Thought I'd post something since we haven't had much activity lately. Now that I think about it, I haven't bought anything since Pokemon with the exception of the below.
We still haven't hit that giant period where all old systems are being cleared out of stores yet so there will be one final wave of clearance where we say goodbye to the Gamecube, PS2, and XBox but at the moment, it's been fairly quiet on the clearance front.
So, here's a little writeup I never made from my trip to Boise a month or so ago, part of a continuing series about CAG'ing on the road- there's no Boise thread near as I could tell so maybe someone up there will get some benefit from this
Three stops this time, one at a Gamecrazy, another at an EBGames and a third at a KMart. I also stopped at a mall they had there a couple of days later in my trip but didn't really have time to shop. They had a legit Software Etc there. These days, tho, it looks pretty much like any other EBGames or Gamestop.
Oh, and speaking of population density. People say Kansas is the middle of nowhere but I beg to differ. If you do an EBGames search centering on Lawrence and going 100 miles out, you end up with over 30 with something like 15 in KC but also places like St Joe, Topeka, Manhattan, Lawrence, and Harrisonville. Boise, ID and 100 surrounding miles: 4 stores, 3 of which are in the Boise MSA and another about an hour away in Oregon.
The Boise MSA is over 600K people- who knew? Basically, there's Boise. Then the second largest city in Idaho is Nampa- it's about 20 miles to the west. Then there's Meridian inbetween but it's more or less unbroken city- tho a lot of that inbetween area is residential. FYI, all 3 stores I went to were along a street called Cloverdale.
First, the Gamecrazy. After my amazing good luck in Colorado Springs, I was happy to see that there was a GC in Boise. Not only that but there aren't any nearby us. I was hoping they would have some Classic Plastic from their big sale and they did have a bin there but it was somewhat lacking for decent stuff. There was no PSX or Dreamcast and the guy behind the counter said that stuff was cleaned out pretty quickly after it went on sale. It was kindof odd to not even see a Madden or anything like that- it was completely wiped out. They did have some N64, SNES, NES, and Genesis but almost all were sports games. I don't know much about what games to look for on the Genesis but for the other systems, nothing I needed at all tho there were a few quality but overproduced games like Perfect Dark to be had.
Also, I went to a KMart. You know how those are the most random with no consistency from store to store but I'd have loved to have tried my luck. Naturally, like most KMarts, there was no one around to help and I think I milled around there for nearly half an hour. I really wish there had been- it looked like that place hadn't been touched in a year. I know one of the big obstacles people keep coming up against these days is that they have restickered a lot of things. I don't think these were ever originally stickered for clearance so there was no knowledge that they needed to be re-stickered. I saw a copy of Pokemon:Sapphire in there with the old $35 original price tag. I wonder if that would have rung up at $15 or $7 or just out of system. Unfortunately, I never had a chance to find out.
Lastly, I stopped at an EBGames. This was during the B2G1 used sale so I got 6 things between the PS2, GC, and XBox- all $10 or less. Just some hole fillers for my collection. Then I found a new clearance display and that's where I got a little giddy as I picked up the first three PC games I can think of for quite a while. They had the Warcraft 3 expansion which I had never gotten and both the Kings Quest and Space Quest collections, each for $10. I was pretty happy with all 3 of those.
There was one other thing of note there but I didn't really have money to go after. They had all sorts of used copies of somewhat rare stuff for the Gamecube- Mario Parties 4 thru 7, Resident Evil 2/3, and Mario Tennis. Sure, all were $30+ but with a discount card and B2G1, someone could have made a killing there. I almost jumped at the RE's as I've been wanting those for a while but even at a discount that's $50 for those 2 and another game.
I forgot to mention earlier but I also stopped at a Target. No games at all on clearance. Just a few electronics that no one wanted. Those are kindof sad stores.
So, in short, nothing really exciting except some of the rare stuff at the EB and I suppose the KMart could have been an untouched paradise but I'll never know.
SI