Sunday, April 25, 2010

Let's Play! ChuLip 16

It's episode 16 of our Let's Wait! series.
Watch Let's Play! ChuLip - Episode 16 in Tech & Gaming  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Let's Play! ChuLip 15

Yeah, it's our 15th anniversary special... and it's more of the same crap
Watch Let's Play! ChuLip - Episode 15 in Tech & Gaming  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Let's Play! ChuLip 14

It's more of dat ChuLip.
Watch Let's Play! ChuLip - Episode 14 in Tech & Gaming  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Sunday, April 11, 2010

What would you do with $31,600.00?


Apparently, if you're a serious collector, you'd purchase the ultra-rare Atari 2600 game, "Air Raid," complete with box. You can check out the story and the thousands of comments about it over at Atari Age. Being the weirdo that I am, loving crazy video game news, I just had to follow this auction as soon as I saw it was on ebay. It came to a close last night with a final price of $31,600.00. I remember watching the auction in the last few minutes. When there was 1 minute left, it was at about $14,700.00. I jokingly called out to high-paying bidders as I said to my computer, "C'mon guys! You can do better! I bet you can even hit $15,000.00!" Needless to say, I was blown away when the final results came in. I once again have to say... $31,600.00! I began to think about what you could buy for that amount of money. I mean hell, I could get... 31,600 boxes of Jujyfruits! That, or... of course... any number of far less stupid things than candy. Here I am, thinking, "Am I REALLY willing to spend $50 for The Misadventures of Tron Bonne?" Then I see an auction like this and am reminded of the "rare" games just out of my price range (Earthbound, The Misadventures of Tron Bonne, & Wild Guns to name a few). They're not even in the same league as the truly rare games. Generally speaking, I would consider myself a collector of video games, but in the grander scheme of things, I guess I'm not.

Okay, sure, it was a lot of money, but what's the point of this post? THAT IT WAS A LOT OF MONEY. I'm pretty sure all of my games combined don't add up to that kind of value. Let's pretend I have 30 games for every system I own, which I don't. Let's pretend I paid $50 for every one of those games, which is a gross overestimate, as likely more than half of my entire collection was purchased at far cheaper prices. It gets complicated, but we'll say including various handhelds of old, and the systems that I only have a few games for, I've got a total of 16 consoles. 30 games for each of the 16 consoles, every game priced at $50. That's likely a serious overestimate, and it STILL ends up as $24,000, which is more than $7,000 less than this one rare cartridge! Holy crap.

I guess what it all comes down to is perspective. Just recently I was whining about the high price of Earthbound carts to Ridah Kick when he put things into perspective for me. "60 bucks for a 30 hour amazing RPG? or the next 8 hour shooter?" That's what he said, word for word, and he poses a damn good point. So what if it's old? If it's an excellent game, why is a game suddenly "not worth that much" because it's old? That's when it hit me. I'm less hesitant when the game means something to me or is a really good game. A year or so ago, I finally caved and bought one of my favorite games I always played at a friend's house, Secret of Mana, for about $30. Days later, the game came out on the Wii's VC priced at a cool, affordable $8. Though I found it ironic, I wasn't disappointed, because I love Secret of Mana. That's the kind of collecting I understand. Games to play. Admittedly, The Misadventures of Tron Bonne wouldn't be nearly as good as some of those other classics, but I assure you I would play it. Air Raid on the other hand? Okay, if you want the definitive Atari 2600 collection, I guess you'd need it, but yikes. The game doesn't even play that well, though admittedly, it's pretty sweet to boot up an atari emulator and say to yourself, "HAH! I'm playing a $31,600 game!." Then after about 2 minutes, if you're anything like me, you say, "Okay, where's my $6 Journey to Silius cartridge?"

Let's Play! ChuLip 12

A.K.A. Let's Play! Purgatory 12.
Watch Let's Play! ChuLip - Episode 12 in Tech & Gaming  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com