Game collecting

With the exception of a few years in the mid 00s, I've played games for most of the last 30 years. I never really considered collecting as part of that hobby until recently. Thanks to Jason Jasicki (who has a great game blog at http://jsicktheslick.wordpress.com/, and is a Splitckick.com contributor), Dan Tolin (also a Splitkick contributor), and an incredibly lucky snag on Freecycle a few months ago, I finally took the dive into collecting.

I don't collect for the sake of collecting. I don't have the money or the space for that. But I started to think of all the series of games that I've loved over the last 30 years and decided to focus on those. Final Fantasy, Metroid, Zelda, Castlevania, and Metal Gear are the big ones. I've recently thought of doing the PS1 Squaresoft games like Vagrant Story, Parasite Eve, etc.. Stuff like that.

When I stopped gaming around 2004 I thought I was done. I hadn't bought a console or a game in years and I hardly ever played games (except for long sessions of Everquest). So I sold all my games and consoles. They were in pristine condition and complete with boxes, manuals, maps, etc. Some of them are nearly impossible to find, and if you do they're outrageously expensive. I couldn't have anticipated getting into gaming again, let alone collecting. While the sale of those classic games was for a great cause (an engagement ring, and she said yes), when I decided to collect those were the very games I wanted.

Unfortunately I can't walk into most stores around town and expect to find the games I want. So I scour Freecycle and thrift stores for games. Any games. I don't often find the ones I want, but I'll if they're cheap I get them anyway. I found a handful of Dreamcast games at a Goodwill recently for $1 each. I posted them for trade on VGFive.com (a great game trading site). I'll use the points I get there to request games I want. And just this week I got an original XBox with 5 games off Freecycle. I didn't want an XBox, but the trade in value of the console and the games is around $40 at eStarland (an awesome local game store). That's plenty of money to pick up a more expensive classic game that I want for my collection.

I pretty much take any game or console I can find (and if anyone reading this has some to get rid of, please let me know!). The lucky snag from Freecycle that I mentioned above really got me in the collecting spirit. Someone posted having an NES, to which I quickly responded to claim. I was thrilled that I was soon going to have an NES in the house again, but when I picked it up I was surprised that the bag contained not only an NES (with 2 controllers, a Zapper, and all the cords except for the AC adapter), but also an SNES (with controllers and cords), 2 SNES games complete in their boxes w/ manuals, and 4 NES games, including a barely used copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 with the box and manual. It's worth a short trip across town for a surprise like that. And making connections with people on Freecycle has paid off. One person was giving away a bunch of old PC games. I wasn't fast enough to email her to get them, but she said if she found more she'd let me know. Well that same day she found more and I got them. Most of them were junk (an Italian copy of Diablo 2 for example), or CD-R copies of games, but some were great and I was able to trade a few for some games I really wanted. Then last week she emailed me after she found 5 Sega Genesis games and I got those too.

My collection isn't a big as some. But part of the fun is in the hunt, and in getting that last game to complete a series or a set. And getting my hands on a dozen games I couldn't care less about only to find a store will give me $10 in credit for one of them is a thrill.

If you have even the slightest inclination to start collecting, I highly recommend Jason's Game Hunter series of videos. They're on his blog above, and the first has recently been posted on Splitkick.com (another favorite site of mine). And as I said before, if you're reading this and aren't a collector but have a bunch of old games to get rid of, let me know. I'll take em off your hands (or pay a reasonable price for them). 


My Final Fantasy collection as organized by Evernote.

30 Years of Gaming: My First RPG

I'm going to skip ahead a few years from my last "30 Years of Gaming" post and fast forward to 1994. I was almost 2 years out of high school and neck deep in my 2nd (and last) semester at college. My good friend Chris had tried to introduce me for years to RPGs and fantasy books, which were his favorite genre if memory serves me right. But I was never interested. I liked games, and had been gaming for many years at that point. But RPGs just never appealed to me.

I had played a little Final Fantasy IV on the SNES, which was stupidly numbered II In the US. It was a lot of fun. But not enough to hold my attention to the end (I think it would now though). Give me Super Metroid any day. But that's a completely separate blog post (it deserves one).

The game that did it for me and made me an RPG fan for life was Final Fantasy VI (also stupidly numbered in the US, as III). I know a lot of articles have been written on the subject. And a lot of people tout Final Fantasy VII as their first, and favorite, RPG on a console. Some even say it's the greatest RPG ever. I'm not here to argue that point (although I disagree). It was a great game and blew everyone out of the water. Even non-RPG folks loved it (my brothers included). And the Sony Playstation was all the rage. Cartridges were dying (don't tell Nintendo). But I vowed to never buy one. I was a Nintendo guy. Until I saw FFVII. Then I bought a Playstation. But the only reason I was even remotely interested in FFVII was because of FFVI.

Final Fantasy has always been (for a good part of it's life anyway) about the story. I don't think the early games really had much of a story. They certainly didn't have the graphics to pick up the slack like games this generation do. And some would argue that the more recent games sacrificed story for spectacle. And while though I enjoyed XIII and XIII-2 a lot, I would have to agree. But for me no game in the series comes close in story and incredible characters to FFVI. Terra. Edgar. Celes. Locke. Sabin. Cyan. Relm. The list of great characters seemed to go on forever. You get to know these characters and their history. You find out why they're here. Long after I finished the game and played other RPGs, if they let you name your characters, I often changed them to the FFVI characters. My monk was always Sabin. My knight was Cyan. If there was a female character, she was Terra or Celes.

Not only were the heroes great, the villain was probably the best the series has ever had (in my opinion anyway). Kefka was insane. He was a madman in a clown makeup (literally). And he had no problem tearing the world apart (also literally) to achieve his goals.

And you were in an opera.


At this point, I don't think anyone is going to be convinced what Final Fantasy is the best. Everyone has their favorite. Most will say VII. But this post isn't about that. For me FFVI introduced me to a genre I had pretty much ignored. Sadly because, in the minds of many people, if you liked RPGs you were probably weird. But if not for FFVI, I can almost safely say I wouldn't have played games like Skyrim or Dark Souls many years later (and loved every second of them). I'm glad I gave RPGs a chance 18 years ago. And I am grateful that FFVII brought them into the mainstream. Thanks to FFVI I'm an RPG fan for life. And probably a little weird.