Tales from the Vault: The Birth of the Vault
I have a lot of stuff. A lot. My husband and I have a room dedicated to just video games. We call it “The Vault”. There’s games in there that I barely remember playing, plenty in there that I have played, and a good few that I haven’t. How did it get so out of control? That’s a nice long story.
When I moved out to California from Alabama, I had a Super Nintendo and two PlayStation games (no PlayStation). My husband, however, had a few goodies such as Atari 5200s, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and a NeoGeo AVS system. I was in gamer heaven and decided then and there my future lay with this man. Over the years, our collection grew. Man, did it grow.
Now bear in mind that Dan and I have been together for almost fourteen years (married five as of 1 September, 2010). We’ve had time. Let this preface the following as I lay out how our Vault turned into the monster it is today.
Dan and I, being young and broke, loved going to the Flea Market. We kept finding deals on old systems, so we’d pick them up and hunt down the cords. We’d find the games for cheap or run into good deals at Dimple Records. I’d even find games at thrift stores (like a $.25 version of KC Munchkin for Odyssey 2). Trips to Alabama produced a NES and ColecoVision from the storage room at my Grandmother’s house.
As newer systems came out, my husband and I would find a way to make them happen. We’d grow impatient for imports and pick up Japanese systems just to play them. We’d get peripherals, deluxe editions, hard drives… you name it. I developed a particular fascination with Namco’s special controllers, the JogCon and NegCon. Then Bemani came, and things exploded.
I’d already been a fan of Dance Dance Revolution since 1999, but I didn’t have anything at home. Dan picked up DDR 2nd Mix for Dreamcast for my birthday in 2000, and I became addicted. Then came Beatmania, and I had a five-key controller and a pile of games. My game collection grew, and I picked up a second controller. Guitar Freaks had my husband hooked, and as Drummania became included in the later games, we picked up a drum controller, too. Beatmania IIDX became a big thing, so we got controllers and games, and finally we had to get Keyboardmania and Pop’n Music to round out the collection. The final straw was the collection of pink biscuits with sensors on them so I could play ParaParaParadise. Of course, Guitar Hero and the subsequent Rock Band (with oodles of new peripherals) came out, and we had to get them, too.
All of those music game controllers aren’t the only odd peripherals we have. I bought the hubby Steel Battalion for his birthday one year, complete with the complicated massive controller. We picked up Twin Sticks for the Dreamcast so we could accurately play Virtual On: Oratario Tangram. We have trackballs for a number of systems, and quite the collection of special controllers, memory cards, and VMUs. There’s the bright cheerful maracas for Samba de Amigo and a cute little taiko drum for Taiko no Tatsujin. Let’s not forget RealArcade sticks, Capcom Tournament fighting sticks, Ace Combat flight sticks, and… I think you get the picture.
Over thirteen years of love for each other and a love of gaming have spawned this room in my house full of gaming history. Don’t think it stops there; we have pinball tables, too. At any rate, when I say I know my games, I know my games, because chances are, I might own it or have played it. I do a “Classic Game of the Week” segment for Orange Lounge Radio where more than once, I’ve gone into the Vault, literally dusted off a game, and decided to talk about it. Keep looking back here down the line, and I’ll dust off something else and talk about my personal history with it.
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