This short feature on game collecting appears in the February 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Check out the tablet edition of this month’s magazine to hear the author speak about a selection of rare games, which also appear in this digital-exclusive photo gallery.
Collecting videogames starts with what you love. You remember your youth—playing Metroid in glorious lo-def—so you buy a secondhand Nintendo and a few of your old favorite games. Then you realize that as a grown-up with a full-time job, you can have all those games that you couldn’t afford as a kid. You hear strings, harps, a choir of angels. But that’s the sound of the rabbit hole opening.
You start buying anything you don’t already own. You never wanted Yo! Noid as a kid—even then you guessed it was terrible—but you no longer care whether the game is actually fun to play. You have a new quest. The original Nintendo Entertainment System had 730 titles; wouldn’t your 12-year-old self flip out if he knew you had all of them?
Soon you’re spending all your time crafting eBay searches (“Double Dragon AND Battletoads NOT Sega Genesis”). And woe betide the collector who wants the original boxes and instructions, which most kids threw away and which can now add hundreds of dollars in market value. Eventually you realize you’re missing only a few games that were made in tiny quantities or pulled from shelves—the same few games other collectors want. So you wind up in frenzied bidding wars where an obscure game like 1987’s Stadium Events can sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Because now it’s not about your love for the games you do have; it’s about your lust for any that you don’t.
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