Haarlem Globe-trotter

This is actually a REAL shop in Haarlem!!

Hey Up M'Dears!

'Tis I, your pimpernel-like, least prolific, and yet curiously most admired team member, Father Krishna!

"Who?" I hear you ask, -well a quick glance at the old side-bar should reveal my DCJY credentials, whilst a dip into the DCJY archives should reveal why I don't post here very often. The last time my DC received a play session, was a blast through Shenmue last October, to see if it still stood the test of time (it does!). This was inspired by my purchase of Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing which I dearly love, and play on the Xbox and DS.

However, as usual, I digress. I recently returned from the Astral Plane where I reside with those ethereal beings the 'Ascended Masters', in order to take a short visit to the wonderful cities of Amsterdam and Haarlem, in that most tolerant and easy going of territories, the Netherlands!

Apart from getting thoroughly off my twat on pipe fulls of (absolutely legal) Haarlem Haze and Ice-olator Resin, I also stumbled upon this little shop which proudly displayed an image of the Hallowed Hedgehog, with the 'crap and unimaginative/post modern and ironic' shop name: Game Shop.


Once inside, there was a great selection of all things aSega including cartridges for the Game Gear, Master System and Megadrive, games for the 32X and Mega CD and this tidy little collection of Dreamcast and Saturn games. The games were an exorbitant 15+ Euros, and were not particularly rare or exciting. Thus nothing got bought for my Dreamcast or Saturn collections.


What I did buy was this rather lovely little nugget for the Gameboy Advance - Sonic Pinball Party.


Chock full of Sega goodness, this basic pinball sim features both the Saturn's 'NiGHTS' and the Dreamcast's favourite primate, 'Samba'. In fact in 2003, (in contrast to the glut of ports heading from the Dreamcast to the Xbox, Gamecube and PS2), Sonic Pinball and Jet Set Radio for the Gameboy Advance were among the only original games using Dreamcast IP game characters that were still being produced!

It's always good to stumble across a tiny independent gameshop that still sells Dreamcast merchandise, even better when said discovery comes after a particularly potent strain of bubble hash on a beautiful day in the coolest country in Europe.

(On a 'Tomleecee DC spotting' related note, the Kyle family in My Wife And Kids are always playing the Dreamcast, I just don't know how how to capture the image and print it here!)

Take care peeps!
FK :)

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

haha, thats nice; willie wortel is in fact the dutch translation of Dysney's Gyro Gearloose.

mayu

Anonymous said...

disney...friggin dyslexia

;))

mayu

Eyz said...

Neat!
It's always great to find some good ol' Sega games in a gamin' store! Specially while visiting other countries :P

Barry the Nomad said...

Awesome to hear from you FK! We've missed ya!

Cool game store. Isn't it always the case though? Tons of games but high prices. :-/ Still, great find with Pinball Party! I picked that up a few months back and love it.

Speaking of pinball, have you played the GBA's Pinball of the Dead? It's right up your ally (that was a bowling pun, not a pinball pun)

fatherkrishna said...

Thank you for your kind comments gentlemen!
Barry, it would be foolish of me to promise regular input, but I hope to post something over at the SJY and maybe even revive the Wiikly Sermons...

fatherkrishna said...

BTW, no I haven't but I'll be checking it out ASAP! Cheers B!

Tom Charnock said...

good to hear from you FK. I too feel I have been a bit stingy on the posting front (kudos to Barry for his continued quality updates, btw). However, nice post - I'm off to Paris next week and will be keeping my dreameye open for blue-cased bargains. DCJY: Global.

Barry the Nomad said...

Don't forget, I have my DC marathon next Thursday! I'll be doing another reminder post this week, so I'll stop plugging it in this comment. :)

John-Pieter said...

Wow , i live in Haarlem and pass by that store almost everyday.
The guy that runs it usually asks a hefty price for any game,but he is a decent guy.
If you wanted a store with some really good sega titles for a reasonable price you should have gone to Game play in Amsterdam (that's about 20 minutes from haarlem by train)

Funny how small the world actually is.