Get Well Now Bruce

Get well Bruce!!! Up the Irons!!!

Pink Elephants on Parade

Having established a new home for myself up in Vancouver Washington I still miss The Bay.  Being fat I hella miss the food, mexican specifically.  There is one decent place in Vantucky called Don Taco, but damn do I miss Mountain View.  Taqueria Los Charros, Fiesta Del Mar, and King of them all La Costina.  Fuck I miss Lard!! 

It's like nobody knows that Tueday is the day for Tri Tip.  People hear my words and get yourself an awesome steak sandwich.  Get yourself to Kal's in sunnyvale!  Go to Steve's my redwood shores brothers and sisters.  Work by the Airport go get Henry's awesome blue cheese Caesar salad.

And for Dinner, lets throw down some Stromboli at Tony Dimaggios.  Damn I miss you my dives!  I grow fat trying to sate my lust for you, yet only the real things may due.

Please Help with Samurai Shodown V MVS Cart

Howdy Folks, this is not going to be much of a posting.   I am looking for help with this video game cartridge.  This is a Neo Geo MVS cart I received when I bought my MVS cabinet many years ago.  It says Samurai Shodown V and then the following weird characters.  I don't know if they are Japanese or Korean or supposed to be funny little monster faces.

Funny anecdote is this cartridge was not even supposed to be in the machine.  I bought the game as a two slot MVS with only one cart.  But when i got it home I found this cartridge at the bottom of the the cabinet.

I have since grabbed a multi cart along with a few other games I like.  Cyber UP (lip lol) , Magician Lord, Super Spy and crossed swords.  I am not much of a fighter game player. Someone always came along to kick my ass when i tried to solo play so I could learn.

Ok well i opened this thing up and have a few more pictures.  So Here is the full cart so you can see it.  I don't see a serial number is that bad.

 Back of the first printed circuit board.

 Back of the second.

 Front of the second.

Front of the first.  i am not sure but the printed board itself looks like of the pirated roms.  Not sure what this thing is though.

Well as a final update the good folks at the neo geo forum indicate its a bootleg copy.  Good to get some closure on it.  I was considering selling it, and I really don't want to pass off something as real when its not.  I guess someone who visits my garage can have some fun with it maybe.

Collecting Shadowfist in 2015

I recently started collecting the Shadowfist collectable card game again.  It was sort of a strange lark that got me going on this but I have already bundled up a better collection than my original.  This may not be for everyone but here are a few thoughts if you are wanting to give it a try.

Why Shadowfist?  Well I really liked it in the past.  But there are other reasons as well.  First off there are few games with very many expansion sets.  Really only Shadowfist, Legend of the five rings, and Vampire the eternal struggle (Jyhad) have enough for me to consider.  I understand there are loads of new games games produced by Fantasy Flight but I am looking for things i can grab cheaply.  Of these Shadowfist and Legend of the five rings are actually still being produced.  As for Shadowfist there are actually a couple of planned tournaments at Kublacon which sort of locked up my choice.

I have found the two biggest keys to buying up these cards are patience and knowledge. As for patience I am really getting at waiting on solid deals.  There are loads of folks on ebay right now trying to sell off unopened Shadowfist cards.  They for the most part are asking retail for their cards which seems crazy.  If you wait you can find people offer an old collection of cards every month or two, these are usually around 20 bucks or so dependent on size.

Knowledge really wasn't the best term to use.  There are really just a couple of things I realized that I had not thought about.  First is a concept we use in Atari cartridge collecting.  Some cartridges have no value, you just will get them in the process of collecting.  Common and uncommon Cards from the Limited and Standard sets are like this in shadowfist.  You are going to get them so don't pay for them.  Work at getting cards from any other set Dark Future, Flashpoint, whatever.  The second weird thing I found was ebay is not always the best price you can get.  That sounds obvious but I mean the seller on ebay may offer an item cheaper on their own website.  I have found this to be the case for unopened packs on multiple occasions.

SO where do I look for cards?  Ebay.com and shopgoodwill.com have been my primary sources.  Moving from The Bay I have no idea where to look for cards here in Portland/Vantucky. If I was back home I would look at places like the comic collectors shop in sunnyvale.  Old shops that have been around through the card craziness in the 90's.  I scored a box of Vtes cards off those folks for ten bucks. Also check your toad and troll or other online game source.  Keep in mind you may want to get more cards than you need and pass them around to folks to give yourself to play against.  I have some unopened packs I will think about giving out at to drum up interest.

Update:  I sort of forgot to mention the new stuff that is being released.  Buy that stuff from FLGS and the kickstarters they release.  I would recommend supporting the company as directly as you can.   Funding the source of new cards is a great way to support the Shadowfist community.