Ozzy_98

Honestly, more stuff like that would make me more interested in sealed gaming. I don't normally follow too may sealed gaming people on instagram, cause their collections and posts all look the same to me. Not the kind of game pics I'm really interested in. And the few times it's not nintendo games, most of the time it's some rare big hitter on some other system I've seen a million other times. Meanwhile, when was the last time anyone ever saw a picture of a neo geo memory card

Is it time for a Wata always flows downhill joke yet?

I just noticed I said 2006, but 2005 was the last year for Grand Am's. So it's sometime between 1999 and 2005. I was not happy with the remodeled GrandPrix's from that generation. They dropped the 2 door models (But at that point I wanted a sporty 4 door anyways), and were underpowered for what you got. The supercharged models had 260 HP, which was kind of weak, and the same power at the G8's V6 model. They had a new GTX model with a V8, but it was weaker than the G8s weakest V8 by a fair amount. I will say with the G8, I did have one quirk that took a lot to get used to, that car has some blind spots that take getting used to. The A pillars (Which hold the front window in) are very think and bulky. When there could be a car in that area, I have to wait longer than expected to make sure there's no cars in there. The drivers side rear blind spot all cars have isn't too bad, but you need to look over your shoulder not just use the mirrors. Often when merging onto freeways people will get into that blind spot and be gone from my view.

First car was a... waaait,this is trying for my security questions, isn't it? Oh well, 1988 Pontiac GrandPrix LE, blue/grey two-tone, I was the second owner. 2.8 liters of "power", which honestly wasn't pad for that time frame. And like @Jeevan mine was a frankenstien; I was rear ended, and the guy who fixed it for me used a 1992 Pontiac back end. So mine was unique. Ran the whole knight rider lights on the front, and neons under it, and some crappy ass pre built speaker boxes. This one isn't mine, but it looked like this: Mine had the same wheels, but I had a power antenna that I had to replace twice. The plates I used to run on it were Ozzy 98 Next car was a bit more expensive, a 1997 Pontiac GrandPrix GT, with 3.8 liter. A bit better in the power department, but no speed demon. Mine was "forest green", which was an odd color cause it was black under many lights. Like this but with the better wheels. I also added a stick on chrome trim on the bottom body line, was never 100% sold on it. Didn't like it with it, didn't like it without it. Changed the tail lights to a "euro" style, made a custom front grill, and still have the radio from it. Mostly cause the bass would alway cut out due to some sort of short, so I had to replace it. It had green neons, and the plate for it was Ozzy 2K. Kept that plate, it's in my shop. Third car is my current "daily driver". Worked from home for 9 years, so yeah, "daily". It's the first and last car I ever got new, and can you guess who made it? Pontiac! It was a Pontiac G8 GT, I didn't get the GTP cause gas was $4 then and there was a recession going on, and at that time, I was driving an hour to\from work. The GT, while "only" making 361 HP (down to 355 for the 2009.5 model year, with bluetooth), was still pretty damned fun. This one I actually searched for and found a car with all items I wanted: Black body, GT trim w/fancy wheels, leather interior with CD. Only options I wasn't sure on was sun roof, and I think I'm glad I didn't get it. Again, not mine, but close: Only real mod I did was flash the computer for a video-in-motion hack, which let the full color video screen be used while driving above 5 MPH. I then hooked up a custom built car PC, ran Centrafuse software, and even had GPS on it. And let me tell you, adding GPS to a PC inside of a car is not fun. I ended up scrapping it all just because it started acting up in cold weather (This was before SSDs were big, the HDD lasted much longer than expected!) and I just started using android on my phone for GPS. While I didn't own them, three honorable mentions. My first truck was a "company" car, from my family's farm. A 1972 Dodge 1/2 ton. 318 c.i.d. and not much real power, but no weight on the back meant it burned up tires. Was harder than heck to drive at first, bias ply tires sucked. I don't known what official color it was, just a brown\tan thing. It was fun, but meh. After a while I also got my dad's old chevy 1 ton truck. Black, like a proper farm truck. I do not remember the year, was a 350 in it. Gave it up when I left the farm. And one car which isn't mine, but will be some day would be my dad's. Actually 2 of them. One would be his non-farm vehicle, a 2006 Pontiac Grand Am. Notice a theme yet? This car hate me, every time I have to use it, it breaks. It knows I make jokes about how Grand Ams are made from parts that fall off of Grand Prixs. The other car of my dad's I will get would be one from grandpa, a 1929 Model A ford. Again, not ours, but: Same color. Our wheels are different, we do not have the correct year wheels on it. Ours are later wheels. Oh, and for the record, the cars my dad owned, reverse order: 2006 Pontiac GrandAm, a Ford Tempo (he got cheap from a friend, only reason he got a ford), Pontiac Phoenix (More for mom, was a tiny pos), a green mid-70s Pontiac Lemans (Looks like it should be said as lemons but it's not) and his first car, bought soon as he was home from vietnam: a 1969 Pontiac GTO. We like Pontiac here.

To me, depends on how you do it. I've been collecting for years. But I'm not even been half assing it. For example, I never hit up yard sales early in the morning, that's work, and I don't do hobbies for work. But I like video game history, not just the mainstream ones, but the crud like Gameates are cool to me. So I collect odd ball stuff with no demand and I'm just as happy with some cheap odd ball game from Japan as most people are with rare expensive nes carts. And I'm a hoarder. Once I get a game, I almost never bother looking for a better quality replacement; it's now my game. Only time I sell games is if I accidently buy duplicates that aren't variants. Some people collect games and the thrill of the hunt for games in the wild is what drives them. Cause they live in areas with better yard sales and thrift stores than me Hell, I can't even find old tools or cast iron pans at yard sales anymore. Others like collecting almost like a strategy game, they use money from some games sales to fund more expensive games. Trade baits and the like are things they like. Completely different style of collecting than my style of "Oh hey that's cheap\never saw that before". Some take that last one to high ends where it is involving large sums of money. That often involves risk. I dislike risk. ALE = ARO x SLE is something beat into my skull too hard, if anyone knows the reference. But it's still game collecting to me, since most of these people know a ton about the games they collect. Then others take the high end and move it up an order of magnitude or two. Sure, you're collecting games, but most (not all) of these people are doing it for money, not the history of the items. But it's people knowing the history of the items that causes the prices to vary a ton. I'm expecting prices of the very high end to be a roller coaster for a while, then stabilize higher than most of us would like. But I also thought covid would cause a glut in prices like the last recession, so meh.

I'm kinda of wondering where everyone stands now. I have no issues with Dain or Bronty on the events here, and I don't think we should ever be pointing fingers as members unless it's something really bad. Right now, I view Wata as a whole as kind of not the most up-and-up company, but not the most sleazy of companies. Prefer VGA though. Sounds like they were using Dain's name a bit longer than they should, and doing questionable practices. And were just media whores, but that's how you get business. I'm waiting for twitter to find out how they got their name. Heritage Auctions is a bit more sleezy than Wata. I think I would trust game gavel pre-buyout a bit more than them. James Halperin just sucks. I wouldn't trust anything with his name related to it. I'm in the boat that these actions aren't the only driving force to the prices, but they sure made a quick jump. Seems like every company is trying to squeeze a quick buck (Investment companies buying houses left and right in some areas for example) this just seems to related to it.

And the citation was him speaking about it to Forbes, last year, joking about it. @karljobst if you didn't see that part about Halperin scamming at age 13, I think you may want to take a look.

Reading it, I see this: --- But Bronty, who has refused to reveal his identity to U.S. media, nevertheless decided, as Ars Technica reports, to “lend” his historically valuable game to “friends” at WATA so they could prominently display it at conventions under their own corporate banner—not VGA’s. --- "What" in the actual "fuck" is going on there. And "breaking news" ? And then just below that, --- to make this possible the first thing WATA had to do was something most game collectors regard as a sacrilege: break the VGA tamperproof case --- Most game collectors? I think the majority still side with the set them free crowd, depending on your classification of collector. Side note, how was insurance for that handled I wonder, incase someone ran off with Bronty's case.

Actually yeah it would. I've got a C64 copy of it down in the game room, need to make sure the disk works still. The D&D port of Pool of Radiance makes me sick. Side note, I owned the world record for speed running it (The PC version not the nes version I refuse to finish) for almost one whole week. Then my time was beat. By almost an hour. My time was only about an hour and 15 mins. Now I'm ranked 3rd. Out of 3 people who ran it. I really need to play it again, but, meh. Got me dragon quest monsters games that need beating as blue slimes.

Digging up an old thread since it was linked to one I saw, and @AdamW posted about this, thought I'd add a bit more details. In the very early 2000s, I think it was maybe 2000, could even been late 1990s before I got online, copies of Sapphire and one of the Fatal Furys were showing up printed by a company, Care-4-data. These were sold as legit games on ebay (Back when ebay was crazy and bidders could message each other). A know 1-2 guys on the Yahoo TG16 "mailing" group were burnt by buying them. The same a-hole who did that, was as stated, one of the main PCE Works guys, who then started using translation patches without permission from the translators, which pissed off more people. He's also the same guy who runs http://scanlines.hazard-city.de/ and is known as Fudoh in some circles. I'm not sure if he's also involved with the snatcher bootlegs at the time, that was around the time I first stopped collecting, cause of reasons. (Unemployment being the reason)

Wait, Dragon Wars? Like, the old PC RPG game? Or something else? Cause, repros of pc games is a new one on me.

Reminds me of this: "Fox persuasively argues, see Def Br. at 13-15, that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer “arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism” about the statements he makes." https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2019cv11161/527808/39/ Fox news case that no reasonable person would take what Tucker says as facts.

Nah, it's Pat. You don't talk to him, he talks at you.

As a ex-subcontractor for just over 10 years who worked with CFPB, DoED, FTC and FCC often, trust me, they go off on half-cocked charges often CFPB was the worst, I think cause they were the newest, but often the others would too. It's always worst right after elections where parties change and new leadership moves in. Last one I remember talking to the guys about was CFPB vs. some Student Loans, https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-ded-1_17-cv-01323 which was dismissed because they basically suied the wrong people.

You had to pick the game with the young (witch) girl on it for that comment?