Rayne wrote:Phantasy Star 0 is a bloody fantastic game mate, it's got 3 seperate story lines (for each of the races Human, Newman & CAST) excellent combat taken from PSO, it's easily the best PSO game I've ever played. Online rocks too
. Haven't seen it in stores as often as I used too, I'd say it's well worth the price.
Kira Kira is hilarious fun, really pink and umm...well, yeah. Pink. Nowhere near worth 20 euros though, CEX have about 80 used copies for £3 each.
Might have to pick up Fire Emblem then
though I'll see if I can get it cheaper first!
All these "used" Kira Kiras then I've been seeing.... they've all been in great nick... maybe the publisher thought it was going to be a bit more popular, and they've not sold and been written off. I will get it some day, but if its common as that I'm not shelling out 20 notes on it!
Thanks for the info regarding Phantasy Star anyway Rayne, I'll pick it up shortly, though I can't see myself playing it anytime soon as I have a shelf-load of DS games to get through first (though perhaps I'll allow it to skip the queue if its as good as you say!).
Anyway, regarding good old Fire Emblem DS.... Its a special game to me as it inspired my DS collecting buzz. I suppose I've been looking to collect for
something recently, having formed a very tidy collection of Neo Geo AES games last year. I wanted more of those, but was I really willing to keep shelling out hundreds on games that I already had on other formats? Well I wasn't - I didn't mind doing it for a while on games that I couldn't get elsewhere, and Neo Geo games are incredible, so having a nice collection of them is great, but I feel that to continue with it, buying stuff that at that point in the collection just wasn't really wasn't necessary was a bit of a waste. I will return to it someday though and collect a few more every once in a while... but really looking at what I now have, I really can't see any glaring gaps in the AES collection that can be filled for a resonable price right now.
As some of you know I toyed with the idea of creating a Sega collection earlier in the year. I finally got round to getting a lovely white import Saturn from Japan in February, and got some incredible games for it.... after playing them all and looking at what else there was for it.... well I decided that I didn't need anymore shooters for a while after having been satisfied with DoDonPachi, Layer Section and Soukyugurentai. The language barrier meant that a lot of other games for it were off-limits. The weakening Euro wasn't helping the prices of games for me either. I felt that again, shelling out loads on Saturn games that I didn't feel the immediate need to have was a bit of a waste. However, there are some games for the machine I do want still, mainly shooters, but the hunger to have them just isn't there, and the budget just cannot stretch to round up the likes of Battle Garegga and the mighty Silvergun at the moment. Again I decided to wait.
I then toyed with the idea of trying to collect a bit more Dreamcast games. I bought a load of PAL games, and pretty much bought up everything I wanted. That was cool, but I just wasn't 100% focused on continuing with DC games. I suppose, once again, it was an itch I had scratched. It was just a case of going onto eBay and just clicking on what I wanted. It just wasn't exciting enough. My Dreamcast collection, like the Saturn and Neo's, was thus in lovely shape and didn't need much more added to it I felt.
I then decided to try and find a fix to my bollocksed Mega Drive. I thought I'd begin looking into collecting for that. Now no offence to the system and it fans, but I've never taken to the machine. I dunno, it just never really appealed to me, and my Mega Drive when it was working, was hardly ever on. I thought I really should give it the attention it deserves clearly, because of course it is popular for a reason, but I dunno... I just didn't have the inclination to research it. I toyed with the idea of getting a PAL 32X because I've always been interested in that system, but lets be honest, it would cost quite a bit to get it and some really good games, and I just decided to leave it. A very expensive novelty it would have been.... onto "the list of future things to do" then..... It just didn't need the attention as it wasn't essential.
I also toyed with the idea of getting Sega's Mega CD system, but again, resources are scarce for us students, and boy is that system pricey! Wouldn't know where to start with that! Looked at the PC Engine as well, and its CD accessories and what have you.. again
far too expensive for me right now.
Anyway, our very learned friend C-Style here was talking a lot about Nintendo, and got me thinking about how much I used to love thme back in the day.... Instead of buying yet more hardware, wouldn't it not be a good idea to collect for one of the systems I had already, that I hadn't looked at in a while? Wouldn't collecting up a few Nintendo games not be a bad idea? I had bought a load of Sega stuff in recent times after all, so perhaps going back to an old Nintendo system and collecting for that would be a good idea? I looked at the NES, my first ever system, and a machine in which I haven't had a new game for in nearly 20 years! Looked on eBay at complete games for it and found very little interesting there. N64 and Gamecube are both systems on which I already have well rounded collections for, so looking into those again in a big way wasn't really doing it for me - they are systems in which I intend to buy the odd game for to supplement already well developed collections, but getting stuck back into colecting for systems I had given five years attention to was something that I felt just wasn't a new enough initiative. The obvious choice was then the SNES, which Imissed back in the day, but it really didn't take off as I have a lot of SNES games on other formats, so I looked at handhelds.... Again I have an entensive collection of GBC and GBA games, so no point in going there - I wanted something kinda new and interesting that I hadn't looked at before in any great way. Neo Geo Pocket collecting was considered, but I couldn't find one new for a reasonable price on eBay. Then one day on YouTube I watched this vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qESU6SWlg0w
THe big man himself! Firstly, I didn't even know my beloved Fire Emblem series had come to the European DS, second, the fact that the DS was becoming collectable was of note, as it was a system I have neglected for a while having bought one years ago, and I suppose a little bit of panic hit me - I suppose it was a system I had taken for granted, and expected it to be there forever. I felt I had really neglected it and knew of all the great games for it - and I knew I had missed a lot of them if they were no becomming collectable. So with that information, I decided to go on the lookout for DS games, and was pretty shocked to find that a lot of them just weren't available anywhere. For example, a lot of you know of my recent hunt for Fire Emblem, Peach and Yoshi. But anyway, as a format, the DS right now makes for a supreme system to collect for:
Games don't get damaged in shops' drawers as they aren't discs - meaning you can buy unsealed "new" games with confidence at retail
You can still get a significant amount of games in the wild easily enough (though of course many are out of print), unlike SNES, Saturn, Dreamcast, etc
You can naturally still get new releases for it
You can get great prices on "sale" games
The packaging is very nice
It has hundreds of great games
Loads of third-party support
Lots of rare titles on there
The games themselves are often superb to play
Its import friendly because its region free, and
Its a 2D powerhouse!
Its got some really nice Nintendo games on it too. Old school, core Nintendo games like Advance Wars, Zelda, Mario Kart, etc. There's loads of reasons to get into DS guys, and with what is probably my longest ever internet forum post, I very much encourage everyone reading this to give it another look if yoy haven't already
I bounced from SNES > NES > Gameboy > Mega Drive > Dreamcast > Saturn > Xbox > Gamecube before finally settling with PS2 
DS games just aren't as delicate in the same way, so its great in that regard.