I recently got a white Sega Saturn and some games, including Bomberman, Panzer Dragoon, and Grandia, all of which are quite fun from what I've played of them so far. I like the controller's buttons' satisfying click, too, though it's a bit too easy to tap a shoulder button by accident.

Something weird about Grandia is that it plays FMVs in 480i mode, despite the actual video still being at half-resolution. Not sure why they wouldn't just keep outputting 240p like other games. On the subject of Saturn FMVs, to my eyes they're usually even more compressed and noisy than PS1 FMVs, but they often play back at a noticeably higher framerate than I've seen from any PS1 title. Neat tradeoff.

The Saturn occasionally outputs 480i, often on title screens for some reason.

Yeah, it's the same on the PS1. Lot of in-game menus are that way too. What I hadn't seen before Grandia is 480i mode for content that only has 240 horizontal lines of resolution in the source picture. Maybe someone working on the game had something against static scanlines and wanted it to look more like "video," even if the image's low resolution made interlacing unnecessary for showing full detail.

I had a cool find over the weekend. A Commodore 1702 monitor for $5. Working but I need to degauss it. It's no pvm in terms of picture quality of course but it has charm and is certainly better than random tvs of that era.

Been enjoying garage sale season again. Video game stuff is mostly dry but a very fun and fruitful two weekends regardless.

Where can I pre-order Oscar Fighter 2?! So long as its individually numbered and strictly limited edition of course.

Yesterday I had these games arrive. DS complete, GBA all cart only.

Dragon Quest IV
Dragon Quest V
Dragon Quest IX

Castlevania Circle of the Moon
Castlevania Double Pack
Donkey Kong Country 3
Final Fantasy 1&2 Dawn of Souls
Final Fantasy 4 Advance
Super Mario Advance 2
Super Mario Advance 3
Super Mario Advance 4

Really enjoying DQIV. Got a little over an hour in so far.

Unfortunately I can't get DK3 to work. Some of the other GBA carts required cleaning but ultimately worked. This one I cleaned a few times and it's freezing right after the Gameboy logo comes up every time. Tried on 4 systems.

If I had a GBA game that didn’t work and I had never personally seen the box/manual for it I’d assume it was boot. There are a TON of pirate GBA games. Even I have one! Some Kirby thing…I also have a clear red copy of Mother 3 in English (obviously boot as hell) that I bought mainly because my flash card died and I wanted to go through it in English again.

It's definitely authentic. I opened it up to look. But always good to mention as bootleg carts are rampant.

https://twitter.com/BShark5/status/1521146714987581441

"Upgraded" some games in my collection to CIB, still just cart/box for Chrono Trigger, added some more DS games etc Some of the boxes are not the best but the price was excellent, and I did about half of it via trade to boot.

I've never bothered looking for SNES games in-box at all, much less complete. Just too big a difference in price for me.

Yeah I definitely get that. My current 13 SNES games (mostly all complete) tag at 2781.04 on pricecharting which is an absurd average. One that I am fine with cart only is Super Mario World. That has to be one of the bigger gaps percentage wise. It's something I would have needed to grab pre-2019 but I actually wasn't super into SNES for a long time. I'd just kind of buy stuff when I felt like playing it and then sell it to recoup (directed at no one just cutting it off since people love to bring it up but spare me emulation talk). I ended up selling off almost all my ps4 games and just buying them digitally on pc so I'm taking things in a direction I enjoy more.

Right now I'm focusing on DS, this was just a great deal all around.

I bought two CIB NES games within past six months and I absolutely sucked at both of them so maybe not being able to afford retro games is a blessing.

Or maybe being bad at them is the blessing, I dunno. I pretty much didn't look back after I got into PC first person shooters way back. CIB PC games are probably way more affordable anyway.

I mostly stick to rpgs, lol. Though I can beat most and have beat the old Castlevanias, Ninja Gaidens etc...

Besides discs, I really avoid getting DS, Vita, Switch etc loose. Way too easy for me to misplace.

Some more modern stuff arrived today. Though Momodora and Mad World are definitely more older in their style/gameplay.

So uh, then yen is way down which means yaj auction time.

Very jealous of that SaGa DS. Hoping we get a new SaGa game soon. Remasters are nice, but Kawazu isn't getting any younger.

It was cheap, considering it's a limited edition. $28 before shipping. Classic Japanese sellers too that both listed as damaged/dirty. While the FF one had a couple marks on the shell itself, the screens were in immaculate condition and everything was in perfect working order on both. There was another I wanted to get but it was bid up to 40000 yen. My max on that was 25000. Another of the same unit has come up and I will bid but I do not expect to win.

I paid more recently (compared to the two I won) for US DSis that ended up being in horrid condition. Had to get refunds. Ended up combining both to make one acceptable working system... By the end I was $30 in with a working DSi but it wasn't worth the headache.

I like most of the SaGa games but couldn't get into the first Frontier.