Retro Megabit

Sometime in the fall of 2016 I threw on my coat and told the wife that we’re going to Ikea! It was time. The Retro Video Game collection was spilling over and no longer fit neatly into the two existing bookshelves that I had dedicated to it.

In fact, at the time I was pretty sure the entire wall that I was using no longer offered enough space. So the man cave underwent a great awakening. An explosion of growth and expansion not entirely unlike the Big Bang.

My Game Room is a rectangular room in the basement. I was using the short wall for the collection but that has all changed now. I bought two more book shelves that are identical to the first two. These four bookshelves and the TV stand fit perfectly along the long wall of my basement. There were two windows in the basement and just half of one is left visible. I’m not above blotting out the sun for the greater good.

Considering that Retro Video Game Collecting specifically has not yet been officially recognized as an addiction or a compulsive disorder there has been nothing to stop me from doing this.

BEHOLD!!! Sega Dude’s Retro Video Game Collection (February 2017).

How many games are here in the collection? Any guesses?
There are 1,288 games on those shelves.

Take a moment to catch your breath and get ready for some close-ups of each of the shelves.

Complete good condition Sega Genesis games are getting harder to come by. I’m glad I already have so many of my favorites.

Pictured above are two of my first Genesis games. Altered Beast and Space Harrier. I have a lot of great memories working hard to beat both of those games.

I really do prefer the look of the older style black insert Sega Genesis cover art compared to the red cases. There’s nothing wrong with the red covers; it’s just my preference. And as best as I could I tried to make games with black cases more prominent but they’re just out numbered.

The shelf below with Sega Genesis games is one of three shelves left with some room for growth. The rest are jammed packed. As far as problems go, it’s a nice one to have.

Did you see that shelf above with 64 complete Game Boy Advanced games? I was really into the GBA when it was current and I bought most of those games used during it’s era. The typical price I was paying per game back then was anywhere between $10 and $20 each. And I was careful about getting them only if they were complete and in good shape. It’s a great collection for GBA that I just don’t know how to display well.

It wasn’t that long ago that I decided to purge a lot of my SNES and NES games. There are sooo many titles and I just can’t afford to chase them all. I’m sticking to the core classics a few that I think will be fun to play.

Next up are my giant Neo Geo MVS cartridges in their after market Shockboxes. They look great but they really do take up a lot of space! …totally worth it.

During the Super Nintendo era I was really enjoying Street Fighter 2 (we all were). I had a ton of fun with it and I could complete the game with all the characters. But fighting games were not my main interest. So it wasn’t until about 2014 when I really got to sample what the arcades had to offer and what the true diehard fighters were into.

SNK Neo Geo games are pure blood arcade games and they can be very punishing! An arcade experience is very different from the home console world.

Did you know you can buy an exceptionally high quality Flash Cart for the Neo Geo AES and MVS right now? At first glance it might look expensive but it’s actually a great way to dive into Neo Geo.

NEOSD at the NEOSDSTORE

My two latest Neo Geo editions are Captain Tomaday and Sengoku 3 (loose carts pictured above). I’ll get cases for them some time down the road. Those two small boxes are two decks of playing cards that use to ship with a Neo Geo game called Knights Chance by Neobitz. I don’t have this game but by chance I bought an unrelated and used Neo Geo MVS game from the creator of Knights Chance (Jeff Kurtz) and he surprised me by giving me these decks for free. It was a very nice gesture. Thanks Jeff! I’d love to own Knights Chance someday but it’s very limited and very expensive.

Moving on to the other half of the collection I’ll start with my Japanese Sega Mega Drive games. You don’t have to go very far back in my blog posts to find that I’ve recently added a bunch of very expensive games to the collection. I can’t make a habit of these premium titles but I do have a lot of seriously good games from the Mega Drive library and I really enjoy them. Right now Gleylancer is stealing the spotlight as an outstanding shooter for the system.

Pictured above is Rockman Mega World another of my recent and very expensive additions. Thanks to a fellow collector I got Rockman for much less than typical ebay prices.

Below is Panorama Cotton another hard to get Japanese Mega Drive game that I picked up in 2012 for $120 CAD.

Battle Mania above was an amazing gift from a close friend in 2013. It cost $100 CAD. Tucked in behind ESWAT is another one of my recent and expensive addition; Alesia Dragoon that I bought with Rockman.

They say you always remember your first. And there is no doubt in my mind that the Sega Master system holds that special place in my heart. The Sega Master System was my first home video game console and the first system I started collecting for when I got into the hobby. The terrible artwork and classic white grid backdrop reek of retro and I wouldn’t change a thing.

Phantasy Star for the win!

There are some seriously good games here. The Wonderboy series, Fantasy Zone II, R-Type, Quartet, Phantasy Star, Mirracle Warriors, Ys and Golvellious are some of my top favorites for the Master System.

Check it out, boxed 3-D Glasses, boxed FM Sound Unit… no big deal.

I also have a good number of complete Sega Mark III games; which (for the most part) are identical to their corresponding Master System game except the packing and cartridge shape.

If I had the money back in the day I’m sure I would have brought a TurboGrafx-16 home. What an excellent home console. It’s just a shame that the games are so hard to find these days. I have 24 Turbo Grafx-16 games including a bunch of the best games the system has to offer. So even though I don’t think my Turbo library will grow much I do feel I have a solid representation of this over-looked gem. My TG-16 and Turbo-Grafx CD was given to me from a close friend who traded for it at a garage sale.

Below is a close up my busiest shelf. In the mix you’ll see PC Engine, TG-16, Sega Game Gear, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast and PS2 games.

A huge thanks goes out to Nintendo Joe! About 98% of my Sega CD and Sega Game Gear games came from him as gifts. They are shinning examples of some of the amazing deals he’d been able to find out in the wild over the years. Thanks Bud! He’s also given me a bunch of TG-16 games too.

Fun Fact: Nintendo Joe‘s own video game collection at the time of this writing consists of a mere 968 video games. He’s what the us Big Timers call a ‘sub-1k’.

The bottom right two shelves are kind of miscellaneous space right now. Games on those shelves were not counted towards my 1,288 grand total. I think subconsciously I’ve started collecting for the Xbox 360 but I’m just not totally aware of it yet.

Stuffed in the cardboard box are misc. games that I’m trying to sell or  trade. To the right are some cool Retro Video Game books. Someday these shelves will be setup games like the rest.

Since I took this most recent collection update picture I’ve cleaned up one of the misc. shelves. Already I’m almost done with my Xbox 360 collection. There aren’t many more titles I want. About half of those Xbox 360 games cost me between $2-$4 each at one garage sale. The rest cost between $10-$20 each.

The cartridges stacked on the right are for the Texas Instrument TI 99/4A; which was my first home computer. These games cost me between 50 cent and $2 each.

So I find myself wondering if the wife will jump in the car with me the next time I exclaim “we’re going to Ikea!” Or will it have to be a secret mission?!

Blast Processing