If you are a game collector, how are you handling this gen?

[Ziggy]

I think the idea that this stuff will just "inevitably" stop working sometime in the next 50 years or so is a bit of a falsity...

It's not. This stuff will inevitably stop working. Nothing lasts forever. Lots of carts have already gone bad due to bit rot. I even see pictures here and there of disc rot (though who knows if it's disc rot or user damage). And lots of consoles have already become broken (due to age/use, not user damage), some beyond repair.

It is inevitable all media will become useless, but not that it will happen in our lifetime. If you have stuff in good condition and work to keep it that way...

I'm not saying that ALL your video games and consoles will go bad before you die, but some of it surely will. If you're counting on nothing going bad before you die, you're gonna be very upset.

You can take as good of care of your stuff as humanly possible. That's not gonna stop certain things from going bad. What are you currently doing to prolong the life of all the electrolytic capacitors found in all your game carts and consoles? Also, the sad truth is that some things are just made with inferior quality. Majesco carts come to mind. It's gonna happen, there's no stopping it. At the very least, some of your games will break in one way or another before die. I hope that I'm wrong, but I know that I'm not.

[Xeogred]

I'm of the camp that wouldn't mind going digital with handhelds.

Other than that though, physical all the way.

[dsheinem]

You can take as good of care of your stuff as humanly possible. That's not gonna stop certain things from going bad. What are you currently doing to prolong the life of all the electrolytic capacitors found in all your game carts and consoles? Also, the sad truth is that some things are just made with inferior quality. Majesco carts come to mind. It's gonna happen, there's no stopping it. At the very least, some of your games will break in one way or another before die. I hope that I'm wrong, but I know that I'm not.

I'd agree that a certain percentage of most collections will go bad, but I think that the majority of the stuff that I bought new and kept in good condition (away from light and dust, in cases and boxes, etc.) should remain that way as long as I live and as long as I use it carefully. I can't control what happened before I acquired a cart or disc, but I can keep stuff in like new condition for a long time.

And frankly I'm a bit skeptical of stuff like disc rot not being related to poor storage, temperature conditions, dust, etc. I'm sure that bad pressings account for part of the problem, but most research on the problem says prolonged exposure to elements (e.g. light) is the biggest catalyst of the process.

[Ziggy]

I'd agree that a certain percentage of most collections will go bad, but I think that the majority of the stuff that I bought new and kept in good condition (away from light and dust, in cases and boxes, etc.) should remain that way as long as I live and as long as I use it carefully. I can't control what happened before I acquired a cart or disc, but I can keep stuff in like new condition for a long time.

And frankly I'm a bit skeptical of stuff like disc rot not being related to poor storage, temperature conditions, dust, etc. I'm sure that bad pressings account for part of the problem, but most research on the problem says prolonged exposure to elements (e.g. light) is the biggest catalyst of the process.

I'm skeptical too whenever I see examples of disc rot. How do I know how that disc was treated?

There are things out of your control, though. You can take the best of care of all your things, but certain things are gonna break down no matter what. Bad pressings of discs, well, I don't know how common this is but I bet they're out there.

Game carts, most people agree that mask ROMs are indestructible. I don't believe that, but I'm sure they'll last a very long time. Not all carts use this "indestructible mask ROM" though. It seems like a lot of Genesis carts have suffered bit rot. And I specifically mentioned Majesco carts for a reason. They were made to be produced as cheap as possible, the evidence is how crappy all those labels look today. They didn't use mask ROMs, I'm sure of it. My guess is they used OTP EPROMs, and they're all gonna die. Seven sent me a Majesco SNES cart to repair for him, and I verified that the problem was bit rot.

There's other components on a cart that wont last as long. They were never meant to be forever. Electrolytic capacitors have a life, and that's that. How long they last is a variable. The quality of the capacitor has a lot to do with it, and it looks like Nintendo and Sega used quality parts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolyt ... th_of_life

SRAM will eventually die. Every SRAM chip has a life span, and eventually they'll stop working. Of course, this wont render your game unplayable. And as of today, this is repairable. So are bad caps (as long as they didn't explode and damage other components). I'm assuming caps will be available in 50 years, but I'm not counting on the right type of SRAM to be.

Same goes for your memory cards, since they use a memory that'll eventually fail. And same goes for capacitors in consoles, only worse. Carts usually only have one electrolytic cap, consoles have many.

Any disc based console, all those disc drives will eventually fail. If there's a console that you use often, on a regular basis, and continue to for the rest of your life, I guarantee the disc drive will fail before you die. There's more than one point of failure for disc drives, and that doesn't help.

Looking at the SNES console, it seems like early PPUs are starting to go bad. More and more I am seeing examples posted online, where it couldn't be narrowed down to anything else. They're almost 25 years old. If this is true, and it continues, how many working SNESes will be around in another 50 years?

A lot of your stuff is gonna break. Some of it will be repairable, some if it will not. What I'm more worried about is, in 50 years, will I physically be able to play video games? Will my mind be sharp enough? Will my hands be able to use a controller?

[Tanooki]

I've been thinking about the original post in this for awhile, kind of not read the others to influence my thinking.

The truth of the matter is I can handle digital, to a point, and well actually a few points. One point would be for a closed system and that would be stuff like Android, iOS, Nintendo, Sony and MS too. You basically get a game, buy it, and you keep it as a long term digital rental really because if a license goes, someone drop support, networks change (like the PSN swap years back or Nintendo pre Network Wii/DS crap they shelved), you crap is stolen on an attached system(dumbasses at Nintendo) I have little interest in buying at all. Much of what I do there is buy stuff with gift cards, take a freebie, or wait for something to be like Free->$5 in most cases, rarely I'll top out around $10 but it better be and known to me as gold to risk that.

Now if it comes to something like GoGames.com, random game makers with stand alone downloads, and others of the like. I'm fine paying whatever up to a certain point since the maker isn't having to pay people to make, bundle, market, ship to stores, plastic cases and discs, etc to get to market. So in a case like that I can see like $30-40 or something but not $60. Those games I can still download and shove on a portable drive or disc(s) and it's mine to keep physically. Steam I dropped away from, it's DRM even if it's light DRM since you're stuck using their intrusive load up frontend with all its chat, online junk, trophies and other bs I have no interest in that forces itself to be there. They claim if they ever quit they have an unlock tool to detach the games, but that's just words to me, so while I have an account with some stuff in it, I erased it off my PC over a year ago.

As I see it there really isn't much to collect anymore. We're down to getting ad sheets if that, a physical disc or card, and then a clamshell. That's it. I don't see buying from a current gen collecting, I call it buying stuff to play, but that's me. So does it impact me? No. I buy to play and hence collect to a point GBA/GC era stuff and back and that's it, and lately just Famicom and mostly GBA. The wii for me was a disappointment, sold it a few months ago and everything but 2 games (mp trilogy steelbook and indiana jones) and I may just part them out yet anyway. I have no emotional or even long term replay value interest to play stuff again from the Wii period(PS3 included) forward again as the gameplay isn't made to be redone really anymore like it once was.

[Fragems]

Another bad thing about Digital is not only can the server/service eventually go belly up, but everything is usually linked to a single account or system. If you have a lapse in judgement and break their TOS in some way or refuse to agree with a TOS update they can basically ban your access to their service .

The games in my collection will probably out live the majority of their brothers however I know eventually as the decades roll by some will begin to fail. The good thing is there are plenty of emulators/repros out there so the game itself can easily be replaced. Emulators will keep these games alive for many centuries after the original hardware has died off as long as the human race doesn't destroy itself .

[synbiosfan]

The newest system I own is a Vita with 15-20 games. I only have a physical copy of one of the games. I didn't plan on doing that, some of the prices were to good to pass on.

I notice that I'm buying Everdrives and not buying physical copies lately. The exception to that is home brews which I try to support in general.

[Gamerforlife]

It's not that complicated

If you buy all your games digitally, you're not a collector. You're just a gamer. End of story.

[dsheinem]

It's not that complicated

If you buy all your games digitally, you're not a collector. You're just a gamer. End of story.

Nope. You can be a collector and have a strictly digital collection, including one that includes limited items, timed exclusives, various versions, etc. You can sell and buy accounts. People curate and maintain digital collections for games just as they do physical collections for games.

[Gamerforlife]

It's not that complicated

If you buy all your games digitally, you're not a collector. You're just a gamer. End of story.

Nope. You can be a collector and have a strictly digital collection, including one that includes limited items, timed exclusives, various versions, etc. You can sell and buy accounts. People curate and maintain digital collections for games just as they do physical collections for games.

I get collecting limited stuff like pre order only, digital exclusives, or even collecting certain games that are digital only(XBLA/PSN games, etc.), but simply choosing to buy digital versions of games over their physical, retail versions isn't really collecting. It's just people wanting to play the game quickly and conveniently with no thought whatsoever of collecting.

When someone tells me they've embraced an all digital future and don't walk into stores to buy games anymore, in my view they've stopped being collectors. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but those people are clearly just gamers now, not collectors

That buying and selling of accounts you mentioned is interesting. I didn't know people did that, or that you even could do that.