What I Wish I'd Done . . .

As a different kind of retrospective, this is a, “What I wish I had done,” kind of post. Knowing what I know now about how the video game industry has turned out, along with what is important to me and how I’ve learned to take better care of things as I matured, this is all the stuff I would do if I could meet my younger self and convince him to do a couple of things differently (along with some money to buy the stuff I wish I had bought all those years ago).


NES/Gameboy Era

First and foremost, I would have been very careful with the boxes and manuals, and kept them in good shape in a bin or tote in my closet so I wouldn’t have had to buy replacements for the Zelda stuff, and I would have also had original copies for all the other games. I also would have kept the issues of Nintendo Power in good shape as well, or perhaps had a subscription for two copies each month - one to use, abuse, and read on the toilet, and the other to keep on a shelf in pristine condition. My friend Michael got that one right.

I would have also been more careful with the actual hardware and games. I wouldn’t have let my mom mark up our games with a permanent marker, nor put the address label on the back side of them after convincing her that I was being very careful and responsible with these items because they were precious to me. I would have kept them in a better state of repair (cleaning gunk off of them and making sure they were put away carefully so the labels don’t get ruined) and put Zelda II away when Michael borrowed it so the basketball didn’t chip the corner off.

I didn’t know at the time how easy it was to replace the door on the original NES, so I could have kept it and fixed it. Even after the system stopped working entirely, I still should have kept it to pull out and possibly repair now. For all I know it was just a 72–pin connector that needed fixing or by disabling the lockout chip it might still be working.

I should have also kept one of the three Gameboys for myself when I moved out to go to my first year of college, and then also kept one when I moved to Utah, and perhaps told my mom to let me know when she was planning on throwing them out so I could take possession of them instead of just relying on my Super Gameboy as a way of playing the games.


SNES/VB/N64 Era

Like before, I should have kept boxes and manuals in good shape. That’s not really much different. By this time, I did keep the actual hardware and games in better shape so there’s not much regret in that department. The only real thing that I wish I had done is keep the Virtual Boy stand and the clip that connects the unit to the stand. It was the "leg" joint on the stand that broke, and these days people can 3D print replacement parts for that particular piece. But I cannot attach the Virtual Boy to a new stand or anything without that clip, unfortunately. However, new replacement stands are now available from stoneagegamer now. 

Overall

I would have left a pile of money with specific instructions to purchase particular things (like hard-to-find games) and directives to become members of certain things. So for example, I should have purchased a Game Boy Color when they came out to play the DX version of Link’s Awakening, as well as bought a Game Boy Pocket when they released. I have been able to find working models of these handhelds through eBay, but it would have been cheaper to just have had my own copy for the past 25 years. Ultimately, it hasn’t been a huge deal because their prices haven't gone up that much over the years but having to find the alternate version of Twilight Princess has been more difficult and expensive (I originally only bought the Wii version and haven’t had the GameCube version until very recently). I also wish I had been a Nintendo Power subscriber (or maybe a Club Nintendo member) so I could have gotten the Collector's Edition disc and not had to pay an arm and a leg to get it last year.

One big thing is that I had the perfect opportunity to acquire some Nintendo history while I was in Japan, but didn’t have the funds (or the inclination) to do so. I really wish I would have purchased both a Famicom and Super Famicom and just shipped them home to wait for me. I could have also landed a N64-DD there in person along with a bunch of games. I had the opportunity, just not the foresight that I would become a collector of such things and the money would have taken to purchase them and ship them home. While I’m at it, I might as well have gotten a second version of each Zelda game to get to keep new in the package to sit and look pretty on the shelf.