Once More Unto the Breach .03

When I started recollecting, I wanted to focus on something that I had not focused on the first time around: boxes. This was one of those boxes that I HAD to have. Let me explain:

I first saw the Game Genie on the shelves at Blockbuster when I was 8 or 9. I had owned an NES for about a year by that point, and like most kids that didn’t have friends to tell them how to beat the games – or a subscription to Nintendo Power – I couldn’t hardly play the damn thing. The Game Genie was the answer to my prayers. I begged my parents to let me rent it (if I remember correctly, it actually cost more to rent the Game Genie than an NES game), took it home, and beat my games. (Well, except for the first Teenage Mutant NInja Turtles, I don’t think I beat that until I was 22.) That big-ass purple box was burned into my mind as a Had-to-Have. I think I may have rented it 2 or 3 more times before my parents finally caved and bought one for me (for an occasion; a brief, odd call to my mom came up with Christmas and a “You’re asking me about something I bought for you 25 years ago?”).



Like most kids I ripped through that box, emptied its contents, and discarded the cardboard. I didn’t start holding on to boxes until I was into my early days of collecting, in my late teens, and only then for new games – it didn’t matter much to me to collect boxed old games at the time. But that feeling of holding on to that box again, that’s what I chase nowadays in my collecting. Not all the time, not across the board for everything I get, but this time my collecting is emphasizing quality over quantity, and thus getting my hands on that giant purple box again was a goal that today I attained.



I also got a boxed, complete copy of Glover for N64, but, I mean, who really gives a crap about Glover?