Some people have their stamps, some have coins. I collect video games.

Most everyone likes a good scary story. It gets the blood pumping and at rare times gives you that rush of adrenaline that you need once in a while to make you feel alive. Or make you glad that you are alive.

I’m a big fan of Star Wars and zombies. I picked up Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City for my PlayStation 3 against my better judgment and others telling me not to. I admit there was a part of me that was happy to revisit classic zombie-infested Raccoon City once more, even if the game wasn’t particularly done well. Playing, I asked myself, “There was another co-op survival game set in Raccoon City wasn’t there?” I soon remembered that there were in fact two separate games set at the same time that required teamwork to survive, Resident Evil Outbreak and Outbreak File 2.

I remember renting the first Outbreak game when it came out and, from my perspective; it was interesting for a couple of different reasons. Characters had specific classes. You had your cop and security guard that was proficient with firearms. You had other classes like medic or carrier and so forth. Every character had a way to defend themselves, some more than others. Other classes could pick up ammo, but only specific classes could use it. Characters with more slots could carry more things. And while all classes could use herbs scattered around, the medic could combine them to make them more powerful. A class-based system in a Resident Evil game that made it more dependent on teamwork to survive.

Zombies could chase you from room to room, but you had the option of barricading doors for a while to give you a couple of moments before the undead would attack again. I found it funny that zombies could never chase you once you left the room they were in the original Resident Evil games for the PS One. I always assumed that hardware limitations stopped that from happening. Then I remembered Resident Evil 3 had the Nemesis character attack and chase you. So it can happen. Maybe it was just never thought of up until that point.

These are not particularly great games, but still interesting to see how Capcom attempted to get this, specifically the online portion, going on previous generation console. And from what I understand, the servers in Japan were up until 2011 for the PS2.

Plus there is another specific reason I wanted to pick these games up; these were two of the few Resident Evil games I never finished. For as big of a Resident Evil fan I am, I just wasn’t able to complete them all.

I quickly found a copy of Outbreak 2 at my local market. However, the game case was in a not-so-good condition with no instruction manual included. And for the asking price of $15, I figured I could find it in better condition elsewhere. And I did on eBay. Score one for the Internet in this case.

I searched for a reasonably priced copy of Outbreak 1 and was able to negotiate a reasonable price of $12 for a like-new copy. Unfortunately, after I paid, I was notified by the seller that the game was damaged in the mail and returned to him. He issued me a full refund. Others were selling the game in fairly good condition also, but I wouldn’t buy them at the prices they wanted. So the search for this game will continue to a later date.

Other games I never had the pleasure of completing are in the Silent Hill franchise. If Resident Evil games were the equivalent to Night of the Living Dead, I would akin the Silent Hill franchise to the Exorcist. With the weird symbols and cryptic messages lying around talking about demonic gods and other worlds isn’t even the scariest part of those games. Walking around with only a flashlight hearing noises coming from where you can’t see. And let’s face it, what’s sometimes scarier than the monster you can’t see?

I played Silent Hill 1 and then proceeded to finish Silent Hill 2, which to this day I still proclaim as one of the scariest games I ever played. I completed it and then put it away with the other discs and said I would never play that game ever again.

So while I was already on eBay looking for the Outbreak games, I took to searching for what I could find with the Silent Hill series. Someone currently has Silent Hill 2, 3 & 4 The Room, like new with the original black labels instead of the red “Greatest Hits” markings for auction on eBay. I already have a greatest hits version of Silent Hill 2, which has the extra “Born from a Wish” scenario that is not included in the original black label version but never bought copies of 3 and 4. I’ve placed my bid, but whether or not I actually win it I will let you know in my next posting.

Remember at the beginning, I mentioned that I was a big Star Wars fan too.

I picked up an extra GameCube last year around the end of 2011 for $20 that came with a copy of F-Zero EX, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a badly treated copy of Mario Party 7, one controller, and all the connections. Great deal if I say so. But the reason I wanted it for was the attachment underneath it; an add-on that allowed you to play Gameboy, GameBoy Color, and GameBoy Advance games through the GameCube system. Essentially it was like killing two birds with one stone as this helped me not having to search for a Gameboy Advance or classic Gameboy system.

Once I started playing around with old original Gameboy games that haven’t aged all that well, I started thinking about which games for the GameCube I missed out on. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I quickly came to the question that I kicked myself for not automatically thinking of earlier; Which Star Wars games were on this system? After finding many copies of The Clone Wars and Boba Fett Bounty Hunter games, I started thinking that I didn’t want prequel games. I wanted to see if there were any classic trilogy games; I found them, the Rogue Squadron series. Specifically Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader and Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike.

If you grew up watching the original Star Wars trilogy and didn’t imagine yourself wielding a lightsaber, I would assume you were piloting an X-wing fighter instead. I grew up playing the original Star Wars arcade cabinet machine at my local arcade (when they were still around), and anyone who played that game remembers the wireframe graphics and basically the same level repeating itself over and over again becoming more difficult each time. So when I heard that Factor 5 games did a game based on the Rogue Squadron group for the Nintendo 64 and the GameCube, it was one of the few times I regretted not getting another Nintendo console since the SNES. One of the other times was for The Legend of Zelda series, which brought me back to Nintendo after almost 15 years but that’s a story for another time.

There have been the X-Wing and Tie Fighter series on the computer before, but my location wasn’t very well known for PC gaming back then. So getting something similar on a console would have to do.

I found two people who luckily had Rogue Squadron II and Rebel Strike on eBay with the “Buy It Now” option. Sometimes this is better than the auction part because you don’t have to deal with people driving up the prices on certain things you might want and run the risk of prices becoming too high. We negotiated, and I picked them both up at a fairly reasonable price. One vendor rush delivered the game so I was able to play Rogue Squadron II soon after. A couple of days later, I received my other game.