Anyone who has read some of my posts on this glorious website might have noticed that in a couple posts of literary genius, I mention that I’m a video game collector/hoarder. This is actually not true. In reality I should have wrote that I’m a game collector/ reformed hoarder. Yes. I can admit it now. I was a hoarder. I’m so ashamed. I had to own every game/ console even if I had no actual interest in it. If it was on sale or cheap on eBay, I would buy it. At one point I owned 18 consoles and a few hundred games. A lot of these games were unplayed and more importantly, still sealed. My collection was so out of hand that I had a whole room in my place dedicated to my collection (it seemed like such a great idea at the time), that my wife graciously let me claim. Once a week I would visit Gamestop and check out the bargain bins and buy a few games. This was on top of the games that I bought from eBay on a daily basis. Essentially there was a non-stop game conveyor belt leading right into my ?nerd room. ? Needless to say, in a span of about 2 years, my room was pretty full and I was proud. Until one day, a little over a year ago, I suddenly wasn ‘t proud anymore. It was like something in my brain clicked. There was no more happiness in buying a game. The joy was replaced by buyer ‘s remorse. It didn ‘t matter if the game was $5.00 or $25.00, I still questioned each and every purchase. ?Do I really need this game? Is it something I ‘m going to play over and over again? ? The answer was always a resounding ?No ?. Yet, inexplicably, I still bought them. I had to have them. It became clear that I wasn ‘t collecting for quality, I was collecting for quantity, and soon I wasn ‘t even collecting for myself anymore. I was collecting to see people ‘s faces when they walked into that room and saw everything. For some reason it was a source of pride for me. My family and friends ‘ awe-inspired faces were my motivation to keep buying, even though I had lost the desire to actually even play any games at all. They were all glorified dust catchers. Soon, even the compliments were not enough. So what changed? It boiled down to just one sentence…

My wife ‘s cousin had decided to drive 2 hours from New Hampshire to come visit us on a warm Spring Saturday afternoon. It was his first time seeing our place so we gave him the tour. Of course the end of the tour was my nerd room, as I thought it was the highlight of the whole place. I brought him in and proudly showed him around. After a few moments of silence, he asked, ?You have an Atari? ?. I said yes. He nodded, taking it all in and then asked if I had actually played all of these games. I was at a loss. No one had ever asked me that question. That ‘s when it hit me. I hadn ‘t. Not even close. Not even a quarter of them. I was honest with him and said no. He nodded again and said, ?Well, some people collect baseball cards and they just sit around on a shelf, it ‘s just that your cards are video games. ? There it is. That one sentence changed everything. You see, I grew up a sports card collector thanks to my dad. He got me started when I was only about 6 years old and I collected until I was about 14 or 15 (he still collects to this day). The reason I had stopped was because I couldn’t get past the fact that they serve no practical purpose other than existing on a shelf or in a shoebox. After that comparison of video games to sports cards the seed was planted; I had to sell most of my collection. If it was a source of happiness then I could justify owning it, but at this point, it was actually depressing when I thought of all the money I had spent on games that I hadn ‘t played, and in some cases, not even opened yet. In my mind, it had to go.

As with most decisions in my life, I sat down and talked to Caitlyn about it. She reminded me of the seller ‘s remorse I had when I sold my entire comic book collection (I was in a comic rut). The collection was mostly all Silver Age books (Tales to Astonish, Hulk, Fantastic Four, etc..) and right before the buyer showed up, a part of me wanted to back out. I didn ‘t and to this day I regret selling them. In the case of my game collection though, I was positive. Soon after our conversation I started the long process of separating what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to sell. In the end I only had 4 consoles and maybe 40 games that I actually played and wanted to keep. I took pictures, made a huge list of everything and posted it on Craigslist. After the endless emails from lowballers, spammers, and people who just wanted a game or two, I found 2 serious buyers: A store owner out towards Boston, and the other a collector from Pennsylvania, who said that he was going to be in the area and wanted them badly. In the end, I went with the collector. After exchanging emails back and forth for a few days, it became clear that this wasn ‘t about a profit to him; he actually wanted to hold on to everything. I expected the ?back-out bug ? to bite the day of the sale, but it never happened. As promised, he showed up on time with his girlfriend and we got to work loading the collection into his truck. While we worked, his girlfriend told us about how his collection was taking over their whole apartment (apparently they had a wii store display in their bathroom), but she was okay with it because it made him happy. I miraculously stopped myself from blurting out “for now!”, like the cynical a*****e that I am. After the last box was loaded, he paid me, assured me that it was going to a good home and drove away. I slowly trudged up the stairs, walked back to my nerd room and looked around at all of the emptiness expecting a wave of remorse to hit me. It never did.

It took me awhile to buy a game again. I would stand in front of the display shelves at Gamestop for what seemed like forever questioning if I was going to open Pandora ‘s Box again by buying a game that I might not make time to play, therefore starting the cycle of wasting money again. I’m sure I must have weirded out a clerk or two. In the end I always walked out with nothing, and for awhile, took it a step further and avoided going into a game store altogether. After taking a hiatus for a few months from buying games, I started reading reviews and watching Youtube videos so I could make an informed decision when it came to a game purchase. I was finally able to identify what games that I had an actual honest to god interest in playing and the ones that I didn ‘t. Basically, I became a smart shopper again. Admittedly, today, I do have a decent collection, but it ‘s exactly that; just a collection. The best part about it is that it ‘s all games that I actually like and play on a regular basis. What? You thought those Currently Playing articles write themselves?!”.

Double Dragon (NES) What?! Another Nintendo game?! Damn right! I actually play my Nintendo quite a bit so don ‘ t be surprised when NES games frequently show up in future editions of ?Currently Playing ?. I have a love/hate relationship with Double Dragon. I love the first few levels as it ‘ s nothing but face-punchin ‘ and baseball bat swingin ‘ but then it gets exponentially frustrating as the game progresses. Right around the 4^th mission, where you have to jump from ledge to ledge like you ‘ re godamn Mario in that ****ing cave, is when the hate takes over. I can ‘ t tell you how many times I ‘ ve jumped directly into a pit like a bungee jumper without the cord. I ‘ m just embarrassingly bad when it comes to jumping in this game. I ‘ ll be honest, even jumping across that puny little bridge in the 3^rd mission used to be a challenge on some days. I would play this game a lot with my dad when I was a kid and basically once we got to that bridge, he knew that he was flying solo for the rest of the game, as he watched me sink like an untalented stone over and over again, until the suffering was over (Ed. Note: I was too stubborn to just let my dad do it for me). Still, besides the platforming aspects of the game, (You couldn ‘ t have stuck with one genre, Tradewest?!), I actually really enjoy it. I guess that ‘ s why I dust it off every few months or so and play it until I get dangerously close to impaling my Nintendo with the controller.

Yup, just one game this week ‘ I ‘ ve been focused on a project at work (being an adult was totally worth the wait..<deep sigh>), the Khans of Tarkir release and ‘ . (drumroll please) ‘ preparing notes for our first podcast which we will be recording this weekend. You ‘ re psyched. We know it.

Chris and I had our monthly (or semi-monthly or really whenever we can get together around our busy schedules as international men of mystery) nerd night last weekend. It involved the usual rounds of fighting games, attempting to survive round after round of Horde mode in one of the Gears of Wars games, and Magic: the Gathering. Magic featured a control v. control game that warmed the heart of this “Blue blood” player who is on record of saying that Pacifism is my favorite card in the game. There’s a reason that it borders my portrait in the banner.

As we were wrapping up and deciding when to get together again for another nerd night and maybe the opportunity to finally record the pilot show, we somehow got on the topic of unopened/unplayed video games. In addition to being an unabashed noob filthy casual gamer, I have also been a cheap gamer ever since I purchased my first console, a PS1, at full price only to see the price drop literally a year later. I have not paid full price for a console or video game (other than a brief and dark flirtation with Skyrim when it was first released…I was unemployed and needed companionship…don’t judge me!) and often troll the 5 or 10 dollar bins at stores to see what deals I can get.

He talked about getting into Castlevania games and buying a few of them and then not playing them. I recalled that as I was digging through my games to find some two player games for us to break from Magic for a half an hour or so, I found three games that I bought for really cheap and now sit in the plastic in a closet in the living room. I found Mass Effect and Mass Effect 3 at Walmart for 5 dollars each. I bought Fallout: New Vegas for 15 bucks after starting and really enjoying Fallout 3, but not finishing that one, either. That’s not even counting the aforementioned Skyrim that I bought and invested far too much time in initially and now sits in the same closet while my orc archer sits in his home in some village, all of his exploits surely forgotten by now or the dozens of Steam games that I don’t even remember buying because they happened during the euphoric fog of a Summer or Winter sale. I buy these games, play the hell out of them for a time, and then put them off to the side for the next new and shiny (at least to me, by the time I purchase them, they are at least a year old) toy. Sometimes, they don’t even make it out of the wrapper or get installed on the computer.

So, what is a working father of three with a writing habit on the side to do to combat this phenomenon? By the time the kids go to bed and I can play the games, Christine has either co-opted the television (though she’s been watching more upstairs in the bedroom lately) or I’m so tired and brain dead that all I can do is match three in Marvel Puzzle Quest or play Hearthstone with the other noobs at my level in Casual setting. Is there anybody else out there with this problem? How do you carve out the time necessary to enjoy the games that you’ve spent your hard earned money on? I’d like to hear your suggestions.

Dragon Quest IX (DS): I’m a sucker for a good JRPG so I picked this one up a couple of years ago. Being a collector/game hoarder, I didn;t actually start playing this game until about a month ago and immediately kicked myself for not doing so sooner. It’s just really, really well done and is massive to boot. It;s absolutely worth every penny in my opinion. There are tons of side quests to do, hidden dungeons to find, you can use alchemy to create weapons, and the vocational system is really interesting. I’m almost 60 hours in and I made it to the last boss. This is without doing any side quests and only completing one random dungeon. Although, I did spend a good chunk of that 60 hours level-grinding. So realistically, I’m willing to bet that if you did all of the side quests and completed all of the random dungeons, there is probably 100+ hrs of game play. I highly recommend this game to anyone who is A) A fan of JRPGs, B) A fan of getting their money’s worth or C) All of the above. If you do take my advice and pick this gem up here are a couple of helpful tips. Alchemy is not something you should look past. Don’t skip finding the items necessary to cook up the best weapons in the game (there are tons of recipe guides online), because against the last boss, Corvus, you WILL need them. All of my characters’ levels are in the low to mid 40s, and while I didn’t really have much trouble actually getting to Corvus, he absolutely beat the brakes off of me. It was embarrassingly bad. Aaaaand really frustrating as everything was going swimmingly before I fought him. Also if you want a way to do some quick leveling up, go to the 3^rd floor of the Bowhole and hunt the Liquid Metal Slimes. These little bastards give you an insane amount of Exp points when you take them out. Use Metal Slash to do the most damage to them as normal attacks miss in most cases and also know that they like to run. A lot.

Karnov (NES): Yup, Friggin’ Karnov. The fat Russian guy who spits fireballs. Yes, that game. You run, you jump and you shoot things (Isn’t that the premise of most Nintendo games?). Simple enough, but strangely still really fun even after all of these years. I picked it up on Ebay a few years ago mainly because it was the first Nintendo game I had ever played. I absolutely loved it back then and I still do now. The only difference being that now I can beat it without the use of a Game Genie. Yes! Ia’m no longer a pansy! Shower me with your applause! (crickets)”ahem” and that brings us to the end of this week’s Currently Playing.

Phantom Brave: The Hermuda Triangle (PSP) – This game, made by NIS America, the same company that created the Disagea series, is a cross between Final Fantasy Tactics and Disagea. I was initially hesitant about trying this one out, due to being intimidated by the battle system and all of the stats and their meanings..Now, I understand that sounds fairly unintelligent (I promise you that I’m a pretty smart guy), but sometimes in an RPG, the customization is a little too over the top. Phantom Brave is like a slightly toned-down version of Disagea. Although loaded with stats, percentages, and mechanics like combining characters, combining weapons, combining characters with weapons, combining items with..well, you get the idea, the game is actually not that difficult to wrap your head around. Long story short..you play a young girl named Merona who can summon phantoms to fight alongside of her as she tries to make a living helping out townspeople on different islands. You create your own group of phantoms (they can be fighters, mages, hell, even little rabbits or slimes), you equip them with weapons and you confine them to objects on the battlefield. Confine a mage to a flower or tree and their magical power increases dramatically, confine a fighter to a stone block or column and their attack and defense increases. My only complaint is the turn limit for each phantom; after a set number of turns, your phantoms disappear. The game can be pretty unforgiving as far as difficulty goes at certain parts but not to the point of making the game completely frustrating. Well, as long as you are ok with backtracking and level grinding that is. =)

Super Street Fighter IV (360) Yeah! That’s right! Super! Not Arcade! Not Ultra! Friggin Super! Screw you, Capcom! Actually, I’m a huge fan of the entire Street Fighter series. I just really wish that Capcom would cut back on the different versions of basically the same game with a couple new characters added into the mix. I think that if they held off on releasing Super, Arcade and Ultra, they could have combined all of the new characters, stages, and mechanics into Street Fighter V. Anyways, this game has been a staple of our nerd nights for a couple of years now and will probably continue to be going forward. I think that Shawn secretly likes to play it because it causes me to throw tantrums and curse uncontrollably at the TV like no other game. I’m on to you, you rat bastard.