Find of the Week (1/6/13 - 1/12/13)

Pokémon Monopoly: Collector's Edition
(with pewter figurines)

Value: $30-40

Actual Cost: $5.00

Here's another steal of a deal I found! This time it's a board game. This edition of Monopoly goes regularly for $40 complete on eBay but is sometimes found for as low as $30. I found it at Goodwill for $5. The store also had Pokémon Sorry, but I'm not going to stoop that low.

Say what you will about Monopoly, but this is probably the most interesting version. I mean, who wouldn't love to purchase Pokémon as properties! Pokémon theming aside, this game also has rules for special powers use (optionally) after rolling doubles. For instance, if you roll double 6's, you can choose to battle another trainer in a roll of the dice over ownership of one of their properties!

Probably my favorite thing about Pokémon Monopoly is that Nidoqueen and Nidoking are the replacements for Park Place and Boardwalk! That's just too cool!

Find of the Week (12/30/12 - 1/5/13)

The Ripper (1985) VHS

Value: $4 on Amazon.com

Actual Cost: $0.50

Ok, this isn't a super good find in terms of value-to-actual-cost ratio. The reason it's the find of the week is because it's another shot-on-tape horror movie (and I didn't buy anything else valuable this week)! I'm lucking out this month! Shot-on-tape, or shot-on-video, is my favorite subgenre, if you can call it that, of horror.

How does The Ripper fare compared to other SOV horror? I don't know. It's not exactly renowned for being good or anything. We'll see when I watch it. I'm excited to see how it turns out. I am a fan of the starring actor Tom Savini. I loved his remake of Night of the Living Dead, preferring it to anything ever made by George Romero. On the other hand, I am not a fan of horror movies that follow the life of the killer. (When A Stranger Calls is the exception because that film was genius.)

Maybe I'll start a shot-on-tape horror review feature. I own a few others on bootleg DVD, so it could be interesting. I'll watch it soon and let you know what I think.

Find of the Week (12/16/12 - 12/22/12)

R.E.M. - Reckoning (Vinyl)

Value: $5, online

Actual Cost: $1

I went out shopping for comics with one of my best pals, Sean, and picked up the new Haunted Horror #2. (Haunted Horror is a great comic, by the way!) Above the comic shop sits a small record shop. After we were done with comics, we checked out the vinyl.

I picked up a few things, but none of the others were cheaper than I would expect to pay online. REM's   Reckoning does sell online for $5 + shipping on discogs.com, so I suppose this is the best find of my week. I would guess that you can get it for $1 at other record stores. My copy is beat up, too, so it's probably only worth a dollar. Either way, I didn't go shopping much this week.

The vinyl is ok, but does skip on the first track on side B. I won't do a full album review. (Not yet, at least. I'm trying to stay away from music on this blog for now.) I will say that Reckoning is some good jangle pop. It's a little same-y, but that shouldn't deter you if you're into the subgenre.

Vinyl is really cheap nowadays, so check your local store to see if they have a copy of this.

Find of the Week (12/9/12 - 12/15/12)

X-Com: UFO Defense (PSX)

Value: $70 on eBay for incomplete copy

Actual Cost: $5

This find is what prompted me to document my great finds. This one was found at my favorite local flea market. My buddy Benny was playing my copy of XCOM: Enemy Unknown for the Playstation 3 (great game, by the way) and made casual mention that they had the Playstation port of the original at some game store he visited recently. After bugging him for more details, he remembered it was at a video game booth at the flea market, hidden away in a stack of games in generic paper sleeves.

It was a Sunday, and the flea market wouldn't be open again until Wednesday. I waited, a bit nervously, I admit, and drove there the first moment I could. We found the game right away. It was much to my surprise that the game was priced at $5! Normally this booth eBay checks games it knows to be rare. Luckily this Playstation gem slipped through the cracks.

My copy is incomplete, unfortunately, but I'm so elated that I don't even mind. The original X-Com: UFO Defense ranks in my top 10 games of all time (right behind it's sequel, Terror From the Deep, actually). I had kind of resigned myself to the thought of never being able to play. I surely wasn't about to pay $70 for a port of a game I could play on the PC for free. Still, it's one of my favorites, so I am elated to now own it for the Playstation.

How does the port hold up? It's pretty awesome. It's not quite as fast as playing in DOSBox. It has load times when going to the battlescape screens. The controls are quite clunky at first. It uses up one whole memory card. But, the gameplay is all there. The loading times encourage me to play "ironman"style with no reloads to try and avoid losing fallen soldiers. The controls get easier over time. I have all my Playstation saves backed up onto my PS2 hard drive. It even exceeds the original in one area, the soundtrack. Overall, it's quite awesome.

I am playing on Genius difficulty, and it's quite brutal in the early stages of the game. I may have to go back down to Veteran difficulty, because I can't beat the first month's terror mission for the life of me. That's something I don't want to do. I'll probably stick through with it for a few more tries. I want this to be a hardcore experience.

Surely, that's only fitting for a hardcore game find!

Find of the Week (12/2/12 - 12/8/12)

I shop a lot. Often times I look for old VHS tapes/laserdiscs, video games, board games, etc. I have a few establishments I frequent, from thrift stores to flea markets to retro game stores (some of which give me discounts regularly).

Last week, I stopped by the top local thrift store for board gaming, Value World. I did manage to find a couple of board games, which I picked up (Nab-It and Beyond Balderdash). Having gone over their room of hundreds of games and puzzles, I decided to check out the VHS section. I've been doing a weekly tape-watching event with friends, so more tapes is always a good thing.

Usually Value World has a lackluster offering of VHS tapes compared to, say, St. Vincent DePaul. At first I found Hercules and the Amazon Women and not much else. Then something else caught my eye. In the middle of a stack of tapes, I spotted . . .

Boarding House (1982) VHS

Value: $28 on Amazon.com

Actual Cost: $0.50

Boardinghouse is considered the first shot-on-video horror film. I'm a huge fan of SOV horror movies such as Sledgehammer, Black Devil Doll From Hell, etc. Boardinghouse is a particularly important find for me because a.) it's not available to download from any major torrent site I've checked in the past two years, and b.) the VHS goes for $28 on Amazon (the DVD is a whopping $70 at this point). I couldn't contain my excitement. I think I let out a squeal, to be honest. I snatched it up as soon as I could, just in case some smelly old lady decided to stroll up behind me and steal it in my stupor.

I haven't watched it yet, but when I do, expect a full review!