Where do you keep your collection of video games?

Submitted by Stephen Munn on July 19, 2009 – 9:19 am41 Comments

shelving unit With a move coming up at the end of this month, I’ve been spending a lot of time rethinking the layout of my home and where I keep things. I was a graphic designer for a number of years, and when I got a floor plan of our new home, I ran around our old home, assaulting all my furniture with a tape measure and building a full color scale map in Adobe Illustrator. The idea was to make the move as smooth as possible.

In the process of packing, I’ve become aware that I don’t have nearly enough storage space for my CDs, DVDs, and video games. I have a storage cabinet from IKEA that holds all my CDs, but they’re just kind of stacked inside and it’s nearly full. Worse still is my collection of videos. I don’t have nearly as many of those as I do CDs, but before I packed them, they were just stuffed into drawers.

Somewhere between these is my collection of video games. These number well over a hundred across many platforms, and I don’t have any kind of useful storage for them. They started out on a shelf, but over time they started to spill over. I keep my Castlevania collection somewhere else entirely. Before I packed everything up, the shelf was full, plus there was a two foot tall stack of horizontal boxes and a number of loose games that I was selling in the corner of the room.

What do you use to store your large video game collections? Is it some specific retail product, something modular that grows with the collection, or something you built yourself? I’m not sure I’m that handy.

Tags: collection, storage

Salesmunn

What collection? I own what I play and unload everything else.
JoeFourhman

Hurm. My old stuff is all stashed in basement boxes (Game Boy, N64, PS1, Genesis). All my PS2, GameCube, DS, PS3 and Wii games are shelved in the living room, spines out, sharing nearby shelf space with blu-rays and DVDs.

The modern games are organized by platform, except for certain franchise collections (like, I put all the PS2 Metal Gear games together with GameCube Twin Snakes and the MGS4 collector set, which transitions into the rest of the PS3 games). Then they are further delineated according to awesomeness. So my favorite franchises and games are on the top, and then as you go down you eventually get to a ghetto with stuff like Superman: Shadow of Apokolips and Starsky & Hutch.

My mother built the shelf to my rough specs, sort of a stairstep design with multiple zones and three steps.

Incidentally, since I shifted to iTunes many years ago, my entire collection of music CDs – which once upon a time would have been part of this equation (yay for PS1 playing music CDs!) – is now entirely forgotten to the basement.
http://www.aeropause.com mclazyj

I have four 29 quart plastic bings stacked on top of one another that fit two rows of games stacked, spines up. Three of those bins have 360, PS3, Wii and PS2 Games. There are a couple of original Xbox games.

As for computer games, that has become a tougher proposition. It use to be, the games shipped in jewel cases that were inside of boxes. I would save the boxes, and then remove the jewel cases, putting those into a standard CD rack. Now, games are shipping in DVD styled clamshell cases, but thicker than DVD cases. So far, those have been stacked, standing up on the top of my computer desk. But I have run out of room up there, and games are starting to form vertical stacks on top of the original row of games.
http://www.aeropause.com mclazyj

and all my older computer games are kept in storage, floppy discs, boxes and packing materials. And I made a second pass for you Stephen, but no DOS version of Castlevania.
StephenJMunn

How efficient! You must love direct download games. Well, except you can't resell them.
StephenJMunn

I appreciate that, thanks. :>
StephenJMunn

…further delineated according to awesomeness? That's just fantastic. I must see a photo of this shelf.
StephenJMunn

I always picture your home as like a hoarder's place, with stacks upon stacks of pristine video games everywhere. A whole room full of copies of Burnout Paradise.
Salesmunn

they're actually my favorite as I don't have to pile them up somewhere.
JoeFourhman

Sounds like something I should virtual tour through YouTube.
Jordan_Snyder

Uhhh… I just stack them up in my entertainment center. I'd love to keep it more organized, but I share a room with the slobbiest brother alive.
lundy3311

I keep my games in a basket next to my tv. I don't have many games anymore, so it's not that much of a problem.
Harshy

Apparently we do the same thing with our games. Ancient ones in a basement box, new ones on a bookshelf with Blu-Ray/DVD.
I've been using iTunes for 3 years or so, but now that DoubleTwist is available to sync my iPods and Palm Pre, I'm going to dump that side of Apple. It is too restricting (and the latest update will nuke Palm Pre syncing through iTunes).
Harshy

I'm moving at the end of the month, too!!! I'm going back to school, how about you?
InfinityDevil

I have three storage locations:

1. a short, black plastic thing with 2 shelves and a drawer on casters. Top shelf was made to hold a PS2, so has a flip up top. Drawer is pretty deep so it holds all of my controllers, charging cables, USB headset, PSP charger, and the extra SD, MSPD, and CF cards I keep backups of PS2 game saves on. The top shelf, which has the flip-down top partially blocking it, holds infrequently-accessed things like PSP game cases, PS2 game cases, and eventually-I'll-play PS3 games. Middle shelf, which is all open, has my current hot list of PS3 games, maybe 10 or 12 total.

2. cardboard box on my computer rack in the basement holding games that are listed for sale. They stay away from everything else to keep me from accidentally moving one out of the box or opening something that's not opened yet.

3. A full plastic crate in the basement holding stacks of PS1, PSP, PS2, and PS3 titles (and some PSP UMD cases for stuff that lives in my PSP carry case) I'm either done with or are played so infrequently as not to belong in the top shelf by the TV.

4. Oops I said 3, but 4 is only accessories and stuff like that. I have a large covered plastic tub-like thing dedicated to console accessories, my PS2, all of the cables, the Logitech keyboard controller for the PS2, the PS1 I got at a garage sale a while ago, extra controllers for PS1 and PS2, etc.
InfinityDevil

Ooh ooh you have a Pre? I don't have Sprint or a smartphone but I love what I've seen of the Pre's design and software stack. How do you like it so far?
InfinityDevil

I think you should. Joe H. definitely needs to show off his.
InfinityDevil

Music and movies are currently a thorn in our side. We have two tall and slender Ikea storage racks on the opposite corner of the living room with DVDs stuffed in one and music CDs stuffed in the other, but we've overrun them both, and there are about 20 DVDs, almost all children's stuff stacked in slots in the TV stand on either side.

Rotten kids.

Wife wants to put all music CDs in the basement but I know if she does that we'll never see them again and she'll start rebuying stuff we already own on iTunes. We don't have enough storage to rip them, either.
Harshy

My Pre is my first smartphone, and the closest thing I've used comparable is a curren-gen 80 GB iPod. So anything I say consider that experience.

First, Sprint is dirt cheap. If you want data (internet), texting, GPS, and 450 anytime minutes, it is $70/mo. I'm on a family plan with 5 lines sharing 1500 minutes for $190/mo. Nobody can touch that plan. Just stay in the states with it for now (Sprint will expand agreements to Europe and such soon).

So, the Palm Pre excites me more and more every time I use it. It saves so much time for me: I don't have to check a computer to get my e-mail anymore. Sprint's data is the fastest in the business. It has Wi-Fi to take care of me at home or where I am roaming to speed it up, too. I can open as many programs at once without closing them. I'm told you can't do that with iPhones or Blackberries. I can open Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files. Interface is more fun the longer I use it. Smaller than any iPhone or Blackberry.

I wish it had more apps available, but homebrew is not very difficult to put on (and Palm encourages it). More apps will come. Small keyboard, but I adapted. Non-expandable 8GB memory. You can get Pandora or Orb for your music, though. Orb is something where you broadcast your music/videos from a home PC, and your PS3 or Palm can receive the broadcast. Battery needs to be charged about every night or more frequently if I'm using it to death.

Had it for 3 weeks and I'm in love. I'm kinda a walking ad for Palm and Sprint .
Harshy

Have you considered network media storage to take care of ripping?
http://www.aeropause.com mclazyj

If it was a console game, I get that you might want the hard copy for resale value, but with the archaic use of draconian DRM, digital distribution just makes so much more sense on the PC side. It also keeps me in check with griefing, because I do not want to lose my Steam account.

That said, there are people that create a Steam account for each game they purchase, so they can resell them when they are done. There are always creative people.
http://www.aeropause.com mclazyj

There is not enough time in the day for me to go to the storage shed and get all the games out for pictures. But I have to admit, I am not sure why I keep them. I never plan to sell them, and I have bought most through digital distribution or compilation packs on CD or DVD.
http://www.aeropause.com mclazyj

Some time, I will have to post the huge access database I have of all the games that I own. Atari carts, floppy discs and a fully functional tandy 1000a complete with two 5 1/4 floppy drives and 640K of memory chips installed. I still have the working color computer two button joystick that was compatible with it. Awesome stuff for subLogic Flight Simulator with its book of landing strip codes. Man that game was challenging for its time.
http://www.aeropause.com mclazyj

and isn't everything better with burnout added to it. Think about it. Burnout King's Quest. Burnout Diablo. Burnout MarioKart. Burnout Ouendan 2. Burnout Persona. Etc.
http://www.aeropause.com mclazyj

I worked my way up to 5 DVD cabinets, each holding 200 DVDs, but they took up so much usable wall space that in the end, I decided to ditch the the DVD cases and put them into CD wallets. Five of those CD binders holds all of my collection and they store nicely under my end tables in the living room. I did the same for my CD collection.

Then I went to Collectorz.com and bought their music and movie collection software. It use to be lifetime updates, but apparently new customers do not get that benefit, so you may not be as happy with them as I am. I take that software and have inputted my entire DVD collection in the Movie Collector software, and all of my music in the Music Collector program.

Each entry includes a reference as to what binder it is in. I did keep two of those DVD cabinets and I have put them in my strangely wide entryway into my house, and my box sets and HD-DVDs and Blue-Ray discs are in them.