirely; people who dislike an entire genre or who give an extremely brief review. And like I said, in my opinion people who dislike the genre any given game or movie is in should still be allowed to rate it, and their opinion on it is still absolutely valid, and a brief review on something doesn't have to be negative to be pretty useless, unless we're talking about something like, I dunno, Star Wars or whatever where everything good that can be said about it has already been said (or, in the case of something really irredeemably awful, everything bad that can be said about it has already been said.)

I don’t know if you realize, I’m actually not arguing with your points of:

- everyone is allowed to vote

- a person who dislikes a game can give it whatever score. (I don’t have any issue with differing tastes)

My point is about the validity of the score in some, and that there are examples where you can and should question their review/score (talking about a very small minority). My point in the previous responses is to do with people who don’t really ever play the genre and by extension, will likely give it very low scores. I’ll give a couple of examples:

- (reviewing a bullet-hell-shooter) “Too hard. Games should be more relaxing”.

- (reviewing an RPG) “Too boring. I quit after playing 5 minutes”.

I can speak for myself that I’m not an RPG fan as a gamer, and have only completed Wind Waker and have only attempted minutes to hours of other RPGs. I don’t bother to give score reviews to RPG games on VGS, knowing that I don’t have the time nor patience to give it a proper review the game needs investment in.

11 hours ago, ZeldaFreak said:

I mean, I disagree with that logic entirely, since that would mean if someone dislikes a game, they just shouldn't rank it at all which obviously isn't fair. I'm not talking about someone disliking an entire genre, I'm talking about if someone just personally dislikes a singular game for whatever reason, even if objectively it's a well-crated game. Opt disliking A Link to the Past is a perfect example of that.

But, even if we were talking about someone who dislikes an entire genre, again, you should still be able to rank a game even if it's in a genre you dislike. This is all just subjective personal opinion anyway, and the best kinds of discourse when it comes to stuff like that are when you have people with a wide variety of likes and dislikes discussing it. I wouldn't want only people who enjoy any given genre to be the ones talking about a game, I want to know what the people who dislike the genre think about it too, otherwise it's just an echo chamber. The only time I find that kind of thing irritating is when people treat their personal opinions as objective fact, since some people for whatever reason have an incredibly hard time separating the two.

I think there are 2 separate issues:

1. Does anyone have the right to vote on a gaming poll? I guess the answer is “yes”. 

2. Does a review of a 3/10 score with one or two words summary, and from someone who doesn’t seem to understand the genre…does that person have the same weight of influence as a reviewer who gives it a 3/10 who talks about the rationale behind his dislike and displays a passion for games and the genre in question?

Personally, I rate the rationale behind the score to be much more important than the score itself.

On 2/3/2024 at 2:00 AM, ZeldaFreak said:

I think it's also perfectly valid for someone to give a game a 5 (or less) just due to it not personally being their cup of tea, even if objectively it's a very good game.

I would say “yes and no” to this. Yes, of course we’d all want a variety of scores to cater for individual tastes. No, if it’s never a genre they’d play, then I’d question a bit more of the validity of their score.

I guess you can say there’s honest reviews which are helpful, and then there are unhelpful reviews, despite the honesty. 

7 hours ago, OptOut said:

Boom!

Finally found time to polish this one off, and... Yeah, you know what? I had fun! It's NOT an abomination, or the second coming of Satan. It's a rushed, unfinished beta-level game, with big ambitions and a lot of ideas that could very easily have been SO much better with a little more time in the oven. But the core elements ARE here, and there are absolutely glimpses of what this game could and should have been throughout.

It's WAY more playable than people give it credit for. The controls are clunky, but they are CONSISTENT. Once you figure out how best to achieve the movement and action you want, you can perform pretty well, and the game is easy enough and forgiving enough with health drops that you really don't have any excuse for giving up.

As far as glitches, yeah, there are a few, most notably OOB and clipping related. But when they happen they are usually more funny than frustrating, IMO, and it wasn't often I'd actually have to restart a mission, or even if I did, it's not really like these levels are that long to redo stuff.

As for the famous onion rings, I'm just gonna straight up own that one. Best part of the game, I actually really enjoy the ring segments. You genuinely DO get a feeling of flying around like Superman, it's fun! The city is actually impressively large, even if you don't get much of a sense of that due to the fog. But, you play the game enough and you play through all the ring stages, and you DO genuinely start to recognize various areas of the city and start to get familiar with the place. If they had more time to come up with a few better objectives and ways to put more variety into the ring stages, that would have immediately improved the game even further, but as it stands I still enjoyed myself.

And, having said and done it all, absolutely I stand by this game I'll defend it from anyone who hasn't even bothered to give it a go and just shits on it because it's a popular opinion. I wouldn't suggest regular people go out of their way to play it, but if you're an N64 fan, and if you're someone with a decent tolerance and patience for bad games, ABSOLUTELY give this one a go, it's WAY better than people say.

4.5/10, better than LTTP.

OptOut is the anti-AVGN with respect to N64 games!

Jokes aside, you could make a pretty awesome YouTube reviewer of all things N64. You have my backing!

@DarkKobold, congrats on your SMS set so far! I collect for Pal only and I would agree Masters of Combat is one of the rarest ones, if not the rarest. That along with Buggy Run and Power Strike 2. 

I liked reading your horror-turned-good stories. Much better than the horror-turned-horrific ones!

23 hours ago, Brickman said:

I remember playing a lot of MK4 on PC when it came out. It felt so awkward playing a fighting game on a KB but it was a lot of fun.

I’ve never actually played MK4 or the later games in the series. I’ve also never really liked playing games on the KB and was more into the consoles. I only have a small selection of PC games just for collecting purposes and enjoying their art/display.

19 hours ago, DefaultGen said:

Holy moly, you don't see those a lot Did you track that down or just happen to find one?

I bought this around 10 years ago. I had a hunch it was rare, and funny to recall it was listed by an ex-store owner for about a year and no one was buying it, so I took the plunge and made the purchase. I think I bought it for roughly around that value of the price sticker.

I agree with your sentiments, as I’ve not seen another sealed one since then! (Granted, I haven’t been overly active with the PC search.)

Here are some of my favorite PC games as a collector’s bundle, notably the action/fighting genre.

And here is something I believe to be quite rare, a sealed 3DO Blaster. It appears to be a PC converter to allow you to play 3DO games.

On 2/1/2024 at 9:34 PM, Brickman said:

I vote off the description Reed gives but they don’t always match my thoughts or how I rate my games.

A 10 to me doesn’t have to be one of my favourite games of all time and a 5 I do think is worth people playing even if it isn’t perfect. I think the 7-9 fits well though.

I also do let historical and nostalgia rate into my own personal ratings on the backlog challenge, but will try to mention that when reviewing it.

Scoring is never a perfect science but I think Reed’s system works well enough for these debates.

I think once you play a game during an era of nostalgia, it’s hard to rate a game without some kind of nostalgic influence. I also agree with your views on the 10s and 5s, with the 10s not needing to be perfect, and the 5s may still be a recommendation due to some unique aspect even though it may be mediocre as a whole.

Here is the current VGS game debate voting system (shortened version from 5/10-10/10):

• 10/10 - One of your very favorite games of all time.
• 9/10 - Killer f'ing game. Everyone should play it.
• 8/10 - Great game. You like to recommend it.
• 7/10 - Very good game, but not quite great.
• 6/10 - Pretty good. You might enjoy occasionally playing it.
• 5/10 - It's okay, but maybe not something you'll go out of your way to play.

On 1/24/2024 at 5:57 PM, Grondorr said:

987/987 GBA
8/8 GBA PC
35/35 GBA Video
43/43 GBA NFR

Let the upgrades begin/continue…

Congrats! I’m curious to know if you’ve revised you’re goals with the graded stuff? Have you had any further thoughts since the original post?

2 hours ago, goldenpp72 said:

You're limited to using short sticks, but to be fair it kind of always was that way since right behind those cabinets were windows. This just came with the house and I worked around it, but we do have people play from time to time. Not drunk people, and not kids, but people who understand not to be stupid

I can’t imagine you going full blast with the pool shots while those glass cabinets are there!

I’m so impressed with the setup rather than the numbers. Absolutely gorgeous!

I hope you can try to mix the guitar with different styles of music. I like the Crickets video with your 3 different guitars. That was cool! Hope it all goes well for ya!

22 hours ago, DefaultGen said:

When can we get this video

Can I book you in advance if Karl rejects my proposal?

Jokes aside, you have great content on your channel. When are you planning for the next rap video?

22 hours ago, Splain said:

Shh. Nobody else will want to do it if this info gets leaked.

Or maybe you’d get more volunteers. Gaming freaks on here might also be into other freaky stuff!

On 1/27/2024 at 4:42 AM, koifish said:

Only ever played it once, so I'd say no, it was just easy all along. IIRC I played and beat CV1 around 2007-2008 and then played Symphony a year later, so my perception of difficulty is likely very different from others when they played symphony.

Incidentally, I downloaded and played Symphony again, yesterday, for the first time since 2009 probably, and it's still way too easy. That said, going naked is proving to be kind of fun. You don't steamroll everything and punching things to death has comedic value. I might play a bit more, but not confident it would raise my score. It's as @wongojack points out, usually I play symphony and its clones but get bored because they become trivial hallway mapping sims. Is there a mode where you don't get levels? That might be more fun. Then again, I got bored of hollow knight because I thought the game wasn't hard, just heavy on damage sponges. Symphony with no levels would probably be similar. 

I like most pre-Symphony castlevania games, but if I had to pick one then it'd be Bloodlines, no contest. It's short and sweet, a really top-quality action game, which you can tell was made by real professionals. Controls are tight, player movement is smooth and flexible without being forgiving, and the obstacles are tough but can be learned, yet they also aren't just rote memorization and reproduction. Add to it that the levels are each unique and well-paced without being too long, and the amazing soundtrack, and you get an incredible game, finished with visuals and sound effects that are icing on top of a perfect cake.

I think the length is a key point of difference between us here. I'd rather have a tightly crafted action game that's only an hour long but which pushes me for that entire hour, than slog through a long, drawn-out game whose only real challenge is how much time I have to waste. "So much going on" is meaningless when none of it is memorable or engaging. Note above how I played CV1 and Symphony at around the same time. I can remember some parts of symphony visually, and I definitely remember the soundtrack, but nothing really sticks out that is truly memorable and notable. Compare that to CV1, where I still can flash a warm smile at how good it felt to finally beat death and his bullshit level 5. I feel that the Quantity/Quality metric really shows itself here. Symphony clearly put the former above the latter, and was hurt for it. Who cares if there's more stuff to do if none of it is interesting? A pile of good baby toys has "more stuff to do" than does one good book, but I wouldn't choose the toys.

Ultimately symphony is just a fundamental break from what I like about castlevania and so I have little reason to personally rate it highly. Like Peter Gabriel Genesis and Phil Collins Genesis, old and new castlevania share little besides their name and certain characters/trademarks.

I’ve never actually played Castlevania on the NES. My first experience with a Castlevania game was on the SNES with Super Castlevania IV. It’s one of my favorite SNES games of all time, so I do enjoy the shorter arcadey-levels format. 

I don’t necessarily feel SOTN is less quality than the earlier Castlevanias, but I can see to a degree it might put people off if they’re more into their action gaming rather than the explorative gaming. I guess the main difference between us, is that the explorative nature of SOTN dilutes the core values you seek in your Castlevania, whereas I see it as an enhancement to the core premise of its earlier games.