Richard Garriott makes online worlds, massively multiplayer games, going back to some of the earliest. He also happens to own spectacular, unreal, magical homes.

His latest is a 16-foot-wide, five-story tall brownstone in Manhattan that is packed with some of the bizarre, otherworldly miscellanea of a life spent collecting.

After going on a half-day tour of the home with Garriott, it's hard to pinpoint what left the greatest impression. There is the entry way wall-sized cabinet designed to illustrate the entire history of the universe from that first spark to space travel. There is the basement of automatons, part of the world's largest collection of the automated and sometimes ancient toys. There is the cellar sidewalk vault, the hidden doors and secret puzzle room. Or maybe it was the very real Sputnik (he owns original versions of both Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2) and the mummy hand, shrunken heads and vampire hunting kits.

This home, Garriott's latest, is really just the real world version of a place to house a lifetime's worth of loot, the physical expression of a man who loves to turn everything, be they a video game or a place to go to sleep at night, into an adventure.