Here it is– my biggest haul of the year and one of my last before 2014 comes to an end. This season, I made up my mind to not do any holiday shopping on Thanksgiving and to do minimal shopping on Black Friday. But I knew of a handful of retro game stores in my region that were having buy-one-get-one-free sales. So I took advantage of the opportunity to scratch off a huge chunk of my wanted list.
I saved up $300 for games and a tank of gas to drive to every store that I knew would have a great sale, and I bought all the NES games that I didn’t already have, using my trusty list on Google Drive. I ended up spending less than $250 on over $500 worth of games, with these 52 NES cartridges– from about five different stores.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find any particularly rare or valuable games (few are valued at more than $20). The rarer of the bunch include: Ghostbusters II, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dragon Strike and Adventure Island II. And the most valuable of the bunch are Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dragon Strike and Ice Climber.
The plan was to concentrate on quantity over rarity, because many game stores will take their rarer games off the shelves when they do big sales to prevent people like me from taking advantage of their deals. Since yard sale season is about three months away and NES games are getting harder and harder to come by in the wild, I decided to buy all that I could.
I am so incredibly excited to play through so many of these games. I may eventually review NES games as part of the NES Quest. But for now, here is the complete list of everything that I bought this Black Friday:
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dragon Strike
Adventure Island II
Air Fortress
Airwolf
Astyanax
Back to the Future
Bases Loaded 2
Bill Elliott’s NASCAR Challenge
Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout
Castlevania II Simon’s Quest
Conflict
Defender II
Double Dribble
Duck Hunt
Elevator Action
Fester’s Quest
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters II
Guerrilla War
Gumshoe
Ice Climber
Immortal
Jackal
Jeopardy Jr Edition
King’s Knight
Laser Invasion
Legends of the Diamond
Magmax
Milon’s Secret Castle
NARC
Othello
Predator
Q*bert
Quattro Sports (unlicensed)
Rad Racer II
RC Pro-AM
Rollerball
Rush’n Attack
Silent Service
Silver Surfer
Solstice
Super Glove Ball
Super Mario Bros/ Duck Hunt World/ Class Track Meet
Super Sprint (unlicensed)
The Three Stooges
Vegas Dream
Videomation
Volleyball
Wheel of Fortune
Wheel of Fortune Family Edition
Wheel of Fortune Junior Edition
Wild Gunman
This haul brings my collection from 197 to 249 NES games, including two unlicensed games. For the rest of the entries of NES Quest, check them out right here on Retro Chronicle.