Hey,
I'm a game collector from East Texas. My name is Wes Southern. If your from East Texas and wonder why it's so dry it's because all the games are at my house.

I got into collecting games before I even knew what game collecting was. While at RIT (Rochester Institute of Tech.) I left all my old gaming equipment at home in my closet. Well, At college computer gaming and internet gaming were the big things with DOOM and later Quake.

After finishing up and getting a job my parents said, "come home and clean all your crap out or it's going in the trash!" well, maybe they didn't say it like that but I remember it being close. So I went home and started going threw boxes of old love letters and clothes so out of style that just touching them could cause permanent virginity.

Well, I came across something wonderful! my old NES! there it was! I thought I traded this old POS for a quarter bag of weed and a Metallica tape in '88. Guess I explained why my memory of that period was fuzzy.

So I continue deeper into the closet.. Some NES games here, an Intelevision cart there. Then a box of Amiga Floppies. My Amiga! I remembered that somewhere was my old Amiga 1000. I had left it somewhere at home 5 years prior and it "must" still be here. I looked everywhere. I went to the garage, there it was! In it's box! I remember how I had sold my neighbor my old (and loaded) C64 back in 86 for $500.00 so I could afford some of the $800 the Amiga cost me.

I loaded it all up and took it to my new pad. Broke off my ass working that first resume job; Which is sort of like being in boot camp.

I only had a 25 inch TV and some old games.. I couldn't afford $199 and $60 for the newest games. I couldn't afford that $4.31 movie rental! I was bored out of my mind!

I hooked up the NES and played threw Zelda, it was WONDERFUL. I was young agian! I didn't cheat and it had been so long. I burned all the bushes, bombed all the walls. I was in gaming nostagia heaven.

I hooked up my old Intellevision and played some Snafu, "damn these controllers suck! I love it!"

So one weekend I'm out looking for some games.. everything new is to much for the guy with the car payment, rent and *insert more debt here*

So I figure I'll go to a pawn and see if I can score some cheap games. I find NES games for $1.99! Megaman! Adventure Island! Dragon Warrior! SMB3! I had just scored 2 months of entertainment for pennies on the dollar!

From there it was just a small jump to a weekend flee market and 100's of Atari, snes, genesis Colecovision games later..

.. I was a Game Collector..