Like many other people, I became a "retrogamer" during the dawn of the YouTube era by watching the early stars of the site dissect the forgotten classics of the eighties and nineties. Watching household names like AVGN and RinryGameGame create such engaging content out of games that the majority of people were likely to have forgotten all about by that point was intoxicating and I, too, wanted a piece of that cake.
Unfortunately, emulating the games didn't bring me the same sense of satisfaction as actually messing with the real hardware would, and I simply grew bored of it after spending countless hours hunching over a keyboard, the experience clearly lost. As much as I was playing the same games (and arguably much more comfortably) than those guys on the screen, I could never truly recapture the full thing without holding the actual controllers and messing with the many wires until everything came together. I just needed to get my hands on those consoles and cartridges to recapture that childhood magic the way they did so seemingly effortlessly.
No cover for the battery compartment and a broken barcode, clear signs of a console played constantly and enjoyed to extreme degrees.
But, of course, being sixteen at the time meant that I really didn't have the means to go out of my way to buy all those systems on my own, so I contented myself with stalking the many early auction sites that were starting to emerge at the time, following any auction that looked promising and raising my bet every time I found myself outbid. I actually ended up winning every single auction I took part in due to some pretty intense strategizing and almost constant surveillance of the pages, which is just insane to me. I guess that I was really that into the whole thing, even though I know that I couldn't possibly had the amounts of nostalgia I was already feeling at such a tender age. It just didn't add up, but I thrived on the ridiculousness of it all.
However... now that I look at my collection, I can't help but wondering why those consoles and games ended up being posted to begin with. Was it because the time was right to sell them for much more than they were originally worth? Or perhaps it was because someone really needed the money and those were easy sales? Regardless, I often found myself thinking about that... After all, I have owned several game consoles in the past and I know just how beloved they were for me, so the idea of getting rid of them just to make a quick (if easy) buck sounded almost obscene to me.
I guess it's fitting that the console which welcomed me into adulthood would be in better shape than the rest of them. It is also funny that it has spent a very respectable second life as a CD player, blasting my favorite songs though the years (also pictured: "Máquina de Sangre", the first album I bought with my own money).
Looking at my systems (which were all bought from fellow gamers, as opposed to collectors), I can't help but thinking that maybe these were someone's beloved birthday and Christmas gifts, and that the original owners woke up one day and "freed" them from their cardboard-and-plastic boxes with shaky hands, utterly excited to plug them in for the first time. Maybe these consoles witnessed some really funny arguments. Maybe they were the cause of some extreme bonding moments. And maybe they even hold the last connection to a lost loved one, someone who either moved on, moved away or just isn't with us anymore.
I know it's beyond silly to give that much significance to some hunks of plastic made decades ago and that were voluntarily put out there for me to buy, but the thing is that I know all-too-well that what I'm saying is actually true.
The girl I bought my Dreamcast from explicitly told me that selling the console was the last necessary sacrifice her husband-to-be and her were willing to make in order to turn their future lives together into a reality. And I can just about imagine the kind of fun they had together as a couple, laughing about as they played the many games that my friend and I bought from them as they pocketed the money to move on to the next chapter of their lives.
I bought these games at different times, and from different people. They can't say a word and, yet, they tell me so much about their previous owners and how they handled them, going from a very pristine cartridge, to a failed repair of the broken label, to utter abandonment. It's like exploring ancient ruins... and I'm all for it!
Maybe whoever sold that battered Gameboy Pocket to the "retro" store I bought it from had spent an entire childhood with it, playing Tetris and Pokemon til they could no longer afford the batteries for it (which seems almost confirmed by the fact that my console came without a battery cover). Maybe they really miss it and wish they could have it back right now, because whatever money they made off it (and it must have been a pitiful amount, considering what I ended up paying for it) just didn't make up for the fact that it was gone.
The little scratches on my own SEGA Genesis will perhaps tell a future owner just how beloved it was, how often it was handled as I passed around the controllers to friends I no longer speak to and to those that are still around. Maybe someone will take a look at it and see that I really enjoyed my time with it and that I had no interest in keeping it in a "collectible" state, proudly keeping an "archive" of fingerprints, as my sister and I handled it and my friends got up to turn it off and reset it whenever they wanted to play something else.
Even my yellowed, somewhat damaged NES has some stories to tell, and I could tell that right off the bat as soon as I noticed the little Dragon Ball sticker that topped it. Maybe some kid wanted to customize it, to make it look unique by combining two of their favorite things together in a way that would guarantee that their console would stand out, even if ever-so-slightly. Maybe they pasted that on a whim or didn't even think about it, but the fact remains that that's part of the system now and that I can't stop thinking about the significance of it (even if there's probably none). It kind of reminds me of when I pasted a badge from Dexter's Laboratory on my digital clock, a badge that's still there and that perplexes visitors to this day.
Much like Ritchie's PokeBalls, this little sticker guarantees that I would be able to instantly pick out my NES in a crowd of similar systems.
I think there's something truly beautiful about the fact that you can buy something and just about share the experiences associated with it, even if you don't fully know what they were. Sometimes buying a yellowed piece of plastic that was never intended to be sought after so many decades can really make you appreciate it in a whole new way. After all, who's to say that someone's most precious childhood memories weren't made in front of these things?
I apologize if this article makes no sense whatsoever, but I wanted to share those thoughts that had been nagging at the back of my mind for days now. If you relate to what I have written here... great! If not, I hope that you could at least get some enjoyment out of it.
Til next time.
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. Great Sweet and short article written with fire 
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