THE GAMER: Flea-market finds

I have a lot of things to thank my mom for when it comes to certain traits, like being short and needing glasses, not to mention my fantastic sense of sarcasm, but not being able to pass up a garage sale is definitely one of them I’m legitimately glad to have inherited. I can’t help but rubberneck every time I see a table loaded with junk sitting on someone’s lawn as I fight the urge to turn the car around for a better look. I’m a regular at the Salvation Army and Goodwill stores in the area, and I have a list of flea markets and antique shops I just have to scrounge through at least once a month. But it’s not the allure of pre-worn clothes or my frugal nature that keeps drawing me back in, it’s the chance to find rare, classic video games that has me eagerly anticipating each visit.

While most people are anxious to see the sights when visiting a city for the first time, I’m usually on Google Maps, tracking down pawnshops and thrift stores. Even in my sleep, I sometimes have a recurring dream about finding a box full of Intellivison games, tucked away in some obscure corner I never noticed before. It’s kind of a sickness.

I live for the thrill of the hunt and the feeling that only comes from finding a game I’ve never played before. I want to try out every game on every console ever made, despite the ridiculous number of them out there.

And then there’s another aspect: the hardware. The history of video game consoles is littered with “the ones that didn’t make it” — the consoles that were too expensive, had too few titles or just couldn’t compete with the more popular consoles of their era. Sure, at the time, no one really wanted Nintendo’s Virtual Boy or the Atari Jaguar, but when you find one in a box of broken He-Man toys and tangled cables for only $10, how can you resist? Like today, where most gamers have only a PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 or Wii, back then, it was rare for someone to have a Super Nintendo and a Sega Genesis. These days, however, that old hardware costs next to nothing.

Digging through dusty, old boxes of junk has to be my second favorite pastime, because you never know what you might find. Sometimes, though, I wonder what’s going to become of it. What’s going to happen to the culture of video game collecting in the future?

As wonderful as the Internet has been to collectors — with sites like eBay and Craigslist making it easier than ever to connect sellers to buyers — it brought along an unforeseen threat in the guise of digital distribution. Namely, what happens when all of our games come to us via the Internet as opposed to small bits of plastic and metal? Not only will the used games market significantly shrink, but the culture of collecting will find itself stunted, limited to the golden age of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. As much as I love the Xbox Live Arcade, the convenience of sorting a menu or typing the name of a game into a search engine pales in comparison to digging through a bin and finding an old game that, somehow, defied the years to wind up sealed, still new in its box, complete with manual. Digital distribution may be cheaper, simpler and more ecologically sound, but it’s just not as much fun! There’s no hunt, no thrill.

The day when games only arrive by download is still a long way off, and it may be hard to imagine the Xbox 360, Wii or PlayStation 3 as obsolete husks, sitting in a pile of junk, collecting dust, but that day is coming. When it does, I’ll be there, digging through it all.

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