November 22, 2003 - 10:31 a.m.
All I have to talk about this week is video games. I'm not sorry, but I feel as though I should at least pretend that I am. Sorry!
Yesterday I literally made my dreams come true. Well, one dream, actually, but it makes for good copy. I was killing time with Ely waiting for a couple people to show up so I started MAME, an arcade emulator. Ely, clearly looking at the game list, said "Caveman Ninja! Play Caveman Ninja!" So I went into my SNES directory to see if I had the ROM file for Joe & Mac, which is a superior port. I don't know why they changed the name when they released the game on SNES, because Caveman Ninja is a great name, but name aside, in one of a very few rare examples, the game was actually much improved when it was ported. I didn't have the ROM (uh, because I, uh, don't own the cartridge) and I told Ely the story of the time I rented the game back in the day, and I made it to the last boss but my dad ran out of patience and took it back to the rental store. I don't think I ever quite forgave him for that.
Anyway, I've never seen a copy of Joe & Mac for sale anywhere. Well, except for behind the window of a store called Treasure Island in Ventura, but THAT STORE IS NEVER OPEN, GOD DAMMIT and I've gone down there so many times only to find out that they have changed their hours specifically to avoid letting me shop there. Seriously. One time the guy even came up, opened the door, and told me they weren't open. ARGH. Anyway, Super Nintendo cavemen have eluded me all my life, as I'd never been able to find a copy of the the-Yuzo-Koshiro-music-is-better-than-the-game-but-the-game-is-still-pretty-fun game Super Adventure Island. Also starring a caveman-- well, a sort of tropical island native, but still-- I've never seen a Super Adventure Island cart for sale.
The night before I told all this to Ely, I had a dream that somebody opened a classic game store in my town. For many dream hours, I carefully combed the racks of old games. You see, many people (usually parents) think of video gaming as a particularily expensive hobby, but there is a trick to it. That trick is to make sure you are in it for the "fun," and not for the "new." I learned this lesson early when I bought my Sega CD in my quest for "new," only to have it fail; stores started selling off unwanted Sega CD games unbelievably cheaply, and I had a lot of "fun." I never seem to get tired of games that I like simply because they are old, and it used to amaze me how easily I could inherit entire collections from people simply by asking. "Sure," they would say, handing over double digits' worth of 8- and 16-bit game cartridges, "I never play them anymore anyway."
So I've always checked the sale racks, the bargain bins, the thrift stores and the flea markets. My quest to eventually own every game I was ever even remotely interested in is truly neverending. But weirdly, a lot of my most rented childhood favorites turned out to be rare games, produced early on in the system's life in small batches. It wasn't until very frustratingly recently that my hometown got any retail stores that would sell classic games, and I used to recruit older people for rides to Ventura specifically to patronize the Funcoland store. We still don't have a Funcoland, but most of the big game chains merged so they all sell classic games now. Trouble is that it tends to be the same 20 copies of NBA Jam, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. So my dream was a lovely one, and I remember specifically the moment in my dream where I found a Super Adventure Island cartridge and purchased it.
Anyway, I told Ely about my dream and he said he'd heard that local video store Captain Video was selling off their old 16-bit titles for five bucks apiece. He said he'd meant to tell me a week ago, but forgot. I was worried that I was too late to get the good stuff, but when Laurie and Matt showed up, we went out for pizza and I went treasure hunting.
It's kind of funny because my mom used to live near Captain Video, and we'd go there every weekend. The employee who seemed to do everything was always there, and he knew us and we knew him. He got to know our tastes and he would recommend things to us. And every weekend I would rent a game. They ran out of shelf space and stopped stocking new games, though, and so the old increasingly unwanted games just sat there. I remember on a number of occasions I would try to convince Reet (the employee guy) to sell them off to me, but he would always refuse. For a while his reason was that every now and then one of the games would actually get rented, but then eventually it was because he thought they might actually be collector's items. He was right, of course, but still. I kept on asking every time I'd stop in, and this went on for many years.
But last night we went over and, sure enough, the old games were indeed on sale. Five bucks each. I asked Reet about it and he said that while they were probably indeed collector's items, he finally admitted that he was never going to actually go about finding out what they were worth and putting them up on Ebay or whatever. I didn't have a lot of extra money this month, after paying that car insurance bill that snuck up on me, but I had some. And I found three games that I've been searching for. None of them in perfect condition, but I don't care, because it will be a very cold day in a specific kind of Hell for me to sell my game collection. I want the games so I can actually play them, the boxes and manuals are just a bonus.
I got Top Gear 2 for SNES, with the box but no manual. I found the original Top Gear a while ago, it's pretty easy to find, but it was Top Gear 2 that I really wanted. It's my favorite racing game on SNES (well, maybe my second favorite, after Mario Kart) and it's extremely fun with two people. The music's great and it has a very well-implemented car upgrade system that makes it just that much more addictive. Truly a great find, I've been looking for a while. Now if I could find the 'futuristic' Top Gear 2000 and even weirder Top Gear 3000...
I also got Toejam & Earl for Genesis, box but no manual. A real score, as it is somewhat rare and has a cult following that makes it worth up to 30 or 40 dollars on ebay. It's really hard to find a copy just out in the wild, and I think I remember Funcoland charging $50 for it! With a game like this you pretty much have to hope you get it unwanted from somebody that doesn't know what it's worth. Five dollars, baby. Oh yeah. TJ&E is one of the few cooperative games around, and it's bizarre and funky. It sold well enough to convince Sega to make a big-budget side-scrolling remake with a big marketing push, but even though that game was good, turning it into a generic side-scroller robbed it of most of its charm. I hear the new Xbox TJ&E game is pretty lousy, too, but I haven't played it. Anyway, now I have the original, so hooray for me!
And finally... Super Adventure Island! WOO! I mentioned to Ely that I had a wonderful dream about actually buying this game, and later that night he helped make my dream come true! Isn't that just lovely? Look, I'm typing this out mostly for my own feeling of satisfaction for actually updating my diary with a lot of words, you don't have to actually CARE. But it would be nice to pretend that you think that this is as awesome as I do. Seriously, I've been looking for this game long enough that my mind actually had a dream about finding it, and then the next day I DID! WOO! Seriously, WOO! Manual for this one, but no box (Reet had made his own, which I forgot to ask if I could keep)... the game itself is a frustratingly difficult platform game. The thing that made it so valuable for me is the amazing music by Yuzo Koshiro (hi Clara!) which sounds like absolutely nothing else on SNES. Especially for an early title it's amazing. I've also been looking for the game because I was so unbelievably bad at it as a kid. I would sit and watch the demo just to hear snippets of music from the later levels. Even that day I got to stay home from school in near-perfect health (I had head lice), I didn't get to the end of the third level. I've been hoping that now that I am older and wiser and have better reflexes (or something), I can finally defeat it.
That is another part of my quest... to finally conquer things which were out of my grasp. To right childhood wrongs. Someday, Treasure Island will actually be open, and I can buy Joe & Mac, and I can beat it, and get revenge on my dumb dad for taking the game back when my victory was so near.
But before I do anything, I need to go get a haircult. (I meant to type "haircut," but that's funny!)
