A box find and some old price lists

PC Gaijin · 04/14/2006, 05:31 PM

While digging through some boxes of old stuff at my parents' house (that I literally haven't laid eyes on in ten or fifteen years) I finally found the boxes to some Turbo games I owned back in high school. I had forgotten what happened to these boxes and just assumed that I or my mother had thrown them away at some point. Anyway, it seems my mother kept them.

Found the following:

Sidearms
Victory Run
Last Alert
Ninja Spirit
Cosmic Fantasy 2
Legendary Axe
Bonk's Adventure
Dungeon Explorer
TV Sports Football
J.J. and Jeff
It Came From the Desert
Parasol Stars

/boxes9ku.jpg

And the biggie, the one that I really wondered what happened to:

Ys Book I & II with map

/ysbox2cy.jpg

I also found a couple of sales brochures from Turbo Zone Direct circa 93-94 when I was in college. Here's some interesting prices. Don't you wish you had a time machine?

Bonk 3 (Hu) $49.99
Bonk 3 (CD) $49.99
Dungeon Explorer II $49.99
Magical Chase $39.99
Dynastic Hero $49.99
TerraForming $49.99
Super Air Zonk $49.99
Might & Magic III $49.99

PC Engine game converter $19.99
Super System Card 3.0 $65.00

And here's some prices that aren't so good anymore:

Arcade Card Pro $159.99
Arcade Card Duo $149.99

The above is why I didn't get any Arcade Card games until just a few years ago.

Also interesting is that in a '93 flyer Dracula X is available for $79.99, but by the '94 flyer there's a special note that Dracula X is sold out and unlikely to be restocked again.

Some later flyers (from 95 or so I believe) had these deals:

Any 3 Super CDs for $69.99

Bonk III
Camp California
Dungeon Master
Forgotten Worlds
Loom
Lords of Thunder
Prince of Persia
Riot Zone
Shadow of the Beast
Shape Shifter
Sim Earth
Super Air Zonk
Ys I & II
Ys III

Any 3 for $49.99

Air Zonk
Magical Chase
Splatterhouse
Neutopia II
Soldier Blade

Any 2 for $69.99

Cotton
Dragon Slayer
Gate of Thunder
Might & Magic III
TerraForming
Dynastic Hero
Dungeon Explorer II
Beyond Shadowgate

Painful isn't it? For $175 you could have bought Might & Magic III, Terraforming, Dynastic Hero, Dungeon Explorer II, and Beyond Shadowgate brand new. At the time I bought DE II and Beyond Shadowgate, but never got the others.

/tzdb24sm.th.jpg

Keranu · 04/14/2006, 07:49 PM

You should scan those brochures, I love looking at stuff like that. And congratz for keeping your boxes, those are some nice ones!

PC Gaijin · 04/14/2006, 08:19 PM

I added a couple of pictures. Crappy because my digital camera is really old. Also, I don't have a scanner so I can't scan the TZD flyers. I took a picture of one of them, but it's really big so I didn't upload any more (stuck on crappy dialup). TZD used to send those flyers out 2-4 times a year if you were on their mailing list. They started out pretty simple, then later they went to glossy color like in the pic above. I can't remember when they stopped sending out the flyers, late 90s maybe?

The one sales flyer that I haven't been able to locate yet had the mother of all sales. It was from a different company than TZD (can't quite remember what their name was). Anyway, when NEC HE was exiting stage left and TTi took over, this mail-order outfit dumped their entire Turbo stock. They were selling almost all HuCard games for less than $10. That's when I got the bulk of my Turbo collection. I've seen searching for that flyer for awhile because the deals in that sale would really make your eyes bug out.

Keranu · 04/14/2006, 08:47 PM

Oh 3vilw33t, thanks a lot! Neato!

MotherGunner · 04/15/2006, 03:18 PM

PC I sent you a pm

motdelbuort · 04/15/2006, 03:20 PM

Awesome, I remember that flyer. I pretty much dropped the Turbo for a long time after it died, but I wish I would have/could have picked some of those games up first. But heck, I had no source of income and some of those games were just as out of reach for me then as they are now.

I also remember the 800-Duo-This number. I was calling some other TTi number for some reason and they were trying to get me to call that one. The guy kept saying "you need to call 1-800-Duo-This" and I would be like, "Duo what???" and he would say it again, "Duo THIS." That went on for a good five minutes before I realized what he was trying to tell me. I thought he was trying to tell me to call "this" number and then kept failing to give it to me.

MotherGunner · 04/15/2006, 05:18 PM

Quote from: motdelbuortAwesome, I remember that flyer. I pretty much dropped the Turbo for a long time after it died, but I wish I would have/could have picked some of those games up first. But heck, I had no source of income and some of those games were just as out of reach for me then as they are now.

I also remember the 800-Duo-This number. I was calling some other TTi number for some reason and they were trying to get me to call that one. The guy kept saying "you need to call 1-800-Duo-This" and I would be like, "Duo what???" and he would say it again, "Duo THIS." That went on for a good five minutes before I realized what he was trying to tell me. I thought he was trying to tell me to call "this" number and then kept failing to give it to me.

LOL

Keranu · 04/16/2006, 12:08 AM

Hahaha, that 1-800-DUO-THIS story is great

.