My understanding is that Niagara Falls is something of an awe-inspiring sightseeing opportunity as far as natural formations go and it’s a tacky extravaganza of shoddy, moldering love hotels as a tourist destination. You go to gamble, eat at buffets, and look at some fast water, right? I honestly don’t know. I haven’t been there in eighteen years, and my child’s-memory is fuzzy at best. It’s a cluttered jumble of images and familial inside jokes, things like eating pickle chips and weighing the odds of my survival if I jumped the railing. My clearest memory, though, is the preponderance of freak museums. Every corner boasted its own hall of mismatched curiosities, from replicas of barrels that made the falls’ descent to stuffed polar bears and any number of imaginary anthropological curiosities. I fear going back because I prefer my memory of the city’s institutionalized theater-of-the-absurd.
I check the website GameSniped on a weekly basis because, while it is intangible, it is very much a gaming freak museum. Prototype NES carts, complete Master System collections, strange promotional materials from bygone eras. It is a literal island of lost games, the detritus of the medium’s collective subconscious, interesting to collectors and freaks only. And me of course. Today’s spotlight is especially alluring, as both a historical find and as an opportunity.
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