Gallery: Weekend Thrifting, From Akihabara to Seattle
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You asked, and we deliver: More of the stuff that I've added to my gaming collection over the past few months. I actually haven't had much time to hit the San Francisco thrift stores as of late, what with all of the traveling I've been doing. Thankfully, much of that traveling has been to places like Classic Gaming Expo, Penny Arcade Expo and Tokyo Game Show, all of which have afforded me ample opportunity to blow money I don't have on old videogames I don't need. Actually, post-CGE I've been a little more enthusiastic about collecting in earnest, buying stuff I've always wanted in my collection off eBay or otherwise at fair market prices. As such, I could show you a great many more things, but that's not the point of this column. Weekend Thrifting is about deals -- finding something cheaper than it should be, something out of place, something truly rare, something oddball. With those criteria in place, here's what's taking up space in Game|Life Towers as of late. Puck-Man LCD game ----------------- As everyone now knows from watching Scott Pilgrim, Pac-Man didn't originally have that name. What not everyone knows is that there was one home version of the game that was released before the name was changed from the original Puck-Man. This Tomy LCD game usually commands a high price of over $100 in Akihabara, but this one isn't in great shape and was thus a relatively inexpensive 4000 yen (about $45). Now the only question is, do I do what Namco predicted that Americans would not be able to resist and change the P to an F?
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Moon Ball Magic --------------- You may remember how I picked up [Akuu Senki Raijin](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gamelife/2009/09/akara-senki-raijin/) last year, one of the two rarest Square games. Moon Ball Magic is the other. They're hard to find because they were Famicom Disk System games that were only available if you brought a blank disk to a store with a Disk Writer unit and paid 500 yen (about $5) to have the game copied. I'd seen a few more copies of Raijin around Akihabara but never Moon Ball Magic, a pinball game created by [Sacom](http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Company:System_Sacom). This isn't the best copy. It doesn't have the sticker on the label and the instruction sheet is clearly a photocopy. 4100 yen (about $45) might have been a bit much to pay. I wouldn't be surprised if this was created recently, actually, by someone with a method of copying FDS disks. Either way, the fact remains that this is the only copy of this game I've ever laid eyes on.
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Local Girls of Hawaii --------------------- How did this game end up in Akihabara, I wonder? Local Girls of Hawaii is an unlicensed American game for the TurboGrafx CD format, which I imagine is made up mostly of cheesecake bikini pictures of the Pacific Islands' cheapest available models. There are three of these, and all command a pretty high price among Turbo collectors -- much more than the 2250 yen (about $25) I paid in an out-of-the-way Akihabara store.
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Sony Sample Games ----------------- Here was a lucky find, for several different reasons. Super Potato in Akihabara has a pretty sizeable special-price bin on each floor in which they place all the yellow-tag discount games. These might be games in bad condition, overstock or just anything that they feel like selling quickly. Everything is "junk," meaning sold without warranty and with no returns. It always works, of course, because this is Japan. They just don't want any of it back. I've gotten all kinds of great stuff from here in the past, but this is the first time I've pulled anything out of it that caused the store clerk to do a double take. These are promotional samples of PlayStation and PS2 games, the sort that would have been sent out by Sony as review copies or to their partners. These are just retail games with a small sticker placed over the UPC code. Promo samples, for some reason, aren't as desirable to Japanese collectors. But I think the salient point here is that because they aren't intended for resale, stores don't want to hold on to them and they don't want any record of having bought or sold them. So these rang up on the receipt as "miscellaneous items" and were sold at rock-bottom prices. A first pressing of Ico usually goes for upwards of $100, and Skygunner usually gets $50 or more. These were marked 1500 yen ($17) each. The PSone Books re-releases were all bundled together for the total price of 200 yen ($3). As if that weren't enough, they all rang up for a total of 2500 yen for everything. A few minutes after scoring this awesome deal, I sprained my ankle pretty bad coming out of another Akihabara store, putting an abrupt end to my shopping for the rest of the trip.
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Beavis and Butt-Head: Virtual Idiot Syndrome -------------------------------------------- Remember Virtual Stupidity, the mid-nineties point-and-click adventure game starring Beavis and Butt-Head? Maybe you do. What you might not know -- and I say this because even I had no idea until recently -- is that it was ported to the PlayStation, but only released in Japan. Having found this out, I knew I had to track down a copy. Fortunately, it's not that rare or expensive and I was able to get a decent one for 1000 yen (about $12). I haven't played it yet, but apparently the duo is voiced in Osaka dialect by a popular *manzai* comedy team called London Boots.
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Virtual Lab ----------- Remember how I once mentioned I was missing five Virtual Boy games? Make that two. After acquiring the U.S. version of Jack Bros. and a rare Japan-only version of Space Invaders over the past year, I bit the bullet and jumped on the next most expensive game for Nintendo's folly. Virtual Lab, as I understand it, is a hilariously unfinished game. I haven't played it just yet -- in fact it's still in the bubble wrap the store put it in for me -- but apparently it gives you passwords when you beat a level, but has no password entry system. Also the word Nintendo is misspelled two different ways on the box and cartridge. This was actually a good deal, as far as this game goes. The store Trader, which is usually where I end up buying big-ticket items based on their lower prices, had it for 22800 (about $250) when most stores' prices were in the $350-400 range. And in mint condition, to boot.
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Power Strike, &c. ----------------- Somebody told me at Penny Arcade Expo that their friend bought a copy of Atlantis for Atari 2600 for $4 from vendor Pink Gorilla, and it turned out to be the incredibly rare Atlantis II variant. As you might imagine, I am still waiting for proof. Until then, I got the deal of the show. The Sega Master System game Power Strike was only available through mail order in the U.S., and was sold in monochrome packaging. It's worth between $50 and $70, but Pink Gorilla had it for just $13. The other Master System games, for which I paid about $10 each, aren't nearly as rare but were decently priced anyway. Especially the three games whose spines are in bold type -- these are late-release titles, produced after Sega and its consumers had mostly moved on to Genesis, in limited quantities.
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Street Fighter II ----------------- Yes, there was a PC version. 99 cents, at a local thrift store.
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Super 3-D Noah's Ark -------------------- This is the only game I'll discuss in this piece that I purchased from The Internet. There was only one unlicensed Super Nintendo game produced in the U.S., by the religious gamemaker Wisdom Tree. There are a whole lot of awesome things about Super 3-D Noah's Ark. The first is that it's Wolfenstein -- Wisdom Tree actually licensed the Super NES version of id's first FPS and changed the graphics around to make this family-friendly Bible game. Instead of shooting Nazis to kill them, you're throwing fruit at animals to make them fall asleep. Also, the game doesn't work on its own -- you have to insert a licensed Super NES game into the top of the cartridge, which lets the game bypass the console's security. These sell for between $80-100 on eBay in complete condition -- as near as I can figure, there was never a box for this game. But if you're interested in putting one on your shelf, you can get it where I got mine, from [Consolegoods.co.uk](http://consolegoods.co.uk/), for 29 pounds or $45.
