The Ultimate Video Game Library up for Auction

Nerds writes "There's an auction on eBay for a console game library that goes back to about 1986. The seller has included all of the boxes and manuals for over 13 systems and a few hundred games. Everything from the NES to the Virtual Boy to the Dreamcast is represented, along with several systems I'd never heard of. Current bid: $15,000. " Its got tons of normal stuff (NES, SNES, SMS, Genesis etc) and a phenomonal number of games. Even a 3DO (when I was a kid, god I wanted one of those things... course now it doesn't even hold up). I hope you get a little jolt of warm memories when you read it too.

Re:Emulators

Yup... MAME. And it ain't gonna be cheap. I'd say a PII minimum.

http://www.arcadecontrols.com/arcade_examples.sh tm l

Legit?

I haven't checked out the auction, but my primary fear is whether this auction is legitimate.

Assuming it is, this is the kind of stuff that belongs in a real museam. I'd hope that whoever wins will set up some sort of public display. That way everyone can enjoy it.
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel

Some interesting info I got from AIM'ing the guy

For some reason I wasn't impressed:

ME: yo, you should put a picture up on that auction, lots of people on slashdot think you are a fraud
Baybuy1: nope not at all
Baybuy1: and ill only sell if my reserves met
ME: but why no picture?
Baybuy1: if not real how would i know names of all those games??
Baybuy1: no scanner or dig camera :-(
ME: why are you selling?
Baybuy1: just want to need money

So what do we learn from this? Apparently there aren't any sites with lists of tons of old games out there. And he really wants to need money???

I suggested going to kinko's to use a scanner, he said he wouldn't be able to before it ended... 4 days, no kinko's hmmmm

tony

Re:Perfect? What of Activision Label Death Syndrom

"Mint" condition has been kind of bastardized in the Ebay world. It now usually means "The condition you would expect if you purchased this item when it was new and did no damage to it between then and now". I'm sure all the coin collectors are up in arms, but that's just what I've noticed. But honestly, most of this stuff hasn't been manufactured in a decade. What this guy appears to be offering is the best condition that you're going to find almost any of those games.

-B

Re:Possible Fraud

Too lazy to log in. Any way -
http://psx.ign.com/games/336.html - kinda hard
for a game that doesn't exist to have codes and reviews :) (I've beaten Symphony of the Night on the Playstation *and* Saturn)
You are right however, he doesn't have Street Fighter on the NeoGeo. That's probably (read : definately) because it's made by Capcom, SNK's (who makes / made the NeoGeo) biggest rival in the 2d fighting game market. Street Fighter came out for the Capcom Play System 2 arcade board, *not* the NeoGeo.
http://cps2shock.retrogames.com/

For real?

Hate to say this but the guy's seller rating is zero, there is a good chance he's not legit. Besides this is a heck of a lot of stuff all said to be in mint condition, or so he claims.

I'd be wary...

Re:Damn, this guy must be in some pretty big troub

And why do collectors collect everything under the sun in mint condition and keep all boxes, manuals, reciepts, etc? If that supposiviely is so they'll still have value later as collectors items, then it would make sense to conclude that someday in the future they might want to sell it for all that money its "worth".

Its possible he's hit a snag in his life and needs a lot of money. Or maybe he's looking for a down payment on a house and has no funds available because all his life he's spent every spare penny on video games. Maybe he's looking at his priorities and is deciding that its time to let this childhood fetish go and get on with his life,
while he can still profit from it. From the way the auction is going, it looks like his plan is succeeding well. Still, I'm curious how much he actually wants for it, considering the reserve hasn't been met yet. :)

-Restil

when you were a kid!?

How old are you anyway, CmdrTaco? As I recall the 3DO came out in 1994...

mirroring now

I mirror cool/funny eBay items, like

Elian Gonzalez on eBay
http://elitemrp.net/ebay/humor/elian/ [elitemrp.net]

and a Can of Dry Water on eBay
http://elitemrp.net/ebay/humor/drywater/ [elitemrp.net]

So within 20 mins
http://elitemrp.net/ebay/humor/games/ [elitemrp.net]
should exist :)

---
Oh my god, I've been bitch slapped by Slashdot, You Bastard!

What, no Vectrex?

And where is the Atari 2600? You can't call a video game collection complete without the grandaddy of them all, the 2600.

All in all, this is an impressive collection, but how many of these games are crap? Quite a few. I would prefer a smaller collection with a focus on quality games.

Ideal systems would include: Atari 2600, NES, Super NES, Nintendo 64, Sega, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, DreamCast, and Playstation.

For interesting historical notes, include the Vectrex, Nintendo Virtual Boy, 3DO, Atari 5200, and Atari Jaguar.

Throw in some of the best, classic games for the above systems and that would do it for me. You can build such a collection on ebay for a hell of a lot less than 16 grand, if you are willing to spend a little time. Did I forget anything important

How timely...

...since just yesterday my wife and I bought an old Genesis and some games to relive those happy memories of 16-bit gaming. Streets of Rage 2 is pretty much her "killer app" of the console market.

What's funny is that in some ways, those old games still look better than what's currently on the market. Sure, there was only one or a few fixed camera angles, with repetitive effects and so on, but on the other hand the people and objects didn't have all of those damn jagged corners that polygon-based 3D brought us. Polygon 3D is going to have to get about an order of magnitude better before I'll give up my bright, shiny, 2D sprite animation.

Of course, at this rate an order of magnitude is just a couple years :)

Shit! And I wasted all my youth on girls and sex.

I guess i really missed out, eh?

Re:Damn, this guy must be in some pretty big troub

He is probaly needs the money to buy a PS2!

umm

so when do you buy/sell on eBay?

If you just joined eBay, and bid on my item, should I refuse to sell you it cause you have a feedback of 0?

If you just signed up on eBay to sell your item, should I not bid because its 0?

If the answer to those 2 questions is yes, then you will always have 0, therefore eBay has no purpose

You've got to start somewhere, just cause hes a 0 doesn't mean the auction is a fraud (although I think it is)

Im lucky people trusted me, I now have a feedback profile of 10, it would have stunk if everyone on eBay thinks like you.

---
Oh my god, I've been bitch slapped by Slashdot, You Bastard!

ugh

I frequent rec.games.video.classic, a once-great newsgroup for talking about videogames of yesteryear.

Unfortunately, the newsgroup has turned into a market place. 70% of the newsgroup posts are conssting of "For sale" and "for auction" posts, and the remaining 30% are urls to ridiculous eBay auctions, such as $70 for Pac Man for the Atari 2600.

And now it's on here? Don't mod me down, but this article seems to be more of a "Check THIS ebay auction out!" post, or worse yet, an advertisement.

If anyone else ever frequents r.g.v.c, you know what I'm talking about, and who Bira Bira and Sum Guy are.

Not that unusual

A few other posters here mentioned they have seen collections that dwarf that one. I'm one of those people with such a collection. Alibet the focus of mine has been mostly pre-NES games. In fact, I have a few pictures of my "core" collection up on my web space.

collection closet 1 [home.net]
collection closet 2 [home.net]
collection closet 3 [home.net]

A rough inventory, not counting the consles themselves:
Atari 2600: 475+ different games, 1000+ "extra" (duplicate) cartridges
Atari 5200: 60+ released games. 100+ extras
Atari 7800: Everything ever Released (60+ titles), shrinkwrapped, times 3. 150+ extras
Colecovision: ~100 different titles, 300 extras
Intellivsion: ~85 different titles, 100 extras
APF M-1000/Imagination Machine: 10 of 12, released,5 extras
Fairchild Channel F: 23 of 26 released, 20 extras
Vectrex: 15 games, Multicart
Emerson Arcadia: 10 games
RCA Studio II: 8 games, 6 extras
Magnavox Odyssey: 5 complete games, 20 circuit boards
Magnavox Odyssey 2: all 50 US released titles, complete, 150+ extras
Phillips Videopac: 66 of 70 releases, Complete Chess and MS Basic modules, 30 extras.
and some more recent items:
Sega Master System + 40 games
NEC Turbographics 16 & Turboexpress + 20 games
Sega Game gear + 20 games
Sega Genesis + 80 games
JVC X'eye + 15 CD games
Atari Jaguar: All cart & CD releases through '99, complete.

and I am sure I forgot something there.

Oddly enough: not a single Nintendo until the N64.

In some ways, collecting for these systems is harder as I wasn't able to uses places like Funcoland and Blockbuster to get the collections going. Instead I've picked them up from flea markets, garage sales, and lots of trades and ebay.

What gets interesting about collecting pre-NES games is the distribution curve. The first 70% of the released games catalog isn't too hard to come by.. Then it starts getting progressivly harder and hard to find the more rare items. For example, Most Atari 2600 games can be had for a few dollars, but recently a boxed complete "Chase the Chuckwagon" went for over $1,000 on eBay. For collectors like myself, things slow down after a while as items you don't have don't come available very often, and when they do, you are bidding against other collectors in the same boat.

The ones that are the rarest are usually the ones that (a) sucked and didn't sell well, or (b) were released late, near the video game crash of 1983.

And that doesn't even begin to take into account unreleased and prototype games. For example, I own two unreleased Atari 7800 games: KLAX and (NTSC) Sentinel. A total of 9 and 8 copies respectively are known to exist. In 5 years only 1 of the 17 has been known to change hands.

After the NES era, companies like Nintendo and Sega exerted much more control over the manufacture and distribution of games for their consoles, and as a result you have fewer unbelievably rare released games like 'Chase the Chuckwagon' and 'Quadrun'. The few unlicensed NES games such as the color dreams stuff and tengen tetris are there though and command the rare premium.

For me it has been more fun colelcting pre-NES games because the industry was so new and didn't have the rules that it has now.

Finally, There are days I am tempted to turn my back on my collections and sell it all off. I can't help but wonder what sort of adventure that would be, and just wast sort of price it would fetch.

.sig? I don't need no stinkin' .sig