Topic: Your latest retro purchase

@Ryno
yer never
ever.
and i mean never.
gonna beat holy diver.
ever.
.

Fact.
I tried playing Holy Diver and was kinda breezing through the beginning.
I thought "Oh, ok, it's hard, but do-able."
Then i died a billion times.
Eventually i will get back to trying again, after i have recovered from my PTSD.

@Ryno
i had to use game genie for the last 2 levels. i had every level before those mastered by repetition, trial and error and tears. and it took months...the game genie was responsible for me beating it. now that its out on the super retro cade you can utilize save states which is a good thing because thats the only way its gonna get beat. i have the repro cart that came out way before folks knew what this game was or what they were getting themselves into. now everyone wants to ride the tiger. and they will get their a**** handed to them for attempting to beat this game on a cart with no game genie. use the super retro cade to play this game so you can save yer progress.

@the_shpydar i tried to save @Ryno his sanity...

My sister went to GoodWill yesterday, and picked up Suikoden 3 for $2.
I hope she likes it, but if not, I'm more than willing to buy it from her...

My latest retro purchases were Dark Cloud 2 (or Dark Chronicle 2 for the UK folk), Phantasy Star Portable 2, and Baten Kaitos Origins. I almost screamed like a little kid when I saw Dark Cloud 2 because it's a game I've been wanting to play since I was in 3rd grade but never had the chance to. It's the first time I've seen that game in a used game store in years! The other two purchases were steals because I managed to nab them at a decent price, especially Phantasy Star Portable 2. (For context I got it around $40 complete in box while a loose umd on ebay will regularly go for around $65+ on ebay)

@MarcelRguez Tell me how Boktai is when you get around to playing it. I'm interested in getting the game for myself as well. In addition, it sucks that Europe never got Wario Ware Twisted. It's one of my favorite gba games and wario ware games in general. One word of advice. Dont try and unlock the last mini game in the collectible games section or whatever it's called. It's a very troll reward similar to getting all 900 korok seeds. I wished I would have listened to the game faq I was following to unlock it. It would have saved me a lot of time and frustration.

@Oat Haven't fiddled much with 1 yet, but I beat 2 some time ago. It's great, I love everything about it. It's a product of the mid-2000's Konami, and it has the charm and quirkiness to prove it. I thought the isometric perspective might be an issue, but it controls like a charm (it even has two different settings for movement). The light sensor gimmick could have backfired spectacularly, but it's not as mandatory as I thought it would be, which is nice. You can't ignore it, obviously, but if you manage your resources correctly it doesn't hinder you at all. Oh, and the games use a battery-powered RTC. As far as I know, it's only used to adjust the solar sensor to the sunlight hours of your time-zone, so the game plays (and saves!) fine without it.

Also, the audio surprised me quite a bit; the soundtrack is super solid and reminiscent of the early Metal Gear titles somewhat —what I've heard of 1 more so than 2, which is a bit more gothic-fantasy in general. There's also some minimal voice acting, which I'm a sucker for in 2D games (it's one of the reasons why I love everything Wario so much).

The only issue I can think of is that it can be a bit unbalanced at times, depending on what gun modifications you're using. Also, stealth can be hard at times, corridors can be downright claustrophobic. Overall, I'd say it's easily one of the best series available on the system, with the added bonus that you can't really play it on anything but the original hardware without compromising the experience.

And yeah, there's tons of GBA stuff that never made it to Europe, sadly . Drill Dozer, Mega Man & Bass, Tactics Ogre, River City, Double Dragon, you name it. Lots of quality games that are downright impossible to find here for a decent price.

Thanks for the heads-up about WarioWare Twisted, btw. I've only cleared Wario's, Mona's and Jimmy's games so far, but I'm having a blast with it. It's crazy to see this tech on something as simple as the GBA.

@MarcelRguez Thanks for replying! It sounds like a pretty glowing review overall. And I feel you on the joy of certain games and playing them on their original hardware. One game for me is Kirby Tilt n' tumble. You kind of have to play it on the original hardware due to the fact that the game is entirely gyroscope based. Playing that game on the gb sp is a nightmare due to the clamshell design of the system so I usually opt to play it on the gb color. I'm hoping to save some money and get a backlit modded original gba since I've always loved the form factor of the original gba.

I always feel bad when I hear about certain games that never made it to Europe especially gba games. Drill Dozer and Wario Ware Twisted are some of my favorite gba games of all time.

@Oat No problem! And yeah, I remember that game, but I don't think I've ever actually seen it in the wild. Google tells me it didn't come out in Europe either, go figure.

I have one of those modded GBAs, actually! It's as good as GBA hardware gets, but you can definitely see some ghosting here and there. No biggie though, especially for the more relaxed games of the system. And you can use rechargeable AA batteries with it, which means you don't have to put up with the aging batteries of the SP and the Micro. I get 6-7 hours per charge out of mine, which is more than enough for me.

@MarcelRguez Yeah I was planning on using rechargeable batteries when I eventually pick up that modded GBA. I actually have a micro as well ( I love the micro but I hate how it can't play Gameboy/Gameboy Color games)

@ogo79 @the_shpydar

_{I have an AVS with a built in game genie that I am sure I will use...}

thats what its gonna take

I pickup Rayman 2 for the gbc and Tom and Jerry The Magic Ring for gba.

Recently I bought a snes for 65$ dollars, with Star Fox that costed 40$ dollars. Honestly I’m beginning to regret choosing the Snes as my first Retro Console to collect games for.

I collected everything for Master System (yes even that goldy front-covered HES game that almost as rare as dinosaur nipples and all the Tectoy Brazilian jazz). Then I crushed all of them onto a Raspberry Pi and got completely disenchanted with filling my breathing space with old plastic tat.

@HauntedNostril
That’s literally the reason that I regret picking up a Snes, because days later of getting the Snes I added the Retro Pie software to my Raspberry Pie.

@games-of-death - at least you can legally DL and keep the emulated software if you already own it. It's basically just a backup.

But it is disgusting the prices some of these games go for on eBay and the likes, even the digital versions on the shops are often no better than a quick emulation job, plus they rarely feature enough extras to justify their cost. The weird thing is that people seem to think there is something noble in getting scalped for 30-year-old titles that you can fit a million of on a memory stick because it's all in the name of being a "collector" - pish and tosh i say, sir!

Perhaps there needs to be a point where games companies go "You know what, it's you, the fans, that have really given these games the status they currently hold, you who have made it a phenomenon. Here, have all the old ones in a nice bundle for nowt, and may you continue to replenish our yatch funds for as long as the sequels keep on rolling."

Then again I've always been a dreamer....but 8 quid for VS. Super Mario Bros on switch store is a bleedin' joke.

That’s true about Ebay, but honestly retro game stores are exactly the same sometimes. My local game store sold me Star Fox with the back of the cartridge yellow and without no screws on the front for 40$ dollars. I know it’s a mistake that I did not return it but, honestly I was so excited for having Star Fox that I did not want to return it.

Watching Jeremy Parish's Game Boy chronological reviews so I ended up buying an obscure Japanese game, Astro Rabby.
I can definitely see a little bit of a learning curve in it.

Though it looks like we've all kind of slowed down on the retro game purchasing lately?