A geek project

Someday, when I have all the money I could ever want to throw away, it'll be time to build my ultimate geek retro-gaming console cabinet. I'll collect all the consoles I've ever owned into one place, buy the best games I ever had on it, and spend some time reveling in the joys of old-time video gaming.

Starting at the bottom would be the Atari 2600 - what most people probably remember as their first console.

Everything about this console screams early-'80s cheese. I mean, faux-wood on a video game console?! That thing looks like my aunt's old station-wagon. I still remember when my dad brought this home for me when I was six years old. It had the horrific slider-switch in the back that allowed you to switch from the antenna input to the console input. Apparently there was a time when TV manufacturers didn't think TVs would ever need more than one input (I think my current TV has something like seven). I cut my teeth on the classic Atari game Combat, which looks ridiculously primitive by today's standards but was freaking awesome at the time. This was the console that ended up getting packed up and taken to Argentina, and thus was my only gaming console until we came back to the US when I was 13. Seven years on one console. My mom probably made me give it away to some poor kid, along with all my Star Wars toys. A single tear rolls down my cheek...

Must-have games: H.E.R.O. That's it - no other game would be required.

Next up in the retro-gaming cabinet would be, of course, the Nintendo Entertainment Console, or NES. This is what most people still think of when you say "Nintendo."

I VERY specifically remember receiving this one. We'd been overseas for four years, and coming back to the US when I was 13 was like summer camp, a birthday party, and Christmas morning all rolled up into one. I'd told my parents that the two things I wanted to get when we got home were a skateboard and an NES. They got me both (trying to make up for giving all my stuff to poor kids, no doubt). The morning after we got back to the States, I opened this bad boy up and plugged it into my grandparents' television. I still recall the distinct joy of playing Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt for the first time. I mean, the console shipped with a gun! How awesome was that?

Must-have games: Contra (duh) and Double Dragon, both received Christmas Eve 1989 at my grandparents' house.

Oh, and one more bit: I got my NES in the summer of 1989. It'd been released in the US in 1985. It's not entirely clear to me why this discrepancy wasn't evident at the time, although I suppose being isolated in South America for four years helped.

The NES was my gaming standard until I graduated from high school in 1994 and came back to the US for the final time. I'm not sure what happened to it, but I suspect some poor kid got it too. Anyway, the next console in my retro-gaming rack is a slight discrepancy in that I never actually owned one. During college, my sister had one as did my fiancee's roommate, so I spent a lot of time playing the Sega 16-bit Genesis:

It's too bad Sega got out of the console business after the Dreamcast, because the Genesis was AWESOME.

Must-have games: Aladdin and Biohazard Battle (which I now own emulated on the Wii).

After I graduated from college, I decided it was time for me to get a grownup console, so the next one in my rack would be the PS One:

To be honest, I didn't really play it all that much - I've always been more into PC games, and the Playstation has got to be the polar opposite of what I enjoy about gaming. It's more arcade-y, action-y, fighting games, and as I've aged I've developed a stronger taste in strategy oriented games. I kept the console for a few months and ended up re-selling it on eBay. One thing about the version that would go in my retro-gaming cabinet: it has to be the PS One version, pictured above, not the standard Playstation. Because look at that thing. It's sexy.

Must-have games: Masters of Teras Kasi. Widely considered one of the worst fighting games ever made, but I played it a ton, and you could play as Princess Leia in her steel bikini, so what's not to love?

The final entry in my retro-gaming cabinet would be my current console, the Nintendo Wii.

I won't make any final statements on what my must-have games for this console would be, but I suspect Force Unleashed might be on there.

To be fair, except for the Wii games, I could probably get every game on this list emulated for free on my PC. But the point is not to have the games themselves, the point is to have the consoles that I remember so fondly from the past 25 years. So one of these days, I'll place a few hundred dollars worth of bids on eBay, build a five-tiered cabinet, and reserve an entire weekend to relive the past.

PS: Mom, if you're reading this, I just thought of a great way for you to make up for having given away all my stuff to poor kids.