Game Purchase Story

Geoff

I know! Isn’t that the craziest thing.

Obviously they didn’t know what it was. Obviously, I didn’t either!
I figure they probably put it out that morning, and it was probably gone shortly after I left is my reckoning.
Somebody got a crazy deal that day.

It was only later on when I googled ‘Hitachi Saturn’ I realized how insane that was.

exodus

Interesting re: fight night!! The only other piece of the puzzle I have is that this NY one was the last one made by the original dev. Icon and the PSP one were made by other studios.

p3ters

they started doing gaming swap meets here in SoCal again, like there’s two of them going on today >_<. I finally checked one out today for the first time in 2020 O_o

another unsuccessful attempt at looking for copies of Bujingai and Bullet Witch lol.

but I did luck on out this:

non-GH copy, decent condition, complete with manual!

$100 cash, not too bad as a few online sales have been over $150, and really only $20 more than what I would have paid if I bought it last year at Book Off.

so yah, pretty glad I left home this morning lol.

also, with the new XBOX coming out and being fully backwards compatible, I wonder how much it’ll affect the price of the original Xbox version of this game, coz right now that one’s actually affordable.

exodus

What was the reason this was expensive, in the end??

p3ters

I’ve really no idea lol; again I was looking for this game for years before I even knew it was rare, just because an old friend of mine made a joke about it once.

all I do know now is I’m saving up to spend another hundo on the PSP version just out of principle lol

p3ters

I got a new pickup! Now I can tell the story about how I bought 3 copies of Arc Rise Fantasia lol.

the game has randomly been on my radar for a while, coz apparently one of my favorite jpop songs of ALL TIME was used in the game!

I was like whaaaaat?!?! I always wanted to play the game to see where the song pops up, but apparently I’ve read it was only used in that one trailer and never actually comes in the game lol. At least when you play Thousand Arms you do not have to get too far to hear Ayumi Hamasaki :p

anywayz, so one day I randomly checked gamestop’s website and they had one store in all of California that had a copy! It was the day I was going to Evo 2019; I detoured 2 hours through Los Angeles traffic to buy a disc only copy for $20 in the city of Calabasas.

I knew I wanted a complete copy tho, so I just had an ebay alert and ultimately got one, which came with an art card! Apparently this was a preorder bonus so I was happy again! But I never removed my alert and discovered there was yet another preorder bonus, a set of trading cards! I believe one was from Amazon while the other was Gamestop. I figured well I’m already in this deep, may as well go all the way!

So finally I was able to track down a copy with the cards, and paid way more than I woulda liked thanks to a last minute snipe bid pushing my max bid up >_< Oh yeah, and I saw a set of pins on ebay too that I said why not and bought for the heck of it also lol.

anywayz, this was quite the adventure lol. I wonder if I’ll ever actually play this game, but in the meantime I can at least sell back the two extra copies and make some good change back.

oh and the full song, Negai Hoshi by Nami Tamaki, can be heard here. It really is one of my favorite songs ever from a singer I truly do adore, so if you like the jpop jamz then check it out!

Syzygy

I love Arcrise Fantasia! It unfortunately has some big twists that YT’s recommendation algorithm loves to spoil, even right there after that song.

p3ters

I jus gotta say, the best pickup stories are also travel stories! Like the time I was in Minnesota and bought a copy of Cleopatra’s Fortune. There’s nothing notable about the story, but I remember it coz I was in Minnesota, and the store employee was dumbfounded coz he had no idea why I was so enthusiastic to find such a plain looking game he’d never heard of lol. They actually had two copies!! Anywayz, I miss traveling :(

there’s another shop in MN called Mr. Zero’s, a super cool but super messy store that sells all used media and trinkets. The owner is either a member of a KISS cover band, or an actual member of KISS - it’s not necessarily in my area of expertise to know lol. I bought a copy of Pamela Anderson’s VIP for the psx, and Aeon Flux for PS2 there. At the time I was actively looking for a copy of Aeon Flux coz the game came with a movie ticket, so I wanted to find a complete copy with movie ticket intact! Now whenever I am hunting, I still actively open every copy of Aeon Flux I come across to see if it has a movie ticket inside :p

so yesterday while I was out hunting I found something that may be better than a movie ticket lol

this copy had a printout from IGN with all the codes for the game on it! The trippy part is, the sheet is actually dated 09/28/2006 in the bottom right corner. Talk about an ancient relic!! I bet there’s much more story behind this than there is with unused movie tickets :p

antillese

I got it in my mind that I wanted to see the Aeon Flux movie recently, but haven’t pulled the trigger on the rental on YouTube or whatever. I know it’s not a good film and I should just watch the Liquid Television show again, but I have a morbid sense of curiosity.

BTW everyone, these hunting stories are fun and I enjoy hearing about them.

milo

I went to SoCal retro gaming expo February of last year. It was my first time being at a big retro games fair and I was so excited to be there. I was like a puppy going to the dog park for the first time.

I got a model 1 Sega CD for $100 bucks from a guy pulling a wagon full of random stuff through the expo. He assured me it worked but his buddy had kind of a weird vibe about the transaction.

It was at the top of my must have list at the time and I was stoked to find one so cheap. I figured if it didn’t work I would just try and repair it.

Sure enough when I hooked it up it barely played games and the sound was all messed up. It was dirty as heck inside but I managed to get it working. I think me and the guy both kinda thought we were getting the best of each other.

p3ters

milo oh cool, was that the one at the Pomona Fairgrounds, or at Frank & Sons?

I got tons of good stuff at the Pomona one. I bought a busted ass GBA for hecka cheap. Dude couldnt even guarantee it works, but it was so cheap I couldnt not buy it lol. Got home, put some batteries in it, and it worked just fine! It’s the perfect loaner device for if I can ever get myself motivated to do a case swap :p

milo

p3ters

It was actually in pasadena at the big hotel conference center. Such a great experience.

I got a gameboy pocket there for super cheap too! One of the model 1 silver ones which I guess is pretty hard to find. I was so ready to go back again this year and had the trip booked at the end of March but the world had different plans.

exodus

This kind of crosses over between the “dream of videogames” thread and this one, but one of my trips to Seoul I went to Yongsan, as I usually do, and went to the underground market there. This particular time, most of the stalls were closed, but as I looked closer, there was a bunch of japanese saturn games stacked up on an unmanned counter. It said 600 won each or 500 if you bought more than 5. When I say a bunch, I’m talking about 150+ games.

500 won was about 4 dollars at the time.

Turned out one of the grandpas running one of the stalls was dumping all his saturn stuff for space, and I just happened upon it at the right time. He was several stalls down once I found him, and I wound up buying 20 things and kind of regretting not buying more. That ALSO happened to be the grandpa who was interested in some of the records I’d been trying to barter around so I traded him 10 records and basically paid like $12 in the end. I got stuff like ninpen manmaru, albert odyssey gaiden with the sleeve on it, a bunch of random puzzle games, ninku, an extra copy of coin puzzle moujiya for a friend, etc etc. nothing that’d totally blow your mind, but we’re taking about $600 worth of games in today’s dollars for a few bucks and some eagles (or equivalent) records.

That’s the kind of thing I dream about happening to such an extent that, tired as I was that day, I was like - okay, I know this isn’t a dream, but IS it a dream!?

p3ters

geez here’s a story, but if you follow Limited Run Josh on twitter, dude picked up a huge playstation haul that has dang near everything in it!! See the thread by clicking here:

crazy thing is, all those games, and not a single copy of Bujingai!!! truly, the rarest PS2 game of all!!!

he had an open copy of Def Jam in there at least :p

gyozaleaf

Wonder what the .hack//G.U. LE is worth. Someone sold one on eBay MINUS THE GAME recently for $99. There’s one listed with the game but no manual for $140.

When things are obscure it’s hard to find out what they’re actually worth! Even one auction, were it complete, wouldn’t be a good enough yardstick to tell, really, as prices on unusual items can fluctuate a lot depending on whether people who really care about it show up.

KennyL

Saturn was on clearance for $60 at Toy r us on its dying days and my local store sold out fast. So I got on a game forum lurking for leads and someone from another state offered to go get one from their local store and ship me one. I took the offer with zero due diligence, paid $60 plus something like $8 shipping, and few days later a Saturn arrived at my house. I don’t remember which forum it was, who the person was, how I paid them, and if I properly thanked them or not. Well, thank you my Saturn getter person!

But I must confess that even though I got couple of now pricey RPGs for it back then, I’ve barely touched my Saturn because I was so engulfed by playstation. I’m planning on cramming Saturn after I finish cramming PC Engine cd.

Anyway, thanks to Tim’s video, I’ve imported PCE Tokimeki Memorial and ended up picking up bunch of other stuff along with it.

I was scared to look into PCE stuff because people say prices are way high now and indeed they are but there are still bunch of pretty affordable stuff to my surprise. I might have caught the bug……..

Got 3×3 Eyes purely for the vhs tape ha. I can’t even run the game because I don’t have arcade card… Tanjou Debut is interesting because it’s PCE game with the most vocal songs as far as I know (12 songs!)

Rudie

Geoff lol I know that bookoff and have a near identical story of being sad and broke and seeing a Panasonic Que there.

milo

So this is kind of a neat purchase story…

Years ago when I was first starting to repair my games I bought a model 1 Sega Genesis on ebay that was listed “as is/for parts” for cheap to practice on.

When it arrived and I hooked it up it was working just fine as far as I could tell. I sent the seller a message asking what was wrong with it and he said that he listed it “as is” because he didn’t finish recapping it. Not only that, but he said he had tinkered with the video output circuit to get a cleaner picture and replaced the audio amplifier chips with more modern ones for better sound.

So I got this super sweet souped up Genny for super cheap without even realizing it! I still use it as my main genesis too.

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