I’ve been buying a bunch of classic games from eBay lately. A particular seller was clearing out what seemed like an entire collection of Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, Master System and Sega CD games. Buy more than one and pay only $1 for each additional game’s shipping. That’s usually too good a deal for me to pass up, especially if the games are semi-rare. You can grab one or two of those higher priced titles and bundle in a bunch of common stuff and pay a very reasonable price. Last week’s winnings included Alisia Dragoon, Atomic Runner, Bio-Hazard Battle, Combat Cars, and Newman Haas IndyCar Racing. Only the first two cost me more than a couple bucks each, but it was nice to throw in a couple other items with them.
Since I’ve been doing all this eBay buying, boxes have been arriving fairly regularly. However, we were on vacation the week before and I pretty much avoided the Internet as much as possible during that time. I didn’t expect to receive anything this past week, but a box showed up for me on Thursday. I honestly had no clue what it could be. Imagine my surprise when I opened it and found this…
A winnar is yuo!
Yes! Contest winnings!
The week before we left for vacation, I spent a Monday evening playing H.E.R.O. by Activision for the Atari 2600 on Gametap. Every Monday they have a new high score contest and there are prizes for the top ten scores in the current week’s game. I stumbled onto the promotion a couple months ago and wanted to pariticpate sometime but just forgot or didn’t have the chops to enter. Dig Dug was the week before and I couldn’t get back to a reasonably competitive level in that one, so I decided to wait for a later contest.
H.E.R.O. was the one. I didn’t start playing the game until that Monday. I flicked it on for the first time around 5:30 or so after work. I was in the top ten by 7 PM, but not real firm. I took breaks here and there throughout the evening and by maybe 11 o’clock I knew I was solidly in the top ten. I really didn’t know if there were better prizes for better positions in the list so I kept playing right up to the deadline of midnight. I managed to unseat someone right at 11:55 to claim sixth. It was very cool. More amazing was the fellow who won posting the best score in Gametap’s history, nearly matching the Twin Galaxies record for the game.
I figured the prize would be either A) lame or B) never arrive. A Gametap t-shirt and water bottle aren’t all that bad for a night of playing a great game from the past. The included certificate was a nifty bonus. It’s one of those things that no one cares about except those of us who participated, but it certainly beats playing the latest five hour blast-fest and watching cutscenes all night long. H.E.R.O. holds up really well after all these years and would make a pretty cool retro remake if someone were so inclined.
Unfortunately, I totally forgot about the contest on August 4. Galaga was the game and I’m a pretty good Galaga player. Maybe next time…
Anyway, if you want to see the contest page and me in the list, look for Grimrod on the right at this page…
