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!!

A trip to Aldershot

So Gmrgrl was down my way and we decided to have a drive to Aldershot and visit Kart Klub. Despite being a small shop it always seems to have something new and today was no exception (more on that in a bit). After finding a few things that peaked my interest, we went into CeX and I to my amazement, I find two Wii games that I have been after for ages! Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World.

After jumping on both of these and grinning with glee, we made are way to GAME where not only did Gmrgrl find another copy of Silent Hill, it was a fiver cheaper too. Story of my life, I buy a game I've been after for ages and find it cheaper five minutes later! Not only that but the copy from game was in near perfect condition, where as the CeX copy was a bit grubby. I decided to buy the copy from GAME and return the CeX copy. I was only able to get the value back as credit but I can put that with the rest that's going towards a PS4 (£230 so far!).

After that, we went back into Kart Klub and picked up a rather special find! In the display cabinet was a blue Sega Game Gear! Both Gmrgrl and I have never seen any variant colour of the Game Gear and were intrigued by it, so we did some research and found that there were some various colours released in Japan that including a blue model. However, the Japanese model was a light blue so we were still confused. After talking to the the owner of the shop, we learnt it was in fact an American model (apparently released as part of a sport bundle). This was good enough for me so I picked it up for £40 with two games (Sonic the Hedgehog and Mortal Kombat).

I also picked up this awesome clear green Dreamcast Visual Memory Unit to go with the Clear blue and clear black one I already have. Now I need to find the clear red one (and a Dreamcast to play them on!!)

So after my little spending spree we were getting hungry, we decided to get some food but remembered that the guy who served us in CeX told us that the store in Camberley was larger and has GameCube games. As it was only a 20 minute drive, we decided to drive up there and check it out and get some lunch there. The CeX store was indeed bigger and had GameCube games but nothing of interest to us. We also checked out the local GAME store and again nothing worth getting (although we did find out that they will soon be selling retro games and consoles in selected stores!).

We were about to give up hope of finding anything but then we found a random toy shop called HobbyToyGame.

(We forgot to take a photo of the shop when we were there so here's one I found online)

For the most part it was a regular independent toy shop but we noticed in the glass counter various Japanese Pokemon merchandise. We got talking to the owner and she and her family are big Pokemon fans and have accumulated many rare items on there various trips to Japan. The most impressive however was a Charizard statue which was one of two given to the winner of the first Pokemon Trading Card tournament in Japan!

To see something that is only one of two that exist in the world was worth the trip, and once I have £13,000 spare, I'll be back to pick it up!

So overall a very productive day :)