New Acquisitions: July / August 2016

Just about every day I see these "look at what I just found" type of posts in the various video game groups I'm a part of on Facebook. While I don't really have anything against these type of posts, my work schedule and life in general don't allow me a lot of time to spend with my hobbies. That said I decided that I'll just start keeping track of my new purchases and share them a month or two at a time. After all, part of the fun of collecting is the hunt and sometimes one or more of the games may have a story attached to it that I thought I'd share.

All of these purchases were made or received in the mail in the last two months. Most of them were planned purchases and you may even be able to pick out a theme of sorts if you look carefully.

Working from the top to the bottom of the group picture, left to right let's take a look at what I have added to my gaming que. First up is Evil Dead: Fist Full of Boomstick and Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green. Evil Dead was found at my local G2K store for $5 complete. I've picked up most of the original Xbox games that I wanted from their two locations locally so I was pleased to find something "new" that interested me. I'm a big fan of horror movies, especially the zombie genre. I've always been a George A. Romero fan so when this Land of the Dead game originally came out on the Xbox I bought it brand new. While the game has it's share of flaws and bugs, I still find it to be a entertaining FPS. In fact, I think I enjoy this game more than the movie itself. I grabbed this one off of eBay for around $15 shipped. Next up is the Limited Edition version of Halo 5. This was a clearance purchase from Target I found while traveling for work. I've owned my Xbox One for a little over a year now and still don't many games. but this is one I've been wanting for a while that I just never got around to picking up for some reason. The clearance price was 50% off it's MSRP so I thought why not? The extras are pretty cool, but I'm just glad the game is better than Halo 4. That one was a major disappointment for me. The last game here is Song of the Deep. I usually can filter all of the garbage GameStop employees fill my ears with when checking out, but I let this one guy get to me and pre-ordered the physical copy of this game that was exclusive to GameStop stores. I've only played a little bit, but I have enjoyed it. Now that Halo 5 has been beaten (at least once), I may go back to this.

Speaking of GameStop, I grabbed Super Mario 3D World from them last week while I was shopping at the mall with my daughters, They have showed more interest in playing Mario type games, especially when they saw the cat suit in this game. Flipnic is a pretty slick looking pinball game that I saw on YouTube while researching something else. Hard to believe Capcom released this game. Haven't played it yet, bit I think I'll get my $10 worth out of this eBay purchase. Infamous was more or less of an impulse buy. I already owned the red case Greatest Hits version of the game, but my OCD doesn't like the red cases and this was only $.89 at GameStop. Wrestle War for the Mega Drive comes courtesy of Stefano Bruni on Facebook. He usually offers a great selection of games at great prices. Being a wrestling fan, the awesome cover art and the $15 shipped price tag I couldn't resist.

Stefano Bruni also supplied me with my latest Playstation import, RayStorm. I already owned the sequel (RayCrisis) and this import was cheaper than the US version. The next 3 games all came from Famicom Dojo's Vinnk. You may have read here how I adore the service he runs via GameGavel called Japan Retro Direct. He actually e-mailed me a month or so ago as he knew I was looking for more pinball games and told me he acquired a nice copy of Digital Pinball: Necronomicon for the Saturn...spine card and all. He asked if I wanted it and I thought "yeah, but how much is this going to set me back?". Little to my surprised his asking price was way more favorable than eBay prices. While I was picking that up I decided to see what else he had. I grabbed Last Bronx for the Saturn and Pomping World (aka Buster Bros.) for the PC Engine while I was shopping his store. Keep on reading as Vinnk also supplied me with more gaming goodness!

These 4 games also came from Japan Retro Direct. The baseball games were dirt cheap, but that isn't why I bought them. I love baseball and have been watching a lot more games this summer than I have in awhile. I've always wondered about some of these baseball video game franchises that never made it to the US so I thought I'd give Power League and Pro Yayku World Stadium a try. I also enjoy racing games and surprisingly I didn't already own F1 Circus for the PC Engine. The last game, Galaxy Fraulein Yuna is one of those quirky Japanese games I've wondered about for awhile. I found an English walkthrough recently too so I thought now was as good as any time to give it a try. My 5 year old daughter said this game has a pretty cover.

Handheld games are getting popular in my house, especially as my two daughters are getting older and enjoy playing their DS lites, Pinball of the Dead however is all mine. I hated I missed out on this game for the GBA when it was new so I'm thrilled to own it now. The DS games were bought more or less for my girls, wife included. Go! Diego Go! Safari Rescue worked out to be worth the $3 for my oldest daughter, however Phineas & Ferb turned out to have a little more dialog than I anticipated. Both of these games came from an awesome local shop called Retro Reboot. Tetris DS is my first import DS game and came from Stefano Bruni. It's got some features I don't recall seeing in other versions of Tetris, plus this a game I know my wife will enjoy too.

I've been working on building my Famicom collection, thanks in part that my Famicom AV system is more reliable than my "toaster" NES (before I installed Blinking Light Win I may add!) and I adore these clamshell cases Namco packaged their Famicom games in. I scored both Family Pinball and Rolling Thunder from eBay for surprisingly cheap. Both are complete and look great alongside my other boxed Namco games. Exciting Baseball for the Famicom Disk System came from Japan Retro Direct and is my first sports title for the FDS. Xexyz was acquired from one of the Facebook groups I'm a member. It's one of those games I sold a few years back and regretted so I'm glad to have it once again. Back to handheld games, the last two are favorites of mine. Burai Fighter was a one of my favorite shmups on the NES and I think I remember playing the Game Boy version when I was younger. I found a completed, boxed copy of the Japanese release for next to nothing on eBay. Pokemon Pinball is one of those games that I get odd looks at from time to time, but's a pretty solid pinball game. I grabbed it for $4 at my local G2K store.

Video Pinball for the Atari 2600 was a $3 eBay purchase. By the way, have you caught the theme yet in all of these purchases? Choplifter for the Atari 7800 was my latest $1 purchase from Retro Reboot.

Last, but not least is the latest copy of Retro Gamer. I don't often get by a Barnes & Noble bookstore, but there is one at the mall not too far from the house so I made it a point to pick this up on my last outing with my girls. Haven't finished reading the Out Run cover story, but so far it's been a great read.

I really hope my work schedule slows down a bit and allows me some free time to sit down with some of these new games. Many of them I'm dying to play. I finished the single player campaign last night (or should I saw early this morning!) in Halo 5 and I really enjoyed the game. The story still confuses me a little, but it was refreshing to play another great game on my Xbox One again. Now I just gotta wait until Dead Rising 4 comes out this fall. 

I don't anticipate buying as many games this month or over the next few months, but I'll make sure to keep up with what I do so I can come back and share them...especially the latest game I'm currently waiting to arrive that I grabbed from Stefano.