I came across someone who wanted to get rid of a bunch of old Windows games, someone who was apparently a fan of real time strategy games. Most of the games are already in the database, but I acquired them anyway because they were basically free and many of the specific covers were not yet in the database.

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Random observation: Check out the back of Lords of Midnight — one of the screenshots has a caption that purports that the game is comprised of an immense world that is the equivalent of 8 CD-ROMs. I’m hoping that the single CD-ROM that I have corresponds to this box copy.

Anyway, out of this lot, Crusades: Quest for Power is the only title that is definitively absent from the database. There is also Superbike World Championship– this is the kind of game that’s difficult to tell whether it’s in the database already. As of this writing, there is a whole category of Superbike World Championship titles but none that just name the basic title, which is all the CD-ROM states. The disc lists copyright dates of 1999,2000, which is a bit earlier than the ones of record, so this probably warrants a new entry.

The other games are:

1. Conquest of the New World: Deluxe Edition
2. Cyclemania
3. Gex (Smart Saver release)
4. Highland Warriors
5. Hocus Pocus (WizardWorks release)
6. Lords of Midnight
7. Patrician II: Quest for Power
8. Renegade: Battle for Jacob’s Star (Sun Moon Star release)
9. Shadow Watch
10. Shadows of Cairn
11. Sinistar Unleashed
12. XIII (distributed through the U.K. newspaper The Sun)
13. XS

The genre of “Tycoon” simulation games is ridiculously vast. Here are some of my acquisitions from the previous year in this field:

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So we have:

• Fairy Godmother Tycoon (I actually remember seeing this when it was first released in 2007 and keeping my eye on it, knowing that I would collect it some day)
• Prison Tycoon 4: Supermax (first 3 games in the series are already in MobyGames)
• Deep Sea Tycoon: Diver’s Paradise (already in MobyGames)
• Mall of America Tycoon (apparently a “special edition” of the overarching Mall Tycoon series, the first 3 of which are already in the database)
• TV Tycoon (I just realized this is already in the database as TV Manager)
• Tycoon Collection (shovelware collection not documented in database yet, though some of the constituent games are):
• Moon Tycoon (in database)
• Marine Life Tycoon
• Ocean Explorer Tycoon
• Coffee Tycoon (in database)

I actually look forward to these playing these games sometime since I had such a good time during my all-too-brief time allotted to Skateboard Park Tycoon.

A thrift store haul

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• Frog Frenzy 2 (with Frog Frenzy 1 on the same disc), from Cosmi
• Sammy’s Science House, from Edmark
• Carmen Sandiego’s ThinkQuick Challenge, from The Learning Company
• Intel Video Phone Software (multimedia software that will be useful on my other blog)

Recent Auction Acquisitions

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• Grandia II (Dreamcast), from Ubisoft
• Championship Snow Boarding 2004, from Activision
• Cabbage Patch Kids: Where’s My Pony, from D3Publisher
• NHL ’99 (PC), from EA Sports

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• Rune, apparently published through Global Star Software as part of a CD-ROM shovelware set, perhaps titled Pack 5; this is presumably disc 3 of a multi-disc set and encompasses action games
• KAR Racing, from Cosmi
• Nascar 2000, from EA Sports

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I thought that this would be “Fantasy Pack 6”, as in, there were 5 other packs before this one. Some Googling reveals that the proper title for the set is “Fantasy 6 Pack”, which means that my set is incomplete since I only got 4 unique games. But deeper searching and squinting at the box image available on Amazon reveals that I do, in fact, have a complete set since one of the games actually counts as 3:

• Disciples II (2 discs) — this is the one that counts as 3 games since this includes Dark Prophecy, Servants of the Dark, and Guardians of the Light
• Prince of Qin (3 discs)
• Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood
• Dragon Throne: Battle of Red Cliffs

I was on a Dreamcast kick a few months back and one result is that I went in search of a bunch of Dreamcast stuff on eBay. Here are the results of a few different hauls.

First, I collected some games, mostly disposable sports games:

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Games included:

• NFL 2K
• NFL 2K1
• NHL 2K
• Sonic Adventure 2
• Spider-Man
• Sydney 2000
• Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2
• Virtua Tennis

Further, I procured a collection of 9 different volumes of Sega Dreamcast magazine. I seem to be missing 2 volumes and I’m not sure sure if there were more than 11 issues as the last volume was issued on February, 2001.

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• November, 1999 — this doesn’t list a volume number but I think this is volume 2
• January, 2000 — volume 3
• May, 2000 — volume 5
• July, 2000 — volume 6
• September, 2000 — volume 7
• November, 2000 — volume 8
• December, 2000 — volume 9
• January, 2001 — volume 10
• February, 2001 — volume 11

That last issue was published around the time that the Dreamcast was being discontinued in North America.