Sunday Roundup: 4/23/17

While browsing Craigslist I noticed a “video game warehouse sale” this weekend, and it happened to be somewhat decent. Online retailer cashforgamers was doing a once-a-month sale in their “warehouse” (which was really just a backroom full of games) and invited people to come in and browse. Since I had the weekend off I decided to check it out. Thankfully their prices were decent, and hit right on the mark of what I’d call fair. The first game I picked up is a PS2 RPG my brother enjoyed. Gladius is a tactial/action RPG set in Roman times, where you command and train multiple gladiators to take on other groups of gladiators! Good find indeed!

There was a bin labeled “3 for $5”, and you know me, I couldn’t pass that chance up! Surprisingly the box wasn’t full of just sports games, though there were some, but it had some decent older games. Sticking out in the bunch were Commandos 2 and Commandos, two games I never heard of but was instantly interested in since they are part of the same series. Apparently the Commando’s series goes back to the late 90s on the PC, but this is the first game released in the series of PS2. Likely a game I’ll never play, but for a couple bucks how could I say no?

Strangely, Commandos 2: Men of Courage is third game in the series, but the first on the PS2. So it makes no sense why the non-numerical Commandos: Strike Force is the fifth game in the series. And for that matter it’s not even the first game on the PS2. Hell, the first game on the system is called Commandos 2! Odd naming aside, this is the last game in the series, and the only other game in the series on the PS2. For a random shooter series on the system full of shooter series’, I’m glad to have discovered and completed the series in a matter of minutes. And for only a few dollars to boot!

Tennis has been near and dear to me for some time now, thanks in part to a little game on the Nintendo 64 called Mario Tennis. Since then, I’ve played many tennis games, some good some bad. Growing up, I would often seen Top Spin with it’s badass black boxart for the Xbox on store shelves, thinking how cool it looked, and yearning to play it despite not owning the original Xbox. A few years after it came out for Microsoft’s system, it was ported to the PS2. Since that port, the series has seen three other installments, and I’ve played a few of them, but never really enjoyed them all too much. I think the arcade style tennis of Mario Tennis or even Sega’s far superior Virtua Tennis series is more up my alley!

The biggest purchase of the event for me was Square Enix’s RPG Radiata Stories. When it released I remember thinking how cool it looked, and since that was right in the middle of my RPG heyday, I really wanted to play it. But circumstances abounded and I never got around to grabbing it, despite seeing it show up frequently on used shelves. Well, now I can finally try this one out! The story appears to revolve around classic JRPG tropes like knights, elves, and magic, and I’m all for that!

The selection at this event was decent, but finding anything noteworthy (and not pricey) was rough. But, as luck would have it, one of the Gamecube’s few games I was still searching for was sitting there on the shelf, and for a fair price! When Amazing Island was first released, I kept getting it confused with another game of the time, Gotcha Force. While these two games share little in common, they both featured collectible monsters to level up like in a Pokemon game, they were both Gamecube exclusives, and they both must have been advertised similarly for me to remember wanting them both. In this one, however, you mostly play minigames and create new monsters. It’s a random game that has no real redeeming qualities, but I’m glad to have finally tracked it down!