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I got very lucky today on an off chance being a county over and walking into a flea market today. Found for $5 an original SNES controller in pretty much great shape. But that's not really the wow.



Free Dreamcast games. They were fairly well abused and uncertain to work. I've known the guy running the indoor spot for years, he was surprised he had any as Dreamcast games are prone to death over little marks as he put it. He let me have the 6 I found! Of them 1 (surfing game) was a total goner (as was the top part of the clamshell.) The other 5 working for a good hour using a Novus 1, 2 and 3 level bottle kit I was able to using a microfiber cloth hand resurface much of the wear away. Quite a few curving scratches, scuffs, odd lines and things. Now all (but 1 I did it to) are working it appears. At least I could boot them and play a stage/course or so into them. The resurfacing now has caused a very find plethora of circular/curved microscuffs, but got out the bad stuff...fair trade off to me for freebies.

Ended up with Bang Gunship Elite, San Francisco Rush 2049, Maximum Pool(the clean disc), Hydro Thunder(AllStars), and Army Men Sarge's Heroes. Plan to keep the first three, the other two one is a copy(HT) and the other not a fan of the series. Probably going to stuff em up on ebay or whatever to get my $5 back for the controller.


It's kind of like a few weeks ago when I gamble bought a scuffed up messy $5 copy of Super Magnetic Neo and I was able to buff it into working order.

Atari 7800.


French version with "RGB" out.

As is the case with my French RGB NES, this is not true RGB.
I'll take it any day over the standard RF, though.











The seller (for whatever reason) didn't include a power supply for this European console.

Fortunately though I've found out that one can safely use a US 7800 power adapter (I already have one of those) on a PAL 7800 console. The reverse applies as well.
Using one of my step-down voltage converters to connect that US power supply, the PAL 7800 works fine.

I don't have any PAL 7800 carts but I do have a few NTSC ones. A few graphical glitches on some now that I'm playing them on a PAL system. Apart from that those are completely playable. But there are others that play at an increased speed, and others which don't play at all.

I found Lego Island for the PC for $1 (just the jewel case and disc, no big cardboard box unfortunately). Last I checked it requires a vintage computer configured a weirdly specific way in order to play it, but I have fond memories of it from when I was a Lego obsessed child in 1997, so just owning the disc and box is still fulfilling to me.

My local Wal-Mart has Shovel Knight for Wii U marked down to $7.

I was thrilled to find this on ebay a couple of weeks ago and even happier to acquire it for just £16.99!



If you don't know what the GameKing is then imagine a Gameboy Advance shell clone with the raw graphical power of an Atari 2600 (except with really good sound) released to compete with the original PSP! It runs on it's own proprietary hardware and had over 70 games released for it. I write about it on my website here: http://www.obsoleteworlds.com/gameking.html

Anyway, the GameKing 3 is the final iteration of the handheld released in such limited numbers that its become something of an urban myth as there are only a handful of pictures of it online and no videos of it in action. It's a 64 colour unit that is backwardly compatible with original GK games and automatically colourises them in the process.

Hopefully I can now rectify this lack of info by detailing it on my site. I've begun by posting a few pictures here: http://www.obsoleteworlds.com/the-banyan-tree/two-snakes-a-dying-duck-and-the-grail-king

I could see messing with something like that 3rd version, but finding games I'd fear could get tricky and costly to do so and would they even be good enough to bother?

Tanooki wrote:I could see messing with something like that 3rd version, but finding games I'd fear could get tricky and costly to do so and would they even be good enough to bother?

If you do then my recommended version of the GameKing is, perhaps surprisingly, the original version.



It has the best d-pad and displays the games as they were supposed to be seen. You can't play it in the dark but the screen is perfectly clear under other conditions. The Gameking 2 has a backlight but a worse d-pad and requires an operation to remove the idiotic colour background insert that someone thought would be a good trick! I only use it to take screenshots for my reviews.

The GameKing 3's colourisation process is neat to look at once but the games too often become garish messes and look much nicer in their original gray-scale.

The most interesting thing about the Gameking for me is the huge 'WHY?' that surrounds it's existence. Who thought such a device would be a good idea in 2003? Why is it so graphically under-powered, yet boasting such impressive sound? Then you consider that it was mass produced and sold in the west in multiple iterations. Baffling. I also love discovering new multicarts for it and wondering what oddities the programmers will come up with next.

My favourite so far has been this Street Fighter 2 "port":

http://www.obsoleteworlds.com/fighter.html

I'd go for the 3 if the controls weren't messed like on the 2nd one. I've seen you cover the things before including street fighter. It's just so weird.

Tanooki wrote:I'd go for the 3 if the controls weren't messed like on the 2nd one. I've seen you cover the things before including street fighter. It's just so weird.

Yes, I've no idea why they moved away from that nice d-pad to increasingly poor button combinations. Granted it's not hugely important in most games EXCEPT Street fighter where you need to do a Hadoken motion!

Oddly, I discovered tonight that although they are physically identical in placement, the A & B buttons are also mapped in reverse on the Game King 3. Oddly this actually improves 'Happy Ball', the GameKing's Lode Runner clone as the original buttons had been mapped in reverse on that game leading to you digging in the wrong direction!

I had a nice day at the Wednesday fleamarket today! I got a lot of nice Nintendo stuffs! First, I struck gold with a lady that had an n64 and gameboy advance. I asked how much, and she said $12 for the system and $5 for the GBA. The n64 had no expansion ram and the GBA had no battery cover. But the price was too good to let go on either of them. So they became mine. After this, I found four bluray movies at a dollar each! I also did okay with a fellow who always brings nice electronics stuff. I usually get games from him every week. This time from him for $12: My neighbor Totoro dvd, heart of darkness ps1, ridge racer psp and a 1gb M2 memory card. From various other sellers, I got random things: Coraline dvd for a dollar, a space shuttle go-bot for $2.00, need for speed underground 2 xbox $2.00. I lucked out again with another guy, he had a bare nes console and a joystick I've never seen before. I asked for prices, he said $5 on the stick and $10 for the NES. He warned me that the Nintendo didn't work. But for the price, it's still worth a shot. And five dollars is a damn good price on an NES joystick with a box! My last fleamarket find ended up being some wii games. I got those three at $2.00 each: wii play, monopoly and EA playground. And finally the last thing I bought was Sword Art Online ps vita from gamestop. It was $10, because of a special anime sale. And I pre ordered it online the other day to pick it up. All and all, I'm quite happy with the stuff I got today!