Retro Game On in Melbourne: Collingwood Cash Converters

While not the classiest place that I could possibly be buying games in Melbourne, I came across a Cashies in my travels within Collingwood and Fitzroy. This was no ordinary Cashies though, this one was special. It was special because it's the first one I've been to in Australia that has had two items; Super Famicom and Dreamcast games.

The last time I saw Dreamcast games in the wild was in France and I've never seen Super Famicom games anywhere except Ebay. While these items weren't the cheapest around, they weren't exactly destroying my wallet either. They were roughly what you would expect to pay online (all were under $20 each).

Melbourne has been great so far, but sadly besides from this the retro scene has been lacking. There was a retro store that I was going to visit, but since I've been here I've been unable to locate their webpage. Even if I don't grab anything else before I leave on Monday, I won't be bothered. There has been lots of interesting vintage and vinyl store to visit instead, and my record collection has grown quite a bit while my wallet has at the same time shrunk. No worries though, maybe I'll cover those and my record setup back in Perth when I get back in a Retro Unrelated.

Retro Game On is Going to Melbourne

Hopefully something worthwhile happens, or I'll have made that header image for nothing. 

As the title so subtly indicates, tomorrow I'll be jet-setting off to Melbourne.
As well as being my first holiday that involves me getting on a plane that isn't with my family, it will be the first time this lone correspondent will be retro-hunting in an Australian city that isn't Perth. It's really about time, since I've been searching for gold overseas several times since starting this blog.
I have one (maybe) retro game shop lined up for a visit when I'm there, but over-wise I'll pretty much be winging it as far op and thrift store stalking goes. I really don't know what to expect, but there is no way the scene could be worse than Perth.

Video: Street Skater for PSone Review

From a few posts ago, you may remember that I bought this skateboarding game for the PSone from a Salvos. In that blogpost I said that I would hopefully film a review for it eventually. I know when I usually write that, nothing ever gets done, but for the first time ever I've bucked my own self made trend.
Enjoy, and all that.

Updates to the Game Room

In the past couple of weeks there have been some devastating developments to my game room.

First off, my ye old faithful AV selector died. I have had that selector for a couple years now, and I was sad to see it go. Since it only cost me $2 from a garage sale originally though, the tears I shredded weren't so wet; not even damp.
Turns out, it's quite hard to find brand new AV selectors in shops these days. I had to look in five different places until I found a decently priced one. In the end I bought a 4-way from Jaycar for $25 (while JB Hi-Fi had pretty much the exact same thing for $50). You can always count on Jaycar when it comes to things like that.

The worst of it though, is that my television also died not long after.
It was a sad day in my household when that happened, very much like a family pet dying. My parents bought that Philips in the early 90's after moving into our current house (a 15" 1980's Sanyo just wasn't going to cut it anymore) and it's been around ever since.
It actually lasted in the lounge room as the main family TV until about 2010, which is quite an accomplishment considering how old it was then. It wasn't long after it had been replaced with an LED that I started up the games room and gave the TV new life. Sadly it will no longer turn on anymore, and while I have basic knowledge when it comes to electronics, I doubt I can fix that when I can't even fix a Game Gear.

The show must go on though, and the TV has been replaced. Luckily for me, analogue television was recently turned off in my area making non-digital TV's redundant for watching actual TV. I managed to scab up this which was no longer wanted or needed:



Fitting brand really, since Magnavox released one of the first ever home consoles, the Odyssey.
You also never really see Magnavox branded anything in Australia either, so I guess me coming across this to put in my games room was meant to be.

And We Welcome an Xbox into the Retro Game On Family

Missing cables, sticky controllers, not breaking a 50 to buy a console; those are just some of the joys that op-shopping as to offer.

Generally speaking, I don't have much luck when it comes to buying consoles from op-shops. Usually you only find a handful of CD based 90's games among $2 jackets and 50 cent plates, but there is a particular Good Sammy's I know where I bought this Xbox for $30. This is actually the same Good Sammy's where I bought my Nintendo 64 from, so at the moment my opinion on that particular storefront is quite high.

$30 bought me the console, two controllers and a power cable. Sadly, one of the controllers is after market, and the legitimately branded one is missing the part of the cable that is suppose to stop cable breaks. Good idea in theory, but I guess those end bits are easy to loose.
Unfortunately the after market controller I can plug in is quite sticky. It doesn't seem to be anything sickly (Coke maybe?) but it's still putting me off playing on the console for an extended amount of time until I can find a replacement for the end of that cable.
I have played it long enough to know it works though, and I bought Project Gotham Racing from a thrift store for $4 (which seems quite fun from the little I've played). As for the missing audio/video cable, I'm currently borrowing one off a friend. There is an after market replacement coming in the mail though.  

While I don't think I can class the original Xbox as 'retro' yet, it is now in that period of time where the hardware and software is insanely cheap. Considering the Xbox One has just been announced, it's nearly two generations behind now; so it's well on its way.
I should have a five to ten year gap where I can enjoy these prices (which I'm also doing with the PS2 at the moment) so there are fun, cheap times ahead. 

More Games I Won't Get to For Months

I took the Retromobile out the other day for a thrift shop run, just like I had envisioned. I don't quite have my licence yet (t-minus 5 days) but it was in the Retromobile non the less, so I thought it was worth a mention.
It was kind of a last minute thing, so I only went to three places. I'm quite pleased with the end result though.

The first place was a bust. I nearly laughed out loud when I saw a Super Nintendo for $150, but I nearly had a heart attack when I saw a Mega Drive for $175. These over inflated prices are just ridiculous. I don't know who to blame, the thrift stores themselves or all the clueless people on Ebay who are also charging these prices, probably basing their numbers off an episode of Pawn Stars they watched.
Quite a shame really, since that place had quite a lot of games. Too bad they were so expensive, maybe I'll come back in a couple of months when maybe they'll bring the prices down after they realise no one is buying them. Either that, or some schmuck will actually pay the ridiculous prices and the whole vicious cycle will start again.

Moving on. The other two shops were quite successful:

No matter where you move your head, the Hawk will still stare into your soul.

The first place was an independent. There I scored Top Gear Rally on the N64 for $10, but the real bargain was buying Red Faction 2 and Tony Hawk's Project 8 on PS2 for $3 each! I can't believe how cheap PS2 games are these days. I better stock up before people consider them 'vintage' and start charging $30 a pop for them as well. 

Also slightly interesting fact; On the top-left of the Red Faction 2 case, you can see a yellow sticker that says 'Ultimate Games'. I found this awesome because during my childhood that was the only independent game store near where I lived. Sadly it's not around these days, but I built up most of my PSone collection from there when they were as cheap as the PS2 games. These were good games too, not the endless $5 copies of Fifa 2001 you see in the present.

The last place I went was a Cash Converters. This particular storefront is usually skimming on games, but they had one sole SNES game sitting in a cabinet; Winter Gold.
I couldn't see the price, so I decided to Google if it was any good. The internet on my phone was going annoyingly slow (it's usually pretty good) so I only got as far as the Wikipedia page, which was no help on the quality of the game. From there I decided to Ebay search it to at least see what it was worth, but as the loading bar was crawling along a store worker asked me if I needed any help. I took the opportunity to ask how much Winter Gold was, so he opened the cabinet and there was a $5 price tag on the back.
For $5 I decided I would just roll with it. There couldn't be much potential personal lose at that price.

Finally logging on to Ebay later that day, I received a minor shock. For some reason, all the auctions for Winter Gold ranged from $30 to $40. I have no idea why it's that dear, as the 5 minutes I committed to Googling the answer came up with nothing. What I do know is that it was only released in PAL regions, and relatively late in the consoles lifespan too (1996). Why this justifies the high price, who knows. All I do know is that its quite a fun game, and the 3D in it rocks. I guess that's all that matters at the end of the day. 

Possibly the Only Game I've Ever Bought From the Salvos

Salvos: Helping certain struggling families get through hard times, such as sport car owners. 

It's no secret the Salvation Army can be a bit hit and miss when it comes to collecting retro games; hell, its always hit and miss. Usually if there are any games, they're way over priced. Most of the time if I come across a Salvos, I just sail right past because there are better places I could be wasting my time looking for decades old video games.
Yesterday I found a store that seemed to be bucking the trends though. There were hardly any games in there but what there was, was affordable. This particular shop is nowhere near where I live; I stopped at a bottleshop next to it yesterday on the way to a family event, and I thought I mind as well check it out. You really don't know until you try, it could be full of $10 Neo-Geo carts for all I know.
There were about 10 odd games for sale, mostly sports games. I emptied all the change out of my wallet and bought this for $2:

Rad.

For a skateboarding game its quite different from the likes of Tony Hawks Pro Skater, but I'll hopefully get into the specifics of it in a future video review.
It came complete with the instruction manual, and the disk is in a reasonable condition.

Opening the case up revealed this hidden away inside too:



Nice surprise really, I'm always after demo disks to broaden my interest in certain games I wouldn't have given the light of day otherwise. Its from issue 26 of the Official Australian Playstation Magazine.

Moral of the story, always check in places you wouldn't usually. While this game isn't the find of the century, it still interested me enough to buy it. Otherwise I would still be one game short and $2 richer.

Super Strike Eagle Video Review for the SNES

It's been a while since I created and uploaded a video for this blog. There is not much else to say about it really.
Watch the video. This is a video post. Words are irrelevant.

A Window to the Past

I've probably walked past this window a million times, as it's on the route that's seperating me from where I work, and the closest available coffee.
Quite an important walk considering it's for the all glorious beverage that is coffee, so I'm surprised I've never seen it before.
This is on the side of an ancient Video Ezy (also a great place to buy caffeine) that's probably been long forgotten about. All the windows at the front of the building of course have all the latest consoles advertised, but this one remains my favourite.

Hopefully the owner keeps on forgetting about it so the retro scene can still keep having a public presense (or a hidden one as it were).

スターフォックス

Hey hey, it's the first game to be added to my collection since my hiatus. Funny (though stupid) story on how I got this; I decided to finally play Starfox as it's probably one of the last Nintendo god-tier series I haven't played yet. Pretty weird, I know. But better late than never.

It all started with me scouring the web looking for SNES versions that weren't there. After every search term I tried came up with nada, I decided to bite the dust and just buy a Super Famicom version instead. Luckily I came across an Australian Ebay Seller who only sold Japanese imports, and I bought this for a fantastic price (it was on sale). The guy selling it did an awesome job of posting it, and I am not remorseful of buying it. It came within three days and worked first try. The only thing I wish I had done was do a bit of research beforehand.
Turns out Starfox was named Starwing in Australia because of some sort of copyright business. Searching 'Starwing' instead results in loads of auctions. I feel like such a noob; it only took one Google search to find that out.

Now I have a cartridge that says 'Starfox' on it, but the whole game is in Japanese. This isn't exactly a gamebreaker though, and makes it kind of cool in a way. The only problem I've had so far is figuring out the controls, but a Google search did help me out on that. I wasn't going to make that mistake again.