Rare Games and Their Collectors

simtastic writes "John Szczepaniak in his article, Obscurity Below the Radar, exposes the underground world of buying, selling, stealing and acquiring rare, one-of-a-kind, and non-public games and gaming hardware. From the article: 'Oftentimes, such groups run the risk of the law, yet still dedicate their lives to the acquisition and recording of things. In trying to uncover this secret realm, I was graciously granted access to some of the more high profile members, including the head of one such community. A renowned American gentleman who wishes to be known only as ASSEMbler, he tells us a little of himself and also the nature of such undocumented people ...'"

Comments

For all who care

[TheRealMindChild]

Join us at Assemblers forum: http://assembler.roarvgm.com/

Re:For all who care

[LocalH]

You dumbass, give the right link next time.

Is Assembler my old roommate?

[rAiNsT0rm]

Working as a game reviewer through college always landed me cool swag and games... like my fairly rare original backlit Japanese Gameboy. I think I spent more time at the local pawn shop trying to get my stuff back my freshman year than studying.

Re:Is Assembler my old roommate?

[Meagermanx]

It's a shame they're greedy bastards, or they could rip the discs and put them on bittorrent networks for all of us to share.

Re:Is Assembler my old roommate?

[Guppy06]

"like my fairly rare original backlit Japanese Gameboy."

No, we're not talking about the kind of people who import a Game Boy Light, we're talking about the kind of people who managed to get their hands on Nintendo's official (and unreleased) English translation of the Famicom game Mother (now known to the internet as "EarthBound Zero").

Re:Is Assembler my old roommate?

[Guppy06]

"Umm, I'm not sure you understand. I actually own a Nintendo made Japanese prototype Gameboy that came with a backlight in it. They are rare, this isn;t some mod I did to a Gameboy."

You don't understand: it wasn't a prototype. The Game Boy Light was sold in Japan. They're moderately rare, but only really rare outside of Japan.

"Also I own a collection of almost every game from Atari 2600 through PS1 COMPLETE! Meaning NES, SNES, Gameboy, GBA, and Genesis."

We're not talking about people who collect published games, we're talking about people collecting unpublished games, the ones that never made it out of R&D. We're talking about people who try to get their hands on the Final Fantasy N64 tech demo there was a submission on yesterday.

"On at least 10 occasions I had to go to the pawn shop with police and get my stuff back during the course of my freshman year."

You should have called the police. Pawn shops aren't supposed to be involved in fencing stolen goods, and wouldn't have dealt with your roommate if you involved law enforcement.

Thrill Kill

[Daetrin]

Hmmm, it doesn't seem to mention Thrill Kill, which is the only rare game i happen to own. (Though it's kind of hard to tell since the article is spread out over so many pages.) Not that i've ever actually played it on my own machine, i've yet to get around to acquiring a modded PSX or PS2.

Re:Thrill Kill

[chrisbtoo]

Though it's kind of hard to tell since the article is spread out over so many pages.
"Print" version - select "Text" from the bottom of the escapist page.

Greed Island!

[EMeta]

Great! Greed Island, here I come!

Hmm. Having a problem here. Anyone know where I can learn to use Nen?

All of them eventually become rare

[Anonymous Coward]

Try to find SuperMarioBros I.

Not rare yet? Wait a few more years and try again.

Re:All of them eventually become rare

[Mattintosh]

One word: Goodwill.

The one in my area has it.

Also the SMB/Duck Hunt dual cart, the Duck Hunt standalone cart, and some other NES game that I'd never heard of. I'm guessing they haven't sold them yet, either.

Copyright

[HTH NE1]

In this dark age of eternally extended copyright terms and the ephemeral lifetimes of so-protected works, I applaud anyone who enters the order of the digital monk to preserve these rare and fleeting works for the enjoyment of an enlightened future that must eventually allow the copyrights to expire so that these works can be released to the world, providing a rich public domain, even as their acts of preservation for the future run afoul of the laws of the present.

Even the copyright on unreleased works must eventually expire and give back to the public domain.

Re:Copyright

[HTH NE1]

these people are not interested in releasing anything.

Maybe not now, but perhaps in 150 years when they can't be prosecuted for it....

Re:Interesting article...

[eudas]

yeah, a very fluff article. ok, you're all "cloak and dagger", hope that roleplaying works for you guys...

*shakes head*

the fact that it was images and not text is weird, too. what's with that?

eudas

Re:Interesting article...

[Fred Or Alive]

It does use text, it's just the website was designed by someone who obviously wished they were making a print publication rather than a website.

It does sound a bit over cloak and dagger, but I suppose there is some chance of being sued. But they do seem to be a rather insular lot from this article.

Are many of these titles really worth having.

[sharopolis]

I can't help but think there maybe a good reason why most unreleased games weren't released. Having played a lot of the more readily available protos floating around the 'net, it seems there are a few genuine bonafide classics that got shelved due to bankruptcy/internal politics or whatever and I can see why these may get premium prices.
Sadly there's no mystery why a lot of protos reamined locked away, it's because they were crap.

Re:Interesting article...

[badasscat]

yeah, a very fluff article. ok, you're all "cloak and dagger", hope that roleplaying works for you guys...

I'm not sure how much of it's role playing and how much of it's a bit of editorial license taken in the article.

I own some of the stuff listed in this article, and have had access to other items (I used to work in the game industry, first as a reviewer and then in the marketing department for a major publisher). So I technically am one of these guys, and I know plenty of others who collect this sort of stuff.

I know I sure don't dress up in trench coats and meet guys in back alleys with suitcases full of cash. I don't know anybody else who does either. Maybe it's because I'm still using my industry contacts and we're sort of a casual bunch; maybe guys who are on the "outside" really do make a real game of it. But I think most of the people who are even interested in something like a Dreamcast dev kit or an M2 prototype probably have some connection to the game industry; otherwise, why the interest to begin with?

There's really not any actual difference between the guys who go on Ebay and blow $200 for a copy of Radiant Silvergun and the guys who are out looking for PS2 TOOL systems. It's the same guys, despite what this article says. Collectors all have their various fetishes - nobody just collects a bunch of totally random stuff; everybody specializes. But whether you're into modern games, classic games, collecting all the Sonic memorabilia ever created, possessing all Nintendo hardware ever made, or whatever... you're eventually going to get to a point where the only stuff you've got left to look for are prototypes, unreleased games and systems, dev kits and debug units, hotel units, or other oddball stuff. A collector is a collector. These guys are not a special breed, though a few of them may think they are.

I'm inclined to think there's a little bit of both of what I mentioned before in this article - rampant editorializing and role playing by a few specific people. The section on Japan ("virtually impenetrable due to the language barrier and sense of security"), for example, is utterly hilarious on both counts. It makes it sound as if there's some sort of secret Yakuza faction hoarding all the rare video game stuff, when in reality all you need are a few Japanese friends. Heck, I'm sure I've bought stuff in used stores in Japan that the guy quoted here probably considers legendarily difficult to come by, simply because I knew where to look and he doesn't, and I happened to get lucky on that particular day.

But that's the thing... read between the lines here and nothing in this article is really all that dramatic. "Connections" is just another word for "friends", for example - but "connections" just sounds so much more clandestine. If I wanted to, I could probably insert myself into an article that sounds just like this, but there's absolutely nothing about my life as a collector that I'd think of as anything outside the normal way human beings interact with other human beings.

hmm

[b1t r0t]

I'm a pretty big collector, but I'm mostly a thrift-hunter collector, just getting cool stuff as I run across it by accident. We thrift store type collectors are notoriously cheap, so I really don't have any interest in most of this stuff other than it being cool that people are trying to preserve it somehow. And mostly I'd rather write new stuff for old systems anyhow.

I've got a single one-of-a-kind item, but it's from the 8-bit era. And I'm actually surprised that no others of this thing have been found, since it was a released, though very rare item. Of course the first thing I did was dump the ROMs and share them.

Dagnabbit!

[DingerX]

Ten years ago, if I had known there were people rich and foolish enough to shell out huge sums prototypes, beta and final roms, crap that never got released, and so on, I'd be a wealthy man today.

Actually, if I'd known about it then, I would have been extra vigilant in destroying every proto-cart I came across.

You fools you! Some games and game machines were never meant to be! Don't go tampering with forces you cannot understand!