I haven't had much activity collecting-wise, so these photos are pretty much everything new of note within the last couple of months:

Two more marquees to add to my arcade marquee collection. Out of all the Capcom Vs marquee artwork, I like XvSF the best. Virtua Racing is my favorite arcade racer, so I had to have that game represented. I have one empty marquee space left on my game room wall; I'm planning on adorning it with either an MK1 or MK2 marquee, assuming RetroWorldExpo continues their tradition of inviting back the Midway devs & MK digital models as guests. I'd love to get an autographed marquee.

About a year and a half ago I got into LaserDisc emulation through Daphne which is when I learned about the game Thayer's Quest. Early 2000s Digital Leisure released a bunch of laserdisc games (Dragon's Lair, Mad Dog McCree) as interactive DVDs. Out of all those DVDs, Thayer's Quest is pretty damn rare and never got the plethora of modern console ports like the Dragon's Lair trilogy. I had a hard time finding good value info on the DVD; the only info I could find was that a copy sold in Great Britain for about $150 USD.

I set up an eBay search for this DVD back in spring 2022 and it didn't return a hit until March 2023 when someone put this copy up for a $75 BIN. Who knows when I'd see another copy pop up, so I snapped it up immediately.

Edit: Not even PriceCharting knows.

This crime story was made for this thread:

Deputies accuse man of using Nintendo ‘Duck Hunt’ pistol to rob a business

Quote

A man in North Carolina was arrested after being accused of using a pistol-shaped controller from the 1980s Nintendo game “Duck Hunt” to rob a business, according to the York County Sheriff’s Office.

https://www.wfsb.com/2023/05/31/deputies-accuse-man-using-nintendo-duck-hunt-pistol-rob-business/

This is the first video game melody to be preserved in this way. Now that the door is open, I will be writing to my Representatives regularly until Bloody Tears is declared a US cultural icon. 

The video game preservation community works quick: There is now a way to unbrick memory corrupted Wii Us using a Raspberry Pi Pico:

I won this big boy marquee about a week and a half ago from an eBay auction for $130 shipped. I used to play Trilogy Arcade all the time at the local theater in the 90s, so I was happy to win it. 

The arcade cabinet used a 40" rear-projection screen CRT, so the marquee itself is over 3 feet wide and a foot-and-a-half tall. I didn't think until after I won it if I would have enough empty wall space in the game room to mount it, hah.

1 hour ago, phart010 said:

I don’t agree. Because if it’s true what they are saying and Switch cartridges suffer from the same fate, then having porting the games to switch only extends the lifespan of the games by another 5-10 years 

Maybe that's why Nintendo supposedly pushed back the Switch 2; they're positioning the launch for when all the Switch games get Thanos snapped and consumers will have to re-buy the Switch 2 remakes. 

32 minutes ago, OptOut said:

Apparently Elon Musk accidentally fired a heroic Icelandic disabled dude with a 100 million dollar dead man's switch written into his contract!

He spent like a full day ripping the shit out of this guy and taunting him for being handicapped before he realised his mistake and came grovelling back, begging him to stay so he doesn't have to pay out the hundred mill... What a fucking enormous douche!

I'll admit I never heard of Haraldur Thorleifsson until this whole thing blew up, but from what I read he sounds like a stand-up guy.

He doesn't exactly have a dead-man switch in his contract; when his company was bought out by Twitter in 2021 he chose to take the payment in salary so he would pay more in taxes to his native Iceland as his way of giving back to the social programs he benefitted from. His contract simply states if he leaves Twitter, he'll get any remaining payment in one lump sum.

It was pretty disgusting seeing the Elon sycophants yesterday go "Hurr hurr! It's just like Office Space!" like it was a joke and mock the poor guy, only to later act like Elon is somehow magnanimous for apologizing for a situation he created. 

The website Exputer put out an article noting that Wii U owners on forums like Reddit, Neogaf, etc are reporting that their consoles are bricking themselves out of nowhere. The commonality with these reports are the error message (denoting an error with the internal NAND memory) and that the consoles had been unplugged/in storage for a long time.

NAND memory slowly discharges disconnected from power over time, so the working theory is long periods without power causes corruption to the internal system files.

https://exputer.com/news/wii-u-memory-error-long-period/

Reading some of the linked forum links to that article, the Wii U uses per-console encryption, so unless you previously modded your Wii U and made a backup of the NAND storage, you're console is bricked.

So FYI: Plug in your Wii U and play some NintendoLand or something at least once a year.

F-16 Falcon Flight Simulator 4.0, fall of 1999.

9 minutes ago, Bonanza125 said:

Isn't the reason being in business is to sell product you have? If you have many copies of 1 item the last thing as a business you would want to do is keep that product around for along time especially if you have overhead. I can understand a collector doing that but a business nah. The investment starts adding up.

Yeah, but selling out too quickly has it's own issues. Customers won't revisit your store if they think there is nothing of interest to purchase.

On 2/15/2023 at 12:48 PM, twiztor said:

Quote

If there were 10,000, I don't know where they ended up. I don't have recollection of us burying them in a landfill. Destroying them or reworking them would've been a laborious task. Getting the label off would've been overly laborious on a per-unit basis. So ... the rarity is a mystery, isn't it?"

 

4 hours ago, phart010 said:

Has anyone tried dialing the phone number on the commercial? It an actual working number 

https://twitter.com/Boos2fer/status/1624873696568508416?s=20

Edit: I also read that Jeannie Ellis (Princess Toadstool from the SMB Super Show) voiced the woman in the ad.

How was rarity calculated on the old NA database? I didn't join the forum until it had long-been well established, but was there any concrete figures or just member "feel" about the rarity?

46 minutes ago, Enternal said:

I might possibly have captures of most of the NES DB and the rarities assigned to each cart. Can the internet archive / wayback machine be used to pull in stuff that we need.?

I tried using IA/Wayback awhile ago to look up the old NA NES database, however big chunks of it are missing. Even if the IA did have the whole database saved, GoCollect owns the data which I believe makes using it to build a new database legally fraught. 

It'd be better in the long run for a new user-contributed database to be built from scratch.

They're nice to have, but I don't specifically go looking for copies with him. I'd rather settle for a nice in-case copy without one than spending extra time/money hunting down a copy with a spine card.

On 2/1/2023 at 12:35 AM, avatar! said:

For sure, and I enjoy that reaction. That said, I think "I'm Jealous!" would get a ton of usage

 

We need a drooling emoji

On 1/17/2023 at 7:26 PM, Mega Tank said:

Nice! How do you plan on displaying it?

For my game room, I use the 3M 0.5lb adhesive hooks you can buy at any hardware store. They're just the right size and shape to properly hold up the marquees. While they're for the most part secure, if I wanted something absolutely secure and less noticable, I'd probably use those clear plastic tabs you use to mount wall mirrors. I haven't done that because the game room walls are wood paneling and I don't want to put that many screw holes into the panels. Old photo of my DK3 acquisition as a visual example:

Onto new finds, last week I was casually browsing the FB pages of game stores in the region. When I checking recent posts from Video Game Remedy down in Rhode Island, I noticed a January 4th new stock post that included a copy of Sword Master w/manual for $310. I was like "Damn that's a really good price, about $100 under market." I figured after three weeks it had to been snatched up, but by Friday my curiosity got the better of me and I called the store late Friday afternoon:

Me: "Hey, I noticed on your FB page you got a Sword Master in. You still have that in stock?"

Store guy: "Yeah, I think we sold that...actually hold on, it's still in the case."

Me (!!!): "What time does your store open tomorrow?" 

So next morning, I hopped in my car and took an hour drive down to RI to get there when they opened. Grabbed Sword Master along with a couple other games not yet in my collection.

I agree as well. Leave the proto cart alone and store it in a clamshell case with custom artwork.

7 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Nintendo on a R-Type marque?  That's strange, it's an IREM title.

Nintendo distributed the arcade game in North America.

New year, new me:

Snagged this R-Type arcade marquee off eBay. Sun faded pretty bad, but I couldn't beat the BIN price of $34 shipped.

An out of state friend gifted me a gift certificate to Gorilla Games up in New Hampshire. Had a lazy weekend last week so took the two hour drive to check the place out. Chatted with the owner for a bit, cool guy. I was able to knock another hard-to-find game off my NES checklist.

7 hours ago, nick said:

NintendoAge was some good times man.

Narrator: "Nintendoage may have only lasted a decade, but the memories and friendships we made lasted a lifetime..."

7 hours ago, LeatherRebel5150 said:

Ive worked in an auction house for a few years and we did a lot of estate auctions and almost every one of them had some kind of “fancy” china that grandma had that was supposed to be passed down to the grand/daughter. But people inheriting it never had any interest and it barely ever sold. 

I think the waning interest in Fine China has to do with the decline of long-term home ownership. A couple regularly moving to follow job opportunities or simply living in an apartment/condo isn't going to want the hassle of storing/moving boxes of china. Plus society has grown more casual; people aren't hosting formal dinner parties much to justify owning china.

7 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

According to Google, Nintendo's age is approximately 133 years old.  They were founded in September of 1889.  

SOLD

Over the last year I've been collecting vintage arcade marquees and I've accumulated a small number of extras. Prices below don't include shipping. Feel free to inquire about exact cost, but in general expect shipping within the USA to run about $20 per shipment.

Note: Due to age and prior commercial use, all the marquees will have scratches and other imperfections. I noted any major imperfections below.

• Donkey Kong Jr - $40
  • In good overall shape. Prior owner drilled a pair of mounting holes in the upper corners of the marquee.
• Donkey Kong 3 - $75
  • In good overall shape.
• Imperfects lot - $60
  • Included in the lot:
    • Cabal - Translite marquee. The artwork layer started to crack and flake a bit. I added tape along the back to prevent anymore damage. Old sticker residue on the upper righthand corner.
    • Donkey Kong Jr (Bootleg) - Vintage bootleg marquee. Missing the Nintendo logo and darker colors than the genuine article. Has numerous pinprick holes in the artwork that's only noticeable when the marquee is in front of a bright light.
    • Pit Fighter - Translite marquee. There is significant deterioration of the artwork along the edges. Taped added along the back to prevent anymore damage.
    • Super Street Fighter 2 - A pair of large scratches to the artwork layer at the center of the marquee.

Cabal

Front:

Back:

Donkey Kong Jr

Front:

Back:

Donkey Kong Jr (Bootleg)

Front:

Back:

Donkey Kong 3:

Front:

Back:

Pit-Fighter

Front:

Back:

Super Street Fighter 2

Front:

Back:

.