Messages

1

General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:

« on: January 14, 2025, 01:40:12 pm »

I too agree that the condemnation of current day disc-based games is a little overblown, but it's not hard to understand where the sentiment comes from. Many game companies are fine allowing their customers to do the quality control check in the official release window after pressing it to a disc, which is total BS and sometimes completely tanks the reputation of a new game. Games get released when they aren't sufficiently bug tested or in some cases not completed, and that's become way too normalized. Such an idiotic practice, can you imagine any other industry being so boldly anti-consumer?

What strikes me is that they still put forth the effort to print physical copies of games, but they've been almost completely pushed out of physical retail. Target and Walmart are slowly, but surely fazing out the last dozen or so shelf spaces they still have reserved for games. The GameStop stores I've been to of late have almost nothing in terms of games on their shelves, they intentionally de-emphasized physical games to the point it was difficult to find and even pre-order a lot of releases, which makes no sense for a niche video game store to do. As a result, there's never anyone shopping the games in their stores, and it's a total ghost-town most of the time when I would go. GameStop did this to themselves, as much or more than the industry changes did this to them. Their entire store model was always built off of circulating copies of games into the local markets, and buying and reselling the used ones. They've abandon that. I don't believe any recent leadership at the company has any real strategy for survival, they're just there to bleed the company of any value it has left to line their own pockets and then resign. This is what typically happens to a failing retail establishment.

But I understand bikingjahuty's doomer-ism, we are reaching a point where everything that we as millennials loved about the gaming experience in our younger years, is all but obsolete. We've sacrificed so much reliability and piece of mind, in the pursuit of technological progress. The account-based digital landscape has only atomized the gaming experience for many players, local multi-player has been de-emphasized in favor of online gameplay. Folks don't even care to own the games anymore, if they can get a sub which allows them to play new releases for a limited time. We're told that ownership of software is going away in the near future, that maybe consoles themselves are going away, and it's just going to be an online subscription to PlayStation or Xbox.

I won't want any part of it, by the time gaming reaches that point. I don't think we're there yet, but the pillars are falling. Game stores are giving up, shutting down, the average consumer has made the switch to the digital marketplace. I agree with biking that gaming in the current era, almost does not resemble gaming even 10 years ago in terms of quality, selection, security of purchases, any sort of hobby aspect we enjoyed. It's become so transformed in favor of big business over the consumer, which is always the story you'd expect in our late-stage economic system. It's designed to do this as a feature, not a bug. Technology is only the accomplice helping to accelerate the enshittification of all things, and the concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the few. As long as we the end users can be convinced that it's being made more "convenient", it's enough that most will abide.

I'd say the best days of gaming are in the rear view. The gaming industry is flirting with apocalypse, and in a lot of ways deserves it.

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General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:

« on: January 09, 2025, 11:29:34 pm »

Well, yet another GameStop in my town has shut it doors. Leaving only one left. I know how much the company is hated by people for various reasons, but I've always had pleasant experiences and have a lot of fondness for the glory days of game collecting at their stores.

It hits the feels with closings like this, I've been going this location literally since they opened their doors in 2008. I remember just stumbling on this location right when it first opened, and being enthralled with all the stuff they had, back when I was just starting to collect. We never really had independent stores in our area, so physical media was reaching it's peak and suddenly there were several GameStop stores in my town. This was the only one built from the ground up as a GameStop. I started to hit all of their locations on a weekly basis, and did so for many years. They've all been going sharply downhill since the pandemic, but I drove by this same location this evening to find it had just been shuttered. Just a real bummer and depressing reminder of how all good things come to pass, being there from the excitement of the beginning, to the bitter end.

As if there were any silver lining to it, I did manage to snag the actual GameStop logo marquees that were on the outside of the building (the light up signs), from going to the dump. They're absolutely huge and there's nothing I can do with them, but it just felt like something I needed to do as a homage to a store that meant a lot to me over the years. I'll probably let them go to someone who wants them eventually, but I couldn't let them go to the landfill. GameStop love them or hate them, are a piece of gaming history just as Funcoland was, and one day I think more people will recognize that.

The times, they are a changing, and I simply hate it. The end of game stores, the end of physical games. It's just no fun this way.

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Classic Video Games / Re: Konami vs Square Enix (Squaresoft) You can only keep one.

« on: January 06, 2025, 05:41:24 pm »

Super easy choice, Konami. I like action based games more than RPGs and Konami is one of the all-time greats.

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General / Re: Old Youtube gaming channels/videos nostalgia thread

« on: September 24, 2024, 11:33:22 am »

I mostly watched and tended to prefer a lot of the early vlogger-type channels, like 2008-2011 era. Many of which never took off or made any kind of real splash. Mostly under a thousand subs type channels. Those were the ones that initially inspired me to get back into retro and get into collecting. The biggest and most notable being of course PeteDorr. He was a big inspiration for me to consider getting into what was modern gaming and collecting for modern consoles at that time. He really piqued my curiosity with the Nintendo DS. There were several small vlogger channels with a focus on DS back then, one was called Retrocalypse and he was like a DS guru. Unfortunately one day his channel was gone. Turns out he lost his collection in a flood, but I later found out he was an owner of like an actual gaming store or something to that effect. He never came back to YT as far as I know.

There were a bunch of small channels like that I doubt anyone here recalls, like Benzo8686, BallinNick1982, MovieStarKitten, TVandLust, and others, just a lot of early vloggers, who mostly pointed a camera at themselves in their bedrooms and talked about what they picked up or what games they've been playing, or childhood memories or stories involving games. Many of their channels are now dormant, or gone entirely.

I never got really big into scripted content back in the old days. But later on I did watch stuff like Game Chasers, Scott the Woz, Gaming Historian, Lady Decade, Sega LordX, My Retro Life, SNES Drunk, My Life In Gaming, etc. But to be honest, I still really just enjoy a good vlog. PeteDorr is back doing regular uploads again which I've been catching regularly, and there's several other good ones going today that I like to watch, such as DatGameCollector, LegallyInsaneGamer, RNG Gamer, Heck'n Steve, Steve Craig Retro Games, etc. There's something that never gets old about that simple format of content with folks just holding up stuff in front of the camera, and talking. Especially when they take the time to interact with their viewers, and listen to subscriber feedback. I enjoy the sense of community/comradery, that comes with following a small-time vlog. Rather than feeling like just another viewer out of thousands who are watching a show, where the producers don't really care what any rando thinks and don't interact with any of their audience.

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General / Re: How did you choose between PS2 and Xbox (or PS3 and 360)?

« on: September 23, 2024, 11:27:15 pm »

Actually, it always mostly came down to which console was the most established, or the most affordable at the time, whenever I'd decided I was ready for an upgrade.

I was more than ready to pounce on the Dreamcast when it launched, and then, my brother and I not sharing so well with it - I decided to save up and buy another one for myself. Before I could do that, the PS2 was out and it was spring of 2001. They had just started to become more readily in stock, and I thought.... well, that's the latest and shiniest toy, may as well go for a PS2. So PS2 kept me occupied and I was not interested in any other console for quite some time after that. I didn't feel like I needed to own multiple competing platforms back then.

Similar as with the Xbox 360. It was more established in my mind, I knew friends who had it, it had more value-oriented bundles available by the time I decided I wanted a 7th gen console. So, Xbox 360 it was.
 
I never spent much time weighing the pros and cons of competing systems. It wasn't based on specific games, or system specs, or bias for a brand. Just a gut feeling.

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General / Re: How do you prefer your Sonic games? 2D or 3D?

« on: September 06, 2024, 11:38:07 am »

I won't say definitively until I've played them all. I've played only the classic Sonic games, up to 3D Heroes. I'm still of the opinion the Sonic Adventure has held up, and is still fairly good even though it's a little jank. I didn't care as much for Heroes, as it was super janky. However, the best I've played are the original trilogy. I know there are plenty of 3D games not well regarded, but in recent years Sonic games have not been a critical failure as some were in the past. I think some of the modern games look quite good from the gameplay, and tend to mix elements of 2D and 3D. Depends on who you ask, some say they are good, some say they are trash. I personally don't see how they could be trash, given most of them look good just to watch.

Hating Sonic has become a meme at this point, and given all the jaded negativity that a lot of games today face, I don't put much stock into what's said about the franchise.

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General / Re: Is there any hope for this site?

« on: August 31, 2024, 02:01:04 am »

As far as the forums? No. Most have either moved on, or become jaded and apathetic towards both retro collecting and modern/current gen gaming. That was the common thread of this place a decade ago, the reason why it was so active, because everyone was very personally invested in those things. We were all more than happy to trade notes, talk about hidden gems to look out for, show off pick-ups, talk about childhood gaming memories, tell wacky collector stories, create various ranking lists and best ofs, etc. But since the wind left the sails of why we were all here to begin with, solid community members disappeared and increasingly fewer came about to pick up their slack, it became more like sending messages into the void, and like "why bother?" Does anyone here have even a remote interest in the same things that I still care about regarding gaming or collecting anymore? As the sentiment has increasingly felt like a resounding "no" on both fronts, my desire to participate only diminished further. Gotta be honest.

I really couldn't have said it better myself.


I guess I send messages out into the void on here hoping someone will reply or contribute something. I get not being as into collecting, hunting for games, or being excited about new releases, I'm certainly one of those people. However, I'm still a gamer and someone who still considers video games to be an important part of my life. I know that's true for a lot of people that use this site, although I'm sure some have moved on. Obviously people can move on, go to different forum sites, go strictly to social media to discuss gaming, or do whatever they want to, but it's sad that so many have left behind a place that has one of the best gaming communities on the internet, at least used to.


Is it just me, or does it seem like interest in gaming is on the decline in general? I feel like there's less interest in gaming on sites like Youtube even, with most gaming content being rage bait or some pedantic video about some currently trendy game or series. I guess it all just kinda bums me out and makes me wish things were the way they were back in 2013/2014 when the zeitgeist felt like a bunch of people who were excited about gaming, both new and old, and tracking down games from their past.

As much as I don't like to admit, this generation and the ways things have been headed has been a bit rough. I'm not one to wallow in this and complain, in fact I try to make every effort to get excited and be enthusiastic over whatever crumb is dropping in the current scene. Like for example, Visions of Mana recently. It's a great game, nothing to throw a fit about there. I feel there has been plenty to satiate that hunger for gaming in the current age, IMO. But that's not to say that it's the same, because it isn't.

Like everything in life peaks, gaming reached a peak at a certain point, now it's on a downward trajectory. It's not 1998, or 2003, or even 2011 anymore. The industry is doesn't function in a healthy or practical manner any longer, it's become creatively bankrupt, riding heavily on nostalgia, gamers of certain demographic are feeling old and jaded, everything is online. It's a lot of things.

I still find a good bit of gaming entertainment to watch on YouTube, and I don't feel like that's dying off personally. I guess it depends on what aspect you're looking into. I still decry the death of physical media as a culprit in further atomizing everyone's experience with modern games. What's anyone buying, what do they own? Who knows. I feel like that's harder to convey when you don't have physical items trading around, and everything is tied to an account that only one person has access to. The sense of what's relevant or popular in this moment in time, almost doesn't matter anymore. Like when MP3s became dominant. Everybody has their own personal playlist now, and no one cares what someone else listens to. I can't think of the last time I saw someone wearing a t-shirt of a band, it's not even relevant in pop-culture anymore, the bands people listen to, because music isn't much of a shared experience anymore. I think video games are headed in that direction too.

Personally, I'm back into collecting once again, lol. I'll never be satisfied until I have everything I've ever wanted, and didn't know that I wanted. I also try to stay optimistic about the current gaming scene, even if it feels like no one gives a shit anymore, besides myself. How much longer will gaming be physical, and something you can take real ownership of and forever play on your own terms? Who's to say, but I'm relishing in the fact that it's still a thing. I'm gonna enjoy it while it lasts.

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General / Re: Is there any hope for this site?

« on: August 25, 2024, 10:47:34 pm »

As far as the forums? No. Most have either moved on, or become jaded and apathetic towards both retro collecting and modern/current gen gaming. That was the common thread of this place a decade ago, the reason why it was so active, because everyone was very personally invested in those things. We were all more than happy to trade notes, talk about hidden gems to look out for, show off pick-ups, talk about childhood gaming memories, tell wacky collector stories, create various ranking lists and best ofs, etc. But since the wind left the sails of why we were all here to begin with, solid community members disappeared and increasingly fewer came about to pick up their slack, it became more like sending messages into the void, and like "why bother?" Does anyone here have even a remote interest in the same things that I still care about regarding gaming or collecting anymore? As the sentiment has increasingly felt like a resounding "no" on both fronts, my desire to participate only diminished further. Gotta be honest.

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General / Re: How Many Video Games Do You Think Exist Today?

« on: June 02, 2024, 11:14:47 pm »

Good lord, folks are just selling ZIP files full of downloads one could go find for themselves. Yeah, those are not legal to be sold, but it's a cottage market so Nintendo most likely doesn't care too much (they probably will at some point) and other publishers less so.

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General / Re: How Many Video Games Do You Think Exist Today?

« on: June 02, 2024, 08:26:34 pm »

Ah, well. Pretty sure that none of us want even a small fraction of "every game". Maybe theflea? I don't know what his actual end goal is. Total number of games is one aspect of game collecting that seldom comes to mind.

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Modern Video Games / Re: May 30th Playstation State of Play

« on: June 01, 2024, 10:04:35 am »

I remember some of you guys writing off Stellar Blade in the last State of Play like their was nothing interesting at all shown, and it went on to smash sales records in April.

Actually, no one did that in our community, in that topic or in any other, based on search results for "stellar blade." Five people mentioned it specifically by name at that time—four praising it, one saying it wasn't for them. Another person dismissed a large portion of the event altogether, which is what I suppose you're suggesting by someone writing off Stellar Blade. Personally, the game isn't for me from everything I've gathered after its release.

I count at least two who doodoo’d on the presentation as a whole, and also count “waiting for price drop” to mean maybe it looks worth playing just not worth supporting, but take that however you will.

There’s just so much 9th gen whining that goes on, it’s difficult to recall which thread, which community, which website it’s coming from. I hear it so much, but this far from being a terrible console or generation. We keep getting new games and more announcements, but the droning remains a constant.

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Modern Video Games / Re: May 30th Playstation State of Play

« on: May 31, 2024, 07:09:14 pm »

I struggle to understand how any hardcore game enthusiast could look at the games shown, and not think the majority of them look promising. I read several comments in this thread which could be paraphrased "All of these new IPs just look the same, I just want my classic comfort titles back". It's kind of the old man yelling at clouds reaction. Not willing to get enthusiastic about the promise of new games, in an industry which already struggles to give us new things.

I remember some of you guys writing off Stellar Blade in the last State of Play like their was nothing interesting at all shown, and it went on to smash sales records in April. It was a fantastic success, and I'm happy that it did so well. You gotta love to see it. I want more of that for the games industry, but it's got to start with at least some degree of optimism and open-mindedness on the part of the consumer. You can't just chase after the past all of the time and demand more rehash of Uncharted or Sly Cooper. The new games look good, we should give them a chance. I think it's healthy to have some optimism and actually want to enjoy new things. It's a novel idea, but I believe in it.

I'll admit I'm even a bit close-minded still when it comes to what I call "live-service slop", because I assume that I can't have fun with a live-service game. That's based on nothing but a stupid stubbornness on my part. However, there's plenty of single player games here, and those games literally hold up, because they don't get shut down in a year's time. That's what I want to see. Anyone making a single player game, I'm all for looking deeper into it than just the surface-level reveal trailer. There's no doubt in my mind that these will be good games, and there's a lot of folks too stubborn to want to give them a chance. They didn't see some past title they wanted to see brought back, and so the rest of it is "not interesting" and the whole thing branded as "disappointing".

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Modern Video Games / Re: May 30th Playstation State of Play

« on: May 31, 2024, 11:30:08 am »

I feel like an outlier because I love my PS5.  It's the best PS4 on the market!

That said, yeah it was a pretty underwhelming presentation.  I do really like Astro Bot games, though.

Yeah, I really disagree with the PS5 hate. It feels like so many of these former PlayStation diehards, now suddenly have Steam and a competent PC setup and they're like "Huh, why is this game console so anemic, where are the exclusives bro?"

When these guys look back on previous generations with their rosy reds, they don't see it's always been that way. PC always got most of the games, and nowadays they even get a few of the Sony games too. It's not a drastically different story from PS4, or PS3. My PS3 collection almost entirely consists of just the exclusives for that console, and I've got the vast majority of them. I have roughly 60 exclusives for a system that was out from 2006 to 2014. Divide that by 8 years, 7 and a half exclusives per year. At least 40% of those are niche or small releases. So realistically you're taking like 3 to 4 high profile exclusives per year. The vast majority of games were third party, 90% of which were on PC.

There was always slim reasoning to own a PlayStation console if you owned a decent PC setup in the past, they would just dangle a few carrots over the console that made you think about buying it. But if you were all-in as just a console owner back then, PS3 and PS4 probably felt like a godsend. Yeah, we're dealing with a handful on industry trends currently, like live-service slop and rehashing old games which has taken the focus away from developing actual good games a little bit and momentum was hamstrung with the release in 2020. But this rosy red notion that PlayStation in the past was just raining mind-blowing exclusives all day & erruhday, it's just nostalgia talking.

If you had a PC and didn't care about physical game collecting back then? You'd of been scoffing at the notion of PS3, or PS4. For me, it's about the physical collecting mostly, which also serves as motivation to pay attention to new releases. And I have to say this constantly, but yes, 90% of the games are on the disc, despite popular belief otherwise. I'm not particularly worried about Sony shuttering the PS5 update servers in 2038, I just can't be bothered by that. Xbox is about to give up the game, Nintendo will never have decent hardware. So, I'm happy to stick with PS5 as the last serious console, which still offers an incentive to collect games for it as well.


From what I saw, Where Winds Meet looks cool, Path of Exile sort of interesting, Ballad of Antara looks good, Silent Hill of course, Monster Hunter Wilds of course looks good, you had some live-service slop naturally, and a handful of quality looking VR games which I'm sure are appreciated for those invested in the VR system. Even Dynasty Warriors is a series that I'm become a lot more interested in lately.

I really don't get why folks are pouting over this. It's not the best thing ever, or the worst. But there's some cool shit in there. This isn't E3 2008 where you see a bunch of third parties announcing stuff all at once and feel like your cup runneth over. It's not the same thing. Those games still come out for the PS5, but then you complain they're not exclusive, so doesn't make it worth owning a PS5 for those. Same situation as the past, just a perspective change for some of you who now think it's not worth collecting, or buying modern games outside of PC. That, and a lot of you guys are super jaded with gaming and don't realize it.

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Video Game Database Discussion / Re: Duplicate List 2024

« on: May 28, 2024, 10:09:49 am »

Mistakenly made a duplicate for Trepang2.

https://vgcollect.com/item/266475
https://vgcollect.com/item/255282

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General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:

« on: April 14, 2024, 02:40:53 pm »

I'm picking up about one game a month on average, and it's typically a new release of some kind. Video game collecting has all but lost its appeal to me, and it's been that way for at least a few years now. I've owned nearly every game I ever wanted to and the idea of paying a ton of money for the ones I still would like to have sounds very unappealing. If game prices were to crash hard tomorrow and you could go to a thrift store or a flea market and pay Contra for $5 again, or Earthbound for $15, I don't even know if that would get me excited about collecting again.


My journey as a collector was one of the most fun, exciting, and rewarding periods of my life, and like all good things I wish it could have lasted forever. I've put a lot of thought into why I'm no longer into collecting, and while I could list half a dozen reasons or more why I stopped caring about it, I think it can be summed up by saying people and their interests and priorities naturally change over time. It happens to everyone, and aside from game collecting it has happened to me easily 10 times in my life so far. While video game collecting was certainly the most involved I ever got in one of my interests, at the end of the day it was still just a hobby. I tired for years to find new avenues to stay excited about game collecting, but every time I did this I was faced with greater and greater diminished returns on my overall enjoyment of the hobby.


Regrettably, I have yet to find a hobby to replace game collecting in terms of how passionate I was for it. I have focused on other interests, but nothing yet has kept me up until 3am researching interesting retro games I'd never hear of, getting up at the crack of dawn to beat an army of other resellers and collectors to the flea market, or spending all my disposable income (and then some) on games I wanted. I miss that feeling and I hope I discover something else that can ignite passion in me the way collecting used to. I still love playing video games, probably more than ever, but I just wish I was as into it as I was when i was paying all these games that I'm not actually clearing from my backlog.

You might wanna look into vinyl or even CD collecting, if you're a fan of music. It's something you can take at a more casual pace than game collecting, because it doesn't feel like there's millions of people competing and scalping a finite thing, like with physical games. It does go on, but to a much lesser extent.

I'm not gonna say that I'm not interested in games or collecting anymore, because I am. There's just many factors now which work against actually doing it, it became stressful for me at a certain point. I felt like I was trying to rush to complete goals before they became even more cost-prohibitive, and then my goals would get reworked and become even broader, and that would add to the stress. I have a clear path to competition as far as retro. It's just hard to jump back into it now.

I feel like a lot of the regulars here are very down on not just collecting, but also modern games. That's one area where I disagree totally with the sentiment. I'm still pretty motivated, and excited for collecting modern releases. I absolutely don't care about Limited Run, or any such similar company. I think they're all borderline fraudulent. I'm just talking about like standard publisher / retail level games. For me, there's been plenty of games in the past several months to come out, and I still enjoy the pursuit in staying on top of those releases. I've picked up Alone in the Dark reboot, Rise of the Ronin, South Park Snow Day, AC Mirage got discounted down to $30 recently. I've picked up Princess Peach Showtime, and there's plenty of others I've had to pass up on, that I want to go back and pick up. I've got Stellar Blade pre-ordered. I wanna pick up Dragon's Dogma II, Pacific Drive looks really cool... and so on.

To me, modern collecting is almost as fun as it's ever been. I know there are concerns about the long-term sustainability of modern game discs, but there's resources like "DoesItPlay?" that are quite useful. A surprising amount of releases are functional without updates. If you're into collecting DLC, there's external HDDs and all of that jazz with which to store all of your update revisions and data on. I'm personally not worried about any of that, and I feel like it's all kind of beside the point of collecting, anyway. Ultimately, we all recognize the best and easiest route to playing any legacy platform or game is just flash media and emulation, and yet so many of us choose to keep buying old cartridges and discs that we don't necessarily need, why not buy modern discs that we won't necessarily need down the road, as well? It's all for the love of the collection, which is something that hasn't yet become totally lost on me. I'm still having fun with buying new games.