I'm Jenn, currently of San Francisco and formerly of Chicago. I am 26. I have long been an ardent, unregistered lurker at the DP forums. And earlier this year, as I distinctly remember, these forums had the greatest RetroDuo thread ever, which is to say, the last time I very nearly registered was in April.
I'm not sure how I first found the forums, but my friend ubersaurus (AKA Kevin) semi-persuaded me to finally sign up. I guess right now my main squeezes include import DS games, titles disseminated via digital distribution, and rail shooters. I also play a lot of DOS adventure games -- my current avatar of dubious morality is actually my Yserbius character over at INN Revival. Maybe I will edit an actual 'favorite game' in later.
As for collecting, I buy mostly for SNES and Virtual Boy (and Wii and PS2 and 360), but my real focus is 2600 games, including homebrew. I am also the proud owner of a Gizmondo with a near-complete library of launch titles -- but that doesn't mean that I am a collector, just that I have a collection, I guess.
I began collecting because I had very dim memories of some videogames from my earliest, earliest childhood. They say you can't remember things that far back, and so I'd become really fixated with finding these old 2600 games just to prove to myself that I could remember my mom and dad clearly. Sometime in high school, my best friend surprised me with a heavy-sixer of my own, and tons of cartridges from thrift stores. We made a game of me describing a vague image, then guessing from among the titles on the floor which it was. We made a game of it. I found what I was looking for.
I used to work and podcast with other game journalists at a company. These days, I am a very happy full-time freelancer who ekes by. As a hobby I keep a games-centric blog over here. I also collect vinyl art toys and read comics.