Video game collectors come in all shapes and sizes. Some people want all the games from their childhood or they want to have all games in a series. Going for a full set on a console is not something unique, there are “plenty” collectors out there with a complete collection for the NES, Super Nintendo or any of the other old school systems. For the Playstation 1 however, full sets are very rare because of the enormous amount of games that got released for the system. Jason Dvorak is the only known collector to have a complete NTSC (USA) set for the Playstation 1.
And when we say complete, we mean every game and every variant known to man!

First things first, why did you start collecting for the Playstation 1?
You know, usually there’s what I call a ‘trigger game’ – a game that, for no exact reason, you must now collect something in relation to that one game. For some, it means all the games in a series, for another, maybe all the games by one company, or whatever it is that drives them. That one game ‘triggers’ the collecting gene.

At the time I started, I was actually instead going for a complete NES set – but upon researching, I realized too many others were doing it; that meant competition for finds, a lack of originality, and random other dumb reasons I rationalized inside my head. I wanted to do something unique; at the time it was unheard of to go for everything PlayStation. I loved the system that much, and figured, why the hell not. Besides, sometimes the quest is more important than the destination.

Jason with a part of his collection

Did you immediately go for a full set with all variants, or what was your intentional collection goal?
In all reality, it was SUPPOSED to be just one of every game, boom, done. When I was within about 200 titles of the end, I met my now amazing friend and fellow collector Steve. It was he who showed me that there were Working Designs variations, and said I should go for that mini-set within the full set. I became so enamored with the researching and hunting that it basically snapped me into a collecting frenzy. I now had to track everything variant..

So thanks to your friend you were now a variant hunter. Most collectors are happy to have one copy of a game, why do you want to have all different case variants, art versions etc?
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of it is the quest; the hunt. I live for the hunt. While I love and live for the hunt, my graphic designer side can also be blamed. It’s interesting to see the changes made to a game’s packaging to accommodate new marketing features. Many games don’t just have a Greatest Hits label slapped on them; screenshots could have been removed, descriptors changed, fonts adjusted, typos corrected and then re-corrected, etc. Many variants jump around; the 4th variant may be more like the original release, or if you’re an art lover the work Working Designs put into their releases is second to none. More importantly, I’m building an archive for future collectors, alongside current collectors and gamers alike. I’ve been very, very blessed with Game-Rave.com and all of it’s readers and fans. If it were not for them and you guys, what I do for fun would be a lot more work. Also, I’m a completist freak, so that’s to blame, too.

The Working Designs variants of Alundra

The problem with your style of collecting is of course, that your collection may be complete today and missing an ultra rare variant tomorrow. Do you think you’ll ever be 100% complete with the Playstation 1 set?
Trick question with a trick answer; one day I’ll have every *known* item, but there are always new items being found; I think one week I had gotten 5 reader emails that totaled 7 new variants. Since there’s no actual “here’s what’s out there” list, it’s up to us to get it all set. I just happened to happily volunteer tracking…and buying…it all. I think one day, maybe a year or 2 from now, I may have everything ‘known’, but who knows.

I think this is also a huge hole in the industry – no real company has ever really taken hold of their legacy. Sega and Nintendo were the only companies to ever offer complete lists of their releases (though missing variants, etc) to the public. Even then, the lists were slightly wrong or didn’t follow a proper unified format.

While the frustration will always be there with the unknown, the end result will be and is worth it; the absolutely complete historical documenting of the greatest game system that was and ever will be. I am up to the challenge. I just need to be more active in updating.

In a way that must be both satisfying and annoying, still no completion but reason for another hunt. Have you ever had a moment of “what the hell am i doing” because of this?
All the time. Twice on Sunday. But truth be told, this is one of the few things that keep me sane. I have to give a huge shout out to the community and my fellow collectors. Without those to share your passion with, it becomes meaningless. Or in other words, it’s nice to know there are others out there as crazy as you (laughs).

Do you see your collecting as a hobby or an addiction?
Both. Game-rave is the hobby that justifies the collecting addiction. Truth be told, it was a lot worse years ago, when I was trying to collect everything, for everything. Now that I have sold off the collections and libraries that were either redundant or would never be played, there’s a much better focus and purpose for the PlayStation and my other “fan boy” systems. What was once a huge (but enjoyable) burden, has become a refined, focused, and re-energized hunt for the things I truly want. PlayStation One may be my first love, but the Neo Geo, Turbo Grafx-16 and several Sega Systems will always have a home in my game room.

The Jewel Case Playstation 1 Games

What is your most recent “finished hunt” ?
The Parappa the Rapper US demo disc. 4 years for one level of a short game. I think NBA 2 Ball has longer game play in a shorter amount of hunting.

I know this is probably too outrageous to even ask, but have you ever considered selling your collection?
No question is ever outrageous, and I’ve been asked this a lot, actually. My PlayStation stuff would never, ever, ever be for sale. It’ll either be buried with me or willed away. I’ve sold off a LOT of my other collections though. I’ve sold off more libraries and decks then most people would own their entire life. With the PlayStation though, so much of my life (both privately and publicly) has been affected by it that it would be soul crushing to sell it all off.

For someone with such an immense collection it must be hard to pick your favorite item, but we’re still going to ask you!
The whole collection, in it’s entirety. Not for the games themselves; but for the journey they have provided. There are stories in every game case; either how I acquired it, where it was in the path to completion, or the memory of playing it and more. When you stand among it, you really never focus on one aspect. You just kind of take it all in, and smile.

The Playstation 1 games in long boxes or special box sets

Ok you got away easy there, two other aspects that are always important in the collecting business, what are your rarest and most valuable items?
Rare is a loose term. If we’re judging based on actual how hard it is to find something, it would most likely be a variant. The Mortal Kombat 3 jewel case variant has only been seen 3 times in my hunting over the years; on the flip side, we now know of at least 7 NBA 2 Balls and plenty of Assassins’ Cases. If we’re discussing a cash value – that’s all arbitrary. Something is only worth what someone wants to pay for it.

As for most valuable, it’s the same as with rarity. If you base it off eBay, the NBA 2 Ball and the Assassin’s Case are the most likely winners. Both are crucial lessons in the grounding of one’s self. I more or less set the bar for the NBA 2 Ball pricing, as I was desperate to get one when it was first being tracked down. Now, thanks to overzealous sellers, the price for it has sky rocketed for no reason. Someone paid $700 for an NBA 2 Ball – that’s $11 for every 1 second of game play on the disc! I don’t even think they played it. With the Assassin’s Case, it averaged about $500 when I got mine. However, after posting my Game-Rave article, people started taking my enthusiasm out of context, or just copied my whole page over to their auction. This resulted in the Case blowing up to $1200+. That’s insane; ludicrous even. It’s a painted gun with a custom brief case – there’s no reason for that price amount. Because of this, I now tend to keep my fan boy admissions in check, and downplay any type of hype; I refuse to let those hungry only for money ruin the hobby and the hunt for everyone else.

The infamous Assassins Case, the NBA 2-Ball demo, Syphon Filter 3 9-11 version and a rare Spider Man 2 variant

Most of the times you get stuff in as a collector, you’re happy with them because they are an addition to your collection. However we’ve all had our bad experiences with incomplete, damaged or missing items. What has been your worst experience as a collector?
The first NBA 2 Ball I received as a gift was cracked – at the time it was the only known copy of the game outside of the programmer’s. While the disc was cracked, the crack was relatively small; if I could access the disc content and just snag the files (not even an ISO) there might have been a chance to rescue the info and finally play the game. I placed it in my tower’s CD tray, and as I opened the settings to set the tray speed to the slowest possible, the tray auto-ran, and spun the disc so fast it snapped an insanely huge sized chunk of the disc off. When you hear an ‘only known copy’ CD snap and feel the pieces bouncing around your drive…no amount of alcohol can fix that. I still own the Disc, and have it framed as a reminder.

I also unintentionally ruined two PlayStation debugging units; in the process of restoring one, I accidentally ripped the CD Laser plug port off with the ribbon. The other, it was so fragile that upon picking the mother board up, one of the chips literally fell off the board. Neither could be repaired.

You’ve been a collector for over a decade now, do you have any tips for the collectors who’ve only just picked up this hobby?
A warning, if not a very passionate plea. Gaming, specifically the collecting side, is beginning to boil in all the wrong pots. We are beginning to see the rise of hobby-breaking trends like game grading, get-rich-quick price gouging, the slapping of the word “Rare” on anything that didn’t come out that week, and worse. I’ve watched whole forums crumble beneath this bizarre and twisted belief that games themselves are some form of currency; that they are something to be looked at from afar and not actually enjoyed. I say this not in a ‘Chicken Little‘ voice either; this comes from personal experience. Twice, I have been the target of a 5-figure extortion attempt – both I laughed off and acquired said objects for the original asking price I offered. Worse, this need to remove each other from the picture or steal from each other is childish and immature. In the last 5 years, I have been hit with a Trojan virus through e-mail (with the e-mail being written by someone who obviously knew me), and lost everything. Game-Rave itself has been hacked into twice, and stolen from hundreds of times. I’ve had to send a cease and desist letter to stop the theft of over 100 pages of images; I’ve had various auctions and random bloggers steal whole pages of content with no acknowledgment of my source material.

Gaming, from the very beginning, has been about friendly competition and a hobby that requires passion in play, acquirement, and every other facet of it. If we are to survive as a species, especially where a future is looking completely digital, we must remember where we came from. Collecting is not a financial institution, and should never become one. Collect for the love; for the thrill of the hunt, and most importantly, play your games.   I spent 3 years tracking down NBA 2 Ball – and it ended up being a factory sealed copy. The first thing I did was open it and play it. It was the best feeling in the world.

You’ve mentioned your site Game-Rave.com a few times now, can you tell us a little more about it?
Game-Rave started out as a fanzine during the 16-Bit era, transformed various times over the years, and is now one of the leading sites for PlayStation fans and collectors. Over the years I have done a lot of soul searching in regards to how to handle the site. Overall, I want it to be the place for people to come to for all their questions and needs, but never lose that ‘fan’ vibe. There were some dark periods in where I didn’t know what to do, how I wanted to progress, and felt myself trying to ‘sell out’, so to speak. There are also the thefts, hacks, and attacks on me and my site, but I keep moving. I want to be the guy anyone can turn to for questions and discoveries. Our FaceBook community has really kept me grounded in that regard. I love you guys!

The other issue, one that I’ve been wrestling with and still do to a degree, is content addition. Other sites will throw up everything they have at once; all this standard info, a couple quickie screenshots, and call it a day. That leads to stagnation; I don’t ever want game playing and collecting to feel stagnant. I instead add games as I go, I mean, I have all of them so no rush, right? It also provides a nice buffer between updates to actually play the games. Just because you post a game’s information, doesn’t mean anything. You need to play it, to feel it, to lose yourself in it, and to come out with your own view on what the developers intended. It’s why I try and have discussions about the game rather than a review. My Final Fantasy VIII rant brought out the readers, both for and against it, and it got more discussion going. I love that banter between gamers – not the chest thumping, or size comparing, but that honest-to-god good old conversations about games.

A cabinet full of demo's and variants

As a final question, we’d love to know what a collector such as yourself thinks about PlaystationCollecting.com?
It’s a good little community. It’s obviously more PAL focused, which is great since every region needs their collectors. It’s also a fairly heavy PSP group, which you rarely see. It’s fun to peek in on other collectors’ ambitions and gaming ideals, especially the newer generation collectors. Some of the PlayStation 3 people have my complete and absolute respect with the variant and Limited Editions they need to track down.

One of my own faults with Game-Rave’s web-site was not setting up a true community vibe (mostly links to other sites and the like), which I’ll be fixing this year once I finish some behind-the-scenes adjustments and rebuilding. If we all stick together and help each other out, regardless of what drives us in gaming and collecting, there’s nothing all of us can’t do!

If you want to know more about collecting for the Playstation consoles, be sure to become a member of our community!
Forum: http://www.playstationcollecting.com/forum/
The topic to discuss this interview: http://www.playstationcollecting.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=3791
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/psxcollecting
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ps_collecting  
Interview with the only collector to have a full sealed NTSC (USA) Playstation 2 set: http://www.playstationcollecting.com/the-king-of-collectors-full-playstation-2-ntsc-library-sealed/

I absolutely hate when people say N64 had the first analog stick.
So lets start out with who was the first

This is the Vectrex. When was it released? 1982

When was the N64 released? June 23, 1996

So Vectrex beat N64 by 14 years

This is the Atari 5200 controller

http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/detail/5200.html

When was it released? November 1982
Still over 13 years prior

Moving to Sony

This is the PS1 dual analog flight stick. It uses the same protocol as Dualshock and works as one

When was it released? April 1996

So Sony beat Nintendo by 2 months.

So lets say you bring that up and a Nintendo fan claims Sony just copied it from Nintendo’s announcement

When was the N64 announced? November 24, 1995
When was the flightstick announced? April 1995
Still almost 7 months earlier.

The next reaction a Nintendo fanboy will go to, is that it’s not thumbsticks. Well that circle on the right analog stick, is a thumbstick.

I’m very excited to bring you the news that at this very moment DJPimpDaddy
is working on the PlaystationCollecting.com database! Read in for more details!

The eventual of this database will be to have all NTSC and PAL
PS1/2/3/portable games in it. Later on we will also integrate a collection
tool so members can show and store their collection online!

We have decided to make the NTSC PS1 part of the database our first
priority, but as you’ll read below any other data is welcome too

At this point in the process we could use help from you guys (and girls) so
I’d like to ask you the following:
- what parameters should the database use (title, publisher etc) if you
have suggestions, please reply to the following topic:
http://www.playstationcollecting.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=983
- we’re looking for volunteers who want to help test the database AND
populate it with data (either system)

feel free to contact me in any way possible, or post on the forums if
you’re interested in helping out!

as a last note I’d like to thanks DJPimpDaddy for his work so far and
congratulate him with his newborn baby boy!

This is a very strange topic for me to even consider but recently i haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. There have been some really awesome moments in slaughter, the No Russians episode in MW2, dismembering people in SoF, having sex with a prostitute in GTA and then kill her to get your money back or doing cool stuff as Kratos in God of War.

So yes, I really love that stuff, but what got me thinking? I guess Heavy Rain had something to do with it cause i could connect to the characters in a way that i couldn’t before, or at least that’s what media have told me but to be honest i have cared about characters in games as long as I’ve been playing games. Admittedly the story in Heavy Rain is great and it may be made to affect me as a player more than many other games.

Where am I going with this I don’t even know for sure myself but i know i can’t bare to even see the things i love to do in games in reality or even on TV. I can’t stand to see innocent human beings getting hurt in reality, will my feelings about games change with newer and better gaming consoles or stories even more playing with your emotions that mentioned Heavy Rain?

Well I don’t think so because after all it’s just a game how and messy it becomes or how evil and brutal things you can do it’s still nothing else than a game. Living out a horrible twisted dream, being how evil and disturbed I want to be in a game is fine. Playing a game won’t hurt anyone and I would certainly not even consider doing any of that stuff in reality.

Teaching people to do horrible things is a science which is pretty well perfected and not that hard but I am pretty convinced that a game can’t teach you that. Then comes the question about how to live with yourself afterwards and judging from pretty much every close combat war veterans story I’ve heard I don’t see why the games industry would like to psychologically destroy their audience. Even if they wanted to do it they couldn’t and if they could who would play their games?

Untill a few weeks back, I’ve always refrained from buying sealed games unless they were very cheap. I’m a collector first, but I’m also a gamer and I do wanna play the games (or atleast have the idea that I can play them). However, something changed..How do you start collecting games? I think most of us started with rebuying the stuff they had as a kid.. after that you start buying games you never had, but you played them at a friends house. Before you know it you’ll also start buying games that are generally considered to be great, even tho you’ve never played them before. The next big step is the moment you realise you want to have EVERY game for a certain system in a certain region (or just ALL of them).

Most collectors never even reach that last step and are more then happy to just collect great games and rare games, some do reach the point where they wanna have everything. But there is another select group that is not satisfied with having everything, they want to have variants too.. or even sealed games.

Explaining to a random stranger why you collect games is not that hard, you’re a gamer and you love to own a lot of games. They might find you strange (or super cool), but it’s an understandable hobby.
Trying to explain them that you collect sealed games is harder tho.. because you can’t really do anything with them, they can not be used for the purpose they were created! Using the stamp collector example always puts them in place tho (a stamp collector is not sad that he can’t use his stamps, so why should a sealed game collector be)

However, from a collectors viewpoint collecting sealed games is just “the next step” I think.
If you’re a collector and you want your games complete and as mint as possible, the mintest and completest you can get is sealed. You can be 100% sure that everything is in, if it’s still in it’s original seal!

So is sealed collecting the logical next step for collectors?
This picture shows that i do believe it is for me!

I want to present a bold statement here, that I would like to discuss with you guys. It is about a genre that most collector’s love and not only because of the overall rarity and price

If someone would ask you what you consider to be the 3 most important things in life, what would you answer?
Wealth, fortune, health, a job, kids, a PS3? Everyone has different priorities in life and different opinions on what is important. But I think it would be safe to say that most people will include wealth and love (family/friends/partner) in their list.

Now let’s distill that first thing, wealth.. why does one want to acquire wealth? What would you do if you were to become wealthy?
You would buy things you’d love to have, you would buy other people things to show them you love them, you could provide for the persons you love and you can afford to do the things you love.
So actually wealth is not a primary goal, it is only a means to recieve and show love!

If we translate this to gaming (something we all connect on).. what type of game captures that most important aspect of life the fullest?
You can love to drive and tune cars in Gran Turismo, some people love to “pwn” online in games of Modern Warfare 2 and others love to kick someones ass in Street Fighter 4. But what genre stands or falls with it’s ability to generate love from the player? The Role Playing Game!

Even if a RPG has a great battle system, or a great level up scheme.. if the game doesn’t manage to get you to love the story and the characters, you’re not gonna spend 50 hours reaching the end. (some exceptions made) You finish a RPG with 50+ hours on the clock because you love your characters, you want to see them develop and you want to know how their story goes.

Therefore I declare that RPG’s are the pinnacle of gaming, because they are not just entertainment.. they capture the most important thing in life; love!

It’s been a while since i wrote anything.. so i figured i would just write what’s on my mind…. lol…

I bought FF13 at release.. fun game. Very linear, which is nice. It’s sometimes fun to play an RPG that is all about the story and the game rather than the side quests and being sure you speak to EVERY npc in the game.. lol.. but I am not playing that.

I bought GOW3.. more correctly, i was given GOW3 by Wal-Mart for messing up my order. Excellent game.  It’s a little “platformy” for my taste but still awesome.  I am not playing that either…

What I AM playing is Worms, Wheel of Fortune and Warhawk. One would have to wonder why I am playing these games rather than the outstanding new games… and my answer is I don’t know. I have several friends who play WoF and Worms.. and Warhawk, well, it’s hard to beat a classic.. lol.. but unsure why I am playing them.. lol

I am trying to complete my collection of early PSMs. I am missing one issue from volumes 1, 2, and 3. I purchased the missing issues for vol 2 and 3 on Ebay. I am still looking for the missing vol 1, Oct 97.  I now have two issue 1′s with all the stickers included. I am thinking of setting up a retro game area in my bedroom.. complete with old grey playstation, lid stickers, etc.

Lastly, when I look at the blog, there are two big boxes of grey blocking out the newest post. I thought maybe it was something for twitter so i logged into that.. and no difference. Am I doing something wrong?

GumbyNeeley

Hello everybody. It has been a while.. well, not for me.. i have been posting to the old board.. LOL.. I guess that will teach me to not read my emails.. LOL 

Ok, let’s start from White Knight Chronicles. In my  previous blog post i mentioned how disappointed I was in this game… and i still am. But, as it turns out, i was right about the online aspect of the game. There is a LOT of fun to be had in playing the various quests online. If only they had ironed out all the bugs before release.. Btw, I am GumbyNeeley on there are well.. look me up.

I found a copy of Ogre Battle in the wrapper on ebay. I had previously seen copies go for as low as $70 so i wanted to catch this copy if possible. The bid got down to the last minute and was still at $100.. So i threw a bid of 120 on it.. then 140.. then 150.. lol. It settled out at 155. Sometimes they go cheap and sometimes expensive.. Rhyme or reason? There is none.. lol.. Instead i purchased a copy of Persona 2 in the wrapper. I got it for $74 shipped. It just got here yesterday and it is perfect. SCORE! lol.. Also, I was recently at the game store checking prices and ran across a copy of Bully CE for the PS2. I had never seen this before and since the price was only $20 i picked it up. It contains a mini comic, a rockstar sticker and a dodgeball all in a locker style box. I have no idea what it’s worth, but it’s kinda cool.. lol

ok, off to work.. happy gaming all!

Marcus

So I have been lacking on my blogging lately. It’s been 8 days since I last posted on here and I felt I should put something up, even if it is lackluster.

My life lately has been consumed partially by the Winter Olympics, as it’s going on in my country. Not close enough for me to go see, but still fun to watch. It is fantastic for my other collecting love. See, I’m a video game collector only as a secondary hobby, it’s not quite the top of my list, but has been pushing lately. My other love is game used/autographed sports memorabilia. I have been glued to not only the games, but to the ebay store of the 2010 Olympics.. watching.. waiting.. hoping that I can score something. As we speak I am counting down an hour to the next lot of items up. I am also counting down the three hours to the game used hockey pucks that are on. Bored yet? lol

So to this point I ask all of you, is video game collecting you primary hobby, or do you have something else that catches your fancy?

1- The game used/autographed sports goods
2- Video games

That’s it for me in order. Once the games are over, I’ll be fully back into the video gaming blog, so for the three people who are wondering where I’ve gone, I’m still here, just distracted.

And I leave you with a few thoughts….

You know you’re a gamer when…

you play for hours, but the controls are so automatic for you that when someone asks what to push for jump, you actually have to think about it…

you consider playing MAG with someone a date

when something goes wrong, you try to remember when you last saved, but you realize that it’s real life

when you and your buddies try to figure out if guitar hero/rockband actually has a story line

There it is, my lackluster update of my life, and pathetic excuse for a blog topic. lol

See you after the games!

I learned about Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures a few years back when a friend showed me a crazy youtube video of some of the combo’s that are possible in this game. A while back I found this pretty rare game at a local flea market, so now I can judge wether the game only looks great or plays great as wel!

I’m not a good fighter, not in real life nor in video games. But I do enjoy my fighters when it comes to gaming!

I grew up with classics like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2 and always loved to learn, excecute and watch the most incredible combo’s. For that same reason I love the Marvel vs and Samurai Shodown series, combo’s combo’s and more combo’s!

Jojo is a pretty straight forward fighter based on a Japanese Anime show with the same name. It has a story mode that (i think) follows the series and a versus mode where you can battle the CPU or a second player. With every fight or episode that you complete you gain credits, which you can use to buy new characters and outfits etc.
The roster of fighters is pretty diverse, with different agile, strong, ranged or combination players.

The thing that makes Jojo different from most fighters is the “stand”. Most characters have a “stand” which is an avatar that you can call with the X button. This avatar performs combo’s, fights and blocks for you. However this stand has a life bar of it’s own, leaving you vulnerable for a moment when it gets destroyed.
The controls are very simple, with the square, triangle, circle being light/medium/heavy attacks and the shoulder buttons combinations of those three. The trick of Jojo’s is learning how to use your character and stand at the same time, performing incredible combo’s and special moves.

The animations in the game are pretty good, they’re quite grainy for today’s standards, but it is a PS1 game we’re talking about here. The combo’s and full screen special moves look stunning and make it a treat for the eyes to slam someone to his death.
The Japanese voice acting is as over the top as the graphics are, but it adds to the atmosphere of the game.
Gameplay wise the game is solid, the charactar responds well to your commands and the special moves come out pretty easily without breaking your thumbs.

Personally this game is in my top 5 fighters of all time, I really recommend this game to everyone who likes fighting games and isn’t turned off by some very absurd characters (a chiuaua with a sand monster for instance) and anime style characters.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Combo’s