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Are WATA/VGA Video Game Gradings a Scam?

August 25, 2021 Guides

To save you time, if you define a scam to mean that you give someone money for a service and they do not do that service, then by all means WATA and VGA (Video Game Authority) are not scams. They’re legitimate companies that, if you ship your games to them, will grade your games and send them back based on what services you paid for. Maybe not very quickly, but they do what they promise to do. Now, is video game grading in of itself a scam? A fictional system designed to inflate the prices of retro video games that are becoming more scarce due to the fragile materials used to construct their boxes? That’s a deeper question with some actually quite odd answers. Furthermore, should you invest in graded games? That’s an even tougher question. We will dive into all of them below. If you’re wanting to collect retro…

How To Solve Nostalgia and Start Retro Game Collecting

July 18, 2021 Guides

If you have fond memories of the good ‘ol days of games from bygone eras then you may want to consider buying games now instead of later, no matter which day you read this. The reason being that physical game media is becoming more rare by the day as games break, get thrown out and are lost to the fates of time. The prices of which are increasing, especially as older games which used cardboard for their cases begin to decay from moisture and age. The community and market for physical video games remained rather stable for a long period of time. Generally speaking, games were worth a percentage of their retail price based on popularity, with more popular games taking a smaller percentage of their retail on third party sites like eBay. For instance, a $49.99 game would likely sale for $35 on eBay used for the longest time,…

Seven Addicting Microsoft Game Pass Games in Less Than Three Sentences

February 24, 2024 Editorials

Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) has gotten a wave of folks to take up the $1 offer for Microsoft Game Pass today. The question is, outside of MSFS what else is there to play? Here’s seven suggestions focused mostly around recent releases. Game Pass no longer has a “free trial” but does have new user bonuses. The following games have been reviewed for 2024 and remain awesome games to play on game pass. Touhou: Luna Nights An amazing Metroidvania game that is based on a popular bulletheck arcade style game. Very fun time control mechanic. Great for those new to Touhou and aren’t into bulletheck style games. Crusader Kings III A game that someone you know probably talks about so you should play it to find out what it’s about. You can delete it afterwards, no biggie, it’s only about 7 gigabytes. Fun to play with no intention to win and…

Let’s Talk GameStop’s Impending Doom

January 18, 2020 Editorials

GameStop is the last vestige of brick and mortar electronic gaming stores. It is a business of acquisitions, claiming most other large competitors and merging them into the fold and is on every YouTube and blog’s “Top 10 Companies Soon to Pull a Blockbuster” for the last six months to a year or so. Are they right? Is GameStop about to go under? I honestly am not some kind of market wizard, I can’t say if their current plans will save them or not, but we can talk about what’s gotten them to this point, in context of video game sales (not the whole who bought who what when and where, lots of that is already out there). So this chart pretty much tells a very, very interesting story. The company went public in 2002 at around $10 USD a share. In 2002, we were still in the world of…

The Nintendo Switch is the Clear Winner of the 2010s and the 2019 Holiday Season

November 27, 2019 Editorials

Nintendo’s console is a literal sweeping victory when it comes to sales and nearly everything else. The Xbox One was released in 2013 and has 46 million. The Nintendo Switch has sold 41 million and was released in 2017. The Playstation 4 has sold 102 million since 2013, which may be more, but considering Nintendo moved half of that in 2 years compared the 6 that Sony has had, we can really see the clear winner here. The Switch games hold really high resale values. For instance, I recently traded in Luigi’s Mansion 3 for $34 after purchasing it for $47 via Walmart, stacking on the 5% back on the Walmart card. That meant that I lost only $13 plus tax in the transaction. Attempting to trade-in most of my PS4 games after launch and I’m lucky to get offered $15 for them. The demand is real for the games…

Don’t Die, Minerva! Early Access Coming December 5, 2019

November 26, 2019 News

Don’t Die, Minerva! (Steam / Xbox) has an early access release date: December 5, 2019. This is really cool for a myriad of reasons, the first being that it’s being developed and published by Xaviant, a gaming studio in Dawsonville, GA a short hop / skip / jump (and 3 exits) away from Dot Matrix Media. They’re known for the The Culling series, if you’ve ever heard of it and for being one of the few studios here in Georgia. The other cool thing about the game is that it’s a rouge-lite that takes Luigi’s Mansion and throws it into the spooky adventure horror genre that it belongs. You’ve got procedural generated dungeons, loot and enemies along with difficulty ranging from “I just want to see the pretty graphics and story” to “typical Dark Souls comment.” I mean, Dark Souls is pretty much a difficulty slider setting at this point.…

Pros & Cons of Nintendo Switch Cartridges vs. Downloading from the eShop (Plus What’s Faster)

March 24, 2023 Guides

It can be a hard choice between the convenience of downloading the game to your console versus the different advantages to having a physical copy like being able to resell your game. On the PS4 and Xbox One it’s a bit of a different ball game, because you’re dealing with game discs vs. the cartridges that the Switch has, which we will go into below. 2023 Update Nothing much has changed, but I’d like to point out that the DS e-store is closing. This really pushes it towards “you should own physical media of your games that last a long time (very long time)” over virtual stores which can and will eventually close. 2021 Update As a note, some Switch games now include two important concepts: cloud gaming & physical copies containing download codes for games (vs. all games being on the cart). For cloud gaming, I’m not exactly sure…

How to Play Outer Worlds for $1 and Not Use the Epic Store

October 26, 2019 Guides

If you want to play Outer Worlds, the new Fallout 3/4-like game by Obsidian, you have a few options. It’s on the PS4, Xbox and on PC via the Epic Games Store. However, instead of buying it full price, you can actually play it (at least for the first month for $1) and not even have to have the Epic Store installed. This “trick” isn’t a trick at all and is an intended play path by the developers. You can get the trial for Xbox Game Pass and install the PC version off of Microsoft’s website (no links – trust no links to it, go to Microsoft yourself to avoid malware). In the games included with the game pass is not only Outer Worlds but other awesome titles like the Gears of War series and Metro. That’s it, all there is to it. Now, you can also buy the game…

Katamari Reroll Review

October 13, 2019 Reviews

Katamari Damacy is a unique puzzle game that involves you taking a ball and rolling it through anywhere from on top of a table all the way to the world itself and in later renditions, the universe itself. The ball, as it grows, can pick up bigger items, which causes an interesting snowball effect – the bigger the ball, the faster the size of it can increase. That’s it. That is all there is to it. There are a total of five console games: Katamari Damacy (also Katamari Reroll)We Love Katamari (PS2)Me and My Katamari (PSP)Beautiful Katamari (Xbox 360) (25th best selling Xbox 360 game in Japan)Katamari Forever (PS3) (compilation game) There were a few mobile games as well but the only thing currently out is Amazing Katamari which is an infinite runner. Touch My Katamari, for the vita, could technically be included in the list but it was really…