socrates63

December has been a crazy month--so much going on both professionally and personally, and it's just been a blur. I've been doing the bare minimum when it comes to social media (which means mostly checking Facebook with very limited time in the I/O).

As far as the hobby is concerned, it's also been a busy month.

• Traded away a bottle of wine for an Odyssey 2 in the box with a bunch of games. This is the same person that I traded my heavy sixer with for the Lego 2600 set.
• Bought a Vectrex light pen.
• Bought couple of short controller extensions cords to use with the Vectrex.
• Bought A8PicoCart multicart for the Atari 8bit. I don't need it as I have other means to store and load games, but bought it on a whim.
• Bought games for the Atari 8bit, 5200, and 2600.
• Got an empty Atari 1040ST box for free from a member of the local gaming group.

I'm pretty sure I'm missing some other stuff, but as far as adding to the collection goes, it's been fruitful.

I hope 2024 will be slower going, and I can finally finish cleaning up and reorganizing my hobby spaces in the house. That's been put on hold the past two years because of my health issues (which should be a thing of the past now).

For 2024 and beyond, I am making a big shift. Instead of dabbling in most things, I intend to focus retro gaming heavily to all things Atari with a smattering of modern gaming on the Switch and Steam Deck. This year has taught me that my heart belongs to Atari and other platforms from the 80s and early 90s.

I will be selling off the PS1, 2, and 4 collection to a local gaming store in the next week or two, so that should help with reclaiming some shelf space. For now, I intend to keep my Xbox collection as well as the PS3 collection. While I will keep all my consoles and a few physical games, I will not be expanding my PlayStation and Xbox physical library.

It's been a very enjoyable six years exploring the popular retro gaming platforms, but as I contemplate life and the need the downsize in 5-7 years, I think the time is right to start that process. Hopefully, narrowing my focus will translate into more game time and lot less shopping.

Happy New Year!