Share your pickup loot and finds

[Steve W]

Yeah, the Turbo Touch 360+ is yellow on the Genesis - I have one someplace, bought a long time ago out of curiosity. This one is by a different company, and the dongle looped on to the cable is a big bulky adaptor that will convert it to a SNES controller. And now I'm wondering if the adaptor will convert any Genesis controller for SNES use, and how would it map the 6-button layout to the 4-button SNES.

Yesterday I went to a Movie Trading Company store and found a PS3 version of Doctor Who - The Eternity Clock. It's always weird to find European import games in the wild like this. I quickly looked up on my phone whether or not the PS3 was region-locked, and bought it. It was $39.99. I would post a picture but (a) I just bought the newe iPhone SE 2020 edition and taking a picture of the cover is giving me some really weird facial ID markings all over the image which never happened on my old iPhone, and (b) ImgBB which hosts my photos has decided to barely work so I can't upload a picture with a little box drawn around the Doctor's face that labels it FaceID:3.

[Steve W]

Spent the day dropping by game stores on my day off, looking for oddball PS3 titles. I also ended up buying some Wii-U games, since I hardly ever see a decent collection in any game store. There's not a lot of games on the Wii-U that I really want to play, and if I come across one I know I need to grab it up because I might not see another copy for months. Anyhoo, I picked up Puppeteer, Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk. 2, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, Magus, Natural Doctrine, and Ragnarok Odyssey Ace for the PS3 (Magus and Natural Doctrine still factory sealed) and Shantae, Steamworld Collection, and Rodea the Sky Soldier for the Wii-U. And I still have not bought a Wii-U console to play those on.

[Steve W]

I decided to go really far outside of town to hit a couple of GameXchange stores I haven't been to in years. All the games except for the three on the far left side were bought at the first GameXchange for $4.95 each (buy 2 get 1 free), and the Legends Flashback console was bought on clearance for $29 at a supermarket. I hadn't heard of the Legends Flashback and was shocked by the crazy selection of games on this thing. I want to find out what that memory card looking slot on the back is for.

[Steve W]

I bought a copy of Fragile Dreams for the Nintendo Wii from a Movie Trading Company store this afternoon. I've shopped a hundred stores for Wii games and this is one I've never seen before, so I paid way more for it than I might have for a normal game. It was $54.99.

[Slate]

At yard sales today, I found some Gamecube games.

The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition Promotional Disc (Complete)
Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (W Case and Precautions Booklet)
Mario Party 5 (W Case)
Mario Party 7 (Complete)
Sonic Riders (W Case, Manual & Precautions Booklet)
Super Smash Bros: Brawl (W Case, Nintendo Power Booklet, & Precautions Booklet.)

I paid $10 for the lot. Every game is scratched a lot, and both Double Dash and Mario Party 5 didn't work before I cleaned the disks. SSB: Melee doesn't work, but maybe it could still be salvaged.



- Austin

[Steve W]

I went to a GameXchange store that finally had a Wii U console in stock. They had two, in fact. Unfortunately, neither console had any cables with them. They ended up getting some third-party cables and throwing those into the purchase. The console was originally $109, but since they couldn't find whatever cable or dock the gamepad needs to charge, they knocked 10% off, so the Wii U games and console cost $129. The PS3 game Damage Inc. was $17.99 at a different store.

I have a Wii U, and no way to play it since I can't charge the pad. Tomorrow on my lunch break I'll have to pop over to the local GameXchange and see if they have the right cable. This is so much work to go through just to play Tank! Tank! Tank!.

[Steve W]

The past few days I've been hunting down Wii U titles without much success... what's out there isn't exactly what I'm looking for. With a gun to my head and knives at the throats of my loved ones you could not get me to buy a copy of Just Dance. I wanted a Wii U to play Tank! Tank! Tank! since I love the arcade game so much, but the copy I bought looks to have been resurfaced and doesn't play. I don't know what to do with it.

Anyhoodle, spent the day driving all over the Dallas area hunting down interesting games. The highlights on this trip are Odin Sphere (new), Alice: Madness Returns, Konami Collection, and Dream C Club Complete Edipyon. I just got home and haven't tried Dream C Club out to see if it's region-restricted and if it's playable at all with no knowledge of Japanese, but I'm happy that these kinds of things occasionally show up here in the US. In another store I came across a British release of a Cricket game. I would rather slather myself in chicken blood and jump into an alligator pit than play a sports game, but it's still great to see these kinds of imports in the wild. If I ever found a UK copy of Alien Breed Trilogy for the PS3 I'd probably wet myself in shock.

[YoshiM]

I went to a GameXchange store that finally had a Wii U console in stock. They had two, in fact. Unfortunately, neither console had any cables with them. They ended up getting some third-party cables and throwing those into the purchase. The console was originally $109, but since they couldn't find whatever cable or dock the gamepad needs to charge, they knocked 10% off, so the Wii U games and console cost $129. The PS3 game Damage Inc. was $17.99 at a different store.

I have a Wii U, and no way to play it since I can't charge the pad. Tomorrow on my lunch break I'll have to pop over to the local GameXchange and see if they have the right cable. This is so much work to go through just to play Tank! Tank! Tank!.

If you can, try to get a pad charging cable that's Nintendo brand or pumps out enough power as the Nintendo charger.

When I bought my Wii U off eBay for a good price (like $70 or something like that as the person didn't know if it workled except for what his kids said), it didn't have the pad charger. i bought a third party charger which charged the pad fine BUT the pad had a crap battery. I tried playing the pad while the charger was plugged into it but the charger got pistol hot after a half hour. The Nintendo brand charger pumps out more juice so you can play your pad plugged in. Unfortunately I can't find good Wii U pad batteries so that's how we gotta play the pad.

I got a bare NES deck from someone at Atari Age for about $30 shipped and here's the story why I got another one. My wife owns a two family home that she rents out with the upstairs being an Air BnB. The past tenants left a lot of stuff behind when they blew town (and messed the place up bad like drilling a like thirty industrial screws into the wall to hold stone mini knick-knack shelves) and that prompted her to not deal with such folks again. So from this we had a 55" plasma and stand to use along with small appliances and she decked the place out with old 70's style furniture as it was the least expensive. Nice stuff, don't get me wrong, but very 70's (dark brown and green recliners, yellow, brown and white afghans, etc.). We also don't have cable TV or even streaming, just regular WiFi, a DVD player, a VCR and some DVDs and tapes. She got a lot of comments, usually sarcastic, as to how much a "throw back" the place was. For as inexpensive as she charges, you'd think people wouldn't mind but many want all the modern conveniences but not want to pay for it.

Anyhoo....I said to my wife "well, why not MAKE the place truly retro? Advertise that as a feature to "disconnect"" but she waved it off. Recently she got reviews stating how much a couple guests LIKED how the place was-not streaming TV, they got to use a VCR for the first time in 20 years...and she said "you know, that might not be a bad idea". So the NES is going to go into the AirBnB (as I don't want to put the NES I have had since a teen) and right now I'm on the prowl for a 27" CRT.

On the "for kicks"side of things, I saw a 5" black-and-white Emerson portable TV/Radio at Goodwill for $8. It has antenna hook ups so I envisioned playing some Atari on it....so I got it.

[Steve W]

I bought a cheap third-party charger for the Wii U pad off Amazon. I just wanted to get the console working, so I know whether or not I might need to return the console back to the store I bought it from. It does work, and I went out and bought a second copy of Tank! Tank! Tank! since that's the primary reason I wanted to get the console since it's the only game machine that has a port of that arcade game. I haven't kept the gamepad charged for very long, I haven't messed with the Wii U long enough to find out what kind of battery life is in the pad.

[Steve W]

After all my errands were done for the day I went on a game hunt. I love the PS3's library because it seems like there's no end to the oddball Japanese titles, way more than we've ever gotten for other systems in the past. I'll come across a store that'll have at least one game I've never seen anywhere else, and that really makes me happy. Like thrift store and flea market shopping used to back in the day, before the eBay resellers cleared them all out. It's the thrill of finding something unexpected that keeps me collecting. I'm also happy that the PS3 isn't region-locked, unlike virtually every console I've owned in my life. The more I look the more foreign titles I come across, and I love picking up cheap imports for the heck of it.

At the first game store I picked up Ar Nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star, Aquapazza, Gundam Breaker (Japanese import), and Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (a South Korean import!). The Rainbow Six game was a freebie. The other three were bought at a Movie Trading Company store.

[YoshiM]

The PS3 is region free? I had no idea. Mine hasn't gotten much love lately I'm afraid, being subjected to daytime viewings of Backyardigans, Legend of Korra, Veggie Tales and such DVDs from the library. A couple controllers are acting up again, so I have to tear them apart to see if the humidity futzed up how the ribbon cable connects, as the connectors from the top and bottom just press against each other.

[Aussie2B]

Yep, the PS3 is region-free, as is the PS4, Switch, and Xbox One. It's become the new norm for home consoles. It's funny because it used to only be handhelds that were usually region-free, yet Nintendo introduced regional lockout to the DSi and 3DS. But both the PSP and Vita are region-free, at least.

[Steve W]

I haven't tried out the South Korean game yet - it says it's Region 3 on the back, but then again my British copy of Doctor Who states it's Region 2 but it still plays. I was fairly shocked that it turned out to be a side-scroller. I also haven't tried the Gundam Breaker game to see if it plays, the label has water damage on it, so I took off the shrinkwrap and saw that the instruction manual's paper has fused together into a crunchy, solid mess. Not that I can read Japanese anyway, but still.

[Steve W]

To get my PS3 collection to the 200 count mark, spent a few hours going to Movie Trading Company stores and a couple independent game stores that I haven't been to since getting a PS3. And a GameXchange on the way home.

Spotted another copy of Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock at a Movie Trading Company location. How did this local chain get two copies of this British game? Weird. Maybe a whole lot of people imported the game and sold it off after playing it and finding it's a bit dull?

I realized that I didn't already have Killzone, since it's such a boring, generic name I assumed I'd already bought it. Killzone 2 was $2.99, Killzone 3 was 99¢, and Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 2 was $4.99, so with the buy-2-get-1-free sale Killzone 3 was the freebie. The rest were all $9.99 or higher.

[Niku-Sama]

i always kind of felt that killzone was a soulless generic game. almost on the level of nintendo shovelware

[Steve W]

I just remember before the launch of the PS3 Sony had footage for Killzone 2 that was supposedly real-time gameplay, and not pre-rendered. Which got people hyped up for the game only to find out it was total bunk. Along with the "totally the game engine and not pre-rendered, honest!" footage of a Gundam game that after release turned out to look like an early PS2 game.

I saw Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey as some kind of limited release for the PS3 at a game store, new, for $49.99. I passed since I didn't have much money left in my account, but I'm thinking I should pick it up next week after payday. I love that I can't seem to find an end to the interesting, obscure releases for the PS3.

[Niku-Sama]

atleast your finding things. people are being such jack asses over here i dont do any thing but go to work and then home with the occasional trip to a fast food joint

[Steve W]

I just need to do something, to get out of the house for a bit. I work in a supermarket so I'm dealing with a lot more stress than normal during this pandemic, and I need to do something on my time off to wind down. And getting my first PS3 at the beginning of the year has re-ignited my collecting drive that had burnt out years ago. At first I was only buying up sackloads of cheap games at GameXchange stores at the buy-2-get-1-free prices, but now I'm having to spend a lot more to get those rarer titles. But I still try to go game shopping one day off a week, it's one of the few things that make me happy right now.

At a Movie Trading Company I found a PS3 Guncon 4 for $14.99 (the ones I've seen in places like Amazon are around $100!) so I picked up the two Time Crisis games to play it with. The Zoids game for the Xbox 360 looked cool and it's one I haven't seen in any other store, so I grabbed it. The Last Story for the Wii was one I passed on at a different Movie Trading Company location and once I researched it online and found it was supposed to be good it was gone off the shelves. I spotted it at the store and had to grab it, eliminating one of the three or four games I have on my Wii wish list.

[JZ456GAMES]

Some how stumbled upon this rare beauty. Can’t say awesome deal but I can awesome find! This bad boy’s next stop, WATA!

[Steve W]

You found a UK region-locked Sega 32X game in Illinois? Damn, that's cool. Congratulations!

I went to a distant GameXchange store, bought a few things, decided to drive out farther to another GameXchange store, bought some more games, then decided to drive out even farther to a place I wasn't even sure existed any more, a movie and game store that sources on the internet claimed had closed and others said it was open, finally found out for myself that it was indeed open. And found nothing of interest there... it was fairly disorganized, I've seen flea market stalls with better layouts. So to cap off an extremely long drive I drove out even farther to another game store that's in a remote town. I think I spent almost six hours driving around. And I'm pretty sure I've hit all the places that sell used video games in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and in the cities distant orbit. I can't help it sometimes, I haven't had the urge to collect games in so long that once that feeling was re-ignited, I just had to go all out.

The six games on the bottom of the stack are $2.99 to $4.99, buy 2 get 1 free. I didn't know there were so many Atelier games on the PS3. I now have 5 of them. This one was $18.99, God of War Saga collection was $13.99, and Yakuza - Dead Souls was $14.99.