NekoJonez’s April 2019 Update

It has been quite some time since I wrote an update article. A lot of things are happening and I think it’s high time that I update you all on my life and all that. There are going to be a lot of changes and big updates in this article. Especially because I’m nearing my 8 year blogging anniversary next month. Also, if you want to keep up-to-date with my latest updates on my life and the things I do, I highly advise that you follow me on Twitter. Since that’s the platform I use the most to communicate with my readers and other bloggers for updates and things of that nature. But, some of these updates haven’t appeared on Twitter yet, so, let’s not stall any further and let’s get into the updates.

 Personal life things

 So, a lot of things are happening in my personal life. I wrote this update article on Friday the 26th of April. Today is the night of the premiere of the play I have been practicing since late December last year. We play it 6 times. Tonight, tomorrow night and on Sunday in the afternoon. We also play next weekend. Because of the frequent amount of rehearsals, I focused my attention more on the play then on playing games or working on my blog. That’s why articles have been so slow lately. On top of that, this whole week I have been out with a nasty cold. Luckily, I have been recovering quite well.

Another big change in my personal life is a huge job change. On Monday, I’m going to start working in a local computer hardware store. I’m quite excited to start in my new workplace. Because I’m starting in the upcoming week, I’m not going to talk too in-depth about my new job yet. So, that’s also a huge focus of mine. I’m preparing myself to start working there by reading up on the latest tech news and things of that nature for what I think are obvious reasons.

Now, another huge change in my life is the fact that I’m not going to college anymore. The reason for that is that I got my degree. I’m now a graduate computer scientist with my specialty in networking and repair. This actually happened in late December of 2018, but I haven’t written an update article since then, so I wanted to mention it here.

Last year, I wrote in various update articles that my bad mental health. So, because of my new job, my finding a girlfriend, completing my degree and various other things, I’m happy to announce that I’m finally out of that bad mental health state. A lot of my friends are telling me that I made a 180° flip. While I’m not going to talk too much in-depth on my blog, but let me say it like this; thanks to the support of friends, family and my support network… I have been looking for solutions to tackle the things that were making me unhappy in the first place. I’m so thankful for everybody’s kind words and advice that I can’t thank you guys, girls (or whatever gender you prefer) enough for everything. 2018 was extremely rough for me, but 2019 looks like it’s going to be an amazing year.

With all of that said, I think it’s high time to talk about the updates concerning my blog and things of that nature.

Blog & brand updates

 First of all, if you go to my YouTube channel, you might notice that I have a lot fewer video’s then in the past. That’s because I have unlisted most of them. The reason for that is, I didn’t feel happy or content with the quality of those videos anymore. From low frame rate footage, badly edited videos to horrible microphone quality… I might have been happy with it when I was creating these videos, but nowadays, I feel they don’t represent me or the quality I want to bring now. So, that’s why I also deleted the video’s from my blog as well. Now, will I put these videos back publically? Well, at the moment of writing I think that the chances are quite low of that happening.

In the future, I’ll be using my YouTube channel to upload glitches or weird things that happen in the games that I have been playing. So, if I want to share a bug, exploit or something of that nature, I’ll create a video about it and share it on my YouTube channel. I won’t make an article for each and every video I create, but I’ll tweet the video out. Now, will I search for these things to have some sort of consistent upload schedule? No, not at all. I feel that I’m way better in writing articles and maintaining a blog then I’m at creating videos. Besides that, I don’t have enough time to create videos, write a blog, work full time, spend time with my girlfriend… I think I’ll exhaust myself too quickly that way.

Now, something that will happen sporadically in the future streams. Because I bought an AverMedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus (what a mouthful), I’m now able to stream almost everything from the original hardware. At the moment, you can find a few archives on my Twitch channel of test streams I did. So, whenever I fell like sharing my gameplay experiences with my you guys and girls, I’ll be doing that over Twitch. Thanks to this, I’ll be able to create better screenshots and video’s to support future articles.

You might have noticed that I have been publishing fewer articles in 2019 when you compare it to last year. This has a lot of reasons. One of the main reasons is that I have been focusing on improving my bad mental health state. The results of that, you already read earlier in this article. Another reason for a fewer amount of articles is one that you might have noticed already. My articles are getting longer and longer, more in-depth. It’s simply because I’m spending much more time and effort into writing each and every article. In the past, I have been able to research, draft, write and finalize an article in 2 or 3 evenings. Now, it takes me at least 3 evenings to complete an article.

I have been thinking about reducing the number of articles I write as well. I have been thinking to reduce the number of articles to 2 articles each month instead of 4 articles. So, I can spend even more time on each article instead of rushing 4 articles through the door. While I tried doing that, I miss writing articles so much, I write 2 additional articles anyways.

Usually, I write during the evening or on the weekends. Because at those times, I’m able to focus on the creation of an article. But, this is also going to change. I’m going to work on Saturdays. Now, I do have another day off and this is Thursday. So, it’s quite possible that I’ll be publishing articles on Thursday in the future. Because I’ll be starting an article on Sunday and then being able to finish it on Thursday. I’ll have to wait and see how it’s going to turn out. It’s also possible that I’ll still be publishing on Sunday as well. Only time will tell.

Another thing I want to mention and talk about are the collabs. A lot of blogging collaborations are happening on a lot of my friend’s blogs. But, because I have been so busy with other things, I have missed a lot of them. So, until I have been able to get used to the new rhythm of my new job and the big life changes, I’ll be keeping the number of collaborations I’m contributing with to a real minimum. That way I can grantee I’m able to give my all during the collaborations and not burn myself out.

So, a good summary of what I have been saying in this article is that I have been cleaning up my blog to make it look more professional. There are also a lot of big changes in my personal life, a new job, a girlfriend, a degree… so I’ll have to get used to the new rhythm. This might cause scheduling changes, fewer or no collabs for the time being and possibly fewer articles. I’m also putting more time and effort into writing the articles as well. And because I bought an AverMedia device, I might live stream some gaming sessions of games I’m playing.

I have to admit that it has been strange writing an update article when I haven’t written one in almost 6 months. In any case, that’s everything I wanted to talk about. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

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Gamer’s Thoughts: General tips to start collecting

Ah, game collecting. It’s one of my biggest hobbies and I love doing it. Thanks to my video game collection, I’m able to talk about so many games on my blog and have so many different experiences. While I’m not the most hardcore of collectors, I do want to share some stories and advice if you want to start collecting retro and modern games. If you have any questions or you have advice yourself, feel free to leave a comment down below, I’ll do my best to help and love to hear the advice of other collectors as well. Also, know that this is some general advice. If you want to start to get really into collecting, then this article can serve as a nice base but videos like this one from MetalRockJesus are a great help as well. 

You will need space!

Do realize that you will need some shelving space when you want to start collecting. Personally, I wish I had more room in my room to build more cabinets and shelves to store my collection.

There are various interesting cabinets that game collectors use. If you look at various pictures of people showing off their collection, you get a great general idea of what sort of space you can use for your cabinets.

Something I personally do is, storing my cartridges in plastic containers. This is to avoid dust and other damage to them. I also sort my games per system. So, I have a PSP shelf, a GBA/GBC shelf, Wii (U) shelf… This makes it easier to find a game when I’m looking for them.

I can speak out of the experience of collecting games all my life, you will need a lot of storage space. Better workout a good storage system before you start collecting. Otherwise, you will regret it extremely fast.

My budget & thrifting.

If you are worried about the cost of collecting, well, know that thrift stores and garage sales exist.

Here are some tips at garage sales. I personally trained myself in the ability to spot games by just scanning the stalls. It can really help if you are able to recognize the shape and color of the system you are collecting for. For example, I know that most PS2 boxes have are blue and/or have the name “Playstation 2” on top.

Another helpful thing to know is that resellers are a plague at garage sales. Here in Belgium, they arrive at the crack of dawn to buy every game they can get their hands on, while meanwhile, another person is setting up their stall.

The best way to do deals is to buy from people who sell from their garage or don’t have a lot of gaming items. Those people really want to get rid of the games and will let them go for a really cheap price. I have bought a ton of games for a really cheap price. For example, I was able to buy GTA 1 (PS1) for 1€ or Outlaws (PC) for 2€.

While you can haggle, don’t overdo it. For example, if they sell PSP games for 3€ a piece, I usually say, what if I buy 5 of them and pay you 12€. Try to check if they are willing to go below their asking price before you continue to haggle.

I ran the risk of looking around for a cheaper version of various times at garage sales. Sometimes I get lucky, other times, I got unlucky and saw some nice games get sold before my eyes.

Since I personally collect Gameboy games, I always have a Gameboy Advance in my pocket with me. Do test your games, if possible, before you buy them. To avoid regretting buying a game.

If you are buying PC games and such, check if all discs are there and if they don’t have a lot of scratches. I always check the games for any damage or missing parts before I buy them. I haven’t done this in the past and had missing discs and discs that weren’t able to be read.

Also, keep an eye out on people trying to sell their physical copies of Steam games. Or any other online distribution platform for that matter. Since you need that key to be able to activate the game, but if you buy it in a thrift store or in a garage sale; you have high risks that the game is already activated and the disc will be worthless. Unless you bought it digitally and you want a physical copy to add to your collection.

What do I do when I go thrifting and/or to a garage sale? Well, I take a bag or two with my handhelds (charged of course) to be able to test the games, I bottle of water, my wallet with the budget I want to spend, something to eat and my smartphone. I also try to not wear many game-related items on me. To avoid giving away that I know what I’m buying. I have seen too many items that people raise their prices because a gamer needs to pay a more fair price for their games…

I like to leave in the morning to do one round and I do another round around midday or in the afternoon. Why in the morning? The earlier you leave, the more chance you have to be before the resellers. Also, you will have the biggest selection of them all. Yet, you do miss a big advantage of something you have in the afternoon.

In the afternoon, some people are getting tired and sick of standing with their stall at the garage sale and start lowering their prices. Most of them are happy if they are able to leave the garage sale with less stuff then they started. So, take that into consideration.

Index your collection & how to collect?

While I have quite a good memory in which games I have in my collection already, it’s always a great idea to have an index. This way you can easily look up if you already have the game or not.

Do put this index file in an easily editable file somewhere in online storage. Personally, I have the games I really want to find in a text document stored in my Dropbox. This way I can easily check while I’m walking at the garage sale which games I’m looking for.

Something I still have to do is make a huge list of all the games that are in my collection. Since I actually want to know how many games I own and how many games I own for each platform. It’s something that is on my bucket list for 2018. This will take quite a lot of time since I have big plans in mind.

Besides physical games, I do collect the merchandise. mostly figurines, clothing and various other pieces of merch. I have one big glass cabinet for all my figurines. I actually enjoy from time to time figuring out how to display them.

So, how can you start collecting? Besides going to garage sales and thrift stores, you can look at 2nd hand websites for people selling their games. Sometimes I buy “a lot”. This means that I buy a bundle of games that somebody doesn’t need anymore. In various cases, I buy games that I already own but I use these games to sell again or to trade.

Trading can be a great way to get rid of your duplicates and get new games into your collection. This is why networking is so important to collectors. I’m in a group of retro game collectors on Facebook and I follow various retro game reviewers on Twitter and YouTube. This way I learn from their experience and stories.

Do network! For real, almost all my coworkers know that I collect games and I have gotten so many games from coworkers who cleaned up their attic or their kids didn’t want their games anymore. One time, I actually was called up by a store that somebody brought in a lot of big boxed PC games and this way I was able to buy a game I always wanted to have.

Anyways, that’s all the general advice I want to give for now. I hope that you learned something about the art of collecting games. While I can tell and teach you a lot more, I’m going to close off the article right here. Maybe I write a follow-up article to this one with more advice and some stories of garage sales.

In any case, thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, take care and have a great rest of your day!