tumes

I didn't really expect to like or not like What Remains of Edith Finch -- Mostly my expectations were just super tempered because Unfinished Swan felt like a entry from a particular era of indie game that had a really nice core but was kind of hamstrung by the limitations of tools being ok but not great and indie games generally being on the come up. Finch, however, is a game I still think about at least once every few weeks. Not necessarily perfectly fun or perfectly executed the whole way through, but it has stuck and probably will stick with me for a very long time.

Categorically Pac Man CE DX 2. I have never been so mad at a game for squandering so much good will.

@htr10: Thank you! I've been on a real run of random internet research bullshit kick this weekend (for example, I just found someone on reddit whose grandpa probably worked with my grandpa on the US' only air-to-air nuclear test detonation in Nevada in 1957 because I posted an unreleased nuclear detonation photo that my grandpa was awarded because he coordinated the test), and it has been non-stop absurd coincidences. The internet can be a freaking incredible place when it's not awful.

Anyway, thanks for the kind words. For the last 5+ years I've been slowly amassing information about a automated phone line that had interactive games that I used a lot when I was a kid in Colorado Springs in the 1990s. I've tracked down the folks who worked on it, but haven't had any luck finding anyone with archival recordings, if such a thing even exists. Knowing that at least one person shows a passing interest in my garbage ramblings makes me feel like my weird propensity for diving in to obscure stuff over long periods of time might result in something interesting.

Ha, thanks @htr10!

@CastroCasper By find this, I assume you're referring to this thread? Short version: It came up in google while I was researching stuff. But who'd be satisfied with the short version?! I warn you, I slept like garbage last night because my kid has a double ear infection, so this will probably be rambley and of precisely zero interest to anyone but myself, so buckle up.

Last weekend I dropped into a different retro game store (Game Fortress in Arvada. It's pretty good, but nowhere near Level 7's... level) and picked up a cheap Super Game Boy and Gamecube Game Boy Player because they caught my eye and I didn't have either. They didn't have any boot discs for the Game Boy Player, so once I got home I started poking around google looking for a used one.

In the course of finding the boot disc, I ran into a couple articles about Nintendo peripheral rarities and refreshed myself on the weirder/more valuable ones. I had heard of the Wide Boy 64, but it didn't really stand out. On Friday it popped into my head and I thought I'd take a look on eBay to see if anyone was selling them since I like to get a sense for what really rare stuff goes for. By sheer coincidence there was a listing for one, and I noticed that it was here in town. I also noticed that the product photos were taken at a retail location, so I set about figuring out where it was since the seller didn't list their business name (though their username on eBay is gameoncroc5, which very vaguely rang a bell since I had only visited Level 7 when it was called Game On). After calling around, I finally put two and two together and realized that the store was still around, it just changed names and I lost track of it in the intervening years.

Anyway, in the process of figuring that all out, I was googling around seeing if the original news reports from the opening were still around, and was trying to figure out when they changed their name. Must've been early on, since this thread is 7 years old and the store is 9 years old. Kotaku wrote an article similar to Engaget's which specifically mentions that there was another store called Game On in Denver and not to confuse the two. I imagine there was some kerfuffle about that locally, hence the name change. So yeah, while looking that stuff up I had noticed that ya'll were showing some love for the store on GB and thought I'd drop a little more info.

Hopefully the info didn't come off as too much of a bummer. Dude obviously has lots to be proud of since he made a successful career path and business out of a rough spot in his life. Remarkably, this is not the only time Level 7 popped up in the local news. They've had a few robberies, the most notable of which involved the owner himself chasing the robber down, putting him in a headlock, and subduing him till the cops came: http://kdvr.com/2014/12/09/store-owner-battle-thief-who-tried-to-steal-video-game-system/. Regardless, it did my heart a lot of good to see how well the store has done in the 9 years since I last visited.

If I ever won the lotto and suddenly had excess time and money, I'd definitely roam the land telling the stories of these independent game stores. If I recall correctly the Video Game Exchange down in Colorado Springs was involved in an ATF raid for gun running or something way back when. Unfortunately I can no longer find the news article about that, but I did find this story where the owner and an employee vandalized a competing store and made a pretty fucking creepy threat in their statement: http://daily.gazette.com/Olive/APA/TheGazette/SharedView.Article.aspx?href=THEGAZETTE%2F1998%2F03%2F28&id=Ar01800&sk=83F80FCE&viewMode=text. Tragically, the store is also infamous because one of their employees got beaten to death during a robbery in 2006.

Alright, that's enough rambling. Sorry for the wall of text, but it was a fascinating process getting to this thread. Super glad we have an amazing local chain of game stores here in the Denver Metro area. I highly recommend dropping by one of their locations and asking about what ultra rare shit they have in the back room if you're still local. When I dropped by this weekend, they had the Wide Boy 64, the complete in box copy of Earthbound (one of two that they have in stock), an FM Towns Marty, a game for the FM Towns Marty that is way rarer and more valuable than the system itself, and a really rare limited edition Sega Saturn that was only sold in Toys R Us stores in Japan. I can't believe that this sort of stuff is somehow making its way to Denver, but I'm glad it has.

P.S. In the process of researching that Video Game Exchange stuff, I randomly ran into a blog post about/the Facebook page of my favorite Game Crazy employee from the location that was close to my house when I was a teenager down in Colorado Springs. This has been a weekend of preposterously unlikely coincidences and internet sleuthing.

This thread is really old, but it’s lovely to see folks being so positive about the store. It actually has a pretty remarkable story behind it. The owner, who was raised by a single mother, opened the store in her honor after she passed away at the age of 35. He was just 18, and he stocked the store with games from his personal collection that he and his mother played together. I remember seeing news about the store opening up, and my partner and I visited during the grand opening. I remember that he put an emphasis on stocking rarer games, like Earthbound.

I’m happy to report that I visited the store this weekend (One of three locations!!!), and true to his word, they had a boxed copy of Earthbound for sale. It’s a sad story, but I am overjoyed to see that the store has become a real success, and I was flabbergasted by some of the rarities they had for sale (For example, they just got a Wide Boy 64, and exceedingly rare dev/press unit that plays gameboy games on the N64).

Sadly 9News has since deleted their original coverage, but this Engadget article has a pretty good summary of their opening (the store used to be called Game On): https://www.engadget.com/2009/06/19/denver-gamer-builds-game-store-in-memory-of-his-mother/

I haven't listened to the Bombcast yet, but it's good to hear that some other folks might have the same gripes about the game that I do. I've played CE and DX a fair amount casually, and watched untold hours of it passively (my partner plays DX competitively), and I'm frankly baffled by the positive reaction to the game in a lot of reviews.

CE and DX made a lot of subtle and brilliant design decision to churn out a damn near perfect take on a formula no one had expected to shake up. CE 2 is overly complex, disorienting, and the map design and character placement after ghost trains and jump pads almost always puts you in a position to utterly arrest your momentum. Almost every design decision feels inelegant, poorly considered, and tacked on. I'm gonna give it another hour or so of play to give it a fair shake, but so far it's been a real disappointment.

@clagnaught: Thank you so much for the link, that's some grade A awesome stuff!

I can't recommend spending time abroad strongly enough, especially in Tokyo if it clicks for you. Now I will describe a bunch of personal info then word vomit enthusiastically about Japan...

My parents were divorced, so while they both wanted to take my places (both military brats, so they grew up abroad), they divorce was bitter enough that they could never agree on terms for travel. As such, I never _really_ traveled until I was 18. But man the bug bit me from that point. My wife and I have visited Hawaii, Ireland (to scatter my mother's ashes), Paris (To recover from the ash scattering), London, Iceland, Tokyo, S. Korea, Singapore and Indonesia, as well as several main land states. If you are lucky enough to have the means to travel, it's super important to a more whole, empathetic worldview, at least in my opinion,

Make no mistake, I'm aware of my many blessings. Luckily my wife is a teacher and gets the summer off, and I work remotely, so this is a working trip, but not a trip for work. I somehow conned my wife into visiting Tokyo for our honeymoon in 2009 (Real talk: a nontrivial part of my motivation was buying old game systems), and luckily she fell in love with the city as hard as I had. The whole world is a wonderful place, but there's something special about Tokyo. I always like to think that if I were to settle somewhere foreign that it'd be Tokyo if I was below 40-50 and Paris if I was a bit older. They're just so alive, cultured, and crazy, but in much different ways.

Honestly, in the last 7 years, as long as you try your best and are very polite, it has gotten quite a bit easier to get around on very limited Japanese in the city. Probably inevitable as the younger generation grows older, for better or worse. Still, what a place. When you get to return, be sure to find time for the museums and monuments in Hiroshima. It is a wonderful and sobering experience. Last summer we visited while the citizens were (exceptionally peacefully) protesting against Abe for possibly allying with America in military actions, and it was a profound experience to visit Hiroshima in that context, and to generally get a better understanding of the perspective there. Quite a contrast to visiting Seoul, since for many obvious reasons there's a significantly different cultural context and set of interactions there.

Anyway, I've been wordy enough, and I'm preaching to the choir. Feel free to bug me when you get the chance to visit again, I'm always happy to talk about great places to visit.

@thephantomnaut: Awesome, thank you! I will be staying in Hongdae, so that's perfect! Hopefully they don't mind if a complete scrub tries a machine ?

@clagnaught: I always love hearing about Japan since it's my favorite place in the world. If you end up finishing your blog post I'd love to see it!

I did almost exactly this same trip last year. This time we're splitting it up a bit. Since we have a rail pass for 2 weeks instead of 1, we're staying at a cheaper place that some friends own in Ikebukuro for the first two weeks so we can save a little money. Plus the place is palatial by Japanese standards and Ikebukuro is fun like Shinjuku light.

After that we're going back to the place we stayed at least year which is right in the middle of things in Shibuya (We'll be a bit further north than the Book Off. Really close to the park.). That area in particular is great because the underground Mandrake is NUUUUUTS and the best crepe place is nearby (Pirate Crepe... You may disagree, but I'd have to assume that you've never been there ?). Plus lots of arcades with good claw machines, which we got, frankly, addicted to last trip. We won so much shit that we had to check a bag, which we _never_ do.

Hopefully you get the chance to go again. I agree, there's nothing like being there long term. We're on top of a couple of izakaya (Ottoko and Onnadojo Izakaya, staffed mostly by men and women respectively... God I love Japan), and every day we could here them psyching themselves up to be excellent. We were also next to a 7-11 that had literally almost everything we needed for day to day living (Including 7-11 wine). We were also close to a Yamazaki combini, which was great because my wife is _obsessed_ with Yamazaki pocket sandwiches, which, if you have never had one, friend, you haven't lived. I can not wait to go back.

Hey fellow bombers. I'm heading for my 5th trip to Tokyo this summer for six weeks, and I'd love to get some recommendations for more obscure gaming stuff I have not hit yet. I'm also taking a week long stop in Seoul/Busan if anyone knows what's good there. I've only been to S. Korea once, and I didn't look for any gaming stuff, so I'm super open.

With regard to Tokyo, I'm a big fan of retro games and arcades. Some of the stuff I _have_ done:

• Retro gaming bars (Mostly in Shinjuku)
• Famous stores (Super Potato, Akihabara, a few spots in Osaka around Den Den Town)
• The retro arcade in Takadanobaba
• A bunch of contemporary arcades
• Second hand stores (Mandrake, Hard Off, etc.)

I'll be based in Tokyo (Ikebukuro and Shibuya). I'll also have a rail pass for two weeks, and I'll be hitting Osaka, Kyoto, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, and some as yet undecided other spots, so recommendations there are welcome. If ya'll want some pictures of anything specific, I'll try to get them as long as they allow photography.

Thanks!