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Ever since I revealed my lack of any Sony hardware to the denizens of RPGamer many months ago, the semi-frequent questioning has continued. How did I come to this? How have I survived without playing anything on Sony, or by owning new consoles? The answers are, of course, innately peculiar to myself and may not be of interest to anyone else. But I thought writing the process of my RPGaming life down might at the very least be different from anything I've done prior.
Framing my actions with regard to console acquisition, I was given a Sega Master System many years ago. Certainly I logged many hours on the NES (most of them on Super Mario Bros. 3 with some Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!) but the NES was not mine. Black Belt, Zillion, Karate Kid, Alex Kidd - I logged a lot of time on those as a young child. Christmas of 1992 found me getting a shiny-new Sega Genesis as a gift, partly thanks to me being overly concerned about the many more buttons on the SNES controller. And what did I play on that Genesis? Sonic 1 and 2, Batman, and Sonic Spinball were the only games given to me early on. Later I got a few more; Tiny Toons: Buster's Hidden Treasure, Moonwalker, Revenge of Shinobi, Shinobi III, Streets of Rage 1, 2, and 3, Vectorman, Robocop vs. Terminator, Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles come to mind. No RPGs are included in this, however. Prior to 2000 I had precisely two experiences with RPGs: once when I swapped systems with a friend in 1994 and was completely befuddled by Final Fantasy II (IV), second in 1998 when I was in Oregon for a week with nothing to do during the day but jump onto an NES and try out the original Legend of Zelda.
The late 90's were a time when I didn't play many games, mostly owing to monetary paucity. I wrote some very derivative, crappy sci-fi on a computer that is now dead, I got good grades in school, and watched a lot more prime-time TV than I do now. Gamewise I just stuck with the Genesis (and a neat summer when I borrowed a Saturn from a friend), honing my skills on the games above. Then, in early 2000, I simultaneously acquired a bit of disposable income and learned about eBay. eBay allowed me to run about wildly and pick up many Genesis games that had been in my mind, and I did. Later in the year I decided to grab a SNES, which I had to fill out a worthy game library for. Picking up libraries I deemed adequate for those systems, even when limited to the action-ish genre, took awhile and filled my shelves quite well. And THEN, I decided to seriously try out these RPGs with years of interim experience having been gained. Super Mario RPG was my first, and it hooked me. I bought up some more for both Genesis and SNES during 2001, and later in that year decided just because games had been released only in Japan I wouldn't necessarily experience problems with playing them. Thus began a lengthy involvement with importing that continues to this day.
Late 2001/early 2002 represents the time when I bumped up my system collection to a level I have yet to greatly exceed. The Sega CD, Saturn, and Dreamcast all arrived courtesy of eBay in the first half of 2002, along with libraries of titles for them. The Saturn's library in particular cost me many dollars, for I was determined not to let scarcity deter my acquisitive mindset. On an unrelated note, I picked up a Game Boy Advance thanks to that semester finding me on the j.c. campus for 14 hours a day with only half of them being class. And ever since, I've been beefing up the libraries of the systems I already own instead of searching out new systems - save for last fall when a technical difficulty compelled me to upgrade the GBA to a DS (which in turn compelled me to compile a DS library).
What informed these decisions? In the case of the GBA, simplicity itself: I needed something portable. With regard to the consoles I currently own, something else is at work. Partly I enjoy having the entirety of a system's library at hand for acquisition, eliminating wait times. Thus dead systems enjoy my automatic favor, and if I was to acquire a new system it would be a Turbo Grafx/PC Engine. Also I enjoy experiencing titles that have fallen off the radar, which I have done more and more in the past year or so. I'm also something of a completionist, which means that even though my current systems have large libraries decorating my shelves I'm not yet satisfied. As part of being a completionist, I continually locate more titles from the past that seem somewhat interesting. Sometimes I get an unpleasant surprise, but even that builds character (or so Calvin's dad says). And the potential libraries of all these systems are expanded by imports, which I was never afraid of and after Shining Force III positively gravitate towards.
There is also my tendency to explore older material in forms of media other than video games. For it is there, and I nurture it. Music in particular finds me eschewing the VAST majority of current releases in favor of exploring older entries that I have never experienced. There are a few new musical entries I enjoy (I ignore video game music here because it does not fall under the general purview of 'popular' music), but when turning on the Top 40 radio station brings revulsion I try to avoid it. Television and film do not occur to the same degree, but again the completionist in me likes to investigate series in their entirety. I don't read as much now as I did a decade ago, but quite a bit of the material I do read is older (with the exception of news magazines, which are quite a bit harder to read once outdated).
And as to why I have not yet purchased a Sony system: I know myself. For reasons of length (unless there is a high demand) I refrain from posting the game listings for all the systems I already own. The PS1/2 possesses numerous titles I would want, probably in excess of 100 combined. Knowing myself as I do, possession of a Sony system would require me to promptly acquire a worthy library for it. Instant financial insuperability would be achieved. While I laugh at Sony's travails, I try not to come out strongly one way or the other regarding a console I have insufficient experience with.
Good night, and good luck.
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