Times You Took Your Love Of Gaming Too Far

[CaspianX]

Hi, my name is Jake McNeill. I'm a freelance writer for 1Up, and I was referred to this board as a good place to get some feedback from the gamer community.

My latest assignment is an article about the more obsessive, compulsive, excessive, and just plain ridiculous side of gamers. Understand that I have no desire to create some kind of freakshow, but rather something more along the lines of "times even we have to admit we took things too far."

I've done a lot of these things myself - my game collection has gotten somewhere into the thousands (half of which I've never taken out of the shrinkwrap), I've taken days off from work just to play Oblivion ("Uh, yeah, I'm... uh... really sick... *cough*" ). One time, I took a pencil and pad of paper and actually mapped out the whole ridiculous trade system of Secret of Evermore - I didn't even like it all that much!

So my question to you guys is what experiences along those lines you may have had. Times when your enthusiasm outweighed your judgement, or caused problems elsewhere in your lives. As per usual, I'll PM anyone whose comments I'd like to use in the article to ask for permission before plastering an embarassing story up on the website.

Thanks again in advance to everyone who participates. I should note that I'm posting this both in the Classic Gaming and Modern Gaming boards because it kinda' applies to both.

[BocoDragon]

Good luck with your story. This is the place for those who are very dedicated to gaming!

I think a few "sealed game collectors" need to step forward and pour it out for this one. There's quite a few around here!

I don't intend to insult these people. I admire their passion. But this has got to be a lot of money and work for a very, very token accomplishment, and with no actual gaming reward!

Picture it's 2035, two videogame collections reign supreme: Which one is most interesting? The collection of sealed games, or the collection of opened games?

The answer is the collection of opened games. Not only can people admire the materials on the inside and actually play the game, but I'd wager they still have shrink wrapping technology in 2035, and they could make it a "sealed collection" with a little bit of work :P

[50s Brawler]

So my question to you guys is what experiences along those lines you may have had. Times when your enthusiasm outweighed your judgement, or caused problems elsewhere in your lives. As per usual, I'll PM anyone whose comments I'd like to use in the article to ask for permission before plastering an embarassing story up on the website.

Thanks again in advance to everyone who participates. I should note that I'm posting this both in the Classic Gaming and Modern Gaming boards because it kinda' applies to both.

Well I've had several moments throughout my life where good judgement just didn't factor into my gaming obsession. The first thing that comes to mind was when I got all pumped up about the (then) Nintendo ULTRA 64 system and saw those vapor ware renders of Robotech: Crystal Dreams. I was convinced that the system was going to push graphics of that capability, and being a huge SDF Macross fan at the time... well I immediately ran out and spent $500 + USD on an import N64 along with SM 64 and Wave Race + an extra controller + 2 memory cards and had the system internally modifided to accept the US N64 carts. Why was this taking it too far?

Well I had gotten my tax return which was about $1,000 bucks that year, and graduation money from my grandmother (this was late '96) and needed to spend most of it on a family trip. Instead I blew it on an N64, knowing full well the domestic system was less than 6 months away, but I had to have Mario 64 before everyone else and just knew Robotech would be worth the purchase. History proved I made a dumb move. The other thing that comes to mind is not seeing a paycheck from the game store I worked at from late '96 until early '97, because I'd ran up an employee discount bill ordering Import Sega Saturn games from NCSX and annoying Susan there more or less every week. Oh yeah, and in the summer of 1994 I planned an entire 2 week vacation to Houston Texas with my best friend, just so I could pick up a Japanese Super Famicom, a copy of Rushing Beat and Last Fighter Twin from GAMETRONIX off of Chimney Rock Road, back when ole' Mike Huey ran the joint. Since those days I've learned to cool it for the most part, though I'd say that's pretty hardcore.

[Arasoi]

I once spent 2000 dollars in one week on Akumajo Dracula/Castlevania items alone, for my collection.

Shameful and unhealthy to eat top ramen for a couple weeks.

[Snapple]

Welcome to the board! I think you've come to the right place for borderline-obsessive yet intelligent gamers.

I don't think I get too obsessive, although I remember this time when I was about 12, and I blew off my friends who wanted to take a trip to the beach so that I could play Final Fantasy 2 (ie Final Fantasy 4). I was very into the game at the time. Do I regret it? Yeah probably, although not as much as I should.

[goemon]

I injured my thumb playing Choro Q3 for about a day straight. The beginning of the game makes you jam on the Playstation's D-pad really hard, and I ended up damaging one of the nerves in my left thumb and it went numb for a few weeks. Even to this day, when my thumb gets cold, it tingles to remind me of Choro Q3, one of the greatest games I ever played.

[badinsults]

I found a document that allows you to decrypt Game Genie codes for the SNES. I spent weeks figuring out what codes will work for Super Castlevania IV. I literally created one hundred codes, with varying effects. Here is the result of one of them:

http://evan.whattheboat.com/castle/simon1.gif http://evan.whattheboat.com/castle/simon2.gif



(btw, the code is xxB1-0DDD)

[Iron Draggon]

OK, I'll confess... there were several times back in the day when I neglected to pay my electric bill in favor of buying new games... it made alot of sense, having all those new games and not being able to play any of them because my power had been cut off... but I still had all those new games to play after I finally paid my bill and the power was turned back on, so I was happy... LOL

[XYXZYZ]

Howabout those marathon gamers who set records for Twin Galaxies? Todd Rogers did something like 86 hours of Journey Escape. I heard a Retro Gaming Radio interview, Billy Mitchell (The first perfect score on Pac Man guy) said something like 40+ hours of Donkey Kong was "no problem".

I did 15 hours of Final Fantasy III (SNES) the day I got it, but that's no big deal around here.

[Steven]

I guess for me, cancelling social events with family/friends to stay home and snipe an auction off eBay. I can recall three times in particular where I either cancelled a social gathering or left a dinner party early.

11/15/02 Nekketsu Oyako Saturn
July 2002 Pocket Fighter Saturn
Thanksgiving 2004 various Saturn imports (I left my gf's dinner party early so I could get home and snipe... yes, I did win all I seeked, but it was really really consuming my priorities back then)

I guess that's pretty extreme, in'it?

[Pantechnicon]

I can't think of anything I've done really out of the ordinary, and by "ordinary" I mean things every other devoted gamer has done at least once. A couple highlights:

- 12 hours playing Doom II (small potatoes compared to the WoW kids found these days dead at their PC's)
- I was allowed only one authorized absence on a 400-level Psych course back in college, and I took it just so I could make some extra headway in Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. Still got an A for the course 8-).

Like I said, nothing out of the "ordinary". Perhaps it's for the best that way.

[Kamisama]

Well I was pretty mmorpg addicted for a few years until like a year ago. Ditched School, didn't have time to meet friends just to have some more time for leveling and stuff :p
I'm also never good with saving money because i always find some cheap deals I dont want to miss :P I just cant resist then :)

[RJ]

Probably not as "severe" as some of the responses here, but I once deleted a CastleVania: SOTN file, then spent/wasted the next 7+ hrs straight getting back to where I was.

I've also taken off a few hrs early from work just to go home & play games- just did it last week.

& I once caused a scene in a restaurant when my older brother messed me up 5 dots away from the 1st "Pac-Man" cartoon intermisison.

[kaedesdisciple]

This place is great for an article like that, and I would also suggest paying a visit to www.neo-geo.com if you haven't already. I know some members here are there as well and those guys are pretty hardcore, too.

Good luck

[Hardcore]

I'd say lugging my television, my Playstation, and my rented copy of Final Doom over to a friends house for marathon co-op.

Then there were the times I would burn my sick time at a job to just leave early and play Phantasy Star Online.

[Mr. Smashy]

I once drove for 15 hours to attend a gaming event that had a Guitar Hero tournament. The tournament was being held fairly early in the morning and I overslept since I was up late at a concert the night before. When I woke up, it was 7 minutes until the competition was to start and the building where the competition was being held was a good 10-minute walk away.

I got dressed and ran to the tournament as fast as I could. Ordinarily, I don't jaywalk but I wasn't going to let something like the law get in the way of my competing that morning. About 2 minutes into my panicked running, I misstepped and twisted my ankle. It hurt pretty badly but I figured that I'd have plenty of time to heal after the tournament.

Finally, I arrive. I'm pungent, sweating, hungry, exhausted, and in pain, but I made it. I managed to win 2 rounds but then lost on a song that I can generally 100% on Expert with no effort. I blame the fools running the competition that thought it would be a good idea to run a 480i rhythm game on a 720p display.

My ankle healed up after about a month.

Still, I couldn't describe my example or any of the other examples listed here as taking a love of gaming "too far" (though some may be irresponsible). A big part of love is commitment. Somebody saying that you've taken it too far is somebody that doesn't understand your commitment to gaming.

[nebrazca78]

When I was 7 a friend of mine was the first and only one in our neighborhood to have a Nintendo NES. We were captivated by wonderment when his dad said they had to leave and go to the store. My bro and I left and when he and his family were gone we went in through the back door (which was unlocked). I played Super Mario Brothers and had my little brother be a lookout. They came home and we got out in time but my great grandmother saw us running out the back door and made us apologize to them. My friend said he knew something was up because even though we had turned off the T.V. we left the NES on. That was the end of it and we remained friends until I moved but I'd say that was way too far. You should call it "Lust Of Gaming".

[Kevincal]

When I was a kid, I used to fake sick to my mom all of the time to stay home and play video games. :D I tried so hard to fake sick sometimes that I actually made myself literally sick! lol

[rbudrick]

I spent close to $2500 to find the origin of a Japanese document that explained how to copy Famicom Disks. I really wanted an original of this document because I wanted to see how to make the circuits and the only copy of it online was some crappy scanned photocopied .jpgs). I also wanted to translate it to English, and I was basically going to attempt to learn Japanese as I did it. I wanted to give something back to the community, and since almost no one was working on FDS preservation, I figured I'd give it a shot.

About $1000 went to a MSX2 Turbo R system with Quickdisk drive, and a Sharp MZ-1500. Both systems had Quickdisk drives, which is basically what a Famicom Disk System drive is (FDS disks are a bit longer, and that's about it!). I bought them to experiment with copying the disks, but never got much around to that part, since I couldn't find any MSX or Sharp MZ experts to help me out. I heard that both systems can back up FDS disks, but I'm still not sure how.

Anyway, the rest was spent on mooks (Japanese Magazine/books...basically paperback books that are put out like magazines quarterly or monthly or whatever). I went on a hunch from "a guy" that this article was from a certain 1980s mook called Backup Technique. They are notriously difficult to find. I found out by searching Japanese websites for weeks that there were 38 issues of this mook released over a number of years. It took nearly a year, but I found all 38 issues. The article was not in any of them, though the author of the orignal article was the same in many articles of Backup Technique, along with the graphic layout.

Pissed off and nearly depressed with my fruitless efforts after a year of hunting these down via Yahoo! Japan auctions, I noticed in issue 11 of BT an ad for a sister publication called Famicom Kaizou Manual. After a few more months I tracked down these three one-off issues, and Eureka! I found the article, spent a few months translating it, and now everyone can preserve their FDS disks. Well, almost anyone. Everyone who hosts the doc ends up having the file go down. Bandwidth problems from the large file size, I guess.

So yeah, theres my pathetic story. :-D

-Rob

[Wavelflack]

I remember this one time when I played Quake 3 Arena on Dreamcast for like 2 hours straight!

[Ed Oscuro]

Hmm. The times I bought obsolete computer equipment off eBay for way more than was intelligent (stuff that never got used) to be used as game servers. That was pretty much my first real encounter with retardedness.

Next, the time I bought a copy of a $70 game for $233 (X68000 Akumajo Dracula; I have two copies now and it'll be a while before I offload one, if ever - not at that price). Or the time I bought the whole (at the time) Samurai Spirits series, and have yet to play any of them outside MAME.

[diskoboy]

I called in sick at work 2 days straight, to take a day off to go down to Atlanta, GA. to pick up my Galaga cocktail. The second day was spent setting it up, doing little fixes, and I threw a little 'Galaga-warming' party. :)

Oh - and I was by myself, and this was in the middle of July, and it was 103 degrees outside, and I started sweating the second I opened the door on the truck I borrowed, thanks to the humidity.

Fortunately my boss never found out. I got a new job since then, anyway.

[Gamereviewgod]

Definitely the day I bought my Saturn. The system was already on the way out at that point. I believe I paid a $100 used if I remember.

Well, it came with a copy of Puzzle Fighter II. Took the system over to a buddies house where I staying the night. Having never played the game before, we popped it in about 5 pm. Come 10 pm, we were still going.

The usual complaints from the parental units told us to go to bed, but we turned the lights out to make them think we were sleeping (oh how brilliant we were).

Come 2 AM, everything simply stopped working. Knowing little if anything about CD-ROM drives (Nintendo said carts were better anyway of course), we left the Saturn on the carpet the entire time. I'm amazed it held on as long as it did in the end looking back.

It wasn't completely dead though. The drive still worked in spurts, letting us get one or two games in before grinding to a halt. We eventually got frustrated and gave up.

It stands as my longest marathon session for any single game and the only time I've burned out a console. It was definitely dead, and thankfully the return policy let me exchange it (it wasn't my fault or anything, right?) and that exchanged console is still with me... off the carpet.

[PallarAndersVisa]

lets see.

I remember skipping high school chem class to go play Everquest 1. I would tell my teacher to his face that I was leaving too, I wouldn't even try to hide it after a while. Ended up with a B in the class.

Lately, I've been checking ebay for anything Castlevania that I don't own, and I've been buying a lot of it that I can't afford, with a $1000 credit card bill looming over my head to top it off. Now I'm living in 20-30 degree february weather with no heat whatsoever. :)

I pissed of girlfriends many a time by not paying attention to them because of MMORPGs (Eq, Eq2, WoW)...usual stuff.

[8-bitNesMan]

I remember this one time when I played Quake 3 Arena on Dreamcast for like 2 hours straight!

I hereby nominate this for the "hardest of the hardcore" award :D

[mizarkgram]

I once brought a Virtual Boy on a hockey tournament with me - everyone else ahd their SNESes and Genesii... I wanted to be different

[Kitsune Sniper]

I used to play Final Fantasy III for a half hour before going to school back when I first got it. And then it was four hours each afternoon.

My god, I miss those days.

[Nesmaster]

Heh, I missed several days of school back in the day playing Goldeneye. I unlocked every code in that game myself, and beat the whole thing on 00 Agent, not bad for being 8-9 at the time :)

[Sanriostar]

I've lost 2 jobs, delayed getting into 4-year college for I don't know HOW long, and had the odd 'no electricity', event every so often. Don't do it anymore.

Wrote up about it in an old issue of Retrogaming Times:
here (http://www.tomheroes.com/Video%20Games%20FS/Retrotimes/retrotimes_64.htm#Power%20Off)