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Do You Collect Games to PLAY or PUT on the SHELF?


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Depends on the game, but lately newer stuff (360 and forward) has gotten backlogged and begun piling up on my shelf simply because the games themselves can be such timesinks nowadays, in addition to the regular play games from the Dreamcast, PC, Xbox, Gamecube, and PS2 have never really stopped getting. Currently the shelf backlog is extensive enough for me to simply sit out the PS4/180 generation, and there's no reason or killer app for me not to do so.

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Right now I don't do much of either because I'm out of room in the hoarder sense of that. Even though somehow I recently found room for one of those Sharp NES TV's but how could I pass that up? Anyway, I live with my in-laws but own the five acres next door. I'm currently and have been trying to save for the last few years to eventually get a home placed there mostly to have a game room. When that eventually happens I plan on having one room for my game room and one room for the things my wife collects. Ideally I would like the game room perfectly organized with everything cleaned, carts sealed in plastic bags, etc. like a mini-museum. If there is room I will set up ways to actually play them in that room but I definitely want a very compact way to play them in the living room. Doubles of my consoles modded for A/V, flash carts, consoles and accessories refurbished, etc. So, basically one room for collecting for the shelf and the living room being as compact as I can make it without relying on emulation for playing. It would be a duplicate collection, one for collecting and one for playing in the living room without the same clutter as the game room. I want the best of both worlds.

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I only collect to play. Whenever I buy a new game for one of the systems I collect for I always make sure to dedicate a fair bit of time to playing it and seeing what I think of it. If the game turns out to be a game that I don't personally find fun to play or wouldn't want to play through more than once then it either gets resold on eBay or traded in for store credit at a local game store. Every time I open up my game collection cabinets I want to see only games that I know I'll have fun playing if I decide to pop them in a system and give them a whirl. :)

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I usually even keep the "stinkers" of the video game collection. You never know when the urge to play one of them will come up, then you say to yourself, "Yep, THAT'S why I don't play this game very much". I try to get games that I know I will play on a regular basis, though.

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I collect and my kids play. I love my old systems and have a lot of fun aquiring rare and unusual games/systems, and while I really enjoy cranking up the consoles and kicking back with some old school gaming I have little time for that kind of fun. My kids though really enjoy playing my old games. We just went on a family vacation and I brought along Rygar and California games for the Atari Lynx, Kirby for the Gameboy color, and Wario Twisted for the Gameboy advance, my kids had a great time.

 

I guess in this stage of my life I mostly enjoy my games through them. Maybe in the next stage I'll get more playtime myself lol.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I collect mostly based on Play Value, but I don't often turn down cheap yard sale/thrift store fare. Some of the best games I own are "well, it was only a dollar" games. Lately I've been getting more things based on historical value or 'quirkiness'. Case in point, I just got a Fairchild Channel F. The games I have for it thus far are either not good, or have better versions easily obtained on other systems. However, it is still the first cartridge-based console, and those controllers are unlike anything else I've encountered, so I'm quite glad to have it! It's the same logic that made me spend $1 on a boxed Wolfenstein 3D for SNES I found at a yard sale a few weeks ago- I don't like FPS titles, but it's still a notable game. (and as I've discovered, worth a fair bit more than a dollar. :s)

 

There's one other way games end up in my collection- Orphan Syndrome. For example: I don't particularly want to own Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose! for the SNES. It was given to me by its previous owner, and I never turn down a free game. I'd gladly sell/ give it to someone who wanted it if I ever met such a person- but it's not exactly in high demand. That gives me 3 options: Throw it out (wasteful), trade it in somewhere for pennies (almost pointless), or keep it until I find someone who wants it. I pick the third option.

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Since starting my collection for Gamecube, I've decided to get the games (primarily) that I will want to crack open and play. However, I still want them complete for collecting purposes. I usually treat my games very well and take good care of them. The box art and instructions on certain systems are a must. Just love some of the art work on the Gamecube games. Perhaps down the road I'll get the more "obscure" titles that might not be played much or if at all.

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  • 3 months later...

I do a balance but like another member said, I'm not sure what I'm doing now. As I'm always on the road, I'm adding oddball items and cool to display items while I cycle through games to play on the road. Happy game room I feel should be a balance of games to play and cool items for display and also some historic type gaming items for preserving and displaying

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I don't think it counts as being a shelf collector if you were once big into games and had a lot of time to play them and as time went on, free time was more limited and they couldn't play as much.

 

I really don't find looking at my stuff that gratifying and few people give a damn about collections in real life that no one else would look at it anyways. The only time I see people's collections are on Youtube videos where people have this seemingly odd need to show their items off. I realize though it adds a feel and production value to their channel. But once you get so many games, or say, have every game on a system, nothing in your collection really stands out. It's too big that someone looks at it and says "holy shit!" but they don't really care beyond that because it's too much to take in. I have a huge DVD collection with quality titles, but since it's such a big collection, all I ever see is something mediocre on the shelf when I look at it. You never know for sure which movie or which game you'll like until you play them, but it's safe to say if I had a smaller collection with only games and movies that really stuck out to me, I'd be more inclined to use them. There's that one famous pic of that game room where it's a huge room, wall to wall and even the floor has games on it online, if someone owned that collection, it wouldn't even be interesting to me to look at it because I know what's going to be in there. If someone has 20 games on 10 systems, those 200 games will tell you a lot about what that person is primarily into. If there's 2000 games, individuality is hard to seep through.

 

I'm perfectly content these days seeing carts/manuals/boxes in pictures online and playing ROMs. After I experienced the physical hardware and carts/boxes a few times at least per system with my own hands and eyes, I got the gist of it. When I finally got a Jaguar, it came with boxed games and that was cool since I'd never seen a Jaguar nor game in real life before, but if I was to get a Jag game tomorrow I wouldn't give a shit if it had a box because I've now been there and done that.

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With the exception of Intelliviison, I collect with the intention to play (though this doesn't always happen). The Intellivision was a special case as it was my main console growing up. So at one point, I decided I wanted everything for it. A wife, two kids and limited disposable income have changed my focus there. I have most of them but not all and I have come to realize that I probably never will own all. And yes, I admit, I do not actively play Word Fun or Math Fun. :)

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A little of both. For the Atari systems, and kinda-sorta-accidentally the Sega Master System, a lot of what I collect is just for display. For other systems, I mostly collect to play, though if a particularly rare or collectible game comes my way, I'll hang on to it as well.

 

Thanks to modern inventions like Harmony cartridges and Everdrives, even the games I play mostly sit on the shelf looking pretty now anyway.

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I think it really depends on if you play more Atari or Intellivision (: I really just buy games I like to play. For my 2600 I have a Harmony Cart so I can try all the game I want. Then if I like one I will look for the cart. I have no interested in having hundred's of turd games that I don't play. I would really say I am more interesting in collecting different versions of the consoles themselves or different joy sticks and peripherals.

Edited by forrestsmith
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Time is now an issue for me as well. Starting my new job in a week and a half will leave me less time to play games. Monday through Friday will be 9-hour days, then working a few hours on Saturday at a cleaning job...so Sundays, if there's time. Sigh.

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Games do look nice on the shelves, but I collect games to play. I keep my collection small, but with loads of quality stuff.

This. That's why I've currently stopped collecting for my Xbox 360 and I'm "rethinking" what games I want in my library that I know I'll play over and over again. Collecting them is great, but right now I want a system I can enjoy by picking up any title I've got and playing it.

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Everyone should try to collect all available software for their classic systems. The more people that do this, the more preserved the old software will be.

 

Bad things DO happen; my Atari XL disk collection got stolen back in 1993 when my home was broken into. Replacing the computer and drive was easy on Ebay but not the software. I just got an Atarimania MyIDE II cartridge now and I'd like to fill it up. I know that I won't play hardly anything.

 

Is it still considered pirating software when the original game company is either gone or hasn't sold it in over 20 years? What is the current thinking on this issue?

 

Back in college (1984) when I had no easy/extra money Atari XL computers were all over and software was kind of high priced. But if you didn't buy stuff quick it wasn't widely available the following year. I remember buying the 5.25 floppy disk for over two dollars each to put software on. Yes, there was a small band of Atari pirates in Cedar Fall/Waterloo, Iowa.

 

Back then the real game was to try to make a working copy of the newest software. Usually someone had it hacked within a week. We had crap software that we hacked and nobody ever really played it. Paid 35 bucks to get the newest copy protection so we could just hack it. Might sound dumb, but that was the best time with the game. Never could get the 1050 to write a fuzzy sector. Slowed the drive RPM down to write over 200 sectors per track.

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I definately buy to play rather than just collect. Same with my model trains. I'm a user, not a box collector. For all that, I do like to use high value items, as I like quality; and I also value a box for the preservation and integrity of the item, but am more likely to buy a game that's missing its box.

 

 

Is it still considered pirating software when the original game company is either gone or hasn't sold it in over 20 years? What is the current thinking on this issue?

 

That's something called "abandonware" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware

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I can understand being a shelf collector for a particular system because you want to complete the collection, but why would you want to complete its library if you don't want to show it all the love it deserves!? :P

 

QotD: Are shelf collectors ruining the hobby for others forcing prices to inflate?

 

I buy games. Then I play them. Then I beat them. Then I make a beadsprite for each game as a 'medal'.

Edited by BladeOfOsiris
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I can understand being a shelf collector for a particular system because you want to complete the collection, but why would you want to complete its library if you don't want to show it all the love it deserves!? :P

 

QotD: Are shelf collectors ruining the hobby for others forcing prices to inflate?

 

It's a double-edged sword. On the one side, you get ridiculous situations where games are overly costly for no good reason... the price spike on Final Fantasy 7 after Advent Children released, for example- the game had a Greatest Hits release. There's no shortage of copies, but people hoarded it up. Demand spikes, and suddenly prices are triple-digit. It's annoying when these kind of 'key titles' that so many people grew up with become a premium to own/experience.

 

Oh the other side, shelf collectors help preserve the hobby by making sure there are, in fact, items still out there to collect. We've all had that friend who didn't take care of their games, throwing them around until the day they get lost or quit working- and I bet we can all name at least 1 rare game said friend ruined. (Valkyrie Profile and the PS Lunar re-releases come to mind for me.) I've got a couple games in my collection that, quite literally, were picked up off the ground somewhere. How many times has someone buying up everything they can get, just to store away, come across an unknown prototype or unreleased game? Often in a box of junk that would have been thrown away otherwise, no less.

 

I think part of the problem is that, our hobby is young. Like, really, REALLY young in the grand scheme of things. Only recently are we seeing museums start to acknowledge the effect gaming has had on our history and set up exhibits. Plus, we haven't exceeded the standard human lifespan. At the risk of sounding morbid, other longer-lived hobbies have the benefit of their members dying, and their collections coming back to market. Game collectors are, on the whole, still very much alive and adding to their set- it only makes sense then, that we aren't seeing a lot of turnover yet. Eventually, price, availability, and demand will sort itself out- we just probably won't be alive to see it. .... Well, now I've gone and depressed myself a bit.

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