Last week the family took a holiday before the kids went back to school and we drove down the Oregon coast as south as Florence, OR and then came back up a little more inland through Salem, Portland, Seattle and Everett. With the numerous stops along the way came many opportunities for thrifting, antiquing and stopping at the many retro game stores that dot the states of Washington and Oregon.
I struggled with writing this entry as I was also working on one that delved deeper into detail about the various places and landmarks and so some of the highlights might be hazy here.
On the first leg of our journey we stayed in the famed Astoria area of Oregon which was the setting for the movie The Goonies. While there we went through the Oregon Film Museum and I saw the display of Goonies video games (including Goonies 2 for the NES). One of the activities gave patrons a chance to make a short movie using props and sets from movies that were filmed in the area. After filming you had the opportunity to email the finished movies to yourself in an editing room. I suppose in the excitement of seeing all of these artifacts I totally missed the VS. Goonies Nintendo cabinet in the room as we walked in.
Thank goodness someone pointed it out to me or I would’ve missed a cool photo op. Unfortunately the machine was not plugged in but it was still nice to see. This stop was about the only retro game related point of interest on this day.
The first 4 or 5 days were spent taking in all of the sights, sounds and smells of the Oregon Coast. We drove from Astoria to Seaside to Newport to Florence (and many small beaches and stops in between). During this time we visited the famed Sea Lion Caves, Ripley’s Believe it or Not, Cannon Beach and drove past the lighthouse made famous in the movie The Ring.
On Friday we visited CD*Gamexchange in Portland and there I picked up the game manual for Paperboy. Saturday was spent visiting garage sales in the Gresham area and we picked up a Ms. Pac-man mug from one such sale. We also managed to get to a Good Will bin location (or “the Bins” as some call it). It was essentially a facility where the donations have not been sorted and are just dumped into huge gray bins for people to dig through. The caveat here is while you are rifling through heaps of unknowns and mangled messes of wires you may encounter things you wish you hadn’t. You can tell the regulars there by their latex gloves and paint shirts. It was an experience to be sure and really gave you a cross section of humanity. People were almost coming to blows while waiting for new bins to be rolled out. I heard a few of the workers yell at people to stay in line or face being removed from the building.
This was also the day I made my trek to visit a newly opened store in Miwaukie, Oregon named Side Quest Games. Here I scored a pretty nice lot of manuals (22 in all) as well as my first PAL region game (Konami Hyper Soccer) which also came with its manual. I also picked up a guide to Zelda: Twilight Princess for Ashton here (as if there are any secrets left in that game for him to discover). The store owner, Josh, is someone I’ve followed on social media for a bit so I was aware of the store recently coming into being. While there we talked a bit about collecting and the like and he showed me a couple of really cool things you don’t see every day. First is a WATA graded Caltron 6-in-1 complete in box game and the other was 2 sealed boxes of the SEI version of Impossible Mission 2. Each box contained 6 sealed versions of the game. It was really neat to see artifacts like this up close and even though he threw a pretty nice deal my way on the sealed box of impossible mission games I had to pass. I would’ve been tempted to open it up and I imagine that would’ve lost a fair amount of the value of such a rare find.
Sunday we visited Video Game Wizards in Portland. It was quite novel to find a game store open on a Sunday. My only fix at home would be our flea market but it is usually dried up in terms of retro game finds. At VGW I bought Ashton Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the WiiU and while we were waiting to pay I noticed a fresh lot of NES games behind the counter waiting to be re-priced. A blue one stuck out and I asked what it was. It was a clean copy of P’radikus Conflict and the price tag on it was obviously not up to date (as it was way cheaper than what it is going for lately). They gave it to me for the reduced price so it was a nice score!
This would’ve satisfied me (and my Nintendo appetite) already, but as the sun started to set we made our way from Oregon into Washington and raced for Redmond and the site of Nintendo of America’s headquarters. Reaching the building just before the last lights of day, I was able to capture some awesome picture and footage of the sign in the parking lot as well as some interior shots of the building through the glass doors and windows. On one of the upper floors the silhouette of Donkey Kong can be seen. It looks like Kong is putting in some overtime trying to figure out how to keep Mario from rescuing Pauline. The lights inside were brilliant blues, reds and greens and they look really striking in the pictures. It is a shame that tours are no longer open to the public but I am really glad that we arrived on a Sunday as the parking lot was empty and we had the place all to ourselves.
The next day (ironically a Monday) we picked up a mini Q*bert arcade machine at a store called Tuesday Morning in Lynnwood. Tuesday morning came and we visited the Funko headquarters in Everett Washington. Though we didn’t see any game related Funkos (we have Pac-man and Ms. Pac-man) we found almost every other Funko known to man. We dropped a good amount of dollars in that store and rounded out our collection very nicely. I think the highlights for me are the newly acquired Wayne and Garth Funkos from Wayne’s World, a Slimer one from Ghostbusters and probably Space Kook from Scooby Doo. There were so many awesome displays including life-sized Chewbacca, Luke, and Darth Vader Funkos as well as a batcave complete with the Batmobile, Batman and Robin.
Before we headed home I walked from the Funko building around the block to Next Level Games and picked up another lot of manuals (11 in all). I realized after we got back that I visited that store a few years back when we last went on vacation to Washington. The highlight of that visit was the Nightmare on Elm St complete in box I bought there.
When we returned home I had a few packages waiting for me including the games: Chubby Cherub and Krion Conquest from a Facebook group as well as some doubles I got from Lukie Games with my points. In all I got 4 new games and 35 new game manuals. Very successful trip in terms of rest, relaxation and retro goodness.
PAL Format games: 1 (Konami Hyper Soccer)
Flashcarts: 1 (Everdrive)
Reproduction carts: 2 (Sweet Home & NWC 1990)
Licensed compilation carts: 1 (Data East Collection)
Unlicensed multicarts: 3 (31-in-1, Action 52 & Maxi 15)
Nintendo Power Magazines: 19
Blackbox Games 29/30 (missing Stack up)