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 (Which is why sports games will also be rare; aside from my lack of interest, they're generally outdated due to real-life roster changes and there's not a lot of demand from retro gamers to play a 10-year-old sports title.)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! 

The Sonic Snuggie

It's been a cold and terrible winter up here in New England, with our third big storm this month coming up over the next couple of days. Most of the country seems to be in a similar predicament, as just a couple of weeks ago, 49 out of the 50 states had snow on the ground.

Every morning after a big storm, our condo building requires that we vacate the parking lot for a couple of hours to allow the plows to do their job. The last time this happened, my boyfriend and I decided to kill some time at the mall. Now, when it's this cold outside, I don't want to be at the mall. I want to be curled up on the couch, sipping hot coffee, cuddled under a warm, cozy blanket. Comfy and fuzzy blankets are in my list of top ten favorite things, after all.  

So imagine my delight when my boyfriend pointed out this cool item! Perfect for a snowy winter day, it was a Sonic the Hedgehog fleece blanket.

I picked up the box to check the price. Upon doing this, I suddenly realized: this wasn't a blanket at all. No, a blanket would have been way too awesome. And this item was the exact opposite of awesome. Because... it... was... THIS!!!

A SONIC SNUGGIE?!?!

I was going to model it myself, but I was too embarrassed don't have
a good digital camera.

I bought it immediately, naturally.

There's something ironic about Sonic, the "fastest thing alive", being plastered all over a Snuggie, arguably the "laziest thing alive". Sometimes it surprises me where I find licensed video game properties. As for this imitation Snuggie (or as the box calls it, "cozy blanket with sleeves") it's made of a soft fleece and is more than long enough to cover your legs. Just like with the original Snuggie, I find the sleeves to be cumbersome and the lack of any fasteners on the back make it impossible to move around (contrary to what the Snuggie commercials suggest.)

Out of curiosity, I looked online to see what other retro video game-related blankets with sleeves were on the market. Here are four more that I found: 

It's a Snug-gie! Mario! If Sonic has one, you know Mario had to have one too! His was probably first, actually. And I think the fabric may be better quality. And no matter how many times you wash the thing, it really stands the test of time. Also, it doesn't turn into a were-hog at night.

Pac-Man! I actually really love this one, it's so retro-looking!

Street Fighter IV! Not a retro game, but definitely a retro franchise! Ryu, Ken, and Chun-Li are all here. And look, the guy on the box is probably playing Street Fighter IV right now! He's smiling to himself because he knows how stylish he looks while he's doing it.

    Kingdom Hearts! Wait... not retro whatsoever. Errr....







So I know what you're dying to know: Where can I get one of these awesome, backwards robes? The answer is... well, I don't know. I got my Sonic Snuggie at F.Y.E. where it was on clearance. They also had the Kingdom Hearts one in stock, but both seemed to be on the way out. I've heard reports that you can find these in Hot Topic as well, though I didn't see any the last time I was in. A quick Google search seems to link most finds back to eBay, for waaaaaay more than you should be paying for these. I'd recommend doing your own search, as they seem to be popping up in random web-based stores as well.

Stay warm this winter, everybody!