3 Scoops in ‘Loops
My kids are out of school for Spring Break and so my wife and I decided to take a trip a few cities over to hit up some thrift shops and game stores yesterday. Being too close to their respective schools to take the bus and too far to walk it falls on us to taxi them to and from each school day. For this reason, it is quite a challenge to plan a day trip anywhere on my two days off. Spring break afforded the perfect opportunity for us to make such a journey as my oldest was able to stay home and babysit. The trip to Kamloops is about 2.5 hours by car so we were longer in transit than actually shopping but it was well worth the drive!
The first game store stop for me was The Funny Pages. The store specializes in comic books, vinyl and of course retro games. The owner is a very enthusiastic, young at heart, guy named Dave who loves swapping game stories and tidbits. He’s all too happy to lay out a blanket on his glass display case and move the 4 or so wooden crates of loose NES carts onto it for easy viewing.
In addition to loose games, he showed me several boxed games as well as one that even had a strategy guide included. Very seldom did strategy guides come out in the NES era so to find one bundled with a CiB game is a rarity in and of itself. After spending about 10 or 15 minutes looking over everything I decided on a loose cart and a boxed game: Solitaire by American Video Entertainment and Silent Assault by Color Dreams (complete).
These games lean towards the uncommon end of the library due in large part to the fact that they are both unlicensed games with Solitaire being the slightly rarer of the two. I always laugh at the fact that my collector app lists things on a rarity scale of 12 instead of 10 but Solitaire is listed as a 9/12.
The second game-related stop we made was at All A-Board Games which specializes more on dice and board games but still has a section of retro games and consoles available. Here I found the highlight of the trip: Casino Kid 2 by Sofel.
Though not listed with as high a rarity as Solitaire it is higher in value and makes the top 12 of my list (edging out Princess Tomato). The game itself is in mint condition and makes a fine addition to my collection. This game is also a milestone of sorts as it is the 600th Licensed game in my collection. For those collectors who are going for a complete Licensed NTSC (North American) set, this is a benchmark. With the few omissions that myself and others have made in the collection of released games, this means that there are about 77 games remaining for a complete series. Here is my score to date:
Licensed games: 600/677
Unlicensed games: 62/90
Reproduction carts: 1
Manuals: 201
Boxes: 89
CiB games: 58
Total games: 662
