Sealed Games: Shame, Greed, and Hesitation

[TSTR]

If anyone wants to collect boxart, there's plenty of it on the internet in high resolution to print and display whatever way strikes your fancy.

If only retro games came on vinyl

some come on LaserDisc

[irixith]

If anyone wants to collect boxart, there's plenty of it on the internet in high resolution to print and display whatever way strikes your fancy.

If only retro games came on vinyl

I bought the vinyl for the music of Retro City Rampage a while back -- and it came with a separate album cover that I framed. I thought that was a pretty cool extra...can show off the album cover on the wall while still being able to enjoy the album.

[AppleQueso]

If anyone wants to collect boxart, there's plenty of it on the internet in high resolution to print and display whatever way strikes your fancy.

If only retro games came on vinyl

I bought the vinyl for the music of Retro City Rampage a while back -- and it came with a separate album cover that I framed. I thought that was a pretty cool extra...can show off the album cover on the wall while still being able to enjoy the album.

I love it when albums come with like supersized versions of the artwork in big poster form.

[Tanooki]

I don't want to appear to be one either, but I do have one solitary game with no intent to open because of the art and because I have the original silver release (Metroid) still with the game and manual from when it came out or I would and just leave the yellow box out.

That aside I like you have a couple of sealed up GBA games I never got around to, so one of them I'm selling currently and the other will be opened when I finish the game I have open now first so I don't quit on it (Final Fantasy 5 is sealed, playing 6.)

As I figure it you have a mix of reasons for the sealed, some were intent to play, some you just had more copies of the same game. Personally I see no reason if you could use the dough to sell the sealed up stuff whatever the reason you have it. Even if you want to open them and play them later, just buy a pretty CIB, they tend to go notably less than a sealed identical game so you'll have more dough later. You unfortunately can't fight the beast, too many sheeple feeding into the hot mess that exists now taking some noble stand would just be dumb. I suppose if you'd feel better, see what a sealed one sells for, sell it for like 10-15% under the average so you get some extra and another dude gets a little deal.

NEVER feel guilt for taking shrink wrap off a game. It doesn't matter if it's 20 years old or 2 days old. Games are ultimately meant to be played. You're being tainted by people with a sickeness in their heads that they need to collect untouchable perfection to fill a hole in their sense of reality. You I'm sure have seen pretty of the weak excuses for collecting sealed and all that trying to rationalize not playing something that was meant to be played, but that's their mental illness, not yours.

Preserve nothing. Play it or sell it so someone else can stare at it and use the cash to keep some for yourself and the rest to buy one you can enjoy without the impose guilt.

[Tanooki]

Open them. The older the games, the better. Video each one, and then post them to Youtube. That way you can hear the collective screams of all the people who nonsensically collect sealed games, and hopefully the collective screams of those collecting the even more nonsensical VGA graded sealed copies.

If this board had a thumb up feature like facebook I'd have clicked that already.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Whenever I buy a game I open it as soon as I get home. Usually while taking a dump. I keep nothing sealed. I don't "collect" or sell/resell games though. Do whatever works for you.

[MrPopo]

Take a video of you unboxing the sealed game and then licking it to mark your territory.

[AppleQueso]

[snip]

You're being tainted by people with a sickeness in their heads that they need to collect untouchable perfection to fill a hole in their sense of reality. You I'm sure have seen pretty of the weak excuses for collecting sealed and all that trying to rationalize not playing something that was meant to be played, but that's their mental illness, not yours..

Want to call it irrational, ridiculous, even utterly anathema to the entire point of owning video games? Sure, but how about we not go around claiming something is a mental illness just because it's a behavior you don't like or don't understand. It's a pretty shitty thing to do

[Hobie-wan]

Yeah, saying it is an illness isn't a nice thing to do. An irrational behavior? Sure. I have a handful of sealed things too, hopefully I open or trade them whenever I get to those games. But then I have multiple copies of PS2 Contra games for no damn good reason. I do dislike slabbing though. As I've said before, if you slab a toy or action figure, as long as it is a window box or a clear clamshell, you can still get a chunk of the enjoyment out of those as a statue/artwork. If you slab a video game or a comic book, you're locking away everything but the outer cover as far as enjoyment goes.

[Tanooki]

Nah I can't do that because it is true. You're just taking it personally because I'm attaching it to video games. Remove game, put in giant warehouse of classic cars. 20 huge albums of stamps. 200lbs of old vintage American coins. You get the idea. When collectings crosses a certain line of just staring at stuff and having it for the sake of having it and never using it is an illness, it's called hoarding which they handle through medication and counseling if you can't get control over it yourself alone or with others.

I understand it entirely. I had that illness at one point as I'd never let things go and the moment that caused me to do it hurt like being cut. I could slide into it again easily enough but I fight that need to do so and have for a long while with only a slight rebound when I got around 330 or so of the NES library back in 2012. At one point I had a few dozen systems (no duplicates) and a couple thousand games, quite a few with boxes, far more with the papers still. Having gone down that road before into game hoarding I know it's a real problem so it's not being shitty, it's being realistic and calling the behavior out for what it is...an illness.