Retro Game Talk & Appreciation

Anybody else play blinx the time Sweeper for the original Xbox? It was surprisingly fun for its time and not going to lie that final Boss Rush to beat the game makes demon souls and blood-borne look easy.

@animekid I did play a demo of it way back in the day. It was pretty fun, but I never bought the full game.

I liked the game. The strange thing is that it was something Yuji Naka made who was also the designer of Sonic the Hedgehog. Yuji Naka was contacted because Blinx was supposed to be the Xbox mascot and Microsoft wanted one. That didn't work out so well.

@arc My parents gave it to me as a gift when they gave me the Xbox. It is a pretty fun game but the final Boss Rush is murder. To get to the final boss you have to battle the four harder versions of the four bosses in the game with a ton of challenges like a small Arena that moves around with holes in it that you can fall in the lava or a floating arena with a similar setup but the arena is also ice so you can slip and slide off of it and the arena is gradually destroyed by the boss and a number of other difficulties and that's just to get to the final boss and the final boss can control time as well and uses things such as bombs so he can throw bombs all over the place and freeze you in time right next to one and you can't do anything but wait and watch the bomb go off and you have to be all four of those bosses just to get to the final boss to try and beat him all well following the one hit and you die rule and if you die you have to start the Boss Rush all over again even if you actually get to the final boss and you can't save in between bosses and come back and play it at a later time so it will take you about 30 minutes or so just to even get to the final guy if you're lucky. It's really insane.

Yeah I remember hearing that blinks was supposed to be the original Xbox mascot and that didn't turn out well. Blinks to didn't turn out well either. I don't think it was a good idea to go in a different direction the way they did with the second game. It had its upsides but overall it didn't quite feel the way the first one did.

https://apnews.com/article/legend-of-zelda-auction-video-games-0ba3a92a781dc79a1285cd7f748cbfed My mom was showing me this. While plausible I am still skeptical about the price. They said it was a limited run version during 1987 but that seems very vauge to me. Can someone elaborate?

The non-revised version of Legend of Zelda is quite rare. What happened was that it was basically a Beta-version of the US release. The actual amount of cartridges that made it to market is estimated to be around 500, real number is unknown. As far as my personal opinion on the price, total nonsense. There are variants of games and games themselves that are far more rare than that and do not command that kind of price.

Not to offend anyone, but PSA graders are poison to the retro gaming community. They just throw games on those vinyl plastic coffins just to bump the value of stuff to ludicrous prices, and also, most of them are anti-piracy people who believe that games shouldn't be preserved and refuse to dump the game they own even if the price won't fluctuate in the slightest. Real collectors do communitary efforts to buy a rare prototype on the internet and then they dump it on the net for everyone to play, games aren't just a collectable item, they also can be used to play, but this "collectors" don't understand that. And it's awesome to play stuff that wasn't meant to be played, of course this was apparently just like a "test" production model of a common game and those usually don't have that many changes, outside from maybe a different hardware and such but the game is mostly identical. Probably just a translation test with some mistakes on the US translation. Still, this should be dumped for everyone to use and preserve.

So first of all, to pay that amount for a 9.0 graded game blows my mind. Even if I was a millionaire, I'd never pay that $ for that game, and I love Zelda and collectables. However, as someone that's sold a 9.5 graded copy of the PS4 Gravity Rush Remastered for $250, who also has bought multiple CGC 9.8 graded comic books between $150 and $450, and Beckett 9.5 graded sports cards for $150, I'm on the side that completely understands the collector's aspect. We all look at collectables in different ways. Collectors like myself and others that salivate over a high grade comic or card... or game (tho not my thing, I only got GRR simply to sell) are in it to know that thing we love is certified in pristine condition, knowing we have zero intention or desire to use or open it. People pay millions of dollars on cars that just sit in their garages as a display because they cherish the vehicle and want it in pristine condition. These types of collectors are also a small demographic of fans/collectors. But it only takes 2 people to desire something for the value to escalate. The people that love comics and wanna stuff it in their backpack after reading it, that's cool af. You pay $4 for the comic and love it for what it is. Not my thing, but that's cool too. I'm not gonna buy a CGC 9.6 X-men #266 to read how Gambit is introduced to the team. I'd buy it to cherish and put on display for myself. The people that buy games to just play (such as myself) and then put the game on their shelf like a collection of movies, that's cool af. We're not spending more than retail cuz we just wanna play the game. If we wanna play Zelda, then we can buy a used copy on ebay for $15. That in no way means the people that collect games for a different reason and want sealed games that are graded are a detriment to the gaming community. Buying a protype/beta game and putting it online for everyone to play does not make you a "real" collector. It just means you did a philanthropic gesture.

It is understandable, after all I know some people who PSA stuff after having it shared with everyone, I still kinda dislike having a game PSA'd myself. A comic book or collectable card is understandable, after all the PSA method was created to grade cards from what I know. It's crazy to think that everything is being PSA'd as of now. While I do not think PSA'ing in itself is bad, I believe it should be limited to certain hobbies or stuff that can easily get affected for example TCG paraphernalia and stuff. I've once seen a PSA'd copy of a limited print of the Orichalcos Seal from YGO tcg that has the clause of "The soul of whichever duelist loses this duel is forfeit to the winner." And damn boy I've to say that's one of the worthiest things to PSA since they almost don't exist. Sometimes some people on the videogame collecting community even make false claims about the rarity of certain game just to make the price skyrocket and for people who just want to play the real thing on their consoles that usually sucks a lot because it becomes pretty expensive. Maybe PSA'ing stuff can be understandable but there's those who use PSA prices as a basis for pricing the game itself and thats when stuff gets out of hand. "Hagane" a SNES game that got hit by a rumor is really costly nowadays because someone said it was a "BlockBuster Rental Exclusive" while in fact its just another common game. Another common game that is unatainable by many unless you get it by the "Anyway you can" means, which is actually sad. Even if some people know it was a fake rumor the prices just won't drop. Thankfully this kind of stuff does not really happen that much in Japan where old games are mostly considered as "The cheap 100 yen thing that sits on a box outside the game store, waiting to be picked up." It's noticiably more cheaper to get stuff there, unless it is a known collectable thing like the gold MegaMan 4 cartridge, since the number of copies is known and the story behind it is known too. I sometimes collect myself when I have the chance to do so, the thing is that I've never really understood PSA'ing videogames. And by the way, sorry for offending anyone who buys/sells PSA without the intentions I mentioned.