what got you into collecting video games

[urbanchaos]

I would say that I really got into game collection because of online shows such as "Pat the NES Punk", "The Angry Video Game Nerd" & "The Game Chasers"

I guess I could also add to that the nostalgia factor that strucked me someday.

[jobocan]

I would say that I really got into game collection because of online shows such as "Pat the NES Punk", "The Angry Video Game Nerd" & "The Game Chasers"

I guess I could also add to that the nostalgia factor that strucked me someday.

There's a little of this with me for sure. I hadn't started collecting when I started watching AVGN stuff (I started watching his stuff when he released his Karate Kid review), but when I started seeing his collection, I thought it may be cool to start doing that too, since my collection at the time was pretty tiny (not even a hundred games, what?). It wasn't the main reason, but it did have a bit of an influence.

But I really didn't start until I started buying old games (basically stuff that I used to like) from jjgames.com, I don't remember when I started exactly. They had great prices (at the time they were positively cheap compared to now) and free shipping on large orders (at the time for Canada, now they only have that in the US), so before long I started having hundreds of games.


Other "collecting" shows like Game Chasers and Pat the NES Punk's Flea Market Madness did mildly change how I find games, making me try to visit more flea markets (there are barely any around here though, the ones we do have tend to have multiple resellers, or just people who overprice their stuff "because it's old", but I do get good finds from time to time) and made me more of a haggler.

[killerchameleon]

Video game collecting never really started for me I just never got rid of any of it, its true I am a hoarder.

[sessiz]

My oldest son got me started a couple of years ago.
He's been gaming since he was 4 and I've been gaming since I could remember. One day he wanted to play some "old" games that I used to play at his age so I let him use a nes emulator and he fell in love. I  told him that playing on an emulator wasn't the way it was done and here we are now.

[madmax]

I'm pretty sure I've posted this before.


I was staying at my grandmas house when I was young and she had a SNES. My uncle said that i would really like The legend of Zelda so I played that a lot and beat the game. After that I looked through the pile of games and saw FFII. Decided to give it a try and was instantly hooked.

When I was a little older i got a PS2 and got FFX and played the heck out of that. I then got my hands on FF7 to 9.

Fast forward a few years, I live on my own, have a little income and Forte shows me his Megaman collection. I ask myself what's stopping me from collecting FF games now that I'm independent. I had no real answer, so I started collecting

[scott]

Forte shows me his Megaman collection.

And seeing Forte and Madmax's collections for their favorite series, made me realize that I should polish off the Castlevania games and go for CIB versions. It's a vicious cycle.

[george]

A friend of mine got me FF7 black label as a gift. I was so excited.

Soon, I wanted Fire Emblem for Gamecube again. Before long, I made it a mission to get every Final Fantasy ever. It just escalated after that and for a while, I couldn't stop. Every time I would see something that I would want I felt like it was my only chance to get it.

I've since slowed down, and now I'm very picky with what I collect. Sure, I get new gen games, but I don't count those. A lot of what I do now is getting stuff I absouletly love or feel will go up in value over time. ie, xenoblade, Last Story, Disgaea Collector Edition, etc.

[disgaeniac]

A friend of mine got me FF7 black label as a gift. I was so excited.

Soon, I wanted Fire Emblem for Gamecube again. Before long, I made it a mission to get every Final Fantasy ever. It just escalated after that and for a while, I couldn't stop. Every time I would see something that I would want I felt like it was my only chance to get it.

I've since slowed down, and now I'm very picky with what I collect. Sure, I get new gen games, but I don't count those. A lot of what I do now is getting stuff I absouletly love or feel will go up in value over time. ie, xenoblade, Last Story, Disgaea Collector Edition, etc.

If you're looking for LE's that have always become ridiculously rare & valuable ridiculously quickly...I've done very well w/ the LE's I'd pre-ordered for both Neptune games.

If you ever see a third - I'd say stock-up on 'em

[theflea]

I started the day my grandfather bought me my 1st Atari 2600 when i was 7 and i still own it today. Got Pac-Man, Combat, Kangaroo, Frogger and Phoenix that day.
Later on I remember going to garage sales on my bike hunting down old Atari, Colecovision, Intellivision, and NES games when most people only cared about Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. Some of my rarest games today i found back in those days when no one cared about old video games. lol

[shingouryu]

Like many of the other people in this topic, I was started on gaming in general by my grandparents.  My grandma had an NES and every day after elementary school I would walk to their house down the block from the school and we would see how far we could get in SMB3.  Meanwhile, my uncle who still lived there would play the more  "advanced" games like Punch Out and Zelda 2.  As I grew older, I stayed largely a Nintendo kid, and I would play awesome games like the Megaman X's and Earthbound.  I enjoyed being able to play the "advanced" games I admired watching my uncle play.  Eventually I got a PSX for my birthday, and that's when I really started to get into RPG's.  I used to own games like Tales of Destiny 1 and 2, Valkyrie Profile, Dragon Warrior 7, etc., but I was young and stupid, so most of these games weren't cared for or lost.  To add to that, my mother, who is a Filipino immigrant, donated all of my old cartridges to the Philippines.  I was devastated at the time, but now I can appreciate the action, and I hope that some Filipino children got the same enjoyment playing them as I did.  So, I guess one reason I started collecting was to recapture those moments from my childhood.

Once I went to college I got a part time job a local Gamestop (please don't strike me!), and while the company is evil, it proved an excellent way to start collecting current games.  Additionally, I prided myself on being a wealth of information, whether it was a recommendation, a plotline, gameplay tips or just the state of gaming in general.  Sure, usually a guy would just come in and bluntly ask for Madden, but sometimes I could actually have a great conversation with somebody about a particular game or game mechanics.  I started to write mini articles about games I enjoy, and funny things we expect as normal within the confines of video games.  Of course, I feel like I can't really fully speak on a game with any sort of authority unless I've played it myself.  So, I guess the other reason I collect games is the pursuit of knowledge.     

As a final note, my sister recently had a boy, so I hope that in the future I'll be the cool video game playing uncle :-P

[lordmeatpie]

I hope that in the future I'll be the cool video game playing uncle :-P

It's funny you end your post with that comment.
When I was a kid we had an Atari 2600. We played the hell out of that for a few years. One of my earliest memories as a kid was sitting in my dads lap steering an Atari racing wheel.
But after a few years, they sold the 2600, and bought a NES from my cool video game playing uncle hahaha.
After that, I was hooked on games. I collected for years, until the 64 era and had a modest collection of more select, awesome games. I never went deep into the collecting then. Maybe had about 100 games.
Then, as an adult, when I moved across the country, the incident I deem as "The Parental Yard-Sale Accident of 2007" occured. My parents got confused with my piles of boxes in storage and accidently put Keeper boxers and in the yard sale and kept boxes of stuff I didnt want that was supposed to be put in the yard sale. I lost such great games as Little Samson, the NES / SNES / 64 Mega Man series (although Mega Man V for Game Boy managed to make it through the years... so glad for that with current knowledge hahaha), the NES / SNES / N64 Zelda series, Conkers Bad Fur Day, Harvest Moon for SNES / N64, and the Final Fantasy NES / SNES games.
About a year and a half ago now I started working at one of the most wellknown oldschool game stores in Alberta, so I was able to start rebuying the games I lost.
Which leads to now, my addiction of collecting! It's really consumed me!
So nowadays, I have the biggest video game and foreign film dvd collection of any of my friends. And I'm also a cool video game playing uncle and video game playing dad My son is only 2 and he already loves playing Mario on the NES ... poor Mario ... he's lost thousands of lives for my sons entertainment hahahahaha

 

Cheers!!

[godnightshade]

I've never not collected video games. I've never parted with my games and I never will. The only games that have ever disappeared on me have been because my brother hates me and sold games out from under me.

[retrotoycollector]

I bought a Milton Bradley Dark tower game for a quarter at a boys scout yard sale. I loved that game as a kid, and after that, I just started collecting all the video games and toys I remembered from growing up.

[burningdoom]

I've always been a gamer, for as long as I can remember. I started off on the old NES stomping Goombas. So I've always had video games. But I'd say I was in late high school (maybe a junior?, it's been over a decade) that I looked back and realized how many games and systems I'd own if I would just stop trading in games at FuncoLand (now GameStop) and getting ripped off. Then I started getting nostalgic for the old systems (mostly NES at the time) and started hunting them down at used music shops. This was before the "retro-fad" began, so the games were dirt cheap since everyone at the time thought 2D gaming was passé and 3D polygons were the only way to go.

Since then, it's gotten a little out of control, lol. I own over 20 systems and around 500 games and I see no end in sight. My wishlist just keeps growing as I learn about more games.

[jcalder8]

Sounds like you got into the hobby at just the right time burningdoom!