Party Like its 1987

No real important topic today.  I just felt like showing off what I currently own from the Transformers: Titans Return line of toys.  170 dollars of transforming robots I don't need but are all homages/remakes of toys from 1986-88 just about. 

Also you know, I bought them here and there as opposed to all at once.  Which ones can you name without looking it up?  

SNES Collection Update

A mixture of a needed use of a sick day thanks to that iron blood testing thing they do when you give blood on a finger has lead me to have a little time to burn to do an update on my SNES collection such as it currently stands.  (The needle in the arm to remove the blood?  Eh.  The tiny quick prick to your middle finger?  OWWWWWW)

Why do these updates?  Well keeps my blog kind of active, and its good to have a photographic record of what I own both for going out and looking for new stuff and if anything bad would happen family members or insurance purposes.  A nice organized inventory helps out when it is needed the most.  Also it helps me reorganize things and clear up space as I re alphabetize and then store my useless but fun junk.  Until much like as kid me did to his closet making everything a disorganized mess again.

Click for big if you need to see them bigger.

 Oddly enough the reason I only have two of these loose SNES cart photos is because back before retro gaming and collecting got big I was snobby and mostly only wanted boxed games, or at least with manuals.  And as can sadly be seen most people never really took good care of their games.  I have seen things that would turn one's hair white.  CD/DVD based games just thrown loose on a table.  Drinks on top of electronic devices.  Games and controllers thrown about.  Horrible things.

 Zelda there came with my SNES in 1995 and can show you how I kept my stuff good.  It is clean and fancy.  Even UN Squadron I bought in early 1996 looks better than most of these carts because I take decent care of my stuff.  (I just need to dust a lot more often.)  And I have indeed actually done some light cleaning of most of these loose games.  That is how poorly people take care of their property.

 The first of my three images of my boxed games.  This sort of explains why I was also a boxed snob.  Most of my existing games in the early days of Ebay were such so why would I buy loose?  And it wasn't like there were a ton of retail stores carrying old games at that point.  SNES was in the midst of being phased out of video rental stores and the normal game shops of the time.  But I got a few choice morsels.  And thanks to a few budget reissues a couple more titles.

 Pilotwings is on top because technically it is the actual box cut up and placed into a plastic case of some kind.  It is a reasonable price.  Now if only we could get the true successor to it (Disney's STUNT ISLAND for DOS) reissued or remade.  It is everything Pilotwings wanted to be and MORE.

 The final suite of boxed games.  All three Super Star Wars games boxed.  And a sought after rarity.  And a game mostly known as a donor cartridge for reproduction and overclocking projects.

 From what I understand the Chrono Trigger cluebook is also sought after.  And while I may have gotten rid of the box my SNES came in (you can only transport so much on an airplane after all!) I still have all the paperwork in there.  Even if it isn't really needed.  The little thing at the bottom is a fancy save state/convertor cartridge.  Plug it into your SNES, plug the game in and you can save state in most spots in most SNES games.  And the design allows for Japanese Super Famicom games to be played without having to do any sort of chopping to your machine!

My controllers.  The Super Advantage because I enjoy such things as RAPID FIRE and joystick controls for my videogames, a stock pad because sometimes shoulder buttons have their use (and you know, it kinda came with the unit), and the SNES Mouse and Mouse Pad for Mario Paint, Arkanoid, Super Game Boy, and a handful of other games should I get them in the future.

Where is the SGB then?  Well I showed it in an earlier collection update covering the Game Boy but.. here it is again:

Just Some Collection Update Photos

I could get into a long long LOOOOONG rant about how silly people are being over videogames, movies, comics, toys, and other assorted bits of pop culture goofiness but it is too depressing to me right now.   I had a heck of a rough Summer so I just don't feel like it right now.  But I will share some roughly paraphrased words of wisdom from Lord Karnage himself of Classic Game Room:

Games are supposed to be FUN.  Lighten up!

Words to live by.

Anyhow, let us start with my Dragon Quest collection as it is at this moment:

Click images for bigger if you want.

 All of my main numbered DQ games!  I actually had the NES releases of 1 and 2 but traded the first in with other games to a game store towards some Genesis games (Kind of a mistake) and the second with a classmate for... Double Dragon 3.  WTF?  I think I got some money as well because the game wasn't as good and I had completed DW(now Q) 2 already and the classmate really wanted to play more of 2.  As we can see from the Game Boy Color remakes it all turned out ok!  The little Slime is from one of the Stacking Slime sets they put out in Japan 10 or so years back. The other slimes and the Golem that came with it you could do silly stacking things with it and said Slimes is in a zip baggie someplace.  (Yes kids there are even better things to put in your zip baggies besides marijuana.)

 The spinoff games mostly bought cheap as chips and some fun promotional goodies.  Sadly the Slime sticker from the 9 sheet is now on a 2007 iMac that I eventually ebayed to someone who is probably using it for dubious activities.  (Which is why I have all the data of the freshly OSX reinstalled and formatted hard disk and the machine info itself saved to a flash drive.  Never hurts to be safe with computer hardware ya know!)

A close up of the other Warrior World newsletter.  This one is sad because it mentions the superb 5th game of the series coming to the US SNES which never happened.  Again we eventually got them in a superior format in the US.  Sometime in 2017 we are reported to even get the 8th game above on the 3DS platform giving us all of the current single player Dragon Quest games on portable Nintendo platforms.

 Back in the days, Nintendo Power and other gaming magazines were the only real way to get help to complete so many games, especially those that never got clue books released.  So I have had this stapled together DW(Q)3 walkthrough waiting on the game itself until I got the Game Boy Color remake... On September 10th 2001.  Unbeknownst to me at the time I was starting on DQ 3 at the same time the tragedy of the next day was happening.  I still need to get the Nintendo Power articles and pullouts for the 1st and 2nd game sooner or later.  But I am cheap.

 The Playstation 1 cluebook of the 7th game I got last year or so cheap enough to buy, and the cluebooks for 8 and 9.  

And that is Dragon Quest as it currently is!

NOW SOME NES!

Well, for some silly reason the Nintendo faithful consider me a hater of Nintendo because I question many of their actions both past and present.  It does not mean I haven't bought and enjoyed a ton of their games.  Or generally the games other companies made for it.  Even some of the infamously bad titles on the system (most of the time licensed titles from such Childhood giftday/allowance savings ruiners as LJN, Acclaim, Bandai, and Ocean) are at least INTERESTING, especially now when you can get some of these terrible no good games for like 5 bucks or less loose.  An emulator and access to the Internet can sometimes help make these games somewhat playable!

 Most of my totally loose cartridges.  Some light gun fun, some of my collection themes (helicopters, Godzilla, computer games gone console, JAWS) and some actually good games in the mix.  I like to keep price stickers on as a reminder how much I paid for these silly things.  And in cases like Friday the 13th seeing the rental store sticker and what looks like all the effort some kid probably put into making the entire cartridge case black with permanent marker gives it charm!

 The rest of the loose cartridges, ones in a case with their maps and manuals, the Famicom version of Ultima 4 for my Ultima collection just like 3 (aka Exodus) there, the manual to the third TMNT game in spite of me having no idea what I did with the actual game, and titles for various collection themes like Batman and 2d Castlevanias.

 My four boxed games from back then and my controller of choice, the godly NES ADVANTAGE that helped and still helps me complete many a game.  And sometimes without abusing Turbo and Slow Motion features!  My one remaining NES pad I never really liked is there for the odd 2 player time, the Arkanoid Vaus controller so I can play Arkanoid right, and the original launch era Zapper for CRT shooty bang bang.

 Cluebooks and tip guides!  Always helpful in the pre Gamefaqs day!  The Official Nintendo Player's Guide was practically a must own for any NES player in the early days.  The Ultima 3 clue book is lovely and well suited for most versions of the game (and like a tenth of the price of the original Origin one that is both rare and has all it's maps done in black and white ASCII text.  Seriously.), and the Gamepro book is mostly NES titles and sometimes good in house art.  There is an excellent Phantasy Star 1 cast painting in there.  It isn't actually covered in the book but.. I appreciate it!  

 The New Games section is more or less previews of recent titles but the rest of it is full of cheats, passwords, and various bits of help to get you through the games covered.  For those who are counting the vast majority of the book is NES so that is why it is here.  

But there was a reason a one dollar (REALLY) 40 page black and white comic book was shown.  The last few pages are a guide and some maps to Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode!  Which is quite helpful, and even moreso back then.  You get a 33 page comic of Manga's most famous assassin killing some dude with an M16 from like a mile away, and a walkthrough of the game I presume this comic was released as kind of a tie in for.