The Video Game Conspiracy!
My first recollection of video games begins in 1980.
Only 7 at the time one of my friends had gotten this thing called the Atari and wanted me to come over and play games. I had played Pong and the Sears equivelant but to me the description of a console that played different games at home seemed unbelievable.
After playing the 2600 for one day I was hooked on console gaming forever. This was in mid-spring or so and was forced to live in denial until that following Christmas. My first Atari 2600 was the greatest gift I “at that time†thought there ever could be. Over the next several years my collection grew but the exitement of the Atari faded and eventually I went back to Coin-ops.
History repeated itself in 1986 when another friend had gotten the Nintendo Entertainment System. We spent nights, weekends, summers piled up with our friends playing every game we could. Unlike the Atari it would be almost 2 years “X-mas of ’88†before I got mine.
Eventually I went on to also buy the SNES, Genesis, Sega CD, Sega 32X, & Playstation before I began to “really†collect games. In 1998 I had an estimated 200 games “Mostly Atariâ€.
Sitting on my couch one day playing some suck ass PSX game I had just bought for $50. I began thinking to myself how of all these systems looking back I still enjoyed my ole NES more than anything I owned. Looking at my dozen or so carts I thought “I have yet to experience all that great system has to giveâ€.
I vowed the next time I went to a used store I would check out some old NES games. When I did I was amazed at the prices and watched dozens of people bring in garbage bags full of games for trade on one or two used PSX or Saturn games. I started hitting every game store, pawn shop, & flea market buying games left and right $1, $2, $5 each.
Before I knew it my collection had amassed over 100+ carts. I couldn’t believe how many titles there were. Soon I was digging up checklists of every game for every system I owned. I always went in looking for Nintendo games but picked up tons of other games whenever I saw deals. I was sucked into the craze of die-hard collecting.
I was building cabinets, printing lists, constantly looking for games to add to my numbers. “Only 10 more games and I’ll have 500, 1000, etc.†Now sitting in my addition I built onto the house aka “The game room†Staring at my walls of games, shelves of consoles, thousands of dollars. I think …was I crazy? Am I insane? HELL YES!
Damn you Mario, Damn you to hell … you have poisoned my mind & soul & emptied my pockets with your NES!
Alas – I wouldn’t want it any other way