New additions to the media collection in March 2018

March 2018 was a great month for collecting, especially if you were into gaming, both digital and old-school.

The newest LEGO mag only featured a Finn figurine, and while I don’t think he’s the worst character in the new Star Wars movies (although The Last Jedi didn’t show him in a particularly good light), it would have been more interesting to build another spaceship.

If you remember from last month, the Games TM and Retrogamer magazines were missing, so here they were, all four of them, one in an extremely bad condition, as you can see from the top-left corner. At the time of writing, my next issues haven’t arrived yet, so that’s probably it for the My (Least) Favourite Magazines subscriptions…

March didn’t offer much for the movie collection, and I’m not sure Attraction is a good movie, but as this steelbook featured both 3D/2D editions, and I got it for 10 EUROs, I could live with that.

I already hinted at more boardgames, and as the new gaming fair in Duisburg, SPIEL DOCH (= SO PLAY), took place relatively close to where I live, it was a great and cheap way to buy lots of titles. I actually preferred this to the annual SPIEL boardgaming fair in Essen (very close to Duisburg), as it wasn’t very crowded and one could move around without much pushing and test some games. Not sure if some reviews or coverage is coming up, but here are a few impressions at least.

The other two titles I bought at the Mueller discount shop on the same day, so there’s plenty to play in the coming summer time…

Speaking of playing, it was digital gaming what last month was all about. Browsing through the rows of games in our local Mediamarkt, it doesn’t happen very often that one finds cheap games, especially ones that are from Nintendo and catch a price around 40-45 EUR. So I was pretty surprised to buy all these 3DS games for less than a tenner each.

The same also held true for Gamestop where one could find some retro bargains if one was looking hard enough.

The bargain hunt continued thanks to Saturn in digital and at on-site stores.

Now if I’d only known before that a 5 for 3 offer would start soon after, with Saturn and Mediamarkt also offering the same games…

But sometimes it’s just about timing, as you never know when the opportunity for the same price presents itself.

So finally I decided to use the 5 for 3 offer to buy some more games, even for consoles I didn’t have. Of course going through each shelf at our local Mediamarkt took ages, and the prices were pretty ridiculous, but at long last I found 5 titles for 10 EUR each, which was a pretty good deal.

It’s not too often that I buy new adventure games, but if the packaging is as nice as with Headup Games’ The Inner World: The Last Wind Monk, including the DRM-free as well as Steam version, then I gladly hand over my money, especially since the original I reviewed was already quite good.

Being a gamer doesn’t only mean buying/playing all the games, but also wearing some merch, and if the T-shirts only cost 5-10 EUR each, then one doesn’t have to think twice.

I found all of these at a Gamestop, and there was even a 3 for 2 offer I wasn’t aware of. I might have bought one more if I’d known, but these were actually the coolest ones, especially with the YPS magazine of my youth. Remembering the sea monkey gimmick was also pretty cool, as it obviously showed that geek culture was already in the making when the term wasn’t even invented (and is now unfortunately used for hipster marketing).

Finally I also bought some essential equipment, both for gaming and for general use. Starting with a great HD webcam, the next logical step was a headset. While the former was state of the art, the latter was cheap, but acceptable for short gaming sessions. The stereo microphone of the cam is surprisingly great to use, but being able to immerse oneself with a headset might come in handy in more noisy environments.

The HDMI cable of 5 m length was also an important purchase, as I just figured out how to connect the PC graphics card with my receiver and have surround sound as well. It also hinted at some rather big investments for the future, with the latest 4K support. But more about this next month!

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