DIMIC

I know it’s been a while but I really needed this little break. But I’m back! And what better way to return then with a nice retro gaming haul we got in this week?

I don’t particularly like Nintendo’s Game & Watch series, find them too expensive for what they are. I do have one, a complete Climber I bought for 1 euro on a flea-market. But I did always liked the table top variants. There a also only four of them (Mario’s Cement Factory, Popeye, Snoopy and Donkey Kong Jr.), so collecting them isn’t that bad. If you don’t mind to pay crazy prices. Now, thanks to a stroke of of dumb luck, we ended up buying two of them in perfect condition for a crazy low price.

So, what happened was this:

We were on a flea-market and saw a paper add for an incredible nice old school bank. We always wanted something like that and it was perfect. And also in an extremely good condition considering that it’s one from the ’20s. When Ingis went to pick it up that night, he was wearing his Donkey Kong Going Banana’s T-shirt and the seller asked him if he was interested in old Nintendo stuff… Let me think… Well, duh! 

So, we went later that week to check out what he still had from his old collection. Not much really… The only interesting things he had were a Gameboy Light (which he asked way too much for), a Gameboy Micro (also overpriced and standard gray) and finally, the items we bought; two Nintendo Game & Watch Table Tops and a lithograph. Considering that he was asking so much for the two Gameboys, I was dreading the price on these since these actually are expensive, especially a complete one like this Mario Cement Factory. But the price was, considering what these go for, ridiculously low. But the best item has to be the lithograph. It’s a pen/pencil drawing of the original North American Donkey Kong arcade flyer made by the guy that actually drew the thing back in 1981.

Not many people know that this iconic image wasn’t drawn by the creator (Shigeru Miyamoto) but by an American; Leslie Cabarga. In fact this artist was also the first to depict Mario wearing white gloves as can be seen in this lithograph (and again in his illustrations for Ralston’s Donkey Kong Cereal and the packaging for Topps’ Donkey Kong sticker packs). The gloves started to appear in official Mario artwork from Japan in the mid-1980s but he didn’t actually worn them until the release of Super Mario World for the Super NES.

I already contacted the artist for more information so this post might be updated when I do.

In the end, I love this purchase. I’m really happy with the two table tops since these are the top of retro gaming for me and the litho is just awesome. Now the hunt is on for the remaining two table tops!