Xbox: The Time To Collect Is Now - Part 2

Even if there is still anyone reading this blog, I doubt anyone has been reading it for long enough to remember my last post about my Xbox collection. It came some seven years ago; shortly after I was given the splendid green console by my wife for Christmas, in fact. I bought many games for it at very low prices in a short space of time after discovering just how cheap most of them were. I also had many others on my radar, however, and intended to buy them all equally quickly and make a follow-up post accordingly. This was achieved for the most part. Well, the part about buying the other games, anyway. But the post about them here was not forthcoming.

Discounting my usual laziness and procrastination, the cause for this exccessive delay was my desire to purchase all of the games I wanted before making my second post. Most of these were bought swiftly but some, including the more pricey ones, not incoincidentally, were continually put off over and over until it became... years. There were a few reasons for this but the biggest one was the change in policy by CEX, a game/movie store here in the UK. It was from there I bought most of the Xbox games I already had (as well as games for other systems). Quite a few I bought in person in my local store but many of them I bought online via their website.

Back then, they charged only one postage fee per order, not per item, despite the fact that large orders were likely to consist of items from different stores over the country. I was a little surprised by this generous policy but also very pleased as it meant I could buy tons of games for a pittance and only pay £2.50 postage (or however much it was), as I did with the first batch of games I bought, as well as most of this second batch. I recall a particularly amusing occasion when my wife and I arrived home from work only to find our front door very difficult to open. Upon forcing it open, we found that there were at least 20 padded envelopes on the floor behind it.

These, it soon transpired, were all from CEX and all with a single Xbox game in each! Suffice to say, wifey was not best pleased! Luckily for her but unluckily for me, the next time I went to order a load of games I found that they had changed this policy, now charging a postage fee per item. This now meant that most games would cost me more in postage than the actual cost of buying them. I'm not complaining much, I understand the change completely, and I did still buy a few more games in person at the store, but it did put an indefinite pause on my large-scale ordering. And thus, some games I had intended to buy were not, and still have not been purchased.

So, I guess I should probably have named this follow-up post 'The Time To Collect Was Then' as I don't even know what prices are like now. Knowing the way the retro collecting scene has been going in recent years, the few games I never got around to buying probably cost quite a bit more now than when I was doing most of my buying, but I'm still grateful for the size of my collection, many of which have still not been played. Now that I have my Xbox set up in my awesome new game/movie room, however, I will be and have been getting through some of them. I hope to do some sort of feature on each of them eventually but for now, here's a look at the second batch of games I bought. If anyone happens to read this and has any suggestions for games I haven't but should buy, let me know in the comments! :)

Advent Rising £2.00
Alien Hominid £3.00
Arctic Thunder £1.00
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance £4.00
Barbarian £1.00
Battlestar Galactica £2.00
Blinx the Time Sweeper £2.50
Blood Wake £0.50
BMX XXX £2.50
Brute Force £0.50
Burnout Revenge £2.00
Curve £0.50
Dark Summit £1.00
Dead Or Alive Ultimate £1.50
Defender £1.00
Deus Ex - Invisible War £0.35
Enclave £1.00
Grand Theft Auto III £2.00
Group S Challenge £1.50
Jacked £1.50
Judge Dredd - Dredd vs Death £2.00
Just Cause £1.50
Mad Dash Racing £1.00
Mashed £1.00
Mechassault £2.00
Midnight Club II £1.00
Mojo £1.00
Need For Speed Carbon £1.00
Nightcaster £0.50
Phantom Crash £1.50
Powerdrome £0.50
Project Gotham Racing 2 £0.50
Project Snowblind £0.40
Rallisport Challenge £0.80
Red Dead Revolver £1.50
Red Ninja £3.50
Robotech Battlecry £3.00
Samurai Warriors £2.00
Scaler £1.50
Scrapland £1.00
Sega Soccer Slam £2.00
Speed Kings £1.00
Spyhunter £1.00
Spy vs Spy £3.00
Street Racing Syndicate £1.00
Suffering, The £0.75
TD Overdrive £2.00
Tetris Worlds £1.50
Time Splitters 2 £1.50
ToeJam & Earl 3 £2.50
Total Overdose £1.00
Unreal Championship 2 £0.50
Wings of War £1.00
X-Men Legends £1.50

Total price for 54 games = £77.30 - crikey!

Total cost of whole collection of 111 games = £152.90 - ultra crikey!