Strange dreams about video game collecting - what are yours?

[Buapo]

Once in a while, I'll have an interesting dream about hunting for video games. The funny thing is, a lot of times the items that I discover don't even exist (at least to my knowledge). I recently had another one of these dreams, so I figured I'd share while it's still fresh in my memory.

In this dream, a friend and I got word of an electronics store that had closed down and left a bunch of stuff behind. It wasn't insanely large, I'd say about the size of your average dollar store. We just walked right in, and the place was a mess. I started digging around for interesting things, and started digging up old video game stuff that they just left behind.

Among the items, I found:

1. A SNES controller, with a Game Genie function built in, so you don't have to put anything in the cart slot. There were three or four of them, boxed.

2. Very strange turbo-style NES controllers that had red leds in them for the functions.

3. A pirate multi-cart for the NES that featured all the NES Mega Man games. It had a poorly made pirate label, and even a box. The artwork reminded me of Mega Man 1.

4. A large, cardboard display for "Darius Gaiden" that hung from the ceiling.

5. A sealed (but with torn plastic) copy of The Legend of Zelda for NES.

6. Loose "dogbone" controller for the NES.

7. A "Super FX" developer's kit, which apparently allowed you develop your own SNES game that utilized the Super FX technology. There were four of these, all in their original box, and they had the Super FX logo prominently displayed.

8. Loose manuals, boxes, and cartridges for plenty of SNES and NES games that I've never heard of. And I couldn't match any one particular item with another.

9. A whole bunch of Sega Genesis advertising, but strangely no Genesis stuff.

I could go on a while longer, but I feel like I mentioned the most interesting items.

So, please share - have you ever had a strange dream about the hunt for video games? Finding rare, or in my case, NONEXISTENT items?

[ryborg]

Oh yeah. As someone who's been going to thrift stores constantly for the last 15 years, I always have big-score dreams there. It happens IRL just frequently enough to make it realistic in the dream. Then I wake up and I slowly realize that none of that happened and I really don't have a gold NWC, a dozen game-used jerseys from the 1990 Bills season, etc etc

[Drixxel]

Discoveries of video game stockpiles containing weird, nonexistent titles occur once in awhile in my dreams. The most recent zany dreamfind was for a Ben Stiller movie adaptation on SNES but I can't remember which movie it was supposed to have been based on. The idea of a Ben Stiller-themed 16-bit platformer is unpleasant.

[Buapo]

Then I wake up and I slowly realize that none of that happened and I really don't have a gold NWC, a dozen game-used jerseys from the 1990 Bills season, etc etc

That is the worst part... waking up and realizing you have NOTHING of what you just had your hands on.

[Dr. Dib]

The only one I can visually remember occurred sometime this summer. I was anticipating a trip to California and dreamed I stopped in a thrift store that had walls of video game consoles and games. I remember trying to decide where to spend my money and having a tough choice on choosing between CIB consoles I already owned for $30 or consoles I didn't own, like the 3DO, for $40 or so. Then I still hadn't looked at either wall of games.

Afterwards I woke up and was saddened that this was just a dream.

[thom_m]

I once dreamed I stole a whole box of NES games from some bratty neighbor kid I actually don't have. In the dream, my brother convinced me to give the box back even though the kid was an idiot, but (as far as I remember) his house was on fire when I tried to. hee was so pissed, yelling on the street with his family as their house burned down. And so I kept the games - since he thought they burned anyways. I was really upset when I woke up and didn't have them...:(

I also dreamed once that I had a Twin Famicom. Needless do say I also got really frustrated the next morning.

[nebrazca78]

Once in a while, I'll have an interesting dream about hunting for video games. The funny thing is, a lot of times the items that I discover don't even exist (at least to my knowledge).

Excellent dream memory! That's a lot of different stuff to remember.


Discoveries of video game stockpiles containing weird, nonexistent titles occur once in awhile in my dreams.

My video game dreams come in two varieties: non-existent Master System games and hardware and Xbox 360 FPS dreams. The SMS dreams are always about going to someone's house and seeing that they have all types of sweet SMS stuff that I've never seen before. The last one was about going to some kid's house and him having tons of SMS games that don't exist. I was wheeling and dealing with him but I woke up before a deal could be finalized.

The one before that I was at someone's mobile home by a river and they had SMS games with huge circuit boards, like 20 times bigger than normal. It was just the circuit boards, no cartridges to hold them. It was amazing and yes, it does suck to wake up and realize these things aren't real.

As for the 360 FPS dreams, this just happens when I play a 360 FPS for about 8 hours or more in a day. Not very exciting, I just keep playing the game in my dream.

[Buapo]

One of the other odd items I remember was a second generation SNES... but it didn't have the normal A/V plug, it ONLY had an RF output. Needless to say, I wasn't excited about that find. :-/

[raptor94k]

Once in a while, I'll have an interesting dream about hunting for video games. The funny thing is, a lot of times the items that I discover don't even exist (at least to my knowledge).

I can assure you that The Legend of Zelda for NES exists. :p

But seriously, I often wondered if other people had these dreams or if I was the only crazy obsessed one out there. You guys are lucky though, my dreams always suck as they parallel what always happens to me in real life.

I'm usually in a store that I wouldn't think sold video games when all of a sudden I find a bunch of really awesome stuff for NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. (My dreams are usually not bias towards any system in particular). So I grab a bunch of stuff that I don't have (sometimes the titles don't actually exist) and I get really excited. Then I look at the price tags and realize they are all priced at market value. And I put them all back because I can't afford them.

[Rickstilwell1]

I hate the dreams when I find something rare that I've always wanted then buy it and put it on my shelf, only to wake up with it not being there. The worst dream was setting the Entex Adventure Vision on my game system shelf of the time. Before that, when I was a teenager and didn't have the NES toploader yet, I had a similar dream.

[dnehthend]

haha, so glad to find out I'm not the only one with these dreams, I've been having them since childhood and continue to

[Zebbe]

My brain fucks me by always making me dream about Darxide, even at times when I haven't longed to have it for a very long time.

[Tempest]

I once dreamed I found a boxed Congo Bongo for the Mattel Aquarius. Now THAT was weird.

It played pretty well from what I remember though. ;)

Tempest

[shopkins]

I have these, too. The things I find are always strange games that don't exist, often weird gold carts or oddly shaped carts or licenses of comic book characters in stores that are fantastically stocked with such things. I remember finding an Avengers game for GBA, for example.

I actually have these kinds of collecting dreams about comic books, too, sometimes, because I collect them just as rabidly as games. I remember dreaming once that I found Wanted, except I had never read Wanted so the version in my dream was weird and different from the real thing. I also dream about finding hauls of comic book longboxes in flea-markets and going through 50-cent bins.

Oh, and last night I dreamed I found a rare, I guess it was an eight-track tape with Willie Nelson and Sheryl Crow songs on it, but it was bright yellow, an octagonal cylinder, and it had a door on it that opened to reveal controls for the songs and how they sounded. I remember two prominent buttons, one for "Extra Grass" as in bluegrass sound and one for "Extra Bass." Yeah, I know that doesn't actually rhyme, but it never occurred to me in the dream. I was playing a non-existent Sheryl Crow song on it when I woke up.

And I do have the "I'm still playing the game" dreams, too, if I've played too much. Usually it's just the elements of my life that would have shown up in the dreams anyway adapted to the gameplay, so I might have a stealth-action dream about going back to college and remembering that I forgot to go to a class for an entire semester and now I have to take the final.

[GameMasterBobby]

Dream Number One:

I was a kid at the time, and Super Smash Bros for the N64 was popular. My friends and I loved this game, and played it all the time. The characters and levels were taken from various Nintendo games. The object was to throw the other characters off the edges of the levels, which was difficult at first, but you could beat them up to make them easier to throw.

I was so obsessed with this game that I dreamed about it. I was in my house and the characters were jumping and flying around in my house, beating each other up and tossing each other around. Because they weren't confined to a TV screen, none of them could get killed. They did retain their same sizes, so they were very small compared to the size of my house.

I got attached to the characters, and worried if they could find a way out of the house. The world is so big, and they were so small that they would easily get lost and never make it back to civilization.

Dream Number Two:

I was a preteen or a teenager at the time. I randomly had a dream that there was a fighting game released for the Gamecube. It was a traditional fighting game: two character would fight until one either lost all it's health or fell off the stage. I never cared for fighting games, but this looked cool because it had Link for the Zelda games in it! I just had to have it!

A few months later Soul Calibur II was released, and it was exactly like my dream. Surreal.

[Auto-Fox]

I once dreamed I went to a retro-gaming convention that was showcasing a bunch of un-produced console prototypes. I got to try what was essentially a "Virtual Boy beater" from Sega that never saw the light of day. Pretty much what you'd expect, it was a wired head-mounted display attached with a LONG cord to a box with a CD drive for the games.
It had two cool things about it. 1, the graphics were in color. 2, it used motion tracking of some kind, and could "see" your head and hand movements (you wore reflector gloves, and the helmet had a reflector, all of which were tracked by a tripod-mounted sensor).
It was... interesting. To the best of my memory, the game showcased was an early beta of "Sonic The Hedgehog VR", the only piece of playable software made for the system before it was canned. It wasn't just Sonic characters, though. I think there were also Virtua Fighter and NiGHTS into Dreams characters too (the last one being very appropriate, I think).
The graphics were interesting. As far as I can remember, there really weren't any polygons involved, despite it being a 3D game. It was all "Mode 7" stuff and scaled sprites, like an old raycasting engine, or one of those old "super-scaler" arcade games by Sega.
Anyway, it was all pretty awesome. In the dream, I got to play the game, which I remember being actually pretty fun to just wander around in.
Of course, then I woke up, and was immediately sad upon realizing such a thing likely doesn't exist.
Still, with all the vaporware Sega's produced over the years...

[joshnickerson]

Occasionally I'll have a dream where I find some awesome stuff, but then right when I start to gather it all up, I realize that it's a dream and get so annoyed that I wake myself up. Then as soon as I fall back asleep, I'm back in the dream and at that point I just ignore it and walk out of the store.

Yeah, I'm not sure what in my diet is causing those meta kind of dreams either.

[buzz_n64]

I had 2 game collecting related dreams last night. In the first dream, my ex-mother-in-law said she is going to have all of my video games when I pass away. I told her no, and told her that she didn't even know what most of that stuff is anyway. In my second dream, I was revisiting a Goodwill I used to frequent back when I lived in Vegas, and found many boxed GBA and other games in bins, but the games were in the wrong boxes and some carts were scattered on the floor. Some game carts were in odd colors.

[slapdash]

My "favorite" videogame-related dream involved going to a rummage-sale and finding a cache of Bandai (Japan) games for Intellivision. IRL, I knew Bandai had released the Inty in Japan, but as far as I knew, they only sold US games. But in the dream... Well, actually, I never got any game titles, but they didn't just look like the US carts with "Bandai" slapped on them. Mmm...

[Buapo]

I'm really enjoying reading all these. It's making me feel... normal. Heh heh.

As a slight addendum to my original dream, I went into total "greed" mode. I grabbed the largest cardboard boxes I could find, and start filling them with absolutely everything. Other people started arriving, so I was trying to get absolutely all the good crap into the boxes.

As I was scrambling, I grabbed the loose dogbone controller, but passed up an SNES controller, as well as an SNES mouse... both of which were beat to hell from being on the ground.

I remember picking up one of the boxes with stuff in it, and it weighed a TON (as video games tend to do, while in bulk), but then I woke up. Darn it!

Though, there really is no feeling greater than being the first to discover a hidden gem. I was really excited, for example, to find Sonic CD (complete) for $3 at a county fair. Certainly not dream material, though.

[k8track]

For years and years and years (and still once in a blue moon on occasion) I would have regular dreams of where I would have a wad of cash and walk into a store and find boxes and boxes of Atari 2600 video games on tables (à la Kaybee stores in real life from when I was in 8th grade, et. al.). I really don't have them so much anymore.

When I was in junior high, I was very prolific with my dreams about new, original games. I would write them down sometimes. I still remember a few:

1. I dreamed about an arcade laserdisc game called "Corn". It had a very specific look: it was done in the same manner as MACH 3 and Firefox, with an actual video background with the video game graphic character superimposed on top of it. You were a chicken racing at breakneck speeds through cornfields. The chicken looked exactly like the one on the box of "Freeway", and you only saw the profile of the chicken but you were racing forward in first-person perspective, kind of like through the Forest of Endor (which was probably what subconsciously inspired it).

2. Another game featuring a chicken (was there a pattern?) by Activision for the Atari 2600 called "Hoke and Poke". You were a chicken, viewed from the rear, which took up most of the screen. You were in a henhouse, trying to peck out a hole in the back wall, while avoiding insects and worms crawling from the sides (you could jump on them). It was a pseudo-3D room, very much like "Racquetball" by Apollo. When you pecked out a whole circle, you would poke it out, then somersault out of the hole and run to the next chicken coop for the next round. To this day I still think it would have made a cool Activision-like title for the 2600. Any homebrewers want to give it a try?

3. Pitfall 3 for Atari 2600 (alternately called Pitfall Paranoia). A sequel to Pitfall 2; all I remember is one part that looked like Pitfall 2 but with conveyer belts.

4. I remember finding a secret bonus level in Super Mario Bros. with an all-new original tune. It was really cool and exciting. I can still remember that short tune to this day.

[Buapo]

1. I dreamed about an arcade laserdisc game called "Corn".

Oh, WOW. You just reminded me of another video game dream that I had!

For some reason, I was attending a synchronized swimming performance at a large indoor pool with stadium seating. I got bored with waiting for the performance to begin (not sure who could get excited about that, anyway...) so I wandered off.

Turns out, right near the pool was an arcade nook! I walked in, and it was very warm in there, and it smelled like a pool. So I started checking out the arcade games.

Somewhere in all of this, I became lucid - or, when you realize that you're dreaming WHILE you're dreaming, and you can do whatever you want. So, as I scanned the machines, I realized my time was limited because this was a dream, so I decided that I wanted to play the most interesting machine in the place.

As it turns out, they had a laserdisc arcade cab of "Blues Brothers." It featured, of course, live action video of Dan Akroyd and John Belushi as the Blues Brothers, and it basically was a run-through of the events of the movie. The very first part of the game involved jumping their car over that drawbridge, just like in the beginning of the film. "I" was sitting in the back seat, while Jake and Elwood were yelling what I needed to do (pretty much like most of the FMV games on the Sega CD).

Sadly, I don't remember any other part of the game. But the cabinet was pretty cool, with different scenes from the movie, and a nice "Blues Brothers" marquee as well.

[obesolete]

I usually dream that I find "rare" or import games that don't exist.
My favorite was an import game for GameBoy (Which totally would not have worked because the gameplay was like a DS game) called "Insecure Doctor". It was similar to Trauma Centre in the fact that you operated on people... however you had the option of having no idea what you were doing and could end up horribly mutilating your patients. I gave a chick a boob job right under her own breasts so she had quadro-tits and another patient I hacked off their calf muscle by mistake. Of course at the end of your operation there was the typical japanese accented male voice screaming "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?" While it showcased the results of your malpractice.

I kind of wish it was a real game.

[NayusDante]

When I was a kid, I had this dream about this weird game that played a bit like Bomberman. The odd thing is that it had text boxes and dialog, like an RPG. I was pretty young at the time, and my gaming experience was limited to the NES. The weird thing about it was that it was in Game Boy monochrome.

In the last few years, I've had dreams about finding bizarre pirate Mega Man carts. The first one was at the Oldsmar flea market, in a very specific spot at at kiosk that I know I've never seen. It was a Genesis cart in NES gray with the US MM2 label art, priced at $1.99. At the same kiosk I saw these cheap Yobo-ish PSX pads with all of the buttons in two rows of four, like a fighting pad, also priced $1.99 and in cheap boxes. I later found out that ASCII made a similar pad. I later dreamed about being in a retro game store and finding some bootleg MM game with the background of Bomb Man's stage as the label art. I actually brought it to the counter and plugged it into a toploader NES and played it. It was sort of a cross between MM1 and MM3, and very glitchy.

I've also had countless dreams about wandering around East Sarutabaruta, thanks to the countless hours of FFXI I logged in high school.

[Koa Zo]

Not a collecting dream... but since there's a videoagame dream thread...

I've been playing a lot of the strategy game Saiyuki on Playstation. I'm just over 20 hours into it and last night I couldn't put it down. Played for almost 3 hours straight - I can't remember the last time I played videogame for that long! (probably when Yakuza came out)

So then I had a dream last night where I was interacting with people in real life, but my movements were restricted to right-angle grids and limited to a few blocks per turn. It was kind of unsettling!

[Icarus Moonsight]

How about finding a game or system that is some degree of super-duper rare for some insanely cheap price and when you wake up, you realize not only did you not actually get this item, but the item doesn't even exist in waking life? So I guess I can claim that I've owned and played some subconsciously invented stuff that no one else has. Sometimes the games seem poor in quality or broken, but sometimes, they're actually rather good.

I wouldn't dream about finding a heavy mod PC-Engine Duo-RX at a flea market for $5, but the new Sega Nibiru system that just recently launched (as in after Wii/PS3 in time frame) and has been sold out for months and sells for buttloads on net auctions, that's much more likely.

[Compute]

I once found the Fleet Farm catalog for Atari 2600 at Goodwill. Man that was an awesome find.

One of my favorite locations that has occurred a few times is the Younkers/JC Penney store. It's the same store but has a different location, as dreams do. It has all the standard parts, but then there's a "used game" section with shelves and shelves full of loose, used games. Intv, Atari, etc. 2-3 aisles of that, then stacks of unopened..unopened anything. Weird SNES pack-in deals, rare sega peripherals.

[Steve W]

Last night I dreamt that I came across a store with heaps of old games. A bunch of boxed Atari games, but also a bunch of computer stuff too. Mostly they're games I've never heard of before. When I do dream about finding stuff, it's always about obscure games with a bunch of computers and console stuff mixed together and they're always unrecognizable titles. In fact, recently I had one where I found an Intellivision cart that was a sort of BBS terminal emulation kind of thing that (with a modem) would let me access The LogBook (http://www.thelogbook.com/) by our own Phosphor Dot Fossils. He originally started the LogBook 20 years ago on BBSes, and that knowledge carried over into the dream. Too bad the Intellivision never had a modem.

[frogofdeath]

Had a dream last night in which I came across a boxed Master System for only $3.50! The console and box were in pristine condition, however the shape and color were all wrong from what they should be in reality. Plus, there was one item missing; a controller that also does not exist outside of slumberland. This controller was more like a TV remote, though wired, and had a simple screen integrated into the face, similar to the Dreamcast's VMU screen.

Kept debating whether or not I should spend the $3.50 to pick up this find. For some odd reason, I kept telling myself I did not need the console, because I was convinced it was a Sega Genesis. My wife on the other hand realized it was a Master System, and kept persuading me to pick it up, since the price couldn't be beat.

[8bitmusic]

I still remember having a dream when I was about 5. The newest system out there was an NES, which I spent most of my time playing. I dreamed that my drawer where I kept my video games had most all the games I ever saw at the rental store. I was so excited when I awakened that I ran to my drawer, opened it, saw the handful of games I owned, and let out an extremely dramatic sigh.

[RulerStabInTheEye27]

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[markusman64ds]

There are four that I can remember well.

1) I found shelves full of boxed Genesis games. All of them exist though.

2) I was at Wal-Mart and the shelves were really empty, with only a few loose Genesis games on the shelf. One of them had Metroid II artwork and was called Douglas, for some reason.

3) I was at someone's house and found a room with an N64 set up. There were a few games there, but one was gold colored and called Mario Party 99. I actually played it! It booted up without a title screen. Basically, it was Sonic Adventure DX. It played slowly, because I was playing it on N64, and the only level was a long blue road type thing. I wake up and 5 years later the same level is in Sonic Generations. Around the start of Chemical Plant act 2.

4) I was in someone else's house and they had a shelf full of NES games. There was one that didn't exist, but it had no title. In real life I went to someone's house and they had a similar shelf full of NES games.

[SpaceHarrier]

When I was a kid I had a dream I got a game called Cracker Dough. It was essentially a re-skinned Super Mario Bros. clone. When you would hit a block dough would shoot out instead of coins. Yeahhh...

More recently I had a dream I was in a Gamestop right across the street from my house (which doesn't exist, since there are ghetto apartments there). Inside I found a game for the Dreamcast, titled Sonic Total Chaos. It was supposed to be Sonic Adventure 3, essentially. Unfortunately it was missing the front booklet, so I passed on it.. LOL

Weird part is at the time I wasn't even aware of Sonic Chaos for the Game Gear.

[Dire 51]

Several years ago, I had a recurring dream about finding and trying to take - by any means necessary - a Splatterhouse arcade cab. Usually it'd be in some super fantastic wonder arcade that only a dream could come up with, but sometimes it would be in some little hole in the wall kind of place, or a school cafeteria, or some other strange location. I remember watching the attract mode several times, and that's where it got very different from the actual arcade game. It seemed like it followed the style of Splatterhouse 2 at times, and it also featured sequences not in any Splatterhouse game ever, although still suitably horrific.

I never succeeded in taking it. Sometimes I'd be stopped by a person, other times by circumstances. Once I did manage to get it - but then it just vanished.

[StarBlazer]

Wow, so strange I'm not the only one. I haven't actively hunted in the wild for 5+ years now and I still have these dreams! Usually coming upon a HUGE score of ultra rare games only to find out that I cant buy them for some reason(not priced, store closing soon...no more purchases that night, register broke down etc..)

I actually found an Emerson Arcadia 2001 in a thrift years ago...buried in with the hair dryers and curling irons ,the games were with the 8 track tapes. It had no price on it (u all know what that means in thrift's) I was told to come back the next day and talk to the manager about a price, I BEGGED to buy it right there, offering 20-30 bucks. No luck. I had to go back the next day. Manager let me have it all for $10. Actually saved me some money, but lost a little sleep worrying if it would still be there the next day.