Hi everybody! Been a time.
You can probably guess where this is going. I’m sorry I haven’t posted much, life getting in the way, yada yada yada… I tend to repeat myself a lot. What I say is true, though I can’t guarantee that my writing rate will change. Life in general isn’t that different from the last post either. Still in the pandemic, still working a lot, and still trying to keep up with everything. I got a new laptop though. It’s a pre-built one, but works well and is much faster than my old one, which has now be designated into the recording computer. This has helped a lot in that I don’t have to move around things when trying to record voice work or do YouTube videos or whatever. I’ve also found that it helps to have one computer record the other, especially since the new one is better for gaming. Other than that, not much else new to report on. Just trying to navigate through this chaos.
That being said, the collecting is still going. Like I said prior, the rate in which I’ve been collecting has slowed, which is useful since I have a relatively large backlog of haul pictures to write about. For this haul, I was trying to focus on specific areas in the game section, such as a singular console. Well, almost singular. I also got a couple figures as well, all of which are in the same kind of mindset of filling the gaps in a specific section of my collection. Let me show you what I mean!
This is the video game chunk of the haul. As you can see, most of the games are for the Wii. At this point, I was trying to complete my personal collections of specific game consoles, the Wii being one of my list with a smaller amount of games I wanted to get. I think this is all of them now, but I’d have to check the large amount of haul photos I have saved up.
The first game on this list is the sequel to the one game everyone who owned a Wii had: Wii Sports Resort! My experience with this game is small, but I wanted to get it since I liked the first one. My favorite mode to play is the fencing mode, since I get to wack people with a baton thing. I don’t recall much about the other mods and to be honest, I probably won’t play much more of the game. It’s mainly a novelty at this point. The price was a bit steeper than what I was expecting, though I guess it was due to the game’s popularity. I don’t remember how much I paid, though I believe it was an eBay purchase, so basically more than the game’s actual value. It was in good condition, at least!
To the right is a game I wanted to get but missed out on. I was a big Rampage fan when I was a kid, so when this game, Rampage Total Destruction, was announced I was super excited! However I never got a copy of my own, for whatever reason. I’m aware it’s on other consoles, but I went with the Wii version because of the extra playable characters included. After I gave it a try, I realized that this was a major mistake. The controls of the Wiimote and nunchuk didn’t work well for me in this game, it just wasn’t my thing. And unfortunately, you can’t use the classic controller or even the GameCube controller, which is odd considering there is a GameCube version as well. Mechanically, the game plays fine (at least from what little I played) but the controls were not fun. Definitely more worth to get another version. I may or may not have already done so! Check back in a few haul posts to find out.
Starting at the bottom row is Super Mario All-Stars! This is actually a port of a previous SNES game compiling Super Mario 1 through 3, including “The Lost Levels”—the Japanese Super Mario 2. Each game has been remade from the ground up in the SNES style and they all play just as wonderfully as they did on the original NES. Though like I said, it’s a port, so these remakes are anything but new. I believe this version was made for Mario‘s 25th anniversary. I happen to luck out and found a copy at Walmart for a nice price, so I jumped on it. As far as I could tell, there is nothing special about this specific version, though it’s just the regular one. There was also a release of the game that came with Super Mario World built-in. The game itself runs well on the Wii; I never noticed any glitches or anything. Unlike Rampage, I do believe that the game will work with a GameCube controller as well. Looks like Rampage won’t be winning this game of baseball…. Anyway, let’s move on.
This last one is not what you think, at least not entirely. Yes, that is a copy of God of War Saga for the PS3. However, I didn’t buy it for the game. In fact, I bought it because I already own God of War Saga on PS3. “But why?” said the reader, confused. I bought it from GameStop because I wanted the case. When my original phat PS3 died on me, I got a “super slim” one, but I wanted one with at least 500 GB since that’s the amount of space my old PS3 ended up with (I switched out the hard drive around the time when Warriors Orochi 3 came out; the original space was like 80 GB.) I didn’t want to have to switch out the hard drive a second time, so I looked up different versions of the system and found a red one that came with God of War Ascension and God of War Saga as well as having the 500 GB I wanted. A red PS3 with 500 GB? Sign me up! And I’ll take the free games too! The catch was that the games were just the discs in thin sleeves. I tried not to care, but I couldn’t help it. I cared. I cared more than I should. Once I started this whole collecting binge, I decided that I would try to get the original cases for all of my loose disc games, starting with God of War Saga. I wasn’t able to find just the case, nor would GameStop sell me just the case, so I ended up just buying a full second copy, games included. But that’s okay, I have one of those leather CD book things with the plastic sleeves for any of my extra loose disc games, which I have since added a few more to. Although I’m not the biggest God of War guy, I didn’t want to give away or sell off the discs either. I’ve only played an old demo of the first game and the first stage of the second. I also played very little of a demo of the third game. The games themselves are fun and action-packed. I’d like to get around and play them to completion in the future.
Moving on, we’ve got some action figures! All of them are online purchases, in fact I’m pretty sure they all came from ToyWiz.com, which is one of my go-tos for toys.
Firstly, we have a simple Knuckles the Echidna figure from Jazwares’ Sonic the Hedgehog line. These figures come in a 3.5 inch scale with roughly fourteen points of articulation. It doesn’t seem like much, but they are surprisingly nice figures. Fragile, but nice. I used to have one of Knuckles already but his leg broke. See? I told you they were fragile. The one I had was an older release anyway, so I thought of it as an opportunity to get an upgrade. The mold of the figure remained the same, but the texture of the plastic isn’t as smooth as before. The shoes are also smaller and not flat at the bottom, so he doesn’t stand as well. Otherwise, it’s a nice figure. Bit of a spoiler, but I did buy another one down the line. Knuckles is my favorite Sonic character, so having multiple figures should make sense. Except it wasn’t because I just wanted more Knuckles figures… It was a shoes. But we’ll get to that one later. End of the day, good figure. I suppose one thing they could improve on (besides the shoes) would be adding in a cool accessory but… Look, we’ll get back to him in another haul, alright?
Coming up next is the largest figure in this haul and another one of my favorite characters. This is The Thing from the old Marvel Legends toy line from ToyBiz, before Hasbro took over. The Thing was always my favorite character from The Fantastic Four, primarily because he was big and strong and orange. There was a newer version of The Thing done by Hasbro a few years ago, but I went for this one because I prefer my Thing without shoes. Shoes are coming up a lot in this haul. I’ll do my best to keep that to a minimum. Anyway, what makes this figure unique is that the fingers are made using a special bendy material, so you can pose his fingers in any manner you see fit. I’ve got one hand in sort of a pointing pose and the other in what I can only describe as a weak gripping pose. Admittedly, the range of poses with the fingers isn’t great, but it’s a nice little feature and not new to the ToyBiz line. Other figures had articulated fingers as well. I’m not a fan of articulated fingers, but here I think it’s fine. Besides my Venom, The Thing is probably my largest Marvel figure and maybe even my largest figure period. At least by mass. Height, not so much, all three of my Play Arts figure are a good few inches above him. I was very happy to add him to my collection.
Concluding things is another Jazwares Sonic figure, this time of Amy Rose. This particular version of Amy was difficult to find, due to her being a variant figure that comes with her signature Pow Hammer. The figure itself is nice, but her arms are reversed. Yeah… that’s another issue with the Jazware line. There’s a fair amount of quality control issues as you collection them all, which I was trying to do. The line has since concluded, so tracking them all down isn’t impossible, but the prices tend to ramp up. If I recall correctly, this figure ran me a good $60, which is much more than what it should go for and certainly more than it cost when it was brand new and in store shelves. There is a version of Amy without the hammer, but like, why would anyone buy her without the hammer? Sure, the hammer-less one may have better hands and more than likely better arm placement, but Amy Rose without her hammer is like Goku without the Kamehameha: it just shouldn’t happen unless it’s a prequel thing.
And that’s a wrap! I’ve still got plenty of hauls to go through and I’ll post about them as quick as I can, which is admittedly not very quick. Given that how close to Christmas this is coming out, the next post will likely be the oddly almost on time Christmas haul. As I’m finishing up this post, I’m in the middle of my vacation from work (yes, it took me two months to write one post) and I hope to use the remainder of my time relaxing and catching up on as much stuff as I can. My comic backlog continues to haunt me, but maybe I’ll get lucky.
Until next time!!