This morning I was playing an old NES game called Karnov on my Palm Pilot at the doctors office. Someone asked me what I was playing, I told them, and they were intrigued when they found out you could play almost any game from any gaming system on your computer or PDA through emulation. I ended up talking to them for about 10 minutes, mostly explaining what an emulator was but also how they could do this on their own computer.

When the conversation was over I thought to myself, “How dorky am I?” I been collecting old video games forever and have amassed several thousand games for about half-a-dozen systems. The old games are from systems like Atari, NES, SNES, Genesis, and TurboGraphix 16 and hold a special place in my heart. I spent countless hours as a child beating every game I could get my hands on. At one point I was actually fielding a few phone calls a day giving out gaming tips. I still enjoy playing the old systems much more than a PS2, Xbox, or Gamecube (with the exception of Zelda: Twilight Princess). The amount of time, money, and energy this collection has cost me is far more than I would ever like to admit, but I don’t care — it makes me happy.

What do you collect? Do you have an obsessively large collection of something that most people don’t know about? Now is the time to come clean. Leave a response to this message and let the world know that you love…well, whatever it is you love. If you have pictures of your collection send me a few, I will post them when I get enough to write a post about them.

If you have questions about emulation, feel free to send me a message me as well.

Filed under: Life