I'm 37 years old have been collecting games since I was in my early twenties. I've spent countless thousands of dollars on stuff I hardly played. I would buy anything in years past... and I mean anything! My "collecting" bordered on "sickness" for many years.

Things have changed as I have gotten older and what was so vitally important to me is no longer so important.

My father died this year and my mother has decided to move to a smaller home. This means that the handy storage unit I had (the attic) is about to close so I had to go home for Christmas and sort it all out.

I found four loose intellivisons. A couple of 2600 clones. Two 5200's. Two new steering wheels for PS1 and Saturn. An original Odyssey. An Odyssey 2. An Astrocade. Piles and piles of stuff. And hundreds upon hundreds of magazines. I really hated to let those go but I had no place to store them and they are HEAVY. I sold the whole mess to another DP member and I hope he loves those magazines as much as I did.

This was not the first time I went home to clean. My last trip I brought back home five nes consoles, four Genesis, two Sega CD, two Jags, another 5200, an Intellivision with no power cord, two master systems, an Atari XE, a 7800, a CV with all the attachments, and only God knows how many games and controllers and LOOSE WIRES oh my God.

I have several thousand games sitting in a friends basement. Lots of boxed Saturn, N64, Master System, SNES, Genesis, PSX, and who knows what else. I tried (and failed) to complete the entire Saturn and N64 domestic libraries and came quite close before I just lost interest. God bless my friend for storing them for me. What on earth will I do with them? I HATE selling on Ebay and I'll never get what I paid for them but I hate to see them just sit there until a bomb blows us all up. I have tons of games at home, too... lots of handheld games (why on earth did I feel the need to complete the libraries for the the N-Gage, Zodiac, Gizmondo, and NGPC?)

I have loads of stuff that I never play and am too busy to sell. They have become a great big monkey on my back. Why have 5 Intellivisions? 6 NES? God knows how many Genesis consoles? Why do I have 3 32x's AND a Megadrive 32x AND a Japanese 32x? THIS WAS INSANITY.

My current gaming habits consist of GBA, DC, and emulation on PC. That's it.

Part of my problem lies in the fact that I have no storage space. I live in a small loft in Midtown. Things would be very different if I had a large house with a BASEMENT... or would they?

Do I really want to be a 60 year old man with a basement full of old videogames and tons of duplicate consoles? What will I do with them? Stay in the house until I die and then leaqve my poor relatives to dig through the piles of junk?

Bottom line... this hobby can drive you crazy if you let it. Don't let it own you! It's far too easy to spend lots of money and acquire lots of things that take up lots of physical space. I really wish I'd kept control of myself and tried to see where I would be in 20 years. Don't buy for the sake of buying! Make sure you have space to store your crap! That stuff you buy today will NOT be an investment tomorrow!

Embrace emulation. It's so much neater.