Games Bought Thread 3

[A Black Falcon]

Why haven't I posted here in a while?  I don't know, I know nobody else cares but I do so I should.  Part of it is that for a while I wasn't buying games, just hardware for that old computer I got and bought stuff for through May.  I did get some games after that though so I need to list it all.


Apple IIGS Computer    Apple IIGS    Apple            04/30/21    $242.89 for computer and monitor    works great    with monitor, 1MB RAM card, SATA type C card, and Echo IIb card.    from ebay
AppleColor Monitor for IIGS (12" analog RGB monitor)    Apple IIGS    Apple            04/30/21    with computer    works great    with power cord    from ebay
Apple SATA Card, Revision C [original, NOT High Speed card]    Apple II / IIGS    Apple            04/30/21    with computer    works great        from ebay
Apple 1MB RAM expansion card for IIGS [fully populated]    Apple IIGS    Apple            04/30/21    with computer    works great    fully populated with RAM chips    from ebay
Echo IIb Speech Synthesizer Card    Apple II / IIGS                04/30/21    with computer        missing cable to connect it to speaker output    from ebay
Apple ADB Mouse II    Apple IIGS / Mac    Apple            05/03/21    $24.95    works but sometimes ball seems iffy        from ebay
Interex MAC-105A Keyboard [Apple Extended Keyboard clone]    Apple IIGS / Mac    Interex            05/05/21    $42.19    works great        from ebay
SCSI2SD V5.5 Pocket Edition    Apple IIGS (also supports many other platforms)    Inertial Computing            05/06/21    $80.00    new        from ebay
Apple DuoDisk Dual Floppy Drive - Model A9M0108    Apple II / IIGS    Apple            05/08/21    $92.80    seem to work fine        from ebay
GG Labs RAMGS/8 - 8MB RAM expansion card for Apple IIGS    Apple IIGS    GG Labs            05/08/21    $93.90    new        from ebay
Commodore VIC-20 Motherboard - Model 1 (I put this in the case from one of my other, less working VICs)    VIC    Commodore            05/14/21    $73.89    works fine        from ebay
Advanced Gravis Joystick    PC    Gravis            05/05/21    $30.00            from ebay
AppleCD 150 CD-ROM Drive model M3022 [1x caddy CD-ROM]    Apple IIGS / Mac    Apple            05/20/21    $72.73    seems to work        from ebay
Sony CD Caddies for Caddy CD-ROM drives - got 4 caddies [for AppleCD 150]    Apple IIGS / Mac    Sony            05/21/21    $31.21    in good condition    for four caddies    from ebay
50-pin SCSI cable - 3ft    SCSI stuff    Centronics            05/17/21    $9.00            from ebay
Apple UniDisk 5.25" Disk Drive model A9M0104    Apple IIGS / Mac    Apple            05/24/21    $49.26    works well        from ebay
Archer Super Deluxe Competition Joystick model 270-1707    Apple II / PC    Archer (Radio Shack)            05/24/21    $32.06    works great        from ebay
25-pin male to 50-pin male SCSI cables - 2 of them    SCSI stuff (Apple IIGS)    ?            05/24/21    $25.22        for two cables    from ebay
25-pin female to female gender changers - 2 of them    SCSI stuff (Apple IIGS)    ?            05/29/21    $6.17        for two adapters    from ebay
ADTPro - cable, USB adapter, ADT Pro floppy disk, box of 20 blank 5.25" floppy disks    Apple II / IIGS    RetroFloppy            05/26/21    $94.75
Also sometime in May, for like $15 I got a battery replacement kit for the IIGS's internal clock/settings battery.  The old battery had not leaked and damaged the motherboard, thankfully, but was dead.  This new one has a socket and should last a long time, I got one with a 1/2AA battery just like the original.

So yeah, I got an Apple IIGS.  Unlike the Commodore VIC-20 from earlier this year, which turned into something of a disaster as I kept buying more of them as I kept getting ones with issues (yes, I bought a fourth, as was listed above, this time a motherboard-only machine.  I put it into one of the cases and using it with that power supply I got previously, this one finally is the 100% working model 1 system I wanted all along.  The two model 2 machines are worthless and broken, I'll sell them or give them away to someone who can repair that stuff.  The other model 1 mentioned in my last post works, but has a weird RAM mod that makes it only sometimes useful.  It's neat to have but can't run all software.), the Apple IIGS itself ... works perfectly!  Yeah, it's flawless hardware-wise.  SOFTWARE wise it's unbelievably cionfusing as I have no idea waht I am doing and still can't figure out basic things like "how in the world do I format a disk on this stupid machine, I think I'm doing it right but nothing works other than transferring over a disk from my PC via ADTPro" but hardware-wise? No issues at all.  And that's why I got so much stuff for it, the Apple II in general is a machine that I have a lot of nostalgia for from the '80s to mid '90s from school and a friends' house and it's amazing to finally own one.  The Apple II is the only Apple product I've ever wanted to own and it's incredibly cool that I finally have this.  And yeah, again, it works great, apart from some software issues that are still confusing me badly.  But that is an issue for another thread.  Any official disks work, and anything made to run from a hard drive works.  (Oh, there is one issue -- I can't get that CD drive to work right.  It's annoying, but I didn't really expect it to fully work -- I know I don't have the high speed SCSI card you really need to use a CD drive on the Apple II, I only have the slow speed SCSI card.  High speed SCSI cards are VERY expensive now and I am not buying one soon.  The CD drive works fine, it just doesn't interface with the computer correctly, to be clear.  With the ADT Pro and the SCSI2SD I can run anything anyway, it's just that transferring things over to the Apple II is a tediously slow process.  Oh well.  The CD drive wouldn't fix that, it'd be just as slow anyway, the bottleneck is the SCSI card.  But yeah, the computer works, it has a somewhat valuable card in it in that regular-speed SCSI card, the 8MB RAM expansion card I got works great and really speeds the system up a lot, and the CRT monitor even works perfectly!  It's awesome, the issues are minor in comparison.  This is probably the most directly nostalgia-based gaming purchase I have made since... oh I don't know, a Sega Genesis back in 2006?

I still need one thing for this system, and that is a 3.5" disk drive.  See, the Apple II used 5.25" disks, but IIGS software is on 3.5" disks.  I don't have any IIGS software on real disks yet but I'm sure I will eventually and I need a drive for that.  I've thought of buying one, but at prices of $90-$120 for tested ones, I've held off so far... just spend too much, you know?  I'll get one eventually.  I should say that both 52.5" drives I did get work well, which is amazing.  (Yes, I could WANT a bunch of things for the Apple IIGS -- a high speed SCSI card, maybe a different storage card other than the SCSI2SD, a CPU speed-up board... but those things are mostly very expensive and not absolutely necessary.  I may or may not get those.  A 3.5" drive is necessary.)

After spending so much on hardware I didn't want to spend much on software, so all I have is this one purchase of three educational games.  That's highly appropriate for an Apple II, heh.  I chose some Stickybear games because there is a Stickybear sticker on the front of the IIGS's case.

Stickybear ABC    Apple II, AII        05/14/21            $26 for 3 games
Stickybear Math    Apple II, AII        05/14/21            $26 for 3 games
Stickybear Reading    Apple II, AII 05/14/21            $26 for 3 games
The only other disc I ahve for the Apple II is

After that, here is the first of three batches of cheap digital Switch games I got during the last two months.

Flat Heroes    Nintendo Switch, NS - DD (eShop)                            05/18/21    On Sale        $2.00
Super Arcade Racing    Nintendo Switch, NS - DD (eShop)                            05/21/21    On Sale        $3.00
Island Flight Simulator    Wii U - DD (eShop)                            05/23/21    On Sale        $4.00
Wanderjahr: TryAgainOrWalkAway    Nintendo Switch, NS - DD (eShop)                            05/23/21    On Sale        $4.00

Then, I got some stuff from ebay.  The next few batches after this are also ebay games.  Zenith is one I've wanted ever since I got a CD-i, so when one showed up at this price I bought it right away!  The game is a somewhat cool top-down platform/puzzle game where you control a bouncing ball thing.  It's fun and is very much like a PC shareware game I remember from the '90s called Jump/Dschump.

Dokyousei 2 (J)    NEC PC-FX, PCFX        05/25/21        Complete (with spine card)    16.89
Zenith (E)    Phillips CD-i    05/29/21        Complete    $43.31

This one is a homebrew Jaguar CD game.  I happened to have recently checked AtariAge right when it released so I got it; the guy only made a few copies with a full set of pretty neat Jaguar stickers, and sold them for very cheap, so they sold in under a day. You can still get the game, but game only, no stickers.  It's a Simon clone with pretty nice prerendered backdrops.  The game is simple but it shows off the system's color and prerendered-display capabilities well.

Simone (Unlicensed Homebrew)    Atari Jaguar CD, JCD    06/10/21    Homebrew release.    Complete (cardboard sleeve with disc, ad flyers, and Jaguar stickers)    $12.00

In May/June, I ordered a bunch of import games from Japan from several sellers.  The shipping mostly arrived here reasonably quickly, apart from one item that took longer.  I got a bunch of PC-FX games because I hadn't gotten anything new for that system since the games I bought when I bought the thing a year and a half ago.  I got some of the games I really wanted for the PC-FX, most notably Farland Story FX and Dragon Knight IV, and a few others. (by the way, the PC-FX's reputation for being an extremely anime console is accurate.  Its reputation for adult content, however, is wildly overstated -- there are only a handful of "adult" titles, and they're all just risque, nothing more.  I got a few of those here, not that I'll ever play enough of them to see any of it, I don't like visual novels.)  At the same time I got some games for other consoles as well -- I finally got the N64 Robopon RPG, Skweek for the PC Engine (this game is also on Game Gear as Slider.), and more.  None of this stuff is as exciting as Gate of Thunder (from my last post), but some of it's decent stuff.

Anime Freak FX Vol. 1 (J)    NEC PC-FX, PCFX    NEC Interchannel                        06/21/21        Complete    $21.50
Aubird Force (J)    PlayStation, PSX, PS1                            06/21/21        Complete    $8.50
Farland Story FX (J)    NEC PC-FX, PCFX                            06/21/21        Complete    $53.50
First Kiss Story (J)    NEC PC-FX, PCFX                            06/21/21        Complete    $43.50
Gebockers (J)    Saturn, SS                            06/21/21        Complete    $10.86
Robot Ponkottsu 64 (J)    Nintendo 64, N64                            06/21/21        Complete    $23.50
Skweek (J)    TurboGrafx-16, TG16                            06/21/21        Complete    $15.50
Sotsugyu II FX Neo Graduation (J)    NEC PC-FX, PCFX                            06/21/21        Cart Only    $18.50
Super Real Mahjong P IV Custom (J)    TurboGrafx-CD, TCD                        06/21/21        Complete    $11.50
Welcome to Pia Carrot (J)    NEC PC-FX, PCFX                            06/21/21        Complete    $38.50 (this is a visual novel so I'm sure I won't play much of it, but it is one of the very few PC-FX games with a full English translation patch available.)

In late June I got some cheap, on sale digital Switch games.  I'll get a bunch more at the end of this post.

112th Seed    Nintendo Switch, NS - DD (eShop)                            06/27/21    On Sale        $2.00
Kingdom Rush Frontiers    Nintendo Switch, NS - DD (eShop)                            06/27/21    On Sale        $4.00
Lode Runner Legacy    Nintendo Switch, NS - DD (eShop)                            06/27/21    On Sale        $6.00
Lost Wing    Nintendo Switch, NS - DD (eShop)                            06/27/21    On Sale        $2.00
TowerFall    Nintendo Switch, NS - DD (eShop)                            06/27/21    On Sale        $4.00

Then on the last day of June, I went to the two locations of our local electronics-and-such chain (one closed thanks to the pandemic, leaving just these two in the area) and got... a bunch of stuff really.

For hardware, I got:
Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 Joystick    PC    Microsoft            06/30/21    $10.00        complete in box
Wico The Boss Joystick    Atari 2600 / Commodore VIC-20 / TI99/4A                06/30/21    $5.00        used, loose stick
Wico The Boss Joystick    Atari 2600 / Commodore VIC-20 / TI99/4A                06/30/21    $5.00        used, tight stick

Both of these finds were really, REALLY cool.  That FOrece Feedback 2 stick is worth quite a lot on ebay and is incredibly cool, so it was an amazing find for so cheap!  The store clearly hadn't tested it properly, because they didn't realize it actually worked perfectly and thought it was broken because it didn't spring back to the center when not plugged in... heh.  I realized that's how it is supposed to be and certainly will benefit from that, it's super cool not just for the force feedback but also the motor-based autocentering -- the stick will stay where you leave it until you touch the back of the stick, at which point it'll spring back to the center.  It's really cool.  As for the two Wico sticks, they are nice and high quality sticks from one of the better early '80s brands.  I've been looking for better controllers for my VIC-20 and TI99 and I hoped this will be better than the Atari 7800 or Sega Master System controllers I have to use (... or for the TI the official joysticks for that thing, but those are even worse.  And I do not like Atari 2600 controllers.).  They aren't as good as Genesis controllers would be, but oh well, they're good and also sell online for well over what I paid.

And for games... I didn't do quite as well here, one game in particular I hugely overpaid for, but given the amazing deal I got on that Force Feedback 2 stick I'm not complaining at all, I came out well ahead.

Curved Space    Xbox Series X|S, XSX & Xbox One                    06/30/21        New    $20
Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below    PlayStation 4, PS4                            06/30/21        Complete    $14.00
Treasures of Montezuma, The    Nintendo DS, NDS                            06/30/21        Cart Only    $4.00
Jewel Link Chronicles: Mountains of Madness    Nintendo DS, NDS                            06/30/21        Cart Only    $4.00
Jewels of the Ages    Nintendo DS, NDS    City Interactive (CI Games)
Mendel Palace    NES    Hudson Soft    Game Freak                    06/30/21        Cart Only    $16.00
New Pokemon Snap    Nintendo Switch, NS    Nintendo                        06/30/21        Complete    $40.00
Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl Deluxe    Nintendo Switch, NS    Level 5                        06/30/21        New    $47.00
Game Builder Garage    Nintendo Switch, NS                    06/30/21        New    $30.00


... Given how much I have criticized the original I know buying New Pokemon Snap may seem really dumb, but... I don't know, I was interested and thought that it looked alright.  Plus, it does fix the first games' biggest problem, which was the extreme paucity of content; this one has a lot more to do.
As for the rest of it, the DS games are tile-matching puzzle games.  Light entertainment stuff.  On the other Switch games, Game Builder Garage is incredibly cool.  3D game development is hard and I'll never be any good at it, but it is a really interesting thing.  It's unbelievably stupid that Nintendo didn't put any way to download other projects without an external code, but still it's neat.  And Snack World is a decent action-RPG dungeon crawler.  It's nothing special but I am having some fun with it.


Then, a week and a half ago I bought a whole bunch of digital games for Nintendo platforms.  The Switch games and the 3DS game were all on sale but the Wii U ones were not.

Elli    Nintendo Switch, NS - DD (eShop)                            07/02/21    On Sale        $2.00
Cecconoid    Nintendo Switch, NS - DD (eShop)                            07/03/21    On Sale        $2.00
Bishoujo Battle Cyber Panic!    Nintendo Switch, NS - DD (eShop)                            07/04/21    On Sale        $4.00
Damascus Gear Operation Osaka    Nintendo Switch, NS - DD (eShop)                            07/04/21    On Sale        $2.50
Demon Crest [SNES Virtual Console]    Wii U - DD (eShop) (Virtual Console)                07/04/21            $8.00
Future Aero Racing S Ultra    Nintendo Switch, NS - DD (eShop)                            07/04/21    On Sale        $3.50
Jewel Match 3    Nintendo 3DS, 3DS - DD (eShop)                            07/04/21    On Sale        $3.50
Mini Motor Racing X    Nintendo Switch, NS - DD (eShop)                            07/04/21    On Sale        $1.15
Pushmo World    Wii U - DD (eShop)    Nintendo                        07/04/21            $10.00
Space Hunted    Wii U - DD (eShop)                            07/04/21            $3.00
Tiny Racer    Nintendo Switch, NS - DD (eShop)                            07/04/21    On Sale        $2.00
Twisted Fusion    Wii U - DD (eShop)                            07/04/21            $5.00
Soldier Blade [TG16 Virtual Console]    Wii U - DD (eShop) (Virtual Console)    07/05/21            $6.00

After that, I got a controller from ebay.  This is the actual remote for my CD-i player, which means I can finally use the media control buttons without having to get up and push buttons on the system itself if watching a CD-i movie or music on the thing!  Yes, you need to use the buttons on the player for play, pause, stop, and such, there is no on-screen display.  These buttons are only for movies and music and cannot be used in games, sadly.  It sure would be nice if they did work for added functions in games, but no.  I previously, last year or so I believe, got a Phillips remote and the remote reciever you need to use the Phillips remote on a system without built-in Phillips remote support, but the media buttons don't work thorugh that reciever, only the main two action buttons and stick.  So I got this to fix that problem.  And while not cheap it works great so I am not complaining.  You need either a DVS or LG remote for the DVS and LG model of the CD-i you see,t they use a different wireless signal than Phillips systems do.

DVS CD-i Remote    CD-i [LG/DVS models only]    DVS / LG            07/08/21    $71.10    works great        from ebay

The same day as that, after two months of waiting, an order I made on AtariAge over two months ago now FINALLY showed up.  That took a long time, but it was probably worht it.  I got three new games for old systems and one basically-a-repro.

Blaster - Atari 5200.  Cart and box, $40. (No manual is available.)  This is a cancelled game that was finished in 1984 but never released by Atari.  It's a port of the Williams arcade game of the same name, and is a rail shooter.  Amazing graphical display for the 5200!
Magical Fairy Force - Atari 5200. Complete. $50.  This is a new release.  It's a shooter inspired by Twinkle Star Sprites.  It's not as good as that game but is pretty fun, I was looking forward to this game quite a bit and I think overall it lives up to expectations.  It is more focused on multiplayer than single player, but is also a fun single player game at least with some of the characters.
Last Strike - Atari Jaguar.  Complete, $70.  This is another new release.  It's a shmup inspired by Scramble.  It's... alright.  Decent to maybe good once you get used to it.  Is it worth the money, I don't know, but I really wanted to have it anyway and have been playing it so... for me I guess?  It looks nice enough, though extremely Amiga-like and entirely 2d, and plays like Scramble with a mandatory rescue-the-people element added that is kind of annoying.
Ninjish Guy in Low-Rez World - $50, complete, Atari 2600.  This is a single-screen 2d platformer with pretty good controls and gameplay for the 2600.  I don't buy many homebrew 2600 games, but after seeing it I knew I had to get this one and it was worth it.