Messages

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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.

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

« on: April 09, 2024, 08:23:18 pm »

So I've taken a pretty long hiatus from the game collecting, further delaying my goal to "finish" retro collecting. Was mostly due to financial constraints at first, tho it's felt good to not collect and to not feel any of that FOMO for quite a while. Of course, as soon as I toy with the notion of picking back up where I left off, all that shit comes rushing back and I'm quickly reminded of how much better it is, to not being doing this or even thinking about it.

Ironically, in my time away I've only picked up another collecting hobby in it's place. I've started to taking music collecting more serious, and have to admit I'm having a lot of fun with it. I think CDs specifically, are extremely undervalued right now. It feels almost like the early days of video game collecting. I'm simultaneously reuniting with some old tunes, and exploring a lot of other stuff I've never heard before. I'm becoming acquainted with Discogs, learning more about different record labels and their rosters of bands. Determining the best places to track down different releases, what's out of print and what's not. It's a pretty fun time.

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General / Re: Games you must play before you die.

« on: April 09, 2024, 08:02:16 pm »

Pretty much if it's a game you've heard most people heavily praise and it was conventionally considered to be an excellent game, I'd say it's a must play. After gaming nearly my entire life and being a collector for nearly half of it, these well known and well loved games are often the ones that stand out above the rest. Very rarely do I play a game that sold poorly or that is fairly obscure that even comes close to competing. In fact, most "hidden gem" games I've played are fairly mediocre at best, or just plain bad. I think a lot of collectors want to pretend these hidden gem games are just as good as their better known, more successful counterparts in order to justify their often exorbitant prices, but the truth truth is they'll never compete. Link's Awakening will always be vastly better than Alundra. Every mainline Pokemon game blows every Digimon RPG out of the water. The Mariokart games will always be better then nearly all other kart racing games ever released.

I simply can't agree with this. It's basically like saying that only what the critics praise and what gets well advertised is actually worthwhile, and obscure equals mediocre to bad? I don't think the notoriety of game is any measure of the amount of fun I can have playing it. I'm certainly not trying to pump up the r@re gem$ and all the crap that people are willing to over-pay for. At a certain point, I think no video game is worth that much, it's all collector BS. But I do think there's a lot of good, even great games that most people never played or hear much about. Sometimes these games will even receive critical praise, but the marketing and the hype wasn't there so it just goes unloved by the masses.

One small example being a game like Immortals of Aveum. EA release this game while putting absolutely nothing into it's promotion, there was no hype, etc. It received some critical praise, but when it dropped the typical jaded gamer attitude was "meh, what even is this? oh it's EA, who cares" and so it sort came and went. But I care, I like first person shooting with a sci-fi adventure type of theme in a well made single player game, which we don't see too often anymore. Will this game ever make into the gaming history books? Hell no, it didn't sell at all. People won't ever know this game. Still a good game, and I stand by that. This kind of thing happens a lot, and has always happened in the games industry. I don't necessarily think that Call of Duty 57 is a better, more worthwhile game, just because it sold better and a lot of people will undoubted look back fondly on playing Call of Duty 57 in the future, whereas almost nobody will remember Immortals.

Will they ever compete? By what metric? Sales, popularity, influence? No. Still don't think that makes them inferior games to play, at least not as a rule. I'll grant you that there's not been very many quality titles in the industry of Mario Kart cloning, but the Alundra shade is a bit harsh. A lot of people love that game, and I don't think it's just because the physical copy has become expensive to obtain.

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Modern Video Games / Re: What are your plans when everything goes digital only?

« on: February 14, 2024, 11:19:01 pm »

I picked it up a while back on the cheap. Digital distribution is garbage, but also, people loose their minds over FOMO. Look how many copies of this game sell PER DAY now. A month prior, nobody would give it a second thought.

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Off Topic / Re: Music thread

« on: February 09, 2024, 11:59:40 am »

Had a bit of a score yesterday at Goodwill. Typically my luck is rotten, I always check the CDs for anything even slightly tolerable. Often come up empty handed as there are of course, known resellers in my area who scarf up anything that's not holiday/children/gospel/country/soundtrack/oldies. Apparently this time I beat them to a fresh batch. For $1.50, I'll pick up anything that's listenable, doesn't have to be a favorite. I'm a lot more open to the array of different bands now, than I was in my youth where it had to be a super specif sound, or I'd write it off. Think I grabbed about 7 or 8 CDs. Should be a good time.

We haven't had a proper record store in my area for over at least 5 years now. I miss the luxury of dedicated physical media shops already, just a cool nostalgic experience most of us won't ever be getting back. I don't miss paying $18 for a CD, but just browsing physic media was always a treat.

Finally started diving into their stuff and basically everything from their first album to The Art of Drowning is great, short of Very Proud of Ya (Production isn't as good as the album before and after for some reason and it doesn't work as well alongside everything else to me).  Kinda surprised I never tried to delve deeper honestly, especially with how much I was into punk in the late 90's/early 00's as a teen

In my early teen years, I was obsessed with their 90s back catalog. I remember browsing FYE and they had like every 90s LP/EP from them. I think I eventually bought most all of them. Still have those in my collection. Seems a lot of those bands that started out in the 90s would play a very different style at first, and then adapt to a more mainstream sound later on. I'm sure you've heard of 90s alt band Goo Goo Dolls? You know, the band behind radio hits like Iris, Black Baloon, Slide, etc? Check out their self-titled first album from 1987 and see if it sounds like the same band at all. Yeah I was obsessed with their back catalog as well, as a kid.

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Modern Video Games / Re: What are your plans when everything goes digital only?

« on: February 01, 2024, 03:17:16 pm »

I mean, Gamepass is super popular. Most casuals see no point to buying the games anymore, physical or digital. Congratulations Microsoft, we know it's what they wanted anyhow since they suck at curating talent to make games, and they lack broad appeal as a result. Might as well just make it the easiest platform for accessing slop, as that's all it's really been for a while now.

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Modern Video Games / Re: State of Play | January 31, 2024 thoughts?

« on: January 31, 2024, 07:33:13 pm »

There's some interesting stuff in there. Stellar Blade is the obvious highlight to me, Dragon's Dogma and Rise of the Ronin are interesting. Not much of a survival horror fan anymore, and not into Final Fantasy either, but hey maybe these games could change that. I like to keep an open mind.

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Modern Video Games / Re: What are your plans when everything goes digital only?

« on: January 31, 2024, 01:56:25 pm »

I was reminded of the site DoesItPlay?, which I'm sure you'll find interesting. The site is vastly far away from making any noteworthy dent in the grand scheme of things, but it should provide a general overview of how many games actually are fully playable without an internet connection.

This is an invaluable resource for modern game collectors, and one I'd invite anyone skeptical about modern game longevity to look into. Evidently, only 11% of games globally in their database don't install fully off of the disc/cart. That's lower than I honestly expected. Internet requirement to play is only at 4%.

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Modern Video Games / Re: Palworld.

« on: January 31, 2024, 01:02:30 pm »

Even the name sounds AI generated.

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Modern Video Games / Re: What are your plans when everything goes digital only?

« on: January 22, 2024, 11:19:50 pm »

I don't really think it's gonna happen, in the sense that there's absolutely zero physical games. So it becomes a niche market, but it's not the end.

The main reason I doubt this is going to happen is looking at the state of physical media right now when we do still have physical alternatives, at least for gaming. I can't remember where I read this, but it said that the majority of games sales are now digital which does not surprise me at all. Streaming has killed physical movies/TV and music, and before that digital distribution (iTunes, Pay-Per View). Best Buy is getting rid of all their physical movies as we speak, and the selection at places like Target and Best Buy is sparse at best. Look at these store's selection of blueray/dvd players too; there is a very small section of about 4 or 5 blueray players to choose from now. With something like a game console, a significant portion of RnD has to go into adding physical media capabilities, and that's not to mention the added costs of making sure distributors and manufacturers can produce the games for your console. I guess what I'm trying to say is, why would Sony or Microsoft even bother with the added hassle of making sure their new consoles can play physical media when there is less of a demand, while still requiring the additional expense of catering to a minority of customers?


I don't think the console makers are going to keep things physical for a niche group of people. And if there's no way of playing physical media, this takes companies like Limited Run out of the picture, unless they are somehow releasing games on older consoles that have the ability to play physical media still. I don't know, I hope you're right, but it just seems like we are going in a very clear direction that other forms of media have already gone over the past 10+ years.

There's a big market for DVD and Bluray collecting still, the casuals might have moved on from owning movies a long time ago but there's still the demand for physical, so every new movie, show, or anime is still getting physical releases to this day. The presence at a retail level goes away or diminishes and gives the impression that "it's dead", but it's products that you can still order online. There's a shocking amount of amateur musicians and bands, which you still buy physical CDs or Vinyl from directly from their merch store, or specialty sites. Anyone who has a real following, has physical media probably dropping right this minute. Relatively speaking, record players aren't exactly abundant at retail, but there's a market for them and they'll always make them.

It's rumored that the next iteration of PS5 / XBOX will not include a built-in disc drive, but have the capability to connect an external one, like modern day laptops or PCs without a disc drive. Really all it does is read and install from a disc, what developmental capabilities are they spending resources on to allow for that? It's a device that's functional through a USB. Isn't a PS5 built off of common, non-propitiatory architecture anyhow? I'm struggling to see how it's difficult for Sony to implement external drive reading compatibility like any other piece of hardware on the market, going forward. Doesn't seem like it would be, particularly if that's the way they do end up going later on with the PS5. With Microsoft, I kinda think Xbox might not even be a thing next generation. They clearly don't want to continue in the traditional sense. Nintendo doesn't know how to manage a online network, I don't see them going digital.

I dunno, every other form of media has survived the onslaught of digital to various degrees and I think games will in a way, as well. Not entirely, but there will be an option. It might even be something that's not even in the picture currently that comes about to pick up the slack. I struggle to see Sony or Nintendo going all digital, with no physical compatibility. I think the best thing to do, is rid the defeatist attitude that it's all over. Keep buying physical games, cake up that market and make it worthwhile for publishers to keep doing what they've always done. Unfortunately we can't rely on physical retail space anymore, but you can still buy online. If I didn't have such a retro fixation, I'd be picking up a lot more modern games.

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Modern Video Games / Re: What are your plans when everything goes digital only?

« on: January 22, 2024, 12:08:28 pm »

Ubisoft does not deserve most of the hate they get. If you hate Ubisoft for making online focused games, the same franchises over and over, microtransactions, whatever then why not support Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown? First non-mobile Prince of Persia game in 14 years, many 9/10 reviews, $50 launch price, free demo across all platforms.. if this is the direction people want from Ubisoft it's out now ready to be bought and owned physically or digitally.

I do want to get the new Prince of Persia. I'm certainly not a full boycotter, but Ubisoft is one of the biggest offenders for releasing physical single-player games with an Internet requirement, which don't have a sound reason to require it, they're just being buttholes about how their games work, like The Crew Motorfest. You can play it single player, but you've GOT to have Internet connectivity just to do that because of they way the game relies on their in-game sales model, I guess. I'm almost positive that if you'd don't have Internet connectivity, you can't even launch the game. That kind of thing supremely sucks. Every game should be playable without Internet, even multiplayer focused games, if you so wanted. Ubisoft and EA are the leaders in doing this, and also in giving the general public the impression that games nowadays don't work anymore without Internet, but it's largely just their greed driven endeavors of in-game sales and massively bug ridden day one releases. That's where the hate comes in, and I think it is a bit deserved.

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Modern Video Games / Re: What are your plans when everything goes digital only?

« on: January 22, 2024, 01:21:33 am »

I don't really think it's gonna happen, in the sense that there's absolutely zero physical games. So it becomes a niche market, but it's not the end. They still print books, they still make CDs, DVDs, there's a vinyl boom still happening in 2024. I can only foresee the biggest of greediest corporations going scorched Earth on physical, and ultimately trying (as Ubisoft and others would clearly prefer) moving to a purely subscription based "you own nothing" model, not even a download. But to Hell with them, I don't really care.

I know there will always be publishers of physical media, even if it's niche and limited. I'll probably continue to buy those sorts of products. I have Steam, so if I absolutely need to experience a release or two per year, I might make a purchase on there. I certainly don't collect downloads, and never will.

Simple as that, really.

I've seen no reason to believe the figure of physical PS5 games which require an Internet connection would be anywhere near 90%. Perhaps when your PS5 is connected to Internet, 90% of your games will download instead of installing, but I'm more inclined to believe 90%of PS5 games don't require it for one reason or another to be playable. I think there's a misconception that all physical games today come with the equivalent of Cyberpunk 2077 quality assurance for the version that's on the disc, but I don't think that's true either (in fact, there's a new and improved edition of Cyberpunk on PS5 that just got a physical release). And again, you can always let your games download and store the latest revisions on an external hard-drive, as another means of preserving them.

An interesting watch on modern game preservation - https://youtu.be/E40lcitQoAs?si=gz1S8jjoE0bTC7Xp&t=246

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Classic Video Games / Re: how would you rank your collecting experience per console

« on: January 19, 2024, 06:57:31 pm »

PS5: I struggle to even call myself a PS5 collector since I know full well its physical games are more or less glorified CD keys. I don't think there is any future in collecting for the PS5 since I know these games will have no longevity in a decade or so from now when Sony pulls the plug on its servers. Nearly every PS5 game I've played requires at least half the game be downloaded, if not way, way more than that. And I've never been able to have more than a dozen or so games downloaded onto my PS5 at a time given how much space they take up and also there being no way to update the HDD in them. If not for the games being petty fun, this would be a straight up F Tier console in terms of collecting for me.

Wait a sec. I've actually updated the SSD in my PS5, adding 1TB of storage to the system. I think it supports up to 4TB or more now after firmware updates. So you can upgrade the amount of internal space. Then you can also use external HDDs to hold install data for your games. You can transfer those files from the HDD to the internal SSD for use when you want to play them again, and then transfer the install data back to the HDD for long term storage when you want to free up space to play something else. While not convienent, it's surely do-able if you're wanting to play games on the PS5 20 years from now.

So, say your PS5 blows up into a fire ball. You have to go get another one, can you then move your stored games back to your new PS5's internal SSD?

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Classic Video Games / Re: how would you rank your collecting experience per console

« on: January 19, 2024, 06:14:59 pm »

PS5: I struggle to even call myself a PS5 collector since I know full well its physical games are more or less glorified CD keys. I don't think there is any future in collecting for the PS5 since I know these games will have no longevity in a decade or so from now when Sony pulls the plug on its servers. Nearly every PS5 game I've played requires at least half the game be downloaded, if not way, way more than that. And I've never been able to have more than a dozen or so games downloaded onto my PS5 at a time given how much space they take up and also there being no way to update the HDD in them. If not for the games being petty fun, this would be a straight up F Tier console in terms of collecting for me.

I often hear this argument being tossed around. My question to those who espouse this - couldn't the same logic be applied also to PS4 and even PS3 games, since there are quite some games even from that time period that saw updates and patches not included on the game disc? When Sony shuts down the server for those legacy platforms, and you can't get the patches directly from them, is there no point in collecting those either? I think the downloads included with many disc games are just a prioritized method of getting the latest version, when you have an Internet connection. Not that there isn't any version on the disc.

I acknowledge that it can be worse now when developers release a beta on disc and then patch it day one, but that's usually the exception and not the rule. It mostly applies to rushed triple A games, which is far from being every PS5 physical release. Sometimes there are definitive edition physical releases, if the game is a big enough success, but there's also a lot of smaller release and indie titles which are complete on the disc. I think too much is made of the issue. SomeOrdinaryGamers once did a video demonstrating that yes, you can in fact install and play games like Demon Souls remake and others without any Internet connection at all to his PS5. So there certainly is something on the disc with the physical games, more so than the hearsay is leading people to believe. Sometimes EA or Ubisoft will pull some crap in pursuit of their bottom lines, and screw the consumer of a complete or accessible product. But it's not a reason to write of PS5 collecting enitrely, IMO.

You are absolutely right, it does apply to the PS4 and PS3. The key differences is I can update the HDD to accommodate most, if not all my games plus all the patches and content. I did exactly this when Sony was threatening to shut down the PS3's servers a couple years ago or so. Given, this will not be as easy with the PS4 since the download sizes are much larger, but with a few PS4's and cloning the HDDs, I can have some reassurance that I can preserve those games. The PS5 on the other hand has everything tied to the specific console. In other words, you can't repair, replace, or upgrade any of the internal hardware on your own. Only Sony can. Maybe someday, someone will find a way around this, but I found this out the hard way when my PS5's disc drive crapped our after just one year. Luckily Sony did a good faith out of warranty repair on it for free, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth that I'd either have to own a dozen or more PS5's to fit all the game data for a moderately sized collection, or accept the fact that the games will be useless in another decade or so.

Interesting. So when you store a PS5 game on a external, those games are only accessible from the specific console they were first installed on, and not verifiable through your actual PlayStation account? That's odd. They had to consider that people might not have the same console over time. I have to assume you can access the games that were digitally downloaded, but why not the ones you installed while on your account, and then stored?

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Classic Video Games / Re: Is my copy of Link to the Past a repro?

« on: January 19, 2024, 01:49:04 pm »

This is why you don't buy from sources where you don't get to see the copy they're sending. You're paying collector's price for a sub-par copy.

A quick glance at eBay and there are current listings of ALttP for better prices, with plenty of good pictures.

Sorry to double-post again, but I've had not so good experiences with EBay.

I bought a copy of Mega Man 7 there, and it was the most obvious repro I'd ever seen.

Every seller is a different story, you have to look closely at the listing. Yes repros are sold on eBay, usually listed as "new" condition, but they can't call it a repro as it tends to violate eBay guidelines. Reputable sellers will mention "authentic" in the description, or will good detailed pictures, not generic.

Amazon sellers brutally over-charge for everything and usually don't even factor in condition, or have any pictures.