Gallery: Weekend Thrifting: Spider-Man's Most Expensive Sticker
01dsc07089
It's November, which means we're well into the dry season for thrift stores and yard sales. Spring cleaning has been over for a good long while, and the cold, rainy, snowy weather is keeping people indoors. That means fewer classic videogames (and everything else, for that matter) being sold off or donated. Fortunately, I always have my burgeoning eBay addiction to keep me happy. Hence, the finds in this installment of Weekend Thrifting come from both thrift stores and the vast Interwebs. There are actually a lot of good deals out there, I've found, if one keeps an eye out for games that are listed with low Buy It Now prices and grabs them right as they appear. Mortal Kombat II, 32X --------------------- Actually, I didn't buy this at all. A Game|Life reader who enjoys Weekend Thrifting works in a library, and found this in the donations pile. Since her library doesn't lend out games for the Sega 32X -- what a crappy library, I know -- she sent it to me instead of selling it for a couple of bucks in the next book sale. It's usually tempting to open up sealed games, but man, it's Mortal Kombat II for the 32X -- I'm doing the world a favor by leaving it trapped in here. This generous person is officially Game|Life's Reader of the Year -- *for now*. Hint, hint.
02dsc07086
Spider-Man, Master System ------------------------- Like much of Sega's hardware, the Master System died a quick death in the United States. In the early 1990's, Sega released a handful of final titles with redesigned box art like Moonwalker and Ghouls 'n Ghosts. You may remember us covering these games in our [last lesson](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gamelife/2010/09/thrifting-akihabara/?pid=371). But just before pulling the plug, Sega took three European releases -- the Master System was much more popular and had many, many more games in Europe -- and shipped them to U.S. stores. The way you can tell which games ended up in America is by the UPC sticker on the box. Note that this copy of Spider-Man has a sticker on the back with U.S. copyright info and a bar code. There were three games released in this manner -- Spider-Man, Sonic the Hedgehog and Strider. In all cases, the UPC-less version is extremely common and the stickered version is quite rare. Sonic is especially difficult to track down. Collectors are divided, as far as I can tell, over whether these should be considered U.S. releases. On the one hand, Sega sold them in stores here. On the other hand, they're just European games with a sticker on them. Would you want to pay exorbitant prices for a sticker? I paid about $13 for this on eBay, so I didn't really have to make that decision.
03dsc07082
Huge Insect ----------- There exists a thriving community of Nintendo collectors called [Nintendo-Age](http://www.nintendoage.com); I met its founder at Classic Gaming Expo and have since gotten a few great deals from its members. The best thing so far has been Huge Insect, an unlicensed and probably terrible NES game made by a Taiwanese company called [Sachen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachen). If you listened to the live Retronauts podcast we recorded at Penny Arcade Expo, you know why I wanted this. 1up.com's Frank Cifaldi was once in the habit of ordering lots of Sachen's games, and always saw this title on its order form and thought it sounded hilarious. (Many of Sachen's games had unintentionally funny Engrish titles like Jovial Race and The Penguin and Seal.) The thing is, although Sachen had apparently created this game -- apparently it was a Galaga-style shooter with bugs -- in 1993, it hadn't actually made more than a few of them if any. But, to hear Frank tell the story, he kept trying to order the game and eventually Sachen actually made them. If [Nintendo-Age's data](http://nintendoage.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=Element.View&pId=1&egID=3010&lgID=1296&sID=1296) is to be believed, there are only 78 copies of Huge Insect in the world: > - First Generation - Green Box, 10 copies, Released 1993 > - Second Generation - Orange Box, 15 copies, Released 2002 > - Third Generation - Blue Box, 18 copies, Released 2002 > - Fourth Generation - Purple Box, 35 copies, Released 2005 Then again, who knows -- maybe there's a whole pallet of them in some warehouse in Taiwan just waiting to be found and destroy the value. Oh, I almost forgot the best part:  I MAED A GAM3 1N TA1WAN!!1! Unfortunately, I can't play it, since Sachen's odd cheapo carts don't fit in my NES top loader and refuse to actually load in my toaster NES. I'll have to try some alternate method.
04dsc07093
Doom, PlayStation ----------------- Everything needed a version of Doom in the mid-90's, and PlayStation was no exception. This was part of the early run of PlayStation games, which came in these deluxe paperboard "longbox" editions. Since these had limited runs, they're worth more than the same game in a jewel case. Doom is one of the rarer longbox games, certainly worth more than the $5 I dropped on it at a Bay area Goodwill. Of course, much like Huge Insect, the most interesting thing is on the back of the box.  "Game is great," says guy who made game. Film at 11.
05dsc07090
CBS Electronics Atari 5200 games --------------------------------- I have very little to say about these copies of Wizard of Wor and Blue Print for the Atari 5200 -- just to point out that if any company has ever made a pug-uglier videogame cartridge design, I have yet to see it. Yeesh.
06dsc07099
Leisure Suit Larry III: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I typed that title entirely from memory. I was a pretty big Leisure Suit Larry fan when I was 14. This was because I was 14, and bawdy PG-13 point-and-click adventure games about (a man's utter failure to have any) sex were quite possibly the best use of a home computer I could ever conceive of. This beat-up copy of [Larry's third adventure](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_Suit_Larry_III:_Passionate_Patti_in_Pursuit_of_the_Pulsating_Pectorals) -- in which you alternate between Larry and his brief love interest Patti -- wasn't worth the $9 that Goodwill was attempting to charge for it, but when the store marked all its games down to $2.50, I went for it. Mostly because the manual and postcard were in decent shape. (We didn't get, back in the day, that the tropical island setting Nontoonyt was pronounced "None tonight." Ha ha.)
07dsc07097
And a few more PC games ----------------------- We finish off with a few more interesting games that suddenly, at $2.50 each, became worth adding to the collection. From the top, there's [ToonStruck](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toonstruck), a 1996 point-and-click starring Christopher Lloyd; LucasArts' cult classic adventure The Dig; the CD-ROM re-release of Cyan Worlds' first game The Manhole; and a CD-i game called The Wacky World of Miniature Golf, starring none other than Eugene Levy. Yeah, I... I don't know why I bought that, either.
