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!!

Cowley Road Jackpot!

So remember I mentioned that Tachiko & I popped into the game store before we went to the gig on Wednesday?

Well when we went inside the first thing I saw was a stack of NES games, some boxed and some unboxed. I didn't want to buy them then as we were going to the gig but I hoped they'd be there if I came back another time. I mentioned it to Mum when we got back from the gig and she said we could go back in the morning!

So that's what we did, we got to Cowley Road at about 10 only to find the store was closed!! We tried asking at a few of the other shops to see if they knew when or if it was open that day but nobody seemed to know. We decided to go for a coffee and come back again after, if it wasn't open by 10.30 we'd call it a day and go back home to finish sorting out the loft.

Luckily when we came back after coffee the shop was open and I was able to pick up a total of 5 games and an original cleaning kit for £60

Tachiko found a complete boxed copy of Odama for £20

There were a handful of other NES games I wish I'd picked up now but hopefully they'll still be there on Payday! 

We also popped into a charity shop on the way back to the car where Tachiko picked up this boxed memory card for the Gamecube for £2 

Given that this was the same charity shop where we picked up the boxed gamecube and dancemat and the Playstation a few weeks back I can't help but wonder what other goodies they have stashed away out the back.....

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: Super Tomato

So after seeing and playing some of the exciting new games that Nintendo has in store for gamers in the near future, Tachiko and I were feeling the need to indulge in some Retro Retail Therapy and where better to go than to Wales?

Admittedly we probably should have done this the day after Eurogamer as the 4 hours of driving to Cardiff and back to Oxford nearly killed me but it was totally worth it!!We knew we wanted to hit Super Tomato in Cardiff and Next Level Games in Pontypridd with the possibility of checking out Toy Army in Newport on the way home if there was time (there wasn't) but we'd also heard about another game shop 'Retrobution' in Llanelli, sadly Sat Nav stated that this was another hour and 30 minute drive after Cardiff so maybe we'll go there the next time we stay in Wales.

Anyway, we stopped at Super Tomato first.

After getting our heads around the stores changed layout since we last visited earlier this year we started looking at all the lovely stock on offer. Shockingly I didn't actually spend half as much as I thought I would and nowhere near as much as I did the first time we visited but I did come home with a lovely reconditioned NES in the mint-est box I have ever seen and a boxed copy of Kirby's dream course (total sucker for a Kirby game, I love that pink marshmallow!)

Tachiko came away with a SNES for his collection (unboxed but in stunning condition, not even the slightest hint of yellowing) and a couple of unboxed games for it -warpspeed and FIFA '96 (freebie from the bargain bin!) 

We were also given Columns for the Sega Game Gear as another freebie (again I found it in the bargain bin) and Tachiko 'won' a GBA game from the vending machine for £3 :)

All in all we spend a good couple of hours in the store browsing and chatting with one of the owners (sorry I've forgotten his name) about some of our latest pickups, eurogamer and reminiscing about our last visit to the store but pretty soon our parking time was running out (parked right outside the shop!)and it was time for us to move onto Next Level Games in Pontypridd.

More on that next time but Super Tomato hasn't seen the last of us yet! To find out more about Super Tomato and updates on the latest things they have instore, check out their facebook page via the link below and give them a like :)

Super Tomato Facebook Page

Cowley Road bargain buy

Tachiko & I went to Cowley road last week to check out a second hand game shop we knew about. We'd been there once before but as they are kind of overpriced and kind of give the impression they don't know what they are talking about we've never bought from them. This time was no exception.

Walking a little further down the road (heading back towards Oxford city centre) we noticed a gadget/phone shop advertising consoles and games on the window.

So we decided to check it out, totally glad we did as they were selling a handful of NES games (unboxed) at £4.99 each, they had a couple of the Mario Bros games which would have been nice to pick up but the one I chose to get (thanks Tachiko for paying! xx) was Metroid.

It's a game I've never had the chance to play on the NES and after looking at the prices of the loose carts on eBay we totally got a bargain! Haven't had the chance to test it yet as the only NES in the house right now is my brother's and it's in a hard to get into cupboard but I'm hoping it get playing it soon!

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 :)