Why sealed? Do you play too?

Do you play any games currently?

I've been playing the tetris grand master series intensively for the last three years and street fighter series for the last 8 years.
I try to finish an rpg every now and then as I love rpgs and improving on manic shooters when I have time.

I have been an avid gamer since i first played super mario bros on the nes when i was 6,and fell in love with nintendo straight away!since then i have amassed a large mint and not-so-mint unsealed collection of nes,snes and n64,and i have played all of them,from super mario to zelda and final fantasy's on all consoles except sega(never was my cup of tea, bar a few games).i own several consoles from nes,snes,n64,gameboy,gba,ds,psp,gc,psone,ps2 and wii 360 and ps3!i only started collecting sealed games a few months ago when i bought a sealed ocarina of time from ebay,and when it arrived it reminded me of when i first got the game and unwrapped the shrink,the utter feeling of magic (being young) i felt and then played the best game i had ever experienced.and i immediately thought about seriously collecting games, and the guy i bought zelda from told me about this site and here i am buying sealed gamecube and gba games like a madman!i chose gamecube and gba mainly because of the amount of money although i do have a few xbox360 and ps3 special editions that i liked,(gears of war,fallout3,metal gear solid 4)!I nearly fainted when i read how much some of you have splashed out on games!also my games collection is to be my greatest gift to my five year old son later in life,who also loves nintendo!so for me i only buy games i have played before and liked,not randomly buying games for future investment,more for pure sentimentality,Its great having little sealed pieces of your history,there to be admired and to show off whenever you feel like!its strange though,now when i buy a new game for the xbox or whatever it feels wrong tearing off the wrap just to play a game!like when i bought gears 2 after opening the game i felt kinda down,until i played it of course!so i bought another copy to keep sealed!is that just me or does anyone else find that?

I play EVERYTHING, and collect sealed games for 2 reasons:

1. My personal sealed collection. These are games I love that I like to have preserved in their original factory sealed condition. Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Dragon Force, Lufia II. All games I went far out of my way to acquire and cherish sealed.

2. A fun investment. I remember when Valkyrie Profile, sealed, was on clearance at Toys R Us for $15. Same with Symphony of the NIght for $9.99, and games like Dracula X & Chrono Trigger for $9.99. What are these worth sealed now? Way too much. I figure if I just nab 1 or 2 of everything decent I see on the super cheap, I can horde it and hope that in 10 years I can use it to trade for things I never acquired that I want. Either that, or sell them all and buy something nice.

wheelaa wrote:Why do you collect sealed games?

Because I intend to live forever, and I want to make sure that I can play my favorite games forever. To ensure this, I will keep a perfect copy at least until it can be ripped/dumped/"backed up"/replicated/whatever, and the hardware required to use it has been documented and can be emulated and/or reproduced. This implicitly assumes that the technology to copy or duplicate games will accelerate faster that they will deteriorate. This is probably a good bet, based on history, but even so, I'm not really a person who likes to take risks, so I make it my personal mission to preserve for as long as possible anything that I want to have survive, to make sure that technology has time to catch up. I am also somewhat distrustful of most "pirate" elements (their goals are often at a cross-purpose to mine), and so I might have to let the technology get to the stage where I can personally rip every disk and cartridge I own.

In principle, I could open or sell any game I have collected that is perfectly ripped/dumped and on a system that is perfectly documented and emulated. In practice, this has not yet happened, primarily because, while I have determined the standards by which I will collect, I have not yet determined the standards by which I will consider a reproduction to be perfect. I'm not sure, for example, if I would require a scan of the manual; I'm undecided as to whether instruction books and box art count strictly as being a part of the game itself. This determination can be made at any time once I've considered it properly; but actually buying the game in the first place a much higher priority because that will be impossible after a certain amount of time.

Even with this built-in limit, if I have no need for money once it gets to the point that I don't need to keep it, then I might as well keep it, right?

wheelaa wrote:Why do you collect the particular sealed games that you do?

I collect the games that I like. However, I obviously cannot know for certain that I will like a particular game before I buy it. So my rule (somewhat arbitrary) is: I buy games according to whether they belong to franchises I like. So, for example, all Mario games, all Zelda games, all Sonic games, and so on. I figure (sometimes incorrectly) that previously good works tend to spawn more good works. Even when it does not (Sonic the Hedgehog titles are a good recent example), playing the new games at least reminisce about playing the old games.

I also buy games that I do not specifically intend to collect, for many different reasons (curiosity, recommendation, good reviews, hype, respect for the developer's previous work, etc.), and if I am sufficiently impressed, then those are "promoted" to franchise status and I go and hunt down any previous games in the series.

wheelaa wrote:Do you ever play games?

Absolutely! In most cases, I will buy a second copy to play. On rare occasions, I will borrow and play a copy that a friend bought so as to avoid buying a second copy (at full price; I will usually buy an openable copy after the price drops a bit). On rare occasions, I will not intend to purchase a second openable copy at any foreseeable time; perhaps at all. This is usually when I don't own the console it was released on, or if I know that I don't actually like the game.

I view sealed collecting as being something that must be done to ensure that games can be played in the future; in that sense, not actually playing games would mostly make sealed game collecting pointless for me. However, it is true (and especially recently) that I have large stacks of unplayed games, mostly because releases are so close between these days that I don't get the chance to play a game through before I have to buy two more!

Jaffar Sholva wrote:Hmm, difficult to write in english, but I'll try

You can write just fine in English.

By all means, if you're more confident writing in another language, try writing in that language and also providing an English translation as best you can. I think about quarter of the members here can read/speak German at least.

theharrison wrote:Its great having little sealed pieces of your history

Yes, indeed. They're like souvenirs; except instead of being from a place that's special to you, they're from a time that's special to you.

theharrison wrote:its strange though,now when i buy a new game […] it feels wrong tearing off the wrap just to play a game![…]is that just me or does anyone else find that?

Yes, yes! I am one of the few here that considers it unnecessary to keep GBA and NDS games sealed (per my stated aims, I do not feel that leaving a cartridge game sealed does anything to improve its survivability). But whenever I buy a new Nintendo DS game, I feel very guilty tearing off the shrinkwrap. It's as though I'm cheating some possible future collector of the ability to get a sealed copy because there are not enough left, or perhaps that I'm almost literally tearing off transparent, hundred-dollar bills that wrap the game, given how much more a sealed game can be worth over the same game but unsealed.

Lots of people wrote:I mostly collect RPGs…

I know that at least part of the reason that so many of us primarily collect RPGs, is because they tend to be rare/expensive as they've traditionally been niche titles released in limited quantities or for short periods of time, but I'm sure that the fact that RPGs traditionally have gameplay that rewards obsessive-compulsive behavior and significant time investments well beyond what is technically required to complete them, must surely also have something to do with it :-)