Dreamcast Road trip!

Yeah so yesterday I decided to take the 2 hour round trip down to Syracuse to scope out some Dreamcast stuff. It was interesting.

First off I went to Hiawatha video near the Carousel Mall. I wasn't expecting much since I tried to call ahead to see what they had about 20 times the day before I went. I was dissapointed. Not because of a lack of video games though.

First off from the outside the place looked like a crack house. When you go inside you realise that it might actually BE a crack house. I half expected there to be a sign that said "please do not go into the back room because we are selling drugs and illegal handguns there" or maybe "windows are for pussies" (There were no windows in the place)

Dusty rooms filled hapzardly with shelves of movies and video games. Which would be totally awesome but they are all OUTRAGEOUSLY PRICED. And while there was ALOT of stuff almost none of it was rare or in any kind of good condition.

And the dreamcast stuff was lacking and high priced.
A $1.99 (amazon Price) 3rd party controller in box for 14.99???? A shitty looking dreamcast for $100.00?

So I did buy one dreamcast game (The others were all common games being sold for like $20) Industry Spy. It looked cool and I had never seen it before. Please do not ask what I paid for it. Too much. Thats all I am saying.

I tried to use my skills to talk down the price but the (manager?) old biker looking dude would have none of it. Normally I can easily talk down the price for ANYTHING but that was one grizzled old leather clad shitheel who did not want to haggle. He obvousely wanted to get back to buying stolen electronics from crackheads and didn't have the time for the likes of me. (He also managed to limit his side of the conversion to like five words)

All in all I got the feeling that the store was probably just a front. The extraordinary high priced and the multiple computers running in a side room led me to believe that that this store is nothing but a front to sell stolen stuff online (or other shit in the back room). Plus the other "customers" looked like a lineup off the sexual offender registry.

Needless to say I will not be going back there. If you are ever in Syracuse, save yourself some trouble and do not go there. (Unless you want to unload some hot Merch)



The NEXT place I visited was much better. The Game Craze store on Erie Blvd in Syracuse made my trip. NICE store. All the stuff is well organized into glass cases. Very nice. LOTS of stuff for ALL video games systems. A TON of imports and hard to find stuff. The even had a Wonderswan hand held (partially broken)!

Number one I got a good copy of the game Dragon Riders that I had been looking for. Not too bad $7. They had some controllers and stuff but I was looking to increase my game collection.

Then I looked at the middle of the room and saw what I love the most...bargain bins...Three large bargain bins full of stuff! The clerk told me that there might be some dreamcast stuff in there. There was a Ton of stuff in the bins. Mostly ps1 and ps2 and random stuff but there was a ton of random stuff as well.

So I did some diving and found some treasure! Most of the games in there had no case or instructions. Some of them were previous rentals. (one even had the dreaded "blockbuster sticker" more on that later in the blog)

So most of the games were a bit banged up and most had no cases and no instructions. But I found out that they all worked later on.


Bomberman -5.99
Resident Evil 3 - 5.99
Jet Grind Radio -2.99
House of the Dead 2 -2.99
Tony Hawk 2 - 2.99
Trickstyle -2.99
Soulfighter -2.99
Tomb Raider LR -2.99
UFC -.99

Nice haul for a road trip!

I already had copies of JGR, HotD2, RE3, TH2 and TR-LR. However the low prices and the good conditions of the actual disks made me want to get them just to have play copies. What happens down the road if some of my stuff gets stolen or broken?

Over all Bomberman is the best of this haul!

The opening in Bomberman is friggin' sweet! I had completly forgotten how fun Bomberman 1 was when I played it on an Emulator in high school, this version actually doesn't seem to stray far from the orginal concept. The single player is fun and I can't wait to challenge some other players.

Like I said before one of these games came with the "blockbuster sticker". This is a sticker that many rental places use to put their logo on a video game AND to sometimes attach a small strip of metal that activates alarms if it is stolen. This sticker fits right onto the label and is a pain in the ass when you buy second hand alot like me.

First off they look bad. Second they can actually unbalance the game disk if the MORON who put the metal strip on puts too far from the center of the disk. This makes the disk shudder, shake and rattle. Expecially in the dreamcast! Third it's almost impossible to take them off an older disk...Try to do it and you will pretty much RUIN the disk by ripping off the top layer of reflective coating..

The game that I got (Tomb Raider LR) looked good but some idiot blockbuster employee had put the security strip WAY too far out on the edge and the game sounded like it was going to break my dreamcast when I put it in.

So to fix this problem I used a few pieces of electric tape on the opposite side of the disk from the strip to balance the disk. It took two tries but now the Tomb Raider disk runs like a dream on my Dreamcast and doesn't make any rattling noise when it spins. This may seem like a pain to do but really wht else can you do? If someone knows a way to get those labels off old disks please let me know.

So all in all a good day!

I have to save up for another trip soon and hopefully they might have some more stuff in. (Or the manager at Game Craze will be in and I can haggle).

Peace out.