Feeling bad about the games I damaged as a child

[Luke]

Most of my paper boxes (snes/nes) were tossed as over time they started to look junky. My Atari 2600 games were my Fathers, so he kept the boxes in excellent shape.

Still have all the cases for my sms, genesis, cd, and saturn games.

Now a days I take care of the boxes I do have.

[Mad_Hatter]

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.

lol, this cracked me up.

[Mad_Hatter]

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.

Really sad to hear about that. And here I am complaining about a few games...

[SirGawain]

Man. If I had a time machine, I would seriously kick my own ass too. I never had anything that is super valuable, but cardboard boxes got chunked almost as soon as I opened them. The only boxes I have left are Conker's Bad Fur Day and Flashback for some reason

[Mad_Hatter]

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.

Yea my cousin did something similar to his Sega Saturn collection back in 97-99. He sold all of it to some regular local game store because he hit his dog in the driveway and wanted to pay the veterinarian bills himself instead of his parents. It was a nice thing to do, but I just wish he sold it to someone individually. He probably would have gotten more money, and on top of that, I just feel better giving it to someone who will make use of it instead of some store who will charge a kid an arm and a leg.

This is actually one of the reasons I bought a Sega Saturn.

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

haha true. I was thinking of selling my Punisher for Genesis and buying a better condition one. I just can't do it. I'm sticking with my childhood cartridge.

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.

I had my phases too. For my Sega and Pokemon games, for some reason I wanted to tear all the labels off and put my own on.

After 2002, all my things are taken care of. All my Gameboy Advance, PS2, 360, and PC games still have the original boxes and manuals. All good condition.

[KalessinDB]

I think most kids (myself included) tossed a whole lotta boxes and manuals. I mean, I tried to keep manuals, but I know I never kept cardboard NES/SNES boxes (never had a Genesis growing up -- kid across the street had it).

Moot point really, I also was stupid and sold my collections ("upgraded" my nes to a snes, don't remember why/when I got rid of the snes).

My collection is mostly in decent shape as far as labels go -- mostly. A few ripped/dinged, a few have rental stickers on a portion of them, but the overwhelming majority you can at least SEE the art and understand what it's supposed to look like, and that's good enough for me. If I find an "upgraded" version in a lot, or for a reeeeeeally good price, I might switch it out, but I'm certainly not going out of my way to do it. I've almost finished getting all my games in UGCs, next step after that is that I'm going to start cleaning my carts inside and out, so at the very least I should get the handful of stickers off and the majority of the sharpie, if not all of it.

[TSTR]

As I mentioned, boxes never held much weight with me (except for the plastic Genny cases). Manuals and labels got kept in good shape though. How else was I gonna know what the game was, or how to play it?

I was also thinking this would be a fun thread if the title was "Feeling bad about the games that damaged me as a child."

[Mad_Hatter]

I was also thinking this would be a fun thread if the title was "Feeling bad about the games that damaged me as a child."

lol, done.

[Mad_Hatter]

Thanks for the posts guys. It is really putting things into perspective and making me feel better.

Here are some pointers if any of you were feeling as bad as I was. I honestly do feel better now, no lie.

1) They are just games. Boxes, condition didn't matter when you were a child, they shouldn't matter now. If you can play it, you should be happy. Pop the game in, and see how you really feel about not having the game in pristine condition with the box.

2) Draw the line between collecting and investing. It is nice to know that your games in good condition are worthy if you ever have to sell them down the line. Personally though, I am never ever going to sell my video game collection. I am always going to keep them. So their dollar value and condition is not really that important to me if I really think about it.

[Luke]

. Manuals and labels got kept in good shape though. How else was I gonna know what the game was, or how to play it?

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Enter the Hour Long tutorial.