I love retro games, I always have. Despite my childhood being the 2010’s, I grew up with a gameboy color, and I would emulate GBA, GB, and even N64 games on my crappy android I had at the time.
Because of the power of emulation I was able to grow up with classics like Silent Hill, Megaman Zero, Pokemon Crystal, Metal Gear, so on and so forth. But when I turned 16, and I was able to get my first job, I became especially interested in collecting games, games that I actually like to play. But now that i’m older and I actually have financial responsibilities, and don’t even get me started on how the retro gaming market just continues to inflate, its getting to a point where its just not feasible for me to continue collecting.
Silent Hill 3 is literally my favorite horror game ever, and I will never be able to afford a copy, or even if I did have the money to spare I could never justify the absurd price. I will never own a legitimate copy of Megaman Legends, Pokemon Platinum, Rule of Rose, or so many of these games that I really do care about and want to be able to experience on authentic hardware.
But whats even more frustrating about it all to me are the types of collectors that want something specifically because it is rare. The type of people to buy a game and shove it in a plastic box on a shelf where it will collect dust and never be played or appreciated beyond it’s box art. It is so frustrating to me because collectors of games, as opposed to people who actually want to play and appreciate these games and make memories off them and share those experiences with their friends, are driving up the market values of games to unaffordability.
Anyways I think I am going to give up collecting games. I still have a large collection of PS2, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, MSDOS, and PS1 games, but I am done trying to get more. I might occasionally shell out a little bit on the occasional cheaper game that catches my eye, but trying to get a lot of my favorite titles is a sisiphusian endeavor.
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It’s a shame that people like you don’t have a way to enjoy the classics as we did back in those days. I wish there was an answer for you, but aside from emulators there really isn’t.
Flash carts? Or, for disc-based consoles, any of the ways of loading games onto those consoles. (ODEs, hard drives, expansion ports, memory card slots…)
Lots of exciting things in the emulation scene these days!
Emulators are the answer. Collecting is becoming completely divorced from playing, and for some platforms it’s not a matter of becoming – it already is.
I have a pretty sizable retro game collection myself, both consoles and games to play on them, but I take it as a point of pride that everything I have is playable and sometimes I do play it. Nothing I own is just there to hang on the wall. Some of it is theoretically valuable, although I certainly don’t have anything sealed or graded, nor do I want to.
I think there is a particular kind of value in something that can actually be used. I feel the same about some of the other crap I collect, in particular pens and knives.
