[RetroPicks] Another step forward in my collection

Hello guys,

I’ve been buying a lot of NES games lately. For the moment I’m lucky because I’m building the base of my collection: cheap and common titles that stand in every collector vault, even if probably they don’t like them. I think this good days will end soon because I’m running out of cheap titles and sooner or later I’ll have to face the fact that for the good games I will have to spend some money.

For the moment however, I can still rely on some good games that are even quite cheap so that’s the reason why lately I’ve purchased some other cartridges.

Since I got my NES modded I can buy more freely because I don’t have to care about the region lock so some of the games I’ve bought are actually PAL B. But wo cares, now I can use them! 🙂

Let’s start with these kind of games, originally designed for Europe (UK and Italy excluded).

The first is the most famous game of all time, sold on every platform in millions and millions of copies: Tetris (here’s my review). I’ve previously played it on the 3 in 1 cartridge (the one that features Super Mario Bros. and World Cup) but never on this cartridge. It’s a very very very common game so even the price was low: 5€. This is the German version but…I don’t really know why they spent time to make a German version! I mean only the label is in german, the game is in english! bah…

Then I got two games I’ve never own but played a lot. They were part of the collection of my old friend Valentina. The first is DuckTales that I was really lucky to take for only 5€. If you’ve never played it (you better read my review 🙂 ) it’s a wonderful platform game starring Uncle Scrooge travelling in every conrner of the world (and on the moon) looking for artifatcs. It’s surely a great game and one of the best of its genre on the NES and features some of the best musics ever, including what I think is the best theme ever made on a console, the Moon theme.

The second is another cartoon-inspired platform, Tiny Toons Adventures. This actually is not so well regarded for some lacks, especially in the controls but you know what happens when you’re a kid: even if they give you a shitty game you can use your imagination and make it the most beautiful of all time. I still have some of this sparks, even now that I’ve passed my 30s and I can still be moved from games like this. Plus for only 3€ why should I ‘ve said no?

So now we pass to the PAL A games, suitable even for my personal old NES. I was a bit sad because I lost an auction for Dr. Mario, a game I had when I was a kid that, I don’t know how, has disappeared when I moved to another town. But I got other interesting games.

The first is The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout, a platformer related to Tiny Toon Adventures, starring Bugs Bunny. The setting and the gameplay are quite similar in the two games and barely one month ago I dind’t know the existance of this game but  since it was only 6€ I’ve bought it anyway. I will surely check it out.

I’ve bought even a sort of dungeonish fantasy RPG, Swords and Serpents (I always make a mess when I say this name, to many “S”) that looks like the 8-bit version grandfather of Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss. I have to play a lot of RPGs because I’ve played only a few in “recent” years (the beginning of 2000) and I missed the good old classics so maybe this could be one of them. Even though from the reviews it doesn’t look so impressive, and this maybe explains why I’ve got it only for 4€…

The platfromer games are some of my favourites and so when I stumbled upon The Goonies II I couldn’t help but trying to have it. I loved the movie back then and when I saw the price was only 5€ I haven’t even thought about it a second and I took it.

The last game of the lot is a good classic, Kung Fu, another game I wanted to try on the NES. I got it for 7€ and since it’s a reference game among the side scrolling beat ’em ups that influlenced a lot some of the later games it couldn’t miss in my collection.

Oh, wait there’s nother one. After a few days I’ve found another guy who was selling Gauntlet II, a game I was looking for since the beginning of my short collector history.

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