Dr. Morbis

I've had mixed luck as well. Some foreign items have been arriving sooner than expected, some have taken three months or more. It's a total crapshoot. I've also got a couple packages out there somewhere that I ordered in July, so it's not just you. On the other hand, an item I ordered from Japan one week ago, showed up in my mail box on Friday. Go figure...

I've always hated Y's. When it came out I pronounced it like the letter Y, but since then have learned it's Eez, but either way, really stupid name for a really great series...

No, he's talking about the Famicom version of Rolling Thunder released in Japan by Namco. And, actually, a large amount of Namco's Famicom releases were picked up by other publishers and released in North America for the NES...

I think Micro Machines and Krazy Kreatures are the two best unlicensed games, and it's hard to argue otherwise, but my personal pick is King Neptune's Adventure; I just love that you're a Merman travelling around the ocean collecting items to unlock other unique areas. I also love the art style, love how the game handles with the underwater swimming and exploring, and the subscreen even has a map very reminiscent of Wizards & Warriors. It's a fun game that literally no one ever talks about...

The N64 Didn't come with a pack-in the day it came out, at least not in my country (Canada). But I do agree, when you've got Mario 64 to play through for the first time in 1996, it doesn't really matter that there are only two other games available...

Great list and I appreciate all the work you put into it. I was getting pretty low on the list thinking, "how the Fuck does he not have Silver Surfer Stage 1 on here?" but sure enough it showed up at #5. My only issue is that I feel like there is so much great material to work with that you could easily get 10 people to make lists like this and have zero overlap in song selection and they'd all still be great lists. Like, how do you pick just one tune from Mega Man 2, you know what I mean? Or do you just say, 'Fuck it' and have like six tunes from the same game on your list? But anyway, it was fun going through your particular selections, for sure...

Wait... what? I live in Canada but only collect US and Japanese games exclusively; so this means every single video game I own is an "import" by this definition, except for my copy of French NES Kirby. Cool way of looking at it, I guess...

If you like Picross and you like NES, there's always Family Picross, as mentioned in the las line of your post: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Nintendo-NES-game-FAMILY-PICROSS-CIB-BRAND-NEW/324010783026?hash=item4b708c3132:g:90gAAOSw6sZd8pG2 It's really well done, and runs on the greatest video game system of all time to boot!

Do you have a picture of the Miracle Piano?

This is my third time overall, but I've always had random party-wipes at various points early on, so this time I'm being overly cautious and attempting to have the RPG equivelant of a No-Death Run which to me is a No-Party-Wipes Run. I'm about half way right now and getting more powerful all the time. Once I unlock the Sage Class I'll be pretty much unstoppable. And yeah, DQ 5 is awesome. Storywise, the blonde chick is the best choice, but I love how your kids look with their blue hair if you pick the blue-haired chick, on top of all the free money her Dad gives you at random locations, so I sometimes pick the non-canon chick just for those reasons. Since DQ 5 is so much shorter than most other DQ's, I've played it a lot more...

Which one? I'm in Calgary, but if you're in Edmonton or Fort Mac, I guess the shoe fits... Welcome, either way!

I don't think it really matters how well you play when you have to face Lamar Jackson in your first game of the season...

As a James Bond fan, I really like this movie a lot as it seems like a James Bond type of movie before James Bond movies even existed. And yeah, I know the "whisked away into an adventure you know nothing about against your will" thing is not Bond-esque, but how Grant carries himself and how he deals with and gets through every situation does seem like Bond to me. The only downside is that Grant was pretty long in the tooth by this point so it's kind of weird seeing him along side a chick who could be his grand-daughter. And I also love the ending, but my favourite scene is the one where he's getting out of a car on a busy city street and you can tell it's not a movie set because various people notice him and start staring, probably thinking, "Holy Shit! Is that Cary Grant?" My two personal favourite Grant movies are Bringing Up Baby and Arsenic and Old Lace, as I've always felt he was at his best in comedies.

You should try the remake on Super Famicom - it's crazy good. And speaking of Dragon Quests, I'm going through DQ VI again myself right now...

Achievements are no MORE optional than anything else in gaming; I don't see how you're missing the point. Whatever game you play is optional; whatever system you choose to play is optional; there are no laws on how you must play your games. Your "argument" is akin to saying 'who cares if a game is riddled with glitches? As long as the glitches don't impede your progress you have no grounds to form any sort of complaint.' Well I'd be unhappy that the glitches even exist, EVEN THOUGH THEY DON'T IMPEDE MY PROGRESS THROUGH THE GAME, just as I am unhappy - by and large - that achievements exist, EVEN THOUGH THEY DON'T IMPEDE MY PROGRESS THROUGH THE GAME. The point is that this thread is about minor complaints people have about playing games; if you can't understand that some people other than yourself may have some complaints about achievements, then I cannot help YOU!

The earlier Bond's that focus more on covert/spy/espionage plot paths appeal to me way more. I remember seeing one of the modern Bond posters with Daniel Craig and he was carrying a gun so large that he looked like Rambo in a suit. I'm sorry, but that is NOT James Bond! My favourite movie in principle is On Her Majesty's Secret Service because I like the story and characters and music and many of the scenes, but in practice, whenever I feel like watching a Bond movie, it's usually a 50/50 toss-up between The Man with the Golden Gun or something else, so I had to vote for that one. I think I've seen it over 20 times now and it never gets old for me. Nice topic!

Absolutely, for three reasons: End labels, more space for bigger circuit boards, and screws instead of snap cases so you can more easily open the cartridges without risk of damaging them. As for your Pokemon argument, I'd guess that the primary reason that the US ones sell for more is because they are US ones; the fact that they may be better quality probably has far less to do with their value as collectables...

I'm not a modern gamer, so I don't know how the achievement tracking works on every system, but I can tell you that at least one of the XBOX systems would load up an achievement percentage on every game as soon as you played the game once, according to a friend of mine. So if you try out a game and pop one achievement and never play it again, it will be listed at 1% complete (or whatever) forever and add that to the cumulative percentage of all of your games, and you COULD NOT OPT OUT OR ERASE THIS - it was not optional. My friend would purposely not play some games because he didn't want to take a gamble that it would be a game he wouldn't really want to delve into. Now if this has changed in the last generation, then that is awesome, but it won't affect me either way as I'm not into playing current-gen games where the average completion time is deep into double-digit hours...

I think this is a weak argument. That's like saying you don't understand the argument that a game is too hard since beating it is optional, so no one should argue against it being too hard. We're talking about video games - a pastime - so everything is "purely optional" starting with the decision to boot up your system and play whatever game. But here's the issue: if you give a man an objective, he's going to want to complete it - that's human nature. So "beating" a game is the initial objective when you first start playing a new game, and that's fine, but when you get to the point where there are dozens and dozens of objectives (achievements) of which some are ridiculously time consuming and tedious for no good reason, like the example above where you must play as Jason 1000 times to get every achievement, it's like the game developers are baiting the gamer and his stubborn human nature into playing their game for an unnaturally long amount of time that far surpasses the amount of time the gamer would have put into said game had it not had any achievements to begin with. And that's my issue with the whole concept of artificial padding like achievements and the like in modern games...

Obviously, yeah, but as someone who does care about the character, game, medium, history, etc, it really hits a nerve...

Yeah, I am SOOOOO glad that achievements didn't exist in the NES era. Feeling like you have to jump through 25 silly hoops to fully "complete" a game is the worst kind of artificial padding. That along with crafting and required scavenger hunts kills most modern games for me...

Yeah, it is pretty pointless, but I still want one pretty bad. Pretty much everything I collect that's game related but not an actual game (like my Dragon Quest Sofubi's) is utterly pointless, but I still want what I want...

Do not buy a Chinese copy of English FF III without doing your homework; many have a glitch that makes your airship disappear early in the game, rendering the final 98% of the game unplayable. I even checked on my friend's "X in 1" multicart, and sure enough, about an hour into the game, I was stuck where I was forever...

I There is no subtitle "Rondo of Blood" in any region and the Japanese version has two X's (Akumajou Dracula XX) to signify to consumers that it is NOT Rondo of Blood. Just saying...

What's funny about this auction is that it is so ridiculously obvious that it is NOT the first print. The first print has no UPC and does NOT have the writing on the back at the top that says "For sale and use in Japan only." That being said, the fact that SMB was released on the Famicom in Japan BEFORE it was released on the NES in the US, means that the true first print of this title is the first run of the Famicom version. The fact that test market US copies are selling for a ton because they're the "first print" is an absolute travesty. In no other hobby would you disregard a first print solely on the grounds that it was released outside of the US. Like the first Harry Potter in the US (Sorceror's Stone) should somehow supercede the true first print of the Philosopher's Stone because the former was the first print in the US?!?!? Leave it to GoCollect and WATA to bamboozle the American public...