Several weeks back, our old friend The Requiem and I traveled to Classic Game Junkie in Glenside, PA, for some good ol’ Dreamcast hunting. I’ve been to this store many times, and you might have seen it featured several times over the years on The Game Chasers. I knew this store would have some quality Dreamcast games, so I decided to open my wallet and splurge a bit here, even if it meant I might have to overpay a bit on a few games.

When you walk through the doors at Classic Game Junkie, you’re greeted with the classic The Legend of Zelda tune when Link opens a treasure chest, letting you know there are but many video game treasures lurking inside. Before I ventured to the Dreamcast section, I decided to browse around at their other offerings.

Sitting inside one of the glass cabinets was a JVC X’Eye! Man, I’ve been looking to get one of these for so long, and The Requiem actually owns one but has thus far refused to give it to me. What a friend, right? There was also a huge assortment of SEGA CD and Master System games, so if you’re in the market for any of those systems, definitely pay Classic Game Junkie a visit if you ever find yourself near Philadelphia.

As I suspected, they had an incredibly large Dreamcast offering, and I immediately started grabbing everything that I was missing from my Dreamcast list, and after realizing I had nearly 30 games in my stack, I knew I’d have to pare it down and focus on the games I really wanted.

With my giant stack of Dreamcast games in-hand, I walked over to the glass counter, where their more expensive games sat, and I saw they had Giga Wing! This was one of the more expensive games I knew I’d have to pick up at some point during my quest, so I decided to splurge and pick it up!

In total, I bought 14 games and spent nearly $200! Here’s the full list of games I ended up buying: 102 Dalmations: Puppies to the Rescue, 4×4 Evolution, Air Force Delta Alien Front Online, Centipede, Giga Wing, Suzuki Alstare Extreme Racing, Sentimental Graffiti 2 (* import) Silent Scope, Trickstyle, Vigilante 8: Second Offense, Wetrix+, Who Wants to Beat Up a Millionaire, Xtreme Sports.

I was able to get the owner to knock of some money since I bought so many games, but I listed the original sticker price in the table below. With this addition, that brings my current Dreamcast collection to 95 games!

Be sure to read my previous journal entries here!

I’ve been tardy in my writing, so I apologize and promise to be better. But the good news is I was able to snag some pretty sweet Dreamcast games over the past couple weeks, so I hope you won’t be too cross with me.

I took the day off on Friday, March 30, and decided I’d finally check out the Columbus Farmer’s Market in Columbus, NJ, because I’ve heard some really good things about one of the video game stores located there. I did go there before a couple years ago, but only looked around at the outdoor area, and it was all the typical stuff you see at flea markets, but I didn’t know there were stores inside, too.

As I went inside, they had some pretty cool stores, like an Amish bakery, a toy store with some Japanese toys and a pet store with a gigantic lizard slithering around a wooden cage.

What really caught my eye, though, was a legit arcade tucked away in one of the corners of the marketplace. It wasn’t all that big, but they did have a Crazy Taxi and House of the Dead 2 cabinets.

We finally found the video game store called Video Nutz, and they had some really good assortment of retro games, ranging all the way back to the Magnavox Odyssey.

There was a guy who walked in a little bit later to trade in some stuff. I got curious, so I walked over to see what he was trading in, and it was an old, dirty SEGA Saturn, but there was also a copy of Radiant Silvergun! I wish I would have seen that before he came in to offer to buy it off him.

I ended up buying five games there, including Bang! Gunship Elite, Fighting Force 2, Spec Ops II Omega Squad, Test Drive 6 and WWF Attitude.

I still had some time left, so I decided to drive about an hour east to visit Powered By Games in Lanoka Harbor, NJ. They had a huge inventory of Dreamcast games that all seemed pretty reasonably priced.

They probably had the best overall selection of any retro store that I’ve seen since starting the Dreamcast Challenge. I wish I had a bigger budget, but I ended up buying another five games: Blue Stinger, Frogger 2 Swampy’s Revenge, House of the Dead 2, Speed Devils Online Racing and Urban Chaos.

Oh, I also received Confidential Mission from an eBay purchase, so that officially marks another 11 games added to my Dreamcast collection.

With Weeks 3 and 4 in the books, that officially brings my collection to 81 games!

Dear Journal,

This week I didn’t have a lot of time to go Dreamcast hunting as I did last week, but I did find the time to stop by a small retro store called Next Level Video Games in Blackwood, New Jersey.

They didn’t have a really large selection of Dreamcast games, especially compared to Jay Street Video Games, but they were fairly reasonably priced. I ended up picking up Tennis 2K2, Sports Jam, Tee Off and Dave Mirra for about $37. Sports Jam is one of those games I rarely see in the wild, not that it’s necessarily a rare game, but it just doesn’t seem to be sold at most places, so I’m really happy to add that to my collection.

I have a lot of fond memories playing the Virtua Tennis games back in the day. The gameplay in those games are so smooth, and they have the best mini-games of any sports game that I can think of.

I decided to pass on a Confidential Mission bundle that came with a StarFire LightBlaster for $59.99 and instead purchased a CIB copy off eBay for about $23, which is a lot kinder on my wallet.

This upcoming week, I’m planning to attend the South Jersey Geek Fest, where I hope to score some good deals on Dreamcast games and keep chipping away at the huge list of games I still need to collect.

With Week 2 in the books, my collection is now 70 games!

Dear Dreamcast Journal,

This past week was my start to the Dreamcast Collection Challenge where I will attempt to collect all official North American released Dreamcast games. Now, looking back at my first week, I really don’t think it could have gone any better.

Early in the week, I received a few games that I bought earlier in the week off eBay – Time Stalkers, World Series Baseball 2K2 and Evolution 2. I could have sworn that I already had Time Stalkers in my collection, but who knows where it wandered off to. That game was one of my favorite Dreamcast RPGs, and it’s a real shame that it never got the attention it deserved because it was really overshadowed by Skies of Arcadia and Grandia II at the time.

I bought World Series Baseball 2K2 because it recently became playable online again. Ever since I bought a DreamPi, I’ve been trying to get all the Dreamcast games that are now online. It’s really fantastic that the Dreamcast community is so dedicated that we can actually play the Dreamcast online nearly 20 years after it was originally released. That really boggles my mind.

I got a little lucky on Friday because my kids were out of school, so I decided to take the day off to spend with them. I had to run into work in the morning, but after that, I took them to Chic-Fil-A for lunch, and they ran around the playground while I searched for some video game stores where I could go Dreamcast hunting.

I didn’t have as much time in the day for hunting because later in the afternoon, I had to go pick up a new truck that my wife and I had recently bought. So I decided I’d stay relatively close and figured I’d go to a local retro game store called Jay Street Video Games in the Cherry Hill Mall in New Jersey. I didn’t have a strict budget for the day but wanted to stay under $100 if I could help it.

Now, I’ve been to this store several times over the past couple years, and they have a decent selection of retro games and their prices usually aren’t too absurd for most games, but can get a little up there for more rarer titles.

Walking into the store, they had an entire SEGA section in the back corner of the store, including Master System, Genesis, Saturn, 32X and Dreamcast games. They also had a SEGA Pico sitting on a shelf behind the counter! You don’t see those very often these days. To my surprise, they actually had a pretty decent selection of Dreamcast games that spanned two rows on the shelves.

My eyes were immediately focused on The House of the Dead 2 and Alien Front Online — two games I always wanted in my Dreamcast library — but my strategy going in was to buy all the cheap games that I needed first, which meant lots and lots of sports games.

Thankfully, they had most of the 2K titles there for only a few bucks, but there were several other non-2K sports titles that weren’t as cheap but still in the sub-$10 range. All in all, I picked up 17 Dreamcast games and a Web Browser 2.0 disc because I wanted SEGA Swirl.

After quite a bit of time hemming and hawing, I finally decided on the following games:

• Demolition Racer: No Exit – $8.99
• Re-Volt – $9.99
• Tomb Raider: Chronicles – $7.99
•  Reel Fishing – Wild – $11.99
• Championship Surfer – $6.99
• Hoyle Casino – $7.99
• Speed Devils – $7.99 (This was a double. Doh!)
• Hidden & Dangerous – $9.99
• Striker Pro 2000 – $8.99
• NFL Quarterback Club 2000 – $1.99
• SEGA Bass Fishing – $4.99
• NBA 2K1 – $1.99
• Railroad Tycoon II – $8.99
• Slave Zero – $8.99
• Sydney 2000  – $3.99
• NCAA College Football 2K2 – $1.99
• World Series Baseball 2K1 – $1.99
• Web Browser 2.0 – $4.99

Total: $125 (without tax)

So I ended up going over budget by about $25, but that was mainly because I really wanted Tomb Raider Chronicles, Reel Fishing – Wild and Slave Zero.

Needless to say, I was incredibly excited about adding 18 new games to my Dreamcast collection. In total this week, I collected 21 games for my collection to increase my overall total to 66 games.

I’m sure most weeks won’t be this successful, and I definitely won’t be spending over $100 a week on Dreamcast games … especially if I want to stay married!

I’ll definitely hit up Jay Street Video Games again, though, and will certainly grab The House of the Dead 2 and Alien Front Online when I visit next.

See you next week!