Nice, that’s better than the prices I see on ebay.
Regardless, the GB/GBC/GBA library is amazing, and you’ll get quite a lot of gaming out of that little thing.
For me, between this, my 3DS and my Vita, I feel like I’m set for a while.
That’s awesome, the GBA is one of my favorite gaming devices, I’ve got an SP model like yours, different color. I still play it, there are some amazing games that are still huge fun to play. I don’t think they’re all that hard to find still either.
I was looking through a list and was reminded of what might be my other favorite game for the thing:
Car Battler Joe
An amazing racing RPG that got more time than Advanced Wars or Golden Sun or other more popular games.
Now to just track a copy down.
Car Battler Joe is a great game, think I have a copy around somewhere. Kind of weird how unique it is, you didn’t see a lot of games like it. Guess it’s most like the Metal Max games, just with cars instead of tanks.
One more thing - if you’re looking to build a collection, beware eBay. I can tell you from experience that there is a big counterfeit problem with GBA games and it’s easy to get scammed.
Are you willing to part with it? ;)
I’ll tell you what, you check around the usual suspects and if you can’t find a copy we can talk.
Oh I can find several copies, they’re just like, $50-60 or more.
Oh wow, are they used?
Yup!5
Oh damn, yes. The DS Lite. Oops. I’d totally blanked the original DS.
There was a time where I like to play old games, or games that I’ve played plenty of times but do not mind replaying. These are the comfort food of games. Same with movies and books. (How many times can you reread LotR? More times than you think.)
Now I force myself to move on, because nostalgia is a disease IMO. If I am stuck in the past I will never have time for new things. I may keep those jewel cases or big ass paper boxes, but I made a conscious decision to not replay old games/movies/books. Except when I am doing research (i.e. making something new by looking at old stuff).
Funny, I was considering rereading it only recently!
It’s rare for me to revisit anything unless it’s short or sufficiently different enough to the last time I played because aside from being very sensitive to repetitive play/content I just do not have time to repeat experiences. And to be honest, I worry that returning to old darlings might spoil them.
As a kid I adored and was obsessed with Dungeon Keeper but a game-breaking bug that I was never able to fix following posted patch disks and many phone calls to Bullfrog (“What’s ‘PKUNZIP’?”) stopped me playing prematurely. In recent years the release of KeeperFX allowed me to return to it and… the later levels just drove me mad (Tickle and Nevergrim). It was great to appreciate it all over again and a real nostalgia buzz but it did sour my impression of it somewhat. Still a fave but with tempered enthusiasm!
I think the same about Planescape: Torment which I finished (not so long back actually, around 2007) but I know I missed whole sections. Would I be so enamoured with it now? Do I want to spend the time to find out and risk that cherished memory?
I did replay the anniversary edition of Another World a few years back and that held up surprisingly well and felt way shorter than I remember it as a kid. The Secret of Monkey Island was as good as I remember, if not better because I’ve become a lot more critical of stupid solutions in adventure games ever since the disappointing Grim Fandango. I want to revisit Day of the Tentacle which is probably my favourite adventure game but I worry it will frustrate me like Grim.
So yeah, I tend to keep trucking ahead. There’s so much that’s new it seems crazy to keep going back to the same experiences. In the same breath however, I’m sure many games benefit immensely from repeat plays and deep diving. You can’t pick up on everything in one go.
I have been having a good time revisiting Ultima Online the past few months and find that I rarely even look for new releases or newer games to play now. I keep up with Gems of War weekly and the guild events they run and just finished up a Dominions 5 game, so there isn’t much time for anything else.
I am also finding that I would much rather do other things lately than gaming, which I thought would never happen to me.
That’s a good looking GBA SP! I loved that color. I still have that and Torchic Orange. The GBA library is excellent and filled with some great SNES ports as well. The triumvirate of Castlevania games on there are superb and Aria of Sorrow may be the best Metroid-styled one of the series.
I just started playing Donkey Kong (‘94) on Game Boy again on the Super Game Boy 2. That one truly stands the test of time. For those that have never played it, just get it and go in blind. It’s awesome and surprising.
Yeah, I’m very happy with it, especially since its red matches my 3DS, coincidentally.
Wait, what?
Bogus carts, dude. I’ve been burned a couple times.
Well crap, I just bought Mario Tennis on eBay. I really hope it’s real. How can one tell?
In most cases I’ve seen, it’s been fairly obvious. Unless counterfeiters have gotten more sophisticated, which is possible. But Nintendo games also usually have a kind of SKU number on them, if I recall correctly, and you can use it to verify. Also google pictures of the case and make sure yours looks the same, like the sticker and logo and everything.
You absolutely need to be aware of counterfeit carts on eBay, especially of the more expensive games, but GBA is really cheap to do so they are legion. You should be able to tell. Vet the sellers carefully by looking at feedback. You should be especially wary of anyone with negatives of any kind and always check those replies to see if it was because of a fake.
I buy a lot of retro games on eBay (and locally) and it is a problem, but you can pretty easily avoid getting taken. Use Google as @divedivedive says to make sure you know what it is that the cart looks like exactly.
Wasn’t sure where else to put this, but I just picked up the recently released Bard’s Tale Trilogy update/revision/release. Holy cow does it bring back memories. I spent so many hours on this in high school. The new version has a LOT of QoL updates like automapping. Even with them the dungeon maps are getting crazy on like the 3rd and 4th one. I have no idea how little 12-13 year old me managed this without help from the internet, but somehow I did eventually beat it. It’s still pretty addictive, the main gameplay loop does a good job of hitting those Pavlovian notes that make you feel like you’re getting more and more powerful. A lot of modern CRPGs have no idea how to create as interesting a feedback loop.