By the time I learned to walk, I started playing games. Granted, I wasn't excessively good at them, but it was impressive to see a 2 year old make it past the first few levels of SMB.
A few years passed and I started playing more. My favorites were the Legend of Zelda and the Mega man series. I loved them so much My mom actually made costumes for me. I actually dressed up as Megaman for halloween once.
Anyways, Again, more time passed. I moved from coastal Virginia up to Northern Ohio where I learned about the wonderful thing that is a snow day. A day that it is too cold to go out and school gets cancelled so you get to sit around playing hours upon hours of video games.
It was also around this time that I moved up from the NES and SNES to a N64. The first system I bought on my own. It was 200$ and I had done everything I could to save up for it. I wasn't the only person that played in my family. My mother loves Simcity for the Snes and Pokemon Snap for the N64.
Over the years my collection had increased with games for the NES, SNES, Gameboy, Gamecube, PS2 and GBA.
When I started for college, I took an SNES and a gameboy for occasional play but didn't have much time to play.
Over the years my collection had increased with games for the NES, SNES, Gameboy, Gamecube, PS2 and GBA.
When I started for college, I took an SNES and a gameboy for occasional play but didn't have much time to play.
The storm
My third year of college was difficult. I was on academic probation thanks to a rough couple of quarters the year before, My sister was on campus because the two years before were tough on her at home and she had a sort of separation anxiety.
On February 11th, 2009, I was over at the college police station. My buddy was a dispatcher and I hung out with him when there was nothing better to do. Right around midnight, I decided to call it a night and go to bed.
The next morning, I went to work as a janitor. As I was mopping my hallway, I could hear my phone in my room ringing.
It was my mother.
"Where have you been? I've tried calling you all night." I could remember the worry in her voice.
"We had a tornado. The house is wrecked."
I felt my heart skip a few beats. My mother was alright, a bit scraped up but the house was a loss. When I told my sister, she made it a goal to get up there and do as much as she could.
If you haven't been through a disaster, It's a real pain in the neck. Insurance companies have to come out to take a look, friends and family do come together to help you out, but you're at your worst, the house is a biohazard of sorts and it's extremely taxing on your health in general.(my mom still hasn't recovered.)
The other thing is the things that survive the disaster have to go somewhere.
Most of the furniture was transferred to a storage trailer. ( Ya know, the things semis pull down the road.)
It became a guessing game where all of our stuff went.
Most of the contents of my room went into our shed in the back yard.
While all of this was going on, My sister and I were urged to stay in school and complete our studies, so we did.
The NES and the games were given to my cousins for safe keeping. They stored them in their barn and of course, a month or so later, it burned down. The games that had survived a tree going through the house went up in smoke.
15 years of collecting, 75 games, gone. I still had my SNES and my N64 games though... Until 2010.
If you haven't been through a disaster, It's a real pain in the neck. Insurance companies have to come out to take a look, friends and family do come together to help you out, but you're at your worst, the house is a biohazard of sorts and it's extremely taxing on your health in general.(my mom still hasn't recovered.)
The other thing is the things that survive the disaster have to go somewhere.
Most of the furniture was transferred to a storage trailer. ( Ya know, the things semis pull down the road.)
It became a guessing game where all of our stuff went.
Most of the contents of my room went into our shed in the back yard.
While all of this was going on, My sister and I were urged to stay in school and complete our studies, so we did.
The NES and the games were given to my cousins for safe keeping. They stored them in their barn and of course, a month or so later, it burned down. The games that had survived a tree going through the house went up in smoke.
15 years of collecting, 75 games, gone. I still had my SNES and my N64 games though... Until 2010.
College isn't free
I graduated in June of 2009 with my Associate's degree in Wildlife management. Around August of the same year, we were in temporary housing because our house wasn't built yet, I had started to get phone calls from the various companies I had taken loans out on demanding upcoming payments.
My loans rang up to right about 200 Dollars a month. Normally this is an easily attained goal. However, I couldn't find a job.
Not knowing where to turn to next, I had read an article about selling things online to make money. I eyed my collection and calculated out that my collection (save for the ones that weren't worth anything to sell) Were worth about 2,500 bucks. I spent 3 years going to yard sales, thrift stores and rummage sales searching for old video games, game systems, game guides, antique books and board games to hawk online.
I learned that old pokemon red and blue cartridges were worth A LOT if they had a functioning save ability. This was the opprotunity to turn a 2.00 "broken" game into 40.00 worth of profit. So, I learned how to change the batteries.
For 3 years, I had a well functioning business with somewhere around 120 sales a year. I was paying my loans off well enough but I knew it wouldn't last forever.
When I started my saddle shop IT job, My amazon store sales fell considerably. I didn't get to sales as much as I used to, and I had steady income so I didn't need to find things to sell.
I had a few friends that knew I sold my collection ask if I was ever going to get back into collecting.
My short answer: Nope.
... Oh, you're still here. I take it you're curious why...
1-It's way too expensive to get the games back
When I started collecting games in the 90s, NES games didn't cost much. There were newer systems coming out so they were marked as obsolete and all the game stores had super low prices on them. Remember places like funcoland? (I think they became babbages and then became gamestop) Those stores and the little independantly owned stores practically gave them away.
There was a store in the city near me that had a deal of buy 4 for 8 dollars. It was there that I got some of my more rare games like Fire N' Ice and rainbow islands
Granted, there's a lot of them out there at a decent enough price, but that brings me to my next problem.
2-They won't mean as much as they did before
A lot of the games I had in my collection were bought for me by family members for birthdays, christmas, that sort of thing. Getting them online now probably won't feel the same.
The internet has a funny way of putting a negative light on anything. Much of the games on my lists have been reviewed by AVGN, Armake21 and other gamers that get their kicks from reviewing "bad" games.
They might be bad, but it's what I grew up with. I couldn't stand the contra games or battletoads and those tend to be on a lot of people's top 10 lists.
3-I'm falling out of gaming as it is
My most current system is an X-box 360 which I use to play a few games.
The problem I have with the new games is they just don't look like my kind of thing. I'm not really into shooters or multiplayers, and all the new systems seem to have the same problem: There's only one or two games each of them that I have any remote interest and it doesn't warrant me buying the system.
That, and I just don't have time anymore. Balancing a job, more education, a social life, family life and a Library committee doesn't leave too much time for gaming.
While I won't be getting the old collection back together again, I can still remember the good times that were had. (And how badly my grades suffered :D )
My loans rang up to right about 200 Dollars a month. Normally this is an easily attained goal. However, I couldn't find a job.
Not knowing where to turn to next, I had read an article about selling things online to make money. I eyed my collection and calculated out that my collection (save for the ones that weren't worth anything to sell) Were worth about 2,500 bucks. I spent 3 years going to yard sales, thrift stores and rummage sales searching for old video games, game systems, game guides, antique books and board games to hawk online.
I learned that old pokemon red and blue cartridges were worth A LOT if they had a functioning save ability. This was the opprotunity to turn a 2.00 "broken" game into 40.00 worth of profit. So, I learned how to change the batteries.
For 3 years, I had a well functioning business with somewhere around 120 sales a year. I was paying my loans off well enough but I knew it wouldn't last forever.
So, why not rebuild?
When I started my saddle shop IT job, My amazon store sales fell considerably. I didn't get to sales as much as I used to, and I had steady income so I didn't need to find things to sell.
I had a few friends that knew I sold my collection ask if I was ever going to get back into collecting.
My short answer: Nope.
... Oh, you're still here. I take it you're curious why...
1-It's way too expensive to get the games back
When I started collecting games in the 90s, NES games didn't cost much. There were newer systems coming out so they were marked as obsolete and all the game stores had super low prices on them. Remember places like funcoland? (I think they became babbages and then became gamestop) Those stores and the little independantly owned stores practically gave them away.
There was a store in the city near me that had a deal of buy 4 for 8 dollars. It was there that I got some of my more rare games like Fire N' Ice and rainbow islands
Granted, there's a lot of them out there at a decent enough price, but that brings me to my next problem.
2-They won't mean as much as they did before
A lot of the games I had in my collection were bought for me by family members for birthdays, christmas, that sort of thing. Getting them online now probably won't feel the same.
The internet has a funny way of putting a negative light on anything. Much of the games on my lists have been reviewed by AVGN, Armake21 and other gamers that get their kicks from reviewing "bad" games.
They might be bad, but it's what I grew up with. I couldn't stand the contra games or battletoads and those tend to be on a lot of people's top 10 lists.
3-I'm falling out of gaming as it is
My most current system is an X-box 360 which I use to play a few games.
The problem I have with the new games is they just don't look like my kind of thing. I'm not really into shooters or multiplayers, and all the new systems seem to have the same problem: There's only one or two games each of them that I have any remote interest and it doesn't warrant me buying the system.
That, and I just don't have time anymore. Balancing a job, more education, a social life, family life and a Library committee doesn't leave too much time for gaming.
While I won't be getting the old collection back together again, I can still remember the good times that were had. (And how badly my grades suffered :D )
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