Any Computer Game collectors here? (Amiga, MS-DOS, Apple II, Macintosh, Tandy, Atari, etc.)

[kahnman 1]

Hello all, my first post here so please be easy on me. I was wondering if there are any vintage computer game collectors here, either sealed in package or CIB. If so, please showcase your goods? I am just starting off and have something enroute (Apple IIGS platform) so nothing to show for now. 

 

[nrslam 404]

I guess you could call me a semi-collector of these.  My primary computer interest is cartridge-based software for 8-bit-class machines (C64,VIC-20,Atari 800/XL/XE, TI99, CoCo, etc) but I do pick up disk based stuff for those and other early systems (Apple II, Amiga,ST and occasionally MS-DOS) when I see it.

My collecting of non-cartridge software is fairly minimal and uncatalogued, hence my self description as a semi-collector. Unlike carts, having a full collection for any popular disk based system is probably impossible, and perhaps indefinable, but I admire those who try.

I've got a lot of loose (and boxed) computer carts but generally only collect CIB for disks.

[SilverspoonGaming 308]

I have a small collection of stuff that was thrown in as extras over the years.  Lots of Mac discs that I have never even looked at.

[Gloves 11,205]

I don't actively collect, though I do have a couple. The Diablo and Red Alert series primarily. Unfortunately my parents made me get rid of my older big box PC boxes when I was living with them, so no Baldur's Gate or Might and Magic. I'd still love to pick up copies of BG and MM just to have them again.

[Tanooki 4,894]

I don't actively seek the stuff, other than almost exclusively locally if it pops up, mainly it eats up room, and because of how the old stuff was it gets expensive fast either due to the franchise and/or the amount of unique junk in the box typically.  And with that I mean PC Big Box stuff from the late 80s through the 90s to early 2000s.

 

This here is a little be warped due to panorama and an iphone 8plus, but what I have for big box games.  A few you may notice are sealed.  I've had others but been pushing out a few.  I'm considering even pulling that new copy of Return to Castle Wolfenstein as it never was favorite, rather have a box original Wolf3D and/or Spear of Destiny instead.

[MegaMan52 2,239]

I haven't been collecting Computer games much, but I have a few from my childhood as well as some that I bought a few years ago:

My Apple II collection. The disk on the top right has Mario Bros., the disk on the bottom left has Frogger, and the disk on the bottom right has Donkey Kong. I used to have more Apple II games, but unfortunately I got rid of most of my Apple II collection about 20 years ago.

Even though Sonic 3D Blast isn't that great, I probably played this more than any other Computer game. My main reason for still having this is because it has the soundtrack from the Saturn version, and I can listen to it just by putting the game into a CD Player/Discman. I got this game in 2000 or so, and I had a few other PC games the same year such as Test Drive 5, some educational games (like Math Munchers Deluxe and Yukon Trail), and some games based on board games (like Monopoly Jr) that came with General Mills cereal.

Bought these a few years ago, mainly because of my interest in imports. I opened both and installed them, but unfortunately they don't seem to work on my Computer. No big deal; I'd rather play Mega Man X7 and Mega Man X8 using a console anyway.

Bought this game earlier this year.

Edited September 9, 2021 by MegaMan52

[inasuma 1,146]

Yeah I got a few. And by a few, I mean multiple copies of the same game: Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. lol

I have it on:

- GC
- Xbox
- Mac (big box)
- Windows (big box)
- PS4 premium edition (LRG rerelease)
- Switch premium edition (LRG rerelease)

Just missing PC premium edition from LRG and this pointless crusade will be complete.

[Tanooki 4,894]

I don't know why I forgot about this, nor why I never took a picture, but I do have one other old PC game, so old I can't even read the disks for it as they're 5 1/4s.  I picked up a couple years back the original Street Fighter arcade game DOS PC port.  The box art was fantastic, I couldn't leave it, and the box is different it's like one of those oversized puffy VHS tape style clamshells.

I tried to be lazy and find an image, I can't, so I pulled it out to take a picture.

[fcgamer 4,522]

If I find anything old for the Taiwan market, I'll buy it. Here's mine:

[obnoxious 107]

I regret so much not keeping my Duke Nukem 3D box. It was the first game I bought with my own money. Still have the CD case and disk, tho.

[Tanooki 4,894]

Love that Doom art, I'd feel Doom'd trying to read that.

[spacepup 2,312]

I don't have a large collection, but I do enjoy them and have a few (don't have pics atm) like:

Castles II: Siege & Conquest
Bagasaurus (C64)
Castle of the Winds series (actually Windows 3.1)
Ken's Labyrinth
Some random old Spot games

And then a bunch of older CD-Rom Windows and DOS games of all sorts.  

I don't collect for any sets or anything - mainly stuff that I played as a kid, or stuff that I just think looks interesting. 

I also have a very small collection of some old japanese computer games like pc-98, fmt, etc., but not very many of those.

Neat stuff for sure!

 

[Tanooki 4,894]

OK now there's a classic and it still floats around on lists so it's not forgotten - Ken's Labyrinth

[tbone3969 303]

On 9/11/2021 at 11:23 PM, Tanooki said:

I don't know why I forgot about this, nor why I never took a picture, but I do have one other old PC game, so old I can't even read the disks for it as they're 5 1/4s.  I picked up a couple years back the original Street Fighter arcade game DOS PC port.  The box art was fantastic, I couldn't leave it, and the box is different it's like one of those oversized puffy VHS tape style clamshells.

I tried to be lazy and find an image, I can't, so I pulled it out to take a picture.

Boy that is sweet.  Any chance you would be willing to part with it?  I am a big Street Fighter fan and would love to display it.  I have PayPal funds and plenty to trade.  PM me if interested.  Thanks Tanooki.  Oh and I was playing that Gameboy over the weekend.  I really like it.  Works great now.

[darkchylde28 1,546]

I don't really collect, but I am an enthusiast of and have a lot of enthusiasm for older computers, especially the early 8-bit ones as well as the MS-DOS era.  I've still got a few boxed games from when I was growing up and won't turn down real/boxed copies of games for those classic systems if I can get them reasonably, but most often I end up playing stuff on real systems but via some sort of disk drive emulator or, for the MS-DOS PC stuff, via DOSBox in one form or another.  Surprisingly, for the Apple II (my biggest "love" of that 8-bit era), I've got far more physical copies of new releases than anything released back in the day.  Partially to help support the authors and keep new stuff coming down the line, but mostly due to what prices have done on sealed/boxed front for all systems in the past 5-10 years.  I'll happily throw down $5-10-20 on a brand new game and get my floppy + manual + baggie release versus paying 5x-10x that for games produced and sold in the same form factor but priced comparatively crazily because of the "historical significance," or multiple times those multiples for popular boxed games that sold well at retail.  I'd love to have Apple versions of the SSI Gold Box games and the earlier Sierra "quest" games that  I enjoyed on PC as a kid, but not for the rates that deep pocketed collectors have set (that sellers/resellers are happy to wait on, seeing as most of them have let the stuff sit quietly in their garage for 25-30 years already anyway).

[Tanooki 4,894]

3 hours ago, tbone3969 said:

Boy that is sweet.  Any chance you would be willing to part with it?  I am a big Street Fighter fan and would love to display it.  I have PayPal funds and plenty to trade.  PM me if interested.  Thanks Tanooki.  Oh and I was playing that Gameboy over the weekend.  I really like it.  Works great now.

I’ll write you.  So. Maybe. 

[kahnman 1]

Awesome, thank you guys for sharing your wonderful collections and stories to boot. It's nice to see other collectibles and games on here than the garden variety carts. That Street Fighter on 5-1/4" floppy is just too cool and would be a key piece in any collection. It looks like it's complete with all the extras as well. 

 

I grew up playing Leisure Suit Larry - Land of the Lounge Lizards and began to look for a nice sealed one (just for display) and was shocked how much the 1987 releases are going for on EBay and not even with perfect seals/boxes! Does anyone remember this game? It was released on several platforms including MS-DOS, Macintosh, Apple IIGS, Atari, Amiga, and maybe one or two others. 

 

These old Sierra quest games where you had to type out commands were a lot of fun but my tastes might differ from others  Hugos House of Horrors, Kings Quest, etc. were my faves so I might have to start hunting for clean boxes of the original releases. 

 

 

Edited September 14, 2021 by kahnman

[darkchylde28 1,546]

On 9/14/2021 at 12:47 AM, kahnman said:

I grew up playing Leisure Suit Larry - Land of the Lounge Lizards and began to look for a nice sealed one (just for display) and was shocked how much the 1987 releases are going for on EBay and not even with perfect seals/boxes! Does anyone remember this game? It was released on several platforms including MS-DOS, Macintosh, Apple IIGS, Atari, Amiga, and maybe one or two others.

I did so as well, despite the fact that I wasn't anywhere near an appropriate age, lol.  If I got to play, it was either because I was watching my dad play and he stepped away for a while or I managed to luck out and get a string of age test questions that I actually knew the answer to in order to get it to start on my own.  Space Quest 3 is my favorite, but I've got a soft spot for basically all of the Quest games.

I picked up boxed (but not sealed) copies of Larry 1-3 and Space Quest 1-3 (re-release for SQ1, sadly) ~3 years ago for a fairly reasonable amount, but yeah, things have gotten nuts in the past couple of years or so.  Anything that's sealed is suddenly, miraculously, going for absolutely batshit insane money, and almost never to people who are actual enthusiasts for the games.  Anybody I've seen talking about getting one of the now high dollar copies has never actually played the games but saw something on YouTube and had to go blow a house payment or two on something that'll probably get 5 minutes of attention when it arrives, then sit on their shelf ignored until someone else comes over and notices it.

If these things were actually as popular as the sudden surge in prices for boxed/sealed copies in decent condition indicated, it wouldn't be such a hard sell to get the rights owners to commission new entries in most series.  Sadly, that's not the case.

[kahnman 1]

$1,000 + tax for a sealed Apple IIGS Leisure Suit Larry original Sierra game! One sold, one remaining. Are PC/Computer games the next to take off or have they already started their ascent?

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/203443735552

[Tanooki 4,894]

They've been up for years, but it depends on what it is.  Typically it's something that has some pedigree of a sort to it, and/or has a lot of fluff in the box.  I don't think on the whole they'll go nuts, as there's a lot you can get now even in a big box format for like $30 and less easily.  But if you have a name by it, Doom, Simpsons Arcade Game, Quake, Wolfenstein, Might & Magic (special box with all of them because it has cloth maps, trinkets, many books, etc) and of those sort they get good wads of cash.  Yet there are others that don't get much despite what they are.

I recently offloaded a fair few sealed up old games from the 90-00 range, quite a few I started at 100 and some sold, a few went closer to the 50-60 range and some had to go as low as 25-30 to go.  Return to Castle Wolfenstein was a $130 BIN highpoint, but another like a flight simulator I had was on the low side as was a Warcraft II authorized expansion at $25.

 

Your Larry there is unique and has pedigree.  It's new, It's Larry, and it's also a strange format as it's not DOS or XT/Tandy but an Apple version.

[kahnman 1]

Tanooki, I appreciate your insight. Quake, Duke Nukem, etc. were some of my faves so I can definitely see much more mass appeal. 

The Leisure Suit Larry being sold on Ebay isn't mine. I was just checking for any new items being listed and came upon it. I do have a mint in sealed box Macintosh example, in even better shape than the one listed in the above auction. 

 

[Tanooki 4,894]

I didn't think it was yours, more of a curiosity with it being an Apple release.

I haven't actively done it, mostly, but I do go after big box games, (very rarely sealed) when there's something I paritcular am after, while sometimes I just accident upon things.  A few years back I found the original Wolfenstein 3D guide apogee/ID did for the game with maps in it, kind of surprises me as it wasn't some retail store thing, it doesn't get a lot of cash, but I guess nazi's don't do what Doom does.   Simspons Arcade is one I did seek, ebay no less, because it was my first retail PC game purchase I made for a full game (wolf3d floppy was for shareware.)

It's how I'm fairly aware of what the values are on some stuff, not so much others, because I try and keep up on some of it.  I have a game right now I'd like, floppy era release, around 1990~ but horrific collectard behavior has it commonly into the three figures, even a loose pair of floppies can be as much as a modern retail title.   Sure I could just warez it, but I don't want to.   I have a working supported 3.5" floppy usb external drive.

Edited October 4, 2021 by Tanooki

[Alder 242]

I love oldschool RPGs, but I don't have many of them. Most of my spending is fueled by nostalgia and I'm not nostalgic for big box PC games since I didn't really grow up with them. I played a few, but I don't remember seeing them in the store as a kid so that nostalgic itch is scratched more by playing them on original hardware than actually owning the game. I'd love to get copies of TES Arena and Daggerfall someday. 

A few months ago I looked into the infamous Big Rigs, but I couldn't find any sold listings, just a few posted on ebay for thousands. I was considering picking it up for a few bucks as a laugh, but I guess that's not happening.