Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Retro Game Get!

As promised, here is a helpful list of places and ways to bulk up your retro collection, or simply locate some of your favourite titles that may seem hard to find now. I am providing this list to help out- but in no way are any of these suggestions a concrete way to guarantee you will find something. Part of loving retro games, is not getting discouraged when wading through nasty swap-meet boxes of crap. You never know when you might find an Earthbound strategy guide amongst broken coffee cups (true story!)


1. Craigslist.

Craigslist is worldwide- and thus a great place to begin for everyone. It’s better to keep searches broad, like “Genesis games” than to narrow it down to actual titles. While you will find people who are hoping to get rich by trying to pass off games as rare- you will also get Mum’s just trying to clean out their kid’s crap. Kids go off to college and leave shit behind- take advantage of it! As always, make sure to check the condition of the games/systems before you buy!

2. Locale Swap Shops.

I’m unsure of what name to designate these stores with, but they should be crowned STORES OF AWESOME. There are still small, family-owned business, which carry older titles and consoles. I live in California, thus I am only able to recommend places in California-if you know of any other places PLEASE COMMENT!! I will be adding this FAQ as a page of reference so please- Help each other out!! The Alameda Game Exchange is a fan-fucking-tastic place. They get a lot of trash talk on yelp, but please do not let that discourage you. The owners are a husband, wife, and their young son- and they are doing a huge service to us retro gamers. They carry everything- and I mean EVERYTHING. They also FIX close to everything. In my spare time I take in broken SNES systems and fix them for people (no, I cannot fix your system…read: SPARE TIME) and finding parts is hard work! These awesome people will do it all for you! Also- they will help you find games. The owner has a few stores and controls the inventory for all, so if they don’t have something at one store, he will try and find it for you at another. They do have some high prices for rarer titles. They know what games are rare and what games are not. You can find almost everything with the manual and a box. You can haggle with them- but I wouldn’t recommend it. They know games, and cannot be fooled. Be respectful and it will be a godly place! You can also see me there almost twice a week…spending waaaaaay too much money…
Also there is Fair Game in Sacramento. They have 2 stores, and are along the same lines as Alameda Game Exchange. I should mention that both of these stores do take in games and systems for trade- which is how they get the majority of their stock. I have been going to Fair Game for years also, and the staff is wonderful. They have always been knowledgeable and friendly with me. Once again, these are my experiences and others might not have had such a rosy time. Still though, keep the golden rule in mind. These stores are getting harder and harder to find- so yeah, they will charge $50 for a copy of Secret of Mana in the box with a manual; and no, they will not budge on that. This is their livelihood, and you should respect it. Fair Game also provides hard to find items- like AC adaptors and such for older systems. Check them out! The links are under RETRO SUPPORT in the sidebar.

3. Auctions, Garage Sales, and Swap Meets

Alright- you are getting into some dangerous territory here. I think of these bad boys as Retro Gambling. You never quite know how the day will turn out, but if you go in open-minded it can be a really fun experience. It also requires a great deal of patience. As a child, I spend a great deal of time at Denio’s Farmers Market and Auction in Sacramento. This place is basically a huge garage sale and vendor spot for Northern California, as well as the birthplace of Jimboy’s Tacos! My sister and I would run around collecting bootleg Sailor Moon goods and video games. A story that I have told many a coworker, is when I first played Starfox on the SNES…and how angry and frustrated I became. In my rage, I destroyed one of the two snes controllers we had at the time. This was during the time period when it was IMPOSSIBLE to locate a controller on its own, without a system. With my cousin (it was his system) threatening to strangle me in my sleep, I frantically ran through Denio’s trying to find a new controller. Low and behold- there were tonnes of them! Story time aside- locale swap meets can be treasure troves. If really, really old systems are what you are looking for I highly recommend it. And older computer parts should come pretty cheap if you are trying to build a retro gaming rig. Also bring CASH- a lot of places will not take cards or cheques! The only major drawback is- does this shit work? You are usually buying blind and will have no idea how things work until you get it home. Sometimes you can get lucky and the seller will test things out (or shit will be so decrepit you KNOW it doesn’t work.) Mostly I recommend swap meets because they are fun- or at least, I think they are fun. You can go home with a box full of Colecovision games, an accordion, a blanket with the face of the Virgin Mary on it, and a bushel of delicious oranges. I call that a fucking fantastic day.

4. The Dreaded…eBay

I use eBay as a last, last, last resort to things. Ebay in my opinion, is more trouble than it’s worth. Sadly it is really the only place to find certain things. Not all sellers on eBay are horrid people. I have certainly gotten some killer deals and found awesome rare stuff for reasonable prices. This however, is usually not the case. People will try their damnest to rip you off. Beware of people who show a picture of a game with a box, but NOWHERE on the page will it mention a box. That game could look like anything. Be very, very selective. Ask for more pictures, pictures of the label, of the contacts (the metal part on the inside of cartridges) of the undersides of disks, etc. Be a picky buyer. Also- KNOW what you are looking for. Does a game or a system seemed priced kinda high? More than likely- it is being priced too high. Earthbound is a rare game- but you shouldn’t be paying $100 for it. Do some research beforehand and you will avoid being ripped off, and you will avoid fueling people who are trying to take advantage of others. This is in no way a jab at people who run legit business through eBay- in fact I encourage people to locate them and talk em’ up on here! I have had bad experiences through eBay and I want to make sure they are not repeated.

This is just the basics of obtaining games. A lot of times, you just have to be in the right place at the right time. I worked at GameStop for years, and would get lucky when people would bring in boxes of retro games and realize GameStop wasn’t buying them- and I would (we weren’t supposed to do that, but I did it all the time!) Another good thing to keep in mind is that when you do get your hands on games, is to take good fucking care of them. Even games that aren’t rare- they will be someday and it’s easier to take care of them now then to find them later. If I had known what a bitch it would be to find SNES games in boxes, I would have kept every box and not let my Gran write my initials on the cartridges! Keep your games and systems in good condition and who knows, years down the road you might make some kid who is collecting “retro Xbox 360 games” very very happy.

5 comments:

  1. "You can go home with a box full of Colecovision games, an accordion, a blanket with the face of the Virgin Mary on it, and a bushel of delicious oranges. I call that a fucking fantastic day."

    awesome quote. i went yardsailing (sic) with my grandmother every saturday morning for many years, and i absolutely love the randomness, and the adrenaline spike of a true score.

    very helpful faq jade, especially for those of us in the bay area. thanks for the tips!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've lived in the Sacramento area for the past 15 years (yikes!) and I can vouch for both Fair Game and Denio's as great places to find rare games. I'd also like to note that if anyone out there in internetland does make to Denio's take the time to use the pedestrian gate on Atkinson Rd. and walk across the street to Trader Dan's Video Game Exchange (its free - and you can re-enter Denios at no charge). The stuff there is a little more pricey, but they have a lot of consoles up and running and you can test anything out before you buy.

    I need to make it out to AGX at some point just to see it. In fact, I think I'll do that next weekend.

    Cheers.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I make my retro game hunting in the flee-market and second hand shops. Never tried to actually buy anything on e-bay although I snoop around there a lot.
    Here's some fan-art for this blog:

    http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/4199/dustypixels01av1.jpg

    http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/2065/dustypixels02vm8.jpg

    http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/8704/dustypixelshu1.gif

    I hope you like it!
    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  4. eBay can be a valuable resource but using it is almost a game. Here are a few pointers.

    1) Carefully read every word of the auction, much like you'd read the fine print in a contract. People like to use deceptive wording so be on the lookout.

    2) Watch out for shipping overcharges. A lot of sellers will sell the item at a really low cost but grossly overcharge on shipping. For example, you might find a rare CD that you really want for $10. What a steal! Until you discover that they are charging $7-$10 for shipping. It costs less than $3 to buy a padded envelope from your local post office and ship a CD.

    3) Only buy from trusted sellers. How can you tell? Easy. Look for sellers that have thousands of transactions and a high percentage of positive feedback. I only buy from sellers with 97% positive feedback or higher. Use common sense here. If a seller has 100% positive feedback but has only completed three transactions, you could be the first victim.

    It's all about using common sense.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Keep the ball rolling you have done the great job here.Toomky Games

    ReplyDelete