Do you collect PC games?
Thursday, July 17th, 2008 - 9:33am
I have been playing and enjoying games since my brother introduced me to the new cutting edge tech called a commadore 64. Over the years I have amased a collection by default and by choice of lots of titles and its grown into more than I had expected. So I guess that makes me a PC game collector as well as a player...
Does any one else collect PC games on this board? Or am I the only crazy one?
Looks awesome, but no, and yes.
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It's cool to see those old Microprose and SSI boxes. I had a lot of them, but ended up tossing them in prep for my return from Japan. I have most of the games/manuals... but no boxes.
What a treasure trove
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Wow you are so organized! But you are definitely not alone in this... I pretty much buy any PC games that seems good.
Often I would get a game that I know I will not get a chance or not that interested to play just to support the dev.
And I don't have all the boxes 
(mostly due to space constraints, and the fact that I am trying to down play the amount of games that I have when my folks come by and visit 
)
So yeah my collection of games is huge... But I am no where near as organized as you are...
I am a sucker for collector's edition of games too and I keep all the contents for them. Actually, I stupidly actually tries to handle everything from the collectors edition of a game as true collectors items... For example, I still have the the T-shirt that came with NWN all nicely wrapped up in its nice looking plastic bag, all the artbooks from blizzard were never opened (I actually have pdfs of them that I look at... yeah... ), etc...
Edit: oh I see that you have a lot of the hint books too. Same here! I actually find reading them to be very entertaining. Esp. when I am unable to play a game.
I also spot your FO2 manual, where is the one for FO1?
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LobsterMobster wrote:
I probably have owned twice this amount in my gaming lifetime. I too have thrown out many a box over the years. And I can kick myself about 1000 times over for each one I did. lol
I too have been a sucker for Civilization limited editons and such. The Fallout one coming out has me actually thinking of spending that much coin to get it. Which is unusual for me, you see nearly 90% of the games you see in this picture were purchased well after they were released and sometimes from thrift stores. I am cheep and many times I dont buy a game until its been 4 or more years since its release. For instance I still havent gotten around to Half Life 2 even though I loved the first one. That way I feed my habbit with about 10% of the cost it would normally.
Yeah, I threw out all my old boxes years ago to save space. I had no idea that PC Gamer did such funky sh*t with their spines. That's absolutely wild. I think you'd have to have at least 2 VM's to be able to play them all.
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I am cheap too (and yeah I pre-ordered that ridiculous expensive FO3 edition already
) that is why I love gogamer.com. I love their 48 hour deals. In fact I just bought ARMA for $5 even though I doubt I will play it...
Decisions are just decisions, there are neither "good" or "bad"
LobsterMobster wrote:
Wow.
*Legion* wrote:
PSN: BoogleGWJ
I have a collection about that size, but I hate to admit that I actually am collecting games. I don't buy games just to add them to the pile, I pretty much only buy what I want to actually play, but I can never stomach the idea of getting rid of any of them or selling them back to a store. Every once in a while I fire up DosBox and go back and play some ancient gem like Frederick Pohl's Gateway, and I would hate myself if I ever wanted to play something that I had once owned but had thrown away at some point. Or at least that's how I rationalize it.
edit: Do you have two copies of No One Lives Forever 2 in there? Well, I guess if any game deserves it, it would be that one
I'm like a flashing lightning and a rolling thunder, I'm like a stepping razor
There's 2 Star Lancers in there too, but there's no System Shock (1 or 2). I find myself regretfully disappointed.
Psychotic Foreign Teenage Chicks are so hot. - Legion
I find it ironic anytime a healthy vaccinated person bitches about science...on the internet. - MaverickDago
Sadly I no longer have any of the boxes to my PC games due to space reasons. Having moved back in with my parents I went from a whole house worth of stuff to one bed plus some attic storage space. But, I do have my games well organized in binders.
Crappy cellphone camera photo:
Each is a double binder and holds 50 page. One binder is all action and FPS's the other is RPG's adventure and strategy. Pretty much in alphabetical order.
For organization some time last year I started archiving all of my games on to my PC. It was a huge undertaking and will prob never be completed.
I have 3 500gb HD's each with a section of the alphabet. In each folder I have the contents of the original game CD or if it was a downloaded game the installer. All the patches to get it up to what the latest version was at the time I archived it or last played it. I also have a crack for the games I do not play online so I would never have to take the CD out of the binder again.
Too bad I am too much of an MMO junkie now to spend time playing most of my games. It makes me sad sometimes as I feel I am a collector more then a gamer.
I do, though I collapse the boxes so they don't take up so much goddamn space. Of course, these days you often get them in rigid plastic DVD double-thick boxes which do not collapse.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
I had a great Game Box Disposal perhaps a year ago, but I still have all the games and most of the manuals. The jewel cases are currently filling a cardboard box measuring 13" x 13" x 17", plus a bit of overflow.
And this doesn't even take into account games purchased via digital distribution.
Holy jeez. I'm the reverse of that. Never saw the appeal of a collection, per se. I usually don't have more than 20-25 titles at any time, most of which are less than a year old that I haven't gotten around to playing yet. The rest are either given away or sold. The boxes and manuals tend to go straight to the recycling bin the same day I purchase the game. I was aching for digital distribution before it even existed.
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What else can you do with them? Throw/give them away?
I just feel so lucky that we switched to DVD boxes over here long ago...
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Nice. I've got a similar look to my shelves. You are not alone.
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lol
You know to this day I have never played either of those games (system shock). I know I know I am a horrible gamer. Some day I am going to have to find those and try em...
You know every gamer I think has one game they secretly love that everyone hates. I have 2 that fall into that catagory... Starlancer and Rebellion
Dang, perhaps when I do my next system build (in about 5 years) I will have to make sure I have like 2 tb so I can do something similar...
Oh my, my OCD kicks in again, damn!
I have the collection about that size I guess, but I don't have a space to show it off. There are some nice pieces like System Shock 1 and 2, but I only have CDs and manuals, no boxes. There is some special stuff in boxes though (Ultima Collection), I especially love thick manuals that are nice to read - Colonization, Arcanum. Lots of oldies on floppies (boxed) for nostalgia sake (Life&Death, including the surgeon's mask!). The few that are on display are the really nice ones - Civilization Chronicles, Civilization IV Collector's Edition (and yes, I have one more copy of CivIV - the complete pack with both datadisks), the deluxe version of Silent Hunter IV (a thick tin box with tons of goodies inside) and Paradox games, as most of them have nice boxes - Europa Universalis III and Rome (both collector's), Longest Journey Collector's Edition is there as well (includes TLJ + Dreamfall + artbook, nice). Similar to Arovin, I also have two 100CD folders full of game CDs. Luckily, I cut down on my purchases significantly recently, but seeing this, there is a lot of stuff I still don't have. I'd still love to finish Sid Meier's complete collection for the PC as well as LucasArts adventures, there's just a few missing pieces...
In short, yes, I am crazy as well.
You can't take the sky from me.
What are you talking about? Starlancer's great! It's just a shame that MS never patched the game, leaving it prone to crashing during some missions. If anyone plays it now, make sure you disable hardware sound. For some reason this crashes the game all the time and software sound seems to be okay. It took me a while to find this on the few forums left that actually support this game.
A blog: by me!
EGGmen - A European gaming blog *Now with added podcast!*
Interesting... Most gamers I met laughed when I said I loved that game. They claim its storyline was all carp. Personally I loved the storyline. Thanks for the tip on Starlancer, I was actually getting ready to re-install it last night.
Not crazy...at least no more crazy than me, I collect 'em too.
Very rough count... 380+ games on-shelf (since they switched to DVD cases) and god knows how many others in file folders (pre-DVD box). Pretty much all major releases since....oh probably Doom 2.
That includes expansion packs and stuff too though.
I have four different copies of the Baldurs gate games.
Still not quite sure how that happened...
As an aside -- are games over there STILL being released in big cardboard boxes!? Haven't seen anything (outside of collectors editions) in an over-sized cardboard box for YEARS.
I used to save all of my stuff. Any game i purchased I tried to hold on to and make sure that everything was in pristine condition. However, recently I have decided that I don't need all the clutter. If I can get a game or movie or any sort of media through digital distribution I will normally go that route. It saves me space, I normally don't have to worry about having a cd or anythign of that nature, and I can redownload the game if it has been removed. In fact I wish more companies would do what blizzard did and allow people with cd keys to register their games online, linking the key to a person. It would be nice to just turn on the PC, start downloading the game, and receive the full patched version that I paid for so long ago.
All that aside, i'm jealous of your collection, as it is quite awesome
.
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Man, that is impressive. I used to have a decent collection of older stuff (full boxes and all), but had to pair it down quite a bit due to lack of storage space. (Living in one floor home with no basement, a joke of an addict and a decent sized shed, then adding two kids to the mix will do that.)
I have still held onto my favorites of yesteryear, though. I've got the original boxes from Ultimas III-IX; Fallout 1 and 2, pretty much all the Infinity Engine stuff (Baldur's Gate; Icewind Dale), a bunch of the Sierra Quest games, Wasteland, Starflight, Conquest of Camelot. Some others. One of the boxes I've got is the first Quest for Glory game, only it's the very original release, which was initially called Hero's Quest before Sierra was forced to re-brand it. I gotta believe there's a collector out there who would want that one.
Sadly, it's all boxed up in my shed awaiting the day I have the room and shelf space to display them in all their deserved glory.
---Todd
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Nope not for a long time, its all the same crappy DVD boxes we get now. All the big boxes come from titles that were made more than 6 years ago.
Space is a big reason why I have lost so many great boxes I owned. Not to mention when my wife first married me and threw out 3 large crates full of old DOS games. Mostly I have been lucky to find most of this stuff very cheep. I go to thrift stores, shop ebay on occasion and hit up other older gamers.
I think I saw 2 of the same Tex Murphy games there, too.
Moo.
Wow that is an impressive collection. I have my own but I got rid of those big annoying boxes. I only keep the Small DVD style ones now.
I definitely don't have as many as you though.
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Guilty. Will post a pic of MY collection as soon as I clear a path to the bookcase.
"Do. Or do not. There is no try." - Yoda
Well, I used to truly "collect" PC games, but about 20 months ago it was overseas-moving time, and that's when the great box cleaning happened for me as well (with a few exceptions). Manuals and boxes for approximately 350 games went into the recycling bag.
...and since I could find nobody interested in 20+ years of gaming magazines, most of those went the same route.
Now all of my 540ish PC games are either in cd binders or their dvd style boxes (with the exceptions of the digital downloads, of course, but I always try to get a physical copy unless the added cost is outrageous).
The list of (almost) the entire collection: http://club.ign.com/b/list/custom?&owner=T-BirD6&mode=edit&&lid=100018
(there are a few titles that IGN doesn't have listings for
Pix of the collection circa Jan. 2006 (except the first 2 pictures - those are current-ish).
http://s91.photobucket.com/albums/k301/aus_tbird/collection/
I liked Starlancer too. The only thing that really got on my nerves about it was the constant whining from your wingmen and the people involved in your objectives because you never seem to be moving fast enough for them. That really was a big blemish for me on what was a great game otherwise.
That collection is awesome. I do collect most games and have a large number of PC titles in their boxes but nothing like that. Impressive!
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OMG... so jealous
Decisions are just decisions, there are neither "good" or "bad"
LobsterMobster wrote: