The joys of being a brand new collector...

[ClubNinja]

This topic is probably going to seem a little odd, but stick with me. I'd like to think I'm not the only one who's had these thoughts ;)

What really prompted this was the recent topic surrounding Air Raid for the 2600. It's still a cart that very few people have gotten their hands on, and most never will. It's also a release that still raises many questions. Who/what really was Men-O-Vision? How many carts are there? Does Uncle Bill have hundreds of these in his garage? Etc. Anyway, I started poking around on the RGVC archives for mentions of Air Raid, but soon started reading loads of old threads. Of course, we've probably all done this, but this is first time I felt like I "missed" those days. This is where I may stop making sense.

Many of the posts made in the early/mid 90s seem pretty naive compared to those of today's "veteran" collectors. A few folks were trying to make sense of the Imagic games re-released in Activision cases. Some others were convinced that a reference to the Atari 2800 must have been a typo. Stuff like that. It made me miss being new to the scene. I remember thinking that Chase the Chuckwagon was the rarest of the rare. I thought that Intellivisions were the most obscure machines ever produced. I was certain that I struck gold the day I found a loose Kung Fu Master cart. I had no idea what Mythicon was (and in that respect, I was surely better off!) Now, I can name every title that was released for the 2600 under any company name. Every stack of carts I find at a flea market is just the same old stuff. I find myself getting cynical about hunting for games - a drastic change from my wide-eyed excitement several years back.

It's not that I don't enjoy the hobby, the hunt, and the gaming. It's just entirely *different* now. Reading about Air Raid recently has been a refreshing experience. The whole mystery that once surrounded all the old games still lingers over that one cart, at least. It's nice.

So, anybody else ever pine for the days when you didn't know any better? When Laser Blast was just as exciting as Eli's Ladder to learn about and dream of finding?

[foggrat]

Playing Diablo 2, there's something I've seen called "item fatigue". Basically, when you're new and starting out, the odds of anything that a monster drops being better than what you're using start out high (100%), and stay very high through much of the first difficulty level. Even throughout the entire single player experience, you have a pretty good expectation of finding new and better things.

One you get involved in trading with other people, and magic finding (creating characters specifically to harvest items), you soon acquire so much wealth that the odds of something being rare enough to be truly valuable drop to the point that despite all your efforts, you find something "useful" seldom, if ever.

The only cure? Get rid of all your items, and start anew. In your case, though, that sounds a bit costly, I'd imagine.

[orrimarrko]

Scott,

I know what you mean. After a few weeks of obsessing over a certain system and it's gaming library, I get a little bored, or bothered that I can't find anything new.

My solution to that is to switch my focus to another system. There are plenty of them out there, and it's like learning something new - that excitement of which you refer comes right back. A few weeks/months later, I get excited about the other system that was boring me to tears. With the number of systems out there, there's plenty of ways to keep things fresh and exciting.

Also, I find that everytime I thought I knew a lot about a system or its library - I find that I didn't know dick.

There's always more to learn, and that keeps things interesting.

Game (or collect) on!

Steve

[ClubNinja]

Yeah Steve, I completely agree - though I've taken a slightly different approach. I've begun reading up on all the funky prototype 2600 games that are out there in some form or another. I'd never really bothered since protos always seemed to be out of my "league", but it's really interesting stuff. I've also taken a new interest in the different homebrews that have been created, as well as the reproductions that have been done. I'm kind of surprised I hadn't really cared that much before, but now it's given me something new to learn about while I wait for a flea to cough up those insanely rare games.

I think that I'm suffering from feeling nostalgic about originally feeling nostalgic. While there are always new strange things turning up, there's never as much mystery as there was when you first started.

@ foggrat - It's not so much about the items I have, but rather the knowledge of them. There was a time when finding out everything I could about anything related the 2600 was "fresh." Even if I cut loose all of my games (besides missing them dearly and not being able to play them), I still wouldn't be able to recapture that naive manner in which I first approached the hobby. And no, a bump on the head to flush my memory is not an option ;)