Mid-course correction or mid-life crisis? You decide.

OEGE is just around the corner, and it would seem that there’s a serious lack of vendors actually dealing in retro video games. The thought occurred to me recently that maybe I could actually thin the old collection out just a little bit – open up some space at home, make a buck, and pass some of these games on to folks who’ll enjoy ’em. When I went to look at my game boxes this morning, however, something altogether different came over me, a realization of sorts: where collecting is concerned, for the most part, I’m getting out of the hobby ASAP.

First off, here’s a quick look at what I’m preparing to bring to OEGE on April 11th:

I’m getting PDF DVDs ready to go as fast as I can, and as many as I can (both for the show itself and for whatever initial wallop of orders I get), and as you can see, I’ve got a pretty healthy stock of CGE DVD sets ready to go.

This is where it starts getting jaw-dropping and eyebrow-raising. This is a large priority mail box full of 2600 cartridges, including at least one Supercharger cassette and not-so-easy-to-find stuff aplenty (there’s a copy of Atari Video Cube in here). The cartridges are stacked two layers deep.

All but six of my 5200 games, and all but about 8 of my Colecovision games are on the block, including Mr. Do’s Castle, Illusions, Atarisoft games, and so on. Also: Channel F, Atari 8-bit, C64 carts, some Intellivision.

Not a lot, but a few, boxed games.

What’s prompted this?

A number of little realizations, really. As Evan gets older, his stuff will be taking up more space. He already cohabits in the game room with me, and a good chunk of his stuff stays in there semi-permanently. I’m pretty fanatical about keeping him out of “daddy’s work corner” (where the Avid and other computers are), but as for the rest of it… it’s extremely naive to assume that he won’t be encroaching on my personal space even more in the future. 😆 We live in a very small house, barely big enough for three people. I’ve loved having my “man cave” back here for so many years, and I’m surprisingly un-bothered about it also becoming the “little man cave”.

As far as collecting old video games goes…it’s something I got into in earnest about 11 years ago, while I was living in Green Bay, fueled by a renewed interest (I say renewed because it had never really gone away) sparked by reading “Joystick Nation”, and by access to a great little shop in Green Bay that specialized – in an on-the-side, come-see-me-over-on-this-side-of-the-counter way – in old video games. It was in 1998 that I procured my first Intellivision and Colecovision from one of SlyDC’s auctions-by-e-mail (keep in mind, this was pre-eBay) so I’d have machines on which to play my newfound loot from the aforementioned local store. Thus was the legend born, if you want to call it that.

I mainly collected stuff I wanted to play, had always wanted to play and missed out on, that sort of thing. Later on, I got into buying eBay lots as a kind of half-ass bit of “army building” to acquire numerous titles I didn’t have – titles which, truth be told, would only interest someone as a road to completion. But I was never serious enough to really chase a complete 2600, 5200 or Colecovision collection – the kind of money required was never there. At some expos and shows, I’d find myself buying stuff because…well…it was just what you were expected to do.

No more. The truth, which I’ve been reluctant to face until now, is that I’ve never been an uber-collector. I’ve got a handful of really rare items, but most of those have been the result of lucky coincidences rather than active searching and the kind of fierce eBay competition that’s made lifelong rivals in this hobby. I am, on the other hand, an insatiable game player.

And here’s the bit that’s certain to piss some folks off: emulation cuts it for me most of the time. I have had many years now to play real 2600, 5200, Colecovision, Atari 8-bit, Apple II, 7800 and other games. I know if the emulation is “off”. And these days, with the computer power I have at my disposal now…the emulation just isn’t “off” that often. It’s enough for me to enjoy it.

Plus, there are little cheats like the program that turns Atari 2600 .BIN files into audio files that can be burned to CD and loaded into a Starpath Supercharger (which I do have). I know that doesn’t work with all games, but it’s a compelling argument for liquidating those copies of Home Run and Maze Craze, knowing that I can probably get some cash out of the deal. There’s more than one road that can be taken to reach the end of the “always play it on original hardware” argument.

It’s not a decision I take lightly, but having stuffed two large boxes full of cartridges today, I’m remarkably at peace with it all. And I have no doubt that a lot of it will be coming back home with me, unsold – to really get rid of this lot, it’ll take something more along the lines of OVGE. Also, please note the utter lack of Odyssey2 or Vectrex stuff for sale – two machines I am still interested in collecting games for when funds and the situation permits.

One of the reasons I hadn’t ditched the collection before now was all of my talking about wanting to share with Evan some of the experiences I had with this stuff. But the experience came from playing games with my family, often meaning just my mom – the tangible stuff like the boxes, while also powerful memories, are a sidebar to that, and in any case even the boxes and manuals are documented quite thoroughly on sites like AtariAge. And in any case, there’s no telling how little interest Evan might have in any of this.

Ironically, where nostalgia keeps many people from selling off their collections, I allowed nostalgia to be my guide as to what to keep: in the case of the Colecovision and 5200, I pared it back to the original small collections I started with about a decade ago in Wisconsin. For the 2600, I pared it back to the favorites I had already kept around from my childhood collection, and the best stuff I’d picked up since then. And homebrews: I didn’t get rid of any homebrews. That’s just a principle thing – the authors will see no profit if I resell a homebrew. You’ll just have to get your own.

It’s been a fun ride, but I’m sincerely hoping that by doing this, I’m making way for even more fun memories in the future. My childhood is done. I keep representative samples on display in my personal space, just for the warm fuzzies they bring back to me, but not much more than a cross-section. It’s only fitting that I should make room for Evan’s childhood yet to come.

Also, don’t mistake this for a sudden switching-off in my interest in old video games – nothing could be further from the truth (though I’ll admit to a little bit of burnout from producing what seems like a rapid-fire stream of documentaries about them in the past year). But my currency where these things are concerned is not in stuff, but in knowledge, experience, and the ability to put those things across so others can bask in that nostalgic glow without having to accumulate all the hardware and software that I’ve spent a decade or so accumulating. I’ll still be here, writing and reminiscing, and most of all, playing. Life’s just too short to try to keep up with all the stuff.