Collecting video games, a labor of love

Our game rooms, or our lairs if you prefer are our domains where we game and compete in virtual athletics or have a place to simply keep your stuff.

Over the last few months, I've become a video game collector and what I mean by that I'll collect almost anything just to have it and increase the size of the stack. This past spring I had the honor of doing an internship at http://www.thegameheroes.com and it was an experience that took me from Hamilton to Chicago and down to Dallas for 2 weeks and it really inspired me because of Handsome Tom's video game collection.

http://www.screwattack.com/Random/Other/Closet
Take a look at this and see that I have a long way to go to compare.
and an updated video from last year


So after viewing this massive collection,I decided that I wanted something of my own like this and so began my quest to collect...but where was I to even start?

With all collections I had to start somewhere but it had to be something that I cared about enough to spend money on and decided on PS2 and Xbox games and I did this for several reasons.

1) The last generation of games would be widely available with many cool games easily accessible via Ebay and used game stores

2)It the was the consoles that I had connected the most with since the SNES and NES

3) GameStop and EB Games would be liquidating their stock of older titles and was offering insane deals on used games

4) I already had a library of older titles so I figure why not start where I am ahead.

I began my collecting in earnest with a raid of EB's and Gamestops and pretty spent $400 in a few weeks and managed to amass like 60 games and some real gems like Resident Evil:Dead Aim for 4 bucks. I began my massive spending spree in Texas with one of Handsome Tom's suitcases and continued to hunt in pawn shops and other second hand stores and found some real finds!

As I began toss down the bucks for games, something started to change and it's not that it wasn't fun, it was fulfilling because I wasn't focused about WHAT I was collecting. I had to stand back and figure what I wanted to collect and after browsing through my games I noticed a trend,the fighting game.

Samurai Showdown, Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury and Street Fighter were all games that I enjoyed and this was the genre of games I decided to focus on and this is where I would build my collection on as a basis.I started looking for all sorts of Neo Game ports and other such things and my collecting started to feel fulfilling again.

It became a labor of love for me by searching again in all my usual haunts and finding rare games like Capcom vs Snk 2 or a mint copy of Marvel vs Capcom 2 for the Xbox. One of my best buys for my collection was getting a mint condition of Marvel vs Capcom 2 on the Playstaion 2 for 30 dollars. It became more and more about finding the best fighters I could and getting them across as many platforms as I could so I could experience it in different way.

So with collecting video games isn't about quantity of what you have but collecting what you love so it's aboout quality. Collecting can also include other items from your favorite games such as press kits or pre order items,etc
This is one kit that I am hopefully going to get eventually


Collecting really can be a fun experience for people because it can involve some adventure and excitement beyond the Ebay sniping and going to places like conventions to find items and haggling in odd places like flea markets. If your going to collect and be serious about it, just remember to have fun with it and look in an unexpected places because you never know what you'll find.