Cowley Road pt 2

I couldn't wait till payday!! Mum and I headed back to Cowley road yesterday to pick up the games I wished I'd picked and I picked up some more gems!

Not only did I pick up Darkwing Duck & Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (mouthful...) I also picked up McDonaldsland for the NES, Bubble Bobble for the Master System and TETRIS for the N64.

Heading down the road we popped into the charity shop where Tachiko found the memory card last week and found an unboxed  Starwars game for the Gameboy Color and an even better bargain was an unboxed copy of Lylat Wars for the N64 for £2!! Yes it has permanent marker on it but I've already used one coat of nail varnish remover on it in the photo below and it should fade more with another coat.

Tex24 (another exchange shop) also provided me with 4 more NES games for £20, I have no idea if they are any good or not but for £5 each I'm not gonna say no!!

Destination: Aldershot (pt 1)

The weekend after Eurogamer and Wales I spent the morning in Guildford waiting for Tachiko to finish a 4 hour shift at work.

He'd mentioned seeing a Gamecube controller in the window of CEX that was purple on top but clear underneath and that he was 'thinking' of buying it. You may be wondering why thinking has ' ' around it, well it's because whenever Tachiko says he's thinking of buying something, what he really means is that he'll think about buying it until it sells to someone else then say how much he wishes he'd bought the thing then he first saw it....there are too many examples to mention....

To save prevent this happening again, I bought it (for him!)

After Tachiko's shift finished we decided to head to Aldershot as I wanted to pick up Doctor Who on bluray from CEX using my vouchers and trade in my DVD versions at the same time.

We popped into Game while we were there, just to see what games they'd had traded in and actually found some pretty cool games for the Wii as part of their 3 for 2 promotion.

Mine- Death Jr & Drawn to life I picked up from Cash Converters for £6 not Game!

Tachiko's- Fragile Dreams wasn't past of the offer but it was still a pretty good price.

After Game we headed around the corner to Kart Klub, Tachiko's local retro game store.

Again just to see what was new and after picking up my NES in Wales, I was interested in buying the boxed copy of Pac Man I'd seen in there before if they still had it (they did!)  

Tachiko picked up a copy of Alien Trilogy for the Saturn 

and a brand new in box controller for the Dreamcast

As he was paying he got chatting to the owner who informed us that sadly the store would be closing down after Christmas. This information prompted me to not only buy Pac Man as previously planned but also pickup a complete (unboxed) copy of Pokemon Stadium

While it is always sad to hear of an independent game store closing, particularly one so close to home for Tachiko, we will be planning as many trips to the store as we can before it closes for good.

Next time: More Pickups!

Destination: Next Level Games

Next stop on our impromptu trip to Wales was Next Level Games in Pontypridd.

(of course we totally forgot to take a photo of the store both times we've visited and I can't find one on the net!)

This store seems tiny from the outside but it's like Aladdin's Cave when you get in there! Last time I was here I didn't buy much but this time I went a little mad, treating myself to my second console of the day, a turquoise crystal N64, Crash Dummies for the Master System, Echo the Dolphin on the Mega CD, Pokemon Colosseum for the Gamecube and a walkthrough guide for Animal crossing Wild World. I also got given a NES Zapper gun and a copy of Sonic for the Master System with a photocopied cover.

Tachiko also treated himself to a second home console, this time breaking away from the Nintendo franchise and heading into Sega territory with a Dreamcast, again in a stunning condition with minimal if any signs of aging! Following his love of Crystal consoles he also nabbed a clear Gameboy Pocket (the only handheld I am missing from my gameboy collection), a boxed copy of Flashback on the SNES, Soul Calibur 2 for the Gamecube and a free rumble pack for his new Dreamcast!

We were also given a few other freebies, an empty N64 controller box and a carrycase designed to fit a gameboy pocket pictured below with our other freebies.

Again we spent quite a bit of time chatting to the owners (again their names have escaped me sorry!) about our collections, eurogamer, midnight launch pickups back in the day and the trails of running a retro game store. 

To find out more about Next Level Games and to see what amazing things they'd got in stock check out their facebook page here: Next Level Games Facebook Page

Tachiko and I discussed the possibility of heading over to Newport to check out Toy Army but decided that given the time Toy Army would be closing by the time we got there so we decided to stay in Pontypridd for a little longer before heading for home, We popped into Game where I found a copy of Animal Crossing 'Let's go to the City' for the Wii and a walkthrough guide for Pokemon X&Y on sale! I also bought a couple of magazines from the newsagents :)

Before long it was time to head home but we thoroughly enjoyed every minute of our trip to Wales and that retro game retail therapy itch was well and truly scratched....or so we thought!!

Kart Klub Aldershot

Look what we bought!

We went to Kart Klub yesterday afternoon and came home with these lovely boxed (complete with manuals & inserts) games :)

We'd seen Tetris for the NES and Dr Mario & Tetris for the SNES before but Street Fighter 2 Turbo was a new item on display. Tetris was £12, Dr Mario was £20 and Street Fighter 2 Turbo was £30. We also picked up a rumble pak for the N64 (the controller feels so light without it!!) for £5 and the guy threw in a multi console adaptable scart cable for free :)

Boot Sale Bargains

Despite feeling shattered after Comic-con on Saturday, Tachiko & I headed over to Kingsley Boot Sale early on Sunday morning, I say early, what I mean is that we left early, got lost and after an hour found the boot sale that the sat-nav orginally said was 23 minutes away....but I digress.

We found a couple of stalls selling games, mostly the usual PS2 and Xbox 360 games but a couple were selling Nintendo items. One lady was asking £20 for an original gameboy and several games but we decided that the asking price was a bit high and left it behind.

Here is what we came home with instead :)

Yep a purple N64 with the matching controller! The guy selling the N64 was asking for £40 and the SNES games (complete with inserts & manuals) were £10 each but he gave us the lot for £55 :) Not a massive saving but for an N64 & 2 boxed games that's not a bad price. I also picked up a couple of gameboy game cases for £1, always useful as I have quite a few loose games and the cases are getting harder to find outside of eBay.

Of course as soon as we'd bought the N64 the heavens opened so we legged it back to the car as quick as we could and headed home. Once we got back we had a closer look at the N64 and found that the reset button was pushed down and seemed to be stuck. Tachiko was really worried that the main spring had gone and that it would be an additional cost having it fixed but after cleaning it up a little the button popped back up- I guess it was just dirty after all!

Recent Purchases

For our first 'real' post, I thought I'd talk about some of the games we've bought recently.

First up I have to talk about 'Tomodachi Life' on 3DS, we actually own a copy of this game each. Mostly because Nintendo sent me a welcome version of the game to try out (no idea why, but thanks anyway Nintendo! Free trials are always appreciated!) and I really enjoyed it and was considering buying it when the price dropped a bit as I didn't really want to pay for a game that is a lot like Animal Crossing. However when Game sent me an email saying they were running a buy one get one half price offer on Tomodachi Life I knew I had to do it as it was too good an offer to miss! So yea, two copies. Each copy also includes 2 download codes for the welcome version of Tomodachi Life so you can introduce 2 friends to the crazyness as well! [I actually gave away one of the download codes to my brother's fiancee who liked it so much she downloaded the full game. I think Nintendo are on to something with this.-Tachiko]

Dragon Quest 9 Tachiko picked up in Sainsburys of all places for £6, neither of us have played any of the Dragon Quest series before but we've both heard good things about it so for £6 we're willing to give it a try!

Crush3D, as you can see from the photo cost me £4 in the GAME sale. (actually it cost me nothing thanks to my GAME card) Again I have no idea if it's going to be any good but it was £4 and I tend to like puzzle/level type games so fingers crossed it'll be fun to play.

Waverace 64/1080 Avalanche, these were an absolute steal from the local cash&cheque express in Aldershot, just £11 for the two!

That's all for now, next time COMIC-CON!!

-GmrGrl88-