My Game Collecting Obsession

Hi, I’m Mark Kilborn, and I’m a nerd. I’m also the Audio Director here at Raven. Like most gamers, I’ve been playing games since I was old enough to hold a controller. But I’m also a bit of a collector, and over the years I’ve held on to most of the games I’ve purchased.

I was fortunate enough to marry an amazing woman who shares my interest in games. She played the Gears games co-op with me. How many wives would do that? She has the collecting bug too, and with our powers combined we’ve managed to collect around 1,800 games for 42 game platforms. It’s a nutty and expensive hobby, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun, so we’ve stuck with it over the years and we’re still going.

1,800 may seem like a lot, but it really isn’t in the grand scheme of things. There are people on these intarwebs with far more. I once read about a guy who has in the neighborhood of 25,000 games. There’s also this weirdo who likes to prance around in Youtube videos shirtless and show off his Neo Geo games (don’t say I didn’t warn you). We’re not THAT insane (yet?), but we’re dedicated.

I always have trouble explaining why we do it, beyond it being a fun activity for us to pursue together (and married folk know, survival is all about common interests). Part of it, I think, is an interest in preserving history for future generations. It would be neat to donate all of this stuff to a museum down the road, and know that our son’s generation will have a chance to experience some of these games, even if it’s at a museum exhibit. Another part is the geeky fun of having all the things I couldn’t afford as a kid. I wanted a Sega CD, I didn’t get one, but now, now I’ve got one. And it’s... well, there are a few good games for it I guess.

So what games do we collect? Lots. The general rule is that we collect anything we consider to be good, no matter the platform or genre. Except when a game is so bad it’s good--Deadly Premonition, for example. Love it. We’re platform agnostic, so no fanboy flame wars for us. It can be said that our tastes tend toward the Japanese, but we do have a lot of Western games as well. Also, we like to buy things in stores wherever possible. It’s part of the adventure of finding things. You can find anything on eBay, but when you hit the stores you never know what you’ll discover.

As we’ve collected, a lot of little sub-collections have emerged:

Controversial games: Games such as Custer’s Revenge, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (before they recalled it, patched and re-shipped), Manhunt 1 and 2, Night Trap, Doki Doki Majo Shinpan!, Phantasmagoria, andRule of Rose. If it’s caused trouble, we want it. We’re big free speech advocates, even when it’s speech with which we disagree, so we’ve had a lot of fun collecting these.

Unlicensed NES games: Obviously there are the Tengen cartridges, but there were also games from such companies as Color Dreams and Panesian (don’t have those yet) that were unlicensed and quite interesting.

Bizarre Creations games: Bizarre gave me my first permanent job in the industry, so we’ve got every game they’ve published. It doesn’t hurt that their games are absolutely amazing. My wife unlocked the 1,000,000 Kudos achievement in PGR4 on 360. Dedication or addiction? You decide.

Megaten games: I’m a huge fan of the Megami Tensei series of games, and we’ve got most of them. We’re missing one or two US games (including the elusive Jack Bros. for Virtual Boy), and we’re working on the Japanese titles that were never released in the states. I discovered this series with Digital Devil Saga for PS2 and have been in love ever since.

Atari 2600 games: My wife has a huge thing for 2600 games, so I’ll just let her explain this herself: I have a special affinity for the 2600 because it was the first game console my family owned. Collecting 2600 games is a way of holding on to a tangible memory of my childhood. Playing video games with my brothers was always fun. Also, I won a lot, which made them mad.

Atlus, Cave, Valve, Working Designs, Treasure, Sandlot, Bethesda, Team Ico, G.Rev, and more: We collect games from many different studios, often following them across any platform they touch. Some studios just have a unique identity that shines through in everything they do, and we like that. In an industry crowded with games that look the same, it’s nice to see developers do something a little different. And it’s great to play games from a developer in series and study how they’ve matured over the years.

Kojima Productions games: I blame Hideo Kojima for my entry into the games business. I played the original Metal Gear on NES (not truly the original, but the first available in the states) and knew I wanted to do this for a living. Since then I’ve been collecting everything his studio has touched; not just Metal Gear games, but his pre-MG work as well as other series like Policenauts, Snatcher, Boktai and Zone of the Enders. I owe my career, in part, to Kojima’s inspiration.

So that’s a general look at our obsession. In this blog you can expect to read about our collecting adventures: new games we’ve found and the stories behind them, stories about our favorite items, histories of some of the games we love and other general nerdiness. I may also dig into the history of Raven’s games, a number of which I haven’t played (shh, don’t tell my boss).