Four me? Yes! ...terday I bought.

I got the N64 pad for Christmas and is the difference between some games being playable and unplayable, but I doubt I would have bought it for myself.

I had a brief play around with a few games the other day and it definitely felt better, even with games that already worked with the pro controller. The N64 was the first console I had that was just mine so I've always had a special relationship with it and playing Mario 64 with that pad again was special.

I’ve typed up my thoughts on Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble in a different thread, but to summarise it’s worth getting yourself if you’ve ever been half-interested in the series. As is typical for SEGA published games, the price already appears to be falling too.
 
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door was a day one purchase that I was enjoying, but I’ve taken a break from it. I’m certain I’ll get back round to it in a few weeks though, it’ll not get abandoned.
 
Until I randomly stumbled across it on Amazon when I was trying to buy (of all things) a shoulder bag I didn’t know NeoGeo Pocket Colour Selection Vol. 2 received a physical release, they kept that quiet. I was well chuffed with this for £28. That said, there’s a fair few games included which just aren’t very good, the sorts of games that make me glad that I never tried collecting for the NeoGeo Pocket physically.
 
It had been literal years since I’ve heard or read anyone talking about Brawlout, a Smash Bros. clone that predates Ultimate. It’s pretty unremarkable all told, I think I’m finished with it. £6 is about what it’s worth.
 
Getsufumaden: Dying Moon was an impulse buy on Amazon at the weekend, truthfully only bought because it’s Deluxe Edition was £15 delivered yet trading in for £26 at CEX. I decided to give it a go out of curiosity, and it’s actually pretty good. I’ve got very little experience with roguevania games, this is a nice change of pace.
 
Lastly, Sonic Superstars was to replace my copy that got waterlogged. I’m not sure I’ve told that story. It was during the winter that the condensation on my Velux window started leaking, and the measure I’d taken against that happening started to fail. Sadly for me, I keep my Switch games between bookends on top of a shelf which is right underneath that window, which the water dripped right on top of. A fair few of my games were cosmetically damaged, Sonic Superstars included. Admittedly I traded it and FC 24 into CEX where they didn’t care that the cover art was a bit creased and flimsy, but others (like Super Bomberman R 2, Yooka-Laylee and, guttingly, Advent Calendar) were ruined and had to go straight in the bin. Anyhoo, here’s another non-mouldy Sonic Superstars here.

Cappa, I have to ask the most important question about those new purchases in that photo:
Is that a carpet, an old tarmac road, a granite worktop, or a wooly blanket those games are on?

My money is on carpet.

Is that just the boxes ruined or the actual game cartridges!

It’s a shabby hallway carpet that’s been needing replaced since about 2006 (BC).

~



He’s here and he’s perfect!
 
One of the retro gaming retailers I use suddenly got Snowboard Kids 2 in stock on Friday evening, and for what I feel was a very decent price. I didn’t need to think about, I don’t think I’ve ever rushed to place an order for anything so quickly in my life.
 
I’ve genuinely been wanting this for a quarter of a century. Just like everyone who ever played it, I was a big fan of the original and I was eagerly anticipating and counting down to the launch of Snowboard Kids 2 in 1999. The magazines previewed it and I’m N64 Magazine reviewed it on import, but it simply never arrived in Europe. There’s a PAL version but it was exclusive to Australasia, and it costs several hundred pounds. This North American cartridge was a fraction of that, and I’m really happy to add it to my collection.

Do you have a set-up to play American N64 carts, or is it more of a collection piece while you play the game emulated?

Who do you use to get that Cappa? As I know, you use Genki for Japanese imports, as I'm always on the lookout for retro mostly Cube (which may have seen I saw MP6 CIB but was £125 nope), PS3, PSP, PS2, Wii, 3DS.

Blimey! Actually I think I did play Snowboard Kids 2, but borrowed it off a mate. He must have imported it then - but that seems so unlikely a thing for us to do back then...

How much exactly? I'm not gonna rush and do the same but also I would definitely consider doing exactly that because Snowboard Kids is king.

Astro Bot the big PS5 game of course, and the DualSense which now takes me to 6 DualSense Controllers (10 more DualSense got released in the UK, two more from overseas) and the Portal (Not a DualSense but is also the Sense VR2 & Access controllers).

Space Marine II has just arrived, a few days early, as standard isn't out till Monday.

Then lastly a pretty spenny PSP game, that I ordered from CEX as I traded in a bunch of things which I'd normally put on eBay. I recently sold (they paid right away) a New 3DS Cover Plate (I found three in a charity shop for £4 each) on eBay and about hour after I sent it got an email saying my daughter has a 2DS this is no good to me (why even searching for New 3DS Cover Plates?) and would like to send back, I've not had the cover plates back and my eBay account is currently -£20. I wasn't going to list Dustborn as I finished it on eBay to only put my eBay account in a positive, so traded that in along with the other two cover plates (Got £20) and few other PS4 games I hadn't played such as Armoured Core 6 (Got £16 paid £10 when GAME got rid of used games).

So I thought got a credit note, let's have a look see what CEX have, I did look at the God of War DualSense though may have came unboxed and even looked at a NGPC but the games such as Sonic were £50 that I'd never get any games for it. So why not a PSP game for the collection.

FC 25 and Ufouria 2 will likely be among the last Switch games I buy on their release dates and even then, they’d been bought straight away because I had Game Collection credit to use up. Hell Pie had been sat in my local CEX for months on end, for around £45. When it suddenly dropped to £25 that’s when I decided to pay out, as that seems cheap for a Super Rare Games game.
 
I’ve had that Tomb Raider cart for a while and it’s definitely not the way I’d recommend playing those games in 2024. I don’t recall that I’d pre-ordered the Legacy of Kain and Bitmap Bros. ones, I can only assume it was after many, many beers. I’m half-minded to send them back for a refund anyway. I’m losing interest in the Evercade, nothing about it's future looks exciting right now.
 
The two SNES games were a better deal though. I’d seen behind the retro gaming glass display that my local CEX got a handful of different SNES games in stock, and I noticed at the front that Super Tennis was priced as being unboxed for £3. I queried this and was advised that it was indeed being sold as unboxed for £3 because it was missing the cardboard inlay. The box, instructions and cartridge are all in great condition, so £3 is a nice little deal (albeit on a game that’s maybe the cheapest on the SNES anyway). After paying and on my way out I had a closer look to the back of the display, and I’d clocked the same thing again: ‘Super Mario World, Unboxed, £10’. It’s in shabbier condition than Super Tennis but I wasn’t leaving that behind – if I find a cardboard inlay then it’s suddenly a £50 game. It turns out I’d missed a lot of other SNES games in the days beforehand, they’d all been brought in an elderly lady who found them in her loft and thought they might be worth something, all in this similar ‘unboxed’ condition.
 
I also found a boxed GBA SP in Cash Generator for just £49.99. While the sticker damage on the box there is saddening, the console itself is in better condition that any of the GBA SPs I have already. I was slightly disappointed when the sales assistant pulled the system out of the box to let me see it and quickly said ‘oops, that’s not supposed to be in there’, wheeching a cartridge out. I think it was Finding Nemo though and not Ninja Cop, so I can just about live with that.

I'm interested to hear how you get on with Soul Reaver. It's a game I hear a lot of nostalgia for, but I wonder if it holds up as something to actually sit down and play today?

During the State of Play was announced Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remaster is coming, that's where I might pick it up myself, especially if it gets a physical like Tomb Raider.

Blood Omen also coming to PlayStation via Plus, that just Blood Omen 2 will be missing.

Edit

I forgot about Defiance

The folks at Evercade must have been kicking themselves that they didn’t get the Legacy of Kain Collection out for retail before the Soul Reaver remaster and Blood Omen re-release were announced at the State of Play. That'll have hurt. I can imagine a fair few potential buyers would have cancelled their pre-orders or just lost interest in the Evercade cartridge. Still, they've sold at least one copy (to me) so the profit from that will likely be enough to fund the licensing for another five Commodore 64 Evercade collections.
 
I decided to open the cartridge last night and give Blood Omen a go. It’s quite interesting, and very different from my usual type of game. You’ll know if I stuck with it if I type up a Halloween review for the retro reviews thread.
 
I guess I’ll get round to Soul Reaver at some point, but I’m half-curious to see how the remaster pans out. If it’s a big improvement then maybe I’ll just hold fire for that.

I thought this was a very decent haul from Cash Generator’s wireframe ‘bargain bin’, where the DS games were £1.99 each, the PlayStation games were 99p each, and the Wii and 360 games were 50p each. You’ll see that I managed to do something that I’ve never done before, which is accidently buy the same game twice. It’s pretty much all gone to CEX to be honest, though I overestimated the value of some of those 360 games – I’d have ended up making a 40p loss on L.A. Noire if I’d bothered to trade it in.
 
On a side note and as a tale of the times, there was a couple of £2.99 Switch games in that bargain bin too. That was one of the old FIFAs, and the sadly underappreciated Samba de Amigo: Party Central. I don’t think that’s even a year old either!

Fallout during the show was going for good money, and think some versions of Minecraft Story Mode do if ones with it on the disc.