The next free room available to me was a daughters bedroom who had painted it red with black trim. The colors so reminded me of Sega Genesis that I knew immediately this was to be my Sega Room. I used the same shelving method I had used for my Nintendo collection, but I'm paying much more attention to making sure the top shelf which I have reserved for consoles is adequate for the task. I've also started using 90 degree cardboard edge protectors found in most shipping departments to hold up the games I have face out. Ideally, I would have all the games showing the box art that had attracted me to them in the first place, but like most libraries, showing spines is a far more efficient method of storage. I never wanted anything in the center of the room because I knew it would obstruct the view, but shelving a collection is all about compromises. I'm using Prepack bookcases placed back to back to form a sturdy center shelf to provide the extra storage space needed. They are versatile, easy to assemble and come with lots of shelves you can place almost anywhere you like.

As I had mentioned earlier, while researching games like R-Type, I had come across a forum discussion here about Sega Genesis. I never had nor ever knew anyone with a Sega. It was completely new to me and I had no idea how much Sega would influence my game collecting hobby. The Sega Genesis convinced me to import Japanese games. The Sega Master System convinced me to import European games. Once you start acquiring import games - you never go back. In fact my Sega Saturn game library has more Japanese games than domestic! The Sega Genesis was probably the zenith of my collecting games like R-Type and I was ecstatic about the clamshell cases that provided plenty of room for the game case artwork I found so desirable but were also durable too. The Genesis even had cool sounding titles like Curse and Undeadline, but I also found plenty of games like Chrono Trigger on the Genesis that held value as well.

The Sega My Card collection, which as I recall is a full set, was primarily for 1984 game Orguss, the oldest Mech game I own. I also find Hu Cards a fascinating format. The large PC box collection I have was for Mech games as well. I actually have a hell of a Mech game collection - 573 Mech games and counting! Too bad the Japanese ruined so many of them, in my opinion. A Mech is a walking tank. It should not roll on skates, fly and damn well should not be holding a sword!

FYI 99.9 percent of Japanese Mega CD, Saturn and Dreamcast games have Japanese titles on the back spine and English titles on the front spine. So I just .... put all of them in backwards. Someone on this board convinced me that pound for pound the N64 was a great collection. When I was shelving my Sega CD games I was thinking pound for pound this collection was pretty damn awesome too! Just wish the freaking hardware to play them wasn't so weak. Where is Analogue when you need them?

After I had all my Sega games shelved, I still had room for other console collections that were not large enough for rooms of their own. I managed to make an Atari closet and the Atari 5200 console and many of it's games were ones I had purchased over 40 years ago and had hung onto. That Atari 5200 console box is the largest console box I've placed so far. What a beast! Frankly, I have never been fond of Atari. The graphics are crude, the sound chip sounds terrible, and a controller with a vertical stick is unpleasant to play. But the 5200 was my first console and the 2600 and 7800 had a large number of tank and submarine games that I collected. What I found very strange when collecting Lynx games was how many I could purchase brand new inexpensively.

Someone might hear my story and think I collected PC Engine games for games like R-Type, but in reality I was collecting helicopter games and found a game on the PC Engine called Mr. Heli. I knew I could never have a serious collection of helicopter games and not own a game with heli in the title, so I started a PC Engine collection.

As my retirement date neared I felt I could manage one last collection while I still had someone else to pay for it. I narrowed it to the CD-i and 3DO. The CD-i had those off-brand Zelda games, which was certainly interesting, but the rest of the library looked multimedia and the console's controller was weird. The 3DO consoles were inexpensive and easy to find and the game library was in long box's with plenty of room for box art. So I went with it. Problem is, it's so easy to get a 3DO collection that I was done in 6 months. I still had more than a year left until I retired, so now what. Twiddle my thumbs and wait to get old? F that! So I threw caution to the wind and decided to really scratch my desire to know the European side of gaming. I'll be honest and say CD32 collecting was very challenging and I even delayed my retirement an extra year to get it done. I could not do it using American eBay, but had to use several European eBays and then use Google translate to communicate with foreign sellers all done during a world wide pandemic that disrupted global shipping. Very challenging and quite a way to end my hobby. Amiga went out of business 6 months after it released the CD32. That kind of financial malfeasance is still hard for me to wrap my head around. The console was marketed in Asia, North America and Europe and had a built in capability to switch from 50 to 60 MHz. It was the worlds first 32 bit game console - says so right on the box! Amiga launched with some 1st party titles and I only found one North American game Diggers. All of the 1st party CD32 games I found were in CD style or cardboard slip cases and suggested to me that was the format Amiga intended to sell it's CD32 games, but once Amiga was no more it became the wild west for anyone willing to make a game for the CD32. The ones willing were mostly Europeans who decided to use the large PC style cardboard box's they had used to sell previous Amiga PC games in. Did I mention I like box art? Finally, some with European faces!

Well, the Sega room went very well. I had room to spare and crammed a lot inside while still showing plenty of box art. Even managed to find use of a Sega hang tab by pinning some Game Gear box's to the wall with thumb tacks. I guess I could call it my room of failed consoles instead, but that doesn't have much of a ring to it.

The only thing left now is the PlayStation and Xbox collection, which I am very much looking forward too.

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