Wednesday, April 6, 2011

A new blog approaches. (R)ead or (F)lee?

Greetings.

I collect retro or "classic" video games.   These terms have fluid definitions; after all, today's state-of-the-art game is tomorrow's retro treasure (or trash).  But for my purposes, "retro" is anything older than roughly the Sony PlayStation 2.  That includes the Atari 2600, Nintendo NES, Sega Genesis, Mattel Intellivision, and my personal favorite – the oft-maligned Magnavox Odyssey².  Of course, cabinets from the Golden Age of Arcades are part of this landscape; I'm talking your Pac-Mans, your Defenders, your Mouse Traps – those kinds of titles.  I grew up with these games, as did an entire generation.  Many of us simply look back fondly on the games as pleasant memories from our past, but some of us – the collectors – are dedicated to owning the real things.

I've collected other things in my time, I've known collectors from other hobbies, and I work for a company that specializes in collectibles (not video games, though).  I've found out that no matter what your specialty, the collecting hobby is a fun one.  You learn a lot, make a lot of interesting discoveries, and get to experience the pleasure/pain of owning a whole bunch of awesome stuff/junk.  The video game collecting hobby has an added benefit in that you can have fun playing the great games in your collection... or laughing at the terrible ones.  Us longtime collectors know: this is a fantastic hobby!

This blog is a place for me to share my wisdom (if you can call it that), observations and random thoughts about classic video game collecting.  It will give me a place to post photos, keep track of things in my collection, and provide me an excuse to think about old video games even more than I already do.  Naturally many of my posts will be focused on experiences building my personal collection, but I hope to cover topics that will be of general interest to other collectors as well.

Keep on keeping those classics!

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