Feeling bad about the games I damaged as a child

[Mad_Hatter]

Hello people,

This is a "make me feel better" thread lol.

Anyway, I just feel bad about all those games I had as a child where I lost/threw away the box and manual. And I had a habit of destroying labels to all my Genesis and Pokemon games when I was 6 years old.

I had TMNT Hyperstone Heist, complete in mint condition, but when I went to my old house, I found out my mom gave them away. I still have Punisher on the Genesis, believe it was cartridge only, but I tore some of the label off of that. And I had a bunch of Pokemon games that I destroyed. I still have Pokemon Emerald CIB, which feels nice.

I keep finding myself trying to find them on eBay, even though I know I should be spending my money more wisely.

Anyone else do this?

[prfsnl_gmr]

I have a couple games with torn labels. (Double Dragon (NES) and Yoshi's Island (SNES) come to mind immediately.) These are games from my childhood, however, and my copy of Yoshi's Island even has the sticker from the long defunct "mom and pop" movie rental store where I purchased it nearly two decades ago. I would never buy games in that condition now, and although I am sometimes tempted to "upgrade" them, they remind me of the time I fell in love with this hobby.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Oh man, this is a topic that I hold close to my heart. My family, especially my oldest brother, had an eye for future collectibles. He would by games that would eventually go for money down the line, including the huge assortment of Saturn games like Panzer Dragoon Saga, Saturn Bomberman, Dragon Force, Burning Rangers, Shining Force III and on and on and on. Not to mention some great Sega CD games over 60 Sega Dreamcast games and a slew of PC games that run for quite a bit of money including the Elder Scrolls Arena Collector's CD edition (which is all complete except for the box)

Thing is, we never could keep the cases in tact and our manuals usually went missing. What manuals or cases did survive are cracked, folded and mangled. The games still work and are under my care as I try to reestablish some order to the cacophony of this collection, but it is an uphill battle. Some games didn't live through the war including Dead or Alive 2 and Gundam Side Story for the Dreamcast....poor bastards.

[8bit]

I never destroyed any games but I did throw a crap load of valuable boxes away. I had a ton of NES, SNES, and N64 games as a kid but not one box to show for it. The NES and SNES stuff I simply didn't keep at the time but the N64 boxes I did keep really nice, organized and in mint condition. I think I was up to like 25 after about 3.5 years of the system being out. But then my house got broken into, all of the games were stolen, and all I had left were the boxes. I kept them for a while but I eventually I just threw them out because they mad me mad thinking about my house being broken into and the games being stolen (by a teenage neighbor I knew nonetheless. I didn't regret it at all for many years but I really do now.

The only other thing I regret is throwing away a ton of old gaming magazines that I collected over my childhood. Probably about the same time I was 15/16 years old and getting into cars I decided that my old video game mags needed to go in place of my growing car and rolling stone magazines. Big mistake again as I had a great collection of EGM, EGM2, Nintendo Power, and GamePro. Sucks.

[Hobie-wan]

Taking care of my things and being thrifty were really drilled into me growing up, but I did have 3 short phases of being unkind to some of my stuff. A few of my early Hot Wheels cars were abused after playing with them resulted in paint chips and such. While playing with them at recess, I had the bright idea to sand the rest of the paint off so they'd just be metal by scraping them on the concrete. This didn't seem to extend beyond the roof on the 2 I still have, but it hardly made them look better. Thankfully I stopped this pretty quickly and was more careful with my cars soon after. I separated the already chipped cars for outside play from the nice and new ones for inside only.

The second phase was when Outline silver paint pens came out. They have silver (or gold) pain in them as well as permanent marker ink. So when you draw with them, you get a silver line with a halo of the ink color around it if writing on paper. If writing on a hard surface you end up with a tinted line instead. Many of my previously beaten cars were scribbled on. I also got some other color paint pens as well. I did some minor detailing on Transformers and things. Some was fine like coloring turn signals on Autobots, some less so. I wouldn't say I really ruined any, but I still wish I hadn't done it.

The third happened with a few of my CDs. I really dislike digipaks. Sure they can allow more interesting packaging, but even just sliding them in and out of your storage shelf creates more wear and tear on them than a jewel case. If you drop a jewel case and crack it or break a hinge, you can replace it. Ding a digipak and you're just hosed. Likewise with the teeth on the hub. I actually got good at regluing the teeth back then when you couldn't easily buy new jewel cases. Anyway, I cut up a few CD singles to fit them into jewel cases. Thankfully I didn't do a terrible job, but you do have to trim them down to fit, so some text is right up to the edge and whatnot. This would be similar to rental places cutting a cart box to fit it in a UGC.

[BoneSnapDeez]

^ I hate digipaks. Most of mine have little tears in them.

I never consciously tossed the boxes & manuals of my childhood games, but they all seemed to get lost along the way. All of the NES/SNES/GB games I had as a kid (and still have) are now cart only.

My brother is terrible about this shit. He's not a collector and is always "upgrading" every time a new generation comes along, which generally means dumping his old games. He's sold some great stuff for pennies on the dollar and has straight up tossed games like Lunar 1 & 2, Grandia, Star Ocean 2... These days I try to get his old games before he does something stupid.

[irixith]

I have a couple games with torn labels. (Double Dragon (NES) and Yoshi's Island (SNES) come to mind immediately.) These are games from my childhood, however, and my copy of Yoshi's Island even has the sticker from the long defunct "mom and pop" movie rental store where I purchased it nearly two decades ago. I would never buy games in that condition now, and although I am sometimes tempted to "upgrade" them, they remind me of the time I fell in love with this hobby.

While the perfectionist in me would love them to stay just as pristine as the day they came out of the package, these days I tend to look at all the stickers and marks and dings as character. It gives the physical items a story, shows how much they've been loved and used and enjoyed. Looking at a game library full of cartridges with ripped labels is to see what love looks like.

/rose coloured glasses

[TSTR]

Oh god, I was a super moron as a kid. I remember making a shelf out of NES boxes I had, taped together with the bottoms cut off so I didn't have to open them all the time to get the carts out. If I could go back and kick my own ass, I would.

[PinkPanzer]

I game doctored FF7, threads of fate, grandia, klonoa and a few other games and they didnt even have bad scratches! Man I was one stupid kid, now the games are worthless..albeit they aren't even near the top of my most valuable games but dang what was I thinking..

Luckily I didn't do this to my panzer dragoon saga, shining force 3, misadventure of tronbonne and others..phew!

[Fragems]

I game doctored FF7, threads of fate, grandia, klonoa and a few other games and they didnt even have bad scratches! Man I was one stupid kid, now the games are worthless..albeit they aren't even near the top of my most valuable games but dang what was I thinking..

Luckily I didn't do this to my panzer dragoon saga, shining force 3, misadventure of tronbonne and others..phew!

You can always have them professionally resurfaced as long as you didn't use the game doctor on them to much. Should only cost 2-3 dollars or you can just do what I did and buy a personal machine for around $120.