Sucks...

When I expected to see things going a little better and my life returning to normal, nah... everything had to remain the same. This sucks, and it's causing me permanent psychological damage... I could say most things will be fixed within a couple of weeks, but now I believe Half Life 3 will become reality before anything changes for the best. Anyway, it's now time to resume with a few updates but... unfortunately, nothing major. Just a bunch of regular stuff that everyone knows about, but still worth showing off.

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Mind blown...

It's been a while since I last posted anything but useless crap in this blog, but I'm still waiting to solve all my problems before anything. Within two weeks or so I should be returning to my normal life after an almost entire year lost.

Today, my mind was blown by Sony's E3 press conference. The Last Guardian's demo was pretty impressive, but my jaw dropped as soon as I realized they were announcing Final Fantasy VII's remake. I didn't even had the time to recover from that shock when Sony decided to give me another one when they announced the Shenmue III's Kickstarter. I was able to hold my manly tears during the FFVII announcement, but Shenmue III just a couple of minutes later was just too many emotions to handle at once.

Best. E3 Conference. Ever.

I'll be back soon.

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Videogame Collecting is doomed.

Yes, collecting videogames is becoming a big pain in the ass. Sooner or later, within the next 10 or 15 years or so, it will perish.Unfortunately, that's what I see happening right now. If you just like to collect merchandise, figurines, statues and all those things that don't really include a physical copy of the game they come from, then the future is bright to you as a collector. You also need to have lots of money to spend on those because there are many "OMG SUPER UBBER RARE LIMITED RESSELLER EDITION WITH JUST 2 UNITS WORLDWIDE THAT ARE SOLD OUT IN 10 SECONDS". If you like to collect digital games and all the stuff that fits that denomination, the world is at your service now. But if you're like me and you just like to own physical copies of games, then I don't see a bright future ahead.

What is a collector anyway? If you search the internet, you'll find a ton of definitions and theories behind the meaning of that word. If you ask me what a collector is, my most direct response would be: a collector is a selfish, materialist person who likes to own lots of stuff related to a family of items. That's basically what a collector is and that's what I am. I can obviously come up with a more poetic or scientific definition to justify this kind of behavior but, in the end, those are just different and more complex ways of saying the same thing. Since the word "collector" involves all sorts of people with different purposes and objectives, from the guys that turn around garbage bins to the intellectual multimillionaire elite who collect paintings and wine, you can't go around spreading my definition of a collector because some people will get butt hurt. This doesn't make a collector a fool or an idiot, of course. It just makes him human. Anyway, there are collectors of all sorts. If something exists, no matter what it is, someone is out there collecting it.

Being materialist means digital, intangible contents that replace a physical item are a big Nope. I hate DLC, I hate F2P, I hate DMR, I hate all that crap. Because that's what it is: crap. DLC was supposed to be something good, something that extends the gameplay of a game a while after being released, pretty much like the good old expansion packs. But no. Thanks to the big companies, it sucks. You have to pay for stuff that's already available even before the game comes out, and most of it sucks. Most of these DLC are fully planned and prepared during the development stage. You basically buy an incomplete game when it comes out and you'll have to pay more for some of the missing bits. F2P is a great concept! People get the game for free and only pay to unlock things faster if they wish. This would be great if most games could be played normally instead of making you deal with all kinds of sh!t that ruin the gameplay experience, such as being unable to further play the game unless you waste your real life money on the items you need to progress or, alternatively, waste countless hours of your lifetime doing the most annoying things ever just to get them. Since I'm about to trash Nintendo again, here's an example: Pokémon Shuffle. Addicting game, fun to play... but then they make you wait at least half an hour just to have a single heart you need to play a single time, and you can't have more than 5 hearts at once unless you use a crystal. You can either win a crystal by doing some things such as beating a Mega Evolution or buy it for 0.99 cents. Seriously, who supports this? 

Then there's also another extremely annoying thing... the updates. Updates that take ages to download and install all the time. Updates that make you wait up to half an hour (if not more) just to play the damn game! Sometimes half an hour is all I got to get a little taste of the game I've just bought but nooooo, instead of instantly playing the game I have to sit there, depressed, looking at loading bar getting stuck on the last 1% for a longer time than it took to fill the previous 99%. Well done.

And here I am writing all this gibberish just because I recently heard that Nintendo announced it will start producing games for mobile phones, tablets and similar devices. It's a fact that portable gaming on these devices is extremely popular in Japan. I don't have a crystal ball to guess the future, otherwise I wouldn't be missing some of the preorders that I'd really like to get before they become sold out, but this kind of attitude coming from a company that dominates the handheld consoles' market seems like an attempt to shoot its own foot. In fact, these news just came out very shortly after Nintendo released the New 3DS models, which don't really add anything relevant to the previous 3DS consoles available. But, oh, wait, "we're working on a new console", they said. I won't even comment on this one. I hope it does better than the WiiU.

Now, if you consider Nintendo is leaving their fans very upset with the extremely limited availability of its most recent releases such as the WiiU GC controller adapter, most of the Amiibo figurines, console editions, plates, preorder items and all of those things, these announcements just seem to add horribly wrong. Now we have a solid gold Mario available exclusively on Walmart in the US. This is how Nintendo gives the middle finger to the rest of the Amiibo collectors around the World, and fools like me will continue to support these companies.

The digital era is not just about negative things. It actually has more pros than cons. No more rare or exclusive games produced in limited numbers, no more wasted resources in producing millions of discs, cheaper games... Sometimes the disc alone is far more worth it than the game recorded inside... So many good things about the digital market! Unless they release digital games with physical Amiibo or Skylanders. Those are awesome to own but horrible to collect. On the other hand, the digital market totally ruins the fun of collecting physical games and it will certainly value retro games and physical copies a lot. Many awesome games will never make it to my collection because they are digital only and I still wasn't able to adapt to the idea of paying for something that you can't "own", unless it's ultra cheap (but I guess that's what happens most of the times, according to Steam). Considering how well I see steam cards and similar stuff selling in regular videogames' stores, I'm pretty sure this will not ruin the business for most of them, as much as they know how to adapt. 

The amazing success of physical goods and collector's editions seems to be a contradiction in the recent tendencies of the digital markets. What kind of strategy comes from companies whose physical games, limited editions and toys sell out like hot cakes but decide to release digital games? The answer is quite simple: it's all about the money.

General gamers just want to play a game for the cheapest price they can get. If that means not owning a physical version, that's not a problem at all. Collectors are a minority in the general videogaming market and companies are not making videogames for charity purposes. Companies just want profit. One day they make collectors happy and the following day they make them sad. One day they make most gamers happy and the next day they make them sad. It doesn't matter to them. All their strategies have a single goal in mind: profit. Their decisions are only based on how much money they can get from something at a certain moment. The consumer's satisfaction is a consequence and an objective at the same time, because there's no profit without that (at least, not legally...). That's basically how the current world works. There's no routine.

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The Enemiibo...

Good thing to know a friend of mine called Ivan just posted some weird study on Facebook saying that bad humour is a sign of intelligence. Looking at all the rants I've been writing in this blog, I must be a f***ing genius.

One thing is certain: I'm stupid. Another thing is certain: so is Nintendo. This has to be the worst collector's nightmare in recent times, seriously. What the heck, Nintendo? I originally bought a couple of these figurines called the Amiibo, but I promised myself that I would not buy all of them. GG Nintendo, I fell for your trap and I'm pretty sure plenty of other people out there can relate... Now what?

I started with Link, Marth and Pikachu because they were cool. I didn't have plans to buy the rest of the 1st wave because I thought I would be able to buy them later after a price drop or something. I certainly am not a genius, but at the time I didn't realize that expecting a price drop for most of these figurines was something even those guys from Criminal Minds would miss. 

Things became more serious when they officially announced that three figurines from the first wave would be discontinued, confirming those rumours that were lurking around in doubtful articles on the internet. I already had Marth, but I still needed to get the two retarded ones: Wii Fit Trainer and the Villager. Well, honestly, sorry if I offended you guys who are fans of any of these two, but even still you have to recognize they are the most random characters to ever make it to the Smash Bros roost. Seriously, what the heck are those characters? It makes more sense to release a "Mii version of Mr. Potato" Amiibo than those two characters. They could even call it Miister Potato as far as I'm concerned. Then they would allow you to customize your own Amiibo with accessories that were sold separately. Oh no, don't give them more ideas... Anyway, I only bought the weird couple to avoid regrets later.

So, by the time I had 5 figurines, I noticed I was missing the interesting ones, such as Kirby (cute and gay), Samus and Fox. Obviously, by the time I bought those, I was only missing two to complete the first wave. I was determined to buy them all at this point. Thank you Nintendo, for ruining my sanity.

Second wave comes out, and brought us plenty of cool characters. I visited one store that had them all, but there was only a single figurine of my favourite character from that wave: Little Mac. I didn't buy any because I didn't feel like wasting money at that moment. I waited a few days before deciding to get some of them but then I noticed I could no longer find Little Mac at the local stores. I travelled a few km to different stores and I eventually realized that Little Mac was only available in extremely low quantities. I started to worry at first, but I eventually found a few here and there, so I bought one. I warned a couple of friends of how limited that figurine seemed to be but they didn't seem to care until it was too late. I was completely unaware of what was happening in the rest of the world.

Third wave comes out and this was by far the easiest to get. Stores over here don't give a crap about figurines. If they have too many on the shelves, they don't put up more for sale, even if they are new ones just released. They don't care about release dates either. Several days before 3rd wave came out, I randomly entered a local store that had all the new figurines available. Plenty of them actually, not less than about ten of each, including Rosalinas. I bought Rosalina, Ike, Toon Link, Lucario... At this point I thought that getting the full collection was not a problem. I heard Rosalinas were rare, so I checked eBay, saw their values and a couple of weeks later I returned to the same store that still had about 7 left and I decided to buy a couple to make some spare money. Yeah I know, I was such a scalper and I kinda feel bad for that.

So I bought a couple of Rosalinas and placed them on eBay with the lowest buy it now and free postage. In a matter of minutes I received a message from another guy in this country asking how much I would sell that figurine for... I thought to myself "hummm this is weird, this must be super common as that store alone had about 10 of them for almost 3 weeks... This guy will probably find it easily if he visits a few stores". I told him that and I never heard from him again. I hope he didn't die or something... 

The Rosalinas I placed on eBay sold ridiculously fast. Some time later I realized Rosalina was nowhere to be found in any other store around this area (and, believe me, there are plenty of stores in a 20km radius...). I even got a few just to help other people who needed it, without making any profit. That's when I understood how scarce these were, and I have a few close friends who wanted one but couldn't get it. Damn, the feels...

Okay, so I was still expecting to easily collect all the figurines... until the 2nd set of the 4th wave comes out. You know, the one that includes Shulk, Meta Knight, King Dedede, Mega Man and Sonic... I didn't even bother looking at release dates, since all I had to do up to this point was walk into that store and get them. Or so I thought.... Shulk was by far my most wanted character and for a second I thought I had missed it for good. Nintendo had the absolutely brilliant idea of releasing just two figurines per store, and only a bunch of stores got them and they were already reserved for scalpers, one guy in particular. Yeah, I know who you are, I know you've been to three different Worten stores reserving almost the entire stock. Oh, but you're such a nice guy, because you left one Sonic and one Megaman for another guy!!! Now die alone.

And now the 4th wave is sold out everywhere, except in the local stores who don't even know what they are selling. I don't know if I will be able to get the 4th wave figurines. Stores over here know nothing until they receive it. Last time I made a phone call asking for the Nintendo figurines called Amiibo and the guy on the phone said "hum I've no idea what they are". So I told him about the Skylanders, and he didn't know what Skylanders are. Seriously???? You work in a Multimedia store and you don't know what Skylanders are? Damn, I hope that guy has some short term plans for your future...

I'm done with the Amiibo as soon as the Smash Bros. Series ends. I don't even care about the new ones from Super Mario. Nintendo is making fans give all the money to scalpers just because they had the stupid idea of not releasing enough figurines. There's a billion of super marios from wave 1, then there are like 39 Shulks all over the world. What's the point??? Is Nintendo dumb? Don't they want more money? Do they prefer to piss their costumers and drive them insane looking for these stupid figurines? I like to walk in a store and get the ones I like when I feel like buying them. I don't want to look like a crazy guy constantly refreshing the amiibo page on websites that still didn't put them for sale, FFS...

Well done Nintendo, I hope you enjoy burying your unsold 1st wave Super Mario Amiibo in the Nevada Desert while you watch the rest of the World killing each other just to get a Ness figurine.

Here it is, the full collection of Smash Bros. Amiibo up to number 29, in risk of never going beyond that number now that I've lost the preorders for the next wave. Even the background is a nightmare to edit on this one, so please just enjoy a regular, crappy, unedited picture showing all my Amiibo in their current habitat. This collection is driving me nuts to the point I've considered selling the whole thing and make a profit just to buy other editions coming out soon.

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It's all about that bass

Now here's something I really wasn't expecting to do so early! Another update - a big one this time. The template was changed even though it looks the same. I didn't really feel like changing the layout but  this one has some improvements over the old one. The background's all black for now. The left bar was updated as well, but just slightly. A couple of changes on the way its contents are organized was enough to leave me satisfied for now.

The blog is much, much lighter now that I've added the "read more" functionality. That wasn't very easy to do, even when I had the full code and instructions. Instead of seeing large sized pictures on the main page and lots of annoying text, now you can only see a thumbnail and a short piece of the text. I've been wanting to do this for a very long time but for some reason I never really invested my time in doing it. Now that it's done, I feel that the old layout with the bigger images made this blog look much better and more appealing overall. At the same time, I also prefer the "read more" link and smaller posts of this newer setup, so I'm still a little confused about what to do. I will reevaluate my reaction to these new settings in the near future and see if I will leave it like this or return to the old style.

The full posts are available by clicking the "read more" link.  Clicking the "read more" link also counts towards the number of visits per post, something that did not happen when they were fully displayed at the home page. I'm a little interested about the number of visits my posts will receive now... humm!

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All your update are belong to us

I believe I'm done with the updates. There are some stitches that still need to be removed, but most of the important things are done. All images now have the same aspect throughout the entire blog, many texts were aligned, a few errors and typos were corrected and all the labels were updated. I obviously didn't correct my own grammar because I can't even tell what kind of mistakes I write but I spotted some atrocities written a few years back and I had to fix those. I also removed most of the group pictures with a mess of regular games and editions as I explained earlier. Those are gone forever. Editing hundreds of older posts is an easy task, but a really boring one at the same time, especially in a slow computer like this laptop I'm currently using. It took me many hours to finish this task and it's hard to imagine it's not completely finished yet.

I still have to update three older pictures because I've used inappropriate images for the background, two of which have watermarks that belong to paid websites which I obviously didn't pay for. The third one has a background with soft nudity in it, which seemed fine when I originally posted but I now considered it to be a little bit too explicit. I usually don't favour censorship but there are limits, so I'll be replacing the background on that one as well. All that copyright stuff kinda sucks, honestly, but I've been a victim myself. I was quite amazed to receive a newsletter some time ago from ShopTo and they've used my picture posted in this blog to promote their sales for the Xenoblade Chronicles controller bundle. I am that kind of a nice guy and I just let them do it because 1. the background belongs to the game which has nothing to do with me and 2. it's just a non-professional picture I've taken myself with a replaced background. Maybe I should have sued them and asked for a lot of money? Nah, that only works in civilized countries, not in one like this that's in the second world, just like an immature teenager who's still determining its sexual orientation. And of course, I don't really care if they used it and would never sue anybody for that, even though they could just have asked. I like educated people.

The Facebook page is now up and running but still with zero contents. I will only use it to "post the posts" that I keep writing here anyway, as well as some other random stuff related to games that I might just feel like posting. No big deal.

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Updating this...

Oh no, another text message with no pictures. I'm a terrible person! But there's good reason for this.

I am doing some small updates to this blog. First of all, I've recently created a Facebook page where I'll post all the latest stuff that I write here. All the information, pics, comments and gibberish will be posted exclusively here, so the Facebook page is  not much more than a heads up of what's new here. I still like to keep my low profile. Next year will be this blog's 10th anniversary. I thought that I would eventually grow tired of it after a couple of years but it seems that it's still my favourite place to write stuff that I really can't write anywhere else.

Secondly, I am updating most messages in this blog since the very first one. When I changed the layout a few years ago, most of the older messages remained in the old format, with smaller images and outdated, inaccurate labels. Since I've kept all the original photo montages posted in this blog, I have the chance to update all the old style posts with bigger images to match the same format I'm currently using in the newer messages. And since I'm updating almost every one of the 400+ messages I've posted here so far, I'm also taking my time to update the labels and fix some small errors. I've added at least three new labels, such as Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Basically, you will now have more options to filter all the posts to the themes you like the most. Up to now, you were able to filter my posts per platform but not per company. So if you are only interested in checking my Nintendo or Sony stuff, you'll now have that chance. As an added bonus, I've also created labels for some of the most popular companies such as Square (Enix), EA, Bandai Namco, Capcom and a few others.

Finally, I'm kinda sad to say that a few of the older posts and pictures I've placed here over the years will be removed. This blog has a very simple recipe: whenever I buy something interesting, I take a picture, edit it on photoshop in order to remove the background and then post it along with something I feel like writing at the moment. I don't post everything I have over here and I usually prefer to leave regular games out of this, unless they mean something. This basically works as a special gallery that I can enjoy myself and share with a small number of people. I'm nothing remotely close to a pro photographer and I don't have the patience to take fancy pictures of my stuff, so I came up with these easy, quick and enjoyable editions to remove the backgrounds and give my pictures a better look. It seems to work fine for me and it became a "signature move" of this blog. However, not every post I've placed here follows this criteria. Shortly after creating this blog several years ago, I posted some images with all my latest acquisitions. Some of those images are just messy bundles with too many regular games that don't look good enough. Now I've decided to remove them because I don't consider them interesting enough to be here. I will still leave some of the early compilation photos with multiple games from the same series because those make sense to stay and I still enjoy looking at them. The only problem is that some of those regular bundles sometimes contain important items that deserved individual pictures that I never took. It's okay, I still own all that stuff and I can take those pictures when I have the chance. 

And that's it! I hope this is the last big text in a while :)

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They replied back!

Even though the response was not that useful, it was by far the best response I've received so far from a big company. A personalized letter from an actual person in my mail box. Thank you, Sony. Too bad I still need to sell the second anniversary model for a pornographic amount if I want to keep up collecting for the next months...

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The rants are over

I'm done with those rants about the limited PS4. That was a waste of time. My console will finally arrive tomorrow, unless that mistake Sony made with the address delays delivery even further...

So... soon I'll resume taking more pictures of my newer stuf with those n00b backgrounds I so much enjoy :D

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PS4 Anniversary, the dirty way. F*** the police!

So, since my only chance to buy a PS4 20th Anniversary Edition over here was to enter one of the auctions that ended for a minimum of 855,00€, I was motivated by a friend to ignore my principles as a collector for a minute and do the exact same thing I complain about: reselling. Yes, that thing I hate. I'm being as hypocrite as those who entered the auctions "just to help charity and not to buy the console..."  - or nobody, to make it short.

I've bought two models from those auctions, I'll put one of those on eBay and I'll ask enough money to hopefully pay for both, or at least just make sure I just end up with less 500,00€ out of my pockets to match the true price of the console. Well, to be honest I only bought one because nobody was allowed to buy two, so I made someone buy the second console for me. Sorry Sony, it was either that or nothing. I couldn't afford a single unit for 800+ without any return, being unemployed and such.... I couldn't even use my credit card to pay for a single auction because mine doesn't have a monthly limit that high. So now I have a dept to clear, which I will, after selling my second unit.

Right now I care as much about selling on eBay as Sony cares about people like me, especially if they live in a small, "nobody cares" country that is completely dependent on Spanish residues. Because that's what the Portuguese market is all about: the majority of the big global companies are always based in Spain (because profit), they add "Iberia" to their name in order to include this country as an appendage (because more clients), then they send to us whatever isn't too successful there with all the information, costumer support and websites in Portuguish. And they act as if they were working very hard to provide to our market... Pretty much like Nintendo and Ubisoft, two companies that love to bring titles to our country with Spanish covers and subtitles. Thankfully, the majority of big UK stores and websites are very open to international costumers and sell cheaper, so it's usually a win-win situation and a great alternative to our weird market. There is at least an exception called (irony mode) Square Enix. That one's a tiny little company, so small and powerless it doesn't have the ability to send their exclusive stuff to more than a bunch of European countries... the poor fellows! (/irony mode). They remind me of how things were over here about 20 years ago.

Heck, we are probably the last country to get these anniversary models. They come from Spain, which got them one month earlier with the same auction procedure. The console was supposed to be shipped within 48 to 72 hours after payment being made according to the terms and conditions I had to agree with in order to bid. However, I paid 10 days ago and the console was only shipped yesterday... If I hadn't payed within 48 hours I'd miss the auctions I won... but after they have the money, terms and conditions no longer bother them so they can take as long as they want... Rules are for the weak.

Not to mention Spain got 350 consoles, almost 9 times as many consoles as we got, even though the country only has 4x more population than Portugal. A a result of that greater number in Spain, they ended about 100 euros cheaper.  In 2014 Sony's SE Vice President Neil Armstrong said Portugal was the most important market for PlayStation. But what's the point of that anyway?  This was another proof that it means sh*t!

I'm starting to blame my ancestors for successfully defending this country against the Spanish invaders a few hundred years ago. With stuff like this and incompetent political leaders to make things much worse, I seriously believe we'd be happier if this was also part of Spain. This last paragraph was enough to upset many people so I'll shut up for now. Even less visitors from now on, heh?

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20 years of PlayStation in the worst year of my life

Damn... this was by far the worst year I've ever had. Even the most stressful problems and situations I had to deal with my entire life were nothing close to all this sh** that I've been through in the last several months. Too much stuff.

I've just entered the Playstation 20th anniversary competition in order to try to win one of those beautiful limited edition consoles. Unfortunately, I don't think I stand a chance. Last year I managed to strike gold by winning one of the Ducktales Remastered press kits from Capcom. I still can't believe how that happened and you can't even imagine my reaction when I opened the message saying that I won, I wish I had recorded that. It was the first time in my life that I've actually won something that big (free toys inside cereal packages or kinder surprise don't count...).

I live in a country with a relatively small videogaming market but at the same time it's the most important market for Playstation in the world (at least that's what people say... hmm, hmm) Yet, that means nothing when it comes to the availability of important items like the PS4 20th anniversary model. It simply won't be available for sale over here. Why???? PS1 is my favourite system, the one where this entire collection started. This model is so beautiful and special that it bothers me a lot to know I almost don't stand a chance to get my hands on it. I can't live with the fact that I won't be able to get one*.

*I obviously can easily live with that, but this is the internet, the place where it's too easy to troll, dramatize, throw tantrums and insult people.

Now Sony came up with those words about the PS4 being sold on ebay. Yeah, it's a shame to see such a beautiful and limited model created with pure intentions being sold on the internet for easy money. This is not what you guys at Sony wanted. Guess what: it's obvious this would happen. Welcome to my everyday world as a collector. A world where scalpers and resellers steall all the good or important deals and the put them for sale for a lot of money. Easy profit. Yeah, it's a shame that people like me and many other folks out there, who wanted the 20th anniversary console, will miss these or pay big cash for them. Out of the 12300 systems, many will be available for sale now or in the future.

Over the years I've done the best I could to get some of the most illusive editions I currently own, and that was not easy at all. I seriously thought that it would be impossible for me to get some of those. I guess I could say the same about the Limited Edition PS4 console.. that it's just a matter of time until I eventually find one... That PS4, much like many other items I am still missing, are just too far away from reach. Usually I would go as far as I could to get them. But, unfortunately, I'm already tired of doing that and this must stop at one point in my life. After so many years trying so hard to get the editions I wanted, things couldn't be worse for a collector:

1. An overwhelming level of speculation;

2. Resellers absolutely everywhere, even in crappy local advertising websites;

3. Stores with exclusives that refuse to send overseas because of their policies (this can be a PAIN);

4. Preorders sold out in a few hours that I easily miss and they become nightmarish to find;

5. Generic 2nd hand stores that had all the bargains now selling for higher than you can find on eBay with postage included;

6.  Digital Media Rights that require online and dedicated servers, which turn any physical version into something useless once the servers are gone;

7. Not to mention all the digital stuff, DLCs Updates etc that you can't collect.

All these things are taking away all the fun of collecting games in general. If there's no fun, I can't call it a hobby. 

Anyway, this is probably my final post this year. 2015 will certainly be a much better year than this crappy 2014 that I'll try to erase from memories because there really isn't anything good that I can squeeze out of it.

I wish you a Merry Christmas or whatever you celebrate in your religion (if you have one). If you don't celebrate anything, then please have a great day. I also wish you a great 2015. I am very positive next year will bring good things this time around.

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That's all for now folks!

In the next few posts, I'm going back to the present with some of the newest editions for the current consoles. Cheers!

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Computer broken. No money. Now what?

My poor laptop can't handle photoshop very well... now what? I guess I'm stuck with freeware programs that aren't as heavy as photoshop, so the next results might not be as gorgeous (ha!) as before. I've got a ton of things to show. Let's get this rolling with some older games first! =)

I've got a few posts ready and they will be here tomorrow :D

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Life can be tough...

You know those moments in life when the world seems to be against you and you have so many serious problems going on at once? Especially when they only tend to get worse with no solution at sight? Well, that's my life right now. And I'm not joking about this. My life's pretty messed up, so much that almost brought me down to depression. I always overthink too much and that doesn't help at all when thinking can't really help you finding a solution. I eventually have some break downs that lead to depression and sleep privation. I'm doing my best to keep my head straight up... kinda... sometimes I don't do a good job and I just let myself fall a bit, but heh I'm only human after all.

Unfortunately, some of these problems will take some time until they get fixed and there isn't much I can do about them but wait. I had some plans for the rest of the year but now I feel I stopped in time. Oh well... I guess this is what we call life.

Over the years I have been collecting all kinds of rarities and special editions. I have a huge wishlist that keeps growing and growing with no end at sight. There's just too much money involved on collecting games with all this seriousness like I've been doing for so many years straight but I need to slow down. Before I do that, I need to catch the big fish and leave the tiny ones for other (hopefully better) years of my life.

I no longer have that patience to search intensively for many items at once because that consumes a lot of time. So now I am extensively searching for a bunch of games while ignoring most of the others. The top priorities are a few SNES exclusives I've been wanting to buy for so many years. I'll move on to other priorities once I'm done with these. I expect to fill the blank spots on my wishlist in less than a couple years with a few dozens of tough-to-get titles. I don't need (in fact, I don't want) to get all the rarities and crazy rare games so I'll just stick with those that I consider to be important. Once I'm done with that, I'm also done collecting retro games. For good.

My quest for the toughies already started and I already nailed a handful of these games. You can expect a new update soon with more pics, but this time there will be nothing out of ordinary like press kits or unusual editions - mostly regular games.

Cheers.

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Road to the 4000

Exactly 15 years ago, my father told me I was spending too much money on videogames that I would get rid of before I reached an adult age. It was basically his kind wat to tell me I was wasting money on useless things instead of saving for my future. At that time I was only buying 5 to 7 titles per year and my collection had less than 50 games. I said that I wouldn't get rid of the games so easily, considering how much I liked them. I am pretty sure he already recognizes he was slightly wrong... 

I was very surprised to find out that my collection is close to reach the impressive number of 4000 games/items. It's been 10 years of intensive collecting. Even though my older games date from 1997, I only started collecting more seriously in 2004. Unfortunately, the growth was much slower during the last couple of years, but still, what an impressive number! 

Some time ago I had a problem with the excel file where I list my entire collection and lost all the updates I had been doing for an unknown number of months. I had to restart from an outdated file and, unfortunately, I've never managed to completely update the list. Basically, I wasn't really sure about how many games I had but I knew they were over 3000.

For the last couple of weeks I've been focused on making great updates to the list. It's not easy to update thousands of items in an excel file... it takes a long time and lots of patience but this was something I was wanting to do for some time. I finally found the patience for that. I had to check all the message board entries, this blog, all my e-mail accounts, every picture I've taken and the older store receipts I kept in order to find out every game I had bought in the last few years, including the estimate year of purchase (and month, when possible). Unfortunately I can't know for sure the year of purchase for several games, so I had to resort to my memory, which was reasonably accurate. How do I know that? I randomly picked several titles from my list which I had proof of purchase and tried to guess the year to see if it matched the excel entry. I missed a few but got most right. But the thing is... the number was much bigger than I expected and I'm already over 3800.

When I've reached about 2000 games, I never knew if I would actually go much further. Yet now I have almost twice as many and never felt so determined to keep going further, except that money is becoming a serious issue at this point of my life. Hopefully, things will turn around for the best some day soon and I will keep pushing my collection forward. 

There are still well over 100 titles until I reach the definite number of 4000 but I am very impressed to have come this far. According to my estimates, when I reach a number of 5000 games, the goals I've set to my collection will finally be accomplished. However, it's particularly bothersome when a majority of the titles I am still missing for the older platforms are the really expensive ones. I don't know what I will do about it but at my current financial condition it won't be easy to be paying over 100 euros for every title I'm still missing, let alone those that are worth 3 to 5 times that much... Spending that much money on a regular retro game is something that I don't do more that a small number of times per year. But every year that goes by, eBay resellers succeed in increasing the value of the already expensive games to the point that it's almost impossible for me to collect them. On top of that it's nearly impossible to find many titles outside eBay, which became the House of Speculation flooded with overpriced Buy it Now deals.

Now to talk about this blog... This blog never had a big visibility - it was never intended to have anyway because I like to keep a low profile. When I originally started it, many people were unaware of the existance of certain editions and press kits. Nowadays it's completely different. Everybody knows about or has access to press kits, so there is nothing really impressive that I can show to you right now. I can't even keep up with all the important stuff coming out and sadly I have to sacrifice most of the newer press kits. Still, this is really the only way I have to list pictures of my collection and I do appreciate the presentation I've given to it. I've put a lot of efforts behind this blog over the years. I hope that the old visitors still have the time and patience to read through all the crap I write :D.

A new update will be coming soon with a few items that were left behind and some newer things. Stay tuned :)

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My thoughts on E3 this year...

This isn't exactly the "oh I've just bought a new item to my collection" post. I am not even sure why I feel like sharing such a post in my blog. I guess I do it because it's the only place I have to write my own stuff. Not too long ago, what seemed to be a legitimate leaked list of the games to be present on E3 appeared on the internet. The list was amazing to say the least but nobody could confirm if it was fake or real. That created some real expectations on me for the E3 this year, considering how weak I think they were in the last few years.

What I disliked the most about the conferences, especially Sony and Microsoft, were the amount of times they were mentioning DLCs, exclusive contents, closed Betas, Free to Play and other crap that's totally unsuitable for videogame collectors and gamers like myself in particular. I have not bought a single DLC so far nor I plan on doing that any time soon. I don't care about paying for missing bits of games or alternative costumes. That's one of the most frustrating things about collecting games in this generation: even when you buy a brand new retail version of a particular game, you know you're not buying the whole package because many pieces are missing.

I was actually satisfied with the showcase on the conferences this year, comparing to how poor they were the years before. It wasn't too surprising because not all games are suitable for my tastes but there were some pretty cool moments. I am a little tired of shooters, so I was not really hyped with any of that, nor with the many cartoonish games that were showed. But the fact that these games do look good is undeniable. I did enjoy watching Call of Duty Advanced Warfight (such an unoriginal name!), Battlefield: Hardline, as well as as Tom Clancy's The Division. No matter how tiring these shooting games are becoming, they always look good. CoD is trying to look futuristic and I'm perfectly fine with that since I love futuristic stuff (if done properly). I also have to mention Halo Master Chief Collection, which will be a great compilation of the series' most important games. It was a nice move from Microsoft or Bungie (not too sure). Even though I'm not a big fan of shooter, I can easily say I was satisfied with what I saw.

I can't say I feel the same about the so-called RPGs like Dragon Age: Inquisition and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt or Fable Legends. RPGs are my favourite types of games, but I can hardly call these RPGs to be honest. The gameplay is heavily focused on action and adventure. While the first two games I mentioned are the same old medieval open world wannabes with costumizable loot and the same type of enemies and wooden villages where you start killing wolves and minions before Dragons and other worn out creatures pop up, the last one looks like inspired by a Shrek movie and it didn't seem half fascinating. And then we have Scalebound, a brand new action (?) game featuring some sort of spoiled younger brother of DMC's Dante and his huge pet. I didn't like the main character looks, sadly. I don't know what to expect from this game but I am not very excited with it. I could tell the same about Crackdown 3 and Phantom Dust (a game that never came out in Europe - why?) and other games I didn't mention.

Another thing that's being exploited to death are zombie games. Dead Island trailers are always amazing and this one was no exception. But the game itself is yet to come. The Order: 1886 seems to try hard to do something different but I'm not too convinced yet.

There weren't many racing games shown this time. Only two actually. I guess people prefer shooters. Forza Horizon 2 is fine but nothing I was impressed with. The Crew actually looked quite interesting due to its length but I'm not sure how well the gameplay can compare to other racing games and hybrid simulators already in the market.

And then we have Nintendo still focused on delivering yet more platform adventure games based in Mario universe, featuring Yoshi's Epic Yarn (I know that's not the name), Toad and "do-it-yourself" Mario. These games used to be cool, but now there's like dozens of them on every single Nintendo console. They will keep selling like hot cakes but I'm getting tired of them and obviously less enthusiastic. Hyrule Warriors didn't look that good either as it reminds me of a lower quality version of Dynasty Warriors featuring Zelda characters. The newer Zelda, on the other hand, was something. Quite something. And I'm not going to mention Xenoblade Chronicles X which looks absolutely stunning despite not being a new announcement. As far as those Mario skylanders go, they are actually very cool and they add features to several games. That was a smart move, especially because Mario and Zelda figurines are tempting to buy. But if they come up with rare variants like Skylanders, oh crap... No wallet can handle that.

Ubisoft... no matter how much I hate that company, they had a decent presentation as well. I'm not really interested in Sims or dancing games, but FarCry 4 looks good and so does AC Unity. I must say that Ubisoft did a terrific job in creating such a popular series like AC, but after the 3rd or 4th game released one year after the other I already grew a little exhausted by it. Again, I will say it: it looks great. It's just that looks aren't everything in a videogame and I don't feel that tempted to play it. There was one exception to this rule though. I might be a little exhausted of shooters or AC games, but even though Batman received several games in the last few years I felt very impressed by the newer Batman: Arkham Knight trailer (as seen in Sony's conference) and I seriously want to play that game.

From EA, the best thing I can take out of that conference was Mirror's Edge 2. I loved the first game despite not being considered by many critics as one of the top games. Sports games... ugh...

Indie games also had their fair share in these conferences. What surprised me the most was No Man's Sky, which is actually made by a small studio but it looks like something that can beat the crap out of many big productions. It wasn't really a brand new announcement, but it's probably the thing I liked to see the most in the entire conferences.

Overall, they were good conferences. They did not create the hype I expected but the proof that companies are doing a good job is the fact that I like to see some gameplay videos and trailers of games and styles I already grew tired of. It's useless for me to talk about Uncharted 4, Halo 5 or even the new Mass Effect. We all knew these games would be coming out eventually but very little was shown about them. Kinda like they were just there to create the hype. It's going to be a while until we trully see their potential (which is very big).

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Update coming!

It's been nearly 3 months with no updates. What a shame! That's about to change soon though. I already wrote about 15 new posts and I have more coming. All that's missing is taking photos and upload them before posting. This should be done pretty soon, within the next couple of days or so. So stay tuned :)

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It's been a while :)

Yup, it's been a while. It's not the first time I take a break from updating this blog, but I usually don't take so long. I'm still unemployed but thankfully I have quite a few things to do to keep me busy. I seriously need to get a job soon but things over here are quite messy and I don't intend to emigrate just yet, unless I really don't have a choice...

I recently switched rooms and now I'm in a room a little larger than the previous I had. I've managed to gain some extra space and bought two new bookcases to place most of my regular retro games. It's looking better than ever and I am quite happy to see some evolution in the way I store and display my games. A new bookcase will be coming soon to store regular DVD-sized game cases from the last 2 gens (mostly PS2, PS3 and Xbox games). Hopefully all regular games will be stored in this room and my old one will be used exclusively to keep and expose the larger boxes, collector's edition and press kits. 

This is just a small picture of how it looks like now, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Not everything's finished yet, but hopefully it will soon...

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I promised a huge update within a couple of weeks. I lied.

Unfortunately I didn't have the time and the patience to update the blog, but I have many things I still need to add. I've added a few items so far, but there are many more I still need to include. I seriously hope to take care of that within the next few days :). Cheers!

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It's a Huuuuge update

Yup, I've been away for some time now, but the collection hasn't stopped growing. I now have way too much stuff to list here. I also need to update my collection list, take pictures, write some worthless things about the stuff I bought etc etc. But within the next week you can expect a pretty decent update with some interesting items :)

Cheers!

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