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Post by Centrale on Feb 5, 2013 17:14:03 GMT
Yesterday I received a copy of My Hero that I bought off ebay recently. I'm not a stickler for the highest quality boxes and manuals -- I don't mind some wrinkled pages or a small chip in the box, although if reasonably priced I'd like a nice copy. But as I began to leaf through the manual, I was like, wow, this is practically a mint edition. It looks like it could be brand new. So imagine my surprise when I got to the high score tables in the back of the manual and saw that most of them are filled in! I haven't got a huge collection -- this is my 30th SMS game -- but it's the first time I've seen one that anyone has actually used the high score pages.
As a kid, I never did. It's not that I wasn't interested in getting high scores, but something about the combination of the nice design of SMS games and the relatively limited number of little boxes that you can write in made it seem like a better idea to not mess with writing in the manual.
So I was just wondering, how many of you actually have written in the high score pages of your manuals? As collectors, how many have you found that have been written in?
Regarding this copy of My Hero, all of the scores are attributed to Steve. It looks like he probably opened this as a Christmas Eve present in '87, and played it regularly until New Years. After that, he only played it three more times -- once in April of '88, and finally twice in August of '88. By that time he'd apparently become quite good at My Hero. I think I'm going to take it as a challenge from this hero of the days of yore and see if I can beat his high score within the next eight months.
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Post by Transatlantic Foe on Feb 5, 2013 19:57:59 GMT
Yeah, I used to write in them as a kid - in some cases (like my Power Strike) there weren't any grids so I wrote scores on the back. It's quite a nice reminder of when you played and how bad you were! I think the only game I sold that had them was Scramble Spirits and I since bought another copy and counter-stopped it, so it's not like it matters.
For some reason in Desert Strike I did some crappy pictures of the enemies and wrote some stats for them. Moves in the back of Mortal Kombat (because for some reason all the magazine printed a bogus sequence for Johnny Cage's balls punch), plus the blood code.
Never bought a game which has writing in the manual though.
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Post by Private Joker on Feb 9, 2013 9:15:30 GMT
I used to do it as well. Even when I was young, I had sort of an OCD thing going on for things neatly sorted and lists of stuff. It would be nice to have the games still that I wrote down scores for but still having them in good condition. However, I sold/traded it all off. It's fun to actually read about Steve's 80's days
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Post by lambrettadave on Feb 14, 2013 13:14:33 GMT
I never wrote in my manuals but I did use to write on a scarp paper scores/codes and put them in the box with the manual.
as for games I have bought none have had scores marked in them though I did have a copy of Action Fighter which had a code wrote on the front cover. I have since sold it on now as a better condition one came along.
Just found out that someone wrote a high score in my recently aquired Galaxy force on boxing day in 1989 and again on the 29th of december as well
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Post by ninjabearhug on Aug 17, 2013 2:09:31 GMT
I generally keep manuals that have scores/cheats written in them over mint ones as long as they're in good condition, adds a bit of history to the game . Personally I don't write on the manuals, but I have notebooks full of scores, maps, tips and passwords that I've written down over the years
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Post by lambrettadave on Aug 17, 2013 11:53:41 GMT
Yesterday I received a copy of My Hero that I bought off ebay recently. I'm not a stickler for the highest quality boxes and manuals -- I don't mind some wrinkled pages or a small chip in the box, although if reasonably priced I'd like a nice copy. But as I began to leaf through the manual, I was like, wow, this is practically a mint edition. It looks like it could be brand new. So imagine my surprise when I got to the high score tables in the back of the manual and saw that most of them are filled in! I haven't got a huge collection -- this is my 30th SMS game -- but it's the first time I've seen one that anyone has actually used the high score pages. As a kid, I never did. It's not that I wasn't interested in getting high scores, but something about the combination of the nice design of SMS games and the relatively limited number of little boxes that you can write in made it seem like a better idea to not mess with writing in the manual. So I was just wondering, how many of you actually have written in the high score pages of your manuals? As collectors, how many have you found that have been written in? Regarding this copy of My Hero, all of the scores are attributed to Steve. It looks like he probably opened this as a Christmas Eve present in '87, and played it regularly until New Years. After that, he only played it three more times -- once in April of '88, and finally twice in August of '88. By that time he'd apparently become quite good at My Hero. I think I'm going to take it as a challenge from this hero of the days of yore and see if I can beat his high score within the next eight months. Without seeing the scores he may well have played the game more but didnt get worth while scores to enter in it. I never wrote in my manuals as I seen it as defacing it I always wrote on another bit of paper with scores or passwords or even cheats if any. Still do this today.
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Post by flatapex on Aug 17, 2013 20:34:17 GMT
Manuals with high scores etc are quite cool, its better that a game was someones favourite, the game that they wanted more than anything for christmas and were thrilled when they got it etc.
I think some of my md games had bits in the back for high scores but apart from the early days I think I put scrap paper in the box
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Post by Centrale on Aug 22, 2013 14:35:12 GMT
Without seeing the scores he may well have played the game more but didnt get worth while scores to enter in it. I think you're right about that. I imagine he might have moved on to other games for a while, then returned to My Hero and took some time re-learning and improving at the game before committing his newer high scores to ink. By the way, I'll have to doublecheck, but I seem to recall I got another game from the same seller the following month that also has some of Steve's high scores. Haven't asked him if he's Steve, though I wouldn't be surprised as the games are pristine so I don't think they've been passed around through too many hands. Edit: I was right, he has a few scores listed in Zaxxon 3-D, although not nearly as many as in My Hero. I haven't been able to challenge his Zaxxon 3-D scores as I'm still looking around for a nice CRT TV that's not too big.
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Post by lambrettadave on Sept 3, 2013 21:20:25 GMT
It is historical evidence that people used to play and enjoy there games and feel chuffted with the scores they were getting (usally on christmas day)
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Post by Batman666 on Nov 7, 2013 19:31:41 GMT
This isn't a high score in the manual, but in Bank Panic I found an old receipt of the game. Dated 28th of December 1993, so I'm guessing this might either have been on a post-christmas sale or somebody spent his/hers Christmas money on this game. What's kind of funny is that s/he bought the game for 20 D-Mark (which is worth about €9), which is about the same price I payed for the game 20 years later
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Post by flatapex on Nov 7, 2013 20:54:46 GMT
This isn't a high score in the manual, but in Bank Panic I found an old receipt of the game. Dated 28th of December 1993, so I'm guessing this might either have been on a post-christmas sale or somebody spent his/hers Christmas money on this game. What's kind of funny is that s/he bought the game for 20 D-Mark (which is worth about €9), which is about the same price I payed for the game 20 years later I used to do that, in the days that I was buying sega games I would typically get money for christmas from most relatives, usually I would be aware of which new releases were decent and which were a marginal update of the previous years game (or in some way ruined), armed with this info when we all went to the sales I was able to get bargains.
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Post by ShadowAngel on Nov 13, 2013 16:29:32 GMT
I never wrote into any manual be it High Scores or whatever (Manuals for PC Games always had a couple spare sites for Notes) because i always wanted to keep everything as pristine as possible. I now have a couple of Master System games where the previous owner(s) filled out the high score fields. The best one has to be Spy vs. Spy where in August 1992 either two good friends or sisters played it and recorded their high scores, one of them was Melanie and she always won. My name is Melanie. It's a funny coincidence The weirdest one i have, are some Sega Saturn games where a guy used a stamp with his full name, adress and telefon number and even wrote his signature over this stamp. I still can't figure out why you'd wanna do that.
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Post by lambrettadave on Nov 14, 2013 17:35:56 GMT
Some Market stalls use to do things like that to prove the game had been sold as used and if it came back it could be identified as being a used game.
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Post by Centrale on Dec 3, 2013 0:41:42 GMT
I managed to get a copy of Alex Kidd in Miracle World at a slightly better-than-usual price. Its manual is fairly well-worn, no tears or bad stains - you can just tell the kid who had this game loved it and read the manual a lot. There are no high scores written in there, but the gem of this cart is that it came with the kid's handwritten notes/reference guide to the Janken matches.
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Post by Batman666 on Dec 11, 2013 7:59:18 GMT
Got another non-high score related manual note. Bought NewZealand Story and when I got it sent home I noticed that some previous owner had used the front page of the manual as a coloring book
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