In the final installment of Save State, Dan Taipua gets right to brass tacks. Dan lays out the five key elements any video game collector will need to create and maintain a video game collection. Heed his words well.
5. Into The Wild
If you want to collect old video games, the easiest way to start is to already have some. As a beginner’s guide, check your lounge, bedroom and garage. If that doesn’t pan out, or you want to expand, you’ll have to go into the world and find some.
TradeMe is a fine place to start but it has a few drawbacks: 1) It’s so easy to use that it’s crowded with other buyers, so the odds of a cheap find are pretty slim 2) The odds of finding a really rare piece are diminished by time, as they’ve been filtered through the site over time. The best bet is also the most fun – digging in secondhand stores, pawn shops and garage sales. Charity shops are good for finding boxed consoles that have lived at a grandparent’s house past their use, while pawn shops like Cash Converters in particular excel in portable games.
The best, cheapest way to find old games? Ask around. Most people have lives that don’t require electronic toys from 20+ years ago and are quite happy, or happily indifferent enough, to give them away. In the past year I’ve been given a PS1 and PSP from friends – proud taonga that now live in their same boxes but inside my garage.
4. Bootlegs
If you can’t find the real thing, you can definitely find the not the real thing instead. Counterfeit or ‘clone’ consoles and games are cheap and widely attainable on AliExpress, ebay and even Amazon – and the savings will soak up the heavy shipping costs. Some people look down their noses at crime, fraud, piracy and illegal trade, but these are mores for people that haven’t spent a year trying to find a region-free loader for their GameCube.
If you’re a serious collector, bootlegs are a decent stop-gap in your collection – they’ll let you play the games you already have while you look for an original console, and can sometimes provide spare parts like controllers or AV ports. Bootleg consoles are always a better option than emulators which, while free to download and crime with, can suffer from performance issues.
3. Cleaning
Remember blowing on your Nintendo cartridges because they wouldn’t work and they’d make the screen flash on and off? What you were really doing is coating the circuits of the game in a fine coat of mouth-temperature spittle, which gave the cartridge temporary conductivity but eventually gave it a layer of rust and human grime. Good one, child you.
A basic cleaning kit will consist of:
- Air Duster, available at computer stores or somewhere like Mighty Ape
- Isopropyl Alcohol, found at any chemist or online
- Cotton Buds, found in your bathroom
- Blow the carts with the can of happy gas, then rub the circuit boards with alcohol, and pay for the crimes of your youth.