The Collection Diary

[Sirgin]

Last night I removed a bunch of price stickers off my NES carts.  They look pretty good now.

I love doing that. There's something so fun about taking games that look like hell and cleaning them until they look mint, that is just so relaxing and fun.
Rental store stickers are another story though, nothing fun about those bastards.

The worst kind are those sneaky ones who at first glance look like they'll come off in one go, but then break off somewhere in the middle! Once that happens you're basically f***ed, I usually get the white spirit from the basement to remove them completely. But then, the game stinks for a while because of the white spirit  . Can't have it all I guess.

[logical123]

May I ask what white spirit is? Is that a synonym for 90% rubbing alcohol?

[Sirgin]

I'm not sure, we don't use the term "90% rubbing alcohol" here (atleast not that I know of)

White spirit and info on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_spirits   (Key sentence: "In Europe, it is referred to as white spirit." )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_spirit



We also call it "terpentijn" (Turpentine in english: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turpentine), however I'm not sure if White Spirit is a Turpentine substitute or the actual thing.

Anyway, probably enough information about it now (Gotta love wikipedia though )

[Mr. Ksoft]

I did some really big rearranging work today.  Yesterday I spent cleaning out my nightmare of a closet (with nearly 8 or 9 years of crap piled up) and succeeded in freeing up about 99% of the floor space.  So today I was able to take the old shelves I had in there before and use them for storing all the games I keep upstairs in my room: NES, Genesis, TG16, Gamecube and Wii, with my Game Gear and Playstation games mixed in along with my DS boxes.  I also moved my DVD stack onto the shelf as well.

Another thing I did today was make a nice little binder for my loose TG16 games (aka, all of them).  I took an empty binder I found during closet cleaning and then took a few pages out of an old Pokemon card book I had in the basement and put the pages in the binder-- they fit HuCards almost perfectly.  Then I went on Google and picked up some TG16 logos and taped them to the binder.  You can see below in the pictures.

Then I took on another task... getting all my consoles up here arranged better.  The biggest problem was wire tangling-- I only have one free plug here so I'm always switching plugs for the console I want to play... plus the video cables.  Everything was wrapped around everything so it was a little bit of a nightmare.
So I decided i wasn't putting up with it any more and went out and stopped being lazy and got a power strip.  Finally.  Now everything doesn't need unplugged.  Then I took all the video cables I'm using and tied them all together so they're all right up by the TV instead of laying in the wire tangle getting tangled more.
Then I moved around all the consoles so they aren't out on the floor any more-- my room has very little space so I need all the floor room I can get.  I used a newly cleaned out part of my fish tank cabinet for my NES, and put the TG-16 right under that shelf on the floor.  I managed to fit the Wii in between the bunch of drawers I use as a TV stand and the fish tank cabinet.  But then the Genesis caused a problem as there was nowhere to put it where the cables could reach the TV.  So I caved in and put it on top of the TG-16 even though I didn't really want to... but it was the only out of the way place where I could still have room to put in/take out cartridges.  At least the TG-16 uses cards, so I can use both without moving either.
And, because I moved the NES drawer into the closet, I can use all the drawers on my "TV stand"!  I've managed to put all my peripherals and extra controllers in them.  The top drawer is just for Wii stuff plus Gamecube controllers (because there's so much of it), the second for older consoles, and the third for memory cards and other assorted things (although it's pretty much empty right now because I only have a GC memory card )

Now I can extend my legs while I play games!  I have room!

Pictures:

[img width=700 height=525]http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m34/MrKsoft/100_3121.jpg[/img]
All the games on the shelves in the closet, along with that drawer to the left (holds NES games)

[img width=700 height=525]http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m34/MrKsoft/100_3123.jpg[/img]
Closer look at the shelved stuff.

[img width=600 height=800]http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m34/MrKsoft/100_3122.jpg[/img]
The new and better-arranged system setup.

My gaming stuff has never been this organized before... even half of it, which is how it stands.  I still have 3 consoles downstairs (SNES, N64, Gamecube) that I just can't fit up here, and since my brother uses them more than me the place is a complete mess. I have no plans to clean it, though, because it'll get ruined within a day.  So I'm just pretending they don't exist and instead feeling VERY good about how I've managed to arrange everything up here.  It feels very fresh and way nicer than before.

[Sirgin]

Fun read! ^ And congrats on cleaning up the mess I myself am a tidy person and can't really stand clutter all around (atleast not in my house)

I didn't do much to my collection today except rearange my games so that Sega games stand together, etc...

[modest9797]

Mr. Ksoft:  I love the feeling I get right after I organize my games and other things.  If it is more organized you are more likely to want to play too.

[Ghost Soldier]

Excellent read Mr. Ksoft.  I wish I could get a handle on my collection and have a way to display and store it properly.

[NES_Rules]

I started designing my newest set of shelves, this thing will be huge, at 77" x 72" x 6" it will take up nearly an entire wall of my game room. It's going to replace 2 sets of shelves and a cabinet so it will make the room look a little less pieced together and it won't be as wide so I'll have a little more room in there. The design has a set of 6 compartments on one side that holds 154 loose Atari 2600 games and the rest of the unit will be all adjustable shelves. My calculations show that it will hold 720 loose SNES games which are the biggest games it'll hold, so it'll be even more NES games.
I hope to get started on it sometime this week and finish it by the end of the month.

I finally got around to starting this project. I've got the wood all cut up except for most of the adjustable shelves, I still need wood for the rest. I just need to sand off the old finish on the wood, screw it together and stain it. What I don't forward to tough, is taking apart half my game room to put it in.

[NES_Rules]

I finally finished my shelving unit. I planned on sanding off the old finish and re-staining it, but the finish that was on the boards was nearly impossible to sand off, so instead of wasting dozens of sanding belts, I used some liquid finish remover which got most of it off, but not nearly enough. So I scuffed it up with the sander and painted it instead. I think it turned out pretty well, although it's not perfect.

The old shelves:
[img width=700 height=524]http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j22/Mike_2_0_0_6/DSCN9856.jpg[/img]

The new shelves:
[img width=700 height=524]http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j22/Mike_2_0_0_6/DSCN9866.jpg[/img]

I'm amazed out how well the boxed games at the top fit on the shelves, but when I get more, it's really going to mess it up.

The shelves that hold the games are actually the left overs from the plywood I used for the backing. They're a little flimsy, so I'll replace them as I come across more suitable wood, but for now they work just fine.

One thing I found amazing was that I bought two 4' x 8' sheets of plywood for the backing and only ended up with two 3" x 4" pieces of scrap from them. It worked out amazingly perfect.

[blcklblskt]

@ NES Rules

Wow, those shelves look great!  They hold all the games very well it seems.  They look very organized.

[Ghost Soldier]

Nice shelves

[BadEnoughDude]

Looks good, dude.

[Sirgin]

Very nice shelves indeed, NES_Rules! Looks very classy and a giant step up from what used to be there, too!

Before I read the text underneath the pictures I was going to ask you if it was intentional that the shelves were so thin (and kind of look like they bend through just a bit), but you already answered my question

Is it a huge win in storage compared to your old shelves? (I mean: how many more games can you store now?)

[NES_Rules]

Thanks for the compliments guys!

Is it a huge win in storage compared to your old shelves? (I mean: how many more games can you store now?)

Actually, it's not a huge improvement in the number of games I can store. I've got room for maybe 100 more games than before. It just makes things neater and easier to add new games when I don't have a row of games stacked on top of another row.

Regarding the thinness of the shelves, most of them sag about 1/2 inch (about 1 cm) but I had a few spares so I was able to double up a few of them so they don't sag so much. The 5 shelves at the top are the thickness I prefer, I just didn't have enough of that wood to do all the shelves.

[NES_Rules]

Well, it's finally happened, I'm completely out of room for games. I've got this stack of Sega CD and Saturn games that I just don't know what to do with. And if I get just a few more PS2, NES, SNES, Xbox, Genesis or PS1 games or any more boxed NES, SNES, N64, Atari games I'll be really screwed. As each shelf that those games are on are at or 1 away from capacity. I thought about rearranging stuff, but I think I've pretty much maxed out the storage space in this room.