Topic: Your latest retro purchase

How is "decent price" for Other M?
I just remember that by 2015, amazon was probably asking like $10-15 new for the game, but Target was still charging full price.

@KingMike I'm in Mexico and considering the exchange rate at 20 Mexican pesos, it was about 11 dollars second hand but in pretty good conditions: comes in its box (you have no idea how often I see loose GC and Wii discs, especially the former), not damaged disc, manual included.

Not bad when I hardly ever see this game around here and when I do it's usually 25+ dollars. Now, if only I could find any Metroid Prime (yes, that includes Federation Force).

My latest retro purchases were Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy VI Advance. My cousin got me a GBA SP for Christmas and a day after i immediately got them from Ebay. Loose copies but got them only for 15 each so worth it imo .

FF Tactics might go for that, but FF 6 goes for almost $100, so that is almost certainly fake. I wouldn't pay any less than $90 for it based on what I'm seeing on Price Charting.

@HeavyMetalWario64DS price charting says loose pal copies of ff6 go for 21.60, if I had to get it loose for 90 euros I would've just gotten tactics.

I was looking at the NTSC prices, not the PAL prices, my bad. That seems like a good price for a PAL version, but with all GBA games there is a risk of fakes no matter what game it is.

I'm surprised about the price difference though. Makes me wonder what games I could get for cheaper in British English instead of US, assuming a US GBA or JP DS can play them.

@HeavyMetalWario64DS No problem don't worry 🙂 , yeah I recently saw a vid on yt saying that pal versions are less collectors items, apperantly all are region free but idk if I trust that they are. 😅

@HeavyMetalWario64DS GBA has no region-lock, so they will not be region-locked on any hardware that can play them.
VERY few Japanese games get dedicated UK English localizations, they almost invariably use the US English.
I can only imagine recycling localization is the reason that the English-only US version of the FF SNES trilogy got the needlessly tiny font. I guess they wanted to make us suffer as much as Europeans had to. (or save on QA testing) (I know, because someone made a font hack, for the EU versions because GBA FF ROM hackers almost exclusively hack the EU versions. They noted that the larger font they put in WOULD interfere with some of the non-English languages.)
I do prefer Tales of Phantasia's USA font over EU (though I understand was a necessary change because of the additional languages)... though as to the famous "power of Kangaroo" line... I've heard kangaroos can be pretty vicious creates, so maybe they were on to something.

Also, handhelds are neither NTSC or PAL. (it just bugs me when people call them that)

The only games I know of to get UK English localizations are the Wii Xenoblade (as I understand, thanks to that guy who got fired for leaking the info, Nintendo Europe invested a lot into that localization and lost money. I guess that kind of forced Nintendo to turn it into a major franchise, then?) and I think one of the 3DS Fire Emblem games, and maybe Triforce Heroes? I guess even Nintendo EU didn't like NoA's style?

@KevRin The only Nintendo portable games to have region lock are DSi-exclusive, DSi "enhanced" games when played on a DSi or 3DS (but can still be played in non-enhanced mode on OG DS or DS Lite), and 3DS.

@KingMike Cool nice to know it's not region locked 😀

Been a while since I expanded my GBA collection, so I figured for the holidays I would get a few more games. I ended up going with Metroid Fusion, Mario Vs. Donkey Kong, and Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga:

Picked up Wario World on Gamecube today at a thrift shop.

Never played it but I'll get stuck into it later tonight - heard it's short but a good game nonetheless.

@Tendo64 The only thing I've heard is that it's not quite up to Treasure standards, but maybe that isn't necessarily terrible.

Final Fantasy Tactics GBA. I bought it for a friend. Surprisignly cheap too, arround 20 euros. I almost thought that it was a repro card but if it is it's a really good one.

I got a fake of that game from Gamestop once. The only ways I could tell is that it stuck out a little from my GBA SP, and on the inside there was a big black dot of something that shouldn't have been there. Gamestop refunded me fortunately.

@HeavyMetalWario64DS I remember buying a repro card on purpose of Pokemon Fire Red just to check out how they work (for like 8 euros, including shipping) but until now I have never had cases of buying a game thinking that it was genuine and getting a repro card instead. In fact, in the case of that game, other people actually warned me about being a repro card when they saw I was interested in buying it, which I appreciated.
I don't see repro cards as something bad per say, I just wish they were labeled as such always (and didn't had that much issues with saving...). In your case, it's quite possible that GameStop didn't even knew that it was a repro card.

I've heard about that black dot being a clue for it being a repro card so I opened that Final Fantasy Tactics card and it didn't have it. It also had a fully completed save file on it so it seems that there is no issue with save data being deleted (my biggest issue with repro cards).
Like I said, if it is a repro card, it is really well done. But that price is still surprisingly low. In my case my friend already has the game and it seems to work fine so hoping that continues being the case.

@Tendo64 I like Wario World.
It's a 3D beat'em up somehow with my favourite Nintendo character, two things which fit extremely well.
I just had to play it at my brother's place because I never owned a Game Cube nor a Wii.

I wasn't going to get anything other than downloaded games from the past Nintendo eShops until their closure on March 28th, but today I made an exception and got Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge for the Game Boy Advance. Mostly because it's a game I hardly ever see on sale around here these days. This follows on my purchase of Banjo-Pilot from 2021.
I hope I can find Rare's other GBA games apart from Donkey Kong Country 2, I already own that.

I haven't played it, but I've heard it's a top-down game, kind of like A Link to the Past.

From here on and until March 28, it'll be past eShop games. After that date, my focus will be on Switch and retro games I can find/afford.

EDIT: I just came to this realization after booting up my DS phat after years of not doing it. One of my goals for this year is to get shovelware games on the cheap (and I'm talking about games I wouldn't play even if I was paid to do so) to use as covers for the cartridge slots of my handheld systems and other add-ons. Diassembly and discarding/destruction of the circuits will be optional unless the game no longer works.

I'm gonna need
-2 GB/GBC games (for my Game Boy Color and Super Game Boy)
-3 GBA games (for my Game Boy Advance SP, Nintendo DS's Slot 2 and the Gamecube's Game Boy Player)
-2 DS games (for my Nintendo DS's Slot 1 and Nintendo DSi)

My New 3DS XL has a game inserted all the time and surprisingly my Virtual Boy has an extra copy of Mario's Tennis inserted all the time.

I'm not sure how much these constitute retro purchases, but until February 1st, Capcom has some games on sale on the Wii U eShop. I decided to get the Wii Download Versions of Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (costed about 100 Mexican pesos when physical copies usually go for 200+ pesos) and Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure (I've read this is a bit of a hidden gem of the Wii and I cannot find it physically), I also finally decided to get DuckTales: Remastered.

If I ever find a physical disc of DuckTales: Remastered, the digital version will be kept on the HDD.

Guys, is it worth getting Advance Wars 1 and 2 on the Wii U Virtual Console, since the remaster is finally moving forward? I've had it on preorder for a year now.