Why do we collect.

[voltron]

are we trying to relive out youth? whats ur reason for collecting retro games?

[mr_intv]

I started to collect because I wanted to relive my youth and get the 40 or so games I had in the early/mid 1980's. Well before I knew it i was closing in on having all the games, not all CIB but that wasn't as much of an issue......I just wanted the games first and foremost. Now, it has escalated and I'm obsessed with finding boxes for my loose games. And after looking over my stash of loose games, I have alot of boxes to get, way more then I thought. But I love the "chase" of getting my collection to where it needs to be. I don't have the "variation" bug as of yet, but it's coming.....I know it is;)

[akator]

There is some stuff that I like. Sometimes I buy stuff. When I get tired of the stuff, I put it away. I usually don't keep stuff that I don't like.

Edited March 22, 2013 by akator

[+JasonlikesINTV]

I had an Intellivision as a kid. Got rid of everything in the 90s. Sometime in college I got the NES and Intellivision bug, but I passed on the Intellivision and began bulking up my NES collection. Years went by and around 2 years ago I decided to get an Intellivision console and some loose games. Very quickly I began collecting more and more. Loose turned to CIB. Common turned to rare. Some turned to all. Then on to variants.

 

Why do I collect? It's a little bit of addiction; a little OCD. I suppose the easiest way to describe it is that the system was available for years. Games were produced in sets by Mattel, compatible games were produced by 3rd party designers, homebrews were released by enthusiasts. Hardware evolved, sometimes successfully....sometimes not. Ownership came and went. All of the games, hardware, catalogs, boxes, ads, etc have a common theme in that they are part of a large set of items under the umbrella that is Intellivision. Hundreds, thousands, and/or millions of these items have been scattered about the world - sold, bought, resold, lost, found, dirtied and cleaned.....over and over throughout the years. It's like a huge old puzzle who's pieces are rarely joined together to actually form the big picture. I decided I wanted to complete the puzzle.

Edited March 22, 2013 by JasonlikesINTV

[voltron]

I started to collect because I wanted to relive my youth and get the 40 or so games I had in the early/mid 1980's. Well before I knew it i was closing in on having all the games, not all CIB but that wasn't as much of an issue......I just wanted the games first and foremost. Now, it has escalated and I'm obsessed with finding boxes for my loose games. And after looking over my stash of loose games, I have alot of boxes to get, way more then I thought. But I love the "chase" of getting my collection to where it needs to be. I don't have the "variation" bug as of yet, but it's coming.....I know it is;)

 

Same here, in July of 2012 i just wanted the games loose. Then .i wanted the boxes, thenthe homebrews.

[+SoulBuster]

Why am I collecting now? My brother and I collected back in the day when we lived together, we had a good 70+ games and they were CIB at the time. Then when we lived apart we shared the games, one would take them for awhile and then the other. Well once when it was my turn, I got the INTV II, system changer and the computer module with all of the carts, very few manuals, a couple overlays and no boxes back. I was lividly pissed and told him he would not get the system back ever. Then It sits in my closet for 20 years, until last fall. I decided that I wanted to play AD&D Treasure of Tarmin and decided then I was going to start collecting again. 6 Months later I am 3 away from 125.

[Janzl]

I never had the Inty as a kid, it wasn't that big over here I think.

 

I was just curiuos to the system when I bought one for cheap woth a few games. I tested it two years later and the first game I tried was Shark! Shark! I immediay fell in love

Wanting more games I started buying loose ones but then I got my hands on a few boxed games! Oh that look nice in my bookcloset! So now I'm collecting boxed games.

I have spend to much money on games recently proving to myself that I'm prone to losing myself into collecting. I really have to call myself to a halt.

At the moment I am auto-mutalating myself with bacon as a punishment!

 

Homebrews, bought both D2k and Carol this year. These games are produced with so much love, game and packaging, that I am now crying over all the homebrews I missed out on. Especially King otm, Space Patrol, and Yogi.

 

So there you have... This is why I collect

[mojotv67]

I started collecting retro games mostly because of nostalgia. I never had an Intellivision when I was a kid but spent many a days at the local retail store display waiting my turn to play baseball/football/etc. Graphically it was so much better than Atari it just blew me away. During the video game crash I started picking up a lot of fire-sale systems - Emerson Arcadia, TI-99/4a, Atari 800, XE. Sadly I ended up selling those when I started college but then the Sega Genesis came out and it got me back into video games (I still have that system). Four years ago I picked up a 3DO and that feeling gave me the bug and I started collecting older systems. Once I bought my first lot of 9 Intellivision games, it was the system that struck a special chord in my heart. Little did I know what I was in for with all the different model systems, games that I'd never heard of, variants of all sorts... and doing so brings me joy.

[Algus]

I never really started "collecting". I got my NES when I was 5 and I've just never stopped buying games for it. I did start venturing out to stuff I never had as a kid in college. I know this sounds stupid but I once had a dream that I'd bought a Genesis and when I woke up, I realized I could absolutely buy a Genesis if I wanted to.

 

I suppose the hobby aspect of it really hooked me around 2008 when I bought my first 2600. I was to young for the atari so I bought it purely out of interest in retro gaming. That led to interest in the Colecovision and Intellivision and here I am.

Edited March 22, 2013 by Algus

[B0B 1ob1aw]

Why do I collect? I guess there are a lot of reasons.

 

I did have an Intellivision back in 1980, when I was 11yo. I kept it for about 2 years, and sold it so I could by a dirt bike (RM80 FTW!). While I always played subsequent console at my friends places over the next few years, I didn't fully get back into gaming again until the release of the XBOX360.

 

A few years back, XBL had an arcade area called "The Game Room" - which has all kinds of retro games set up in an area that looks like a multi-level vintage arcade. So obviously I bought a few Inty games to play. But they didn't have AD&D:CM for contractual reasons. Then XBL had "Intellivision Lives!", which I bought, but that version has no AD&D either. At that point I wanted to play AD&D so bad that I knew eventually I was to grab a console, and a few games, but this got held off for a year after we decided to buy a new house.

 

So this fall I started thinking about it again. I bought one console with a few games on ebay, thinking that would be it and maybe buy a few more games. But as soon as I realized the huge number of games available, as well as homebrews and the tight INTV community, it only took me a month to become addicted to collecting. I think it goes without saying, that people who collect vintage games in general are to a certain point reliving their childhood. Also for people like me who couldn't afford very many cartridges, this allows me the "fun" factor of playing games I didn't have.

 

For me this is also a very interesting hobby now, because I have never been a "collector" of anything - so the fun of the hunt is completely new to me. And compared to hobbies I have had in the past, Inty collecting is far more affordable. But the Inty itself is special, and I think we see that just by the cross section of fanatics here. I think the love for Inty, and other peoples quizzical reaction to it, falls into the cliche of telling them: "If you have to ask why we love the Inty, then you wouldn't understand...".

[vprette]

because gaming was art that time, today is business

[HunterZero]

Definitely nostalgia. My parents weren't going to buy me a game console because the initial cost was too high. Instead I remember seeing and playing the games set up on display in department stores, seeing all the games in the catalogues, and dreaming of being able to have one. I was lucky enough to win an Intellivision with Star Strike pack in in a competition (Streets Paddle Pop ice cream Lick A Price for those interested). Then there was the anticipation of waiting for birthdays and Christmas to receive new games for it. Many hours playing Burgertime and AD&D with my sister. Since getting a new game was a rare event, and because I was proud of the games I had, I kept all the boxes and manuals in good condition. So there are those good memories that come back when I pop in a cartridge. There were always games that I saw in catalogues and in stores, but never really played. I am lucky enough to have kept all my original games and console so no need to rebuy them. So a lot of the games I have collected are to satisfy my curiousity of what the games I saw as a child but never owned are like. I'm not a completist, but because seeing shelves of boxes in stores with their art was a big part of my enjoyment, I do track down boxed copies for my collection.

Edited March 22, 2013 by HunterZero

[Atari_Bill]

I started collecting in the very early 90's for two reasons....

 

1. Nostalgia & the love of gaming growing up.

2. It's an extremely cheap collecting hobby which will allow me to complete pretty much any system I'm interested in with very little $$$

 

At least one of these is still true.

[bennybingo]

I'm in it for the money!!!!

 

(or should I say...lack thereof! )

[AtariBrian]

I started collecting in the very early 90's for two reasons....

 

1. Nostalgia & the love of gaming growing up.

2. It's an extremely cheap collecting hobby which will allow me to complete pretty much any system I'm interested in with very little $$$

 

At least one of these is still true.

:rolling:

[nukeshed]

I dont just collect retro games, I didn't get an Intellivision until after I got a NES, and a Genesis, iirc.

I dont just collect new stuff, either, which is obvious enough.

I dont just collect games, I like game peripherals, and merch as well.

I just collect

[Alex.Pace]

I collect to create an unique museum to be visited by intellivision fans;)

[voltron]

I collect to create an unique museum to be visited by intellivision fans;)

 

I remember you said that in the past. im impressed by your collection. nice job.

[pimpmaul69]

I dont just hoard retro games, I didn't get an Intellivision until after I got a NES, and a Genesis, iirc.

I dont just hoard new stuff, either, which is obvious enough.

I dont just hoard games, I like game peripherals, and merch as well.

I just hoard

as you would commonly say, "there i fixed that for you!"

[mdoerty]

There are a variety of reasons that I collect.

 

I had always stayed up with Intellivision because it was my first system, I had almost all the releases, including all the INTV games, when the "Summer of Carts" rolled around in 1994.

 

While the main focus was bulking up an anemic Atari 2600 collection (50 games eventually exceeded 500), I also starts looking for the two Intellivision games by Imagic (Tropical Trouble and White Water) that had been pulled from the stores before I bought them. (I had a fellow student in grad school give me Fathom in 1988, so while I had never seen it for sale, I owned it). I then learned of three more games that I had never seen -- Super Cobra and Tut, which were never released in the US.

 

Eventually, I found those games in the mid to late 1990s. I went to Philly Classic in 2001 and picked up 4-Tris. I also sold almost all of my INTV boxes because you can't play a box. (Most of my original boxes were pitched when cleaning while in college at my mother's insistence.). I have stayed up with Homebrews ever since.

 

The collecting bug bit in 1994 and I spread out to other systems. I have over 30 unique systems and 1000s of games, including all commercial releases for Atari 7800, Odyssey 2, and Sega Saturn -- in addition to Intellivision. I have at least 100 titles for a dozen or so systems with nearly 1000 games just between the Atari 2600 and NES. So I guess you can say the bug bit hard.

 

Back to the original question, I collect because I Ike to play and because of the fun in finding things. I still remember finding my first cache of cartridges and thinking how wonderful it was. Unfortunately, because of time and technology, I rarely go to thrift stores like I did two decades ago. There is usually nothing there that I want/need/am willing to pay the eBay-inflated price for.

 

That ends my story. I need to get some pix to join the 125+.

 

Mike from Morgantown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[scalpel]

Proust's madeleine ^^

[potatohead]

I'm not into Intelly right now, though I think you guys will appreciate this: (And it's a cool system, don't get me wrong there)

 

So, I'm working on a spare bedroom. Need to shuffle some items around and out comes the pile of VCS stuff. I've got a nice restored and modded 6 switcher, Harmony, all the controllers and a pile of carts, bunch of original instruction sheets, catalogs, etc... from the time period.

 

In walks my youngest son, who has played on that thing more than a few times when we get it out to jam on near Xmas time. He's got a friend with him who looks, stops, looks again, lights up and says, "Oh man, you have one of those Atari things?"

 

My plan was to locate a few things I wanted to get quick access to, then sort through the rest, maybe repackage a little, etc... In no time flat, it was all over the floor! They were picking through the carts, and they called the Harmony a "modded one" and "very cool."

 

Their core experiences more or less started in the Super NES / Dreamcast era. (There is one of those on the shelf too.) We started talking, and I hooked the thing up for some quick gaming action. They had a great time. Never fails either. COMBAT ends up in there. It seems just about everybody likes the tanks. INDY 500 doesn't take long either, and so it goes...

 

So that's why I keep stuff. I don't collect for value. Many of my carts are in various states of repair. Some look great, others have a metallic pen marked end to identify them as the labels fell off or just degraded long ago. Doesn't matter. Plenty of the art is still there, the old stuff looks kind of old, and the real fun is in the playing of it all anyway. And it's a great way to connect too. We've got some common ground yelling and stuff while playing simple great games

 

I personally value a few things, like the Supercharger and the few tapes I have along with the Stella CD. That's always a trip, loading up a game from CD like that. But those are just milestones, or some good memories, or something really fun to play.