Weekend Gaming Score: Now available in platinum

By Stephen Munn | July 18, 2009

This weekend, a town nearby with the distinction of having a virus named after it had a town-wide garage sale event. The result was jammed streets and some very frustrating parking situations while people struggled to be the first to discover which houses were selling things better just thrown away, and which ones would qualify for mention here on Weekend Gaming Score.

A tiny sale that actually seemed to have more people watching it than items for sale had some cheap video games, and I only grabbed one of them: a complete and excellent copy of an obscure Interplay PS1 game called Heart of Darkness. I took a chance on it, never having heard of it, because it *looked* like the kind of game that might be worth something, and it looks like my gamble paid off. Completed auctions on eBay show it selling for as much as $20, a nice figure when I spent $2 on it, to be sure.

As someone who pays closer attention to Nintendo than Microsoft, I’m a lot better at gauging value of the former’s products. One house had a couple of Gamecubes for sale, one of which was stacked atop a Game Boy Player for $30. I chose the other, and here’s why: the Game Boy Player is a great device, but is utterly worthless. Instead, I talked them down from $20 to $15 for the platinum Gamecube with two controllers. eBay’s advice tells me these sell for an average of $35, so I could stand to do pretty well when the hammer falls.

Lastly, I spotted and grabbed a rather large stuffed Sonic the Hedgehog toy for my daughter, which she seems undecided on. Personally I wish it were softer, but it appears to be stuffed with styrofoam beads, meaning it’s not much fun to hug at all. Maybe some surgery is in order.