Good Bye S&S Games

I know I said that I was signing off on the game collecting blog posts, but there is no other option I have to post this.

Yesterday I had been planning to stop by my favorite game store twice. Once to post a sign for work, and again a few hours later to do some shopping. I also wanted to pitch to them that they should pick up several copies of NES Remix for the Wii U, because they could buy them from a whole seller, increase their stock, playing the game would be free advertisement for their other merchandise, and they could hold tournaments with the NWC Remix (which given my obsession with that part of the game, I’d be sure to win) my review on this game will be soon coming. I liked to hit the store at least once a month, but because of the nature of this year (and summer specifically) I hadn’t been there since June. When I stopped by yesterday for the first time, I saw… they were closed for good. Such a shame.

They had been there for almost two years, and I admire the two young men for attempting to open a store in today’s world. It’s not an easy thing to do, as Jimmie McMillan says “The Rent is Too Damn High!” (Granted I don’t know specifically why they closed but I would imagine that the rent was part of the reason). The store catered to a niche market, and because of the internet, running a brick and mortar store for anything like this an unnecessarily difficult job. You have to pay rent (which is probably outrageously high thanks to the free market), you have to run the store, pay people to run the store (if you as the owner want any kind of time off), and also find the merchandise to sell. This last part would be easier to do for a lot of other stores, but old video games, sure they exist, but there’s no whole seller to buy from, it’s finding piece by piece her and there, or waiting for people to come in with trades.

Last, and in my opinion most difficult, they have to deal with customers. Sure not all customers are bad, but so many of them are. As I get older I find that people as a whole are becoming more and more intolerable, I don’t know if it’s because of society or just my own jaded view resulting from the personal nature of getting older, but I could barely tolerate some of the people I run into at stores like these, and that was just as a customer.

For all these reasons I am proud that they made it this far and can say with certainty that the owners will go much further in life, and I can’t wait to see what they do.

I discovered the store shortly after it opened in 2014, and couldn’t believe that a store catering to a hobby I was just then getting into had opened up so conveniently close to where I worked. And since then I’ve picked up many games, a lot (but not all) good. The store was originally called “Classic Game Junkies” borrowing the name from another established store in I believe Glen Mills. More recently they changed the name to S&S Games, taking the first letter of the two owners’ last names.

The first game I got there was Prince of Persia for the Sega Geneses, one of my favorites. The last game I got, from them a few months ago was Dragon Warrior for the NES, which I havn’t played much of yet, though I will, don’t worry. Both times I picked up other games of course, but I’m marking those specific ones as first and last. Here’s the full list of what I got from S&S Games if you’re interested.

For the NES

• Baseball
• Captain Skyhawk
• Dragon Warrior
• Faxanadu
• Fester’s Quest
• Golf
• Gyromite
• Hogan’s Ally
• Lee Travino’s Fighting Golf
• The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
• Lunar Pool
• Milon’s Secret Castle
• Super Mario Bors./Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Tennis
• Tetris
• Trojan
• Wizards & Warriors

For the Super Nintendo

• Championship Pool
• Denis the Menes
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• Porky Pig’s Haunted Holiday
• Road Runner’s Death Valley Rally
• Tetris 2

For the Wii

• Kirby’s Epic Yarn
• Link’s Crossbow Training
• Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam

For the Gameboy

• 4-in-1 Fun Pak
• Donkey Kong
• Madden 97
• Mickey’s Dangerous Chase
• Pac-Man
• Tetris 2
• Tetris Attack
• Yoshie’s Cookie

For the Sega Geneses

• Arcade Classics
• Asterix and the Great Rescue
• Barney’s Hide and Seek Game
• Ceaser’s Pallace
• Eternal Champions
• Jurassic Park
• The Adventures of Mighty Max
• Mortal Kombat
• Mortal Kombat II
• Prince of Persia
• Street Fighter II Special Championship Edition
• Taz in Escape from Mars
• WWF Royal Rumble
• Zoop

Other Games & Hardware

• GTA: Vice City Stories (PS2)
• Orange Zapper (NES)
• Original NES Controller
• Reproduction SNES Controller
• PS2 Controller Extension Cord

I am sad to see the store go, that goes without saying. I have fairly good notes on when I picked everything up, so perhaps, next summer I can do an S&S Games Review, i.e. a half hour on each game, and brief review for the Blog, that would take over 20 hours of playtime and maybe 10 hours of writing time. If I can do next summer what I planned to this summer (which is more or less nothing) then it shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll see, maybe I’ll start on the project early, or maybe it will just be too sad to do.

NES (22+3) SNES (9+2) N64 (0+3) GC (20) WII (24) WIIU (5+1)

GB (14+6) GBA (4+2) DS (18+1) 3DS (10+2)

GEN (28+3) DC (10) PS1 (1) PS2 (13)

Collecting Episode 4

This time around, at my favorite game story, I had to spend exactly $10 (long story). I picked up the copy of Jurrassic Park that I had been eyeing the last two times I was in the story, and to even out the bill, I picked up something I never thought I would get, Madden 97 for the Gameboy. I was also given the tip that I could use card sleeves (like for binders of magic cards) to hold Gameboy cartridges.

Jurassic Park – I played the game for a full half hour to test it. It’s a typical side scrolling platformer, not my favorite type of game in general, but they can be pretty good some times, unfortunately this is not one of those times. The game gets extra points for graphics, but that’s about it. It is relentlessly hard, moving too fast can make you fall through various platforms and too your death. The button scheme is bad, A makes you cycle through your weapons, B fires the weapon selected, and C jumps. To jump to a higher platform you have to jump next to the platform and grab onto it. the biggest problem though is that the graphics seem to slow down the game, you see this in old games from the NES from time to time, but I don’t recall ever seeing it in a Genesis game before, where is that blast processing I hear so much about? Maybe if I play the game more I’ll get use to it, but in the half hour I played I didn’t even come close to the end of the first level. It does have a nice box though. And I’m glad I only payed 9$ for it, instead of the 50$ when it came out, as I had planned on doing many years ago.

Madden 97 – I had a funny feeling that despite everything I would actually like this game, it would have been very unlikely of course, as I don’t like sports in general, least of all football. Well guess what: no I didn’t like it. you choose different options and different attack patterns, but since I know nothing about football I was just selecting things at random. I played the game for 8 minutes before I couldn’t take it anymore. Don’t think I’ll be going back to this one any time soon.

Collecting Episode 3

It was a very cold and very wet November day at work, and a day that I had to work outside of course. I knew the first thing that I would do when I got home would be to get all my clothes off in the laundry room, then immediately take a shower, then eat something spicy. What I didn’t know was whether or not I was up to going to Classic Game Junkies before getting home. A friend of mine from work and I had planned on going to the store after work that afternoon, but what I didn’t plan on was working outside in the cold rain non-stop for 7 hours. In the end we did go.

I picked up 3 games, all for the Genesis: Mortal Kombat (in the box), Mortal Kombat II, and Caesar’s Palace. Here’s a game for you at home to play, which one is different than the others? I was also close to picking up Jurassic Park (also in the box) but that game has been in there since the first day I went in, so I’ll probably pick it up next time.

My friend also picked up 3 games, all for the N64 (a system I do plan on getting at some point, but not in the immediate future). All three of his came from “the case” one of a few glass boxes in the store where the more valuable or desirable (i.e. games that may not be all too expensive, but are commonly stolen) games are kept. I haven’t gotten anything from the case yet. His trio was Diddy Kong Racing, Mario Kart, and Super Smash Bros.

Mortal Kombat – Yes I know the game, everyone knows the game, probably the most famous game from when I was a kid. Of course I did not have it when I was a kid, mom would not let me get overly violent video games, and this one was infamous. It basically started the ESRB rating system, digitized human actors fighting to the death. I remember a friend of mine from way back had a copy and we played it at his house quite often. I forgot that there is a code you have to put in to turn the blood on, and (I assume) the fatalities only work when the blood is turned on. When I picked up the copy, the owner told me that they had just gotten that copy in yesterday. During the test play I was able to beat the game with Raden (my favorite) on Very Easy, the second time around.

Mortal Kombat II – Mortal Kombat plus more: more characters, more stages, more fatalities, humorous non-lethal finishers, “toasty”, and best and most important, more blood. You don’t even need to use a code to turn the blood on, how could the game go worng? Answer: turning up the difficulty to virtually unplayable levels. This seems to be symptom of fighting games. Shaq-Fu could have been a cute and warmly liked (maybe not smash it) if the difficulty wasn’t so relentless, same goes for Eternal Champions, however there is the possibility that a six button controller could make that game much easier. There is an option in MKII for a six button controller, so I won’t pass ultimate judgment until I find that device. Still though, why do they have to make these fighting games so hard? I’ll admit I know very little about programming, but I think it would be a much easier process to tone the difficulty down on a fighting game as opposed to say a sidescroller. I had the game set at very easy and gave myself 30 credits (continues) I think, or 38, whichever the max is, and I made it up to level 5, and gave up when I had only 10 credits left. Granted I’m not the best gamer in the world, but why make the very easy difficulty that hard? If it wasn’t for the two player options and the controversies surrounding the game itself I can’t see how it would have survived. They put a lot of work into the game, there is a lot of stuff there, I just wish I could explore it better. Maybe after 8 or 10 hours of playing I can get a handle of the game, but it is certainly not a pick up and play.

Caesar’s Palace – I had seen this game at the store the last time, but for the SNES. The price was good so I picked it up, and I test played it more than the other two. The controls took a little time to get a hang of and I lost about 300$ at black jack because I couldn’t figure out how to stand. Just like in San Andreas you can play: Black Jack, Rullette, Slots, and Video Poker; but in Caesar’s Palace you can also play: Keno, Craps, bet on race, and even scratch off lottery tickets. I like that they included Craps, I don’t have a clue about how to play it, but it might be worth learning, I know a few people who like the game. I love playing gambling video games (with fake money) but I can’t stand the real thing, too many people and the “rules” are ill informed. I found it interesting that there was a warning on the first screen not to use this game for any real kind of gambling. Aside from the controls the other downside is the goofy password system, but I think I’ll only need that when I win more than my initial 2,000$, I don’t expect that to happen for a while.

On a side note, I’m going to try to make this a week of posts, one new one each day. the last time I tried this it didn’t work out so well.

Collecting Episode 2

After my first experience at Classic Game Junkies, I had to go back. They’re right next to a pizza place and the place I get my birdseed, not to mention 2 minutes from work (luckily in the other direction). So I will be back fairly often. I perused there very limited selection of Dreamcast Games, and found two that I wanted, Sonic Adventure and Shenmue, but they were both higher then I wanted to spend, not that they were overpriced. I got 3 games: Zoop, Eternal Champions (with box and instructions), and 4 in 1 Funpak, for the Genesis, Genesis and Game Boy respectfully. Unfortunately this haul was not nearly as good as the last, but for unusual reasons. I’m not too upset about it thought, because the hobby is both collecting and playing retro games, in time I want to amass a vast (if not complete) Genesis and Gameboy collection, not to mention the other systems, so it’s not like I’ll be returning them.

Zoop – this game is advertised as a “puzzle game” but it is almost half a puzzle game and half an Avant-Garde space shooter. The game seems to be much more mature then the typical video game. At the beginning there is a blue screen with copyright legalese written on it that looks like something you might read on a VCR options menu. The BGM is a more Jazzy number then you typically hear in a video game (I don’t like Jazz, but this is not the biggest problem with the game). The game has simple selection screens that are reminiscent of computer games of that era as opposed to consul games. For me the game is virtually unplayable, but that may not be the case for you. You shoot objects of different colors (each object has only 1 color) your shooter or space ship has to match the color of the object your shooting to make it disappear, if it is a different color then your space ship changes to that color and the object changes to color your space ship was. Does that sound complicated to you? Maybe, maybe not. Well for me, being color blind, I can only keep a game going for, at best 2 minutes. I don’t know how long normal people can go, but I would assume it would be longer. I’m actually surprised I can last as long as I did, since I’m not 100% colorblind I can match some of the things some of the time, but I can’t last for very long.

Eternal Champions – I got this game for 3 reasons: it came in a box, it was well within my price range, and I remembered it from when it was new. I remembered it because I used to think that the one guy on the cover was the cowardly lion from the wizard of oz, who had apparently gotten braver and more viscous and armed with a morning star, and I also remembered that it was one of the first games that “required” a 6 button controller. I checked the back of the box before buying it and it said “six button controller recommended.” Now here’s the kicker, I have a six button controller somewhere, a third party clear controller with turbo switches on it, but I can’t seem to find it at the moment. When I do I will probably put this game through the 8 hour test, because it does look promising, and if I can’t find the controller I’ll pick up one from the junkies. Without the six buttons you have to use the start button to switch between punch and kick attacks, a little yin-yang icon next to your health bar moves up or down to tell you which way your oriented. The controls seem difficult but learnable, the opponent can seem to block most of your moves, but I have no idea how to guard myself. Aside from the controller problem, there is another problem where it won’t let you get out of the tournament mode, you lose and it keeps resetting your first match, no game over, continue count down, etc. so get use to hitting that reset button. There is a promising story line and 9 unique and interesting fighters to choose from, all with much different histories and background. The overall story tells you they all died too early in one way or another and they have been brought to this eternal championship to fight their way to the top and to get one more shot at life if they win. Sounds good, I’m not sure why this series never caught on. I will give it more time in the future I’m sure, probably the best of the 3 games I got.

4 in 1 Funpak – it might not be the best game I’ve ever played but since it was out of the dolor bin I can’t complain. This has 4 different board games in it: Checkers, Backgammon, Reversi, and (my all-time favorite) Chess. The Chess game gives you 6 levels of opponent difficulty, and I devastated the computer on both level 1 and level 3. The only problem with the chess game is the think time, the computer takes forever, but I can’t be too critical, I don’t know how chess games work from the computers end. It was getting too late to finish the second game but I had taken way to much material from the computer for it to have a chance. I lost the checkers game, I’ve never been too good at it, but maybe I should play it more often, and get better. I have checkers app on my phone, to try and improve. I tried playing the Backgammon game but I don’t remember how to play the game, so I gave up quickly. Reversei I’ve never played before, and couldn’t really figure it out. But now I have someone (or something) to play with.

Collecting Episode 1

On Saturday October 4^th, I officially became a retro game collector. A week earlier I had parked in the wrong place when picking up some pizza, and discovered a brand new Retro store that had opened up just right around the corner from where I work called Classic Game Junkie. Unfortunately I had gotten very sick the next day and for a week I was not able to stop in. I knew it would not be a good thing to have such a specific and convenient store open up so close by, but what can you do? I went in and the two owners were very friendly, prices were reasonable. They didn’t have any specific games that I was looking for, but I did pick up a few, mainly (but not at all entirely) because I like to help a new business like that.

What did I get? Prince of Persia, TAZ in Escape from Mars, Tetris Attack, and Donkey Kong, For the Sega Genesis and Game Boy respectfully. I am considering Prince of Persia to be the first “New Old Game” that I ever got, even though I got all 4 at the same time. It has been at least 18 years since I bought a Genesis Game, and 20 or more years since I bought a Gamboy game. My Geneses collection is now 2% complete, and my Gameboy/Gameboy color collection is 0.8% complete. Hopefully (for financial reasons) those percentages will not change drastically any time soon.

Prince of Persia – The guy at the store told me it was a hard but good game, and he was right. The controls are sluggish, but not in the way that a crappy game’s controls might be, here it forces the player to plan ahead like in a strategy game, plan every move. I like the game so much that I stopped playing the original Zelda and started playing this game for the review. However this was only the second best of the four I bought.

Taz in Escape from Mars – I have a tape from the early 90’s that I still watch from time to time, it’s a recording of Nickelodeon cartoons from way back when they used to show Rocky and Bullwinkle on the network. There was some sort of prize giveaway, to promote the then in utero “Snick” block, kids used a primitive video phone to call and try and match 2 Snick shows. If they won they would get and I quote: “A TV, a VCR, a Sega Genesis 16-Bit video game system [this was back in the height of the bit wars of course], a whole bunch of game cartridges, and a hundred dollars from Kraft Handy Snacks.” If they lost they still got a Sega Genesis and the Tazmania Game Cartridge. Now this Taz is a different game from the one that I got, it was the original one. I had played one of the games before, but I don’t remember which one. I remember we rented it from Blockbuster and I played it at my Grandmother’s house with my cousins. I think it was the original, but I can’t be sure. Regardless that is the reason I picked up this game, because it is somewhat connected with my past, albeit indirectly. The game play is pretty strait forward, decent controls, somewhat typical sidescroller. Looney Tunes games tend to get criticized heavily and I would think unfairly, I’ve never had a huge problem with any of them. In the 15 minutes I spent testing the game I almost beat the first boss, so it’s not too difficult, it should be a promising game for a later point.

Tetris Attack – This is my favorite of the set. Match 3 or more of the different symbols (hearts, stars, etc.), you play the game by flipping two blocks at a time on a vertical axis (similar to but more limited then Puzzle Quest, which allows flipping on both axes) while the screen slowly fills up from the bottom. This is a puzzle game in its purest from, and absolutely fantastic, the replay value is through the roof. This game has it all: challenging puzzle, cute animations, and fantastic music. And was actually the cheapest one of the lot. Sometimes that’s how the world works.

Donkey Kong – and here we have my least favorite of the set. I had this game on my 3DS wishlist because it looked like a more primitive version of the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series (of which I am a huge fan). The game however is not that at all, it is basically the original Donkey Kong game but with new screens to play. It’s not really a game I found myself enjoying all too much, though I can’t really say why. Maybe in the future I might pick it up and give it another go, but not any time soon.