Collectors gonna collect.

Haters gonna hate.

Sure I can.  And I probably would.  

My answer to your question is "both" ... I don't only collect games I like, and I like having games I'll never play.  But at the end of the day, I collect them because they can be played.  

EDIT: question, not "collection."

Oh really? 

I guess simple sentences like, "You like games.  For you, I think video game collecting is cool." are also below your comprehension level...except, I don't think that means what you think it means.



I don't think everyone who collects video games is an asshole, but I will thank you as you have provided me with the perfect example of the pretentious prick video game collector who I do think is sphincter-ific.



Oh yeah...Julia says, "hey" and she wants to know if y'all are still on for your "regular Sunday", whatever that means...

I collect sealed in order to have sex with them. Once I get my sealed game home, I then hop on my drill press and make a nice hole thru it. Straight thru the middle, Shrink Wrap, Box, Manual, and Game. All of it. Then I sand the edges down with a nice fine grit sandpaper. Once it is sufficiently smooth, I apply a good amount of lube and proceed to bang the hell out of the game. Once I'm finished, I place it on the shelf until I want to play with it again.

That's how I collect.

Please check out my FS thread for games that I no longer want

You're gonna take something that is worth $5,000 (I assume something in that range, anyway) and in one fell swoop, destroy $4,000 of its value?

I'll believe it when I see it.

Like I said, it would be like buying the rarest stamp in the world and using it to mail a postcard.

And, the thing that really is starting to piss me off is that people are taking new games, grading them and sealing them away so that they will never be played, specifically for the purpose of "collecting".

They toys...play with them for Christ's sake.

If you do, and you enjoy doing so, then you are not the collector type to whom I am refering, and I think video game collecting is awesome for you. 

More and more, though, I see this hobby as overly self-important by the participants, and a means of ego fulfillment through the adulation that collectors receive when they pay enough to feed a small African village for a game that they aren't ever going to play by those who covet their ability to do so.

But, whatever...as others have stated, the same can be said of coins, etc, though at least with a coin, it is entirely visible within its case, and in the end, it is equivalent to money, which is what it was in the first place, so it's hard to criticize that pursuit too much...

Well, Mr. Malcolm, I actually do appreciate your writing so I will chime in on your question.

I only collect what I love, but I have to show restraint. I love NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube and Wii games but I don't collect them because I know I will never get them all. So I buy only the ones I want to play. I do, however, collect PS1 RPGs because they are my absolute favorite games to play. I want to play them all and I want to own them all. After I finish one I want to put it on a shelf and I want it to be there for me when I am ready to revisit it. It's awfully fun trying to find them in the wild and it is an attainable goal for me to get them all. I don't collect just for the sake of having something; for example, I would never collect for the 3DO because I find that entire system and its games to be puke.

In short, the answer to your question is that I collect because I like them.

Did you have a particularly difficult break-up with those games?

Truth be told, that's exactly what I would do with the games as well, though I'd probably try to incorporate a little more foreplay before I just started drilling them, ya know?

Oh, I sweet talk'em a little. I like to keep that private tho. And yeah, I usually let them go when I find a sexier replacement

   Which would you say is your "special lady"?

  I personally collect CIBs because I enjoy the artwork on the box and booklet/map. It helps to flesh out the world presented in the game, and acts as a piece of art when displayed on the wall. Its a playable work of art. Its plart.

It's a hobby relevant to my interests. /thread

Interesting topic. Few people here would admit that they value the games strictly for financial reasons.

I am nearly the opposite. I only acquire games that I will play, or have enjoyed playing. You won't find me selling off games that I have enjoyed but will likely never play again. I'm not quite sure why this is. I believe it is so I can look through my collection and say to myself, "I remember playing through this game and enjoying it". I also like owning the physical hardware of the games I play.

For me, there is virtually zero financial aspect to my games. I would never sell a game in my collection unless the value had increased to an absurd level (maybe $1000 or more). If I want a game, I simply buy it at the current market value and never think about the cost again. From then on, it is simply a game in my collection.

That said, I do not hesitate to sell off and games that I ultimately discover are not worth playing through.

For me, if that was the ONLY Hagane cart I could get my hands on for a next 5-6 years or so, I sure as hell would open it up and play it because the game is that amazing. The things I have in my collection I plan on passing down to my children if I ever have any. Money comes and goes. Sure, you would be decreasing the value or something by opening it up and playing it, but there are exceptions.

As well you should.

Strangely enough, the RPGs I enjoyed the most were for the C64 and PS2.

Final Fantasy X and whichever Dragon Quest VIII ate up a lot of my time when they were released (consecutive time...consecutive DAYS...I especially liked the level progression system changes they made in FFX and was obsessed with being able to have all the bubbles notched off), though Baldur's Gate on the PS1 is probably my favorite of all (I think it was the PS1...I know there was one on the PS2, but I think the original console version was for the PS1).

On the Commodore, The Bard's Tale, Ultima, Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide and the Apshai Trilogy were the ones I obsessed over.  That was a special time for computer RPGs because each new one that came out (that was of any quality whatsoever) really propelled the genre forward, so those ones will always occupy a special place in my heart.

I just can't get myself to collect them any longer, because after my PS3 sat dormant, collecting dust for the 2 years I owned it, full compliment of a dozen or so games by its side, I realized I desired to have the games, but not to play them, and because that's just stupid, I got rid of everything and quit letting myself get suckered into buying them any longer.

It was hard to resist when the Kinect came out with the Lightsaber game, as this was a particular dream of mine as a child, but I knew that the end result, after toying with it for an hour or so when I brought it home would be that I never touched it again, so I let the rational part of me overcome the childish part of me and I let that one go.  Who knows if I'll be able to resist the next time.  Luckily, so many of the games that are released these days are FPS, and I absolutely despise FPS, so that makes it quite a bit easier for me...

People collect sealed for many reasons. The most common is a preservationist attitude, which I find completely understandable. But unless the ROM hasn't already been dumped, arguing that sealed collecting prevents someone from playing the game is strange, if not simply wrong. The vast majority of gamers don't care whether the game they're playing is on a physical cart or a ROM on an emulator - people who enjoy having the physical copy end up being collectors like us. Regardless, buying one sealed copy of a game barely makes a dent in the availability of the game. I'd have an issue if someone was buying tens of thousands of copies of the same game just to drive up the price -- but a single collector buying one sealed game (per title) has almost no impact on the availability of any game. But still, even if they VGA them (which I personally don't buy into either), those cases can still be opened, the game can be unwrapped and played. I'd only agree that it's a waste if the game was encased in solid platinum or something

yeah...cartridges be lovin' the sweet talk.  word.

I could not get into the C64 but I also love the PS2 and yes, Final Fantasy X and Dragon Quest VIII are two of the best games ever made in my opinion. I plan on collecting all of the PS2 RPGs next, which will be easy because I pretty much already have them all anyway. 

x2

It's like lowering a pickup truck and adding 22" rims to it - here's a thing that has utility, and your modifications, rather than enhance that utility, have completely destroyed it.

BUT

if these gamers don't care about playing an emulation vs a cartridge, and the artwork is scanned and saved on multiple servers (as almost all of them are, especially those for any Nintendo console), then what's the point of owning the cartridge?

Anyone who answers preservation is being completely disingenuous.

I picked up an internal Microsoft Xenix Operations Guide a little while back.  My intent was (and still is) to sell it, but when I looked for a scan of it on the many document preservation websites, I found none (Xenix was Microsoft's short lived Unix based OS, like Linux, but they sold it exclusively through 3rd parties, so an internal operations guide, as opposed to a 3rd party guide is a rare, important find that people who document these things need to know about...so, I'm not selling it until I get a chance to scan and upload it...thus, it is preserved.  I don't then need to keep it because it is the only copy known to exist outside the MS campus.  Someone else can have the damn thing...it down me no good sitting on a shelf.)

THAT'S preservation.  What y'all are doing is ostentatiously showing off for your peers.  And, that's fine, as long as you're also real about it.

I grew up with it, and when these games came out, they were the latest, greatest, most exciting thing at the time.  It's harder to go back when you're used to a superior technology and never experienced the other technology when it was the apex of what was widely commercially available.

20 years from now, you're gonna have a conversation with someone like yourself who is going to tell you that they could never quite get into the PS1.  It feels weird to hear it at first, but antique tech is a strange bird...in the end, it's more of a nostalgia thing than anything else (shitty rock bands have made a killing on the same thing), and it's hard to be nostalgic of a thing which revives no memories for you.

I can't play Mario Kart 64 by myself, and never could (which is probably why I wasn't that great at it), but I would play that shit all day long with 2-3 (or, as was usually the case, 5-6, where all the losers had to sit out a circuit) other people, because it wasn't a particularly entertianing game to play by yourself, but it was amazingly fun with other people.

You just need to find some C64 people and have some fun with it...Like I've said, I don't really play games any longer, or I'd be happy to volunteer.

I should make myself more clear; I didn't give the C64 much of a chance. I only played a few games on an emulator so I am not trying to say anything negative about it. I know a lot of people were loving it at the time in the same way I was blown away by the NES as a kid. The C64 is the best selling PC of all time and mostly because of the games so I'm sure it has some really good stuff on it.

This topic sucks.

You're right, I'm going to follow your lead and give up what I enjoy and instead go find some forum to troll because it's so much more fulfilling.

Maybe I can go insult comic book collectors for keeping all those books after they've read them! And then maybe I'll buy some just to make money, all the while not caring about them in the least! I'll be a genius just like you!

I'm super obsessed with video games since the first time i can understand whatever was on the telly ~5 years old give or take. My place, it is quite ridiculous to pay more than 30-50$ just to buy vhs/dvds/cds/videogames. We can get them cheap as pirated games are abundant those days. I grew up playing the famicom with the 10000 in 1 games, super famicom, skipped the nintendo ultra 64, ps1 to the ps2. The Super famicom unfortunately, we need to buy original copies as not many fake cartridges were made.

I am always a person who like to collect 'stuff'. Toys, comics or mangas for instances you tend to try to keep it and store them in such a way that you can see them and you feel proud of it. Funny enough i never kept my old video games as i can get them easily for cheap. The manuals, cds were just printed on cheap fake paper and burnt cds. You dont feel like keeping them as they look really bad. UNTIL around 2008, i started browsing youtube and stumbled upon petedorr and happyconsolegamer showing off their collection. Im impressed.
I made an ebay account and started buying. I made my first purchased and it was an NES dragon warrior cartridge. I was very excited even though i dont have the NES console to play for. That was what started it all. I started buying games that i have missed. The gamecube, N64, etc. I also found out that by playing on original you dont encounter a lot of glitches or corrupted save files as compared to the imitations. I became a member on NA and was very surprised that there a lot of NES collectors out there. That was around 5 years back and you can really tell the huge difference now. That time, true there are a lot of hardcore collectors but the cib copy of earthbound was still around the 200+ price range. Sealed/vga collectors are also not as many as today.

I think, what im trying to say is that people are very much influenced by other collectors. Like for me im pretty much inspired by petedorr and the happyconsolegamer. You can see many gamers now tend to buy and collect a series of games so that they can have a 'complete' collection. Same goes with the sealed/vga collectors. They wouldnt stop unless they have everything. I can never find a 5$ suikoden 2 in the wild. So, my only option is to get the 100+$ copy off ebay or here as i have made the decision earlier that it is not cool to have only the virtual copy. Do you get what i mean.

I love to play the games in my collection. There are definitely some I play more than others and some I never play. For instance I play Joust for NES almost every time I have a game session, but I never play Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular because it's terrible. I like the fact that snoopy is in my collection nonetheless.

A retro game collection is also just a really cool thing to show people when they come over to break the ice or whatever. A love for video games is something most people have in common. I think a big part of why I continue collecting too is just the thrill of hunting for games. It's a good feeling when you score a rare game from a flea market for way less than market value.

I think it's because we see them at least once every 3 - 4 weeks.