Hello there, my name is Mike Decleir (aka declaritive) and welcome to my blog that I have made. I'm your average Canadian twenty-something working his way through college to go into architecture, and in my spare time one of my favourite things to is play modern and (mostly) retro video games. I love to both play and collect video games ranging from Nintendo, Sega, Playstation, Xbox, PC and even Atari as I've been recently delving into that. I've been a gamer since I was only 7 when I received a Game Boy Advance for my birthday. Still have it to this day. I love collecting games and seeing my collection grow, trying out new games on other systems or catching up on other games I missed out on is a great way for me build a collection. However, I identify as a gamer first, and a collector second. I don't go for complete sets, such as building a full NES collection or the like, it's not my style, I'd rather own a handful of really great games instead of owning hundreds of potential crap. Though, I will admit, I have considered going for a full set of Playstation 1 games, but I made a choice for the better as there's only about 1400 more games I would need to reach that feat.
Now, you're probably wondering, what do I plan to do with this blog? Well for one, I plan on doing written reviews and articles of video games that have got less attention. The whole "youtube gamer" or "angry reviewer" persona has become extremely cliche in this day and age, but I would like to just do in-depth articles, and I hope to improve my writing and critique, which may not be the greatest when starting, but it's something I really want to work on. All constructive criticism is welcome, this is the internet, right? As far as games and subjects go, I plan to discuss lesser known, more obscures games that get less coverage, not the typical, "Durr hey guys today I'm going to be reviewing this underrated hidden gem called 'Legend of Zelda'. Anyone ever heard of this nostalgic gem?!" At this point in time on the internet I think it's better to discuss more overlooked games instead of games that have been talked to death already. In fact, I already have in mind some Playstation 1 titles that I plan to talk about, and their ones that don't seem to get much attention. I plan to post a review or two in the near future.
Now let's look at the collecting side. I haven't actually done a total tally of games I own, but I'm going to say I own about 400 games spanning over a dozen different consoles and handhelds. Like I said, rough estimate. At the moment, I really like collecting for Genesis, Playstation 1, 2, and 3, Gameboy, and even some Nintendo stuff in there. Over the past year I've slowly moved away from NES, SNES, and N64 for two big reasons:
1: Ever since retro games took off in popularity around the early 2010's (I'd say 2012 is when it really hit) retro games have been at all time high prices on the second market. The most popular it's ever been. Of all this, Nintendo has increased the most. It's no surprise, though. It's arguably the most nostalgic type of classic thrill for millions of gamers, and whenever you think of retro video games, Nintendo is almost always the first brand to come to mind. Because of this, prices have skyrocketed. Furthermore, I have mostly got away from Nintendo collecting, as one great piece of advice for collecting I like to remember is, "when everyone goes right, go left." Essentially, as hipster-ish this may sound, when something else is really popular and pricey, go for something else that not many people are paying attention to. It's going to be cheaper and possibly easier to find. This is why I've moved to stuff like Genesis and Playstation. Sure, they're already rising in value (especially Genesis, Playstation's starting to) but compared to Nintendo there's many affordable titles for the systems. Also because of this, I've already acquired some of the more rare/sought after games for the systems, like El Viento, Grind Stormer, and Mega Turrican on Genesis, and Einhander, Mega Man Legends 2, and Tomba for the PS1 as examples. It's gotten to the point with Nintendo that people on Kijiji (good place to find games, not always) hoard dozens of copies of popular games for all systems. Every Zelda. Every freaking Mario Kart. I live in the Burlington area of Ontario and I would say our neighbour Hamilton is the worst for this. Sure, you can say, "it's capitalism" or "it's a free market". Those are both valid and I can't deny it, but when it gets to a point that people are hoarding tons of copies and asking insane amounts of money is when it's going too far. Basically, Nintendo stuff in general is getting ridiculously expensive and I've moved to other systems.
2. I have mostly every game I want for NES, SNES, and N64. I can safely say I'm done with N64. Unless I can find a complete copy of Quake, for like, $10. There's still a couple of NES and SNES games that I'm after, such as Link to the Past (which I used to own, but traded for a SSB Brawl, yeah I know not a great move) or Metal Storm on NES (pricey game, cart only goes for ~$100). And even then those are games that I could live without. If I had an oppurtunity to trade them or buy them for a good deal, maybe, but I'm fine without them. I don't even own anything exceedingly rare or valuable, maybe my Metroid Yellow Label cart, or my complete copy of Super Metroid, (I don't think I've mentioned yet how much I like Metroid) but that's about it.
...Wow. That was long. Okay then. To add more, I'd like to upload pictures of my collection to show what it looks like. I've finally organized most of it and looks great. I look forward to having an output to just share this somewhere. I'll also probably do pick-ups or cool finds, I know, a little cliche, but I'll mostly share games or systems that I find in thrift stores, pawn shops or Kijiji deals. I'm not going to share every game I buy, but mostly interesting ones or the ones that have an interesting story to their finds. I'm also going to give any opinions on gaming/collecting news, as well as some of my own collecting tips, for any of you aspiring collectors and gamers. I hope to try and have something new up once a week. A little slow perhaps, but I think it's a reasonable goal to start off with.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this, and stay tuned. There's more on the horizon. Later days.
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