Discovering a box of old video games in my parents’ attic initiated a powerful experience that has now become something very special to me. Connecting with past-days’ games has provided something far more than nostalgia. I’m drawn to the period and devices that brought gaming into my life. Revisiting the material I experienced, instead of just recalling past events, has given me a deeper and fiercer appreciation for what it means to preserve the gaming history I hold dear. And through that special connection, I now share a world that has become my life’s passion with a community of enthusiasts that just keeps on growing. Join me as I bump around in the world of past-day gaming machines and truly revolutionary works of art.
Nostalgia is the main thing that attracts folks to retro game collecting. The games most of us grew up with weren’t just slickly packaged, well-adapted movie tie-ins like some of what video games are today; these were ad hoc kinds of period pieces that sucked us into games for hours on end. For me, the best part of unwrapping a gift had to be my chance to unwrap a few Super Nintendo games each day until I worked my way down to the final system. My soft spot for what was probably my first RPG-style game will always be a part of what brings me in.
A treasured discovery was a near-perfect copy of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. As a child, I would spend whole weekends lost in Hyrule, unearthing its many secrets, and just being in sheer awe of the immense world that the game offered. To hold that cartridge again was, at first, no different than the joy of reacquainting oneself with an old friend after many years. The familiar metallic sharpness of slicing through the game’s plastic seal; the sliding of taking off the top half of the game’s box (a box idyllically promising the very adventure that it held within); the absolutely ravishing act of holding the game itself.
Longing for the past can be a potent catalyst, but it’s not just about reclaiming our youth. It’s about comprehending the artistry and imagination at the core of the old games we’ve nearly impulse-bought at every checkout counter our whole goddamn lives. It’s about realizing that a lot of games from yesteryear are still some of the best and most ingenious things ever crafted. Bound up in nostalgia, there’s also a deep, if sometimes inadvertent respect for history.
Nostalgia may give us the impetus to begin, but the very real, very addictive excitement of the treasure hunt keeps us going. Retro game collecting is big-game hunting. When you’ve got pocket change, it’s the equivalent to heading out into the backyard and digging up buried artifacts to see what you can find. But when you’re ready to browse a long tabulation of very real things that have very real prices—well, the chair you’d better be sitting in had better be comfortable because your ass isn’t going anywhere for a good long time.
The first time I ever discovered a rare game at a yard sale remains well-seated in my memory. At the sale, I found a copy of EarthBound for the Super NES, a well-loved game from my childhood that I remembered very fondly. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it there. The people running the sale didn’t know how valuable it was; they just grouped it in with piles of old toys, VHS tapes, and other junk they were selling. When they handed it over to me, all they asked for was a few bucks… a pittance compared to the momentous worth of the game.
What truly invigorates the hunt, and would impress even the most stone-cold, stiff hunter from Shakespeare, is the purest kind of suspense: the hunt’s outcome is always unpredictable. The same could, in fact, be said of any adventure. What’s going to happen? When or where will it happen? What will we find at the end? Tooling across the little game store in Pittsburgh, are we going to find it filled with old classics? Will it be that one copy of the game we’re going to lay hands on? What if there are any number of those games to be had? That we might seek out any number of these adventures is productive of the basic incredulity that keeps us on track. It’s too bad, I think, that the hunting of old games doesn’t in itself form the basis of a great work of literature—or even a decent essay.
This pursuit also connects you with the little camaraderies of fellow hunters and enthusiasts. It forges Elks Club-like bonds and friendships. You get to hang out and talk with people who, like you, are passionate about this stuff. And though you experience moments of Jeans Enthusiasm-like frustration (“HUH, you stashed away my dream game, kid?!”), there’s always the chummy kind of B.S. mixed in with it. At the end of the day, it’s all incredibly rewarding.
I derive immense satisfaction from gathering and preserving the vintage games I grew up with for a simple reason: I see them as parts of my living history. I collect these games not because I have a determination to keep hanging on to some idealized vision of my childhood, but because I think of all of the games that I play as being totems of some sort, as if they were coins in my pocket carrying good luck. I have a determination equal to any twisted little old lady who lives in a house full of cats to keep my gaming memories alive long after this current life of mine shuffles off its coil.
Restoring an old NES found in a thrift store remains one of my biggest accomplishments. It was in a terrible state, blanketed in filth and muck, making it one of the better “before” candidates I’ve come across. It was dirty—inside and out. Its external plastic was scuffed, scratched, and marked in positively every way. Internally, it was covered in a variety of electronic entrails that somehow always manage to impress with their sturdy refusal to omegas. One had to marvel at this poor thing’s previous life. It was certainly much, much more abused than mine had ever been.
Ensuring the past sticks around isn’t simply a matter of mothballing consoles and computers. Games are worth preserving for reasons beyond the fact that they are “obsolete” pieces of technology. And when it comes to preserving games, I don’t think focusing on what Jimmy Maher calls in the title of his blog all those “magnificent, intricate contraptions” is the right thing to do. Games are a way to experience technological thinking. They put the player in what’s sometimes an algorithmically perverse situation and let the player come to terms with what it would really be like to compute in this or that way.
Preservation in the digital age cannot be understated, especially when many older games have already received a death sentence. The police no longer operate with orders to “distribute no further,” but when it comes to the most classic games in our past — the ones held in the highest regard that have shaped the memories and minds of so many players — preservationists usually only receive boxed copies when the game’s commercial death sentence becomes known.
Collecting retro games is a personal experience. The collection you amass is a mirror of what you hold in high regard or outright love; your games have your fingerprints all over them. Kelsey Lewin, game historian and co-owner of a non-profit video game store called Video Game VHS, captures it perfectly in this tweet: “Your retro game collection, to some degree, is a museum of your tastes.”
My collection has many highlights, but very few of them shine brighter than my complete set of *Mega Man* games for the NES. Mega Man was my hero growing up. I spent so many hours living through his adventures, taking down Dr. Wily and the Robot Masters. It means something really special to me to own these games with their original packaging, the condition of which is very good, I might add. Playing through the newest edition of Mega Man: Legacy Collection has given me a chance to reflect on why that is. Today, because it’s impossible for me to choose just one, I’d like to walk you through my top three reasons why the Mega Man series means so much to me.
Amassing a collection isn’t just about gaining the items a fellow collector didn’t get; it’s also about connecting with those who have the same passion you do. The retro gaming community forms the perfect collecting network—it is open and even eager to embrace newcomers, including those who harken back to the old days. And the community doesn’t stop there. When Retro Game Bros was on the hunt to form their afterschool hustle into a one-stop storefront, they met up with a well-established gaming fan base not only on social media and online forums but also across a now-closed venue called 12/12 Games.
Retro video game collecting has brought me close to some amazing people. They’re as passionate as I am about the wonderfully therapeutic and nostalgic experience that these games can bring. We’re always trading the best techniques we know for reconstituting oxidized cartridge contacts and cleaning corroded game boards. We even trade games, and my current collection might as well be my resume because writing about these games is the way I pay my bills.
Being in the vintage gaming community brings with it the chance to show classic games to a new generation. When I think about why I love “retro” games, it is in part because of the memories associated with them. And now, I get to create new memories with another generation. When my nieces and neph—”game testers,” as I like to call them—come over, they sit cross-legged on the floor, joyfully discovering a virtual world like the Super Mario Bros. that I once inhabited. The delight and impromptu laughter that result are my antidote to the blues of a long day, without failure. And that is why I cannot seem to get enough.
The many reasons for collecting retro video games boil down to one simple truth: it’s really a lot of fun. But collecting, like gaming itself, is also a highly personal experience. The types of games I as a collector seek out, don’t always match up to the types of games I actually play. And that’s very much okay. It’s part of the unique appeal of having a collection in the first place. I do happen to play many, if not most, of the games I’ve managed to amass. I’ve got “classics” like Super Mario Bros. that I can pick up and play at a moment’s notice, as well as “complete-in-the-box” (CIB) experiences like the Famicom Disk System version of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
