boxpressed

Thanks. I ended up buying a new set anyway and will be sure to keep my receipt and even the original packaging.

Green for me. Commodore PET in middle school, IBM PC XT in high school.

In other news, K'NEX stock plummeted 50% today.

Fruit Ninja Kinect is a blast.

I wonder what an Xbox 360 with VGA output cable set to 1024x768 would look like on my 15" CRT VGA. I would need a 15 pin D-Sub male-to-female adapter because both the Xbox 360 VGA output cable and the CRT have male connectors.

Some examples I keep may be exceptions to the rules above. For example, I have gatefold versions of Burgertime and Mission X, but I wonder whether they came out after their non-gatefold versions. Same goes for Buzz Bombers, but I don’t have a gatefold version of that title. I think I’ll hang onto both variants of these Mattel titles bc there aren’t a lot of them. I hope.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'm glad to know that there are USA versions of all the KC titles. It turns out that I have only four USA KC titles sealed. It'll be calming to focus on getting the rest of those rather than chasing every sealed variant of every title as I used to do. I have about 120 sealed variants that "lose" out to a "keeper" using the criteria above (some doubles), so this is a serious streamlining of the collection. I think I'm going to have to not use "older" as a criterion because these are all sealed and I can't know if a tray is included or not. I wouldn't even trust weighing the box. I'm just going to go with the USA versions if I can.

It's been several years since I actively collected sealed Intellivision games, and it's time to recover some space by getting rid of variants. I'd like to know what you would keep when given a choice of variants. I basically want a "original" sealed US collection (as much as possible). I don't have any sealed FCTVVO games, so the collection won't be THAT original. But basically an "original" over "variant" collection. The problem is distinguishing what is "original" and what is a "variant." Here are the criteria: 1. If there is a Mattel version of the game, I will keep it and get rid of the Intellivision Inc. version (even if the titles are different) 2. If there is a box that says "Keyboard Component" in the lower right, I will get rid of the ones that don't mention it 3. If there is a cartridge "Made in the USA" Mattel version, I will keep it and get rid of the HK, Singapore, Taiwan, and Various origins 4. If there is a gatefold version of the game, I will get rid of the non-gatefold versions I know it's not perfect, but does this seem like a good set of criteria to go by? One problem that arises has to do with the "Made in Hong Kong" box that mentions the Keyboard Component and a "Made in the USA" that does NOT mention the Keyboard Component. I'm keeping the former in this case. When there is a "Made in Hong Kong" game that mentions the Keyboard Component, was there always a "Made in USA" counterpart that also mentioned the Keyboard Component? So far, I've come across several KC titles that I don't have the USA version of. These are all sealed games, so it could be just that it exists and I haven't run across a sealed version. Thanks for your help!

Received a well-packed box of FREE hard drives from OLD CS1 today. Thanks again!

Wow, I missed that earlier mention of HOTD 3 and 4. They are $7 and $10, respectively, on the PS Store. I am waiting on the delivery of an HDMI transmitter so that I will be able to play Move games with a projector and a 120" screen.

Nintendo just accepted my repair order for my original Joycons (drift). I want to buy a replacement pair since I'll be without them for a while. Are 2020 Joycons you'd buy from Amazon or Best Buy fixed, or has anyone encountered the drift problem with these too?

It would be interesting to know what game retailed for the most without any special pack-in hardware. If we were going that route, Phaser Patrol would be right up there. Zaxxon for the CV commanded a premium over other CV titles. I wonder if the same was true for the 2600 version. Time to dig out the EG magazines.

Not really a piece of my collection, but one of my favorite purchases in a while: a hydraulic lift. My PVM has been collecting dust on a shelf because it's such a pain to move it and set it up. I have this 2' x 2' space in my office where I thought about putting a stand for it. But the white wall behind it is also a 120" projection "screen," so the monitor has to be able to move up and down. Turns out there are no shelves or carts that fit this space and were sturdy enough for a PVM--except this lift made for working on motorcycles. It's perfect. It has a 300 lb. limit, so this PVM is nothing for the hydraulic lift. The lift is heavy duty -- 75 lbs. by itself. I rationalized the purchase by figuring that it would have other household uses, but this is pretty much all it's going to do.

I will take one too. Thanks!

The best P3 boards already command a premium. Several years ago, you could buy Intel 440BX-2 ("Seattle") mobos new in box for about $40. Now used examples of that board can reach $100. That era peaked with the P3 Tualitin boards, and enthusiasts also use Socket 370 and Slot 1 Slotkets to get Tualatin tech on boards that still have ISA. As a rule of thumb, the last boards (that is, the most recent) that offer a particular technology (usually bus) are collectible. The last ISA boards. The last AGP boards. Same goes for the cards (e.g., last, most powerful AGP card).

Some dual CPU boards are quite collectible, and all of them are worth saving. A Tyan Tomcat dual Socket 7, for instance, is a board that would go for over $200.

PM sent!

Socket 7 boards are still inexpensive. I'm selling some NOS 430TX boards now for $60, and that's a little high. Super Socket 7 (with AGP) are more expensive, as are Socket 4 and Socket 5. Even then, $200 seems a little high, especially for SS7.

I can understand the desire to have a full collection of games for a system. If you feel this way, you probably think like some coin collectors at an important level. Those blue Whitman albums that had a space for every date and mint mark are based on the logic of this kind of collecting. If it doesn't seem weird that some coin collectors do this and it does seem weird that some video game collectors do this, then that dissonance has something to do with the notion that video games are valuable because they can be played and not because they are valuable in and of themselves. That's a legit perspective, and it probably seeps into discussions of comic book collecting--"why are you slabbing that book instead of thumbing through it and enjoying the experience it gives you?" I think it's useful to make these comparisons to figure out just what it is about video game completionists that is so objectionable.

Good idea, but I already deleted all the games using the client apps in order to get a relatively clean image to clone to the new drive. It turns out that I don't miss them -- I wasn't really playing any of those games anyway. I might reinstall a couple like Doom 2016 and GTA V.

Thanks, everyone. I ended up deleting all the games but kept the client apps, freeing up about 400GB of space. Using Macrium, I was then able to clone the mechanical HDD (1TB) to a 500GB Intel SSD that I like a lot. It's free and fairly easy once you figure out how to clone to a smaller drive. I will probably use the mechanical HDD as a secondary drive for redownloading some of those games.

Thank you. I was just recalling apps like iTunes that allowed you to install on so many devices, so it was a good practice to deauthorize computers before you wiped the HDD.

I have a Windows 10 computer with a mechanical HDD that I'd like to upgrade to an SSD. I think I'm going to just install Windows fresh rather than try to migrate. Right now, all I have on this mechanical HDD is games from Steam, Epic, and Ubi. Although I'm not looking forward to redownloading these games, I'm more concerned that I won't be able to download them again with the new HDD. Is there any kind of deactivation process I have to undertake before reformatting this mechanical drive (will use in another build)? Or are we allowed to download as often as we like as long as only one download is "active" at a time? Thanks for any advice.

I'd buy a Socket 7 mobo with a nice Pentium 233 MMX CPU to do the reorg. Then you'd have a really nice Pentium system that is much more usable for retro gaming than the 486. And I love 486 boards.

Thanks, that makes sense. I have pretty much every other console that takes cartridges!