The following is our seventh Chicago-Style Drunksaling post to the old Drunkgamers.com forums. If you're unfamiliar with Drunkgamers.com, occasionally they would go out drinking and go garage saling for video games and then post about it. Unitdaisy and I were inspired to do the same and posted the bulk of our first year finds in their forums, and in fact if it weren't for drunksaling you probably wouldn't be reading this site right now. We'll be posting one from the archives every other week or until the weather turns spring-like in Chicago which means that yes, we have quite a few of them. Even a few that I lost and recently recovered on an old hard drive.

This week was by far one of the richer weeks we've ever encountered, and some of the best deals (i.e. free) ever! The below article is from August 10th, 2002.

Apparently, Chicago in August is prime garagesaling time. We hit a record number of finds and sales this week, so if you're reading this while waiting for the page to load, and you're on a dial-up I'd suggest giving up and go and download some low-res porn instead.

As we have an abundance of pictures this week, we're keeping the text to a minimum.

Our first sale: good potential - poor execution.

ummm ...no.

peccaui: Sports titles and an overpriced psx. I suppose it's better than porcelain.

peccaui: Next up - one of the geekiest sales we've ever been to.

Paperweight, or object d'art? The answer is obvious.

This organizer really likes his sound.

Geek quotient rising ...

peccaui: After being talked up by the seller of these goods, we found out that there was a shop that sold only arcade games a several blocks away. After a short bus ride, we arrived to find that they were closed. However, through the power of sand, we were able to capture the following photo:

Captain America-Get!

peccaui: Random pictures from several sales:

peccaui: Battle cars - with pull-out action! err ...

peccaui: This franchise taunts us every week.

peccaui: Nothing says lovin' like ...Fox Sports Soccer.

peccaui: At first, I thought we had finally found a good game while drunksaling. Then I realized it was just a demo. Fantastic.

peccaui: I long for the days when chess was violent and full of crudely animated sprites.

peccaui: $4,000 dollars and all I have to show for it is this game? (That joke isn't reaching ... no ... )

Felix, this is for you. (ed. note: This joke was aimed at a fellow Drunkgamer forum member at the time, who as far as I know, has condemned the Internet as a tool of the devil and will never read this.)

Arr, off the plank with you weebles.

Finally - a copy of photoshop I can afford.

peccaui: We stumbled upon a video store that had a collection of 16-bit games for sale, including mother-fucking Gaiares! However, the owner of the store was asking $5 for the game, and it had heavy damage to it ... and at the time, i didn't have a genesis. (oo, foreshadowing!)

peccaui: After hitting up a sale that demanded that we write down our names and addresses in their address book, we ventured off to the same thrift store we found the Intellivision Voice Module at a few weeks ago.

I don't get you.

This packaging screams out Home Depot.

Packaged up in plastic, and hiding underneath some very dirty glass is this snes. With Super Mario World rammed into its slot.

peccaui: It was in some nasty condition - dirty as hell, and only had one controller. They wanted $30 for it. The anticipation for Mario Sunshine is high in blood, so my first desire is to buy anything mario related however, I managed to pass on this. I still left, feeling hollow and despondant.

Well, at least they had the decency to tell us ...

peccaui: We noticed a disturbing trend in garage sales this week - nearly half of the ones we visited were selling friday and saturday, instead of saturday/sunday. Who the hell goes garagesaling on a friday?

Found on the back of an early New Mutants comics. Nostalgia, nostalgia.

In case you were wondering - yes, the game is based on this. Don't blame me - blame Jim Shooter.

peccaui: By this time, it was around 2:30pm ... on a chicago email list I'm on, some guy posted stating that he had a 2600 with about a dozen games that he was giving away for free, since he was moving. I called first-sies.

peccaui: When we made it to the address he gave us, all we saw was a boarded up building. I'm serious - I wish we had taken a picture, but we were stunned. It looked more like a CHA apartment. Luckily, it wasn't a sad joke. Not only did we get the 2600, with over two dozen games (and half of them are classic, well done games) for free, but he also threw in a Hometronics TV Game system. We're talking about a pre-2600 system here.

Click for a hi-res pic. C'mon - tron is in there!

Now this is old-school.

peccaui: Quite frankly, we already knew that was going to be the find of the week. But we trudged on and hit up one more thrift store, where we found the following:

Great games - good times. Too bad they're for mac only.

From the creator of Leisure Suit Larry. I can't remember whether I enjoyed it or not.

Ahh college towns.

So tired ... but it was worth it.

peccaui: For $5 with controllers and cords? Sure!

peccaui: Overall, going home with a bunch of games and three gaming systems made this week very profitable, if tiring. Oh yeah, and at one point in time I found a semi-cheap copy of Perfect Dark.

Lesson of the week: Unitdaisy made a nice paper grid map of the city so we could easily locate how far sales were from each other (in block numbers - chicago's city layout is based on a grid system ...) Geeky? Yes. Helpful? Definitely.

Find of the week: The 2600 - no doubt. You can't beat free - espcially when it comes to Joust, Donkey Kong, Combat, Defender, etc.