In summer of 2009, I lived in an apartment in Ohio with my parents and sister. I worked at a grocery store in the deli department and had recently dropped out of college for the second time. I was paying my bills as they came up, so on and so forth. When I got the chance, I’d accompany my family on Saturday mornings as they went to yard sales in the area. Sometimes we’d find things to buy, sometimes not.
I should
mention at this point whilst I had some video games and consoles – a Nintendo
64 and a handheld or two – I wasn’t a serious collector yet. The idea hadn’t
occurred to me at the time. I’d sometimes play my games, like Pokémon Snap or
Dragon Ball Z: Buu’s Fury, but it wasn’t a frequent thing. I was pretty far out
of the loop on the latest and greatest in gaming, though I still loved the
older consoles, such as the SNES, Sega Genesis and Atari 2600. I’d only heard
of the ColecoVision when it was mentioned in an episode of Family Guy but had
never laid eyes on one.
Imagine my
complete surprise when, one Saturday morning, my family happened upon a small
cluster of yard sales and one had almost nothing but video games and consoles
for sale. I believe the guy was selling off his collection to go on a mission
trip or raise money for a developing country; details are fuzzy on that.
Regardless, this guy was a serious collector who knew his stuff and answered
every question I’d had about the games and consoles.
Naturally, my
eyes fell upon the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis that were for sale, though I
also saw a Virtual Boy and, to my shock, a ColecoVision. I’m sure there were
other consoles, but those four had caught my attention. I didn’t have much
money at the time and cursed my bad luck. I really wanted to buy everything
there – can you imagine how cool it would be to have a freaking Virtual Boy?! –
but with very little money, that was impossible. Instead, I settled for the two
consoles I wanted more than anything: Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.
I didn’t have
enough money for both of them, so I begged and pleaded with my mom (who’d
stayed in the car with my dad) to loan me some money to pay for them. There was
no way I could decide between the two, and I certainly wasn’t going to walk
away from this thing empty-handed. My mom reluctantly gave me enough money to
help cover the cost for both, and I rushed back to the yard sale with money in
hand. Er, pocket.
The guy was
very friendly and even let me pick two games for each console to add into the
bundle for free. I was so excited and happy, and eagerly looked over the game
selection. I don’t recall which games I chose for the Genesis – I remember one
was a space shooter I got for my sister, but she displayed zero interest in it
– but the two chosen for the SNES have always stayed in my mind. The first one
was Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. I was told it was a hard-to-find Final Fantasy
game for the Super Nintendo, and was a different, but fun entry in the series.
As a fan of both Final Fantasy and RPGs (and JRPGs), I knew I had to have that
one.
The second game
was one I’d never heard of before, and, well…
The guy told me
he couldn’t remember which game it was, only that it was a Donkey Kong game.
The label was obviously gone, so he’d written the name of the game on the
cartridge with a Sharpie marker. I only really knew of Donkey Kong Country, so
I was intrigued and decided to get it as well. What kind of game was “Ditty
Kong Adventures”? I had to find out.
After returning
home later with the consoles and games, I hooked up the SNES and tried out
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. It was fun and certainly different from other RPGs
I’d played before (usually Pokémon), but I was mostly concerned with ensuring
the game and console worked. Next up was Ditty Kong Adventures; I was dying to
know what kind of game it was and how it pertained to the Donkey Kong
franchise.
I popped in the
cartridge, turned on the console…
And was greeted with the title screen for Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest.
I was quite surprised to see the game’s title was vastly different from the title written on the grey cartridge, though I thought it was a nice stroke of luck to have the sequel to the well-known and well-loved Donkey Kong Country. I wouldn’t obtain that cartridge for several years to come, but it was great having the sequel game. I played through the game for a bit, then turned it off and kept the game and console.
Some years
later, the SNES stopped working (I’d already sold my Genesis to a co-worker,
though I later bought another one), so I replaced it with one I’d found on
eBay. I kept all my games, of course, and tried to store and display them the
best I could. The number of games slowly grew, I’d play them on occasion, etc.
In 2017, I’d obtained
a small media shelf to store my then-tiny collection of games and found a spot
to display my SNES games. I looked at my Ditty Kong Adventures cartridge and
knew it needed an upgrade, badly. I recalled seeing reproduction labels for
certain cartridge games on eBay and was certain I’d find one for this game
easily. Within a week or so, I had the repro label in hand and was ready to get
to work.
First, I
cleaned off all the Sharpie marker letters and that weird white spot, along
with the tiny remaining fragments of the original label.
After the
cartridge had dried, I carefully added the repro label to make it look as nice
and neat as possible.
I know in
retrospect, I could have left the cartridge as is and it would’ve been an
interesting conversation piece, but I’d really wanted it to look like the
actual game – it gets rather tiring to me seeing the hand-written “Ditty Kong
Adventures” and the strange white spot on the front – and cleaning the cartridge
really helped it look much better. Personally, whilst it’s fun to recall the
origin of my Donkey Kong Country 2 cartridge, I prefer it with the repro label,
and it looks a lot nicer in my SNES collection.
