TSOLfan's Game Room(s)

[juan0tron]

My first console was a PS1 I got for free from my cousin, so that's where my fanboyism comes from. I've always loved developers like Naughty Dog and Insomniac, and Metal Gear Solid is one of my favorite game series up there with Metroid. I really can't hate Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo, because they don't make all the games that are sold on their consoles. I'd be missing out on too much awesome stuff if I did that.

It's interesting that you bought a lot of your games in lots. That's honestly something I haven't tried out, but I think it's a great idea. I can personally say I've bought 99.9% of my games used. I'd rather spend $60 and get 6-7 awesome games used than get one new. 

[akrate69]

This thread has been read more than 105,000 times now, making it the 4th most on the site.

Here's the top three.
136,704 - New SNES covers
121,477 - PS1 Cover Thread
120,759 - NES case art

Even if Arseen started now clicking in and out of the SNES thread to run up the numbers, this thread is going to be #1 pretty soon. (just kidding Arseen  )

[Arseen]

This thread has been read more than 105,000 times now, making it the 4th most on the site.

Here's the top three.
136,704 - New SNES covers
121,477 - PS1 Cover Thread
120,759 - NES case art

Even if Arseen started now clicking in and out of the SNES thread to run up the numbers, this thread is going to be #1 pretty soon. (just kidding Arseen  )

Why you pick on me?

OK, joke understood, but out of curiosity, why did you pick me? 

[AppleQueso]

I feel so weird with so many guests watching my posts...

[akrate69]

This thread has been read more than 105,000 times now, making it the 4th most on the site.

Here's the top three.
136,704 - New SNES covers
121,477 - PS1 Cover Thread
120,759 - NES case art

Even if Arseen started now clicking in and out of the SNES thread to run up the numbers, this thread is going to be #1 pretty soon. (just kidding Arseen  )

Why you pick on me?

OK, joke understood, but out of curiosity, why did you pick me? 

I guess partly because you seem like someone who kids around here (all in good spirits) and wouldn't get offended if I teased you a bit. Secondly, when I think of NES or SNES on this site I kinda think of you (the 2 consoles you seem to like/want/need the most). So when I had to pick someone who I thought would defend SNES as the top viewed thread, I picked you. If another system was #1, like Dreamcast I'd think shenske or Sega CD I'd think Vt102 (glad he's back) but I don't know if they'd get offended or not (although I wouldn't think so).

I'm going to try and make it up to you. I know someone who said he has a lot of boxed NES games that he said I can scan a couple weeks from now. Hopefully I can get some you need.  

[xelement5x]

Awesome collection man, you're an inspiration to collectors everywhere.  Your story about being such a big Sega fan sounds pretty similar to mine.  I scrimped and saved for months to buy my Genesis, and once I had enough saved up to buy a Sega CD that was my second big purchase as a kid. 

I've also been using the "lot" method to fill in my Sega CD collection too, but I find going through Craigslist is just as productive.  My big weakness though is the Working Designs games, they made it way to easy to be collectible.  I've got a complete set of all 7 Lunar variants for the Sega CD, all 4 Dragon Force variants (with stickers), both Albert Odyssey discs, and each of the 3 different copies of Rayearth; it's kind of crazy, but they did an awesome job on those Sega CD/Saturn games.  They blow the packaging of almost every other game for those systems out of the water.

[comradesnarky]

This thread has been read more than 105,000 times now, making it the 4th most on the site.

Here's the top three.
136,704 - New SNES covers
121,477 - PS1 Cover Thread
120,759 - NES case art

Even if Arseen started now clicking in and out of the SNES thread to run up the numbers, this thread is going to be #1 pretty soon. (just kidding Arseen  )

I take credit, I recommended he do this.

[juan0tron]

Just noticed you mentioned you read EGM. I used to buy that at retail every week until I got a broadband connection. I still have all the DVD's.
'

[TSOLfan]

The Reddit comments are hilaroius, and I must say, I've learned a lot.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/ev6bg/incredible_game_collection/

Apparently, the next time someone asks for pictures of my game collection that I post to a forum subtitled "Show off pictures of your fully cased collection", to satisfy the anonymous Internet masses, that meant I should have taken detailed photos of all 13 rooms of our house, including copies of our marriage certificate and our kid's birth certificate.

My mistakes, hopefully you guys/girls all learn from them

And, yes, I have a wonderful wife that let me have creative control over "my" office and "my" living room, though, to be fair, she has "her" office and "her" living room, and her library of books starts in our master bedroom and spills across 3 rooms (and she left her Nook on my Dreamcast shelf, so I guess that makes it 4), so in the end, she wins

Also, quite a few people seemed genuinely concerned that I don't own any Sony hardware, and that my life will somehow be incomplete.  At the end of the day, there are too many games/books/movies/life experiences for all of us to ever partake in, so we eventually have to narrow our focus.  I've done just that.  Though, everyone can once again sleep peacefully in knowing that, yes, I do have friends that over the years have owned/still own Sony video game hardware, and yes, I have played games on them (the shock, the horror   But let it be said, after growing up on Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds and Secret of the Silver Blades for Commodore 64, as well as Legacy of the Ancients for Commodore 64, I've already played the best of the best, everything else is just a bonus (Panzer Dragoon Saga was a great one at that).

Oh, and for those that think I "hoard" these games, I have friends that flat out gave me the Sega games they owned to contribute, as it was a goal among friends to build the Sega collections.  I just happened to have the space and had the spare $100 a month of disposable income over the years to go towards finishing it.  My collection (and my wife's book collection) is an open collection, in that, my friends and family and friend of the family and neighbors are all free to borrow anything (in fact, I've got a "loaner" Dreamcast and Saturn left over from some of my lots), with only two rules.  You only borrow the game/movie/book (not the case/dust jacket), and it gets returned in the condition it left, else you just bought it

[AppleQueso]

So TSOLfan, what's you're take on the various rumors of Sega someday re-entering the console biz? (Talking about RingEdge and stuff like that).

[VanderOZ]

I just noticed the small stack of booster boxes of Magic card.  I'm just getting back into the game after being away for 10 years.

[TSOLfan]

So TSOLfan, what's you're take on the various rumors of Sega someday re-entering the console biz? (Talking about RingEdge and stuff like that).

I definitely would find that interesting to see what new territory they might try to chart, as it seems a lot of their ideas with the Saturn and Dreamcast were expanded upon in this current generation (with both the Saturn and Dreamcast having Internet connectivity for multi-player and Web Browsers with the Dreamcast also using it for downloadable content for games, the Dreamcast having a VGA hookup for HDTVs, and the Dreamcast VMUs that let you take a portion of your game and play away from home and sync back up changes (Sony looks to have done this with the PSPs Remote Play and Microsoft with the Windows Phone 7 platform)).

Though, honestly, I don't see it happening.  They've churned out quite a bit of hardware since the Dreamcast/Naomi days, as you can see here:

http://www.system16.com/museum.php?id=1

And with every new arcade hardware revision/release, there's always a rumor it's a new Dreamcast/Naomi (home console/arcade variant), that is never substantiated.

I just noticed the small stack of booster boxes of Magic card.  I'm just getting back into the game after being away for 10 years.

I had a cousin that bought these things called Magic cards with black borders dubbed Beta, because they had cool artwork.  I shrugged it off, as the last cards I had bought for artwork were years before that where the Marvel Universe Series II cards (not a card game) and TSR cards (also not a card game).

Though, by the time the Dark rolled around, they had peaked my interest, and I picked up some packs and built a Goblin deck with Goblin Caves and Goblin Shrines.  I never bought a ton of packs, and usually traded for cards I wanted.  I called it quits in high school after Fallen Empire, which I did enjoy for the Goblin Grenades   I still have that Goblin deck, but got rid of my other cards (I had maybe, 100-200 tops, all red and black, any rare came from a pack, most were commons I picked up for 25 cents).

A couple of years ago, when 10th edition was coming out, my friends and I had the bright idea to go in on some boxes of boosters and see what the game was like these days.  As you can see, so far, we've yet to get around to opening them, but we did manage to pick up Duels of the Planeswalkers on Xbox Live, which was fun (I know they released DLC expansions, though, I haven't picked any up).

[Drakul]

This collection deserves a bump.

Gorgeous house man! Not only your games, Jack and everything but you did a great job on the wood flooring and the iron stairway.
My wife and I are buying a house in the coming months and then the collection starts! I can't wait.
I was such a full I gave/resold most of my games up until the recent generation of consoles (I'm 31) so I have to restart form scratch.

I see all your games seem to be mint in box. Did you have issues getting them like that since you bought in bulk?

[TSOLfan]

Gorgeous house man! Not only your games, Jack and everything but you did a great job on the wood flooring and the iron stairway.

Thanks for the compliments, we've worked hard on this place (and continue to do so).

Since the winter is long gone, I decided to post a picture of the "cleaned up" garage.  It's in the queue to get scraped and painted on the inside in the next couple of months.



I had to clean things up for the Mortal Kombat tournament at our place.  With the release of the new MK, I had a garage open house and worked with the local comic shop to promote it.  We had a tournament on MK1-4 in the garage, set the machines for 50 cents per play, best 2 out of 3, and after each match, the machine was reset.  The winner of each tournament took home what was in the cash box below.  To be fair, I excluded myself, and I set all of the machines to free play for the first hour so people could practice.  Here's a shot from where a few showed up extra early (when I still had the KI machines on):



We wrapped up the evening with a tournament for the new MK where the grand prize was a copy of the game for Xbox 360.  Given that the game had just come out, we used the two TVs upstairs and the screen downstairs to run three stations so people could get in as much practice.  For the main MK tournament, to be fair to all, I again excluded myself, and we went for a double elimination bracket, with the last match being best 3 out of 5.

Here's a quick shot I took of the final match (Ermac player vs Scorption player):



Needless to say, a good time was had by all, and even though I didn't get my play time, I always enjoy getting my collection out there in the hands of others (as I mentioned in an earlier post, I collected it to share, not to hoard).

I see all your games seem to be mint in box. Did you have issues getting them like that since you bought in bulk?

Actually, the ones I picked up in bulk fared the best.  It was always the individuals that I seemed to have problems with, such as sellers throwing Sega CD or Sega Saturn games in a bubble envelop, and that's it.  Those would almost always arrive with broken hinges.  Also, I don't know what it was about N64 sellers, but, I received so many of those also just in a bubble envelop, so the boxes arrived crushed.  The auctions I got in lots, they always came in a larger box, so less damage.  I had won this one SNES lot where the seller meticulously unfolded every box flat to ensure they'd arrive without damage.  It surprised me when it arrived, because the box was so small.

Unfortunately, when I sold off the extra games from lots I didn't want (to recycle the funds into picking up individuals), I hadn't come across this site yet, else I could have scanned a few extra boxes.  Hopefully, none of these were too sought after:



That was a lot I sold off in August of last year.  August and September is when I purged all of my duplicates for Sega systems and titles I didn't want for the others.

[juan0tron]

That sounds like it was a fun day! It's all Smash Bros in my room, but we end up having impromptu tournaments all the time because our door is always open.