Friday, September 18, 2015

Random Happy Time, 26 O’Clock - Gotta Catch ‘Em All!

http://www.complex.com/style/2011/09/the-10-rarest-pogs-from-the-90s/
After talking about Rabbit’s extensive Skylanders collection, she quizzes Tiger on some of the other collectable games they’ve had in the past. From Pokémon to Pirates and everything in between, Tiger and Rabbit have had a long history of compulsively buying collectable games.

**^^**

Rabbit: Talking about collectable games got me all nostalgic. We’ve had so many different collectable games in the past.

Tiger: ⊙︿⊙ Too many, way too many.

Rabbit: I know we were huge into Pokémon cards for a long time.

Tiger: I think we stopped when we got over five thousand cards.

Rabbit: Do you remember NakNaks?

Tiger: Those were the humanoid figures that stacked like Jenga but had random skins. Geez, we bought a ton of those. We also got really into Pirates, The Constructible Strategy Game.

Rabbit: That one was really cool! You could pop out components from the styrene cards to build ships to use in the game. They broke easily and the ink tended to wear off quickly so I know that annoyed you a lot.

Tiger: I got one of the rarest ships from the Crimson Coast expansion and the mast snapped the first time I popped it out of the card!

Rabbit: Remember Pogs?

Tiger: Oh, that one really dates us. (//・_・//) Yes, I still have about ten tubes of my favorite Pogs in a locker somewhere.

Rabbit: That was probably our first real collectable game.

Tiger: But we’ve had a ton of others like the X-Wing Miniatures game, Young Jedi CCG, X-Men Trading Card Game, and various other card games. Remember Perplex City?

Rabbit: That was an ARG CCG or would you call that a TCG? Anyway, that was a really awesome game but someone beat it before we could get to the highest level.

Tiger: Yes, you bought booster packs which contained puzzle cards. You would solve the puzzles and enter the answers via their website. The more points you got, the higher the level you would go and the more clues you would get to find The Cube which was hidden in the real world and worth two-hundred thousand dollars. I still have the pins they sent us for every level we reached.

Rabbit: Last time I heard there were still two puzzle cards that were never solved.

Tiger: I liked how some of the puzzles where actual Millennium Prize Problems such as the Riemann Hypothesis. The game actually encouraged all the players to work together to solve it.

Rabbit: I wonder if they would’ve split the prize money from CMI too?

Tiger: Do you remember My Perplex City Trades? We would make deals with other players to trade our extra cards to them, since duplicates didn’t help you at all. So I guess you could call it an ARG TCG.

Rabbit: Do you still play CCGs?

Tiger: I don’t, I don’t do collectable card games, trading card games, or deck-building games anymore. I just have the one living card game and that’s the Star Wars LCG. Oh, but I did wish I was able to really get into the Gundam M.S. War TCG. That came out during our pre-internet shopping era and the local hobby shop never carried the cards. I was only ever able to pick up a few boosters. I do remember getting Heavy Arms, which I was really pleased about.

Rabbit: That’s the thing that was always disappointing; we only lived in one town that had a decent hobby shop. It was actually pretty awesome, downstairs had your general toys and educational garbage but in the back there was this unmanned counter with manga. It was the first time we had ever seen manga, and then you’d take these super narrow stairs to the second floor, which was just a converted supply closet, and they had all the card and board games up there.

Tiger: That was the first place I ever went to that made me realize I was a geek.

Rabbit: ╭(♡・ㅂ・)و ̑̑Good times, good times.

Tiger: I hate you right now. (#`皿´)

Rabbit: (っ- ‸ – ς) What? What’d I do?

Tiger: Talking about all our old collectable games has me itching to get into a new card game now. Fantasy Flight has a couple games that are interesting and I haven’t even looked into what Wizards of the Coast is into nowadays. I just miss the smell of a brand new binder filled with card sleeves. I also miss the sound when you tear open a new booster pack and how your heart races to see if you finally got Dratini because he wasn’t rare but you couldn't catch him. Man.

Rabbit: ^pats Tiger on the back^ Poor Tiger, what have I done. I might as well have taken you to the card aisle at Toys R Us and gave you a hundred bucks to go wild.

Tiger: It still amazes me that as much as we loved Pokémon that we didn’t turn into Nintendo gamers. I still have the soundtracks and you still have the movies.

Rabbit: I still have a few Pokémon posters in a tube somewhere in the black hole that is my closet.

Tiger: I have a plushie Charmander in a box.

Rabbit: I have a plushie Pikachu in that same box.

Tiger: Admittedly, I’ve seriously looked into buying a 3DS so I could play the Pokémon games along with the SMT ones.

Rabbit: But you have way too many games as it is.

Tiger: *sighs* Exactly, collecting games is like a collectable game in its own right. (︶︹︺)

3 comments:

  1. Ha ha. Right on, T&R. Collecting games sure is a game in itself.

    I remember pogs and, of course, Pokémon cards. Good times for sure.

    And I'd only heard bit about Perplex City after it wound down, but it sounded really inventive from what you two say. The fact that they worked in the Riemann hypothesis (this my first time hearing about the theory, too, so thank you for teaching me something new!) is fascinating.

    All this talk of collectable and figures has reminded me that I used to have a couple Warhammer Lord of the Rings sets. I was never any good at painting them, though. They looked awesome when the professional did them, but I wouldn't go back to anything like that now.

    Of all the collectibles I've had over the years, my Lego Bionicle sets and my Pokémon cards are my favourite. I still have the latter (minus my shiny Zapdos - it was among several stolen from me), and, one day, they might actually be worth something! Maybe I'll get them valued on the Antiques Roadshow.

    Speaking of Pokémon, I recently booted up my Pokémon Red and Blue carts, on my old Game Boy Advance, and found that my original game saves from the 90s were still there. That got me way nostalgic. I've been tempted to get a 3DS, or even a DS Lite, and bundle of old GBA/DS carts, just so I can revive in the magic of handheld gaming and the Nintendo games I never got my hands on as a kid. But, you know, maybe it's time we looked into the emulation scene for a possible Nintendo fix?

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    1. I think Pokemon probably impacted a lot of 90s kids whether it was the cards, the games, or the TV show. No one was immune from Poke-fever. I remember Bionicle fondly, they were pretty cool toys. For now though, it's all about the TCGs. I've gotten sucked into another one that we'll be discussing sometime on this blog.

      -Tiger

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    2. That totally sucks about your cards getting stolen! That's a shame someone would do that. As for Warhammer series of games, I always thought that game was cool but I'm in the same boat, painting is not in my skillset. They have a Robotech figure game too that's similar to Warhammer, was super interested in that but again, I'd just end up making the figures look terrible.

      -Rabbit

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