Hey guys!
I wanted to take a moment and post about my latest pickup which is actually a really big milestone for me. I picked up a copy of Chocobo's Dungeon 2 for the PS1. And with that, I have now obtained every North American RPG released for the original Playstation. Hopefully...
I have been trying to collect every PS1 rpg for about 10 years or so. Admittedly I had a lot of them when they were new, but games got traded, sold, damaged, etc. It wasn't until about 2010-ish that I really focused on amassing the entire set. It started when I found a copy of Tactics Ogre in a closet at my parents' house. I had completely forgotten about that game and realized I never finished it. Going back to it made me nostalgic for Final Fantasy Tactics. And then Final Fantasy 7. Then Koudelka, Kartia, and others - but I realized a lot of the ones I had as a teenager I no longer owned. So my hunt began. I found some here and there, but I began to notice that some were really expensive. I couldn't justify spending around $75 for Valkyrie Profile, no matter how much I missed the game. So I kept my eyes peeled. Looked in thrift stores, local game stores, eBay, etc looking to see if I could find it cheaper. And I did. I found a lot of them, maybe 30 or so, in the first 2 or 3 years, spending no more than $20 apiece. There was the occasional splurge, like when I spent $100-ish on Tales of Destiny 1 and 2 in 2012, but I built up a respectable collection for not a lot of money.
Eventually I had collected all the ones I had nostalgia for or just wanted to play. The last one was Vandal Hearts II. After that I kind of threw up my arms and figured I might as well catch 'em all. So I began to keep track of all the titles I could think of and made it a point to look for them regularly. It was always awesome to find one cheap in a game store or garage sale. It really got the adrenaline pumping. I bought a few here and there off eBay, but I found that I didn't get much excitement from that. No sport. Some of these I was collecting just for the sake of collecting, and I didn't want to just throw market price at something I wasn't really going to use (to this day I still regret paying something like $25 for Saga Frontier 2 in 2012). So I made a promise to myself to only buy these in the wild or if I found a low price buy it now on eBay, or winning with a low bid. Basically, I didn't want to pay going rate for most of this stuff and was just fine waiting it out until I did find it cheap. I had pretty much all the expensive ones by that point, so it didn't bother me if Alundra 2 went from $15 to $25 in a few years. I'd still appreciate the hunt and not go into debt buying them all right away. Technically I paid more for some games in 2015 than I would have in 2011, but that comes with collecting. The longer you wait, the more likely it will cost more.
This did occasionally backfire as some games would unexpectedly shoot up in price. The ONE game I didn't grab as prices began to raise that I still kick myself for is Shadow Tower. That was a $20 game for years so I passed on it to spend my money on other games I thought might jump up at some point. Then one day I look and it's close to $100. And unlike other titles, i.e. Persona or Valkyrie Profile, that one never seemed to fluctuate over the years, only rise. So when I found it for about $20 less than average I had to jump.
As I was getting close to the end of my list, a few years ago I was reviewing my list and someone pointed out I was missing some of the more obscure titles. It made me realize that my list might be missing more, so I looked to the internet to find a complete list of PS1 rpgs. Surprisingly, a definitive list was very hard. Everyone has a different idea of what counts as an RPG. Is Symphony of the Night an RPG? Some say yes, others no. It comes down to a personal preference, I guess, but I decided to be very liberal with my list and included anything that someone could argue would qualify. I even made a post on TCP asking for opinions and got some interesting answers. Ultimately my final list may have games that some people don't think should be there (I'm still not 100% convinced the Mega Man Legends games belong on here, but whatever), but I'd rather have too many than be missing some.
Anyway. If you read this far, thanks for listening. This collecting goal meant a lot to me and it was definitely a long and bumpy ride. Now that it's done I feel a strange combination of joy, relief, sadness, and emptiness. What next? Where do we go from here? What else is there for me to collect? Or maybe I should just sit down and PLAY these games. I'm sure most of this is hitting me because I JUST received the final game today, and it is very possible all this will pass in a week or so. For a decade I have had this goal anytime I walked into a store. Now it isn't there anymore. That it is definitely a weird feeling.
So to all of you who have your own lofty collection goals, good luck. Your patience and perseverance will pay off.
TLDR: I finally collected all of the PS1 RPGs either by finding them in the wild or paying under market value on the internet. The final piece of the puzzle...
The entire set...
(sorry about the glare, with everyone home during the current pandemic the only place I could do this photo shoot was the attic, and the light is right above the door)
