GRcade Retro Gaming Chat

[kerr9000]

Grabbed a few little bits today.

Sonic the Hedgehog for Megadrive cart only £1
Sonic the Hedgehog for Megadrive complete for £3
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for Megadrive American not for resale cart only £2
Global Gladiators for Megadrive cart only for £2
Fantasia boxed no manual for Megadrive for £4
Sonic SpinBall boxed no manual for Megadrive for £4
Tomb Raider 2 for PS1 complete for £3.50

Thrillvile for PS2 boxed complete for 50p
They Came From The skies for PS2 boxed complete for 50p
Battle construction vehicles for PS2 boxed missing manual for 50p

Nothing that's going to set the world on fire but wanted to do some last minute charity shop and pawn shop shopping before we lockdown again, also got a few modern things while there Mario kart 7 for 3ds complete for £10, UFC 3 complete for Xbox one for £7, Rocket League complete for Xbox one for £4 , most of it was from a big Banardos charity shop.

[Green Gecko]

Does anyone know if Sonic 2 PAL cart will actually run at 60fps properly on an NTSC system?

I think the Megadrive just does this internally and it's literally just a switch mod, and only some carts have region-only locks.

Just something I thought about because Sonic 2 NTSC otherwise is worth £2 just to play the game at a faster speed, although I've never really been that bothered by PAL speeds honestly.

[kerr9000]

Does anyone know if Sonic 2 PAL cart will actually run at 60fps properly on an NTSC system?

I think the Megadrive just does this internally and it's literally just a switch mod, and only some carts have region-only locks.

Just something I thought about because Sonic 2 NTSC otherwise is worth £2 just to play the game at a faster speed, although I've never really been that bothered by PAL speeds honestly.

I think most pal games get pushed into 60hz easy enough, I'm sure sonic 2 pal would do so fine. A lot of pal games if you shove them in a Jap Megadrive will even come up with there Jap name if they have a different name etc streets of rage will show up on a Jap Megadrive as Bare Knuckle.... Short story I buy rubbish I probably shouldn't lol

[Green Gecko]

Yeah a lot of the carts include both ROMs and just switch by "asking" the console what region it is, but not all of them are like that.

[Cheeky Devlin]

I just tried out my PAL Sonic 2 cart on my modded Mega Drive.

In 50hz PAL mode it runs nice and quick as well, perfectly playable and if it wasn't for the squished gameplay window I might not otherwise notice.

In 60hz US mode it runs full screen and seems to run just a little touch faster, but not too much.

I think in this case Sonic 2 was fairly well optimised for PAL systems, unlike original PAL Sonic 1 which I find utterly unplayable these days.

My guess is the cart can read the region it is playing on and adjusts its speed accordingly. If it didn't I would expect a game that has been optimised for PAL to run far too fast on an NTSC system as it's been tweaked for the lower refresh. (I've seen this with cheap famiclones before)

EDIT: So yes a PAL Sonic 2 cart will be perfectly playable on an NTSC Mega Drive (I think).

[Green Gecko]

Interesting because I'm thinking of picking up and multi region modding a Japanese MD when I go over. My bro also sent some pictures over where I happened to catch him on FB messenger while shopping for weird controllers (he mods them into MIDI music controllers), including an N64 fishing rod. Saw a pic of a Satrn and wonder what they go for over there, might be a less ridiculous price for some of the games too if you buy domestically rather than paying inflated online prices... I'll need to do my research into which games are playable in Japanese language if they didn't include a translated ROM on the same cart (like Streets of Rage for example).

Yeah Sonic 2 PAL is fine in my opinion, I have the (really damn good) M2 port on 3DS which is better but never have issues going back to it on my PAL MD model 1.

The thing with the squashed borders and image, I never really notice this honestly, most MD games run full screen on my PVM? I think it's because it has an overscan function so it fills the screen whatever game it is.. Certainly a nice feature to have. The same set also supports NTSC or PAL I believe.

I recently checked the small Sony PVMs (mine is just 9") on eBay and strawberry floating hell are sellers cottoning onto it now, some are going for £150 or thereabouts. I only paid about £60.

[Cheeky Devlin]

Interesting because I'm thinking of picking up and multi region modding a Japanese MD when I go over. My bro also sent some pictures over where I happened to catch him on FB messenger while shopping for weird controllers (he mods them into MIDI music controllers), including an N64 fishing rod. Saw a pic of a Satrn and wonder what they go for over there, might be a less ridiculous price for some of the games too if you buy domestically rather than paying inflated online prices... I'll need to do my research into which games are playable in Japanese language if they didn't include a translated ROM on the same cart (like Streets of Rage for example).

Yeah Sonic 2 PAL is fine in my opinion, I have the (really damn good) M2 port on 3DS which is better but never have issues going back to it on my PAL MD model 1.

The thing with the squashed borders and image, I never really notice this honestly, most MD games run full screen on my PVM? I think it's because it has an overscan function so it fills the screen whatever game it is.. Certainly a nice feature to have. The same set also supports NTSC or PAL I believe.

I recently checked the small Sony PVMs (mine is just 9") on eBay and strawberry floating hell are sellers cottoning onto it now, some are going for £150 or thereabouts. I only paid about £60.

Yeah the sellers know there's a market for PVMs now. They're all listed as "Retro gaming monitors" and gooseberry fool like that with increased prices, even the gooseberry fool ones.

[kerr9000]

I got a few PSP and DS bits today from charity shops, this is the last of it for who knows how long I guess.

I got Cooking Mama world hobbies and fun, Warioware DIY, Spiderman 2, Nintendogs Labrador and friends, splinter cell chaos theory all boxed complete for DS for 7.50 in total

And Wiepout pure, Secret agent clank and Little Big Planet (Platinum version) all complete for 4.50

I also grabbed a loose cart of Chess Master for the GBA for 1.50

[OrangeRKN]

LBP PSP is an interesting game because it makes a really good attempt at bringing the game to handheld but is almost completely hamstrung by technical limitations. The Vita game is undoubtedly better but still not as good as the home console games so somehow ends up being more forgettable.

Question to all those with retro collections, what's your approach to it with contents insurance? It's one of the things I get anxious about with all my games.

[kerr9000]

LBP PSP is an interesting game because it makes a really good attempt at bringing the game to handheld but is almost completely hamstrung by technical limitations. The Vita game is undoubtedly better but still not as good as the home console games so somehow ends up being more forgettable.

Question to all those with retro collections, what's your approach to it with contents insurance? It's one of the things I get anxious about with all my games.

Keep 95% of it at my dads house which is locked up like fort knocks and pray to gods I don't believe in that nothing ever happens is my plan I guess lol (my dad does pay house insurance and I do contribute to it but I don't really think about it) .....Most of my retro buying and owning is done to keep me sane and fight my PTSD and autistic traits not to have some kind of nest egg so even if it exploded tomorrow it will have served a purpose I guess...

[Green Gecko]

My retro collection is literally down as "plan z" in my business plan as well, it's a small nest egg that I can sell off in the worst possible circumstances, it would probably come down to either that or my fixed assets in the business (machinery etc) but I could not really say which would go first... Probably the business before my beloved games!!

And yes I need contents insurance, you can easily cover this by having "unspecified contents" up to a fixed amount, it can be anything and then you add specific items to your policy on top of that e.g. TV, guitar. But I also need cover for partial business use, at the moment I am only aware Admiral does this but it's a specific package, I really need to sort it out... Co-op dumped us on contents insurance because my partner accidentally told them I own machinery which they then deemed "heavy industry" (which sounds like something out of metal gear solid ) and chucked us off the policy which worked fine for us for years, plus for a long time she got a staff discount that they forgot to take off when she stopped working there.

I own CCTV though, it's totally self-maintaining in that it will rewrite over old recordings, it includes a hard disk Linux based recording box, I need to just dump it in front of the front door in case anyone drilled thru it or someone I don't know well enough walked out with something; which is a real danger (be very careful with parties etc as people our age group know about these things and stuff has gone "missing") as insurance will not cover people you allow into your property, it has to be forced entry.

[Corazon de Leon]

LBP PSP is an interesting game because it makes a really good attempt at bringing the game to handheld but is almost completely hamstrung by technical limitations. The Vita game is undoubtedly better but still not as good as the home console games so somehow ends up being more forgettable.

Question to all those with retro collections, what's your approach to it with contents insurance? It's one of the things I get anxious about with all my games.

I work in home insurance. Generally you only need to add it to the insurance where there's a single item over your valuables limit(so for me that's £1,500). If the collection is valued at higher than, say, £20,000 then I'd maybe get it checked out. Other than that, you probably don't need to add any cover.

[jawa]

...Question to all those with retro collections, what's your approach to it with contents insurance? It's one of the things I get anxious about with all my games.

I work in home insurance. Generally you only need to add it to the insurance where there's a single item over your valuables limit(so for me that's £1,500). If the collection is valued at higher than, say, £20,000 then I'd maybe get it checked out. Other than that, you probably don't need to add any cover.

It's a good question from Orange and handy to see your response, Cora. I have a large videogame collection and the last time I spoke to my insurance company (maybe five years ago) they said a similar thing; albeit they also made me feel like a total weirdo for having such a collection .

It could also be a good idea to photograph your collection using your mobile phone, though; just as some form of evidence of the stuff you have. I haven't really done this but will do so!

[OrangeRKN]

It's not going to be anywhere near 20k obviously but I reckon the cost to replace my game collection is definitely in the thousands when you consider the handful of games like Path of Radiance that quickly push it up. I guess the worry is with games like that specifically where I'd say "I bought this in a charity shop years ago but it will cost me £150 to replace it" and the response will be "nah".

[Green Gecko]

I found co-op pretty good with those claims. I bought a graphics tablet as part of a deal for about £300 but they weren't selling it anymore, essentially redundant hardware with the accessories, and there was no equivalent, so they paid for the upgraded newer version plus a cash settlement for the difference which worked out over £100 more than the original value. I ended up spending it on rent

Basically if you can demonstrate the thing exists and it is worth X amount they should cover it, I guess it's similar with jewellery although that sort of thing probably needs appraisal due to the prevalence of fake gold and non-sterling silver etc.

Might be pretty easy to get insurance to replace a fake cart tho

[jawa]

...I guess the worry is with games like that specifically where I'd say "I bought this in a charity shop years ago but it will cost me £150 to replace it" and the response will be "nah".

Yeah, I wonder that too, Orange. If I were to rock up and say "Hey, I had two complete copies of Bangai-o for the Japanese Nintendo 64", I'm kinda unsure if they'd pay me out around £300 to replace them.

[Corazon de Leon]

It's not going to be anywhere near 20k obviously but I reckon the cost to replace my game collection is definitely in the thousands when you consider the handful of games like Path of Radiance that quickly push it up. I guess the worry is with games like that specifically where I'd say "I bought this in a charity shop years ago but it will cost me £150 to replace it" and the response will be "nah".

What the company does in a claim situation is essentially google the price of each item and check places like eBay, CEX etc, so make sure you've got pictures of everything you own and keep these updated quite regularly. I'm at one of the big insurers and we recognise that things change in value, especially stuff like this, so I wouldn't worry too hard about being strawberry floated off. And if they make you feel bad or ashamed for owning stuff, raise a complaint. That's not on.

[Ironhide]

It's not going to be anywhere near 20k obviously

Mine, before I sold a lot of it was probably knocking on 6 or seven grand and I didn't have anything truly rare or valuable.

I just hoarded every game I ever bought between the age of 9 and 29 (quite literally)

[Corazon de Leon]

Mine is currently worth about £7k and I've got a huge horde of N64/Cube games.

[kerr9000]

I would have no idea what mine is worth. I have decent stuff like Punisher for the megadrive, and streets of rage 3, fire emblem for the cube and wii, the last story limited edition, a lot of rpg's for the PSP, AVP for the Jag none of which are worth loads but it all adds up I guess etc never really stopped to think about it that much.

I got something I am happy about in the post today Captain America and the Avengers cart only for the Megadrive for 5quid including postage.