I started playing Phantasy Star III yesterday. I've had this copy for awhile--the sheer number of stickers from the rental store it came from always makes me laugh.
I actually love physical games with rental store stickers--in retrospect, they were a short-lived phenomenon, and having evidence that they existed feels more meaningful than a pristine cart.
I don't shop for stuff advertised as big box games anymore, because they're put of my price range.
However, I do occasionally spend between 1€ and 3€ apiece on on interesting sounding, minimally labelled old games that are either not in my collection, insufficiently preserved, or that I require for some project or experiment.
These are routinely turning up an interesting edition or two every order, at minimal cost. It's like a retro tombola.
This 1995 Infogrames budget release of the Unreal Collection was a nice surprise, and I'm super happy with A Fistful of Boomstick and Tunguska: Legend of Faith.
I was hoping for a French edition of Sam & Max (the most expensive, at 2.99€), but I had no boxed version at all before and will settle for German.
(There was more fun stuff in this order, but those are going in Small Owlbear's Halloween stash.)
This is the most expensive game i own. it sucks, but at some point an absolute fool paid $969 for this game, i guess because despite sucking it is rare and obscure. I wrote a bit about the game's history and terrible port quality on Cohost, and a few people there shared some additional info about the devs.
Anyway, since posting this the price of Sakura Flamingo Archives has fallen to $450 or so. Did this post have anything to do with the price drop? Probably not but I'm gonna take credit for it anyway :ichika_bubble: #shmups#xbox360#gamecollecting
Got some quality additions to the collection today. The Xenoblade games are all pre-owned from the local retro emporium (£70 for all three) and Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising arrived from VGP 😎
Mega Man 7 and Mega Man & Bass would have run me 300+ if I went through ebay. While the copies of Rockman's Soccer are a bonus, I didn't know those are averaging 15+ each LOL.
Comparative to JP prices averages that list internationally on Ebay, this probably would have ran about 75 before any shipping. Japanese sellers have caught on to the fact that North American collectors have screwed the market so prices have been going up the past several years now.
Instead, I wound up paying $23, plus whatever will be needed for it to be dispatched from the warehouses in Japan to the US.
I will be making a video covering all the carts when they arrive and I'll list the spare Rockman's Soccer for sale if both of those carts are working.