Does Ben collect video games?Does Ben collect video games?One recent hobby has been collecting old video games, especially ones for the Atari 2600 and Atari 7800. My Atari game collection has over 320 different games, even more counting label variations of the same game. (The online list is a bit out of date... I'm working on setting up a real database, but its taking time) I'm still a small fry in the game collecting world, though. There are several collectors on the newsgroup rec.games.video.classic who have over 500 carts in their personal collection. I've also been collecting for the Odyssey2, Intellivision, Colecovision, TI/994A, Atari home computer, Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Master System, Super Nintendo, and Atari Jaguar. I can safely say that I've got more games that I could ever play through, especially considering the size of games for recent systems.
My best find so far is the game Glib, published by Qualtronic Devices Inc. in 1983. The VGR list shows it as ultra-rare, and I only know of two other collectors that have it. Apparently, this is a two-player game similar to Scrabble, but since I don't have instructions or a box, I'm not totally sure. The graphics aren't much, but it looks like it could have been a fun game. I found this at a yard sale. I found a Crazy Climber (a much desired ER cart) at an Austin Goodwill store, and lately I've been getting a lot of label variations to fill up my collection. Another very good find was a complete Milton Bradley MBX console for the TI99/4A with joystick, overlays, and several carts. Less than a thousand of these were made, according to popular speculation.
