sp1nz

September SEEGAA! Super stoked to add all of these Nordic MD rentals to my collection The other shenanigans

There are so many considerations to this, even if you try to touch most of the bases, that it feels like the best you can come up with is insane speculation. It's basically questions of 'Teletransportation paradox' and 'Ship of Theseus'. When a clone human is created and then the old human is destroyed, I would say your old consciousness definitely died, so while others perceive "you" continuing, the original consciousness died - unless you can feel yourself as an organism of shared consciousness, which would almost certainly need some physical link between the bodies (like 'craniopagus twins') unless future humans are some transhuman cloud-connected beings. We can't even understand human brains yet, and we would need to have technology that would transfer us so elegantly through time-space that our consciousness had uninterrupted continuity; quantum theory was mentioned, maybe that's one possibility, but building something that can utilize that theory is the gigantic undertaking. So sure maybe in the future it's possible on a theoretical level to pull off a teletransportation with continuity of consciousness but the resources needed to pull it off could be very prohibitive and maybe singularity++ level A.I. is the minimum needed to come up with a way to do it for a human organism, so the practicality might be an impossible wall for us, if not the laws and ethics of the matter. In my speculation I would call teletransportation with continuity of consciousness a pipedream and just a fun dreamer scenario. I don't much believe in human race surviving long enough to see it actually happen, even if it was possible, with how things are going. But no, I wouldn't touch teleportation devices with a googolplex sized pole while I'm alive, no matter what some expert/A.I. posits about functionality of such. SOMA is a great game that delves into this question from a few angles.

There may be some dubs that are superior to subs but it's exceedingly rare and I prefer to do subs with original audio for my first time with any media.

Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa Takahashi Meijin no Bouken Jima IV

Drug addiction in six steps.

Squirtle my dude.

One of the all time greats in the fighting game category. Version mileage will vary a lot, but it's definitely a great and balanced versus 2D fighter that oozes character and brings some timeless banger tunes. I guess the thing that brings it down a bit is the light single player content. Loved playing Super Street Fighter II on my Mega Drive as a kid, heck I even had a Tiger LCD game of it (bought one again for the nostalgia, it even came with the manual). Beat the GB version on Level 5 with all chars last November, even that version has some merit to it, not that I'd rate it highly. Go home and be a family man! 9/10

I like compilation games/digital releases, they're a nifty way to play a bunch of old games for an affordable price, but I do prefer the originals on the original systems, even if the re-release versions were objectively the better versions. The experience with the originals is just more tangible; the extra effort required in getting a machine, a game, cleaning them up, setting them up, taking in the artwork, the smell, the manual and so on - while nostalgia heightens all of that, even without nostalgia towards a specific game or a system, I find it to be the true experience when dealing with original items. Playing on an Everdrive with a thousand ROMs or on a modern system is a great way to play too, but it's not quite the same for me. Do I play everything with/on original stuff all the time, even if I own it? Not at all, but that's the way to really take something in and get transported into the magic, a hopeful attempt to grab the feeling of your past or just appreciate the finite lifespan (maybe less finite than yours) of the original media while you still can.

August Amplifying Three choice picks from my local shop some NISA discount purchases and other stuff I've been mostly keeping up with the Neptunia series collecting so here goes again another purchase from Koei Tecmo EU Shop, keeping up with the Ateliers too Turrican goodness, pretty cool to get some free extras for the long wait Demons of Asteborg CE and couple others Had to have this Sonic Spinball vinyl although I usually only go for vinyls with exceptionally great music

1 or 2 times a year is too common to settle with high price and dog condition. 1 in 2-5 years or beyond I'd still not jump on it at a near market price, at 0-50% price of a very good condition copy I'll definitely think about picking up a rare game depending on what the damages are; moderate or even heavy sunfade is better than utterly mangled box but if the damage is too severe I might not be interested even with actual rarity and high interest in the product. I'm not really in the market for buying dupes or upgrading copies later down the line anyway, so in general my decisions to purchase are to purchase for life and I'm not overly condition sensitive either.

July Jumbos Let's start with some sweet MD rentals - played all of these a ton in my childhood, not that I owned the rentals as a kid: VGS partner homebrew and some other homebrews from Mega Cat Studios: Premium Edition games wave 3: Big purchase from Red Art Games - I've only purchased their Vita catalogue before this: More miscellaneous arrivals including Doom Classics Collection PS4 replacement disc: And 2 VGM vinyls to top it all off:

Pretty surprised by the low reception but taste is always taste. I never felt the game didn't work on a technical level as a kid or as an adult. Anyway onto the praise: Lent it from a friend and beat it pretty quickly when I was a kid, and have played it randomly over the years and always enjoyed my time with it. Great sense of style, amazing art, simple and effective story, some branching paths and secrets, utility pet rat, decent and unique rock music for the system. Also has inventory management, instant death potential, it's pretty difficult, there is a variety of combat moves you can utilize but spamming can work just fine. So there are pros and "cons" but I happen to like difficult enough games and most things people seem to complain about are nonissues for me and turn into pros most of the time. I like how you can tear a part of the comic page and throw it as a strong paper plane projectile but it costs a decent chunk of your health, I like how you can make your rat find secret items, I like the speech bubbles that pop up and meaty sound effects, I like the traps and residual damage from hitting hard objects, I like learning where to get items and when to best use them - so needless to say there's a lot of attention to detail. Whether you love it or hate it, I'm not sure if there is another game in the "same" style of panel hopping and baddie smacking. Not a perfect game but a damn good game that any action game fan or high concept fan should at least check for themselves, if they can take on the challenge - definitely a must have Genesis game in my book and somewhere in the top 25-50 of the system for me. 9/10

Korean market also has weird unlicensed/pirate (?) Genesis games with Genesis text red spines with similar green sticker on box and JPN cart shells.

@goonhoon spotted Donkey Kong for Mini Comboy in this fresh thread: Oval seal, different color on the on the Mini Comboy text and a green sticker. I assume the differences are due to being a late release. The green sticker reminds me of some Super Comboy releases.

Sounds very much like Truxton (1988) Arcade.

You need to change the DL/CR2032 lithium battery of the system located in the bottom left compartment of its backside for the system to regain the ability to hold saves.

The game has a harder Extra Game mode if you press Up + A + Select together in the title screen. For me it's a childhood classic and an amazing Game Boy game; perfect sprite size, great music, cute graphics, snappy length and for Kirby's first outing it knocked it out of the park despite not having the advanced mechanics the series would become known for. Nostalgia is strong in this one but I think it's genuinely a great platformer that has aged well. It's in top 10 of GB for me. 9/10

Star Ocean: The Second Story

The depth and competitive nature of MOBAs (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) are definitely not for everyone, since to be competitive you have to know each character's skill set, you have to know what items to build in what order, you play as a single character in RTS micromanagement style while working with your team etc. The problem is that the communities of these games are often toxic to boot and it's hard to work as a team with random people flaming for small mistakes and tilting everyone else. I think the genre is decent one to play with friends though, if you want "near infinite depth" in a team based PvP setting, since every match is wildly different with the character bans/picks/item builds/progression of the match etc. I think League of Legends has a fun roster of characters and hits a good balance of accessibility and complexity within its genre. Still if you want to play fully free I guess there's a lot of grind to be at an even playing field with rune loadouts and things, if those are still a thing, since last time I played was almost 10 years ago or something. I think any online only team based PvP game can suffer from the fact that you are working in a team of random people, unless you have a good friend group who enjoys a certain game like that. So the score would mostly depend on the company you have or lack in such games, if you like the genre to begin with. So to me it feels like a 5/10 for solo play, since there are not many great alternatives to this kind of gaming experience and I don't really play the genre but it could be vastly higher if I had a great friend group to dick around with. The MOBAs I know of are Defence of the Ancients aka DotA (never played), DotA 2 (played a tiny bit), Heroes of Newerth aka HoN (I played for a while with friends casually but I think the game has been discontinued since a long time), League of Legends aka LoL (I played a decent bit with friends casually, still maybe "only" 50-100h) and Heroes of the Storm aka HotS (the Blizzard franchises mix and match roster with decent accessibility that I played a few matches of). Complexity is probably DotA 2 > DotA > HoN > LoL > HotS. It doesn't surprise me that retro console gamers / older gamers don't know or don't care about a genre that rose from Warcraft III community mod (RTS and RTS adjacent games are quite niche to begin with and are very PC centric for playability) and doesn't have too many examples to speak of. The Netflix series "Arcane" is based on League of Legends and it was rather good. Riot is also making and has made other games based on the lore and characters that have been nurtured over the course of League of Legend's lifespan.

June Gone Jungle Bananas I've been mostly buying "limited" print products for a while, so I decided to go nuts with PS4 retail games (+1 Switch and 3 3DS games) that were heavily discounted for the most part. They were under 20€ average price, no postage/customs costs incurred. Seeing the Darius PS4 games from a few posters here made me go look for them and it just snowballed hard from there.

Aye aye, captain!

Well here's my Korean GB 2nd release (pretty sure it's missing some paperwork): Got a CIB Alleyway, Golf and QIX too but haven't taken a picture of them.

Interesting read. I collect big box PC games but I never dealt in the "ultra high end" items, so I can always compare copies and contents easily. Most of my games come from a big bundle of games from a Finnish collector (with original store stickers on a bunch of them) and from an American collector with a couple thousand games accrued over decades. Luckily I'm not looking to expand my collection too much from this point on and what I'm seeking is high supply high demand type of stuff.