Purchase: NES & SNES Manuals

So I just had a purchase arrive today and it made me think of this blog.  If I am going to write about collecting, I should show my purchases and give some information about them.  My first arrival since starting this blog is a bubble mailer full of manuals for NES and SNES games.  So let's delve a bit:

  First thing, a bubble mailer is a very nice way to send manuals and/or games.  This is particularly true of manuals, since a lot of people sending them think that it is a needless extra expense.  For a collector, at least a serious collector, protecting the parcel is half the battle.  No collector wants their package to arrive with something torn or damaged in some way.  While bubble mailers are good they are not always the perfect choice.  There is a shop on Ebay that sends me games in bubble mailers all the time, however quite often the envelope is too big for the games being sent.  What this means is, if the shop didn't take extra measures to protect the games (wrapping them individually in bubble wrap, which they didn't), and the envelope is too big, the games are rattling around inside the envelope in transit.  I have a picture of a game before it left the shop arrive on my doorstep in much worse condition.  But for manuals, the current items of discussion, it is an excellent choice.
 Second thing, keep track of your collection.  I had two trades with people in transit to myself at the same time.  Because of this, between the two trades, I have ended up with a couple of the manuals being repeats (i.e. I now have two Castlevania manuals, two Burgertime Manuals and two Tetris manuals.  I do keep track of my collection very closely now to avoid this kind of problem, but I also don't catalog items until they arrive and because of that I still run the risk of collecting more than one of a cheap item like manuals.
 Third thing, the more confidence you can have in what you are buying, and who you are buying from, the better.  I bought these manuals from someone I don't know.  However, I bought them from him based on his exemplary feedback on gametz.  If he had received bad reviews or had very little feedback I would have made sure he sent the items first (something you can't do on Ebay), but since I can trust him (based on other gametz community individual comments), I paid for them first before he sent.
  Needless to say I am very happy with this purchase.  The individual packed the items well, he was accurate with the description of the manuals and he didn't overcharge me for them.
  Some of you less devoted of the devotees might ask "Why on earth do you care about the manuals anyways?  You can't play the manual!"  That may be true, but the manuals & the boxes of the games have their own amazing features to them.  Since we are discussing manuals we'll stick to them for now.
 The transliteration from Japanese to English is incredibly funny in some of these manuals.  Here is an example from the manual for Spy Hunter:

YOUR MISSION

Pilot your vehicle through the track.  Seek and destroy enemy agents who will use every means to wipe     you out.  You must avoid the road hazards and protect the friendly pedestrian vehicles.  There's terror at every turn - tire slashers, torpedoes, bomb dropping helicopters - standing in your way of the most diabolical collection of enemy agents ever to hit a video screen.  You have your skill and reflexes along with Smoke screens, Oil slicks, and Heat seeking missiles to outmaneuver your opponents.  One mistake and it's all over.  So strap yourself in, no need to check your ammo.  You've got more than enough; and take the challenge.
Be: SPY HUNTERtm

This transliteration is not half bad actually, but I wanted to use an example from the manuals I just received.  Pilot your vehicle through the track? Friendly pedestrian vehicle?  And the capitalization on Smoke, Oil and Heat? I love little details like this.  These are the fun little tidbits in the manuals.

  Beyond that there are some games that having the manual becomes necessary for game play.  I mentioned this issue in my review of Destiny of an Emperor, where the 'magic' you use in that game, without the manual, there is no way to decipher what it does except trial and error.  From the bunch I just received there is an amazing amount of information in the Metroid manual that I would only be able to guess at by playing the game without it.

  Another important reason for collecting the manual, at least from a collector stand point, is that the manual (and/or the box) quite often mentions other items that would be included with the game when it first came out.  This is one method for collectors to determine what items make a game CIB.  CIB means one of two things; it means Cart, Instructions, Box for some, but the second interpretation is more apt for collectors, it means Complete in Box.  Most of the time, the game came with more, and sometimes much more, than just the game, the manual and the box.  Thus I say Cart, Instruction, Box doesn't cut it.  I'll give you some examples:

Both Orb 3D and 3D Worldrunner both came with 3D glasses included in the box.

Air Fortress, if purchased from the publisher HAL america, came with an Air Fortress T-Shirt.

Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego came with a small encyclopedia in the original oversized box.

  These are just a few examples of extras that came with NES games back in the day.  While there are databases out there detailing everything that was included in the game, I like to find out through the info on the boxes and manuals the other items hidden for me to find.

  I`ll leave you devotees with that information for now.  Perhaps I have convinced a few collectors who never game the manuals a passing glance before to consider them as an important element to a collection.

   

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.