Share your pickup loot and finds

[Steve W]

I went way out of town to go to a game store that has usually had good stuff (the only place I can think of that has an Emerson Arcadia 2001 sitting on their console shelf) and bought a couple imports, a Japanese version of Sengoku Basara: Samauri Heroes for the PS3, and a Singapore release of Kamen Rider Climax Fighters for the PS4. And on my previous day off I ended up buying Dragon Quest Heroes II for the PS4.

[Steve W]

My nephew is up in Seattle, and he started sending me photos from a local video game store this afternoon. That inspired me to head out to some game stores too - he's been looking for a couple games, so I thought I'd see if I could find them near me. Didn't find the stuff he wanted, sadly. I picked up a PS3 Rapala fishing game recently, and on the back of the case it says it'll work with a wireless fishing controller that some copies were boxed with. I found the fishing controller, and it turns out there's no USB transceiver to plug into the console and it can't work without it. I tried some generic USB dongles from wireless mice and controllers, they don't work. Well, crap. I did pick up another Rapala fishing game that doesn't need the wireless controller. I went to a GameXchange that had (past tense) a disc-only copy of the PS3 game El Chavo Kart. I couldn't get myself to pay $120 for a game without a case, regardless of how hard to find it is (it was only released in Mexico and Brazil) but since then prices have gone down on rarer PS3 games, so I thought I'd check up and see if it had gotten a little more reasonable. And it was gone. Bummer. All I bought there was the Zone of the Enders: Mars VR game for the PS4. At the place where I bought the fishing controller I bought the Spanish language (still sealed) copy of Invizimals: El Reino Escondido. The fishing controller and game were only $9.99 each. Way of the Samurai 4 is also sealed and came off Amazon.

[Steve W]

I'm now searching for the little USB transceiver for that wireless fishing rod up above, so I decide to go back to that game store in Mesquite, TX called Game Trade that's getting rid of all their video games. Maybe they might have what I'm looking for. I get there, and they've changed the name of the store since my last visit, I guess to distance themselves more from video games. They're called Game Nerdz now. They had a table filled with old gaming junk (mostly Xbox 360 Kinect cameras, power supplies, and cables) marked down to $1 each. All their video games have been condensed down to a couple shelves, mostly sports games. No fishing controller dongle. No PS3 games of interest. I picked up The Town of Light and Killing Floor Double Feature for the PS4. Heading up to the register I noticed behind some Pokemon boxes behind the counter they still had some Limited Run games (they used to be an authorized retailer). Since all PS4 games are now 25% off, I broke down and bought the Beyond A Steel Sky steelbook, Edge of Eternity, and A Hole New World since there's no way I'll ever find them new at that price.

I was a couple miles away, so I went to a GameXchange nearby and all I found was a Japanese version of Dead Rising 2 that I bought for the heck of it, and at a Half Price Books down the street bought that Cabela's Adventure Camp for the PS3, and a German copy of Das Mystery-Team for the PSP. I think I have one or two other PSP games, and none of them imports, so I had to have it (and it was only $7.99 which made the purchase easier). I've found over time that if I buy a game for a system I don't have, eventually I'll find the system at a decent price down the line. That hasn't always worked (I'm still waiting for a Neo•Geo CD console to play my one game on it that I bought 15 years ago) but I hold out hope.

[Niku-Sama]

i've havent been looking for much lately with portland retro gaming expo around the corner.
i did find a NIB WiiU Nunchuck for $15 but thats it

[Steve W]

I went out to a couple GameXchange stores looking for the little USB dongle for my wireless fishing rod. I found out that all of Activision's wireless controllers from that era use the same USB dongle, so there's a chance I can find a wireless Skylanders kit or maybe the Tony Hawk skateboard controller kit that I can get the dongle from. Of course, I didn't find anything. I did buy a copy of Planescape Torment/Icewind Dale for the PS4 for my nephew. He can't seem to come across it where he lives.

[Niku-Sama]

that could be a thing, a quicky search shows that fishing rod dongle in this listing:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/193790754141

and it matches the number on the skylander one too:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/385032897314

i just did an ebay search for

ps3 activision controller dongle

odds are you might have a hard time finding one elsewhere considering its the type of things the kind of players of skylanders like to lose all the time

[Slate]

Small update that I had forgotten to post:

I forgot to mention that a while back, I found a copy of Dr. Mario (NES) and one of the Gamestop brand Composite & S Video switch boxes. There were a few other things in the lot, I think I got a Game Boy Carrying Case and a Super NES Power Adapter. I paid $4, IIRC. I forgot the date, probably late August or early September.

- Austin

[Niku-Sama]

i'm back from portland retro gaming expo and i bought so much stuff, i cant remember all what i paid for things. some not all buut i have a good idea how much i spent overall.

Day 1, Oct 15th


Atari 2600 Jr Boxed complete $65
Panzer Dragoon 2 manual only
Virtual On manual only
Panasonic 3DO controller $34
weird PVM RGB cables $3
Xstation PSX ODE $70
Retrobit Prism GC Component $45
f-16 fighting falcon Master system $10
Renegade $10
Bust a Move 2 PSX Longbox $30
AirCombat PSX Longbox $35
Rebel Strike GC preview disc $12
CGC Games bag Free with submission

These first day items were mostly stuff i was hunting for in one form or another with minimal impulse buys here.
I would like to get all the long box games and i didnt have these, the saturn manuals where 2 of the 3 i am missing (still missing albert odyssey), i have a 3do but didnt have a controller. Master system games on cards are like long box games to me, odd, so try to get what i can of those...

The PSX ODE and GC component cables were a deal, they are no longer making these 3rd party GC components and they do plug into the digital out on the earlier GC. the ODE was the right price as i had been thinking about adding one to my already modded pink PSX

The Atari 2600 Jr was impulse, i was going to bundle it with a saturn game but they wouldnt budge on it so some how we came to $10 off still on the 2600 with out a bundle. Come to find out its still new, no plastic has been peeled and the cords are still wrapped up, i didnt know this till about 2 hours ago

it was so busy and there was so much at the vendors this year i totally missed most of the panels i wanted to check out. hope they get posted to you tube again.

Day 2 Oct 16th



Atari 2600 (Signed) $160
Nintendo Parts controllers / PS3 AV cable
Ridge Racer PSX Long box Trade for loose GC games (Sonic something and Starfox Adventures)
Castlevania collection PS4 $40
SD Gundam G Genesis Card I & II $15
Holy Potatoes Compendium $10
Wild Gunman $10
Duck Hunt $10
Wrecking Crew $15
PSX ODE SD card blank w/adapter $35
SNES 1up $1
2x 1up Card packs $2
2 cat shirts $40
7x Whatnot reusable bags Free
PSX Demo cd #7

Day 2 was more lets get cool stuff that i saw the day before and also see what the vendors brought out to resupply.
I dig the places that sell broken or junk things for parts... as long as they are clear about it and arent asking for a mint price for one its a good way to get some hard to find or spare parts for things. I missed out on a model 1 Sega CD and a PC Engine Duo that worked but not fully. by the time i had my hands free and went back they were gone.

So another boxed 2600, this one haunted my dreams because i noticed it was signed. It was at some ones booth that i've apparently come to be known at for having interesting random things. I sold/traded a Osbourne luggable pc and a TI VPU... thing to the same person and this time i wanted to actually give him money for something. i did trade a little twards it and got it down to $160.

$160 is a lot for an atari in any condition other than new but this is the guy who signed it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Decuir


i'm not sure if i want to leave it as is or try and get more notable early atari employees to sign it.
nothing else too notable here, I already had hogans alley, wrecking crew, and duck hunt of course but these all had signs showing they were converter carts. I'm trying to gather what i can of PSX demo discs that sony put out (interactive/underground) so thats where 7 came in. can be interesting as some of these demo discs have games that never made it out or had major changes before.

Castlevania collection is unfortunately one of those LR games, its digital for $4 which was a bit tough to drop $40 on physical but it was still cheaper than most places that were selling it. theres a few new games that every seller seems to have in one form or another because its "rare retro" but not really. this was one of them, copies everywhere. limited my ass

every time i left the show i tried to grab a free bag, some times i used them to carry things to the car other times they were empty but after paying $65 for an entry fee i figured why not, they'll get used

i almost forgot the most important thing i found:


VECTREX KNOB!
it was $8, been looking for one of these forever. mine hasnt had a knob since i found it. i should use some loctite on it so it doesnt come off

all in all i spent $737 on all this at the convention. Some of that total is including some necessities like drinks and MAX tickets (public transit day pass)

that total doesn't include the cost of my hotel, parking, or the tickets to get into the show.

prices are way up but and it doesn't seem like i got a lot for the money but everything is way up. in time it'll normalize but i feel like most of what i got are safe bets. system mods are a whole nother category.

but wait, i'm not done yet.

Friday before the shopping spree i had to stop and get a new PSU for my little computer so i could power the video card i got on ebay that arrived today (Monday 17th)



The PSU was $100 and the card was $395

it was a tight fit, i had to take the plastic shroud off the fans so it would fit in the case


i guess i should call of thrifting for a little longer to recover a bit, expensive month

[ncman071]

been a month or so since i last posted..but last weekend picked up dragons lair and ecco the dolphin on sega cd both complete...got these at a new semi local game store..so retail prices...also got COD MW3 on the NDS as well as 007 on ds both complete

[Niku-Sama]

i found a CIB genesis Madden 97 ffor $6.
no pics my cord broke, new one is on the way

[ncman071]

got a decent deal yesterday on pokemon black version 2 (cart only) for $50 as well as n+ for $5 complete both on nintendo ds...the pokemon cart is going for around 100 on ebay..so not too bad a deal

[ncman071]

I'm now searching for the little USB transceiver for that wireless fishing rod up above, so I decide to go back to that game store in Mesquite, TX called Game Trade that's getting rid of all their video games. Maybe they might have what I'm looking for. I get there, and they've changed the name of the store since my last visit, I guess to distance themselves more from video games. They're called Game Nerdz now. They had a table filled with old gaming junk (mostly Xbox 360 Kinect cameras, power supplies, and cables) marked down to $1 each. All their video games have been condensed down to a couple shelves, mostly sports games. No fishing controller dongle. No PS3 games of interest. I picked up The Town of Light and Killing Floor Double Feature for the PS4. Heading up to the register I noticed behind some Pokemon boxes behind the counter they still had some Limited Run games (they used to be an authorized retailer). Since all PS4 games are now 25% off, I broke down and bought the Beyond A Steel Sky steelbook, Edge of Eternity, and A Hole New World since there's no way I'll ever find them new at that price.

I was a couple miles away, so I went to a GameXchange nearby and all I found was a Japanese version of Dead Rising 2 that I bought for the heck of it, and at a Half Price Books down the street bought that Cabela's Adventure Camp for the PS3, and a German copy of Das Mystery-Team for the PSP. I think I have one or two other PSP games, and none of them imports, so I had to have it (and it was only $7.99 which made the purchase easier). I've found over time that if I buy a game for a system I don't have, eventually I'll find the system at a decent price down the line. That hasn't always worked (I'm still waiting for a Neo•Geo CD console to play my one game on it that I bought 15 years ago) but I hold out hope.

just curiuos, are you going for a complete set on the ps3 games? if so, about how many do you have now?

[Steve W]

just curiuos, are you going for a complete set on the ps3 games? if so, about how many do you have now?

I'm probably not going to go for a full set, there's too much junk on the system like sports and kids games that I don't want. That Cabela's game is a kid's game, but I rarely see it in the game stores I go to and it was a reasonable price. I have roughly around 650 games so far. I'm basically just collecting games that I would want to play. There's more games that I would like to get but are priced way beyond what I consider a good amount. Lots of interesting games released in places like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan that are the only places where an otherwise Japanese language game might get translated into English and put on disc. A lot of games are still downloadable from the online store, but once that's gone there's no way to play a lot of these kinds of games without physical discs. Those are the games I'd like the most. Which is why I'm always happy to find foreign games.

I haven't had the chance to do much game shopping. Last week, while hunting down the USB dongle for that fishing controller, I bought the My Hero Academia game My Hero One's Justice for the PS4. I've actually never seen the anime, but I've heard great things about it. And today I stopped at a Half Price Books and picked up Devil May Cry 4 Collector's Edition for $19.99 and two pairs of 3D TV glasses (one is labeled for Samsung TVs but I'm going to try it on my Sony TV anyway) for $3.99 each.

[YoshiM]

I guess one can call the following a "pickup loot and finds". Within the past couple months when I go to pick up my daughter as it's my visitation day, she pulled out boxes of stuff from her mom's car to plop into my back seat. When her mom and I divorced, I had moved what I could on my own to my apartment but left stuff behind. On the divorce day, it was said by the judge that possessions would be set (so if my stuff was at the house, that was hers). We never spoke about it since. I intentionally left game stuff behind like the Sega Saturn because her mom liked playing Bust a Move 2 and I figured those two would play along with the Ms. Pac-Man cabaret cabinet.

The stuff I received was small stuff, things I forgot and stuff she probably had no idea what to do with. Old hard drives (which were either dead or had nothing), an IDE DVD Burner, an IDE Blu Ray drive with DVD burning (which works! I'm seriously thinking of rigging this into my modern machine as I had a finicky Sony CD player from 1989 that only likes discs burned slowly and nothing I have goes slow enough), cards, an ornament and other what-not. One day I received a bunch of Sega Saturn games! Still complete as I left them and in pristine shape. I don't have a picture of them but they are:

Astal (complete)
Rampage World Tour (Complete)
Nights (pack in version that came with the 3D controller;case and sleeve)
Christmas Nights (complete)
Bust a Move 2 Arcade Edition (complete)
Virtua Cop 2 (standard case and slip cover)
Virtua Cop (loose)
Virtua Fighter 2 (I believe)
Rayman (complete)

Then I received some burned CDs of games for both Sega CD and Saturn like Lunar SSS, Lunar Eternal Blue, Dungeons and Dragons Collection, Final Fight CD. I also got a official NES deck cleaning kit. I haven't opened it up yet to see if the swabs are still in there.

I was offered the Ms. Pac-Man machine, though I have to wait until it gets dropped off at my ex-brother and sister-in-laws as I pissed off my ex's new husband at the start of Covid (they were going to get married in Vegas when it was a high transmission area and they were taking my daughter so I got a little mad. Ok a lot mad but he dropped the F-bomb first). I'm not allowed anywhere near the house. My daughter said she corralled some things I left like an Atari 800 computer complete in box so I'd get it at some point. More to follow.

On actual purchases side, I did get the last two issues I needed to complete my Joystik magazine collection. Both came from a warehouse purchase so they look as if they've never been read. I never read the magazine back in its hey-day but I did used to check them out from the library when I got a VCS for Christmas around 1986 or so. I had no idea how to play Raiders of the Lost Ark and thankfully the magazine had a walkthrough!

[Steve W]

I went and picked up a Skylanders wireless platform so I could get the USB dongle for my wireless fishing controller - it didn't work. At least it only cost me $7.99. I guess I have to order the stuff off eBay to get that controller to actually work.

[Niku-Sama]

did the number on the USB dongle match the ones we saw online?

[Steve W]

Yep, it said CE 1588, just like all the other Activision dongles. I guess I have to have the specific one that came with it.

[Niku-Sama]

i hate it when they do crap like that

[Gameguy]

As for that dongle, it's odd but someone else on reddit seems to have asked about compatibility between the fishing rod and Skylanders about 5 months ago. They found it's not compatible. That CE number is just for certification standards, it's not a specific part or model number. It's like an FCC certification number.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PS3/comment...ce1588_dongle/

This is why I pretty much avoid buying controllers unless the receiver is present, I don't like having to track them down later. If I came across a loose dongle by chance, maybe I'll pick it up and look for a cheap loose controller later. It's still rare for me. Mostly the exceptions are specific rare controllers, like the Wavebird or official wireless Genesis controllers.

Last week, while hunting down the USB dongle for that fishing controller, I bought the My Hero Academia game My Hero One's Justice for the PS4. I've actually never seen the anime, but I've heard great things about it.

I watched the first three seasons of that anime as a friend highly recommended it to me, and I hated every minute of it. You know the stereotypes that anime fans get from non-anime fans, how anime fans are weirdos into cringe types of constant repeating unoriginal tropes and odd fetish type content? This is the most defined anime I've watched that confirms these stereotypes, basically every stereotype. Every character feels more like a trope rather than an actual person, plenty of sloppy writing that goes nowhere, horrible weird looking characters that don't follow a consistent art style, fan service fetish crap randomly forced in, etc. Usually a show will have all the characters drawn in the same art style so it feels like everything fits in, but not this show.

I guess it really depends on the type of anime fan you are. If you watched anime back from the 1980's through early 2000's and really liked what was available then and still watch anime from various time periods, you probably won't like this new anime. If you're the type of fan that basically only watches recent shows and avoids watching anything old or completed, like once a recent show is finished and you've seen the last episode it's dead to you forever, then you'll probably like it.

[Steve W]

Honestly, I'm more of a gag anime fan at this point. I did watch a lot of anime from the 80s to the early 2000s, and I gave up. It seems they have great ideas for the premise of the shows, but they can't seem to stick the landing. They start off with a great idea, flounder for several episodes, then limp to a finale. I started watching some of them again after a decade and a half once I saw some comedies like Sabagebu! or Ai Mai Mi.