Awesome Retro Finds of the Week 02: Rewind

While I got pretty lucky at the thrift stores the past two weeks, this week was not successful at all! I found a few retro items, like an NES Advantage controller for $4, and some old Genesis sports titles, but ultimately passed on all of these. With the poor weather lately, it's been harder to get out to anywhere further than in my local area. I can't wait until winter passes and it's yard sale season again!

So since I don't have anything for this week, I'll post some finds from a couple of weeks ago, before I launched this blog.

A few weeks ago, I went to a new thrift store for the first time. I found a few items there, lots of game accessories, controllers, a Nintendo Zapper, and some PC games. There were a bunch of original Xbox games but they were still a bit too much (about $7 apiece) to pick up at this time.

I also found a copy of Tekken 3 for Playstation, but it was really horribly scratched up, so I passed. Tekken 3 is an extremely common PSX title, and is always very, very cheap. I'll pick it up sometime in the future.

There were several original Game Boy games, but they were all titles I had zero interest in. Things like the Olsen Twins and Rugrats. I may be a retro gamer, but I'm not a completist: if I have zero desire to play the game, you probably won't see it on this site. (Which is why sports games will also be rare; aside from my lack of interest, they're generally outdated due to real-life roster changes and there's not a lot of demand from retro gamers to play a 10-year-old sports title.)

I wound up picking up the following:

Street Fighter Alpha 3 is probably my most favorite Street Fighter game ever. I bought it for a whopping $2. Sadly, like Tekken 3, the game suffers from terrible scratches all over the back. Unlike Tekken 3, this game isn't nearly as common a find, and I just couldn't pass it up, scratches and all. I got it resurfaced at a local independent game store, but I haven't tried it out yet.

Taz-Mania was $3, Quackshot was $2.

Hopefully this upcoming week is a little better! 

Awesome Retro Finds of the Week 01: Miniature Edition

Throughout the week, I go to various thrift stores looking for retro merchandise. There's even a thrift store on my way to work, which I stop in on an almost-daily basis. Every week I'll post a list of my finds. 

Now for today's thrifty tale: Last week, I found a copy of Street Fighter Alpha 3 (PSX) for $2, only to bring it home and find that my PS2 no longer reads PSX discs. Disappointed, I decided that I'd keep my eyes open for an original PSX the next time I went out.

And what luck! I found this baby at my local Goodwill store:

This is a PSOne, the smaller, redesigned Playstation console. It's about half the size of an original Playstation, and comes in a sexy eggshell white color. I paid $8 for the console and $3 for the controller. The only downside is it didn't come with a power cord, so I'll have to purchase that separately. (Or at least hold out until I find one at a yard sale or something.)

They also got several retro games in, including many old NES games, but those were $4 apiece, cartridge only. I didn't feel it was worth the cost as none of the titles were really that interesting. I did get these two Genesis games though:

1993's X-Men was one of my favorite games as a kid, and probably one of the best X-Men video games in the franchise. Out of This World is a title I'm not familiar with, but after reading about it, it seems to have a cult following and excellent reviews. I look forward to playing it.

Both of these games were $4, and they were complete with the case and instructions. (Though no "special edition" fold-out poster for X-Men...)

I also got my very first Dreamcast game this week!

I just finished Sonic Colors for the Wii, which is actually a really excellent entry in the Sonic the Hedgehog series. I've had a hankering for a good old Sonic game, but it's really a craving that's difficult to sate; the majority of Sonic's 3D outings have been terrible. Sonic Adventure is one of the few exceptions, I've played it on Gamecube and I can't wait to try it out on the Dreamcast! 

The disappointing part about this post is that I have all these neat games, but nothing to play them on! My Genesis has mysteriously vanished (buried in storage from our last move, I suspect), I don't even own a Dreamcast, and now I have a non-working PSOne! Luckily, my boyfriend retrieved his old, original, non-fancy-schmancy Playstation from his old house, which seems to work just fine! It may not be as cute, but it gets the job done!