Why do you collect?

[scott]

I'm sure all of us have our reasons for building collections we have. Be it nostalgia, value or challenge. Why do you collect the games & systems you do?

(I'll post mine later today)

[matt]

Nostalgia.

I was a child of the 80s and have amazing memories of the early Nintendo and Sega days. Those were the best times.

[scott]

I traveled all over the States while I was growing up. With me for most of those road trips has been a Game Boy. That system is a big part of my childhood, possibly more than my NES was. Countless hours were spent playing Zelda, Super Mario Land, Metroid II, TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan during those vacations. Even though we needed to have enough batteries to handle the Game Boy and my Light Boy for the entire trip.

Ha, While I bring my DS with me on trips now, I still rock my Game Boy Light and Game Boy Color in the travel bag, it along with a decent selection of games from my collection.

[monochrome]

Most of the games I want now are ones I either used to own or rented back in the day.  So, nostalgia for me too.  

[tpugmire]

I still have all my games from when I was a kid except my 2600 and games.  I often wonder where it ended up.  Anyway, a few years ago when the Wii was really hard to find, my sister in law got one from her work and didn't want it so she gave it to us.  It brought back so many memories, my last system i owned was a SNES, so I was out of the loop for a while.  I gradually got more into gaming, and made up for lost time by buying the consoles I missed out on.  So I guess you could say I'm an old school gamer, but a newer collector.

[jobocan]

Well, I can't think of anything more fun to collect than video games. Not only do you get a bunch of items to show off, but each of them houses a different experience, and any of them can be fun, even if just for a minute or 2 if you have some time to waste. Almost any game can have some entertainment value (just setup a small Shaq Fu tournament with friends, you'll see what I mean ), so no game is ever truly worthless (other than Heavy Rain, but that's a topic for another day). Collecting something like stamps or rocks or whatever other people collect will never be this fun... I think.

So yeah, I collect because it's fun. Heck, I wasn't even aware I was collecting until, suddenly, I woke up and realized I had over 100 NES games in my room (probably some time early last year, or the year before). I just started this "collecting" thing about 3 years ago when I wanted to pick up just a few NES/SNES/Genesis games I had missed out on or that I rented as a kid and wanted to have myself, and it snowballed to what I have now... and I don't regret it. I guess nostlagia has a small part to play here too.

[possebon]

Mostly to play the games I missed as a kid, I remember being a bit of an J-RPG geek as a kid but never really having any money to buy anything myself - mostly I'd just get whatever FF title was out that year and that would be it, as FIFA would also be a definite purchase.

And every time I buy a new one I get so much closer to a bigger collection, that it would be silly to stop collecting and being so close to having a *real* collection.

Plus, it looks good on my shelves =)

[soitsgh3]

I started playing video games when I was 4, and I simply loved every minute of it.  Every hour of mario bros on the nes and beating pokemon yellow over 25 times and memorizing every detail of the game.  Now that im older, I enjoy the history of video games and I started collecting 2 years ago and would spend sleepless nights just reading about console after console trying to learn and understand what that console did to help future consoles succeed and of course those that dont succeed but have great ideas like the hyperscan.  Great idea for marketing but it never took off and was simply horrible.

So to sum it all up, I collect to gain knowledge and enjoy the wonders of technology.

[scott]

bump

[mariokarter]

I collect games because I like to be able to play them anytime. Recently I have gotten quite interested in the history of video gaming. Whenever I read about a game that was groundbreaking or great or horrible, I love being able to go and take it off the shelf and play it. I think of my game collection as more of a library than anything. I loved collecting sports cards as a kid, and now for whatever reason it makes me feel happy to look at a shelf full of video games. I love not only the nostalgia but video games as a form of media in general. But now I am starting to worry about space!

[scott]

@mariokarter oh ya, I've got the same issue with space. I just needed to trade out my original shelving with my dvd shelving thanks to the thickness of stupid Saturn cases, haha. Eventually, I may need to devise a better solution.

[coaxial]

I don't buy often its a slow build but there are many reasons why I hold on to what I have from nostalgia to regret (after selling or getting rid of things like my Game Gear collection for $25). Just for example, one of my first computers was a Coleco ADAM. The printer quit printing and was eventually thrown away. One day I went to fire it up and found that was no longer possible because the power supply was housed inside the printer. Oops. Most of my lessons are learned the hard way.

[scott]

@coaxial oh man I feel your pain on the Game Gear. I sold both my NES collection and my Saturn collections for super cheap. I still haven't rebuilt my original NES library yet.

[amauriel]

I never sold any of my games back as a kid, I still have everything I owned (which is why you'll see games like Barbie for the NES in my collection) but my husband traded almost everything he owned to get an XBox when they first came out (before we were married, or I wouldn't have allowed it!) ...every time we go buying, we pick up games he used to have.

[scott]

I never sold any of my games back as a kid, I still have everything I owned (which is why you'll see games like Barbie for the NES in my collection) but my husband traded almost everything he owned to get an XBox when they first came out (before we were married, or I wouldn't have allowed it!) ...every time we go buying, we pick up games he used to have.

I used to trade in games, until I realized how much money I was losing doing so. Also I sold off my original NES and Saturn collections for ridiculously cheap (stupid, stupid). I did sell off some games that I never played and reign in my PS2 collection to "favorite franchises" though and didn't regret it. But, now I don't sell or trade or sell anything...  unless of course I build up some doubles in my Saturn hunt.