Author Topic: The gamer you were when you joined VGcollect vs. the gamer you are now in 2023  (Read 2433 times)

I mean this completely in the sense of you as a gamer and/or collector, not necessarily how different you are on a personal level. What was collecting like for you when you started, what were your collecting priorities, interests within the hobbies, favorite places to find games, pretty much anything that defined you as a gamer or collector back when you joined versus right now in 2023? Obviously this questions is meant more for people who've been on here for at least several years, but anyone can chime in if they'd like.


It blows my mind that I joined this site almost a decade ago, and despite it being more or less a ghost town these days, VGcollect has remained one of my favorite spaces on the internet to discuss gaming. But anyhow, here is my comparison.

September 22, 2013

I joined this site after Gamespot.com nuked their collection cataloging feature, and also their forums had become more and more unbearable. I can't remember where I first heard of VGcollect, but it sounded like the perfect place to catalog my rapidly growing collection so I decided to join. In late 2013 I had just moved into a house a relative of mine owned, however despite being a house my rent was about the same as a one bedroom apartment at the time. What this essentially meant is I had ample money to boost my collecting habit, which I absolutely did! For several years leading up to this point, I'd found dozens of excellent spots to find cheap retro games, and while my tastes had become slightly more focused by 2013, I still feverishly collected almost anything going back to the NES all the way up to modern consoles which was the Wii U and PS4/XBONE at the time. The local flea market was still mostly good, however my main hunting spot was a used media store called Tradesmart where I made out like a bandit regularly. I would constantly find cheap retro games, all priced at $3 each regardless of title. During this time my PS2, PS1, Gamecube, and original XBOX collections exploded and I quickly was hitting triple digits with these consoles. I also got into collecting for several consoles I'd never really collected for until then such as the PSP, DS, Sega CD, and Neo Geo Pocket.


Unfortunately around this time it was becoming more and more obvious that video game collecting wasn't just a few people out there, and quickly garage sales, the flea market, nearly every thrift store, and Tradesmart become more and more competitive. Resellers started flooding these places to, which at the time filled me with a murderous rage lol. There are probably a decent amount of posts back in 2013 until 2016 or so where I probably spew constant venom at resellers and the ire they caused me back then. But while I was still massively into collecting in 2013, the writing was definitely on the wall that this hobby was becoming more and more crowded and things weren't going to be as easy, or affordable as they once were when I began collecting in 2008/2009. Still, looking back to 2013, hell even to 2017 and 2018, we really had no idea how good we still had it compared to what happened to game prices in 2020 and beyond.


Present - 2023

Since joining VGcollect I have had probably 4 or 5 considerably large downsizings where I purged at least 100 games each time, mostly rare, expensive stuff that I'd bought because, well, it was rare and expensive lol. I've also come to realize several hard truths that have contributed to these downsizing efforts, including me not being as much of a handheld or JRPG person as I once thought I was, and also discovering other interests outside of gaming. Despite this my overall collection hasn't significantly been reduced since I've made up for it by purchasing quite a few newer games, but also many retro games I'd been after for years. Still, I do find myself in a very different place now than I did in 2013.


For one, my passion and drive for collecting, and really video games in general, is a fraction of what it was in 2013. My first downsizing was not done by choice, but rather necessity. However, one valuable lesson it taught me was that my games were just things that could be bought, sold, and rebought if I so desired. And while this is probably the healthier way to look at video games and collecting, it unfortunately stripped a lot of the magic and emotional gravity retro games once had on me. The result of this was it becoming more and more difficult for me to get into collecting video games, which hasn't been helped by how insanely expensive they've become too. I currently find myself with a passive interest in collecting where I typically only buy games I'm after when I come across them in the wild or at a collector's swap meet, rather than actively pursuing them like I used to. I also have found myself mostly going after CIB copies of loose cartridge based games I own, as well as a handful of other games I'm interested in too. The combination of these two things are more or less the end of the road for me as a collector of retro video games, and it honestly saddens me when I think about it. Video game collecting has been my primary hobby for over a decade, and while currently I can't say for sure if it is anymore, it's still something I've spend a massive amount of time and money on. I feel like I've artificially extended my stay in the land of video game collecting over the years, however my current collecting goals are the ones I will bow out on once I've completed them.


Ending my response on a more positive note, my decline as a collector has corresponded with my rise as an actual gamer. I play far more games now than I used to back in 2013; in 2013 I probably and beat less than 15 games a year, however now I regularly complete the 52 games challenge, often by around a dozen games or more. While I have embraced many other hobbies and interests of mine more and more, I still get a lot of enjoyment from popping a game I've never played in and just checking it out. In fact, playing games instead of beating them has become my focus so much that I don't even really use VGcollect as a collection tracker anymore, but rather just a way to chat with you fine folks and keep track of what I've beat over the course of the year lol. Compare that to me religiously updating my collection on here in 2013 and up until probably 2018 or so.


All and all, I'm in a very different spot than I was when I began posting here, and while I long for the days of plentiful, cheap retro games, I'm under no illusion that those times will ever return. While it does bum me out a bit, I also accept that things inevitably change over time and I'm at least very fortunate to have experienced it all when I did and how I did. In fact, those memories of going out all day and hunting for cheap game in 2012 and 2013 mean more to me than the actual games I found during that time. And not only that, but I still have many of those great games still and I'm actually playing and enjoying them now versus just admiring them on a shelf like I used to. So in a way, I'm happier where I am right now as a gamer, but also feel a tinge of sadness knowing my days as a collector are growing fewer and fewer with each new game I find. It's been a wild, fun ride though and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
« Last Edit: March 04, 2023, 01:20:38 am by bikingjahuty »

Warmsignal

Really, the story dates back to before my time at VGC.

Fall 2008 / spring 2009

I had become a retro game collector and enthusiast by the start of 2009. Largely inspired by many of the early game collecting YouTube channels that I used to watch then. Back then, truthfully I was just mesmerized by the fact that there was so many games, and so many systems which looked cool to own and play on. Prior to becoming a "collector", I was more of what I'd call a casual type of gamer in my youth. Up until the PS2 era where it more or less wrapped up for me, I played roughly 5 to 8 games a year. Maybe owned 15 to 20 games per console.

When I got into retro and collecting, it was an entirely different story. My eyes were open to so many different games that I'd never considered before then. Better yet, I didn't have to go spend $50 on every game anymore. In fact, many of these retro games could be found at thrifty $5 or less prices if I just went hunting around on the weekends. Only problem was, despite how thrifty everything was, I didn't have a lot of money to be spending on the hobby. So I'd hit the town and see what all I could find for a $20 bill, and I'd come home with a stack of games. At the same time, my brother also became a fan of the AVGN and wanted to start game collecting as well. We used to hit the town and travel to neighboring towns hunting games every weekend. He'd come back with big cardboard boxes FULL on NES games for roughly $100. He was going for a full NES set and in less than two years of hunting, got around 80% of the way there. I was more of a variety collector. Wanted to go for a bit of everything on all systems, but I didn't know a whole lot about what games where what back then. I knew that many of the early YouTube channels were big JRPG fans, so I felt like I needed to try to get into that scene.

2012 / 2013 and joining VGC

This was around the time game collecting was exploding as a hobby, prices were getting higher and a lot more competition. This was where I started to mature and become a bit more seasoned, I learned how to judge the market better, which games were for me and which weren't, how to catch sellers slipping, etc. The era of cheap games was over, my brother had bowed out as a result. I decided to press on, as I had a better understanding of how to find things I wanted, and get the best possible deals. I enjoyed my time trading notes with fellow VGC members, many of us where at a similar point in our collecting journeys. Deals were still possible and the thrill of the hunt was still there. My collection was beginning to take shape and become more what I wanted it to be, and I was reaching the point of owning many of the more popular, highly regarded types of games, but I was thirsting for more of the obscure and what else was out there.

Mid 2010s era

By the mid part of the decade, the market was worse than ever. Retro collecting was SUPER popular, and SUPER competitive. Anything outside of retail and video game stores, had completely dried up for me. This is when I started to have a bit more money to spend on the hobby, but subsequently the hobby had become MUCH more expensive too. Games reaching ridiculous $200 and $300 price tags was no longer uncommon. A lot of my pickups by then, came from local game shops, and I also started going to annual video game trade-shows / cons, where I'd go and blow several hundred dollars getting more of that premium sort of obscure stuff that I never could find back in the thrifty era. Each year I'd hit several trade shows and come away with a stack of obscure/primo games for a hefty chunk of change. Also, a business owner in my town had opened up a new retro game shop with fair prices and a really good selection. In addition to this, another local spot which had an epic stash of retro stuff stored away for many years, brought their inventory back out to their floor as well, selling at FLAT prices like it was still 2010 or something. I hit those places religiously, every week building up the collection. The former business eventually decided to fold up shop, and sold out stock to other store in town, absorbing all of their inventory and hiking up the prices. I took some pics of this massive buyout, and shared them on a thread here that was about local game shops.

At this point I was getting a lot more into the odd and obscure, I was becoming more a fan of the unsung, or "hidden gem" type of games and discovered that many of those were just as interesting to me as a lot of the popular, so-called "must have" games I'd chased after in years prior. My interests in different types of games began to expand further, and my wish lists only grew over time. Games that I would have looked right passed in years prior, were suddenly on my radar as I did more research into what more of these lesser known games were about.

Late 2010s and pandemic nightmare era

By this point, collecting was reach ridiculous levels. Stuff that had always been cheap was no longer cheap, everyone and their uncle was a retro game collector by now. Then the pandemic hit, the government responded stupidly handing out money to those who obviously didn't need it, which resulted in market poisoning for retro gaming. Suddenly everything was worth like 50% more than before, and naturally prices didn't recover from this.

I was still kind of following that pattern of trying to build an exhaustive collection for each of my favorite consoles. Modern game collecting had taken off, as we began seeing more and more indie title games releasing in physical form on platforms like Switch and PS4... further dividing attention away from my retro goals... still, I pressed on. Paying high prices for some things, but still managing a few deals here and there at the last few local spots I could go to. Having to resort to eBay for many things, by this point.

2023

Currently I've found myself stuck in this rut of wanting to flesh out these various sub-collections but with prices often rivaling that of new release games, it's just not financially sustainable for me anymore. Many things I still want to add to the collection are $50 there, $100 here, and $75 for the other. I can't spend that kind of money on individual pickups every single week. It's the complete opposite of how things felt back when I first started. If I had the money that I spend today, back then? I could only imagine how quickly I could have built an epic game collection. Nowadays, it doesn't matter how much money you throw at it, it still eludes you. Granted, I've probably taken the whole thing way too far, my goals became way too lofty and I should have hung it up long ago. It's just too stressful.

So now, I'm really tying to streamline my goals, and create a vision towards getting out of the retro game collecting market for life. It's more or less become a rich man's hobby, and it's more stressful than fun anymore. I have the rest of my life to sit down, roll my sleeves up and really spend the time using all of this expensive plastic I've acquired over the years the way that it's intended to be used. Maybe that'll trigger more revelations, and I'll discover that perhaps some of this isn't what it's cracked up to be. Maybe I'll let some things go, once I experience more of it. We'll see. But for now, I'm wanting this to be the final era of retro collecting.

I actually look forward to the mental and financial freedom of no longer doing this, and turning my attention towards the many other aspects of life, that I've probably ignored far too heavily in pursuit of the retro gaming hobby. Honesty, I miss what my life felt like before I became addicted to this hobby, and I want that back. Hopefully, I'll be able to reflect on this post in some time and have a conclusion to this whole story.
« Last Edit: March 04, 2023, 11:25:37 am by Warmsignal »

hexen

I like this kind of thing.

History, start in the mid 2000s and joining VGcollect in 2011

I'd always been interested in gaming since playing Super Mario world when I was 4 or 5 at a daycare center. That daycare is where I got in most of my gaming as my brother and I begged my dad to get us an SNES. He didn't want to, but he did happen to have something in the closet from his younger days... an Intellivison that he let us use that really was what started my interest in retro games. At school my friends would talk about games on the SNES and Genesis which was completely different from my experience of playing Frog Bog, Night Stalker and Astrosmash. I hate myself for the fact my dad kept all the games and system with pristine boxes but us kids didn't consider that and just mishandled and destroyed all the fragile cardboard and only cared about the practical items which luckily I still have to this day. I inherited a lot from my dad, in many ways to be elaborated later, because he would also go to the flea market every week and occasionally come back with new Intellivision games.

Eventually we got Gameboys and finally the coveted SNES by the time the N64 was out, which we chose over it. Throughout the years I made attempts at getting into older systems via early emulation on the family Windows 95 and even buying an NES at a friend's garage sale... which I sadly returned because we couldn't get it to work being ignorant of the proper method of cleaning back then and this particular situation for sure didn't effect me at all. I moved on through childhood upgrading to the newest systems occasionally. By the time I entered high school I met Byron who had managed to already have some collection despite our young age, lack of money being a big reason I couldn't. This would change in a tragic way.

Early in my sophomore year my dad extremely suddenly died in a just few days from some kind of infection they couldn't pin down in time. Time moved on and then in my junior year I started to receive small chunks of inheritance to the degree of about $500 a month and that is when I started collecting proper. I was pretty reckless as a young man with money for the first time is not unlikely to be, but because of the stupid rise of the retro game market in modern times I would make a huge profit nowadays if I ever wanted to sell. The one system that had always evaded me was the NES so that is what I started collecting for. I snapped up every well known game and some "rare" ones judged by internet sources and still cringe at seeing stuff like Bubble Bobble 2 for $50 in 2006 and passing it up because I thought it was too much, if fucking only. I was doing this all on eBay as I had limited car access.

When I graduated in 2007 I started getting out more in my dads old truck and when I was out with Byron we would occasionally stop at garage sales and then we came up with the idea to go out Friday mornings to garage sales and thrift stores and that became the start of 5 or 6 years of doing this weekly. As we did, and our collections grew, we started thinking about tracking our collections - but how? We searched around online earlier with nothing good leading me to just take a picture of each individual item and put it on a photobucket as a tracker. Eventually we found a site called RetroCollect we started using but it was heavily UK based and not great for US tracking. However, we got friendly with a user on the site name NightowlJRM who just happened to tell us about a new site he was using - VGCollect!

When we joined the site was in it's exciting start-up phase where it was buzzing with activity and would frequently talk with Matt & Co. with the other early users for suggestions to improve the site. It's a shame almost all those old users and admins are half a decade or more removed, but I've got weird leftover souvenirs like Scott following me from back then. Well, we had our site to track collections and I was personally putting lots of effort into updating the databse and my passion for collecting was high! On to the bright future!

Present day

Well, the future wasn't so bright for me or my collecting hobby. Around 2014 I had the worst parts of my life one after the other which badly hurt my passion for collecting but the other side of the bad coin was setting in even before then and would have driven me out even if I was on cloud 9 - modern retro game collecting over-saturation. Now, I started collecting seriously in 2006 which was a mythical dreamland golden age so amazing I wouldn't believe it ever existed if I couldn't physically look at my collection. Every Friday we would make amazing finds for pennies and that sets expectations. By 2012ish I was already sure it was over for collecting. Flea markets that used to sell boxes of games for $5 to get rid of them were now selling Combat for Atari for $100 thinking it was some valuable treasure handcrafted by DaVinci. The money I was spending on gas to traverse our spots was becoming not worth it for our returns.

More and more disheartened and frothing with rage at resellers the worst year of my life in late 2014 broke the camels back and I stopped actively hunting for games in the wild. To this day the last piece of retro tech I bought for my collection was a bundle of NES games from our own Soera in 2017. I still like the idea of collecting things, but it's not the same as the old days. I collect Amiibo to which I have a full collection as of now, and I do enjoy collecting Switch games as many sites exist to print indie games I love that would otherwise have no physical release. The thrill of the chase is gone due to being priced out of that wild hunting. Today's prices make pessimistic view of 2014 seems sunny in comparison. I once had aspirations of a 100% complete NES collection which would actually have been possible with my meager means had I picked the right games to buy with hindsight, but now the remaining 5% I still need would probably outprice the 95% I have several times over.

It's all a big shame. The past is price locked to all but the most wealthy or irresponsible and the future is digital slavery where you don't even own games you buy on online platforms, I don't even track Steam and digital games I own here because that is about the same to me as counting games I pirated in terms of ownership. My playlist just hit Little Dark Age and I think that's the perfect song to end my rant here.
Take a spin, now you're in with the techno set! You're going surfing on the internet!


sworddude



2012 / 2013 and joining VGC

This was around the time game collecting was exploding as a hobby, prices were getting higher and a lot more competition. This was where I started to mature and become a bit more seasoned, I learned how to judge the market better, which games were for me and which weren't, how to catch sellers slipping, etc. The era of cheap games was over, my brother had bowed out as a result. I decided to press on, as I had a better understanding of how to find things I wanted, and get the best possible deals. I enjoyed my time trading notes with fellow VGC members, many of us where at a similar point in our collecting journeys. Deals were still possible and the thrill of the hunt was still there. My collection was beginning to take shape and become more what I wanted it to be, and I was reaching the point of owning many of the more popular, highly regarded types of games, but I was thirsting for more of the obscure and what else was out there.



Usa is rough, in those era's retro games where usually still pretty cheap over here in europe. Even for amazing listings you could be days late and have high odds of nobody seeing it so it was pretty fruitfull to even look days or weeks back. I think those days ended over here in 2018 orso. that is when it started to get quite competitive. and we don't talk about past pandemic  :o

still especially pre 2016 I was a super cheap skate. dollar games for stuff like zelda's for cube and older where not all that uncommon. it was quite plentyfull really. and if it was anything niche you'd be one of the few looking for it, not much competition.
« Last Edit: March 05, 2023, 07:28:22 am by sworddude »
Your Stylish Sword Master!



Warmsignal



2012 / 2013 and joining VGC

This was around the time game collecting was exploding as a hobby, prices were getting higher and a lot more competition. This was where I started to mature and become a bit more seasoned, I learned how to judge the market better, which games were for me and which weren't, how to catch sellers slipping, etc. The era of cheap games was over, my brother had bowed out as a result. I decided to press on, as I had a better understanding of how to find things I wanted, and get the best possible deals. I enjoyed my time trading notes with fellow VGC members, many of us where at a similar point in our collecting journeys. Deals were still possible and the thrill of the hunt was still there. My collection was beginning to take shape and become more what I wanted it to be, and I was reaching the point of owning many of the more popular, highly regarded types of games, but I was thirsting for more of the obscure and what else was out there.



Usa is rough, in those era's retro games where usually still pretty cheap over here in europe. Even for amazing listings you could be days late and have high odds of nobody seeing it so it was pretty fruitfull to even look days or weeks back. I think those days ended over here in 2018 orso. that is when it started to get quite competitive. and we don't talk about past pandemic  :o

still especially pre 2016 I was a super cheap skate. dollar games for stuff like zelda's for cube and older where not all that uncommon. it was quite plentyfull really. and if it was anything niche you'd be one of the few looking for it, not much competition.

Truthfully, it's always been quite competitive, even back when things were much cheaper. I remember going to flea markets.... you would see someone selling an NES with a stack of games for a "high price" at the time. Within minutes the person would get approached and bargained with by no less than 5 different people, resellers leaving their cards with phone numbers, etc. Buying up the normies games for $1 a piece and reselling them 10 feet away at their own booths for $5 or $8 each.

People were ravenous about retro games and reselling them, even from my earliest experiences in game hunting. It was the one thing at a flea market you could guarantee wouldn't last long after opening. You literally had to get there before daylight was even breaking, while normies were unpacking their crates of stuff to sell. As soon as they unpacked a crate with some video games, you had to jump on them as it was the only way to beat the resellers. But that was back when getting these deals was at all possible. By 2013 when I joined VGC, it had dried up. Video games weren't even turning up at flea markets anymore. Even resellers dried up, because there just wasn't any more games coming out of the woodwork here. Everyone had a smartphone by then, and everyone knew games were worth money.
« Last Edit: March 05, 2023, 01:02:16 pm by Warmsignal »

I joined VG collect in 2020, when my original collection-database-site retrocollect went down. I started collecting about 2017 ... I actually don't collect for value or with the intent to sell anything of my stuff for profit someday, but rather for having a solid gaming-temple with a good library of games for all my fav consoles.
I'm the same type of gamer right now, that I was back in 2017: I try to finish as many games out of my shelfs as possible :) currently playing PokéMon Silver edition in combination with PokéMon Stadium 2, and a little something of Perfect Dark too ...
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US !!
WELCOME TO YOUR DOOM !!

hexen

I joined VG collect in 2020, when my original collection-database-site retrocollect went down.

Damn, RetroCollect went down? It's buried in my long post but I started there so it did have some importance to me. That is a shame, I wasn't there long because back in the day (maybe this changed in the near decade) it was focused on UK collectors so it kinda sucked for American collections.
Take a spin, now you're in with the techno set! You're going surfing on the internet!


I joined VG collect in 2020, when my original collection-database-site retrocollect went down.

Damn, RetroCollect went down? It's buried in my long post but I started there so it did have some importance to me. That is a shame, I wasn't there long because back in the day (maybe this changed in the near decade) it was focused on UK collectors so it kinda sucked for American collections.

I actually don't know if the site ever went up again, I didn't bother to look it up, for my collection's new home is right here :)
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US !!
WELCOME TO YOUR DOOM !!

As a gamer, I don't know if that much has really changed in the decade I've been here.  Maybe the fact that I got super into Souls-likes in around 2016?  Heck, I've probably even regressed a bit with the fact that I've got a WoW sub again, even though my goals today are drastically different than they were back then.

As a collector I've become far more casual, because as most of you have said, it's gotten cost prohibitive, and in general just harder to find good deals any more.


telekill

I joined only back in December 2019 but holy hell has my viewpoint on gaming shifted. Back in 2019 I was full steam ahead looking forward to what the next generation of consoles would bring. It's always an exciting time wondering what the next gen will offer that's different or at least what kind of graphical enhancements we'll get. I could imagine a hundred different possible games that would have me hyped beyond measure. Then what happened?

The world shut down in a draconian fashion and stayed shut down for far too long due to greed, a lust for power from government officials and the gas-lit fear the media set ablaze across the globe. People did die and it was horrible but it wasn't what we were told and they stopped the world economy for years.

On the gaming front, developers scrambled to try and figure out how to properly do work from home delaying nearly every game in development. It quickly came to light how lazy and entitled the general population of the work force became as we now have boycotts and walkouts coupled with full on protests because companies have started requiring people to come back into the office. It makes sense when you realize that many employees aren't motivated to work their hardest when a boss can't come around the corner at a moment's notice.

Equally on the gaming front, my console of choice... Playstation... released its new iteration... the PS5. What generally happens when a new system releases? Most here are old enough to remember the swaths of game announcements, trailers, screenshots, gameplay, etc. of past generations. What did Sony do with the PS5? They shut the f**k up stopping most communication to the public about any upcoming projects save for a small handful that are now all released. They focused on small titles with their State of Plays that for the most part, have been abysmal showcasing titles that could be played on cell phones let alone other consoles. It took a staggering TWO YEARS for a PS5 gen only title to release I was interested in (A Plague Tale: Requiem) with everything else I was interested in also releasing on the previous generation.

Then the push for games as a service skyrocketed. And I mean skyrocketed. This was primarily as a way for companies to squeeze every penny they could from people stuck in their homes connected to each other ONLY through online communities. What better way to bring people together than making online only community games that you'll never own and never get the full experience of for less than $200? How noble of them.

I get it. I really do. You have a massive shut down of the global economy and your market has shifted drastically as we play out the book "1984", but seriously? Modern gaming as it is now in comparison to what it once was... is a joke. The industry as a whole has an insane amount of work to do if I'm ever going to consider another system. Don't get me wrong, there are games years off that I'm looking forward too such as Instinction, a rumored new Tomb Raider, Mass Effect 5, Witcher 4, etc... but as it stands, PS5 will be my last foray of being up to date with gaming.

I think I joined around 2014, honestly collecting is a blur pre-2014.  I had tons of games but I never tracked anything until I joined VGCollect.  I owned little enough and only bought dirt cheap that it didn't matter if it was dupes.  I think 2008 my wife bought me some retro games for my birthday (CIB Mega Man, Yoshi, Yoshi's Cookie) which I never truly appreciated because I wasn't big on NES in general and at the time I was about emulating over original media.  But that kind of started my collection.  From there it was pawn shops, thrift stores, and yard sales.  I think the big thing was the 5-10 times my parents or I wound up at an estate sale and wound up picking up a box or boxes of games for next to nothing.  Eventually I wound up with tons of games and it just kind of continued.  I know I was collecting a lot pre-2014 because I recall getting good deals back in 2013 and earlier.  2014 was when I got turned onto Facebook groups which skyrocketed the amount of games I was buying because I had tons of disposable income at the time.  So around when I joined here I was going full Flea and buying everything I could find everywhere for any platform.

Now?  Now I'm not really buying anything, I'm back on emulation over original media on just about everything unless I can earn achievements (PS3/360/X1/PS4/XS/PS5/Steam) and I play games way more than I did back then.  My time back in 2014 was like completely collecting and not playing.  Now I'm more about playing than collecting.  I still buy modern stuff pretty frequently, mostly waiting on sales, but I'm playing games like crazy, way more than I was back at peak collecting.  Honestly consider selling the majority of my collection every day.


sworddude

I joined VG collect in 2020, when my original collection-database-site retrocollect went down.

Damn, RetroCollect went down? It's buried in my long post but I started there so it did have some importance to me. That is a shame, I wasn't there long because back in the day (maybe this changed in the near decade) it was focused on UK collectors so it kinda sucked for American collections.

I actually don't know if the site ever went up again, I didn't bother to look it up, for my collection's new home is right here :)

The site is back up again if where talking the database, but the forum is probably not going to return anytime soon.

That being said I always found that database to be quite messy to use. prefer this one. The forum was interesting though so that not making a return is pretty sad.
Your Stylish Sword Master!



I joined VG collect in 2020, when my original collection-database-site retrocollect went down.

Damn, RetroCollect went down? It's buried in my long post but I started there so it did have some importance to me. That is a shame, I wasn't there long because back in the day (maybe this changed in the near decade) it was focused on UK collectors so it kinda sucked for American collections.

I actually don't know if the site ever went up again, I didn't bother to look it up, for my collection's new home is right here :)

The site is back up again if where talking the database, but the forum is probably not going to return anytime soon.

That being said I always found that database to be quite messy to use. prefer this one. The forum was interesting though so that not making a return is pretty sad.

I liked retrocollect for it's way to display your collection, but after more than 2 years as member of THIS community, I def prefer VG collect, because I can submit and edit data by myself, helping to accumulate as much and as complete data as possible, making this site a really impressive database for games. Mentioning this, I want to shout out a big salute to all of those dedicated members, checking and correcting all those edits submitted, cause they do a great job! :-)
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US !!
WELCOME TO YOUR DOOM !!

sworddude

I joined VG collect in 2020, when my original collection-database-site retrocollect went down.

Damn, RetroCollect went down? It's buried in my long post but I started there so it did have some importance to me. That is a shame, I wasn't there long because back in the day (maybe this changed in the near decade) it was focused on UK collectors so it kinda sucked for American collections.

I actually don't know if the site ever went up again, I didn't bother to look it up, for my collection's new home is right here :)

The site is back up again if where talking the database, but the forum is probably not going to return anytime soon.

That being said I always found that database to be quite messy to use. prefer this one. The forum was interesting though so that not making a return is pretty sad.

I liked retrocollect for it's way to display your collection, but after more than 2 years as member of THIS community, I def prefer VG collect, because I can submit and edit data by myself, helping to accumulate as much and as complete data as possible, making this site a really impressive database for games. Mentioning this, I want to shout out a big salute to all of those dedicated members, checking and correcting all those edits submitted, cause they do a great job! :-)

I'm curious what strong points where there for retrocollect in your vision display wise.

Because from my perspective even on the european stuff most items lacked pictures even outside of niche items and you have less info per specific item compared to vgcollect.

One of the few things I'd say it has over vgcollect maybe the looking up part of said database seeing all versions of said games which is a big thing for europe. but most of those would lack pictures and have very limited info. so it's mostly just text.
Your Stylish Sword Master!