Hi guys! I'm new here and I LOVE the TurboGrafx!
But enough about games, how about those BOXES? Will I feel happy after I buy 94 pieces of cardboard? Or do I need all 98?
This may be hard to believe, but even though I'm a totes TURBO diehard, I'm clueless regarding the extent of the library. But don't worry: I've already committed to buying everything I don't know exists and I never wanted previously. However many games there are, I'll buy 'em! Six games or eight hundred and ninety-two, it doesn't matter, I need them sealed in protective cases on my shelf ASAP. Just tell me what YOU consider a set. Do those Sapphire bootlegs some guy made in his living room count? How about that Rockman game stolen from one of our selfless homebrew programmers? I'll happily pay the thief $66.55 for an ISO on a CD-R... as long as it's in shrinkwrap, that is. Tell me what other collectors are buying and I'll buy it too!
And don't worry about genre - my collecting appetite is completely indiscriminate when it comes to little things like playability, shovelware, or fun. No favoritism for RPG's or shooter bias here, I'm more interested in whether the packaging bears the TG16 logo. Heck, I don't even care if it's a game! Pixelated boobie slideshow for $150? Why not? Beach Boys soundtrack sung by a studio band in animal voices? Whatever, as long it increases the length and girth of my collection!
That said, I'm not going to waste my hard-earned money on any old thing. As a collector of taste and discernment, there are two types of so-called "collectibles" for the TurboGrafx I will not buy:
First, strange tales and whispers on The Racketboy have alerted me to an imposter, poorman's console called the PC Engine. Apparently the common mob of slobs and gamers buy these "imports" rather than pay $300 for Bonk 3. Well, that's not me! Maybe I'll look into these Japanese knockoffs like Dracula X and Spriggan on my emulator someday, but first I need to buy a poster for Yo Bro and a box for Tricky Kick.
Second, I'm not interested in truly rare items like promos and prototypes. Those things are just too expens... I mean nebulous. How will I know when my collection is complete? It's impossible to find a checklist for all that crap and they don't look that good on a shelf anyway. Most prototypes don't even have packaging or collectible boxes! Homebrew is cheap, so I'll buy that, but don't expect me to actually open the shrinkwrap and waste my time playing those primitive Atari clones! As a buyer of dozens of games every month, I'll be lucky if I even play Air Zonk before sending it in for VGA grading.
Nope, I just want the plain-jane set of 150+ games sold in stores to fulfill my lower-middle class childhood commodity fetish so I can throw my slab on the Youtube yardstick for a couple of years until I sell everything and get a return on my investment. The SNES library is too big and the NEO GEO is too pricy, that's why I love the TURBO!