Retro Megabit

This is the second time I’ve been to the Video Game Collector Community (VGCC) Game Swap. The first time myself and Nintendo Joe rented a table and we sold some of our extra games and systems. You can read about those VGCC highlights here. This time around we just went as pure (and giddy) shoppers.

Nintendo Joe has also blogged about his VGCC experience over at MyNintendoDimension.

Nintendo Joe and I brought a box and backpack each full of stuff to trade. I always prefer trading vs. spending my hard earned money but trading can be hard to pull off. Specially when you’re The SegaDude. I’ve started to realize that this event is very NES and SNES heavy. That’s not a bad thing but the selection of Sega Master System and Sega Genesis games was much less by comparison.

We were at the event for about five hours and it’s wasn’t until closer the end that I scored most of these new and glorious Sega additions.

First up is a very exciting find for me. Ever since I discovered Mystical Fighter for the Japanese Mega Drive (called Maou Renjishi) I have always wanted the Genesis version. And it’s not often you’ll come across it. Even better I was able to trade for it! I traded a boxed copy of Phantasy Star for the Sega Mark III (no map) for the Mystical Fighter shown below. With this same vendor I also traded Steel Empire for the Genesis for a boxed NEO GEO Pocket puzzle game called Crush Roller.

My new Mystical Fighter is complete and in Excellent Condition. I love it.

Mystical Fighter

Mystical Fighter Gameplay by the Sega Dude

Mystical Fighter is an isometric (Golden Axe style) fighting game and it’s a good game. Not amazing but good. Games like Golden Axe and Streets of Rage have it beat on every count but it’s still a worth while entry. And even though the game will recycle a lot of sprites and send identical but different colored enemies at you the graphics are still good and there is still enough variety in the character designs.

Occasionally I would pick-up and throw an enemy and I was never quite sure how I did it. But it still helped make the combat feel more interesting despite being pretty simplistic. The level design although a little plain still looks good enough and in some stages the environment can be used to hurl enemies off cliffs into some unknown abyss! Of course the same can happen to you but I liked seeing this. It reminded me a lot of Golden Axe where I use the environment to my advantage a lot. I also tried to take advantage of this in the video clip above but you can see it sometimes got the best of me.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms III

ROTTK3 Gameplay by the Sega Dude

I have a bunch of Japanese strategy/Sim games that I knew I could never play because of the language barrier. So I was curious to try out Romance of the Three Kingdoms III in English. I started the game and I knew right away that I was in way over my head. It is very complex.

There are tons of tasks you can perform and in my very short time playing it I never really understood anything. I just did the best I could to make different things happen for the sake of the above gameplay video. Even still, there isn’t much to show off. It could be a great game but I’d have to spend a lot more time with it to find out. I suspect that for those who like this style game it was great in its day. But I bet it hasn’t aged well.

Next up is Earnest Evans! Check out that cover! Looks like it might be a cool Indiana Jones brawler. So far so good. Power up the game and you get a brief but decent looking into. Then the game starts and that’s were it falls down… flat… on it’s face. The Rag Doll Earnest character is ugly and the added complexity of getting him to crouch or go prone feels completely unnecessary. Even the animation of his whip attack is ugly. This combined with plain graphics and uninspired enemies leaves us with a really weak game.

Earnest Evans

Earnest Evans Gameplay by the Sega Dude

Caliber 50 is actually the first game of these four that I tried out when I got them home. While playing it I was sure it was going to be the worst of the bunch. Unfortunately it’s not good and despite this it’s still better than Romance of the Three Kingdoms III and Earnest Evans.

Caliber 50

Caliber 50 Gameplay by the Sega Dude

Any game (and there are a few) that require you to turn your character clockwise or counter clockwise by holding down the A button and then the C button for the opposite direction is going to feel awkward right from the start. It takes a good while to get use to this and if the game itself is a bit flat it’s really hard to justify the effort.

Sometimes it was dificult to get my guy to face the right direction, he felt too slow to really be able to dodge all of the incoming fire and sometime I didn’t even know where on the map I was suppose to go.

Forgotten Worlds has the same control scheme but it’s just so nice looking and fun that I never felt put out when trying to deal with controlling my character. Although Forgotten Worlds is too easy to beat.

But despite all my complaints about three of my four new additions they do look pretty and I’ll enjoy putting them on the shelf with the others 🙂

Another tiny incentive for me regarding these new additions is when I first started this blog I had almost exactly the same number of Japanese Mega Drives games as Genesis games. But over the years the Mega Drive count took a big lead. Mostly because they were cheaper and easier to find. Even though they shipped all the way from Japan! So now, slowly, I’ll see if I can bring the count closer together and restore balance to the force and all that jazz.

Before this post I had 160 Genesis games to 194 Japanese Mega Drive games. And now that’s 164 Genesis games to 194 Japanese Mega Drive games. YAY!
Just 30 more Genesis games to go! That’s about 18% more Genesis titles required to catch up to my Japanese Mega Drive count! And knowing me I’ll find some Mega drive games that I wont be able to pass up along the way before I get my next 34 Genesis titles.

Nice New Genesis Additions for the Collection

Earnest Evan (Excellent Condition), Romance of the Three Kingdoms III (Excellent Condition) and Caliber 50 (Good Condition) cost me $55 together. At just over $18 each I’m very happy with them… even though I don’t like them. That makes sense, right?

Below is what I feel was the best find of the day. A complete boxed Japanese Sega Mega Drive. Which is in excellent condition!

Japanese Mega Drive

Asian Region Packaging

I’ve always wanted a Japanese Mega Drive but because of shipping it was always just too expensive. Specially considering the fact that I have many Sega Genesis consoles kicking around.

Box Opened

Mega Drive Close Up

When I bought this Mega Drive I was sure it was the Japanese version. It had to be, right?

Later I went online to double check and I found the video below from Ian. So I realized that my packaging is definitely what was used for the Asian markets but not Japan. I kept watching and I started to realize that despite the Asian market packaging everything else about this Mega Drive console was exactly to specification of the original Japanese model.

My beautiful Mega Drive is Model # HAA-2510,  it has writing on the left and right side of the power LED, the word Trigger is written above the A B C buttons and the button letters are Red not black and the system has the cartridge lock that engages when you power on the system. This Mega Drive also plays with no slow downs on my NTSC Television. I tested it with Sonic 1 and 2. So it’s not PAL and it is running at 60 Hz.

To be honest I’m not 100% why this model is more sought after. I don’t know why an Asian market Mega Drive that runs at 60 Hz wouldn’t be just as good. I’ve read a few comments that people believe the audio is better on the HAA-2510 but I don’t know any details.

This Mega Drive cost me $65 with no shipping or anything else to deal with so I feel like it was a great deal. I’m really happy with it.