Month: August 2017

I planned on posting this ages ago, I’m falling behind!

In short this was my first summer project, I have been a bit unhappy with my
computer setup for a while and after contemplating a bit I realised that
the games I will play in the near to half distant future will be either
Steam games on PC, emulated fan translations on PC or PS4 games.
I have always had all my consoles hooked up but for the first time I
decided to take them and the CRT screen down, replace two of my old shelves
with a larger desk and rebuild one of the shelves to hold just a few modern
consoles, I am really happy with the new setup and it finally feels like I
have some space in here! Sadly everything is so dark that my camera can’t
pick it up correctly but enjoy the new look:

Here it is!

Woo, you can actually see the Xenoblade posters now (and also a small
glimpse of the PS4 games in the corner).

A lot of free space left on the desk if you want to place a console
or something else there temporarily or just move the keyboard and
work on the big screen.

Plenty of room to twirl around between the desk and sofa.
I planned to rebuild the shelf in the corner to hold the computer
but this turned out even better with a “suspended” solution.
I still haven’t decided what to do with the free space!

A nice overview.

Love the small side table with removable top! You can almost
see the PS3, PS4, Wii, WiiU and receiver in the darkness

But wait! It didn’t take long before I started to miss my old consoles and
used the spare parts from the old shelves for this:

That’s right, most of them just moved into the collection.

Well, at least half of them, I could remove the PS1 and get a region free
SNES but for now I like the setup.

I lowered the back shelf to make a “cool two layer effect” with the Tales of
items but I lowered it a bit much, now it only works if you are taller than me
or stand on something… this is how I wanted it to look at least.

For now this is a standard composite setup, all controlled from here.

Not much to see but adding a simple “hook” at the back of the new
construction was all it took to keep the cables at bay, in fact this
turned out to be one of the better setups I have seen or setup myself,
almost no cables at the floor, easy to switch between consoles etc.

And finally an overview sitting in the sofa.

Like always I wish I took more pictures during construction and
explain it better but everything is just so dark here, the camera
can’t handle it. Oh well, that’s how I wanted it after all,
the dark shelves keeps the focus on the games, notice the heartless,
that’s how dark it is, hehe.

The power to all consoles are controlled with remote control
to easily turn them all on/off when I don’t plan on using them for a while.
Overall very happy with this too, maybe I will raise that one shelf a
bit again and also try to find some nice lightning.

Even if it was a lot of work the best part was being able to recycle
the old shelves and build this, about $10 in new materials!

I planned on writing this last week but I got sidetracked by Kingdom Hearts,
I finally played trough both II: Final Mix for the first time since the
PS2 release (12 years ago!) and also Birth by Sleep for the first time,
long overdue! More about them another time, today I will be happy to add
some of the most sought after Xenogears items:

The amazing Key chain set is finally complete!!
This has probably been my biggest hole in the collection and a bit
embarrassing not to have in a collection of this size. I was never worried
not to find them all but it is not easy (or cheap) these days.
It will remain a mystery why they choose Sigurd instead of one of the other
playable characters but I don’t mind, hehe.

I dance in joy to finally have a complete set of these!
MUCH harder to find than the key chains and well, most things.
I don’t know if very few were produced, if fans are hogging them or if
people don’t think they are worth selling. Either way here they are and
again a mystery how they choose among the characters.

With these items crossed off from the list, the missing Xenogears items
are very few although rumors says that we will actually get some new ones
next year thanks to the 20th anniversary! I still don’t dare to be to
excited since we know so little about the items but it seems to be
at least two action figures of Weltall and Vierge, interesting times.

Another item I am not as excited for as I “should” be is this:

The japanese Xenosaga I KOS-MOS Standee!!

I knew this would find its way here one day even though it probably is
one of the hardest items of all to find. The things holding back my joy
for this is the size and storage of this, now that I have all three
Standees they together cover half the collection and they are a pain to
move around for cleaning etc. Secondly it did get quite damaged on the
way here, it doesn’t look to bad in the picture and I have managed to
bend back some of the damage but still upsetting.
(The tape was not part of the damage, I knew about that from the start).

Just a comparison with the US Episode II standee. About the same height
for both but EPI KOS-MOS is a lot larger, almost 1:1 scale.