Ah the joys of finding an item you want, only to find out it is/was only available in Japan… Fear not! There are services out there to help you get around such unfairities. I personally use Japamart but there are others like Japan Auction Agency. There are some downsides though, the first being commission charges. The second being you have to make a deposit before you can bid. Japamart generously lets you bid up to twice the amount of your deposit. Japamart in particular, is rather slow though. It takes a few hours for your deposit to be registered. And has problems with abnormally high bids (something like 40,000 yen or higher IIRC). They do take Paypal.

What do you use these sites on you ask? Yahoo Japan Auctions. Japamart lets you search from their site for convenience.
Let me start by saying you don’t need to know a lick of Japanese. This Google Translate Bookmarklet will be your best friend. So right click it and add it to your bookmarks. Some common search terms are automatically translated by Japamart. Others you will have to go to Google Translate yourself. You will have to do most searches in Japanese, though English does manage to find things once in a while. I’ve found a lot of terms are in Japanglish, where it’s the English name for items just written out in Japanese characters as close as they can get to the word.

Like ebay, YJA does incremental bidding. Where lets say the item is currently at 500 yen, you bid 1000 yen, it will post you at 600 yen until someone bids higher than you then automatically raise you one step higher than that. Unlike ebay, sniping (bidding in the last 5 seconds) does not work. It just extends bidding by 5 more minutes (which is very annoying cause someone extended bidding a few hours by always bidding in the last 5 seconds on an item I was bidding on, not learning his lesson after the first dozen or so tries) Japamart will not alert you when items you are watching are close to expiring, nor will it alert you of new items matching your search parameters like ebay will. YJA are also typically a lot shorter than ebay auctions. You will need persistence, to check every 4 or 5 days if you really want it. But do not give up, I’ve either been very lucky or everything I want shows up within days of me looking for them

Oh, and of course do your research on nasty territorial lockout on games and such… (PS3/PSP being mostly exempt, thankfully)

Japamart also lets you order from other sites that don’t sell to yanks via this page

The Silverspoon Reviews is a new concept of reviewing by our long time member Silverspoon. How did an old classic stand the test of time and how would you review it by today’s standards? The first review in the series is the best selling PS1 game of all time Gran Turismo!

Game info:

Gran Turismo – PS1
Publisher: Sony CEA
Developer: Polyphony
Genre: Racing

Original review – PSM (July 1998)
Graphics – 5 out of 5 stars
Sound – 4 out of 5 stars
Control – 5 out of 5 stars
Innovation – 5 out of 5 stars
Presentation – 5 out of 5 stars

PSM Final Score – 5 out of 5 stars “Gran Turismo is simply the greatest racing game ever”

———————————————————————————————————————–

The Silverspoon review (August 2010) Playing time – approx. 40 mins
Graphics – 3 out of 5 stars
Sound – 3 out of 5 stars
Control – 4 out of 5 stars
Innovation – 5 out of 5 stars
Presentation – 4 out of 5 stars

Silverspoon Final Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Collectors Appeal - With almost 11 million copies sold, it is the most common PS1 game, making it worth around $5 today. The replay value is worth every penny. There is one known variant that has the help line text on the disc in black instead of blue, and it is known for being extremely hard to come by.

Graphics - For its time, the graphics were amazing. Even today I’m impressed by the detail given to the cars and tracks in Gran Turismo. Based on today’s racing titles, there wouldn’t be anyone drooling over this games graphics now.

Sound - All of the background music is still very enjoyable. There are many tracks that play randomly while racing, but the best is the menu music for each auto dealer. Each is unique, but I have always been a fan of the Honda/Acura music. As far as sound effects, each car sounds about the same. To test this again, I did Time Trials with 3 distinct sounding cars. I used a ‘97 Supra, a ‘98 Impreza, and a ‘95 Corvette (all years are an estimate.) Three cars that have a distinct exhaust tone in real life that I could call out if I was blind. From stock exhaust systems, up through each racing exhaust option available, each car sounded identical. For me personally, this was the biggest disappointment while going back to play again.

Control - The control is stellar. Even by today’s standards. The realistic features play a large part in the control of the cars. In simulation mode, you have to deal with real-life characteristics such as wheel hop, over steer, and under steer. Although there is no damage to vehicles other than tire wear in endurance races, the realism makes the control, and the racing very enjoyable.

Innovation - Lets face it, without this game, there wouldn’t be racing games like the other GT titles, as well as Forza and Need 4 Speed Shift. Games like Rush, Cruisin’ USA, and older Need 4 Speed titles made me sick with their phony street racing, huge crashes, and turbo and nitro options to blow down the straightaway at warp speed. This title is what the real car fans waited a long long time for, and because of its amazing realism, its still fun to play today.

Presentation - The menus are set up a little strange, but are still pretty easy to navigate. Having Arcade mode, and Simulation mode on the same disc, made it easy to switch between the two, instead of having to swap discs. After building up a ton of hype in the months before its release, the game definitely didn’t disappoint. It went on to be PS1’s top selling title, and put the racing simulator genre on the map for good.

Summary - This title was important to me from its release date, because where I’m from, your car, and the car scene was everything up until about two years ago. This game, to this day, is unbelievably difficult due to the realism, which in the end is still its best feature. Luckily I still have a save file from the 90’s, where I have over 2 billion credits, and a ton of cars, so I didn’t have to start from scratch. It is incredibly deep for its time featuring 187 cars, 11 tracks, and 17 different championship races. I would estimate, in order to 100% complete this game, counting loading times, it would probably take over 3 days to complete all of arcade mode, and all of the races simulation mode offers if played non-stop.

Even the most hardcore of gamers and collector’s needs to take a break once in a while right? Even if you don’t enjoy the sun or the beach, there is probably somewhere you enjoy going in your holidays.

My question however is.. do you take your hobby into consideration when you choose your holiday destination?Do you plan your vacation with your hobby in the back of your mind? Are you going to Scandinavia or Spain just to find some rare NES games or are you going to Portugal to hunt for Sega stuff?

Personally I didn’t take my hobby into consideration for the last few holidays, BUT when I’m at the location I always have my eye out for flea markets, second hand stores and game stores.
In some countries PS1 and PS2 are still the biggest market (which I didn’t know at the time) and that resulted in me and my girlfriend spending numerous hours in random gameshops. If you’re still planning your destination, don’t be afraid to check Hungary (Budapest) or Czech Republic (Prague)!

So what are your plans? and was your collection a part of those plans?

Have a nice holiday everyone!

I absolutely hate when people say N64 had the first analog stick.
So lets start out with who was the first

This is the Vectrex. When was it released? 1982

When was the N64 released? June 23, 1996

So Vectrex beat N64 by 14 years

This is the Atari 5200 controller

http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/detail/5200.html

When was it released? November 1982
Still over 13 years prior

Moving to Sony

This is the PS1 dual analog flight stick. It uses the same protocol as Dualshock and works as one

When was it released? April 1996

So Sony beat Nintendo by 2 months.

So lets say you bring that up and a Nintendo fan claims Sony just copied it from Nintendo’s announcement

When was the N64 announced? November 24, 1995
When was the flightstick announced? April 1995
Still almost 7 months earlier.

The next reaction a Nintendo fanboy will go to, is that it’s not thumbsticks. Well that circle on the right analog stick, is a thumbstick.

Welcome to my first article for the Playstation Collecting Weblog. Today I will be talking about something your average gamer probably never really thinks about. Cases. Specifically Playstation 2 cases. Sure it’s probably boring for most, but for the hardcore collector it may be interesting. Please also note that this was written by a PAL collector, so information here may be inaccurate for those in NTSC-land.

All PS2 cases are made by the European company Amaray. They had a deal with Sony in 1995 to produce the ‘CD Safe’ for the Playstation, so it comes as no surprise Sony continued to use them for PS2 cases. They also make regular DVD cases. Amaray made three main case types for PS2.

“TYPE A Black” (Pictured: Fantavision, SCES-50002)

Here is the original case used in PS2 launch titles and was unchanged until about 2002. Most people call these black, however they are actually a very dark navy blue. It has the memory card holder above the disc and 3 clips to hold the disc in place. The plastic on these cases is nice and thick.

“TYPE A Blue” (Pictured: Virtua Fighter Evolution, SLES-51616)

So some time passed. DVD sales climbed steadily and Microsoft released the rivalling Xbox. This is when Sony decided to change the colour of all their cases to the now classic blue. I suspect that this was so they could more easily stand out against the DVD video (black) and Xbox (green) titles. Otherwise exactly the same as the original launch cases in design. This is the most common case Sony used.

“TYPE B” (Pictured: Mortal Kombat Deception, SLES-52705)

Then at some stage a new sort of case came out. The memory card holder was removed, probably as a cost cutting measure. In its place is just the stylized “P” Playstation logo. These cases only have two clips holding the disc and the part where you put your fingers to pry the case open has also been changed. It also has two small lots of prongs down the inside of the spine. I suspect this is so a holder for a second disc to be slotted in. Either that or something to do with holding the manual in place.

“TYPE C” (Pictured: Yakuza 2, SLES-55242)

By 2007 or so, even with the PS3 released, the PS2 was going strong. It was around this time that Sony started releasing games with yet another design. This final design somehow uses even less plastic than the previous design and feels extremely flimsy. The disc is held in place by an unusual 4 clip design that looks like arrows pointing towards the centre. Has a tiny plastic ridge inside the spine. Be careful not to put anything to heavy on top of these ones!

“TYPE D?” (Pictured: Ty The Tasmanian Tiger 3, SLES-53636)

So that about wraps it up? Not quite. There is one more variant I have come across. This horrible looking thing is a bit of a mystery to me. Its like the normal two clip design, and very flimsy. But instead of the matte look all the other PS2 cases have this one is shiny! I have only ever come across one case like this myself, on a game I bought used. I presumed it was just a blue DVD case someone had swapped out because it doesn’t even have the “P” logo inside. But then I looked at the back and it has the Official Sony hologram on it. Factory seconds perhaps?

Sony’s platinum re-releases of top selling games come in silver (well platinum) coloured cases. Depending on the age of the game the case can be either type A or B. I have not seen a type C platinum case, but I do not have enough platinum games to verify this properly. In addition to the standard blue and black cases there are specific games which came in unusually coloured cases. This is not a complete list but just one example for each colour. Careful with these cases, replacements can be hard to find!

- Frosted Clear: Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (limited 2 disc version), SLES-50383
- White: Gran Turismo 4, SCES-51719
- Real Black (different to launch cases): Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, SLES-52541
- Red: Buzz, The Big Quiz (bundled version), SCES-53879
- Fluorescent Orange: EyeToy Play 3, SCES-53315

Well I think that about covers about everything except the collectors tins and special editions, which are outside the scope of this particular article. I hope you will think twice now before swapping that damaged case for the first one you see! This was written from alot of original research and the thread on the Playstation Collecting forums. Therefore I cannot guarantee its accuracy. If you have any corrections, additions, comments or suggestions please post them on the forum or in the blog comments.

I’m very excited to bring you the news that at this very moment DJPimpDaddy
is working on the PlaystationCollecting.com database! Read in for more details!

The eventual of this database will be to have all NTSC and PAL
PS1/2/3/portable games in it. Later on we will also integrate a collection
tool so members can show and store their collection online!

We have decided to make the NTSC PS1 part of the database our first
priority, but as you’ll read below any other data is welcome too

At this point in the process we could use help from you guys (and girls) so
I’d like to ask you the following:
- what parameters should the database use (title, publisher etc) if you
have suggestions, please reply to the following topic:
http://www.playstationcollecting.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=983
- we’re looking for volunteers who want to help test the database AND
populate it with data (either system)

feel free to contact me in any way possible, or post on the forums if
you’re interested in helping out!

as a last note I’d like to thanks DJPimpDaddy for his work so far and
congratulate him with his newborn baby boy!

NeoTechni’s review of the Sphere360 controller for the original Playstation!

It comes with a training CD, which would not boot on a PS2 (it said a condition in main.c was false, press start and select to reset, and would not reset. The PlayStation logo wouldn’t display either) It also wouldn’t boot initially on a PS1. It would freeze at what should have been the PlayStation logo but only showed SONY. After a bit it started playing music with the PlayStation noise, it was weird. It says it’s a licensed disc, but it acts like it isnt. After a minute of random music, it boots. It has 2 tutorials, one where it shows you want direction to move the sphere to do an action, and asks you to repeat it. It’s not very good cause it’s using a 2D graphic to show a 3D movement, and it doesn’t map very well. The other is a little flight sim training, where you fly through rings like the training mode in Star Fox it would have been neat if they added a dog fight. Maybe there is one later on. After a while I realized I can use the dpad to steer so I just used that. The on-screen “helper” robot even insults you if you can’t figure it out (The academy always sends me the slow ones)

ASCII really went the extra mile with the packaging. The front has transparent plastic with the controller name written on it, the sides have holes in them to look like a grill. It’s somewhat bigger than a GameCube. The back of the box has one of those PS1 supported-feature icons that says “Six Axis Controller”. Heh. There’s even a sheet of thicker plastic that holds it up on an angle, and a piece of cardboard to hide the cable behind for display. It comes with a long list of games it supports, a lot longer than I expected. Pretty much every PS1 game works with it, just some better than others. I’ll have to grab a copy of Descent.

The controller itself feels like a Dreamcast controller. In that it has angular wings, that make your wrists angle inward too much. It has a 9 different modes (like how Protoshock can act like the Flight Stick) and even comes with a sticker to help you remember them all which is nice cause I usually tape a piece of paper to my controllers to label the controls. But there is no flat surface on the controller to stick it to. The rubber sphere itself feels exactly like the one on the SpaceOrb 360. I think I read somewhere they are made by the same people, and that people prefer the PS1 one because it has more buttons. It doesn’t have much give to it, it will only let you move slightly in any direction. I would have liked some sort of free-floating trackball but I guess that’d be a bit difficult to attach, but I digress. The buttons have a nice click to them, circle has a little less than the others. They’re wider than PS1′s regular buttons, but more spongy. The dpad is like XBOX360′s, in that it’s a sucky disc, though they did put a cross shape on top and it’s not as inaccurate as 360′s.

Let me start by saying that sites such as Game Rave are a treasure trove of information for a “cherry picker” such as myself. I LOVE looking for variants. I don’t think I need to post a link to Game Rave as I am sure we all know the site. Thanks again and again, Jason.

There is a section on Game Rave that discusses Silent Hill for the Playstation (US). It mentions the version of the game that I found today. The variant appears to be an almost normal copy of Silent Hill except that the cover of the manual is silverish… a metallic, almost faded look. The artwork on the back of the manual is the same. It’s the normal picture, but metallic. I also noticed (and didn’t see mentioned on Game Rave) that the disk inside is different. This disk is darker than the regular version. This variant disk also seems to have a light center where the regular release has a darker center. I would like to post pics but my camera is unavailable tonite.

On ebay I found a copy of Digimon World 3 GH. I got it for around $30.. was pretty stoked about that. I thought I found a copy of Mortal Kombat 3 jewel case and bought it for around $10… before I realized it was MK Trilogy.. lol..

I got a copy of the original release of Nocturne for about $40. I have the re-release but that isn’t nearly as fun.. lol

Well, that’s all on the collection tonite. Any observations about the SH variant would be appreciated!

Gumby

This is a very strange topic for me to even consider but recently i haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. There have been some really awesome moments in slaughter, the No Russians episode in MW2, dismembering people in SoF, having sex with a prostitute in GTA and then kill her to get your money back or doing cool stuff as Kratos in God of War.

So yes, I really love that stuff, but what got me thinking? I guess Heavy Rain had something to do with it cause i could connect to the characters in a way that i couldn’t before, or at least that’s what media have told me but to be honest i have cared about characters in games as long as I’ve been playing games. Admittedly the story in Heavy Rain is great and it may be made to affect me as a player more than many other games.

Where am I going with this I don’t even know for sure myself but i know i can’t bare to even see the things i love to do in games in reality or even on TV. I can’t stand to see innocent human beings getting hurt in reality, will my feelings about games change with newer and better gaming consoles or stories even more playing with your emotions that mentioned Heavy Rain?

Well I don’t think so because after all it’s just a game how and messy it becomes or how evil and brutal things you can do it’s still nothing else than a game. Living out a horrible twisted dream, being how evil and disturbed I want to be in a game is fine. Playing a game won’t hurt anyone and I would certainly not even consider doing any of that stuff in reality.

Teaching people to do horrible things is a science which is pretty well perfected and not that hard but I am pretty convinced that a game can’t teach you that. Then comes the question about how to live with yourself afterwards and judging from pretty much every close combat war veterans story I’ve heard I don’t see why the games industry would like to psychologically destroy their audience. Even if they wanted to do it they couldn’t and if they could who would play their games?

So I bought the TiltFX accessoire for the PSP… read in to find my experiences with this novel piece of equipment!

It doesn’t work! It’s flat out a waste of money…

First, it doesn’t fit in the remote port properly, and even then it won’t fit with any case on your PSP. It’s very small/loseable. It comes with no way to store it, not even a strap to attach it to the wriststrap hole on PSP.

It says to select a profile, press start to load the inserted UMD. Pressing start does nothing. It does not work with games on the memory stick.

It stops sound from working!

It comes in “Demo” mode, which means you have to enter a license key. Which is retarded since it’s hardware that only they sell.
Meaning if you have multiple PSPs, it will only work on one of them. If it ever breaks/gets lost, you must buy a new TiltFX.

The program they have to detect your PSP to register it, does not detect PSPs properly. Which is ironic/infuriating cause somewhere else in the program, it does detect PSPs properly.
I managed to get it to work by restarting the program.

It adds yet another folder to mess up your memory stick’s root directory, instead of just using it’s Game folder.

Then it says to enable it by pressing R (shoulder) and Home in game, which does not work.

Do not buy this product.

I tried testing it on another PSP, of course the whole licensing BS didnt work