Why Collect Physical Video Games?

When Physical Media Was the Standard for Video Games

Once upon a time, physical media was the standard means of video game distribution. Before there was Steam and the PlayStation Store, our games came in a variety of formats including floppy disks, cartridges, and CDs/DVDs.

I can still remember booting Chips Challenge off a floppy in school. It felt like my copy- I could connect with it in a way I can't with a digital game.

Sure, there have been some improvements. Gone are the days of staring at display cases while my parents shopped, longing to open that box of Star Fox I read so much about in Nintendo Power. Now almost any game I want is a download away and cheaper too- especially if I wait for a sale.

Sure we could go to Family Video and try our best to finish the game before our week is up, but now games can accumulate in our digital libraries until we are good and ready to play them (if ever). Why, we can scroll through our digital collections and feel like we own these titles, even though we can't sell or give them away. And even though we may never play many of these titles that are one click away, we can take pride in being good consumers who help stimulate the economy.

Pride of Ownership

Given all these advances in video gaming, you might be wondering why I and many others still enjoy collecting and playing games on retro consoles. For one thing there is pride of ownership. To hold a physical game like Yoshi's Island in my hands, slot it into my childhood SNES, and see the wonderful intro on the old CRT television. That is something a digital library can never reproduce.

No Internet or DRM worries

I don't need to have an internet connection to play, there's no DRM bullshit to put up with, and I don't have to worry about some company going bankrupt and shutting down the servers. There's no worry about software dependency hell making the game unplayable, or spending hours to get some feature to work properly. Back in the golden age of gaming, developers had one shot at making a great game. They couldn't ship a rushed product and patch it later. There wasn't any day one DLC nonsense either. You got the whole game, like a time capsule preserved for posterity.