Anyone who's taken the time to check out my "Owned Games List" here on Gamespot knows that I'm an avid collector. It's taken a long time to get to where I'm at in terms of my game collection. Given the circumstances, It's actually only been about four or five years at that, But It seems like it's taken me an eternity to amass what I have.
Five years ago I had nothing. Or at least It felt that way.. the only system that I had at that time was a Playstation 2. Certainly not bad, by any means, But this particular PS2 was out of comission. It didn't run DVD's at all, and with the advent of PS2 switching from proprietary "Blue-Back" discs to DVD- Finding PS2 games that worked in my defunct system was fast becoming more and more difficult. The only thing that made things bearable was the fact that my PS2 still ran PS1 games. This gave me a chance to revisit Final Fantasy 8, Brave Fencer Musashi, and experience new games that flew under the radar such as Front Mission 3. It was a good enough distraction at the time, But it's difficult to be limited to only a certain spectrum of games when everyone else is moving full steam ahead into the latest available software. Something needed to be done!
Luck had come my way and I had gotten an opportunity to work a job that would pay me up to Ten dollars an hour, With this sort of income (And no bills to pay) I was determined to begin building my collection up again. The first thing I did was secure a "New" slim model of the PS2, This gave me the chance to experiance all of the games I'd missed out on up to that point, (Silent Hill 3 and "The Room", Digital Devil Saga, MGS3, etc.) and opened up a whole new realm of possibilities. I still focused on picking up PS1 games, this was due to the abundance of second hand stores in the Eugene area. To my delight people sold of plenty of rare games, Probably not even aware that what they're getting rid of is actually quite hard to find (And also that they could undoubtedly make more money auctioning it off on Ebay) Still, they're loss is my gain. A large number of the PS1 classics I have in my library came from these second hand stores.
Eventually after about Two years with the company I finally got a pay raise, taking me from Ten to Fifteen an hour. This was great as at this point and time The Xbox 360 had emerged and talk of Sony's PS3 and Nintendo's "Revolution" had begun to circulate, Not to mention the introduction of the DS and the PSP as well. With this increase in pay I was able to afford a DS and an Xbox 360. Things were finally starting to come together with my collection... Unfortunately, about another seven months after the pay raise major changes in management were breaking things down with my Job. Eventually I had to resign my position and with it forefit all income that I had. I was going to have to rely on Unemployment to get by, and under those circumstances, You don't really have room to purchase items for entertainment, just things to get by. It would be another three months or so before another job opportunity came along, And even then It would only just be temporary work....