There is much to say about this year with so many highlights that it has one of the best years ever for my collection. There were some amazing finds such as the sealed NES game lot which included two sealed copies of Castlevania 3 as well as three sealed copies of Garygoyle's Quest 2. Sadly, due to financial problems a couple of months later, I had to sell almost all of them. Then there were all those trips to the flea market that flourished amazing find after find. With so many finds there will surely be one to top them all out of the water. I think this year has been the year of the sealed games especially with the already mentioned NES sealed games among others. In the month of December, there have been a lot of sealed findings including Super Mario Advance, Valkyrie Profile (NDS), and Tetris DS(NDS). Getting into collecting sealed games is very rewarding and tempting at the same time. You just want to open the game so bad but also know that if you open it, you will damage its value for years to come. That's why I decided to buy used copies of the games if I really want to play them in the future. I do have a big long list of games that I'm trying to finish so I just can't keep adding more and more games to a list that's already packed and has a waiting line with other games as well. My main problem is that I play RPGs for the most part which are ten times longer than other type of games like platform or fighter. Well, I have talked little by little of this year but why don't we make a walkthrough of every month....
January
A new started and it was time for the usual such as hunting and blogging. The month went by as usual with the neat findings as well as finally finding a box for my disc only Tactics Ogre game for the PS1. Then, my discovery of a NES deluxe set with a brand new R.O.B. Made the whole month jump with joy as I finally found the previous accessory. It might be quite useless for many but it's a very important item for Nintendo collectors. There was also one last trip to the flea market that was a complete success. I ended up finding a lot of games and a very odd power joy cartridge. It looked like a gameboy cart for a while but it ended up being something completely different.
February
This month was filled with a lot of odd finds as well. I got a repro of Earthbound as a gift from a good friend and I continued my hunting to thrift stores, flea markets, and even Play n Trade. I also picked up a copy of House of the Dead for the Saturn for free! Sadly, that Play n Trade would close their doors to the public in very fast fashion. I also picked up some other games such as Spider (PS1), Dragon Warrior III (NES), and Joe & Mac (SNES). There were lots and lots of findings in the NES area as well. I bought around ten CIB NES games in the final day of this month as well as many other things. I also found a lot of Gijoe action figures! A great month indeed.
March
This was a slow month for finds but I still managed to pick up some games like Hammering Harry (FC) and Metal Slug 7 (NDS). There was also a TMNT vehicle I used to have when I was a kid that I found at the flea market. I still haven't tested it yet. There is no use doing that anyways as it's away in my storage unit for the time being. There was also a huge really huge video game lot that I was more than happy to receive. It came short from being one hundred games but when you get anything close to one hundred games, you are going to have a great hell of a time with them. The lot included games for various platforms such as Famicom, Gameboy, and Game Gear. There was just so much to love about this lot of games that it seemed never ending at one point! There was also this very odd Sega calculator I found at a thrift store. I never got to try it out but it looked in great shape so I'm guessing it works. This is according to my sources, what kids used before texting in cellphones came along. The online store eBay was very nice to me as I won this awesome Famicom lot for around fifty four dollars! The Famicom came CIB in very decent shape but that's not all, there were also twenty six games that came with it some of them being pirates! It was a great month for findings nonetheless.
April
This month was when things started to slow down. There were many changes going on in my life and I just didn't had the time to devote it to my hobby. These kind of things happen to everybody so I know most of you would understand. The blog also reached forty followers which I see it as a nice milestone. Retro Game of the Week posts were still coming and going. There was not much discipline on releasing them every week for some reason. I guess there wasn't much urgency or demand as it is now. I didn't had any new additions until almost the middle of the month when I posted about
this video game lot with lots of fun titles. This lot of
Pokemon games and handheld kept my hunting spirit up as well as this amazing find of
Valkyrie Profile for the PS1. There was a lot to love after that like the
Ys game for the PS2 I picked up from Gamestop. I also picked up
Magna Darta for the PS2 and a great
PS2 lot for mad cheap! The month ended great with the finding of
Marvel vs Capcom for the Dreamcast. You can even have great finds during crappy times
May
This month had great find after great find coming to my hands. There were many discoveries like the
NES Prototype in this awesome
hunt. There were so many finds from that previous hunt that I had to split them in two different posts. The
second post didn't failed to deliver as well with tons of new finds like the Turbografx console and tons and tons of games. Such new sections like the
Question Session and
Retro Gaming Life News had a short life span as they didn't survived for long. They might have a future but I have so many sections to take care of right now that there is no room for them as of now. This month also had a great arrival of
Famicom Disk System games as well as more
Famicom pirates. There were also more
insane finds from the flea market including a Neo Geo pocket as well as lots of Nintendo 64 games! Then, I finally picked up some
import PS1 titles once more for my collection. I also picked up yet another
Nintendo 64 lot with a lot of good resellers and to end the month on an amazing note, well just click on this
link I can assure you that you won't be disappointed.
June
This month had a very important milestone but before that it had a
game.com finding. This handheld actually has a touch screen, talk about way ahead of its time. The games weren't that good so they failed in the end to the all mighty gameboy. With that find out of the way, I was able to hit the jackpot with probably the most amazing Famicom related finding ever.
Finds number 200 made
Finds number 100 look like crap! Well you see and compare. There was just so much to love about Finds number 200 that I am still amazed about the stuff I was able to add to my collection not to mention all that 8-bit porn! Things got even better as I was able to pick up what could probably be the best find of the year.
Finds 204 proved that there are still amazing hidden gems somewhere out there and we have to find them! With so many sealed NES games, I was as happy as a collector as I could ever be. Sadly, they wouldn't be in my hands for long as a real bad turn of events forced me to sell the majority off to collectors all over the world. This is one bitter-sweet find indeed.... Moving on, I was able to pick up the notorious
Gimmick! for the Famicom. It may be a pirate but it's better than playing it on the emulator that's for sure. I also got some
mixed video game lots and
Pokemon games couldn't be absent from my findings, that's for sure.
July
Things turn for the worse as I wasn't able to invest in the hobby as I was in the middle of selling off all the wonderful sealed games but other than that, it was DOS Month! I used to do this every June in my old website and decided to migrate it to here except it'll take place in July. This is a yearly tradition that has been adapted to Retro Gaming Life so be on alert this coming July as you'll get thirty one more posts! There was only a
sole find this month with an easy Find of the Month award.
August
This month was even worse than the one before it. With DOS Month over, there was little material to add so there wasn't much information to upload. There was this
lot of games and a sealed
MAC OSX that I was able to sell for a good amount. A
trip to the flea market brought some decent finds with
Thousand Arms being favorite of the current month.
September
With all my problems finally getting resolved, Retro Gaming Life was coming back to life and at just the perfect time too! With this
great hunt, Retro Gaming Life was officially back in the game! The joy of me the hate of some...believe me, I got some assholes annoying me trying to take me down for some reason, go figure! Furthermore, I got a
very sexy Nintendo DS lite that I ended up selling off anyways...There was also another
awesome lot of games with some Pokemon CIB games among other gems and the
Yu-Gi-oh! Finds made their debut!
October
By this month, things were already getting back to normal and new stuff was brewing for the blog to have more content than ever. The Yu-gi-oh! Finds was a nice addition as many gamers and retro gamers out there are familiar with this game, some hate it, some love it. A new section related to the Yu-gi-oh! Finds also made its debut. This one is called
Yu-gi-oh! Amazing Cards which showcases counterfeit cards that have hilariously incorrect grammar as well as "amazing" stats. It's certainly worth a look. There were some
neat finds as well as some great
Nintendo titles from the SNES era! I also found myself with some
PS1 Russian pirates.There were also more interesting items such as the
Merio handheld from that same hunt. Talk about a pirate month! There were finds, such as
Sakura Wars for the PS2, and lots of other ones.
Famicom Guide made its debut on the 30th of this month and the Famicom madness started!
November
Retro Gaming Life turned two and lots of new updates started to appear. I finally decided to start writing articles for the blog and started with a couple such as
To Date or not to Date a Gamer Girl? And
Retro Gaming Collecting 101. Finds kept coming and going with lots of new additions to my collection. The usual
Nintendo lots were not absent from my findings and many interesting games came to my hands. A great
flea market hunt took place as well with some of the more interesting finds I have ever had! The awesome horror game
Fatal Frame for the PS2 also became finally mine, I'm only missing part three and I will have the trilogy! I also picked up three
sealed games for the NES. Not the best titles but a sealed game is a sealed game.... I also picked up some
Nintendo DS games even though I didn't had a DS at that time, I do now. There is just so much to talk about but not enough time. One last thing, Pirate Game of the Week made its debut with great success.
December
This is probably the golden month for the blog as a lot of new stuff was added to it. New sections such as
Ads from the Past and
Retro Cheat Page came to life. The
Pirate Game of the Week also made its debut with Super Bros 8 as its first entry. There is just so much to talk about from this month that you will have to go into the records and see for yourself. To sum up, we have Famicom Guide posts, Ads from the Past every day, Retro Cheat Page every Thursday, Pirate Game of the Week every Wednesday, and many other things coming. There is just so much going on that I will probably miss so many things that it wouldn't be fair. There are over one hundred posts from this month so you can see why it's so amazing! This activity won't slow down as I'm going to continue working on this blog so that one day it'll be a very respected and cherished blog for every retro gamer out there. In findings, there were some fantastic additions such as
Great Greed CIB for the gameboy as well as a
lot of Famicom games with one of them being autographed by a mysterious person that I hope to find out who that person is. There is just so much to talk about from this month so I'll just leave it to you to check out the rest.
So that should do it for this years overview. It was an amazing year for sure and I can't wait to start over in 2011. There are still many games out there to discover and add to my ever growing collection. There is a lot of research to be done and information to be discovered. Some obscurities are still out there for us to dig out and show them to the world. I hope all of you have a nice and safe happy new year...cya next year!
