Game Surprises

Today accidentally became New Game Sunday for me. My girlfriend and I went shopping, and somehow the idea had crept into my head that I needed to get a new game. Of course, this thought should be pretty nonsensical since I'm planning to buy Super Mario Galaxy on Thursday or Friday. So I hardly need to be buying any new games today. My general hope was that I could find a game I wanted either on sale (which seems to be rare for new games), or a good price on a used copy of something. The first store we went to was Hard Off, which is a Japanese sort-of used goods store, especially regarding video games, CDs, DVDs, guitars, and other electronic stuff. No luck. They only had 2 Wii games, and for some reason, most of their DS games I may have been interested in were new copies, not used. Weird.

Second stop was one of my favorite recycle shops. It's big, has lots of decent clothes, a section of random household goods, and a decent little video game area. Again, no luck. There were quite a few games that looked interesting, but most of the prices were too close to the new price to be worth while. Finally, I was successful at a Hachimonjiya, which is actually a bookstore, but this particular branch has an enormous video game section. After watching some pretty cool videos about both Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 (which just came out in Japan) and Dragon Quest XI, I found one of the games I was thinking about: Tetris DS. I've never really been into Tetris much, but all the additional content on the DS version seemed too good to pass up, especially for under 3,000 yen. I also really dig all the Mario backgrounds on the various Tetris levels. This was all I intended to buy, but as I was browsing, I saw another game that was an even better deal. I found Dragon Quest Swords for the Wii for more than 50% off. This is the first time I've ever seen a used Wii game discounted this much. I never would've bought this game at full price, because I had heard how short and relatively easy it is. But for around 2,500 yen, it looks to be well worth it.

I've played a little bit of both of these, but I'll post my impressions of them both tomorrow. I'm still just waiting for Super Mario Galaxy.