Posts Tagged ‘Sam’s Scores’

Sam’s Scores: Gameboy Edition!

Today’s Sam’s Scores is yet another special edition. I had enough to do a special Gameboy Sam’s Scores, enjoy!

8) – Turn and Burn
Turn and Burn is much like Top Gun for the NES, to a point. It isn’t bad, but its far from great. I picked it up at a Goodwill just because it was cheap and it was a video game.

7) – Rechargeable Gameboy Battery
Sifting through bric-a-brac sometimes yields interesting results, and this is one such case. The Gameboy logo is worn off, but its pretty clear what this is. I’ve actually had this for a long time, avoiding adding it to a scores article because I don’t even know if it works. Even so, its a pretty cool little piece.

6) – Gameboy/GBC AC Adapter
Another thing that I find myself doing quite a bit in thrift stores is sifting through the cables and power adapters. Sometimes I come out a winner, like this time, but mostly I find myself trying to untangle a rat’s nest of stuff to come up empty handed. This thing works with both GBC and Gameboy, with a switch on the unit to get the right power to which device you need to power. Although the case is broken, it still works and with a little super glue it will be good as used.

5) – Castlevania: The Adventure
I found this one at Half Price Books, during a strange mark it at a single price and sell it period. This game, to be honest, sucks! I like Castlevania, but Konami really screwed up a good thing with this one.

4) – Pokemon Red
Way back when this game originally came out, I bought it. I loved playing this game because of it’s RPG style gameplay. I ended up loaning this game, and sadly the box and manual, to someone and never saw it again. I had always kept my eyes open for a loose copy of it and never found one less than $7, until Half Price Books got one in.

3) – Pokemon Silver
Yet another tag it and sell it score, brought to you by Half Price Books! The Pokemon Red above was exactly a week before I bought this one, so prices went down. Sadly the battery inside this one doesn’t work, but I did swap the battery in the Pokemon Gold I had, which will become a tutorial at some point.

2) – Zelda 1 and 2 for the GBA
I personally don’t think the Gameboy Advance is a vintage system, but these games certainly are. Even though they’re remakes for the system, they’re still vintage gaming classics. I must note that I bought these with another Gameboy Game (Dr. Mario, not pictured) at a Goodwill and had to wait 15 minutes for someone to go unlock the case!

1) – Green Gameboy Color
In a previous Sam’s Scores I showed you a Green GBC that I picked up off Craigslist for $10, so when I saw how cheap this one was I didn’t care whether it worked or not. I figured at the very least it would give me a matching green battery cover for my other one. When I took it home it didn’t want to work, but after shaking it, it sprang to life! The screen was scratched and it only works on batteries, later I decided to buy a new case and swap it out, so its no longer green.

Sam’s Scores VI

4) – Yellow N64 controller
Sadly this isn’t the DK edition controller, but the yellow sure is bright. When I found it, it needed a lot of cleaning, but that is something I do to all my scores anyway. The joystick is pretty loose on this one but its overall completely functional.

3) – Gameboy Color w/ games
Over a year ago now, I passed up a Gameboy color in a thrift store because I didn’t know whether or not it worked, and to this day I wish I had bought it. I’ve been keeping my eyes open for another one at a reasonable price when I saw a Craigslist posting. The ad was a few weeks old but I took the chance. 2 days later I became the owner of a lime green GBC with Galaga/Galaxian and Yoshi’s Cookie, beside the atomic purple battery cover (at least it had one!) everything was in great shape!

2) – Beeshu Zinger
Every once in a while I will come across something so wild, I have to buy it and this is such an occasion. I own a Beeshu Zipper, so I have a little background with Beeshu’s products. I was checking out a Goodwill I had never been to before when the box (and the bright colors!) caught my eye. I picked it up and checked inside, everything but the instruction manual, if there even was one, was inside the box. This thing is a bright pink with a white cable, very strange for an NES joystick, but everything works and its just a fun piece to own.

1) – Casino Kid 2
If you’re an NES game collector, you may know Casino Kid 2 is one of the harder to find games. I’ve only seen 2 of them and this is 50% of that equation, the other was $20 or $30 at a local Disc Replay store. This particular copy had been sitting in a bin at a flea market, I knew the game was harder to find and I knew it might get snatched up at the $5 they were wanting for it. Week after week the game was still there, so I decided to take a chance and buy it, but when I got to the cash register they had a surprise for me..

Sam’s Scores V

4) – Age of Empires II & Sim City 2000
I’m not a huge PC gamer, but if I see titles that I know, or have wanted to check out I will buy them, if they’re cheap enough. Both of these titles are pretty big names in PC gaming. I’m well aware of what Sim City 2000 is, but I wasn’t prepared for just how awesome Age of Empires II truly was.

3) – Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and NFS: Porsche Unleased
Here we go back to my console asylum, two Playstation games. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and Need for Speed: Porsche Unleased are two games I’ve enjoyed quite a bit since I bought them. I am a huge fan of Need for Speed, and I’ve played the heck out of THPS2 on my N64, so I knew I would enjoy it.

2) – World Series 2k2
World Series 2k2 on it’s own isn’t anything special, but the fact that Dreamcast games are getting harder and harder to find makes it at the very least a great deal. Everything was included and everything was in great shape, but the price was the best part of this score.

1) – Final Fantasy Origins
Final Fantasy was the very first RPG that I ever played, and the RPG that started off my love for the genre. I knew they remade it for the Playstation but I could never find a copy at a price I felt was fair, until now. This is another reason why I check the CD bins and make sure I don’t skip over titles. Although it is missing the manual, the game is the most important part (to me) and that is mainly what I paid for.

Sam’s Scores: Pick ups #2!

Sam’s Scores: Pick up video!

Thats right, I have gone youtube! Not always, but I felt that this score deserved a bigger presentation. If you’re a fan of pick up videos, you may enjoy mine. This doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned the article based Sam’s Scores, this just means I’m going a little more visual than articles will allow. Enjoy!

Sam’s Scores: SNES Jr. (aka SNES 2)

It seems lately that I’ve had a lot of luck on my thrift store hunts. I’m either finding huge scores, or nothing at all. You might remember the $5 Atari Jaguar I got about a month ago, well today I’m going to present to you my Super Nintendo Jr. find!

I’ve owned a normal Super Nintendo for about 12 years, but the poor thing rarely gets much love. I am a MASSIVE RPG fan and as we know the SNES’s library was rife with great RPGs, but that also means these games are either impossibly difficult to find or amazingly expensive! That isn’t to say my SNES game collection is small, I just haven’t been focusing as much time on it as I have my regular NES collection.

When I do find SNES games they’re generally sports titles, although I did score Batman Returns at a flea market a few weeks ago, which will be part of it’s own article later. Needless to say my SNES collection exists, but it isn’t as great as I wish it could be.

So every Tuesday my schedule is pretty much the same as I hit a handful of places and usually find little to nothing, but on some occasions I find great deals! The store where I found the SNES Jr is pretty hit or miss with what they have, but that day I walked along the electronics wall and saw it sitting in a clear plastic tub with 2 controllers, the power supply and the AV cable. When I went to pick the tub up, I noticed it was all taped to a shoe box underneath. I gave the box a shake and the unmistakable sound of SNES cartridges clanking around poured out of the box.

I saw the price tag and I needed to make sure it was all one price, even though it was all taped together. I found the nearest employee, who almost started having a childhood flashback right there in the store, who told me that yes it was that price and that I should probably go test it on their TVs, which I promptly did! The system had Tetris Attack already plugged in and ready to go. After getting everything hooked up the system powered on and Tetris Attack started working perfectly!

I didn’t even know what games were in the box until I got out of the store and gave them all a good once over. There was a total of 12 games, which I will be listing in the spoiler below, and sadly none of them were RPGs as I had highly hoped. Luckily most of the games that came with it are well worth the purchase, especially one in particular. The controllers included are 2 SNES controller variants I had never seen before, the SNS102 (embedded Nintendo logo instead of printed) and a normal controller with a painted L and R on the shoulder buttons.

I’ve only seen the SNES Jr on two or three occasions at Disc Replay, and even though I think they ask about $55 for the system alone they never seem to stay in stock for too long. My main goal in hunting has been to snag an NES 2, but I’m still searching high and low. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to pair one with this system, it can only be a matter of time, eh?

Sam’s Score: Atari Jaguar

Do you believe in fate? Destiny? Serendipity? Well, I do… sometimes. I had just decided to add a new thrift store to my weekly rounds, because on my first trip through they had a few video games. They didn’t have anything I wanted to buy then, but that doesn’t mean that will always be the case. After a few more trips their video game stock was growing, anything from Sega Genesis to a lone PS3 game. They had the games but didn’t have any systems or controllers lying around, at least not that I saw. But one day, on what I thought to be just another browsing trip, I found it sitting there and I knew that I had to buy it!

Just a week prior, a friend and I were discussing a Craigslist ad for an Atari Jaguar, which included 10 games. The ad sounded a lot like my old Atari Jaguar that I lost in an unfairly slanted trade, but I never contacted the seller because they wanted over $200 for the lot. During the next week, for some odd reason, I heard a lot about Atari Jaguars, so I took it upon myself to do some research on them, as well as their prices online. By the end of the week all the Atari Jaguar talk had me missing my old system pretty bad, so I was even more amazed with I walked into that store and found it.

It took me a few seconds to calm down and focus on anything other than the price tag, but eventually I went into hurry up and grab it mode. The system came with one controller, both of which were caked in dirt. Sitting on the shelf beside them were five games, which I nearly missed entirely in my euphoria. After collecting the system and games, I looked pretty hard but sadly there were no hookups anywhere to be found.

Given how dirty the system was and the fact the Atari Jaguar has an open game connector, I still felt that it was worth a chance to buy it anyway. After I collected my thoughts, I took everything to the register and watched as the tiny amounts rang up to a very decent total. I asked if they had a return policy, luckily they did, but even so I wouldn’t want to return anything unless I absolutely had to (like the system being dead — gulp!).

Throughout the rest of the day, while I continued to game hunt, the system sat in the bag but my mind couldn’t stop thinking about the score, and wondering if the system even worked. This also brought on the hope I would run across more games, controllers or even the official hookups for this thing. With no such luck, I knew I had to do some research to see what power supply I could use, so that I didn’t create the reason why I would need to return it to the store, and I found that I already had one!

The very first thing I did was break out the cleaning wipes and gave the system a much deserved bath. The dirt came off with ease as the wipe turned from white to a sickly, dark brown color. At first I only cleaned half of the system so I could take a comparative pic (seen below), but once it was done, the system looked brand new! I assume everything went together, but I’m not sure why the games were so clean and the system and controller were so dirty.

Left: Dirty! - Right: Clean!

After I was confident that I had the right power supply, I hooked everything up and pushed the power button… nothing! My heart sank and I immediately started thinking about how I would return the system, but I wanted to keep the controller and knew I would keep the games. I sat there for a moment, wiggling the power supply in hopes that it may spring to life and all I would need to do was solder something back together, no life what so ever.

I sat there for a moment and the knowledge of my old Atari Jaguar returned to me. IT NEEDS A GAME!, I thought to myself, so I picked up a game and firmly planted it into the system. I wasn’t prepared to see another lack of life in this thing, so I pushed the button and hoped for the best. Success! The system lit up and the Jaguar logo came roaring on to the screen (literally, it roars at you), needless to say I was extremely happy.

The Atari Jaguar is a relatively rare system, which I will be discussing in my forthcoming Jaguar review. Before I found this one, the last Atari Jaguar I had seen was my own. Throughout my many thrift store finds, I’ve never come across anything related to the Jaguar, not even in Disc Replay, which may not even carry them. The 5 games I got were: Tempest 2000 (complete in box), Iron Soldier (complete in box), Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales (complete in box), Raiden and Doom. Inside Bubsy’s box I found an interesting receipt, which I will also be discussing in the review. So far everything works great, and I hope it continues that way because I’ve quickly grown attached to this system and it’s games.

Sam’s Scores: Playstation

4) – Playstick for the Playstation
Although you may guess otherwise, I’m not a joystick fan by any means. I do however like to own odd controllers for various video game systems. Apart from the huge Advantage style joystick and the Steel Battalion layout, I had never seen a joystick for the Playstation, but here it is! This was sitting on a Goodwill shelf right next to another score I’ll be posting about another time.

3) – Interact’s Barracuda
This is yet another strange controller, but not entirely the strangest of all my controllers. This thing has switches and buttons all over the place, in an oddly comfortable layout. This thing jumped out at me from a wall of controllers, so I had to have it.

2) – Sony PSOne controllers
I bought both of these at different times, but they’re the same thing so I figured I would cover them together. Obviously one is in better shape, which cost slightly more than the other one. They’re both fully functional and since I own a PSOne, I figured I would need the controllers to go along with it. The one missing the analog grip has become my favorite PS controller, for some reason I think the missing grip has a better feel to it.

1) – Sony PSOne
Although I already own a PSOne, it doesn’t work. Being me, I decided to keep my eyes open and if I found another one cheap enough, I would buy it too. The price tag says $9.99, but that isn’t what I paid for it because it was on sale. So far everything works just fine with this one.

Sam’s Scores: Atari 2600!

The Atari 2600 was my first video gaming system, I loved that thing! Even though I first got it during the Super Nintendo days, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was actually playing video game classics in my home, in front of my TV! Although my Atari 2600 doesn’t work, I still keep my eyes open for Atari items, so here is an entire edition of Sam’s Scores for the Atari 2600!

4) – Atari 80 Games CD-Rom
No, this isn’t entirely vintage, but the games are! This is Atari’s 80 classic games in one for the PC and it has some really good games on it: Asteroids, Centipede, Haunted House, Human Cannonball, YAR’S Revenge and it even has all 3 Swordquest games, but you won’t be getting any prizes for finding the secrets. I picked this up cheap enough at a thrift store and since it’s 80 Atari games, that classifies it as vintage gaming!….technically!

3) – Atari Controllers
This score is 2 different sets of Atari controllers I found at the same thrift store. The items were in 2 different bags so I couldn’t see what all was inside, I just knew they were Atari and I needed them! 1 Joystick, 1 set of sports paddles, 2 driving paddles, a DC adapter and some other miscellaneous hookups for the 2600. Each set had it’s own price, but when I reached the cash register I got an additional 30% off, even though the tags weren’t discounted that week.

2) – Atari DC Adapter
While trying to test my Atari I found my DC adapter was bad, so I was on the hunt for a new one. Searching through adapter bins and bric-a-brac piles alike, I finally found one! It was an official Atari adapter and it worked, sadly my system did not. The price was good, but I still pushed for (and failed at getting) a discount under the “No Returns, yet I don’t even know if this thing works” act. Still wasn’t a bad price…

1) – 26 Atari Games
After Thanksgiving I hit some thrift stores that were having sales, the store I happened to get these games from has become a staple in my thrift store rounds and has paid off quite a bit! I had noticed a shoe box filled with Atari 2600 games, so I took a look. I didn’t know if my Atari even worked at this point, I had no controllers but I also had no games! Each game was set at a certain price but I didn’t have that much, so 2 of the store employees gave me an early X-mas gift! And there were some seriously great titles inside the box!

Sam’s Scores: Box Score!

Welcome to a special edition of Sam’s Scores! This edition is going to be a little different, so let me jump right into the details and explain….

Back in January, I was on my normal thrift store hunt when I came across a box with quite a few items inside that peaked my interest. None of the items had price tags, so I decided to ask a store employee about them. The employee looked in the box and asked me if I wanted everything, short of some stray hangers and a few cassette tapes, the answer was yes! The employee looked at the box and shot me a price that I couldn’t turn down!

On the very top sat a Nintendo 64 and a Sony PSOne with it’s power supply. Inside the N64 was Mario Kart 64 and within the PSOne was Test Drive Off-road 3. Deeper in the box there were 3 more games for the N64 (Turok 2, Madden ’99 and San Francisco Rush), two different RF adapters (one for the N64 and a multiple adapter for Nintendo, Sony and Xbox), the power supply for the N64 and a PC controller. Sadly there were no controllers or other accessories for the systems within the box.

Everything inside the box needed cleaned but that doesn’t scare me as most thrift store finds do and I clean them all anyway. After some testing, the N64 works but the PSOne refuses to read discs. The PSOne might be an easy fix or maybe not, I will check further into it and possibly write an article about the fix. Even if the PSOne doesn’t work, I’m still happy to have gotten such a great score!