Yes, another one of those has passed, one more year before the midlife crisis
where I will sell my collection and move out into the woods, hehe.

As usual for me the day was celebrated at home with my family, pizza and
meringue(?) cake! It’s the best and really simple to make, just buy (or make)
some meringue layers, put mashed bananas between them, cover everything in
whipped cream and add some grapes or your favorite topping.

I don’t know what I have done to deserve it but I did get a really
good gift from a friend:

The freaking Ni no Kuni box!! This is probably on my top five gifts ever,
really generous, it is one of the boxes I really miss in the collection
and he knew it. Of course I gave him one of my finer duplicates as a
counter gift, hehe.

As a bonus these two are added to the PS2 collection:

Not in top condition but good enough, two more off the list and the next
post will probably be all about more PS2-games!

I’m currently trying to finish up Harvest Moon (SNES) but it is really
slow, I still have around 90 days left of feeding, milking and brushing
my cows, ugh.

Just a short summary today.

First up we have Wild Arms 4 which I actually beat a while ago. It was quite
a pleasant experience all in all, the best part is probably the combination
of RPG and platforming even if it never gets very advanced it is still a fun
way to mix up the gameplay. The rumored HEX-battle system also works really
well even if one of the characters is totally broken and absolutely DESTROYS
any enemies within one turn, I even ended up defeating the final boss
with ONE counterattack.

The only real problem I had with the game was a rather silly part of the
story where they keept talking about adults like a different species or
something. Oh well, the ending is worth mentioning as well since it’s
not at all like the usual RPG ending but I won’t spoil why of course.

Next up is Mega Man X Command Mission, I already mentioned it earlier but
now that journey is over as well. Not to much to say besides what I already
said, great battle system here too, I did have some trouble with some of the
bosses since strategy and planning before the battles is important.
Just having the right elemental armor equipped is the difference between
an easy and impossible fight. I was a bit disappointed how easy the final
battle was after all the trouble earlier. As a whole a good and overlooked
game but there is 50+ better games to play on the console!

Lastly, you can finally take a look at all of my limited and collector’s
editions in the 100 boxes section! I will keep adding information about
all of them but feel free to take a peek.

I know, posts two days in a row! I still lack my energy though, I planned on doing THINGS yesterday but I ended up sleeping for 11 hours instead…

At least this a good start for the PS2 collection:

Both Full Metal Alchemist games arrived today and I must say that I am glad to finally have them, I don’t know if they are good games but I will try to play them in the near future! Currently I’m giving Mega Man X Command Misson a chance, a game that I have heard very little about. So far it is decent enough, as expected not the best of stories and far to many random encounters even if it is quite a sight to see that in a Mega Man game. At least the battles work really good, just like in FFX you get to see the order in which the enemies will act and best of all you get to switch party members freely.

There probably won’t be to many new PS2 games for a while but I do have
3 of the more expensive ones on the way already…!

As the title say, I have been low on energy the last couple of days and
haven’t done too much. I finally rewatched the best of best animes:
Legend of the Galactic Heroes!
It is still the best and sadly the reason why I almost never watch
anime anymore… Some happy news regarding that anime: it seems like it will
finally get an offical english release after all these years!
I still can’t believe it but Sentai Filmworks have apparently
bought the license for the show and plan on translating it! Amazing.

A friend who also likes to fiddle around with old consoles paid me a visit
and helped a bit with my mountain, we “only” had time for three Megadrives
but we did get two of them to work and sparkle like new, the third one
probably needs some new components but 2/3 is not bad.
The only picture I have for today is this one:

Some controllers drying after a well needed cleaning, today the SNES
controllers work perfectly, the NES ones both need new rubber
for the D-pad, oh well.

Lastly, I now officaly collect PS2 RPG:s! I have decided to finally start
filling out the gaps in my PS2 collection, it will take a while but it is
not at all impossible (I hope). The focus is every RPG that got an english
release, about 130 titles that is. I have added a list of the missing ones
in the Buy/trade/sell section so feel free to take a look!

I was worried that too many of my posts would be about Xeno…

Oh well, here is another mountain of defect consoles, controllers etc!

This will take a lot of time to fix but I have at least sorted everything and
started the testing, it’s mostly PS1 consoles (12 of them!) but also a lot
of Megadrive/ Genesis controllers and power supplies which I really need!
This loot was actually a form of payment from helping a friend last summer,
quite generous even if it is a lot of work.

Two newly cleaned PSones and one PStwo, later today comes the fun part,
putting everything togheter again and see how it works!

It might be a bit boring post but this is something that I have been
wanting to buy since it was first announced in 2013:
The Drag-on Dragoon 10th anniversary box!

This might even be my new favourite, so beautiful, and best of all
is the front art that includes the main characters and their dragons
from all four games, yes even Nier and his dra- book!

The box is massive and only has one small logo in the corner, ahh.

A close-up of course.

I really like this design of the box, just lift up the top and everything is
hold in place by these trays. no risk of damageing anything when you open it.

First we have the normal game and some codes to get Nier costumes and some good remixes of Nier music.

Then we have a case with one CD and one DVD, the CD contains some intresting chips music (haha) from all four games, some Nier tracks I hadn’t heard before! The DVD remains a mystery for now.

To the left is a postcard book with art from all the games, to the right a novel that talks about the events before Drakengard 3.

The postcards have ridiculously high quality.

This is probably the highligth of the box’s inside, a book with 300+ pages filled with art, information about all four games, interviews etc.
There is even a mysterious page that says Drag-on Dragoon 4 and has has the PS4 logo… it might be a joke or a very obscure way of revealing a game?

One of my favourites, Caim making the pact from the first game.

These two are “just” the script from Drakengard 1 and 2, a really cool material even if it dosn’t show in the picture.

Lastly an overview of this crazy box, in total 5 different books, wow!

Let’s do it like this, number one was Environmental Station Alpha.

I finally beat Dragon Quest VI, the DS verison. It has been a long journey that
started in christmas 2013 when I got the game. This is the third one that I
have played, the other two are Dragon Quest 4 on DS and Dragon Quest 8.
I have never been a big fan of the series but I think that I like it more
and more after every beaten game!

It has been the same with all three games, in the beginning they are quite
boring with the same old story and characters but as soon as the worlds start
to open up it gets really fun to explore and find the perfect spot to hunt
metal slimes, hehe. In total it took about 55 hours to beat but I did explore
almost everything and was lost for quite some time, in the end a solid game
and I might even play the far more beautiful SNES version one day.

Somehow I needed more Dragon Quest and couldn’t help but to try the
SNES version (emulated) of the very first game… I ended up beating it
in one sitting! I was surprised by how small the game was and the fact that
you only play as one character, VERY unique in turn-based RPG’s and
something that I really like. To me the game actually felt more like Zelda 2
or something than a Dragon Quest and I did enjoy it.

Next time I will return to world of Dragon Quest it will either be the
SNES version of Dragon Quest 2 or maybe 9 on the DS, hmm.

For now I will focus on Wild Arms 4!

I just wanted to share my latest addition to the collection but after checking
my list it seems like this is my hundredth limited/collectors box!
That sounds crazy but I’m sure the number is correct, one of many “side goals”
with the collection is that 10% should be special editions so I suppose that
goal is now fullfilled, woho!

We all know that I have enough projects already but I think that I wil add a
list (with pictures) of all the boxes. In the meantime enjoy the 100th box,
the japanese Growlancer collection, a good example of how
a collector box should be made:

So shiny!

The outer box is really sturdy and the contents just slide out, no bending etc.

Here is the inner box which…

…folds out and reveals the four discs to the right and all the manuals in an “envelope” to the left.

Close up of the discs.

Close up of the manuals.

A lot has been going on since the last post!

I haven’t spent too much time on that pile of consoles yet but at least the
NES (dis)advantage is cleaned and working pretty good, I always wanted one
of those even if I will use it very little. I was able to combine the three
“fat” PS1 into two fully working machines, I was happy to see that one of
them was the very first model with all the extra outputs in the back, I will
definitely keep that one! I would already say that this was a good loot and
I will keep you updated when I get around to the controllers etc.

The second time devourer (Chrono reference) was my brother who came home
from his first trip to Japan (I am jelly), he and his friends didn’t spend
much time in shops but atleast they had a great time testing all the
food and beer, climbing mountains and seeing the sights etc. A real adventure!

Since the news of the FF7 remake had reached him too we just had to play the
original, dual screens, dual consoles (one of the newly fixed ones as a test),
one couch, ahhh. We are closing in on the end of the game but his
vacation is sadly over.

Just when I thought I would have some time my sister suddenly decided to
move and helping her with that took up a lot of energy, in the end it
might have been good for me, since she has to store some items here it
was a good reason for me to finally throw away some old things and rearrange
all my storages, in the end me and my mother made four trips to the
recycling station, all with her car filled up with things I did’t need…
it feels really good to never see those items again! The best part is that
I finally could rearrange some things better and as a bonus display my
sister’s entire collection (mostly Assassin’s Creed boxes)!

In the very few moments that I could play anything it has been
Dragon Quest 6, by now I have a floating island, flying bed, flying carpet,
ship, magic underwater bubble and a flying unicorn… it has to end soon!

Hopefully I will be able to keep updating the Xeno section soon, I also added
a buy/sell/trade section, I will keep adding items in there too!

This is a collector blog after all so why not! I don’t really like the term loot but
everyone else is using it, maybe “finds” is better?

Anyway, let’s start with some games:

Somehow I now own the JAP, US and EU versions of both Disgaea and
Makai Kingdom! I might be a fan but that still feels a bit extreme,
the EU (PAL) version of Disgaea is definitely my favorite when it
comes to the box art but apparently the US version have both the
english and japanese voices, I will have to keep them all! The mini
version of Ice climber was a gift from my brother, I only have two
of the games from the mini series but I wouldn’t mind to have
them all one day, so cute.

Next up is a giant mystery box:

Inside we find…

Lots of newspapers! What can this be, christmas decorations mayhap
or some new fancy china?

Oh no! not this again, as some of you might know I spent last summer by
cleaning and repairing old consoles and it seems my fate is to repeat
that task this year too… Last year was much more extreme but this pile
will take a lot of time to test/clean, I have no idea if anything works
right now but some of the items have apparent damage.

I will write more about these items later when I have
had the time to do some testing.

So many things to do, almost no playing this week, at the pace of a snail I
push myself forward in Dragon Quest VI (DS version), I should be about
halfway, it has taken over a year but I will finish it!