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Great White North Drunksaling, eh - Week 1

May 4, 2004 By Namons

It has come to my attention in my visits to The New Gamer in the recent months that while there is a wonderful niche being filled by peccaui and unitdaisy, there is a vast untapped audience being ignored and thus, hopelessly shunned. I am of course speaking of us metric geeks. The Great White North does thaw over the summer and the first thing that happens when the ice recedes is massive garage sales. Let me make it very clear that I would not be doing this or be suffering from this grand addiction were it not for the Chi-Style Drunksaling. And it is in this spirit that I will do my best to not replace but supplement the great humour that they brought us. And so begins the weekend of April 24, 2004.


Eggs and Bacon: A good part of a carbophobe's breakfast!

My first endeavor is breakfast. One cannot start a good day of Drunksaling without first getting all greased up on the Atkins™ recommended diet of eggs and bacon. Mmmm, bacon.

Just ignore the mess, in real life it doesn't look nearly so skanky.

Then of course, pause and reflect on my work to date. Let's see, there's the N64, the PS2, the Sega Saturn, the JVC (oops wait that's just my dual channel mono sound VCR), the Super NES, the Sega Genesis, the Atari 2600 and finally at the bottom right, there's the good old NES (I hadn't tested this one yet, as I had purchased it from the local Goodwill and not hooked it up. Apparently all it does is blink repeatedly.) Not shown but just as important, my Sega Master System (no games yet), Atari ST with no games and no HDD, and a 180 mhz PowerPC Macintosh.

Unfortunately, right after this picture was taken, too much green entered the picture and reality itself collapsed.

My first stop was at 6am! I know I know, I'm a machine, I'm insane, I go well with brie. I've heard it all. This was a shot of what eventually greeted me, as these garage sale psychos managed to sleep in and had nothing out until about 6:30am. I lucked out, but also got boned as well here. While I was drooling over a box with various NES and Genesis carts, a married couple came over and somehow homed in on a N64 cart tucked in another box. Never mind that it was a Mario cart to boot. I grabbed 12 cartridges, and because the lady was grumpy I got the whole mess for only ten bucks (she was trying to get me to play $15).

It's not like I'll let just anyone see my bed covers you know... (ed. Apparently you do!)

I would have taken a picture at the time but I was too excited at the time to do anything but swipe them on sight. Pele II, NHL 96 (found out I already had a copy at home, though no case) Aladdin, Maximum Carnage (you're not a true Spidey fan if you don't remember Carnage and the Venom storylines of the early 90's), Jeopardy: Sports Edition and Wimbledon Championship Tennis. As for the Nintendo, first I found NCAA Football and then the various NES cartridges, some looking older than me. (I'm 28 and don't look a day over 25!)

I now have 4 or 5 EA NHL games. Somewhere a marketing executive earned his wings. And fell straight to hell.

But this was the coup de grace (sorry grace). NHL 2001 completely intact and with a PS2 8 meg memory card included. This was separate from the 12 cart deal and as such I paid another $10 for this. Pretty good deal considering memory cards go for $30 these days. I almost turned this down before I smacked myself in the face and said "self, youse a fool... git that memory card, bitch!" Who knew it would go downhill from here?

So if there's no puck and no one is there to find it, can the Leafs actually win the cup??

Ah, remember the good old days when you didn't need 64 bits or double jointed thumbs to be good at Hockey? You just needed a lame ass friend who sucked at table hockey worse than you did. Actually the same still holds true today on the later. The lame ass in question today was attempting to sell this without the puck. In true Canadian fashion he was really apologetic about it... offering up his business card so the victim could call him the next day to find out he still hadn't bothered to clean his basement to look for it. Even if this had fit in my backpack I think I would have passed on it. I had hit a major strike early and was on the prowl for more. Simple manual hand-to-eye coordination wasn't gonna cut it today.

Separated at birth: You be the judge!

I can't imagine why these two movies were bundled together.

Itty bitty teeny weeny shrivelled lil short played games!

Now this is a blast from the past. Karnov was an excellent game for the Genesis (if I'm remembering correctly (ed. Nope, it was in the arcades, and then ported to the NES, C64 & PC.)) and I played it endlessly in handheld form as a kid. And thanks to Tiger and its ability to churn out worthless crap in any electronics area, it makes Karnov look like a solid waste of time. I almost felt dirty associating the Transformer with this group but he's another childhood memory I'm glad I've long forgotten. Why did Optimus Prime have to die? Why damnit why?? How will he pick his nose when he's only a head??

Oh wait I know.... no wait... there's no running water here!!!

There's a joke in here somewhere, but I'll be damned if I know what it is.

In some creepy alternate dimension, I just stole this man's soul. Weep for his future my friends. Weep. Now...

I was caught taking the previous picture by the seller and was immediately shown what happened to the last person that tried to make a joke about her kitchen sink. I assume I got away with it only because this previous victim had such a big mouth while mine is only relatively huge.

If I look drunk in this picture, that's because I took this post-drunksaling.

As my day (morning) winds down, I find myself yearning for that staple of every Canadian's diet, the good old Tim Horton's donut. Today I picked up a Maple Walnut Glaze and a Maple Walnut Dip. Similar but surprisingly different. Tanked up and ready for my celebratory drink, I make my final stop at the local Goodwill to see if any more surprises have arrived.

NES, NES, how do I love thee... let me count your trays. 1, 2, 3...

This is the sight that has greeted me in the back corner of the Goodwill for the past 3 days now. Today is no different. I am almost numb to the shock of seeing so much aged crap in one spot. But still I recoil slightly. Were it not for my first expedition, opening each one to see if any NES games lay within and finding not one but two (Ice Hockey and Dr. Mario) I would have nothing to do with the entire area at all. But luckily each day new assorted games have been surfacing, draining my will and my bank account with each visit.

That is a computer propped up over there, but it's more or less just for parts. Parts of 1988. HA! Sneaky no?

This also greets me each day now. Poor defenseless Genesis systems. Won't someone give them a good home? They're even the older version with the sliding volume control that I used to love so much (and sliiiiide.....). On the upper right and in the box below there are about a couple million NES controllers, AC Adapters and RF Modulators. Also tossed in for fun were a few NES arcade sticks (both of which I bought the previous day) and a Genesis infrared hub for wireless controllers. If only I had bought those controllers when they showed up at Blockbuster all those months ago. God smites me with his cruelty!

Say it five times fast: Mac OS 8 is great!

And here we have another regular at the Goodwill, the insanely old "I come on 12?20 5 1/4" floppies" OS and Application software. But wait a minute... this wasn't here yesterday. (Grabs and hugs the copy of Mac OS 8 which seems rather heavy) Having recently been gifted with my first Mac (a PowerPC clone but a Mac nonetheless) I was rather shocked to find this just laying around. Included in the box was about 49 3 1/2" floppies. And one CD. (Thank God!) According to the outside of the box you have to send away for the floppy disks. I can see why. That's a fsckin' truckload of disks to be shipping out with every copy of your software.

Don't hate me cause I'm boozy.

And thus ends another fine day of Great White North Drunksaling, eh! It wouldn't be Drunksaling though without the obligatory Rum & Coke to help soothe those aching feet.

Find of the Week:

It was a toss up between this and finding the Maximum Carnage Genesis cart, but in the end the Mac OS 8 software was the item that made me the giddiest. Complete with my free AOL disk and trail account and password. Soon my Mac will be networked and then we shall take over the world!!!!!! Ahem, I mean soon I will be able to make my Mac the best it can be.

Lesson of the week:

Don't go parking your bike where it can be easily compressed and mangled "GTA" style by a rampaging car. (Damn I guess Rockstar Games was serious about taking GTA: Vice City off of my FTP site).

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