The Holy Grails of Console Collecting 64
Retrogaming with Racketboy has up a feature looking at some of the 'holy grails' of console collecting. These are titles worthy of long, hard searches through auctions and used game stores ... both for their quality and their rarity. From the article: "16. Star Fox: Super Weekend/Donkey Kong Country Competition Cartridge, Estimated Price (Loose): $200. If there was a big one-two punch in Nintendo's fight against Sega's Genesis, Star Fox and Donkey Kong Country would be it. While the main retail games may not be rare at all, there was a special package that is quite desirable. The Star Fox: Super Weekend and Donkey Kong Country Competition cartridges were used by Blockbuster Video in tournaments held within the store, and never received a true commercial release. The winners of the tournaments would receive prizes such as jackets and sometimes even vacations."
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For all the Sony hate on
One could easily argue that the PS3 then would have by far the most lax DRM restrictions of the consoles.
Holy Grail! (Score:1)
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Also there was a limited Edition Xbox 1 version of Counterstrike availble only to people who pre-ordered... in about 10 years I bet it'd fetch a pretty penny.
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Duke Nukem Forever?
Vectrex! (Score:1)
Anyone out there still own a working unit? Was/is it fun to play?
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I used to play on one a lot, and years later I worked for the company that designed the danged thing.
Randy
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There are plenty of old consoles that are next to impossible to find these days.
I kept all my old consoles for ages and my demanded that I get rid of most of them because I never hooked them up or turned them on. I resisted, but many of the old consoles don't work incredibly well, and my emulators do. I had an Atari 7800, NES, Sega Master System, SNES, Turbo Grafix, Genesis, and N64 I got rid of. And honestly I don't have serious regrets. I could point to them and sa
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Well, for one it gives you the right to play the play the games on that nifty emulator.
"I kept all my old consoles for ages and my demanded that I get rid of most of them..."
And I'm pretty sure the missing word in this sentence is "Mom".
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I hardly ever sleep with my mom anymore.
Game Boy Player? (Score:2)
You can run GBA homebrew code on a GameCube. You cannot run GBA homebrew code on a Wii because, as far as the public knows, the Wii has no Game Boy Player.
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Though I have emulators for my PS2 and Dreamcast as well, the XBox is my system of choice for emulation at the moment. I imagine I will eventually shift to the PS3 for all my emulation needs.
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Came with built in games, spent many hours playing with the stupid draw program. Controllers really sucked!
Thanks for the flash back!
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Some of the games are quite fun. Mine Storm is far more than "an asteroids clone", though -- with magnetic mines, magnetic shooting mines, and various interesting shapes above level 13 (when the game starts skipping
I own two (Score:1)
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I always enjoyed it when I was a kid, and they had some really cool ideas. First, the Vectrex had (I believe) the FIRST analog joystick on a home system, beating Nintendo by about 15 years (!). Second, they used a light pen for some of their titles, which everyone at the time thought was going to be the "next big thing".
I haven't played it in a while (it's fragile), but it really was a nice system, even though it was a bit underpowered even for the
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I once played "Mine Storm" for ~4 1/2 hours straight (at work! Ah, the good ol' days...). IIRC, the levels wrap around after 20-something.
Hmmm, I wonder if John Dondzila is still making new games, and if Sean Kelly is still making multicart boards?
Missing option (Score:5, Funny)
on a similar note (Score:2)
"Holy Grail of Console Collecting" (Score:5, Funny)
The Holy Grail of Console Collecting refers to the Nintendo Entertainment System that Jesus Christ and the twelve apostles played after the last supper. The exact fate of this relic is unknown, but many medieval churches have claimed to possess a joystick or a cartridge or other component of this legendary system. The most convincing relic is the Drop-Lid of Turin which is an angled piece of plastic that is purported to be the "door" from the front of Christ's Nintendo. Carbon dating of the artifact has been inconclusive.
Re:"Holy Grail of Console Collecting" (Score:5, Funny)
4) And the Lord said, "Remove thy cartridge and blow into it, such that the breath of life that I have given unto thee would give new life unto thy cartridge."
5) The people did as the Lord spoke, so that the scourge upon the console should be lifted.
6) The Punch-Out title didst appear, and the people rejoiced with beatings upon Glass Joe and offerings of burnt Hot Pockets.
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Not Impressed (Score:5, Interesting)
For games that are actually fun, here's my list in no particular order:
1) Shuttle Orbiter (2600) $50 - $80
2) H.E.R.O. (2600) $10-$20
3) Diner (Intellivision) $50-$100
4) Galaxy 5000 (NES) $10-$20
5) Thin Ice (Intellivision) $20-$50
6) Killer Bees (Odyssey 2) $10-$15
7) Dreadnaught Factor (Intellivision) $10-$30
8) Happy Trails (Intellivision) $10-$15
The Intellivision is sort of a leader in this space as some of their best titles were released after Mattel Electronics folded. As a result, these titles are very hard to get ahold of. I've only named one's I've played. I'm sure that Stadium Mud Buggies and Thunder Castle are lots of fun too. (In fact, I've been forcefully told as much by others.)
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I think you answered your own question. The article is about collecting, not playing.
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The truly GREAT stuff are t
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Besides, we've already got one. Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time.
Re:Fun is in the eye of the beholder (Score:2)
Sapphire for the PC Engine which is so rare that counterfeits sell for over $60 [superpcenginegrafx.com]. The ever-popular Akumajo Dracula X: Chi no Rondo [gamespy.com] is another great PC Engine game. Besides the previously mentioned PDS, the Saturn also had Shining Force III and Radiant Silvergun [wikipedia.org].
There are plenty of classics out there that are just so hard to get a copy of these days.
The list (Score:1, Informative)
20. Panzer Dragoon Saga (Sega Saturn; NTSC-U, PAL)
19. Psychic Killer Taromaru (Sega Saturn; NTSC-J)
18. Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Master System; NTSC-U)
17. Congo Bongo (Intellivision; NTSC-U)
16. StarFox: Super Weekend/Donkey Kong Country Competition Cartidge (SNES; NTSC-U, PAL)
15. Magical Chase (TurboGrafx 16; NTSC-U)
14. Myriad 6 in 1 (NES; NTSC-U)
13. Bounty Bob Strikes Back! (Atari 5200; NTSC-U)
12. Mine Storm/Mine Storm II (Vectrex; NTSC-U)
11. Bubble Bath Babes
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The U an R+ items aren't fetching what they used to. In 1998, I had the Intellivision Congo Bongo (boxed) listed above. Someone paid me $50 cash, just for the box. I then sold the mint cart and instructions on eBay for another $75.
I also noticed Chase the Chuckwagon (2600) isn't on the list when it would have been near number one over five years ago.
Battlesphere Gold for the Atari Jaguar (Score:1)
I thought I was doing ok... (Score:1)
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I picked up Earthbound at Best Buy for $5.99 when they were trying to make room for N64 stuff (mid-1997). They had tons of 'em and the boxes were big and took up a bunch of valuable shelf space.
I have the cart, "manual" (it's really a strategy guide), and box, all in good condition.
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Y'know, it's funny you should say that about the manual, cos (with regards to games in general) I've always thought of that the other way around... The "strategy guides" you get these days quite often contain stuff that really should be part of the manual. So by shipping sub-standard manuals with the games these days, they're often forcing you to buy one of these strategy guides just to work out how to play, and max
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I never really go
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Tetris? (Score:2)
And that Battlesphere isn't on here makes me scratch my head but someone else already brought that up.
And finally, what on earth is "1990 Nintendo World Championships"?
"but gamers everywhere know very well of it's existence." (Except for me apparently.)
Ultima Holy Grails (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a game I've seen screenshots of, Origin confirmed, but I can't find any info on. It is rarer than rare. Origin was making SNES and NES ports of many of their PC RPGs. Some are decent and some are horrible (Ultima VII on the SNES for instance). They were dumbed down versions more often than not.
However, the original Words of Ultima: Savage Empire was built using the Ultima VI engine. Origin worked on redoing the game using the Ultima VII engine with all new graphics. The only screenshots and info I've found was for a Japanese Super Famicom version, but it was never officially released.
That would be a rare cart.
Within the Ultima series you've also got the Lost Vale addon for Ultima VIII that was finished, but never released. Even the staff who made the game say they have no idea what happened to the files, but they might be floating around. For years collectors have looked for anything related to it, and just last year the single existing copy of the box prototype popped up on EBay, was confirmed as legit by Origin staffers, and sold for thousands of dollars.
When an empty box sells for thousands, the software itself would be holy grail worthy.
There is also the original 2D isometric Ultima IX that got scrapped, but that was also unreleased.
For a rare released title, there was an FM Towns version of Ultima VI with full speech. Try finding that.
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A lot of this stuff simply is so rare that it's undiscovered. Or the game isn't a big name, so nobody cares. For an example of rare stuff on a shipping game, the E3 version of Eyetoy: Antigrav used colored gloves to track hand
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I weep over a bunch of unreleased titles that I would love to have seen and never got my hands on. In the PC RPG-genre alone, I regularly weep over:
The original Ultima IX, Bob White's Ultima IX, Torn, Jefferson (Baldur's Gate 3: The Black Hound), Van Buren (Fallout 3), Ultima X Odyssey, Worlds of Ultima: Arthurian Legends, Ultima VIII: The Lost Vale, Ultima Underworld 3 (which years later became Arx Fatalis),
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Info [atarihq.com]
The Nintendo Tourney Cart was just a mishmash of Super Mario, Rad Racer, and Tetris. The idea was to get to a certain number of points in Mario, beat a race in Rad Racer, and then use the remaining time (yes, you were on a clock) to get the highest possible score in Tetris. The basic strategy was to get past the first two parts as quickly as possible so that you could begin raking up a huge score in Tetris before everyone else.
Pretty much
Ever see the Wizard? (Score:2)
In 1990, Nintendto held "tournaments" in various cities (including many in the U.S.). Players played SMB, Tetris, and Rad Racer for timed periods, and players won or lost based on the number of points they accumulated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_World_Champi onship [wikipedia.org] for more information
I participated in one of the 1990 tournaments and was successful enough in the lower rounds to get to play on the "big" stage which was modeled after the one used in the Wizard.
Number 14... (Score:2)
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Had you read the article like a good n00b...
While the game itself was released many times, these actual carts were released twice, the other time from Caltron, who reportedly went bankrupt during it's production. Myriad Games would later aquire the leftover carts, shipping them out in a new box, and with a numbered label for the price of $69.
Laptop 360 (Score:3, Informative)
I have #16! (Score:1, Interesting)
Number 0: Earthbound (Score:2)
By the way, I thought there were a lot of those Star Fox competition cartridges. Is this some special version that also had Donkey Kong Country?
meow
Half off-topic - Please read anyway (Score:2)
The Innovation SSI-2001, ISA soundcard based on the C64's SID6581 sound chip.
If someone has one, or know where to find one, please contact me. I have almost every other main soundcard (sb-compatibles aside) on my Soundcards Museum [yvan256.net].