A place for those truly, fantastically, over the toply insane NES collectors, part 2.

 Continued from part 1.

River City Ransom Rocks!

 Destiny of an Emperor was the first in a long line of NES games to come back to me.  Then I got a few games from my brother-in-law, not sure what they were.  Then I found a box of them at a garage sale, including games like Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular, Dusty Diamond's All Star Softball and River City Ransom.  There were 19 games in that box I know for a fact.  It was also with that box that I started doing some research into the value of the games.  I had already experienced through buying Destiny of an Emperor that these games were not the dollar bin items some expect them to be (and what keeps collectors like me looking at garage sales to this day).  I had to pay $22 U.S. to acquire Destiny of an Emperor, whereas River City Ransom, a game that is worth $15 and up, I maybe paid 50 cents for it. (I paid $25 that day at the garage sale for 19 games, an NES with 2 controllers and a Power Glove).
 After that first garage sale; and yes, it was the first garage sale I went to specifically looking for NES items and happened to find a box of them, I started searching diligently.  By this time the collection was a mere 30ish 'cart only.'  That first summer, after going to perhaps 100+ garage sales I ended up with around 80 games.
  The garage sales led to another discovery.  It wasn't just NES games that people wanted to be rid of, these garage sales were full of games for other systems as well.  From VIC-20 to Xbox 360, these garage sales brimmed over with games nobody wanted anymore, and yet I knew of an internet market in place for all of these games.  That doesn't mean that every video game is worth more than people sell them for at garage sales, not by a long shot.
  Here are some things to keep in mind:
  MOST sports games are worth nothing.  Unless the garage sale is giving them away, or its one of the few rare sports games, like Intellivision's World Series Baseball, don't waste your money.
  Rich neighborhoods have a higher amount of video games for sale BUT they want a higher amount of money.  In my experience it is the unusual rich person's garage sale that actually sells things for garage sale prices.
  Do your research first or have a mobile device with you at all times.  Knowing the values of NES games has informed me quite well on the values of other system games.  That being said my cell phone has also saved me from spending too much on games I assumed to be worth a decent amount of money.
  These are a few examples and I plan on doing an article focusing on this down the road.  But back to this piece.
 Garage sales were the catalyst for finding internet resources such as videogamepricecharts.com, or as it now goes by: http://blog.pricecharting.com.  I used (and still use) this site religiously for getting a basis of the values of these games.  However, while this site is useful, it also has flaws in the valuation of games and should thus only be used in tandem with other pricing sources.  Using this site, plus other sources sure to be mentioned on this blog down the road, I began to amass a giant amount of garage sale games...the intent was to 'flip' them and use the profit to acquire more NES games.
  For the most part I have come out ahead collection wise.  I have made large garage sale purchases that I have flipped for 10 times what I paid for them and quite often make single item purchases that have me come out ahead 20-50 times the price I paid for it.  Those are the good purchases.  I have also made a number of purchases where I lost money due to the game being worth less than what I paid for it, the game not working (disc games should be checked for scratches), or being for a system that there is little interest in anymore (anyone want to buy a TI-99? I have two.).  But as I said, overall I have come out ahead, perhaps doubling or tripling the money I have spent at garage sales over all (and put that money back into the collection).
  The winters are harsh here in Saskatchewan and thus the garage sale season is short, perhaps 5 or 6 months long.  At the beginning of winter 2010 I had a little over 1500 video games in my basement, most of them not for the NES.  This is where the selling on Ebay and the discovery of gametz came into play.  Selling on ebay I don't need to explain (or evilbay as I usually call it now), but gametz is a different can of worms.
  Gametz is an online trading site focused primarily on buying, trading and selling video games.  The site also is known to trade books, music and movies, but the focus is mostly gaming.  The site is entirely feedback based and thus those with low feedback have difficultly continuing to trade on the site, while those with good feedback establish strong reputations in the community.  Gametz is very much a community, full of a huge array of personalities that clash and clash and clash on the forums and chat therein.  For those just needing a place to trade however, gametz is a great site for those looking to offload games.  Some basic rules that will save you from ridicule on gametz: 1. Don't charge Ebay prices, there is no percentage coming off the top here so you can lower your price by 10-20% from Ebay prices and lose nothing.  2. Be honest about everything (particularly the condition of your games), it will help.  3. Avoid confrontations if you can: The forums are full of hostile young men looking for an internet fight, learn to avoid them because becoming one of them hurts your trading.  Check out gametz...and subscribe to it if you like it.
  This process repeated itself since then.  I have been on gametz for a year, using ebay and pricecharting for two years, and constantly researching NES and other systems in that whole time.  I learn something new almost everyday about NES games, whether it is label variants, NTSC vs PAL values, gameplay hints and cheats, video game history...all of this has led to this blog, where I intend to review as many NES games as I can, review game collecting books, discuss rare games, share personal video game related stories, explore NES related sites, etc etc.
Hope you join me on my quest to get the complete collection...and then on to SNES (lol).

GAME REVIEW: Destiny of an Emperor

Oath between Guan Yu, Liu Bei and Zang Fei

Destiny of an Emperor is one of my favorite RPG's, not only for the NES, but for all time. I thought recently that perhaps I needed to revisit it; since the 5 years since I had played it may have made it old and boring compared to the new incarnations of RPG's. However it remains a potent and engaging RPG to this day. The game is based on Hiroshi Motomiya's Manga, Tenchi wo Kurau, which itself is loosely based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms story that takes place in ancient China. You initially play Liu Bei as your main character, fighting as the warlord at the head of his ever-increasing army. The initial goal is to defeat a band of rebels known as the 'yellow scarves', but the storyline develops soon into an attempt by your army to unify China and bring peace back to the land.

There is only so much that can be said about graphics here. It was a game for the NES, and the graphics were good if not great for the time (1990) without being on a next-gen console such as the SNES. There is no lag on the graphics, there are no flashes to the screen and it renders perfectly fine - 'nuff said.

The music is excellent as per what can be expected from the NES system. Composed by Hiroshige Tonomura, there is a dedicated track for when you enter battle or a city, and the map music changes as you progress throughout the land. The music is engaging without being overt or annoying. It keeps to the theme of ancient China by being similar in sound to some old Chinese melodies. The sound effects are not very developed, but again this seems to be the norm for an NES console game. Also sound effects are not a key element to this type of RPG and thus they may have distracted from the game had they been developed further.

Gameplay is streamlined and rarely do the mechanics of the game become frustrating. I found that the control of the main character - because you move relatively fast in the game - can sometimes overshoot an entrance or a person to talk to. But this never threatens in terms of having to reset or start some element over again. The biggest issue with the game would have to be the strategies (kind of the magic) of the game. Because they are transliterated from the Japanese into English versions of their sounds (i.e. 'An Sha' or 'Bei Jing') there could be difficulty playing this game without a manual. With the internet close by this is less of an issue but if you don't want to have to look up each new strategy as they come available, or have to test each one, then you need the manual or a list of the strategies copied down beside you. There are also times when it is less than clear where you are to proceed to next in the game. This will bother new-gen gamers since new games lead you by the hand through the game. I like it personally as it gives an element of "necessary frustration." Why should we always know where to go next?

The biggest problem I have with this game is the encounter rate. It is incredibly high at some points in the game. I know for a fact that I have fought eight battles in the time it took me to walk 11 spaces. That is just unreasonable and excessive.

Gameplay has some excellent features as well. A well integrated 'reasoning' for the Hit Point system. A character's hit points are the number of soldiers in their army. Soldiers reach zero and your General of that army is unavailable until a resurrect is used on them (it is unclear as to whether they 'die' or what happens, but since it is a resurrect you need to use I guess they are dead). The Strategist in your army is the one that controls what is effectively the magic in the game. However, they do not limit just that character to using it, the Strategist provides each General with the ability to use those strategies each turn if needed. While the strategies are not as necessary early in the game, without them later on it would be near impossible to finish the game. Probably the best feature to gameplay is the 'All-Out' choice on the battle screen. This allows you to quickly fight easy battles without deciding tactics for each player in the line up. So instead of a battle taking a minute or two, it could take 5-15 seconds, depending on the relative strength of the attackers to yourself. This intensifies the action in a genre that is known for being slow and sometimes dull. Actually, I would consider the 'All Out' as one of my favorite gameplay features of all time.


There is a HUGE amount of characters that are playable in this game.  That being said, most, if not all, of the gameplay centers around perhaps 10 individual characters.  While you can play any of the hundreds? of other characters, it would make the game fairly impossible to beat.  Only the 10 or so characters I mentioned before have armies that can grow as you advance in level, not to mention they are the strongest and most capable characters as well.

The learning curve suffers for me on this game because every time I play it I need to look up what the transliterated strategies are, I get lost in the caves, and frustration seeps in when the opponents use 'An Sha' all the time (An Sha is an assassination magic, it kills one of your armies completely). But that is just nit picking as these are also reasons I go back to this game. It remains frustrating and fun and clever and everything even after playing it through perhaps 6 times now.

The replay value on Destiny of an Emperor is extremely high as it is an engaging game, full of battles and hidden items, with a huge amount of playable characters and strategies to employ. There are many situations to perform quests differently and there is almost no 'grind' to speak of. The game can be played start to finish without having to deliberately gain levels in order to proceed. How many games from this era can you say you would play from start to finish every three or four years? This is one of maybe 5 NES games that I can say that about.

All in all, for a 20-year-old game this is still one of my favorites from the RPG genre, as it is fun, engaging, smart, frustrating and gives a long play experience (25-40 hours) for this old of a game. You really can't go wrong with picking this one up.
Gameplay video

A place for those truly, fantastically, over the toply insane NES collectors.

'I am ready to start this.' says me, in my own head, to the computer screen.  I have amassed a large collection (but small by some standards), I have organized it (not pretty yet though) and I have become completely obsessed with it.  I am not the only person out there that has this obscene fascination with all things Nintendo, but in the short time I have been collecting now (almost three years) I have seen dedicated collectors sell , turn tail and run from the craziness.  I can't see that happening with me, below you will find out why (and it will act like a bio).
  I started playing video games when I was young, perhaps 7 or so.  My first 'game console' was the VIC-20. It taught us how to hate Jupiter Lander and write our own games in basic.  The games were, for the most part, incredibly bad, with a few exceptions like Crossfire.  The real interest for me, and for many of my friends was the ability to write our own games, albeit in basic.  It was in large part due to this that video games became, for me, a very cerebral thing, leading me to favor RPG's, Puzzle and Strategy games over the typically more popular Fighter, Schmup and Platform games.
Nintendo Entertainment System was the cornerstone for my obsession with video games in general, with a caveat; Obsession with video games in the mid 80's versus what an obsession is now are two very different things.  The obsession then was still fairly split between kicking Metal Man's ass in Mega Man 2, and taking our bikes down to the 'Pitt' in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada, where I grew up.  Time outside versus time inside was still fairly even and my mom didn't need to kick me off of my NES to go play outside.  The obsession we see today with video games is incredibly different.  From WOW to prestiging in Modern Warfare 2, obsession with video games has become something more sinister than it ever was before.
  Nintendo became a solitary thing for me, and really still is to this day.  The games I would play, like Dragon Warrior and Destiny of an Emperor were single player RPG's, games that helped create my later world perspective of very few heroes and multiple villains.  Other types of games not thought to be solitary were still in fact solitary games for me.  I watched my friends growing up play Contra, Super Mario 3 and other 2 player games, rather than play along with them.  This led to later watching my good friend play Gran Turismo (2?) for HOURS on end in 2001.  He would ask me 'You wanna play?' and I would shake my head no.  Who would want to shatter that level of introspection?
 I never had more than maybe 15 games for the NES growing up, but I played all of them with a dedication that I don't really have anymore.  Nintendo thumb is not an urban legend, it is a fact. Other titles that helped form my NES obsession are: Mega Man 2, Baseball Stars, Magic of Scheherazade, Final Fantasy, Defender of the Crown, Life Force, the entire Dragon Warrior series, etc etc.
 My NES obsession probably grew more out of other systems than out of the NES itself.  I played Goldeneye for the N64 so much, that I could identify where an opponent was on the map even if they were hiding in a corner.  Civilization 2 on Playstation I played for 8 months without picking up another game.  I think I spent more time playing Morrowind for Xbox over working full time during that period.  Even Halo 3 sucked a big chunk out of my life.  But all of these systems led back to the one that really formed it all for me.
  The collection started about three years ago with me getting my old NES back from my nephews whom had grown very tired of it.  They had been through N64, Gamecube and were now on to the Wii at that point.  I happened to catch that they were going to throw it out, games and all.
  I scooped it up and declared that I would take it and the rest is history (an expensive history).  There were about 5 games with it at that time but the only two I can remember being part of the first group of games were Mega Man 2 and Final Fantasy.
  I played Final Fantasy from start to finish in a few days and then played Mega Man 2 through in an evening.  I then asked myself what game I needed to play again from my childhood.
  Having studied Asian History (my focus in university was Religious Studies with a History minor) the game that immediately came to mind was Destiny of an Emperor.  It was my first purchase of a Nintendo game in about 16 or 17 years, and I bought it on ebay.
  This concludes the first part of this article, to be continued very soon in part 2.