Games Bought Thread 3

[A Black Falcon]

Some good questions there...

Was I once telling you that you need to become a curator for museum for video games? I changed my mind. You should open your own museum.

Hah, maybe. I do have a lot of games. :p Over 3200 now I believe! I know some collectors have plenty more than me, but it's a lot.

[quote]How many consoles do you own, and spanning how many generations? The oldest one I can think is that Odyssey or whatever, what's that from the early eighties?

The oldest console I have is an Atari 2600, but it doesn't work (and never has since I got it), so I play my 2600 games on my Atari 7800, which is a newer (mid '80s) system. Next oldest would be the Odyssey 2; I don't have the original Odyssey, which is the first console ever, but the second one, which is from the late '70s. Apart from that though, I don't have any other pre-NES consoles. I've been getting into that over the past few years in the O2 and 2600, of course, and only got that 7800 this year, so I expect I'll probably eventually get more of them. The Intellivision, Atari 5200, and Colecovision are three obvious ones to eventually get, for instance; there are lots of pre-NES consoles though, some very obscure and rare. I don't think I need EVERYTHING. I do want (someday) those three, the newer systems I mentioned earlier, a 3DO, a Jaguar, a Jaguar CD (maybe), and perhaps some other stuff, though.

I assumed straight away that you must have current-gen consoles, but it occurred to me that I never see you post about them and you probably only play new games on the PC. Do you have a WiiU?

No, I don't have a Wii U, 3DS, Vita, or PS3. I do have a 360, but only got it in May or June of this year. I spend way too much money (and time!) with older games to be able to afford most of the newer ones... though I definitely do want a 3DS. Whenever I get another system (next year sometime I expect), that'll most likely be the one. And even that 360, I don't really regret getting it, but I could have gotten that next year too, probably; I played it for a while, but have barely touched it since finally deciding to spend the cash to get my Turbo CD drive repaired... because yes the TG16+CD is really awesome.

As for PC, my case, and CPU, are getting older... I replaced the video card a couple of years ago, but the CPU is from early '07. By next year we'll start seeing PC games which my computer won't be able to run, since games which require more RAM than I have and a 64-bit OS, which I also don't have, are coming. I do have quite a few games on Steam and such though, bought from various online sales, sure. I've never actually gotten around to PLAYING too many of them, but I own plenty, and even played some.. :p Of course over the last gen I also got a DS (in 2007) and a Wii (in 2010), which served well until this year. Oh, and PSP too, in 2011 I believe... I've used that more than I thought I would. Apart from TG16 stuff, Class of Heroes for PSP has been my most played game for the past couple of months, for instance...

When I first got this PC in '07 I thought I'd play more games on it than I have ended up doing, honestly. I kept getting games, on digital-download sales or older PC games on sale locally mostly (I've only got a very few full price PC games in recent years). The main reason that has been how much I've been playing consoles, older consoles particularly, but also back somewhere around the later '00s my wrists started hurting a bit while playing PC games (with the mouse, particularly); this pushed me more towards consoles as well, since gamepads are much more comfortable. That didn't help. But that's not the only reason... I just came to really like playing this stuff. I mean, I already said how I already only infrequently play the 360, and I have stacks of barely-played Wii games as well... I've played the PSP a lot more than the Wii, since getting it. (And the DS too of course, but that I've had for much longer.) I don't dislike modern games though, when I do play them I often like them... but I like older games a lot too. I didn't have any of these consoles back when they were actually current, so a lot of this stuff is/was new to me, and it's great... And on that note, yes, that I spent over a decade with the PC as my main gaming platform probably is another reason why I play it less now; PC gaming isn't what it was back in the '90s, and when I play modern PC games, I can see that decline. Graphics have gotten better, but games overall have not.

Also, I can't stand modern military shooters and have absolutely no interest in playing such games. And open-world games? Eh, maybe amusing for a few hours, but I've never found one that I actually want to come back to and really stick with. Those things limits the number of modern "AAA" titles I actually have any interest in playing for sure. I like the 360 so far, for instance, but I've played platformers, sidescrolling action games, fighting games (2d and 3), racing games, RPGs, shmups, and the like, mostly; very few first or third person shooters.


But anyway, overall games from all generations that I've played, second through current, can be fun and good games. So now I play some from all of them, "next-gen" excepted since of course I don't have those systems yet, or a still-high-end PC (I can still run anything now, but by the time Watch Dogs and the like come out, next year? That will not be true anymore. I'll have to get a new machine eventually, not sure when.).

Do you have a set of collectibles that you show in your room (the ones you want to show off to guests) while the garbage goes in a cellar somewhere?

Well, I just have an apartment (and basement too), so I can't keep everything up here yes... PC game boxes, cardboard boxes for N64, SNES, etc. games, most PC game manuals, those are all in the basement. Excepting a few PC games, I keep the games upstairs, though. It takes up quite a bit of space now. :p And to make it easier to get to games I put a bunch of them on the floor too, even though I could put more away if I wanted to... some consoles are on the floor as well, since there's no space for them elsewhere. It's a mixture of both. I generally try to keep the usable stuff (games, controllers I'll actually use, and such) out, and the less important stuff -- extra controllers, unnecessary game boxes, etc -- stored away. I do not have space to keep all that stuff out up here too.


As for collectibles, I have games all over the place (I am not a naturally overly neat person, floors are good places to put videogames! :) And shelves too of course, along with books.), and some manuals (on shelves or in the basement), but I don't really have much in the way of "collectibles" outside of games; I don't have any Mario or Sonic toys or what have you. The games take up enough space, and money, as it is... I remember thinking about getting a Starcraft action figure back in '98 when they were first made, for instance, but didn't do it, and haven't done that for any other games either.

I do have some videogame-related posters, mostly small ones that came with games but a few from other places, some of which are up on my walls, though. For small posters that I have up (these came in game boxes/cases) I've got posters for Guild Wars; The Lost Vikings (I forget if it's from the PC or Genesis version though...); Micro Machines 1+2: Twin Turbo (the GBC collection; it's bad, but the original versions are great); Micro Machines V3 (GBC version poster); the Bust-A-Move 2 (N64) ad that's on the back of the Iggy's 'Reckin Balls poster; Wipeout 64; and Etrian Odyssey 3. I have some more for various other games that came in game boxes of course, but the ones that are up are for games I particularly liked. For other (larger) gaming posters, I did get those Zelda posters from the Nintendo Club prize collection thing (for the points you get for buying first-party Nintendo games), and have the Twilight Princess poster up because it's really awesome (that game has my favorite Zelda art design...), and the "all the Links" poster up elsewhere. I think that also came with a Wind Waker/Phantom Hourglass poster, but I didn't put that one up. There's also a Sub-Terrania (Genesis game) poster that I actually found in a local store; it's pretty cool, so I have it up. Back in the '90s we used to have this Sid & Al's Incredible Toons poster on the wall (it's a large poster from the game box), but I haven't had that one up in quite some time now though I do still have it. There are also some others from PC Gamer I never quite liked enough to put up, such as a Drakan poster and one with a Midkemia map on one side and Return to Krondor on the other. Oh, there's also one with some ~1995 Interplay D&D game ads on one side (Blood & Magic, Descent to Undermountain, underwhelming stuff like that...), and a big Forgotten Realms map on the other. Or maybe it's one sided and the ads are the bottom, which is why I didn't put it up much? I did used to have a Civ II tech tree poster on the wall, though... don't anymore.

Another thing I don't have is game-related clothing. I've never actually bought any videogame-related clothing (shirts or whatever); I've got that now-somewhat-torn (since I wore it a lot!) Eternal Darkness shirt I won from the raffle on Tendo City back in 2002, and a Playstation baseball cap I've never worn and don't plan on wearing but I have because my sister said if I didn't want it she was going to throw it out and, well, I don't like doing that, and that's it.

A Bug's Life? Are you serious? That's better spent behind glass than in an N64. Can't guarantee many people would pay to see it, though.

It's not very good (the game is a subpar, shoddy port of a mediocre PS1 game), but something else I got recently for the N64 is much, much worse than that game: The Powerpuff Girls: Chemical X-Traction. I played that some yesterday... and I think I have a new worst N64 game. I of course generally like N64 games, but this one is HORRIBLE. The game has okay graphics, but absolutely unforgivably terrible gameplay and controls. I haven't played Superman 64, but it is surely the worst N64 game i have played -- yes, it's even worse than my previous choice, War Gods. At least that game can be amusing (in multiplayer particularly); this one is not.

Do you need to regularly spray the games for silverfish?

What are those? Oh, a kind of bug. For stuff in the basement, I have had mold issues with a few cardboard PC game boxes which were stored too close to the (concrete) floor there, but no, no bug issues there.