In the thread started by recorderdude he states why he starting buying and building a classic video game collection and I thought it would be interesting to hear how the rest of us got into it.
For myself I was born in the early to mid 80's and when I was about four years old my parents bought us (my brothers and myself) an NES. In those days we had very little money so this was a huge deal and something I absolutely cherished. I remember playing Super Mario Bros and Castlevania II Simon's Quest for hours on end. When the SNES came out my parents did not have the money to buy one but my oldest brother had saved up from cutting grass, shoveling snow, and do odd jobs around town that he bought a Sega Genesis. Once again we'd play that for hours and the two games I played the most were Sonic and Kid Chameleon. In fact my brothers and I would start playing Kid Chameleon (No save feature) on a Friday night around 7:00pm and wouldn't stop until we beat it around 1:00pm the next afternoon. We even purchased a poster sized piece of paper and charted out all the levels as well as the secret levels and passages that you could use to skip levels.
From there my parents started doing better financially and we before I moved out in 2001 that had purchased a Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast as a family present for all of us on those Christmas mornings.
When I was 15 I saved up enough money to buy myself an N64 and I played that console more than all others combined. I loved it incredibly and of course my favorite game was GoldenEye followed closely by Zelda Ocarina of Time. I remember playing my brothers and friends three against one with their health built up and mine push way down and I would still dominate them.
I then went off to college and got out of gaming and as such missed out on the PS2/Xbox area. After the PS2 had been out for several years I did buy one but I installed it in my car and rarely played it. Around this time I sold my N64 as it had not been turned on for several years.
Several years later I built a couple websites and after they became popular a media company offered to buy them and I accepted their offer. I used part of the money to get back into gaming and I bought myself an LCD TV (back when they were brand new), I bought an Xbox 360 Elite as they just came out like a week earlier, a Wii, and a PS3. I would play quite a big but my playing came in cycles, meaning I would play nonstop for a month and then wouldn't turn them on again for six months, then play nonstop for another month and so on. This continued until about two months ago I was looking on eBay and came across a good deal on a used N64 with a couple games. I decided to buy it and that's when everything went down hill. I forgot how much fun it was so I went out and bought more games, extra controllers, and everything else that goes with it.
After remembering how much fun those classic games were I bought an NES and later a top loader NES modified with the AV jacks, and a Sega Genesis with the Sega CD add-on. I initially bought all the games I loved playing growing up and I know I'm extremely bias I still think Castlevania II Simon's Quest is the best game of the 8 bit world. After playing those consoles I picked up a slim SNES and bought all the games I played at friend's houses and then I decided to get all the goodies so to speak. I purchased an original Xbox, a Gamecube, a PS2, PS1, and a Virtual Boy. I then created a media room where I set everything up. I have a 42" LCD TV where all the high definition consoles are hooked up to and a 32" LCD TV where the standard definition consoles are hooked up to. The only variation to this is the Wii is hooked up to the 52" LCD TV in the family room.
Now I feel addicted to buying all the great games I either had or wanted and in the past month I've picked up a little over three hundred games. Since I want them to last I don't want any open cartridges out I bought a couple hundred of the universal game cases and put them all in there. I'm now printing off covers from The Cover Project so they look good.
Finally a reason I am collecting games and consoles is my grandparents. When I was young and we'd all go to their house the adults would stay upstairs and talk and us kids would go to the basement where they had an Atari 2600 hooked up to a 13" TV. The 2600 was long out of date at that time and my grandmother would go to yard/garage sales and when she saw games for a couple cents each she'd pick them up. Those are some of the best memories of my life and I hope to be able to create those types of memories for my nieces and nephews by allowing them to play anything they want.
Wow I typed a lot there. With all that said I don't collect to sell for a profit, I do not collect sealed games or consoles, everything I buy I buy to be played. If I buy a game lot and there are some really rare games or sealed games I sell them and use the money to buy several games in their place.
Now tell us your story.