DarkKobold

4 minutes ago, T-Pac said:

@DarkKobold I know people like to hate on the packaging for SMS games, but that looks soooo nice all-together as a set.

How did you approach games released in different formats for different regions?
(Just dipped my toes into the Master System myself, and I had to get a German copy of Transbot since the US release was exclusively in card format and I only have a cartridge-reader.)

[T-Pac]

Absolutely, 100% agree, SMS sets look amazing when you rainbow sort them. (As a spoiler, I do a ton of rainbow sorting in my collection.)  I really dislike when people mix the few off-color boxes into the set. In fact, I made sure to use PAL boxes for Bomber Raid, Galaxy Force, Rampage and Cyborg Hunter, because they're the correct  colors for the shelf!  I have duplicate US versions for everything but the poorly colored Red US Rampage. Also, I did not care about getting US UPCs for the 4 imported PAL games. 

Originally, I just went cart-only on everything, so PAL versions for all the US cards. Then, I gave in, and went ahead and got the US cards as well. Also, as silly as it is, I got Heavyweight Champ, James Buster Douglas, and George Foreman KO Boxing, despite them all being the same game with different titles. Same with Great Soccer and World Soccer, those are the same game, but confusingly Great Soccer (card version) is a completely different game. 

Finally, there's some things you could say I'm missing, depending on how you define the Euro-exclusive set. There's the Hang On card version, which was mostly a console pack-in, but a very rare boxed version exists, and is insanely expensive for what amounts to a piece of paper inside a case. Next, I'm missing the esportes gamebox, which is a 3-in-1 version of other games I already own, but technically was a European release, only available in Portugal. I'd like to get these, but they're not a priority in my collecting. I did make sure to get Sapo Xule in the purple box Portugal format, as opposed to the Brazillian Tectoy version. 

As this post demonstrates, I could babble endlessly about what counts towards a set, and what shouldn't. 

22 hours ago, DefaultGen said:

Collectors are so dumb. The consoles version of this game shot up 3x in price because of this. Was anyone buying digital versions of Spec Ops: The Line on PS3? Are those digital stores even still up? The PC version, the version that was actually just delisted, is still available for $15 brand new physically. Insanity.

This is the perfect situation to not panic. A game was delisted... and physical copies were already available for low prices on every platform! It's like buying up a DVD because it got removed from Netflix.

Shit, I panicked and just bought 50 copies... 

3 hours ago, final fight cd said:

So this legit has not been on eBay in 7 years? Is that info accurate?  If so, crazy!

Also, if true, how could somebody think it appropriate to use the term “rare” for both this and, let’s say, little Samson.  They obviously are worlds apart in terms of availability.

People also call Earthbound rare or "RAR3 OMG L@@K!!" 

There's no accounting for taste. 

It's also one of those games. If two people with deep pockets feel they need to own it, the sky is the limit.  Pricecharting is actually valuable for one purpose here - it shows that there hasn't been one available for ~7 years on eBay. Someone with money but without contacts to find rare stuff is gonna bid through the roof on this, because this might be their last chance this decade. 

4 minutes ago, Tyree_Cooper said:

hey i still remember that guy bragging about finding LOTS of brand new copies of the smurfs around the world game in a game shop somewhere, i think it was in czech republic or poland, somewhere around there, he posted photos of the location. he must have made good money reselling them.

your copy with the halifax sticker shows some copies made it to italy

I bought it from the guy in Italy who had multiple copies. I just checked eBay, It appears he finally ran out.  He must have found a pretty good stash somewhere. He did it the best way possible if you want to unload a rare game you have 30 copies of. He wouldn't negotiate a single dime off, he'd only list one at a time, he wouldn't tell you how many he had left, and he would usually wait 1-3 weeks before posting another one. He might have gone months with out a sale, but sometimes, when he'd list one, the pure FOMO would rule out, and someone would buy it immediately, which meant waiting weeks to find out if he had any left. The FOMO definitely caught up with me, and I bought it at full price. That stung, but... FOMO. 

So, I'm not sure I'm deserving of my own thread, but I figured I'd make one anyway. I thought it would be fun to go through my game collection, set by set, and talk about why it was fun to collect, the bad stories, the good stories, etc. To start, here's my complete US (114), complete Euro exclusive (168), and working toward complete Worldwide Sega Master System set. 

Putting together the US set was mostly uneventful. I got really lucky, finding a BIN lot with James Buster Douglas CIB mixed in with a bunch of generic SMS games for $300, in 2021. Otherwise, I don't really remember getting most of the set. I had Alf, Ys, and Phantasy Star early on, so the rest of the set wasn't hard to put together. 

The Euro exclusives, on the other hand, were a ton of fun. Trying to seek out deals all around Europe, finding anyone with underpriced games.... One of my favorite stories was finding Power Strike II - It was on some random Swedish game store website, for half the price of a normal CIB. However, there were no pictures, and no description. So, I emailed and asked the two main questions: Do you ship to the US, and is it complete? It is, I order it, and it shows up dead mint. Looks like it'd never been opened. Usually, stories like that don't turn out good, lol. 

Another fun story was finding Masters of Combat. I got an incredible eBay snipe out of Portugal, for around 30-40% of what the most recent auctions in the UK had been closing at. My heart is pounding through my ears, as for those that don't know, MoC is the rarest, most expensive game out of the set. Later on, I'm on twitter looking for other SMS posts to find deals.... but then, I see this tweet - 

My freaking snipe, being advertised to a following of around 4,000 people. I was sweating bullets. Was someone going to be backdooring me? Is it going to ship? Is the seller going to cancel my listing? I was beyond pissed. Obviously, the story ended well, but my F5 button broke due to over use on the shipping page. I eventually confronted him a year later, on youtube of all places, and he just replied with a sweat emoji. I wasn't still mad, but I wanted to point out what a crap move that was, for someone who apparently is seen as a price police. 

Those were the most eventful gets.  Now, for the downsides: Australian published SMS games suck. They use about 1/4" thinner cases, which stick out like sore thumbs, and they don't have real manuals, instead unfolding posters. I spent a lot of money on a lot of expensive Australian rare games, just to find that out. T2 judgement day is my last Australian release to replace. Also, SMS spines fade in about 30 seconds of sunlight. Seriously, finding nice spines for SMS games is brutal, because they didn't use very good ink. 

This was honestly one of the most fun sets I've collected. Having to find deals halfway across the world, trying to convince random game shops in the middle of nowhere England to ship to some weirdo obsessive in the US, scouring deals for games most of you don't care about, it was just a blast. Finally, I'll end with a flex picture: the heaviest of the set.

Just an FYI - Broke Studio is increasing the price of each game by 5 euro starting Feb 1st. If you want to grab games from them, now is the time before the price increase. The Star Keeper thread reminded me of this, so I went ahead and ordered a few of the ones I didn't have. 

https://www.brokestudio.fr/

I'm not affiliated with them in any way shape or form, nor am I getting anything from this post. I have my own studio, lol. Micro Mages is one of my favorite homebrew, that's all. 

2 hours ago, fcgamer said:

To address your points:

1. I never said Star Keeper was an early homebrew game. 

If we divide homebrew into two periods, Star Keeper falls into the earlier period.

 

tl;dr Star Keeper has historical significance for homebrew for many reasons, it's sort of a situation where one had to be there and been following it to understand it.

OK, gotcha. It's not early. Just earlier. Great clarification. A++. And that constitutes many reasons. 

On 1/26/2024 at 2:01 PM, DarkKobold said:

Full hypocrite disclosure: I own this from the original NA sales thread, and I would not sell it at the price it's currently going for. 

 

I.... was there. 

14 hours ago, fcgamer said:

I don't think it's necessary to do some sort of full hypocrite disclosure when posting one's opinions on a gaming forum.

I also own one of these, and have also been saying for years that the game is not great. Then again, neither are the Super A'can games, they are not great either, when compared to the price point.

You ask why the game has captured so much attention? It goes back to the history of the game and its release, as well as the history of NES homebrew as well, imo, ranging from the early years (i.e. Chris Covell and the early impressive tech demos before then) up until now.

A game such as this is quite significant to the history of NES homebrew scene; other titles I'd also value up there would be the early Christmas carts, Garage cart, etc. To compare it to the Super A'can, for example, that's a machine on an equal footing to the Tiger Game.com, i.e. a mediocre machine without much oompf to back it. Yeah, some people tried to artificially inflate the prices and popularity, but at the end of the day there's 12 mediocre 16-bit seen-it-all-before games, with the historical significance resting on an ethnicity, i.e. that Taiwanese people made it for a Taiwan market. On the other hand, with something like Star Keeper, it falls into a much broader historical area, of general NES homebrew, so it should be quite obvious why this would be a significant piece from the early years....

LOL, Wow. 

First, I was saying hypocrite, because I'm saying "it's not worth that" because, clearly it is to me, otherwise I'd sell my copy for what it's currently going for. It was meant as sort of a tongue-in-cheek, pointing out the irony of what I was saying. 

Also, Star Keeper is far, far, far, from being an "early" homebrew. I'm pretty certain Battle Kid 1 & 2 were out by that point, and the field of homebrew was already pretty flooded. It wasn't particularly impressive as far as design goes. It's an OK game, but it's only a strangely unique game for being released in limited quantities, from China, and is currently undumped. It really isn't as historically special as you're making it out to be. 

You insulting the Super A'can left and right is pretty hilarious. A 16 bit system with fun games is 100% the exact same level as a handheld with absolutely awful screen lag. 

4 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

This is pretty much the same question for all expensive games. It always comes down to personal preference. I paid a lot for my Star Keeper because it’s cool to me. Some people have paid 10-20x that amount for other expensive games. Really the only answer here is “to each his own”

Fair enough, it just seems like such an odd release, in a dense field of homebrew. I was hoping there was more depth to the story of why it's so desirable, that's all. Like some cool factoid about it that set it apart from the crowd. 

Full hypocrite disclosure: I own this from the original NA sales thread, and I would not sell it at the price it's currently going for. 

Disclosures aside, this game isn't that great, I can't understand why it's going for so much money. Can anyone explain why this particular homebrew has captured so much attention? There's so many other great homebrew games. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad game, but it's no Battle Kid. I don't understand why this particular game is so insanely sought after. 

3 minutes ago, RegularGuyGamer said:

That's a difference then on my end. Collecting video games isn't part of my personality. It's just something I enjoy in my spare time. I would be who I am w.o collecting video games. I read about politics and EVs / cars all the time but I don't make those a part my personality either. 

Yup! And there's nothing wrong with either side, imo. 

Also, I guess it's important to say what it means for something to be "part of your personality." For me, it's because one of my friends group is all retro game collectors, it's what we enjoy talking about. One of the last two girls I seriously dated was a retro collector. When I host get-togethers, it's centered around retro games and retro gamers. When we plan friend vacations, we go to conventions like PRGE or Game On Expo. When we got out on the town, it's either to an arcade bar or to go game hunting at local game stores. 

In reality, a personality is more about introvert/extrovert kind of measures, game collecting isn't part of the myers brigg test, lol. But I feel that definition helps explain why I call it part of my personality. 

3 hours ago, fcgamer said:

I don't think anyone is trying to hide their collections from the lives of their friends, colleagues, lovers, etc. - that would be incredibly dishonest imo, especially at the age that most of us are, where we should be secure enough about ourselves not to care what others think of such idiosyncrasies as these; however, my point is that I personally don't want to be defined by my gaming collection, no more than a stripper wants to be defined by his or her job, swingers by their hobby, etc. The people who should know about it know about it, those who wouldn't care about it have no need to know about it, and those that are on a more intimate level yet don't care about it in particular, know about it, but don't need it thrust in their face anymore than is necessary. Then again, although I do consider these old games to be a large part of my life, it's definitely not the essence of me as a person.

If they're in my house.... we're already at a level of intimacy that they should know who I am. I don't walk around with a shirt on that says how many video games are in my collection.  And I'm 100% happy with people seeing my game collection as a big part of my personality. Not the only part, but a big part. 

I find it odd that both your references are about sex. Also, if you've ever met a swinger, you know that the first thing out of their mouth is about them swinging. Every swinger I've ever met defines themselves by their hobby. 

On 1/23/2024 at 12:07 PM, RegularGuyGamer said:

I feel the same way but have the same view towards displaying my collection as he does. For context, I have built in shelves at the back of my basement that holds my collection and most people that come over never even ask or acknowledge it besides, "Damn that's a lot of games. Remember playing xyz?".

I don't really care what people who don't share my hobby think so I don't need to have it front and center in my house to invite people who don't know or care about my hobby to provoke a conversation. In my experience, most conversation with non collectors go in a couple directions. 1) it's space 2) it's money or 3) it's useless. After you have this conversation a ton of times, it becomes tiring.

So since I don't care what people think, I don't provoke their responses by putting my games front and center - and my wife wouldn't have it lol. In the living room I have a Xbox Series X with the OEM Star Field wrap with the Star Field controller under the TV and my HDMI N64 above that. Those alone have been enough to spark any other closeted gamer or collector to start asking questions. 

I almost see my collection as different - I can't imagine someone "knowing me" but also trying to hide what I consider a huge part of my life. I host a lot of get togethers for local friends, and our joining factor is mostly that we collect video games (actually, most of those are past tense, but I digress). 

Collecting has been such a big part of my life, that if people don't like my collection, they can GTFO of my house. Luckily, collecting hasn't just brought me video games, it's brought me so many great close friends that are friends for life, regardless of whether or not they continue to collect. 

So in short, I do care what people think, because it's a good judge of whether or not I want them in my life. 

So, my favorite "find" of 2023 was obviously REBEL for Super A'can, but I paid 1.5 years of bento boxes for that, so it wasn't that much of a  "find."  This, however, was my best score of 2023. No manual, but a $3000 piece of cardboard for $275 ain't bad. 

I only want one Badger. 

Give me that Super A'can Full set badger. 

3 minutes ago, Gloves said:

I decide what constitutes a full set and it's completely contextual based on my current mood paired with how much I like or dislike the person requesting the reward. As god intended!

You're denying me the dopamine of an endless circular argument about what constitutes a complete set! 

One of the things that really scratches my brain is a discussion of what counts as a fullset. Like, does RCA Studio II require you have Bingo? There's 2 copies known. There's no Amstrad GX4000 badge, but if there were, there's like one owner of Chase HQ2. Anyway, I would love to see a debate thread as to what counts as a full set. I'd get many dopamine hits from a long, detailed, nerdy discussion of what should count as a complete set. 

On 11/10/2023 at 10:38 PM, Dr. Morbis said:

Yeah, but the first Superman (Action Comics #1) is absolutely undisputable, whereas the release that you're calling the first SMB is not actually the first SMB; that label belongs to the first print run of the game in Japan on the Famicom, which seems to have been conveniently forgotten by the hype train.  It's not even a name change or code change either - the exact identical game with the exact identical name had already been released!

Of course Mint sealed NES games will always be worth something, it just isn't going to be seven figures for generations to come like all the WATA/Heritage talk had been leading many to believe...

I'm a little late to this conversation, but... 

This FRIST PRINT!!!11eleventy SMB is also really the heart of the sealed game explosion. They sold it to themselves for like $100k, and then had the media run a bunch of articles about how they agreed to buy it from themselves for an absurd value, and that makes the price super-duper real. Then they did that a few more times, and got a bunch of rubes to fall in line. 

So, they not only pumped the market monetarily, they also set out to change "what matters" in NES collecting. I don't remember anyone giving a shit about print runs. NWC and Stadium Events were the grails to talk about. 

So my question is, now that the emperor has been shown to not be wearing clothes, are we going to go back to talking more about stadium events, and less about print runs? 

Also, since Rebel came in under budget, and this ended 15 minutes later, I decided to bid on this. Kinda got lost in the shuffle with how this thread went. 

On 10/8/2023 at 1:02 PM, FireHazard51 said:

@DarkKobold now that you got your grail.  What are going to focus your attention on next?  Any plans on taking Rebel to a Con for people to actually experience the game in person.  I've heard of someone people who do that, take rare consoles/games to Cons to share with the community.  I'm really interested if you gave any thoughts to what you would do if you got Rebel and now that you got it, do you still feel the same about what you want to do.

 

Once it's dumped, it'll be made available to the entire Super A'can community. I'll have more to say on that soon, but big things are coming. I honestly have barely played it myself, as I'm concerned about hurting it before the dump is made. Probably 3-4 weeks out before that is solved. I feel more like a steward of the game, than an owner at the moment. It's my fault if this copy gets lost to time, so that's sort of a burden, but one I hope to remedy quick. 

I do wonder how I'll feel about collecting moving forward, as this was #1. No game will hit bigger, emotionally. 

3 hours ago, BlackVega said:

I am all in for people showing off interesting and all kinds of stuff without exception but maybe it is a good idea for anyone not to disclose the price paid? Because I noticed when someone shows something off then the responses are usually very positive like "HURRAH YOU FINALLY MADE IT GR8 STUFF M8!!!!!!" but when they say how much they paid then the discussion ALMOST ALWAYS gets very political

FWIW, I never posted a price. It was still a completed eBay listing, and being one-of-a-kind, it's not very hard to track down a price. You basically have to put a 3 month moratorium on posting items like this, so they expire off eBay... except this was also "immortalized" in an article, so, basically, the chance of it flying under the radar as to what I paid was never going to happen. 

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2023/09/fancy-owning-the-rare-taiwanese-flop-super-acan-heres-your-chance

5 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

There are tons of offerings on the NES and Game Boy, which would make those machines worth owning, which is the point you are failing to acknowledge. Can you honestly recommend the Super A'Can machine to the average gamer, given the price point of the machine and it's software? There are much better choices out there, no matter where you look, which is my point.

There's a total of one system on eBay, so no, I can't exactly recommend everyone go out and buy it, lololol. But I'm also not recommending people go buy Daytona Netlink either. And whether or not Tetris or Super Mario Land is on GameBoy has literally nothing to do with Amazing Tater's CIB price. 

Again, still waiting on an answer as to what I should have done. 

33 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

I was told to more or less not post in here. You might feel that 5K+ or four figures is reasonable for games, a lot of people don't. The games like Samson although established by now at a four figures price, at least they're considered the top of the heap. A game for a failed machine, in traditional Chinese, it's just not on the same playability level as Samson, actually as I pointed out early on in the thread, none of the Super A'Can games are, which is why the machine just isn't a great system when compared to the price per cartridge.

If you disagree with that, then that's fine, but you shouldn't let your personal love cloud the reality of the situation. I feel the same with the Sachen library, there's tons of games I think are fun on there, but it's definitely not what would suit most people.

Now I've said my piece, I don't want to have to respond again, as I was told to let things be the end, fifteen posts back.

"The reality of the situation" is that the market dictated that price. If I wanted it, I had to pay that price. That's how auctions work. I have yet to see any actual, workable solution from the few naysayers as to what I should have done if I wanted to own the game, but not pay that much. It wasn't even the only 4 figure game, four other games went for over 1k. It may be your opinion that no game on the Super A'can is worth 4 figures, but the market disagrees with you.

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2023/09/fancy-owning-the-rare-taiwanese-flop-super-acan-heres-your-chance

I'm sorry that I quoted your post. My intention was not to draw you back into this thread. I can see if you got that notification, how it would seem like a gut-punch.  Further, I believe you weren't told to stop posting, you were told to stop making accusations against my character, and how this entire thread was a charade to maximize my resale price. 

We could get into a discussion of playability versus price, like Daytona Netlink on Saturn, an essentially unplayable version of a $20 game going for $10k on eBay. Little Samson was just one easy example of 100 games that are now 4-figure games, especially when you consider CIB games. The last Amazing Tater CIB went for 6,800 on eBay. Is that game the star gem of the GameBoy? 

18 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

I just received a notification that the op linked to my content from a different page, and some people are also making snarky comments regarding that. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to let it be the end, per your instructions, when people just keep drawing me back in to this thread.

Because you made a good description of the racist origins of WATA? I found that looking on Google for "WATA grading bruce lee" 'It's literally the first result on Google. I didn't know it would notify you.