I mentioned this franchise before a few weeks back and after writing about it, I went on the hunt to find some copies of these fairly rare cult classics.
I picked these two up on eBay and got them for a fairly decent price each.
Trying To Buy Them Local
The only place I could find these in Ireland was CEX, the first game was €45 alone, but since the store in our town had a copy I went in with the intention of picking this up.
The price was a bit steep, but that's around the price it sells for online - I've even seen it going higher than that and that's before adding the additional costs of postage, and even VAT at checkout when buying from the UK.
I asked if the game came with its manual, and the guy in the shop said no. With that, I put it back, because there's no way I'm paying premium prices for an incomplete game. Not that the manual is a big deal or anything, it's more so the fact that there's no way I could charge €45 if I even decided to sell it in the future.
Anyway, I headed to eBay to hunt the games down. The third, I cannot find with a manual, but these two I did.
In total, the first game was €30, and the second was €25. So, cheaper than buying from CEX. But, each was going to be €13 including delivery, so now we're around the CEX price (well, even higher for the second, but whatever. Then, the additional €12 VAT per game.
Totaling €95+ - Nearly €100 for two games was stupid, so I kind of put getting these on the back burner, especially with Christmas around the corner, I couldn't rightfully drop that much on a gift for myself.
Then, I had a brain wave. What if I ordered to my mates house in England, and had him send it to me as a gift.
I got his address and did just that.
Now, the games were €55, and one had free UK shipping, and the other was €3. Nice, €58 for two things I want, only a few Euros more than buying the first one alone over here.
He sent them over, plus another thing I got as a Christmas present for someone else. He packed them up and it cost €13 delivery. No import charges or VAT.
Streaming Them
I haven't had a chance to play them yet. They arrived the other day, but sadly Kaleb passed on his conjunctivitis. Which isn't entirely debilitating, but kind of uncomfortable.
Since it had been a few days without playing them, I decided that rather than just playing them myself, I may as well set up a stream and do it that way. Kill two birds with one stone.
I get to enjoy some games I've always wanted to complete, and I also get to finally put my capture card to use and get back to doing some streaming.
Streaming is something I've really wanted to get back into for a while, more so than that, I want to get back into cutting down the streams and working on playthroughs for YouTube again. It has been too long and even I can just find an hour or so a week it's doable.
Classic gaming is something I really want to get into properly, so that's going to be my main focus this year.
Currently I have my convertor in our place in Aimee's town, and I have a few PS2s back home, but without a convertor, so I'm thinking of buying a second one so I can get a stream setup together back home without disrupting the setup we have down here.