HoshiChiri

Let's see... Atari 2600 Jr. Intellivision Channel F NES Toploader SNES Nintendo 64 Gamecube Wii U Master System Genesis model 2 Sega CD model 2 Dreamcast Playstation 2 Playstation 3 Xbox 360 Game Gear Game Boy Color Game Boy Advance- purple Game Boy Advance- pink Game Boy Advance SP- blue Nintendo DS Nintendo 3DS Sony PSP PSVita For a total of 24! I also have a Pong C-100. That's currently in the care of Atari-dna, who's working on repairing it for me. I don't want to officially count it until it's back and working, since everything else is.

Old consoles/games can just get quirky after awhile. My sister had an SNES once that wouldn't play Super Mario World. Anything else was fine, but no cart of that specific game would load at all. She took it in to the game store and they tried over a dozen copies! I'm in the 'good cleaning and see what happens' camp. Check your pins, too- maybe's something bent funny in there or something.

On the rare occasions I buy a new game on release, it's pretty much always the deluxe version. Unless deluxe just means digital stuff- I normally could care less about codes for some silly outfits or a gun I'll quit using a few levels in. Buying secondhand, I rarely bother- the effort of finding a reputable seller with a good condition and complete LE (because let's face it, there's no point in going LE otherwise) who isn't charging an arm and a leg compared to the standard edition isn't worth it. I'd consider it for a favorite game that came with something really cool- but if that's the case, I probably bought it new anyway!

If the Golvellius buyer falls through, I call dibs!

Oh, I remember this: It was my Playstation 2. My sister is a year older than me. When she graduated, I asked her one day what it was like to be 'finishing up' (as kind of a joke). She told me, very serious, "you're going to get letters from people. You don't remember who they are, but apparently they knew you when you were 2 and now they're sending you a check. I have SO MUCH MONEY." This was only about 2 months after the PS2 came out, so my immediate thought was "I'm so buying a PS2 next June." And that's exactly what I did. I got Zone of the Enders with it. I'd intended to save the remaining money for a bit to see what upcoming releases looked promising- unfortunately my brother was somewhat sticky-fingered at the time, and a good chunk of that mysteriously vanished. I spent the rest immediately on Shadow of Destiny just to have a game instead of a nothing. Don't regret it, I had a lot of fun with that game. When the laser started going bad later on, I remember calling the Sony hotline, knowing if I said the right things they'd repair it for free... the guy I talked to was surprised how quickly I could tell him exactly when the system was bought. Nice to have a 'landmark' by that purchase date.

Please don't say that- my intellivison has something rattling around loose inside it, now I'm gonna be afraid to ever open it! Anyway- I recently discovered I have 2 Earthworm Jim carts (no idea how that happened), so I grabbed them real quick- one has that sticker, one doesn't. The indent on the stickered one is shaped like an acclaim logo, the other is a standard sega logo. Looks like some Earthworm Jims got re-purposed acclaim shells... interesting to know.

Sounds like a great starter to me! I got lucky and got mine on a day when Best Buy had the bundle with Mario/luigi U in, during a bunch of promos that resulted in a free copy of Zombi U and $30 in gift cards. Which became $50 in gift cards because they mis-rung my order. Anyway, since you're decided now- make sure you get Rayman Legends. I think you'll like it. I've never played a side scroller with rhythm stages before, but now I wish I could get a whole game of it!

mbd, do you have a good used media/game store in your area? Perhaps you could take your system in and see if they'll let you borrow some carts/cables to pinpoint the issue with your toploader. It could just be you have a really quirky system, like the SNES my sister had that wouldn't play Super Mario World- just Super Mario World. Anything else was fine.

I think it has more to do with the bad screens... I don't play my game gear much because the ghosting makes it too hard to follow a lot of the time, so as a result I don't collect much for it. (Is there some sort of game gear adapter for a console, ala Super Game Boy? I'd love one!) I'm at a point in my collecting where I'm usually after specific titles, so Ebay tends to be my friend. It's far easier to check everyday amongst the available copies of what I want, then scrounge around the local secondhand shops hoping for good luck. It does not help that I live in a 'nerd-heavy' area, so there's a lot of competition. Plus prices tend to be higher due to knowledgeable sellers. On the plus side, it does mean an excellent local selection if I'm willing to settle for fair prices instead of deals. I tend to watch the Best Offer auction a bit more closely than other buy it nows... it's a little rare, but if you see someone's sat on the game for a few months, you can try to talk them down. This is doubly useful if you don't need everything they're selling- sometimes if you say you only want the case/the insert/a specific game in a lot, you can get them to sell it separately for less. (I'm super excited because someone finally agreed to sell me the case for their copy of Lunar: the Sliver Star. After 14 years, my copy will be complete!)

Dodge 'em! (I just like that name, it sounds silly)

I'm not super interested in the multicart, but I would be interested in another stand-alone Pac-Man run. Assuming you did one, what would the cost there be?

I'm gonna go with the PS2 as well- it's hard to argue with such a massive game library, and it had great ease of use going for it. The built-in DVD and ps1 functionality was amazing in its day, and still handy now. Plus, quite frankly, I like memory cards over internal RAM- it was simple to move saves to friend's consoles, and the number of files you had was only limited by the number of cards you could get. The PS3 had 'nicer' games, but that's kind of to be expected- it's more powerful hardware, they can do more with it. It's just flat-out harder to use... you want to play a game? Ok, set up or log into your user profile, put in the game, go to the game icon on the menu, download the update (there's ALWAYS an update), boot up the game, tell it it's ok to save to the system... now you can play. Assuming you aren'y playing online, then you need to log into PSN. I hope you remember your password, because if you forget and the auto-login doesn't work, you'll have to go to your computer and hit the PSN website to fix it! This is all assuming you don't need to update the system itself- if so, you have to do that first. I'm not even going to get into the hoop-jumping for moving save files, assuming the system will even let you. I know it sounds like I hate my PS3- I don't! It's got some damn good games on it, I love that it runs blu-rays and streams various internet videos (VERY handy during Desert Bus for Hope). Of all silly things, I love that it beeps when I press the power button- it kinda bugs me that my 360 doesn't! I just really wish, when I come home excited to play a new game, it didn't take 10-30 minutes to do it!

I personally don't have a multimeter, but my dad and fiancé both work in electrical for an aerospace company, so I can get ahold of one. The unit does have the Holt Tri-head screws, which is the only reason I haven't had one of them open it up already (can't find the right tool anywhere- although I'll find out if they have any of those wire nuts to jury-rig one.) Right now it's been put aside for a bit while we finish prepping for PAX Prime... after that you may hear from me

I feel very lucky in that damn near every console I've ever owned has worked just fine. Out of 30ish systems I've crossed paths with, 5 have had trouble- 6 counting one my sister had. First was that poor, poor NES. It has belonged to one of my sister's boyfriends before it came to her and then me. He had painted it black- with craft acrylic- and put Nine Inch Nails logos on it (I called it the "NiNES"). He'd also lost the original power supply and replaced it with something running on a voltage so wrong, it buzzed. Needless to say I didn't turn it on again with that power supply after I figured that out, but it was far too late. It is the only system I have ever put into a trash can, because there wasn't anything salvageable about it. Next was an Atari 2600 Vader model. Bought it without cables when I was like 13, took me almost 10 years to find someone with the cables to tell me it didn't work. I gave it to a local game store in the hopes they could repair or part it out. There was the Genesis/Sega CD combo I bought from some high school friends. I don't what they did to it, but the genesis was super fuzzy and the Sega CD needed to be hand-started like a prop plane. It died after a couple months, I bought a new one from a wonderful flea market booth that gave me a discount for letting them keep the cables/controllers (since I didn't need them) and bought the broken set for parts. The original cost was $20, the replacement after discounts/trade-in was $20, and Lunar: The Sliver Star and Vay were included in the games I'd gotten with it. Totally worth it! My PS2 was bought new with my graduation money, and succumbed years later to laser death. Luckily, this was still when Sony had to fix lasers for free, so I sent it in and it's still going strong today! It's the oldest system I've got that wasn't bought secondhand. Lastly is the Pong C-100 I got just recently. I have no idea what's wrong with it. I found a schematic online, if I can find a triwing holt bit I'll get my dad and/or fiancé to open it up. They both work in aerospace electrics, maybe they can make sense of it. None of these are as weird as my sister's old SNES. She'd had it for a couple months and picked up a Super Mario World at Gamestop (back when you could still get SNES there.) It didn't work. She got a replacement. It didn't work. Third one didn't work either. Confused, she took the system in, and after some fiddling, they discovered her system would play any game EXCEPT Super Mario World. Seriously, they tried all 17 copies they had, nothing played- but they ran fine in the store's system. She traded it in for a different SNES. I'd love to know why that system hated Mario so much...

I collect mostly based on Play Value, but I don't often turn down cheap yard sale/thrift store fare. Some of the best games I own are "well, it was only a dollar" games. Lately I've been getting more things based on historical value or 'quirkiness'. Case in point, I just got a Fairchild Channel F. The games I have for it thus far are either not good, or have better versions easily obtained on other systems. However, it is still the first cartridge-based console, and those controllers are unlike anything else I've encountered, so I'm quite glad to have it! It's the same logic that made me spend $1 on a boxed Wolfenstein 3D for SNES I found at a yard sale a few weeks ago- I don't like FPS titles, but it's still a notable game. (and as I've discovered, worth a fair bit more than a dollar. :s) There's one other way games end up in my collection- Orphan Syndrome. For example: I don't particularly want to own Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose! for the SNES. It was given to me by its previous owner, and I never turn down a free game. I'd gladly sell/ give it to someone who wanted it if I ever met such a person- but it's not exactly in high demand. That gives me 3 options: Throw it out (wasteful), trade it in somewhere for pennies (almost pointless), or keep it until I find someone who wants it. I pick the third option.

Years ago, there was a chain of shops around here called Zakka... sort of an Asian dollar store kinda thing. When they went out of business, I stopped into one that had this random shelf of used knick-knacks, like the owner took the chance to have a yard sale alongside his closeout. I found a lil' pile of Sega CD games on that shelf. I bought Midnight Raiders and Flink, and left behind Make My Video with Marky-Mark and the Funky Bunch (low on cash that day.) I also bought a soundtrack CD for Genesis game Comix Zone. I don't remember what I paid anymore, but less than $20. On another occasion I found a Genesis in an Army Surplus store. No games, though.

My fiancé got me my intellivision... sort of. He'd been telling me for years his parents had one "somewhere" in the attic space above the garage, but no one had found it in ages. When it finally turned up, I jumped on the chance to fiddle with it. They didn't find any games or the video cable, but they did have an NES RF adapter around- I plugged it in with that and turned it on. The static changed, I decided that was enough to warrant going out immediately and buying the first game I could find in my local game store (which was a CIB Astrosmash). Turned out it worked perfectly, so I took it home for a good cleaning (it was awfully dusty) and picked up a new F-plug cable and a RF/F-plug adapter for it. When I told him it was ready to go back, he said his parents hadn't even noticed it was gone, so I might as well not mention I have it. They still haven't said anything (although quite frankly, I doubt they'd care.) They did bring me about a dozen or so games they found later, and the voice module. Nothing boxed or in especially good shape, but all working- and who'd ever complain about free games? He also bought me my Nintendo DS for Christmas- back when they released those limited Nintendogs bundle, he managed to get the last pink one in our county. Of all the nerdy girls I knew online at the time who asked for one, I was the only one who got it. I actually had a couple offers for it over the next spring, until the DS lite was announced. (He'd also made it a point to tell me not to "go crazy" for Christmas, so I wouldn't out-gift him that year.) His crowing achievement though, was my Xbox 360. It was also a Christmas present, but wasn't content to just give it to me- he said I'd 'love and hate him' for this one. He got ahold of a 4 foot tall, 3 foot around box full of bubble wrap. He then opened the 360 and wrapped everything individually (including the batteries for the controller). He spread these throughout the box, then put the actual 360 box on top (wrapped, with a couple of rocks in it for weight.) It took an HOUR to get through all that bubble wrap and find everything. Well, almost- he'd kept the power cable aside as my birthday present, but decided not to make me wait the two weeks to have that. On top of that, he did all this knowing I'd been focusing on saving up for a PS4, and therefore had no shelf space for a 360 or games I knew I wanted for it. It took a week of system shuffling to make room for it, and another week to get a game list together. Once I had it set up right, I loved it- but he was right, I was kinda mad at him for springing it on me so suddenly!

Hello! I'm hoping some of the fine folks here can help me out- I recently acquired an Atari Pong console (C-100 model). It was dirty and untested, and not surprisingly, doesn't work. I get no sound and no playfield, just some colored bars. I have it hooked up via batteries (brand new) and a coaxial/f-plug adapter running through a a/b manual coaxial switcher. You can see it on the right side in the photo. Now, the video cable is definitely damaged- the rubber is stripped away in places, exposing a metal wire mesh that is broken in 1 place. Would this possibly be the only problem, or is the lack of any sounds/paddles/anything a sign that this one's just too far gone? Please keep in mind that I'm a fairly new entrant to the vintage collecting world, and I've never actually repaired a system before... thoughts on people I could go to in person for repairs and info would be appreciated! (I'm in the Puget Sound area.)