Steam Power: Super Monday Night Combat

While a lot of my interest lies in the classic, vintage or historical aspects of gaming, I am still a huge fan of the PC and of Steam from Valve.

Valve has been distributing many "free-to-play" titles in recent time and since it's accidental full release in April, i've been addicted to a little game called Super Monday Night Combat. SMNC is in essence a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (or MOBA) game through a Third-Person Shooter perspective. The art style, humor, free-to-play vs pay-to-play aspects and award systems seems like it could have been heavily influenced by Team Fortress 2. They also recently implemented a similar "crate" like award that looks like some kind of Pokeball. Like TF2, you need to purchase keys to unlock the ball and your random loot. Steam trading can be used to get rid of what you don't need for something you could use which is always nice.

I'm not going to get lost in explaining the mechanics and objectives as YouTube reviewer TotalBiscuit (TotalHalibut) has an excellent episode of WTF is...? dedicated to the game.

What I will say, it has kept my attention longer than most MOBA/DOTA games out there. I had a casual experience playing DOTA in Warcraft III, tried LoL and DOTA 2 without continual replay and strangely the only game in the genre I played for a period of time was Petroglyph's Rise of Immortals. Mostly due to it's early induction into Steams Free-to-Play games and that it has an entertaining PvE map I quite enjoyed.

SMNC features hilarious and very helpful commentary from their fictitious broadcasters GG Stack and Chip Valvano and strategic, varied gameplay. It is a breath of fresh air from the overpopulated "realistic military" shooters out there. As an old school gamer, I think the majority of games need to take themselves less serious and pump up games with more camp and humor.

While I feel the characters or Pros are balanced among on a level playing field, Ubernet's matchmaking seems to throw a monkey-wrench in things. When you are level 1-20, you are in one matchmaking pool above that you are in another. I understand why they need to do this right now and that is due to the fact this is a very underplayed game. At most in one regional server, you might see 800-1000 players but that is at peak hours. I think as more people catch on and the game becomes more refined we will see problems like this get worked out. Hopefully they are able to combat player retention in the mean time.

Overall Super Monday Nigh Combat is a personal favorite of mine and I urge you all to check it out. You have nothing to lose... download for free using Steam.

One Man's Trash: My Game Find

After watching The Game Chasers, I was inspired to look around my local thrift shop for some old games to no avail.  In fact the only product I came up with was the Sega Sports Pad, amazingly complete in box.  This was a trackball controller with two buttons for the Sega Master System.  The nice thing about early Sega controllers was that they usually could be used for Atari & Commodore consoles and computers.  I would have picked this up if it wasn't for the $15.99 price tag.  I had to double check just to make sure it wasn't an old label from another store but it was their price.

Moving on, I decided to take a look on Craigslist and sure enough I had a lead in my own town.  Someone was advertising a few random carts for $1.00 or less each.  At that price, i'll pick up just about any game cart.  He had listed; Yoshi's Cookie for NES, 4-in-1 Funpack Volume II, Daedalian Opus and Paperboy for Game Boy and last he had a Genesis game called High Seas Havoc.  Nothing jaw dropping but Yoshi's Cookie and Paperboy peaked my interest.

After a few e-mails and text messages we arrange a time and decide to meet at the Taco Bell near my house.  About two hours before were supposed to meet, I get a text and he said he found a few more games and would bring them along.

We meet up and he had a few more Game Boy titles but amongst them was a slightly larger cartridge.  Turns out he had a copy of Wario Land for the Virtual Boy.  Instantly I asked him if he had the system but he said it broke years ago.  Other notable games were Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakining and Grand Theft Auto both for Game Boy.  In the end, I walked away paying $7.00 bucks for the lot feeling completely satisfied.

When I got home I checked my games against current used retail prices on RarityGuide.com and found I really made out on the deal (See below).  As I come across more sweet deals, i'll keep you informed but you do the same.  Let me know what great deals you've come up with in the comments.  Happy hunting!

NES:
Yoshi's Cookie - Nintendo - 1993 - $5.00 Loose (Paid - $0.50)


SNES:
WWF Super Wrestlemania - LJN - 1992 - $4.00 Loose (Paid - $0.50)

Game Boy:
4-in-1 Funpack Volume II - Interplay - 1993 - $5.00 Loose (Paid - $0.75)
Daedalian Opus - Vic Tokai - 1990 - $3.00 Loose (Paid - $0.75)
Legend of Zelda: Links Awakining - Nintendo - 1993 - $24.00 Loose (Paid - $1.00)
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - Virgin - 1992 - $8.00 Loose (Paid - FREEBIE!)

Game Boy Color:
Chase HQ: Secret Police - Metro3D - 1999 - $10.00 Loose (Paid - $1.00)
Grand Theft Auto - Rockstar - 1999 - $8.00 Loose (Paid - $0.75)
Paperboy - Midway - 1999 - $8.00 Loose (Paid - $0.75)

Sega Genesis:
High Seas Havoc - Data East - 1993 - $7.00 Loose (Paid - $0.50)

Virtual Boy:
Wario Land - Nintendo - 1995 - $32.00 Loose (Paid - $0.50)

Web TV: The Game Chasers

Every collector is driven to seek out rare and hard-to-find items of interest and us gamers are no different. While more mainstream media outlets give us programs like American Pickers or Pawn Stars, web-channel RetrowareTV and Captain8Bit present The Game Chasers.

The Game Chasers stars Billy (Captain8BIT of Youtube) and Jay as they travel to flea markets, retail stores, thrift shops, peoples houses off Cragslist and more in search of vintage games.  In addition to the previously introduced duo, the show also features guests from other Youtube channels and their hilarious cameramen. Despite a shoestring budget the show has very high production value and is really freaking entertaining.

I blew through 16 episodes in about two days. Whether a collector, someone who used to play as a child or someone who wants to learn about an era of gaming before their own, you should give this show a serious try.  Below is an extended cut of the debut episode, I highly recommend you give it a watch.



The Game Chasers is currently in it's second season and you can find them on Youtube and on RetrowareTV.

Memory Lane: FuncoLand... Bring Home the Fun

During the course of my travels in the web, I ran into some old FuncoLand commercials. Unlike my view of current brick & mortar video game stores, my memories of FuncoLand were far more exiting.

FuncoLand was the first store I had seen selling only video games and accessories. As a child admist the 3rd and 4th generations of gaming, it was amazing.  You could buy new and used consoles and games, sell your old ones and try out any game in the store.

Using the archive.org "Way Back Machine", I was able to find images of the FuncoLand webpage from late 1996 and early 1997.  I was intrigued to see this information with the given prespective of being a gamer in 2012.

I remember always taking these newspaper style price guides you got at the counter home with me. I would add together trade back values for the games I had made the mistake of purchasing. Even at the time you could get some really great deals on used items. Below is an image of the NES used price list from 1997.

Not bad... Power Glove for $6.99 (nowadays you can fetch one from $50.00-$200.00), Rock N Roller for $0.79 (I can't even find a current used price for that piece of crap) and a U-Force for $1.99 (which go for $50.00-$150)!

Another interesting list was for the Nintendo Virtual Boy. I never owned this system and even after trying the display at the long closed Kay-Bee Toy Store, I still wanted this eyesore.

Amazingly in 1997, you could buy their one each of their entire stock for less than $150.00.


The last list I want to talk about is for the Panasonic 3DO. I always wanted this system even though at the time, I knew little about it and had never seen one in person.

Lucienne’s Quest, with the exception of DinoPark Tycoon is the rarest US title for the 3DO. A copy of this RPG could sell for $90-$400 today depending on condition. In 1997 you could get a used copy for $19.99.


Check out the old website using the "Way Back Machine" and also check out my FuncoLand Collection on Youtube.


Do you have any fond memories of FuncoLand you would like to share?  Get a conversation started by leaving comments on the blog and over at the youtube channel.

Sh00Boxx Game Videos

Welcome to Sh00Boxx

Yes, that's two zeros, two x's and welcome to my blog.  This site was conceived as a companion to my Youtube Channel "Sh00Boxx Game Videos" (please subscribe).

There are many interesting moments in gaming that fall between the gap of time and sometimes someone has to clean that crap out.  That someone is me and that crap is for you, so enjoy!