What console stuff do you collect and why?

[DJ_Izumi]

Myself?  I was a child of the late 80s and the 90s, becoming an adult in 2001.  So as a child I remember not always having quarters but pretending to play with the machines anyway, once I grew up and could just go to the arcade and blow $20 on tokens most of the good arcades were gone, pinball was getting scarcer and those that were left were in movie theaters, expensive, poorly maintanced and not that large.

So plan B was consoles.  Lots of games got ported to consoles and so eventually I realized I could just buy this stuff.  I don't have the room or the money for a home built arcade so a box you can hook up to the TV is pretty good.

About a year ago I got into it hard, I was at EB Games and in the used bin were two Guncon 2's and on the wall was Time Crisis 3.  I remembered seeing the game at the arcade and it demanding $1 worth of tokens to play.  ...It's been snowballing ever since.   The arcade 'toys' interested me the most, the DX racer sets, the light gun kits and pinball machines.  Light guns are the easiest to collect and have a fairly authentic arcade experiance so I've focused there.  Six Guncons, three Guncon 2s, one Guncon 3 (I don't even own a PS3!) plus some third party guns for PS1/PS2 and Xbox of varying quality.  I've scrounged up ligit copies of every light gun arcade port I could find worth posting.

Point Blank
Point Blank 2
Point Blank 3
Time Crisis
Time Crisis II
Time Crisis 3
Time Crisis: Crisis Zone
Area 51
Maximum Force
Ninja Assault
Vampire Night
Endgame (Okay this one sucks, but it was $7.99 at EB!)

I also pick out whatever arcade ports of racers I can find, Outrun 2/2006, Crazy Taxi, 18 Wheeler, Ikaruga, Soul Calibur, the Capcom and Namco classic collections.  Stuff like that.

Also, for those who want to enjoy pinball and don't have the space for a real table, Pinball Hall Of Fame: The Williams Collection features 8-10 authentic Williams tables with remarkably good physics.  It's on Wii, PSP and PS2 with rumored ports set in June for PS3 and 360.  I have it on my PS2 and PSP and pinball is a great time killing when you're waiting for a bus to show up.

I also don't let my stuff go to waste.  It's not some collection that gathers dust in my room unless I'm playing.  I run a series of anime and gaming events here in Ottawa, Canada and we pool our resources the best we can to put up an 'arcade' experiance using TVs and consoles.  A classroom lined with 10+ systems setup with various games running the full range.  It's interesting because the anime fans, they think of Soul Calibur, DDR, RockBand and stuff like that.  They rarely think of racers, pinball or light guns, but when we set them up, they're just like "...I can shoot the TV? "

Sadly true retro stuff doesn't work on them like that.  I can put up anything from the 80s and they'll pretty much react like this: "Oh wow!  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!  I remember this!  .........Okay, let's go play DDR'. :/  I think the oldest game I can get them to eagerly play, excluding the Williams pinball tables which date though the 80s to late 70s is Point Blank which is dated 1994.  I've been tempted to set up a retro rig next time and offer small prizes for score achivements as an insentive to get them to relive some older arcade history.

[SavannahLion]

I collect whatever console games garners my interest. The consoles I experienced as a kid growing up ranged from the 2600 (XEGS is the first I owned though) clear up to the current generation console so my gaming tastes are a little bit broader than most. My all time favorite era are Fourth Gen consoles (SNES, Genesis) since I feel that these games tend to hold up better under scrutiny and resist replay anemia better than earlier or later generations.

Interestingly, my 2nd Gen and my 6th Gen collection is probably larger in volume than the 4th Gen stuff. Mostly due to the increased use of eBay to get cheaper 2nd Gen titles and NIB/Mint copies of later titles.

I don't really have a specific goal for any of my collection. Right now, I'm trying to repair my NES collection since I suspect my mother may have destroyed part of that collection when she cleaned out my closet in my old home. Apparently, Mother Rational lack a fundamental concept that steamer trunks in a closet have no business having their contents emptied and discarded. Apparently it's a disease likened to Alzheimer's that only attacks females. 

[clok]

I like to play the new stuff, but it doesnt hold my interest long, most console games nowdays are games you would have played on a PC 5-10 years ago (not graphics wise, dont read that wrong, style wise) so I prefer mouse/keyboard to gamepad. Sports games nowdays require more button combos then i can remeber/manage.

I do have pretty much every console (semi commen, released in USA) since the 70's and many games for them all, no where near some of the collection out there, but I would bet its not the smallest. When E-bay was new i bought alot (undertatement) of console games/controlers/heck even consoles. I think the earliest ones i have are the many PONG variants, i have maybe 15 differnt ones. A Tank (yes there was a console dedicateed to just Tank) OdyseyII, even a bally Astrocade, Vectrex, etc.. All the Atari ones (even some of those re released Atari 2600 in the tiny boxs in the late 90's) including the computers. Right now I'm pretty sure the only one i dont have anymore is my SMS (traded it and a nes i bought for $15 to get a $100 off a PS preorder) been planning on picking another up on Ebay someday as I still have the glasses/gun/crapload of HUcards(was that he name?) and carts. I have most of the Handhelds (led ones, like 40-50 of those) and the later LCD screen ones Lynx/LynxII, Sega's color one (forgot name) Nomad, The NEC one, and NeoGeo one... am lacking in the Nintendo department on Handhelds.. No gameboys at all except the newest one (ds?) with the touch screen, i did pick one of those up, PSP, GPX, etc..

I have a walk in closet that is just boxes of those, all consoles in original boxes, 75% of games are, 50% of the add on stuff is (those stearing wheel addon boxes got big, and when i was collecting to actually use the add-ons a few boxes went in dumpster    )

Nowdays I have most if it emulated on a "do all" PC hooked to my bigscreen with the MS/360 pads and GameEX to play um (then you dont have to dig boxes and boxes and boxes out of the closet).

lately i been trying to complete the Intellivision set and the 3DO and Jaguar stuff. I thiink the 3DO and Jag where the Last 2 consoles I played alot, a bit sad, the 3DO ($699 at release, and people think a $599 machine is exp, the 3DO was more and it was released 10 years+ ago) had some pretty solid fun games, the AD&D ones, Imercenary (ok I know most hate it, I loved it) Crash & Burn, the Madden game, heck that wierd Asian RPG where you had golums. The Jag on the other hand, had only a few, AVP, Iron Soldier, Tempest 2000 (still play T2K) but the good ones where very very good.

I do have a wierd obssision with collecting games for the Wii/360 and PS3, i have over 100 games for the 360, 40 or so for the Wii and 30 or so for the PS3, no repeats ( owned the 360 first so it has most games, i prefer the old PS2 controler so nowdays the PS3 gets the cross platform games) Wierd only becuase I dont play the new ones much at all. Guess its just the Video game collector in me.

[DJ_Izumi]

Original poster - you might scrounge up a Dreamcast or a Saturn and grab the gun game ports for those, they're pretty close to the real thing.

Yeah, HOTD2, Confidential Mission, Death Crimson OX (Actually WAS ported to PS2 but for JP and EU only, I'm in North America. :/ )  I've not had much luck digging up some decent DC guns, especially when a lot of third party guns arn't the most well constructed.

[daywane]

At first it was Atari
Then Nintendo
and still is.
NES, Super NES, N64
I have the qube but not the real urge to collect for it yet

[Loafmeister]

I’m into all the older systems. I love the new consoles (own an xbox360 and a PS3, though the PS3 is mostly a bluray player). Own a lot of xbox 360 games and playing coop games with friends is a blast.

However, I’ve been a gamer for 30+ years, going back to pinball when I was a kid, so nostalgia or not, a lot of my passion is reflected on those early consoles and although some had come and gone, I got the itch to start collecting them again, which took off last year.

My present collection:

Consoles:
Atari 2600
Odyssey 2
Colecovision (with ALL adapters)
Intellivision
Amiga CD32
Sega Genesis
Sega Saturn
Sega Dreamcast
NES
SNES
N64
Gamecube
3DO
Playstation
Playstation 2
Playstation 3
Xbox
Xbox 360

Handhelds:
Gameboy B&W
Gameboy Advance
NDS
Game Gear
PSP

Computers:
Commodore 64
Amiga 500
Amiga 1200

Misc:
Commodore 64 Desk (eheh)
Commodore Amiga flag (I might have lost it!)

I’m sure I’m forgetting some stuff.  A lot of the systems above, I don’t have a lot of games for them, I really care more about the hardware and having a couple of games each is more than enough to show someone if they’re interested in what the systems do.

[ChadTower]

There are a few of us on this forum, especially in the MA area, that were big console collectors before we were arcade guys.  I don't even have a good handle on the exact size of what I have left but it's still a sizeable bunch of stuff across pretty much all systems.  Not so many pricey invididual games anymore, though, as when I started to fund arcade projects the rare carts got sold off one by one.

[Loafmeister]

There are a few I'd still like to add to my collection, some feasible (Lynx/SMS/Jaguar/Vectrex) some probably not (NeoGeo AES).  Speaking of the NeoGeo, I used to have one. Yes, I'm kicking myself for getting rid of it.

[Mauzy]

I would only consider myself a fledgling collector at best. While all you guys have the classic Ataris and such as the consoles you grew up on, mine were the SNES and N64. Looking back, I REALLY regret selling off my N64 collection to buy my 360. I love my 360, don't get me wrong. Its just that my N64 was MY first console, not something my brother let me play with. This meant that when we played Mario Kart, I got to be player one (he always had a rule: whoever owned the console got to be player one). That is the only console I regret selling, yet oddly enough I still haven't picked one up. I think I'm looking at it as too daunting of a task to rebuild the more glorious side of my collection (Super Mario 64, Goldeneye, first three Mario Party) Not that they are hard to find, just still expensive.

What I do have, however is the beginnings of a decent collection. Right now I'm sticking to NES and SNES, but if something comes along at the right price I'll pick it up. I haven't really been able to build my collections until about a month ago when I finally got off ---my bottom--- and got a job.

Everything I have I've either owned or had at some point in my live previously except for my latest aquisition: a Magnavox Odyssey 300. Not a particularly rarely or expensive machine, but the first "never seen one of these!" buys. It was only a buck at a garage sale and it has its original box. How could I pass it up?

[danny_galaga]

i remember you posted a pic of your guns (",)

mostly N64 for me. No fond memories of most consoles. never owned them new. But there's something about the N64 i really like. I think it's the fact its solid state, but 3D. Also have a NIB mega drive with some games. But it's the nintendo i'm collecting for. I think i have 43 carts now...

[Blanka]

I have 2 NES boxes, 8 games for it and 167 different NES controllers.   

[SavannahLion]

167 different NES controllers? Are you just being facetious?

I'd like to hear the story behind that.

[ChadTower]

Savannah highlighted a different word than I would have... I chucked at him having 167 different NES controllers.   

[DJ_Izumi]

i remember you posted a pic of your guns (",)

What I really need to do is get photos of people playing them.  I put them to good use at anime and gaming events, it'd be more endearing to have photos of them in use.  Like there's this one 10yo kid that comes with his 40+yo mom, he gets her to play every game with him.  It's sorta cute to see her obliging and playing Point Blank while the kid goes frantic with my Guncons.

[SavannahLion]

Savannah highlighted a different word than I would have... I chucked at him having 167 different NES controllers.   

That's why I wanted to hear the story. I can recall a few NES controllers that still never get any sort of mention on websites.

[dreamakuma]

Well I have a sad story(get a tissue). My game collecting began with a snes back in '96. I wanted a N64 but my family was poor, So we got a snes new with Killer instinct for cristmas $60. I was 8. In January of '97 My mom found out she had ovarian cancer. So stress was very high. I was being sent from house to house to live with some people I did not know. School got tougher, so I played more snes games. Bought games cheap at a pawn shop(I did quick work to earn a few dollars like cleaning windows). Then in '99 I saw a dreamcast ad and just quitely asked my sick mom if I could get one. We were in the poor house and she said yes even with my dad being against it. well we pre-ordered it with crazy taxi and sonic adventure. Got it midnight 9/9/99. My mom said "enjoy it, cause I ain't buying another one!". For the whole month I just played it. Then on 10/29/99 My mom passed on in her sleep. So I found more and more ways to enjoy it. Emulators,homebrew,imports,anything I can get. It's the only system I won't get rid of. and I really haven't moved up in games since. I play all the newer stuff at a friends house or at a store. So I just keep stockpiling dreamcast stuff.