If You Won The Lottery...

[FlufflePuff]

Today at work, someone asked the question, "what would you do if you won the lottery?" Someone chimed in for me and said I would buy every game every known. Now, while I'm not denying this fact, I got to thinking.

Would it be enjoyable to collect games if you had unlimited financial resources?

For me, part of the fun in collecting is having to budget myself when buying games. If I could hit Ebay and buy everything, there wouldn't be the challenge of finding the rare games at great prices. It's kind of like playing the Sims. If you started with a great career and unlimited money, it wouldn't be fun.

So, if you won the lottery, would you still find joy in collecting?

*apologies if this has been done before, but I couldn't find a thread like it*

[EricRyan34]

This is a tough one. I have thought about this before as well, and I still think it would be fun, just not as much. If you saw a game for a good deal, you wouldnt be as "Oh, I gotta buy this right now!!"....you would just be like "meh, ill grab this one i guess"

ya know?

[Jumpman Jr.]

I wouldn't actually buy every game that was ever made. I'd buy A LOT, but not all (especially not imports). I'd definitley blow some money on getting practically every Sega, Nintendo and Atari game, but thats probably where it would stop.


..... maybe

[Vectorman0]

No matter how much money you have, there will always be gaming stuff you can't get. And I'm not talking about the games yet to be release either. There are just so many items and such a variety of scarcity amongst them that there will always be something missing.

If I won the lottery, I would make sure to try and ration it and put alot away, but I would surely put alot in game collecting.

[Nukie]

Just because you have the money to spend, doesn't mean you have access to all the titles out there. You would still have to find the rare titles before you could buy them.

With that said, I would still collect, just to say I had all the games from my childhood.

[KingCobra]

I'd buy a nice house and go after Arcade cabs :D

[Charlesaway]

My friend and I actually have a deal going about this. If he wins, he's opening a video game store, which I will manage on a day to day basis. I'll be salaried with benefits, comparable to what I make now. To go hand in hand with the store will be a video game archive or museum (good as a tax writeoff too)

If I win, it's the same deal for him.

As far as for my personal collection, I guess I would buy what I please on a whim, and not go crazy. I'd probably budget myself a couple thousand a month and stay within that range. I figure it would still be quite a while before I had everything.

[evil_genius]

I would deffinitely start collecting arcade cabinets, and AES.

[johno590]

It would be hard not to buy everything you see because money doesn't matter... but it would take some of the fun out of collecting, I think anyways.

I would really want to buy alot of video games, but they would probably be last on my list of stuff to buy if I won the lottery.

[Rogmeister]

Whenever this subject has come up, I always say the same thing...I'd buy a house and buy more cats. I'd be giving more unwanted cats homes and the house would be to give them (and me) the space we need. Interestingly enough, I never think about buying more video games. But then I don't buy as many games as I used to in the first place.

[Mattiekrome]

Hmmm, I would go for all NES, SNES, N64, DC, SMS, and PSX games all minty complete. It would be cool to be able to drop 10 $ bucks on a fairly common NES game in minty complete condition and not have to worry about paying inflated shipping charges to get it to your house in one peice. Oh, and Addams Family Pinball @_@

[freckledpeas]

If only I had this dilemma to worry about... :-P

I don't think having oodles of money would take the joy out of collecting for me. There are plenty of game systems I've never seen in real life. Aside from purchasing a large house to display the multitude of game systems, arcade cabinets, and pinball machines I would undoubtedly buy, I would do some travelling to FIND those elusive systems. Trips to Japan (obviously), Korea, Brazil, etc. could turn up some rare finds that I probably couldn't acquire easily under normal circumstances. I'd love to go out on a videogame safari, but I could NEVER afford such a thing on my current salary. Winning the lottery sounds GREAT to me! :D

[Yago]

Hmm, don't know. I probably would not be buying that many games. But I would be playing them, ALOT, because I sure as shit would not be getting up to go to work. :D

[keiblerfan69]

Hmm, First I would buy me the 1970 Chevy Yenko Nova that I want, then I would buy a house and like others said fill it with arcade machines. Then with the rest of the money I would buy a store and open a game store. With what ever is left I would either donate it to a SPCA to help save animals or just adopt a lot of dogs and give them all the care they would need.

[djbeatmongrel]

well i dont think i would go and buy every game out there but i do have an ingenious idea. use the money to fund a long road trip (planned of course) to hit major swap meets/flea markets, known video game shops and gaming conventions.

Personally i would love to fly to japan, hire an interpreter and go on a country wide hunt to complete my wonderswan collection.

[Haoie]

I doubt it'd be as fun collecting if I was rich [which fortunately or unfortunately, I'm not]. Seems like half the fun is in the trouble getting stuff?

[Emuaust]

Id buy a house to show everything off in and then id
become a full time professional cyclist, as thats what my dream
is and as sad as it is gaming would come second.

The only other thing Id love to do is go on a massive anime
and dvd spree to buy all the stuff we miss out on here in
australia

[Push Upstairs]

First on my agenda would be putting some of that money away. Savings, investing, whatever.

Whatever is left (interest or whatnot) i'd spend that on the games that i really want. It's not terribly exciting, but i'm not the person to buy games i'm not ever going to play.

[Iron Draggon]

It would sure make my collecting a whole lot easier. I could just put the word out that I am looking for a bunch of old factory sealed video games, and if you have one on my list you can email me and name your asking price for it. Simple.

Besides, it's not like I would have a ton of games on my list. Just the ones that I still haven't been able to find yet, and all the ones that I've found but haven't been able to afford yet. So mostly just a bunch of old SNES games and a few Saturn imports. I already have most of what I want.

But best of all, I could finally have a real Room of Doom to display all my games in, and a real game room for that Roller Coaster Tycoon pinball table that I've been dying to get but have no space for even if I could afford to get it.

The rest of the money I would just blow on traveling all over the world to ride every roller coaster ever built. Maybe I'd even buy a bunch of land, have a roller coaster of my own built on it, and use all the money that I made charging people to ride it to build an amusement park around it and expand my new collection of roller coasters. Yep, I'd be a very dangerous rich man. That's why I will never be rich.

[Fuyukaze]

Winning the lotto would not stop me from buying games because I no longer needed to budget my spending, it would have the oposite effect. I wouldnt buy ever game in site, but every game I always wanted. I would visit every single place I could in my hunt for them. My import colection would definitly see a boost. The thing is, I would at first be overcome with the desire to spend so much, but in the end I would have what I wanted and as I was well off, the time required to enjoy said games. The question I wonder is, how long before I eventualy felt the need to own it all? With the 102mil my state's curent lotto is up to, I cant help but ask that.

[Tron 2.0]

Simple i buy a, Discs of Tron cab ;)

Turely the best design for a cab ever 8-)

[googlefest1]

i realation to games ---

id probbaly start working on a game console and hire a bunch software people to make games for my hardware

and after that fails (becasue nintendo, MS ans Sony would run me into the ground) - my kicks and giggles would be gone and id probbaly return back to research and also continue amasing degrees - of course continuing collecting -
the first thing id go after ofcourse would be the blockbuster world championship carts for the genesis

[Cav]

I would invest half of it in glorious mutual funds and take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in securities...

[dcescott]

Tithe to my church. That's another thread...
I would do a little ebaying on certain titles and consoles. I would however build a new house with a HUGE gameroom/arcade filled with my favorite stand up arcades. I have a long list but when those super auctions come to town, I will be prepared to buy a boatload of games and take them to a tech to look over alll of them, clean them up etc.

Go back to school and get my masters in fine art. I have the drive and talent, just not the money.
Also a sweet studio for my art assignments, ceramic/sculpture.
The fastest Mac, crammed with as much memory as possible and the biggest monitor I can buy. I'll pay a techy to set it up right!
Fastest Internet possible
Recording studio for some rock and roll, I can sell time there to other acts...

The rest of the money will be spent re-investing. God knows I'll spend all of it!

[klausien]

I'm sure we have all thought of this at one time or another. Collecting would lose none of its allure for me. I know what I would get first though:

Star Wars Arcade sit-in with Empire Strikes Back upgrade setup with a switch.

Asteroids original

Ahhh, if only...

[Kejoriv]

If I won the lottery, I take care of all my family, buy myself a nice car and a house then consider all the electronics, video game and Mad Magazine stuff later. But I agree with some of the other posters, on the rare games, the reason is that they are rare is they are incredibly hard to find. A few thousand, won't make a rare game jump out of someone's basement and into your hand. We can only dream of winning the lottery. Maybe I will marry a rich girl..

[CosmicMonkey]

Lottery win, eh. There'd be many things I'd get before games: nice sized house for the family, Aston Martin V12 Vanquish, pay off Parent's and Sister's mortgages and buy them a nice new house each. Oh, and my step-dad would love an Aston or a Jag too. I'd get the 100 or so games I still want for PCE, PSone, Saturn, DC and MVS. A copule of Egret III cabs and the PCBs I want and that'd be me sorted.

After the important things I'd set-up my own company. I'd want to try and releasas many unreleased games as possible. I mean, Lucas Arts have got Indiana Jones for Sega CD complete and ready to go locked away in a vault. I'd offer them a good deal to let me publish the game. After that, I'd try for other companies and then hire a talented team to finish off games that aren't quite complete. I'd go to Sega, see if I could release Prop Arena and Geist Force. I'd also get Dreamcast servers back online worldwide for some Prop Arena fun. And maybe even get another run of DC BBAs made. Then start the hunt for the Neo protos. God I want Ironclad on MVS cart.

So yeah, that's what I'd do.

I did think about a videogame museum too. With every piece of hardware and software released, and dev kits.

[Pantechnicon]

http://www.starlighttheatre.org/images/Dsc02569bw.jpg
"All day long I'd Ebay Ebay bum...if I were a wealthy maaaan."

The biggest "lottery dreams" I have are either prudent or altruistic in nature. I'd have to take care of those first.

After those...um...there was a time when I would have said winning the lottery would in large part ruin my collecting hobby since I would no longer have to go hunting at the thrifts, etc. But since those seem to be drying up relative to my particular wants a huge pile of cash might be a good thing.

Still, I wouldn't want to go nuts here. I'd build a classic cabs game room in the house. And then, just to keep some edge on the whole thing, I'd probably limit my game buying to CGE, which I would visit every year and drop huge piles of cash to amass a complete 2600 collection. That's about it.

[chrisbid]

you can actually run into a problem when you have too much money that you do not have enough time to play the games you buy. my brother is a music packrat (over 3000 CDs in his collection) and he has a stack of well over 200 discs that he has yet to listen to.

granted a CD may require a bit more of a time investment to "check it out", as most people can test a video game through the first level or screen, but i can imagine if i buy more than a dozen games in a single day of shopping, that i can easily leave a stack of games unplayed for a week or longer.

i would imagine winning the lottery would totally throw time management out of whack.

[Sanriostar]

Well, the *FIRST* thing I'd do is get myself over to an investment/Money Managment house, like Charles Schwabb or Merryl Lynch. 'Cause I know that if I didn't, I'd just end up with a huge game collection and no plan for the future. I'm one of those guys who needs to save himself from himself.
But what I'd like to do, if resources permitted, is make a dedicated Arcade in my house that looks like a pizza place frozen at about approximatley Early summer 1983. Enter the place, all the period pins and Cabs would be there. I'd also have an L-corner where all the post period games and 90's pins would be.

I'd also have the art studio of doom, but that's not game-related.

[Tetris Grand Master]

One Word: Dunebuggies

after that gets boring im sure i'd buy a mound of games and then jump in. Followed by some heavy drinking.

Then i would probably set up my lifelong dream of a puzzle game tournment.

Image playing every puzzle game in a tournment setting: Pure Gold

[Sauza12]

I have a detailed plan of action in place if I ever win the lottery.

First things first, I would buy a large house, and somewhere on the grounds I would build a boathouse type of building that would be strictly for video games.

After that, I would go buy a big truck, or SUV, or van that would serve as my "Hunt Vehicle 4000". As soon as the vehicle was officially mine, I would head over to the local independent game store as many games as I could, and pay for everything with cash. Why cash you ask? Why, because I've always wanted to carry around a dufflebag full of money.

Over the course of the next month or two I'd go into random Gamestops, EBs, and Game Crazys and talk to the staff. If I thought the staff was helpful, polite, and not a jerk I would buy around $2,000 worth of stuff and make sure that thier managers knew that they were great employees.

After a few months of a game buying frenzy, I would go through on a plan that one of my friends and I have wanted to do since the begining of time and open up two buisnesses:

One would be your typical game store, but so much cooler, and the second would be a bar that has a few arcade machines in it, but at each table there would be a TV and a random video game system. You could ask for a list of games that are available for that day (everyday the selection would change) and an employee would get you all set up. We would also have sports on bigger TVs as well because, hey, I like sports.

Maybe we could call the place "Brains and Brawn Video Game and Sports Bar". Eeeehhhh, maybe not.

[Nature Boy]

I could be wrong, but I think collecting would still have that same sense of accomplishment it currently does. I'm not sure I'd do it more often or not - to be honest collecting is mainly about *playing,* and I can still only play so much.

If I could live off the winnings I'd take a serious stab at retro console programming. I'd have the type of time I'd need to learn it, and with the modest homebrew market out there I could maybe even sell something and make it into a business venture.

Of course I don't enter the lottery so the chances of me winning one are slim to none (and slim just left town).

[drwily008]

If I won the lottery I would still make it fun to locate the games. Sure I would go on a EBAY spree but that would probably just be for imports or uber rare titles.

I would take a year long trip to Japan and fill my import list VERY quickly.

For domestic titles I would buy a real fun car to drive and take it cross country and look for all of the stuff on a 5 year roadtrip. I would load up the car until it was full, then ship it somewhere for when I get back.

That way the hunt would still be rewarding and I would have something to look foward to when I got home!

Oh yeah, I would also go to all of the Arcade auctions across the country and have a group of people build me a house designed for my "Ultra Room of Doom" in mind!

So somebody please give me the money so I can live my dream.

[fishsandwich]

I would get a complete GameCube collection.

:D

[rbudrick]

I know collecting wouldn't lose it's allure to me.

What would I do...hmmmm. Maybe I'd start a *real* videogame network for TV. I'd hire the best in the industry (including some DPers, who are certainly some of the most knowledgeable in the world).

Certainly, I'd start a bona fide vg museum.

-Rob

[Austin]

Whenever this subject has come up, I always say the same thing...I'd buy a house and buy more cats. I'd be giving more unwanted cats homes and the house would be to give them (and me) the space we need. Interestingly enough, I never think about buying more video games. But then I don't buy as many games as I used to in the first place.

I'm with you a bit there, Rogmeister. I'd definitely buy a nice, large place where I'd be able to have cats, period. My current apartment doesn't allow it. :( My two are staying at my parents' place several states away, and I miss them.

But, as for the lottery question... I'd definitely still have fun collecting. My main thing, though, would be to quit my job to write full time, and also put aside more time to play the games I do buy. I've got such a backlog of stuff I'm afraid I'll never get to, and it's been slowing down my collecting more than anything.

But, yeah. I'd definitely buy another cabinet or two, and maybe finally track down a lot of the more expensive games I'm missing but have never been able to give myself the excuse to purchase (RSG, PDS, etc.)

[mezrabad]

I'd sock away enough in an interest bearing account for my wife's and my retirement. I'd sock away enough for my children's higher education. I'd pay off the house and the car. I'd educate myself how best to manage that money (I'm already trying to do that, though).

I don't collect, I accumulate. So, I'd really just continue my chronogaming without worrying about getting a good deal or selling the stuff back on ebay.

Oh, and if I won the lottery I would SOOO buy me an Xbox 360 with Oblivion when it came out.

After all that, I'd probably start chronogaming arcade and computer games, too. Logistics of actually "finding" the stuff aside, it would take a lot of money to chronogame home videogams, computer games and arcade games (especially the non-emulated arcade games, I'd have to travel to other people's collections) at the same time, but that's what I'd do.

I'd also probably go to the next Penny Arcade Child's Play Charity Auction Dinner and buy something really expensive and silly just so Child's Play could get a good chunk of change from me.

[gepeto]

Here is one for you straight from
Gepetos You cant make this shit up

A few years ago the powerball or mega millions ( I can't remember)was over 250 million. At work in New York we always played as a group and as the jackpot grew we put in a little more money.

That particular lotto game you could only play in New Jersey (where I lived) My company is big but only 12 others wanted in. My one friend told me that his aunt called him and told him she had a dream that he won the lotto.


With me it was 13 total. They turned in there cards I filled mine out at the store. We played 10 apeice. I passed out the sheets. The drawing was friday night.

Saturday morning I get a call from one of them excited telling me we won something. I was superstitous and I don't watch the drawings. I thought they was messing with my head. i said how do you know he said ernie told him. I said have ernie call me.

minutes later he calls and tells me to turn to page 3 third from the top.

In powerball you need 5 numbers and the powerball to win the jackpot.

We had 4 numbers and the ball. The winning numbers were from my Picks.

The number that I missed was 13 the missed number I picked was 31 I had all the numbers but one reversed
totaly depressing.

My weekend was messed up. I just sat on the couch in disbelief so close so close. And the real rip was the payout was only 5000 I couldn't believe it should have been 50000 at least. When we finally split up the money each got 384.17.

Guessing 5 balls and no power pays 150000 I could live with that.

we were all messed up for at least 3 months we were gambling fools Bingo ,horses,numbers, anything the color of your socks.

They are people who say well at least you won something but I will tell you I would rather not win than come that close. The hell with that and thats the truth.

When asked what would you do if you won the big one

. One guy was like I will wait for check to be cleared before I quit.

One guy said once that ticket goes through the machine and says we won I'll quit on the spot. Unbelievable

[Bad Dog]

I would finish off my NES Collection all complete games. :D

[donkeykong1]

If I won the lottery, I would get married sooner than I plan too.(I'm engaged) I would then buy a house for us and make sure our families were well off. I would also buy a few cars including a Lamborghini Diablo.
The next thing I would do is TRY to get every game ever made in mint condition. I would still have fun collecting because the games are not gonna just jump in front of me with a price tag on them.
I would also spend a lot of time traveling the world.
I would also donate some of my money to astronomy related projects.
The rest I would invest.

[Howie6925]

I think I would but 2 houses one beside each other. One for my home life and the other for my gaming stuff, my place is over flowing with gaming stuff as it is if I had more money then I knew what to do with it think one house would get out of hand.