The games collecting bug, I mean.
It’s something that I thought I never really understood. When I thought of collectors I imagined people buying up sealed copies of things to put on their shelves or — worse — place straight into storage, their only benefit from owning them the self-satisfying knowledge that they owned them.
I’m sure we’ve all of us, as individuals who are pretty into our videogames, seen the pictures of ‘the largest game collection ever’. If not you should go back and check out the featured image on the main page or just click here. That’s one photo of a few shelves. There is no way in hell, heaven, purgatory, any other plane of existence or liminal state that the owner of this collection has played all of these games. So what’s the point in owning them?
That’s what I thought, anyway. As happens to many of us as we age, at some point my disposable income increased beyond my free time. All of a sudden I could afford to dabble and buy things that I’d otherwise have passed on like a sensible person. Thanks to the sales Steam has been introducing over the past couple of years, I’ve probably acquired a few score games that I bought for a pound or two and have yet to play — some of them I’ve not even downloaded yet.
A few months back I enjoyed a stint of re-watching the classic Scottish games TV shows Consolevania (independent) and VideoGaiden (same blokes, but on BBC Scotland). At one point Rab, one of the show’s two main players, indulges in a rant about games collectors, before confessing that he’s gone through something like it himself: ordering imports from Japan, playing them for a few minutes and having no idea what’s going on then sticking them on a shelf to be forgotten about. Possessing as I do a keen sense of irony, I followed up my marathon TV session by using some of that aforementioned disposable income to buy up all the games recommended on these shows that I’d always wanted but could never afford at the time: Bujingai, Global Defence Force: Tactics, Michigan: Report From Hell, Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII and so on. Most of these I’ve only played for an hour or so before getting distracted by one of the other unfinished titles on my shelves.
Is this a phase that everyone goes through – or at least, everyone with the money to spend on things they don’t always have the time for? Is it an inevitable process? What’s your worst crime of collection, or do you live free of consumerist sin? Are you one of those people who trades in everything and saves nothing? And most importantly, will I ever play all of these games? Because Glod only knows I want to.
Tell us your stories, readers.
Comments
11 responses to “QOTW: Ever been bitten by the bug?”
I've never done anything like that in my life. Except for all the games in the unfinished portion of this list:
http://www.backloggery.com/twmacb
I have a sealed copy of Condemened: Blood Shot, that I bought on the cheap so that I could start playing it as soon as I finished Condemened: Criminal Origins. I got stuck on the last boss of the first game and as a result never started the second.
I think there are at least 20 games on that backloggery list that have been completely ignored (guilty gear 2 and IL2 Sturmovik) not because I didn't enjoy them, but because I simply just picked something else up and never went back.
My gamer profile now has over 239 games on it, and that is not even counting the XBLIG ones that don't register.
THE SHAME.
The XBLA games are my enemy. I'm so prone to entirely stupid and un-necessary impulse buying on it. The depressing bit for me each month is seeing how much credit I've earned on that reward scheme thing they do. Like all reward schemes, it gives you roughly 1p for every £3,000 you spend, and I pretty much get enough each month to buy a new game. It scares me.
You may be pleased to hear that the Backloggery has at last reopened registration, so I've signed up. I'm going to wait to update it fully though, as the server is already groaning under the strain of folks wanting to sign up!
Oh, and re. the final boss of Condemned… yeah he's pretty tough. What I realised is that it's not until the final level, and in particular that last fight, that the game really forces you to learn how the melee mechanics work. I learned more in the final hour of play than I had in the nine preceding hours.
That said, to beat the final boss, grab a large plank, don't bother trying to block, and just swing at him from as far away as possible. You will have slightly more reach than he does and will only take a couple of hits per each of the three stages of the fight, and you can heal up between them.
Since I told myself at the start of the year not to buy any new shit, I've pretty much held up my end of the bargain. There's too much stuff to play already, I don't need more. I fear what this is doing to developers — video game crash coming??
I do wonder if this sense of an overwhelming number of games being released/made available/going on sale really does represent an unusual glut of product being put out there, or if my perspective is just skewed by this whole videogames blogging malarkey…
I… I'm guilty of this. For just one game.
I bought 3 copies of Shadow Squadron for 32X. One for a friend, one for myself and another because it was sealed and… ''I just had to''.
Sad part is, I got all those while not even owning a Genesis and 32X anymore. I only played the game twice (finished it once in coop, was pretty cool) and it was at some friend's place, on a huge plasma TV. The experience was… a mixture of disdain and excitement. Dear lord, I didn't know pixels could stretch that much. Still, I regret nothing.
I REGRET NOTHING.
I think that the first two Fallout games are the only ones I've bought multiple times… I can understand the all-consuming love for a game that leads toward the temptation to buy unnecessary extra copies, though. ;)
I own 3 copies of Mindjack, Lost Planet 2, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising (this was for multiplayer purposes). I have paid for 3 copies of Dark Sector, and 4 copies of Earth Defence Force 2017 (this was mainly to get people to play them).
I didn't consider this being a case of frittering away money, more an investment in developing the hearts and minds of the gaming populace.
Ugh, about 2 years ago I went through a SNES phase where I ebay hunted for SNES games I never got to play. The problem though was that I require to have a boxed/manual copy of the game which is rather difficult to find consider back then people usually chucked the boxes.
Anyways I ended up with a collection of around 40 complete SNES games that would make any RPG and Platformer gamer drool.
My crown piece was a mint complete copy of Earthbound. Look it up on ebay if you want to see what they go for =p
Hey, I don't pirate games. That said, my game collection is pretty small at the moment, I am trying to avoid becoming too much of a hoarder so have traded in a bunch of games I am barely interested in anymore and that I can make some money on. Both Bulletstorm and Homefront went for 35 dollars each at Future Shop.
I don't like trading in, but I also don't like having these games loitering in my collection.
I probably should have done the same thing with a few games in my collection…Freedom Force: The 3rd Reich, Uber Soldier, shoot maybe even Infernal, but they may have made me pay them to give them back.