Month: November 2015

Why hello!

It has been a really busy month on all levels, a lot has been going on around
the collection, unforeseen family matters, Xenoblade X closing in etc.

This has been a really crazy month (and year) for the collection, I received
two of the largest packages ever, the first one is something that
I have planned to buy and discussed with the seller for the last four years
and now the deal finally came to a close, I will not spoil what it is today
but it was definitely worth the wait!
I had saved up the money for this and was prepared.
The other package left a large hole in my wallet though and today I finally
sold off one of my more expensive items to a friend to make up for the hole
and be able to get the WiiU – Xenoblade X bundle next week!
I can’t believe we finally will get to play it in english, it has been
a long wait and I am really looking forward to it.
I feel bad for not showing the contents of the packages today but if you
visit the “100 boxes” you will see that there are a couple of new ones, hehe.
Also I had to rearrange a bit again, it is now a complete Gust shelf:

By the way, if you haven’t visit the Xeno collection the last couple of weeks,
you might get a shock, I have spent a lot of time taking pictures and even
opened the third and final Xeno stash:

This is a quite popular item from Ikea, and if you have seen it you know
that there is a lot of room to store Xeno items in there! I have actually
taken photos of everything except the posters. A few will get better
pictures later but at least everything will soon be up.
You may think that taking some photos is easy and should be quick
but when you handle everything as careful as I do and need to put
everything back exactly as it was etc it takes time, my camera isn’t
the best either so every succesful picture means four bad ones that
I need to sort out, it’s just a lot of work for me and I do this mostly
to help other collectors but of course also to document my own collection.

The Buy/ sell/ trade section is also updated with new items and pictures,
I think this will be easier than the old list, there is some nice and odd
items for sale and even if Xenoblade X is secured there is ANOTHER big
package on the way in January (not to mention christmas, huhu), it includes
the most expensive game that I have ever bought so every sale counts now.

Sorry if this turned into a bit of a rant but there is much to think about
and so many projects that I want to spend time on, what about those 20
consoles that needs to be cleaned and fixed or the secret project that
I have yet to announce or all the games to play, or, or… phew.
I think the best thing to do is just relax with Xenoblade
for the rest of the year.

At least these are cleaned, let me know if you need a
Gameboy game or two, hehe:

Most of them are fine to play without knowing japanese, I have been
playing a bit of Mole Mania, a really interesting puzzle game and I
also finished Kirby (it took 1 hour). I never really played Gameboy back
in the day and when I did it was on the Super Gameboy so it’s nice
to try out a lot of the library now.

There is nothing I like more than seeing other collectors’ collections and
I can spend hours looking at pictures and youtube videos where
people speak about their collections. A lot of collectors surprisingly
or maybe understandably like to keep much of the collection a secret and
that has been the case for me too all these years and I have very rarely
put any pictures up showing the game room.
I always think “just one more item and the collection will be ready for display”
or “I just need to arrange this part”. Also, I don’t want to spoil the
surprise when people visit and see the room for the first time but
I have decided to finally put up a few recent pictures, you can see this
as a half room tour! We will not get to see the Playstation shelf today
and that is where half of the games are, hehe.

I have just put a lot of the “oddly shaped” boxes and items in new protective sleeves, it might not show in the pictures
but it took a lot of time and it feels great that everything finally is protected!

(Don’t forget to click on the pictures if you actually want to see
what is on them)

The Xeno shelves change very little, the other boxes move around a lot though and this setup is far from final.

The lower corner is a chaos of boxes in different sizes, a few that I might
not even keep. Don’t mind the mystic green censor square, hehe.

This is where the Tales of collection recently relocated to, it took a lot
of time before I was happy with this, I tried making the right shelf a
Tales of shelf but in the end I got the crazy idea to put up an extra
shelf for the consoles in the background and then the Tales of boxes could
take their old spot over the TV. I like it, a bit sad that the “normal” games
no longer are on display. By the way, this is not where I usually play my
games but I plan on connecting at least four consoles to the TV,
the projector usually have Xbox360 and PS3 connected.

The red table for all the photos, and half of the SFC games.

The other half and Nintendo corner!

I rarely speak or brag about the Nintendo shelf since I don’t actively
collect any of the games, I just get the good games when they are
released, the old games are from my childhood, some of the missing titles
like Castlevania for NES is in my brother’s hands. It may look nice in the
picture but there is not much left of the Link to the Past box, haha.
The same goes for the other favorite games that I played as a child
(Poor Illusion of Time).

As a bonus, this is where the Tales of games used to be, now it’s some kind of diorama shelf! This and the one below will change when my next package arrive later this year.

I really hope that you liked it, I will do a real tour someday, including the Playstation shelf of course!

There is so much going on in and around the collection right now that I don’t
even know what to write about!

I recently looked at the stats for this blog and it seems like there has been
quite some visitors from around the world in the Xeno section lately,
I am happy and welcome you all, hehe. I really hope that you find the info
you are looking for since that is my goal with the site after all,
I will try to pick up the pace and add the rest of my collection and one step
towards that is of course to reveal the secret stash number 2!

Long before I even started collecting games there was one item that me
and my brother always dreamed of owning,
the item is of course – Xenogears Perfect Works –
Back then it seemed like a distant dream and we spent hours looking
through the amazing art in a scanned copy on the computer screen.
We spent even more hours reading and discussing the incomplete fan
translations that existed back then, those where the days and the
outcome of Xenosaga was still a mystery.

Less than a year after the collecting started a copy of the – Real thing –
finally made it’s way to me! Not only did – Perfect Works – arrive,
I soon found out about the Xenosaga Emission books and made it my life’s
goal to one day own those as well, since I was made of money back then and
had a good proxy/friend who could find them for me (I had no idea how to use
ebay or import items at that time) I didn’t hesitate to buy them all at
once when he said he could get them for me!
I was shaking just at the thought of owning them, I was not worthy of
such magnificence.

Around the same time as all of this I was planning to move and had to store
the four art books in the safest possible way. My solution was to build a
large chest, thick wood, many screws, really sturdy! On the inside I used some
kind of foam like in a mattress and made insertions for the four books and
added some luxurious cloth fabric of course.
At last I added an extra layer to the chest for future items.

After the move it probably took around a year before I even opened the chest
again and I was still shaking when I saw them all lying in there, such a sight!
I still couldn’t believe it. The chest has been with me all these years and
have of course gotten a few additions since then but very few have actually
seen the inside and sadly no one else will since I finally have grown tired
of it, or rather I have found something even more spectacular and
need the space…
The items have moved to a new location and I took some pictures of
them and put them in new protective sleeves.
(They are up in the Xeno section any moment)

For some reason I don’t have any good pictures of the chest but enjoy these old ones anyway:

It is big!

A really old picture when I stored some books on top.

This is the top layer with handles to lift it up while the items are still in place. By the way, the middle item is on my top three items ever created and of course I will get back to that one!

And this is the lower layer designed especially for the Emission books.
(Make sure to enlarge the picture by clicking it.)