I struck gold at a yardsale! (for the gamers)

[BlueDevilJay]

I almost forgot to post about this but here it is. I went to a youth group yardsale this past Friday evening, browse through the stuff, and take a wild guess what I found??

An original Nintendo, with one controller, and about 16 games (more on those in a moment). Needless to say, I immediately asked them how much, and they said would $10 work? I ended up giving them $40 bucks as I wanted to make a donation to the youth group anyways (at my church) and I ran home with the system ecstatic! Obviously, it didn't work all that well but still had a power supply so I knew it could be fixed. Ordered a repair kit (with a new 72 pin connector) off a repair website on Fri night, got it yesterday, and was playing Super Mario 3 all evening yesterday evening. Even came with a tool to open old games so you can clean them as well. Felt kinda weird given that I have a PS3 with COD4, GTA4, and HD graphics and all, and here I was super excited about playing the old original NES.

Games included:
Mario Bros/Duck Hunt (I got the gun as well, have to put a new bulb in tho)
Mario 3
Dragon Warrior (My FAVE RPG of all time)
Rambo
Adventures of Bayou Billy
Skate or Die (another fave)

Several other games too but none were faves of mine. I also still have from the old days Blades of Steel, Ninja Gaiden, Tecmo Bowl so I plan on taking Edmonton to the cup tonight on BofS.

Any of the rest of you still classic game players? What are your faves? Would you have felt the way I did on Friday night when I saw the Nintendo laying there for sale? :)

[ugadevil]

My fiance beat Donky Kong for the Super NES over the weekend. I still love playing Ken Griffey Jr. baseball for the Super Nintendo.

[bjornolf]

little did I know you were so easily pleased. :p I still have my original intellivision, my NES, my SNES, my N64, and my gamecube with bunches of games for each. They all work fine. I pull one out every once in a while when I get nostalgic. Also, if you want to play original NES games, can't you buy them off the Wii network now?

As far as yardsales go, my golden find was a PS2 with two controllers and three games for $20. All I had to do was download instructions for how to clean it and then follow those instructions. It works great now. :)

[DukeDevil]

I had a similar deal. Got a nintendo, 2 controllers, the gun, plus a load of games for 15 bucks. The ones that sucked up my time were Tyson's punch out and super mario 1 and 3. Also Super Off Road. I need to find contra, and I feel that I'll have all my classics back in hand.

[wilson]

Contra, YES! Best game EVER. Also California Games and American Gladiators. And call me crazy, but I also really liked Mario 2 (I also like the others, but I'm not a vol. 2 hater like so many people seem to be).
And we can't forget Tetris. My fraternity at Duke had somewhat of an obsession with Tetris. We would host tournaments on the big screen in the commons room and bill it as social programming to meet university requirements.

[Cavlaw]

Nice pickup. My cousin asked for my system and a few games on the day of my wedding reception, so I couldn't refuse. He then had it stolen a few weeks later.

I still have about 60 games in my parent's basement that I'd be willing to part with if someone wants to cover shipping. Also have an N64, PS2, and Atari with a bunch of games and controllers.

[xenic]

I almost forgot to post about this but here it is. I went to a youth group yardsale this past Friday evening, browse through the stuff, and take a wild guess what I found??

An original Nintendo, with one controller, and about 16 games (more on those in a moment). Needless to say, I immediately asked them how much, and they said would $10 work? I ended up giving them $40 bucks as I wanted to make a donation to the youth group anyways (at my church) and I ran home with the system ecstatic! Obviously, it didn't work all that well but still had a power supply so I knew it could be fixed. Ordered a repair kit (with a new 72 pin connector) off a repair website on Fri night, got it yesterday, and was playing Super Mario 3 all evening yesterday evening. Even came with a tool to open old games so you can clean them as well. Felt kinda weird given that I have a PS3 with COD4, GTA4, and HD graphics and all, and here I was super excited about playing the old original NES.

Games included:
Mario Bros/Duck Hunt (I got the gun as well, have to put a new bulb in tho)
Mario 3
Dragon Warrior (My FAVE RPG of all time)
Rambo
Adventures of Bayou Billy
Skate or Die (another fave)

Several other games too but none were faves of mine. I also still have from the old days Blades of Steel, Ninja Gaiden, Tecmo Bowl so I plan on taking Edmonton to the cup tonight on BofS.

Any of the rest of you still classic game players? What are your faves? Would you have felt the way I did on Friday night when I saw the Nintendo laying there for sale? :)


I just gave mine away. I wish I had known you could get repair kits.

[DukeDevil]

Cavlaw...you have Contra? I'd be willing to pick up a bunch of your games depending on what you've got, happy to pick up shipping.

[Cavlaw]

Unless my cousin took them I had contra 1 and 2. I've gotten a couple of message from folks. I'll post a list of them when I get the chance and try to be somewhat fair about dishing them out.

[juise]

No collection of NES classics is complete without Tecmo Bowl... though Tecmo Super Bowl is a somewhat acceptable substitute. There's nothing like ripping through a defense with Bo, running past everyone with Sweetness, or picking off every throw that gets to the secondary with Ronny Lott.

I just took to the NES out of my living room after a two-year stay. My favorites include: Tecmo Bowl, Mario 3, Ninja Gaiden, Mario/Duck Hunt (I have the red gun, not as cool) and Super Dodgeball.

[billybreen]

No collection of NES classics is complete without Tecmo Bowl... though Tecmo Super Bowl is a somewhat acceptable substitute. There's nothing like ripping through a defense with Bo, running past everyone with Sweetness, or picking off every throw that gets to the secondary with Ronny Lott.

I just took to the NES out of my living room after a two-year stay. My favorites include: Tecmo Bowl, Mario 3, Ninja Gaiden, Mario/Duck Hunt (I have the red gun, not as cool) and Super Dodgeball.

Amen. Tecmo Bowl is the greatest. The Niners play where Rice runs a straight out route was always my favorite.

Screw Madden's complexity. Give me 4 plays. :)

[DukeDevil]

The Contras would make me very very happy.

[merry]

We still have our original working Atari console from the early 80s along with Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Ms Pac Man, Warlords, Super Breakout, Pong Sports, Space Invaders, Frogger...I think that's about it. My first ever Paypal purchase was a new set of pong-style contollers (can't recall the actual name for the non-joystick kind) bought on line a number of years ago. I'm amazed it's lasted so long.

[DevilAlumna]

We still have our original working Atari console from the early 80s along with Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Ms Pac Man, Warlords, Super Breakout, Pong Sports, Space Invaders, Frogger...I think that's about it. My first ever Paypal purchase was a new set of pong-style contollers (can't recall the actual name for the non-joystick kind) bought on line a number of years ago. I'm amazed it's lasted so long.

We called them "paddles," but not sure if that's the correct term. Super Breakout was my all-time favorite Atari 2600 game.

[prefan21]

Great NES games you might want to pick up:

Jackal (best 2 player game ever, tied with Contra)
Maniac Mansion
Bad News Baseball or Base Wars
Legend of Zelda
Battletoads (hardest game of all time)

... I want to play Jackal right now. I still remember the music.

[snowdenscold]

Cavlaw...you have Contra? I'd be willing to pick up a bunch of your games depending on what you've got, happy to pick up shipping.

Did someone say Contra??!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsNngmdPiCI

Seriously though - I absolutely love playing old console games, especially NES.
Legend of Zelda
Mario 1 and 3
Zelda II: Adventures of Link
Contra
Faxanadu
Dragon Warrior (1 and 4)
Final Fantasy
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
The Battle of Olympus
... all great games.

Now that I just heard you can get repair kits - I gotta go see about trying to fix up my old NES - although for most of those games I can now play on emulator. Still, there's something about holding that controller...

[jimbonelson]

baseball stars was the bomb:)

[BlueDevilJay]

Great, I figured this thread would get a little bit of interest. CavLaw, I would be greatly interested in some of your games as well, let me know what you have and I'd gladly pick up shipping.

For those wanting to know about the repair kit, the link to the site I used is shown below. The site had over 90 5 star reviews, so I ordered a total repair kit for $20, and fixed mine in about 45 minutes, runs perfectly now. You just have to make sure you have a power supply to the NES, that would require more detailed "fixing" I guess.

http://www.nintendorepairshop.com <---theres the link. I found a couple other sites as well, but they wanted $50 for me to send them the NES so they could repair it. That site lets you buy your own repair kit and fix it yourself. I never knew either until I did a yahoo search on Friday night and Voila! Its going to be kinda neat to have my 26 yr old cousin up to play some Contra, just like the old days :)

Now for my faves, I really want Contra bad but can't seem to find it either. I loved RBI Baseball and Baseball Simulator 1.000, had a blast creating me and my friends on there and taking away homers with the rocket jump :)


but I also really liked Mario 2 (I also like the others, but I'm not a vol. 2 hater like so many people seem to be).

I'm also partial to Mario 2 as well, as that was the one extra game my dad bought for me the night he got me my first ever NES, and I played that game ALL NIGHT the first night. I got up to 7-6 on Mario 3 last night after I got in from my softball game, using the first Warp flute of course.

I want to also get Zelda and I think that site sells it as well for like $6. Those games were really good games back then, and my childhood has totally came back to me the past few days.

Tecmo Bowl remains one of my favorites, and Super Tecmo Bowl sucked to me, couldn't stand it. Nothing beats the original.

Anyways, check that site out and if you order, let me know your experience with it. I have nothing but good things to say about them. (They are also located in Raleigh NC, got my kit in 2 days) Glad to see you guys share my love of the classic NES (I also have an Atari 2600 and 7800 that still run flawlessly for the record, but no Intellivision)

Edit:
Dragon Warrior (1 and 4) I LOVE Dragon Warrior 1, and got it with the NES the other night, but the battery is dead so I have to replace that before it will work. I remember a friend of mine in elementary school paying me $40 to build up his XP in that game. I ended up beating the dreaded "Knight" by accident while doing that, with two "Execeptional Hits" or whatever they were called, can't remember exactly now, but I cannot wait to get it back up and running.

[BlueDevilJay]

little did I know you were so easily pleased. :p I still have my original intellivision, my NES, my SNES, my N64, and my gamecube with bunches of games for each. They all work fine. I pull one out every once in a while when I get nostalgic. Also, if you want to play original NES games, can't you buy them off the Wii network now?

As far as yardsales go, my golden find was a PS2 with two controllers and three games for $20. All I had to do was download instructions for how to clean it and then follow those instructions. It works great now. :)

Yep, I'm pretty easily amused :) I had the SNES but traded it in at a gaming store while I was up at ASU, to buy the original PlayStation. Looking back I wish I'd have kept it, but oh well, Im still thrilled to have found the original again. You really can't put a price on reliving your youth :) AND I am teaching my 3 yr old how to play Mario Bros and so far she loves it.

[Channing]

2 or 3 years ago my brother found our old Nintendo in our basement. For some reason we had about 6 controllers.
(1) He took two of them (one for him, one for me) and cut off the plug cord.
(2) He then took 2 U-Nails (http://www.jmnails.com/Images/NAL12.jpg) that looked be roughly the right size, and
(3) hammered them into "screw holes" on the back of the controller (so that each nail went from the top of the controller to the bottom).
(4) He then went out and bought cloth belts (like the army kind) - just make sure that there is a buckle on one end and the other end has some sort of metal clip on the end.
(5) Take off the buckle, thread it through the back of the buckle and

Voila - you have yourself a Nintendo Controller belt buckle that will be the hit of any party (plus you can ask others if they want to "press your buttons)

[HaveFunExpectToWin]

Amen. Tecmo Bowl is the greatest. The Niners play where Rice runs a straight out route was always my favorite.

Screw Madden's complexity. Give me 4 plays. :)

And when the defense immediately sacks your QB or stuffs the rush, you get the the glee of yelling "I called your play!"

We spent a lot of time my junior year playing Super Tecmo Bowl. And this was in 1997.

[DevilAlumna]

http://www.nintendorepairshop.com <---theres the link. I found a couple other sites as well, but they wanted $50 for me to send them the NES so they could repair it. That site lets you buy your own repair kit and fix it yourself. I never knew either until I did a yahoo search on Friday night and Voila!

Yahoo! Search?? You *are* old-school. :D

[BlueDevilJay]

Yahoo! Search?? You *are* old-school. :D

Yeah I like to kick it old school. I didn't realize until the other day that I was now "uncool" because I don't use Google for everything :D I plan on getting home this evening and firing up the 386, logging into my Prodigy account and surfing the world wide web for a few.

[YmoBeThere]

Ah, Nintendo brings back memories of freshman year in the dorm...and too many hours playing and watching others play.

[colchar]

I almost forgot to post about this but here it is. I went to a youth group yardsale this past Friday evening, browse through the stuff, and take a wild guess what I found??

An original Nintendo, with one controller, and about 16 games (more on those in a moment). Needless to say, I immediately asked them how much, and they said would $10 work? I ended up giving them $40 bucks as I wanted to make a donation to the youth group anyways (at my church) and I ran home with the system ecstatic! Obviously, it didn't work all that well but still had a power supply so I knew it could be fixed. Ordered a repair kit (with a new 72 pin connector) off a repair website on Fri night, got it yesterday, and was playing Super Mario 3 all evening yesterday evening. Even came with a tool to open old games so you can clean them as well. Felt kinda weird given that I have a PS3 with COD4, GTA4, and HD graphics and all, and here I was super excited about playing the old original NES.

Games included:
Mario Bros/Duck Hunt (I got the gun as well, have to put a new bulb in tho)
Mario 3
Dragon Warrior (My FAVE RPG of all time)
Rambo
Adventures of Bayou Billy
Skate or Die (another fave)

Several other games too but none were faves of mine. I also still have from the old days Blades of Steel, Ninja Gaiden, Tecmo Bowl so I plan on taking Edmonton to the cup tonight on BofS.

Any of the rest of you still classic game players? What are your faves? Would you have felt the way I did on Friday night when I saw the Nintendo laying there for sale? :)

Remember the robot thing that you could buy with that? It was the one that was supposed to provide an opponent for some (maybe all) games. Well we still have one of those here in the basement. Too bad you're so far away or you coulda had it as it has been collecting dust for years.

Come to think of it, I should pull out the old Nintendo system and see if it still works.

And Excitebike was a great game.

[colchar]

although for most of those games I can now play on emulator.

I've gotta figure out how an emulator works so that I can play some old games.

[prefan21]

I've gotta figure out how an emulator works so that I can play some old games.

Fortunately, some computer brainiacs have done all the work for you.

Vitual NES (http://www.virtualnes.com/) is usually the best, but it's down right now.

So in the meantime, try this one (http://www.nintendo8.com/all/). It plays in your browser -- no programs necessary.

(Use your keyboard... X = A button, Z = B button, Enter = start, Ctrl = select.)

[snowdenscold]

I've gotta figure out how an emulator works so that I can play some old games.

There's a lot of emulators out there - just search for whatever people are recommending these days - a couple years ago I just grabbed a bunch (nesterJ, fceu, RockNESX).

Then all you have to do is find the various games - which usually come as a .zip or .nes file. Just load that up in the emulator, configure your key bindings, and you're good to go.

Due to fact that you'll probably be using your keyboard and not a controller - emulators work better for RPG's and other games that don't require lots of finger dexterity.

As a bonus, they also come with a save-state and load-state options, so if you screw something up, you can just immediately have it revert to where you last saved it on emulator - note this can be anywhere, anytime during the game. It's kind of cheating - but it can make some games go much much faster. Oh, and you can also sometimes set the game speeds to be faster, so if you're just walking around having to kill a million mobs in Dragon Warrior, it can go twice as fast - of course the music sounds funky :D

[colchar]

Fortunately, some computer brainiacs have done all the work for you.

Vitual NES (http://www.virtualnes.com/) is usually the best, but it's down right now.

So in the meantime, try this one (http://www.nintendo8.com/all/). It plays in your browser -- no programs necessary.

(Use your keyboard... X = A button, Z = B button, Enter = start, Ctrl = select.)


Ummm, normally I would say thank you but I just found Gyrus on that site so I'm officially going to flunk out of grad school now. Then again, maybe I should thank you...

[2535Miles]

Great find BlueDevilJay! I could play Dragon Warrior until my eyes fell out of my head.

My friends and I had a yard sale to raise money for Tsunami victims (we raised over $600 and the funds were matched by my girlfriend's father) and I sold my Sega Dreamcast along with a dozen other games for around $25. The next day my friend that purchased the system called to let me know he found one of the games selling on eBay between $100 - $180. The game; Panzer Dragoon Saga. Anyone else ever play this game? The game had an amazing soundtrack, stellar graphics, and combined RPG with a first-person shooter. I miss it.

[bjornolf]

You can/will be able to get tons of older games on the Wii Shopping Channel.

As for the old NES, my faves were Zelda, Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, and Ice Hockey. I also LOVED Speedball (called Klashball on the NES).

[Cavlaw]

I've had problems with the old NES games on wii ware now that I run my wii through a receiver before it gets to my TV. For some reason I can't get any picture.