you’ll never catch me
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despite probably having like, 50 or so games within arm’s reach and more kicking around my parents, this is the only picture I have of anything and it’s very on-brand
ooooo I should take another pic with Gravity Rush 2 in the frame
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I’m a pretty bigtime minimalist but I do like having a collection of games (experiences to have, atmospheres to inhabit) at hand. I really like physicality and physical processes — even the little act of opening a case, taking out a disk, and putting it in my PS2 is a little moment of anticipation and enjoyment. I know for a lot of people it’s just work and everything is much better now that digital downloads are the norm. That’s fine. But that’s not the case for me. The more effort I put into experiencing something, the more I am able to shift my brain into a state where I can really engage with it. Even just waiting in the mail for a game to come is its own sort of excitement. Life is pretty fuckin miserable so I find my fun where I can.
I’ve run out of money and sold off all the games I owned multiple times in the past but I’m determined not to do that again. The room I’m renting right now doesn’t have any space for a shelf setup or whatever so I have everything stacked all ugly-like in a dresser drawer.
the only exception being the boku no natsuyasumi games — they make my heart feel warm when i see them and think about just how much dang heart they have, so they hang out on my tiny little bookshelf.
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Yeah, I feel this. Having to hook up my little CRT and the N64 with cords everywhere is a pleasure of inconvenience and I get way more focused than I would with emulators (abusing save states is another thing I’ve realised is maybe sacrificing “the experience” in favour of convenience latley). Someday, if I can somehow have my own place, I do want to build up a collection. I’m remembering a friend now who moved away but had this extensive Genesis and Saturn Collection and it was so fun going over to their house and not even playing the games sometimes but just flipping through all the manuals and boxes.
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Yeah, manuals and back-of-boxes can be really fun! And to speak about “the experience”, one thing I struggled with a lot in the past is a concept of purity of experience, how to experience something “right”. This year I finally realized that the way to experience something is really just however I experience it, and any “imperfections” (like how fucked the geometry on my PVM is) adds texture to make the experience more memorable.
The moments waiting for the display to warm up enough that it wasn’t pincushioning to death so I could play Demon’s Souls were so full of anticipation and excitement in a way I rarely feel as an adult.
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children can want at an imaginative intensity that’s hard to even remember
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oh yes i love playing physical games on all sorts of different consoles and i keep everything perfectly organized and in alphabetical order just kidding its a fucking mess
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I’m desperately clinging to physical media not just because of the sensual reasons and bits of art and paraphernalia included in game packaging folks discussed but also because I want to feel like I own the games represented in their originally intended, infinitely replayable form, but I understand that’s only going to get more difficult as hardware and media formats deteriorate or are phased out.
I took a bunch of photos but cringed looking over my disorganized gamer-shame-mess and just decided to pull avatar synergy and gather up what I could of the physical manifestation of my lifelong Taito fetish. DDG Final and Shinkansen are missing in action though, probably the best ways to use that big lug.
Um, don’t know why I forgot to include Super Bust-A-Move, which got a very 90s game magazine ad box art in the US
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this was fun
the duplicate copies of bujingai, ghost in the shell, and operation winback are due to my collection actually being a fusion of @dylan 's and my own (and maybe also pieces of @woudww 's? i think the copy of crystal chronicles is theirs maybe) and now that he is back in australia i figured i would grab my own copies and return his. however, he is returning to live in the same house as me, so these pairs will not in fact be separated just yet lol.
if you look closely you can tell which games i owned as a little kid lol. the 5 different metroid carts are @dylan 's and i kept them because i thought it was a really funny thing to own. most of the gba games are not mine originally either, even the ones that i’ve had for years i think were loaned or swapped from a friend. the copy of gradius advance is mine however, and it is also the first game i ever finished (unless you count beating the elite 4 in pokemon gold, which i think i did a few years prior, but is that really the end of that game? idk). i blasted through it during a long weekend trip with my family and was extremely proud of myself.
(the small clear case to the right of pn03 is a gamecube gameboy player disc)
the only system that i am actually trying to collect for is the wii, specifically its b-tier action rpgs (fragile dreams, baroque, pandora’s tower, etc) which are extremely my jam. maybe one day i will feel bougie enough to buy a copy of the last story but not today.
i also have a bunch of gamecube games at my parents’ house which i really need to take off them before time and neglect destroy them or someone throws out all the cases in favour of a disc book (my family has lived overseas a number of times in my life so games would travel in a little book rather than in their cases, to save space. however, now that they are settled in one place i am hoping to get those cases out of storage and fill up my life with plastic oblongs).
ok and the hardware:
the two gbas are not my original childhood handhelds but they are the exact same makes as the ones i owned. the gbc however is the very first handheld (in fact very first console, period) that i ever owned. i was given it by a complete stranger i was sat next to on a ferry trip – some guy in the army reserve i think – who, after noticing 5-year-old me watching him intently, just up and asked “do you want it? i’m going to buy a gameboy advance soon anyway” and handed it to me, cartridge and all. my deepest sadness is that whatever game it had in it was stolen not long after when our house was broken into, and i never could remember or deduce what the game had been, only that it had thoroughly perplexed me and i never got very far in it.
the soft golden case is an off-brand gameboy holster (it has a loop on the back which you can use to attach it to a belt or similar) which my parents bought after i was given the gbc, and it’s actually the perfect size for my 2dsxl, so it comes with me whenever i take a trip anywhere and wanna take my ds.
idk how i ended up with so many controllers. some of them (the nes dogbone, n64, and saturn controllers) are actually just pc controllers in classic chassis. the blue knock-off psx controller (at least i think it’s a knock-off. i’ve never seen a real one) i got from savers, and the panther light gun i got from a local videogame market. the clear yellow dualshock came with my death stranding ps4 (not pictured; i am too embarrassed) and it is by far my favourite controller, which is why i’m really sad that the right stick has serious drifting problems (which weren’t fixed even after i sent it off for repairs!) but i still love it and have fond memories of bouncing it in my hands to soothe bb.
i have a bunch of other stuff in a drawer (a light peripheral for the gba (i also had one for my gbc but i think that has been lost to time), a buttload of ds chargers, a gameboy connection cable, probably some other nonsense) but that’s not interesting to look that so i will stop here.
i plan on getting a switch lite soon to play the new monhun so i guess my collection will grow a little more.
i love physical accoutrements, and i wish games weren’t becoming primarily digital objects, so i’m glad i’ve managed to keep/acquire things that are precious to me, even though i know it’s kinda silly.
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Wow! That reminds me. First person to post a picture of their Handy Boy wins the thread.
How is the shinkansen controller compared to the standard type 2 controller, if you have experience with both???
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I couldn’t find the type 2 at a decent price unfortunately. I’m shit at these games but from what I gathered the selling point for the Shinkansen one is finer control than the type 1/2 style handles, since the throttle and brake (brake still has 7) has 13 “clicks”/gear increments. This controller only works with Shinkansen, Final, and Ryojou-hen (the streetcar one) and doesn’t work with DDG3 or the PS1 games. Not sure how the type 2 compares for compatibility. Type 1s are going pretty cheap but on PS2 afaik they only with with DDG3.
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I got rid of all my stuff about 5 moves ago. I don’t really miss them that much because I pick games like a vampire: I buy a console / PC, play all the games I want on it, then move to another console and begin again, rarely going back. No backlog.
I’m going to sound heretical but I got less pleasure browsing game stores, touching game boxes and reading manuals than I get now, looking for new games on e-shops. I’ll just sort by newer games and look at what’s catching my eye, read the little blurbs and screenshots, maybe watch a gameplay video. Lots of small gems found that way, including the GOTY 2020
I feel like a kid now could get a lot of fond memories from browsing an e-shop for hours, looking for the one perfect <20$ game they’re allowed to buy this week
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i got some versions of 3s, and jjasb on the PS3 and that’s literally it
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i cant get into this tub without moving a ton of shit around and its a little too late night for that, but this is full of everything i couldn’t sell to move out of california. i sold 4500 dollars of my collection to get to seattle, I MISS A BUNCH OF IT but it was freeing to get rid of tons and tons of belongings, i also got rid of hundreds of books but they didnt really sell i donated most to the library
i like leaving price tags on games to compare the price they sell for to the price i paid
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I did the whole Konmari thing a buncha times and live with relatively little but the big exception is a physical games collection which I mostly keep in big plastic storage containers. I’d love to display them properly but I only have so much shelf space and I use it for books which I more regularly go back to and use for work.
I’m conflicted because when moving it is a huge pain to carry 10 consoles worth of games library, wires, and controllers around but it’s also a part of myself in a weird conflicted consumerist kinda way. Just holding these cases is enough to make me happy and transport me back to the year I played them. Might grab some pics later.
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I bought some of those games! I was just some rando on twitter. I got mr driller ds, bangai-o spirits (may be the copy in woudww’s pic?), ouendan, ridge racer 3d, some other stuff i forget. You gave me shining force sword of hajya as a freebie.
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yeah i have type 1 and type 2 and with that youre covered for every game. The shinkansen and streetcar controllers seem cool but theyre so expensive and have limited compatibility. Do u have a jet de go controller? I rly wanna try one
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This plus maybe 20 more ps2 + 1 games, sekiro and ff15 PS4 and a shoebox full of gba carts lol
I can’t explain my j360 shooters and I don’t know why I have two copies of mushihimesama futari. Proud to have DP2 as my only Switch game though
Edit: oh shit and my Saturn with Nights, Sonic Jam, Quake, Fighters Megamix etc. Still works perfectly 25 years later
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