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Harry’s Game Room Redux


HDN

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Hey everyone.

For those of you who didn’t already know: my game room has been ransacked. My mom essentially kicked me out of it. So, my consoles and I are migrating to our unfinished basement, temporarily, I hope. From around 2013 to mid 2018, our games all lived down here until we moved them up to the home office.I worked hard these past few days to try to restore this “old game room” to its former glory. I haven’t moved any consoles down here yet, save for my GBA which has just been keeping me company. I did move a couple of games here, though.

With an unfinished, concrete-covered basement, it can only look so nice. But at least I tried my best. At least it’s a clean basement, which I guess matters more than how chic it is. Hopefully we can move back upstairs soon. For now, though, this is ok. At least we have a rug so our feet don’t get cold and a couch to sit on. 

I plan on updating you all on what I do with this temporary gaming space in this thread. Please look forward to it.

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What's wrong with the basement?  It sounds like this is a downgrade?

When I was a kid, the basement in our house was the kids domain.  We set up a game room down there, did our homework down there, and visits from friends were always down there.  I always loved it.  Although it was cold, we could make noise, arrange things the way we liked, and generally "own the space". 

Run with it (if you can).  Put old sheets over the "stuff" you don't want to see.  Keep the space neat!  Maybe this is a positive thing.

Was it the noise that caused you to get moved?  If yes, make sure you insulate the ceiling so noise doesn't drift up through the floor. 

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Addendum:  I should also mention we kids knew not to mess with certain areas of said basement.  Example:  The laundry room was off limits.  Do not make a mess there.  And my dad's storage areas (mostly his wine) -- DO NOT ENTER/LOOK/THINK-ABOUT-IT. 

In general, the rules were simple -- keep our areas neat, no rough-housing, and there were no parental problems. 

I have pictures of that basement when I had to clean the house out.  I will find them and post them here. 

 

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40 minutes ago, RickR said:

What's wrong with the basement?  It sounds like this is a downgrade?

When I was a kid, the basement in our house was the kids domain.  We set up a game room down there, did our homework down there, and visits from friends were always down there.  I always loved it.  Although it was cold, we could make noise, arrange things the way we liked, and generally "own the space".

The basement certainly has its pros. However, it’s much harder to organize here without the cubbyholes for the consoles, more space by the TV, closet space, etc. It’s not too much of a downgrade, it’s just not preferable. At least it is much easier to stay up playing games in the late hours of the night undetected down here.

43 minutes ago, RickR said:

Was it the noise that caused you to get moved? 

No, it was much more complicated. I probably would not have had to disassemble everything if my mom was not already in a bad mood from previous events of the past few days. It was sort of out of spite mixed with a few simple mistakes from the recent past. Our family isn’t doing great right now. I don’t really want to get into the specifics here.

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OK, I don't want to dig up bad feelings.  Advice:  make the best of it.  Maybe have one console out at a time if you don't have shelves to organize.  Or get some milk crates to make shelves?  You're a creative guy, you'll figure this out.   

Here's pictures of my childhood basement room that was dedicated to us kids.  That spot in the corner under the hidden electrical panel was where we had a TV on a cart with Atari hooked up.  It took a lot of hard work to get it cleaned up like this.  And frankly, it was very sad.  I'm glad I took pictures and video of the whole house, though. 

 

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6 hours ago, RickR said:

Addendum:  I should also mention we kids knew not to mess with certain areas of said basement.  Example:  The laundry room was off limits.  Do not make a mess there.  And my dad's storage areas (mostly his wine) -- DO NOT ENTER/LOOK/THINK-ABOUT-IT. 

Don’t worry, I don’t plan on going into the other areas of the basement. Just making a little area for us to hang out in down here. We are planning on making a massive, several trips long Goodwill run, which should clear up a lot of space.

Hey, since I have some free reign down here, what should I do? Anyone have any good ideas?

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The house I grew up in, my brother bought a pool table and was down in the "cellar" it was never "fixed up" in any way but during one period we had thick cardboard on the wall and was able to perform some graffiti with the chalk. 

A few private pinball pinball locations I had played at are in the basements of homes, one is a "finished basement" with hardwood floor and Sheetrock, another is just wall paint on the foundation wall with posters and "wall hanger" play-fields & backglasses and yet another is painted walls with murals painted, one area is like castle walls , another is Mario world , I think the steel columns are painted green to resemble the pipes.

On 12/30/2020 at 1:19 PM, RickR said:

Here's pictures of my childhood basement room that was dedicated to us kids.  That spot in the corner under the hidden electrical panel was where we had a TV on a cart with Atari hooked up.  It took a lot of hard work to get it cleaned up like this.  And frankly, it was very sad.  I'm glad I took pictures and video of the whole house, though. 

 

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Those are prolly asbestos floor tiles , very durable material 😉 doubt you can get any today, also might have a hard time finding that wall paper print too! I imagine it could be custom made. That countertop/ bar area does really display some fine craftsmanship with the steel-edging and the "wood rope" trim. actually it all looks like fantastic work, I'm trying to figger-out if that is real brick and I'm leaning towards that it is.

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Yep, real brick.  The flue for the furnace and there's a fireplace above that on the main floor.  The house was built in the 50's.  The floor, chicken wallpaper, and bar were original.  My parents had the paneling put in,  I wanted to buy the house, but we decided it was going to be too much work to make it modern and livable on the main floor.  The basement, I would have been happy to leave as-is. 

 

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On 12/30/2020 at 12:19 PM, RickR said:

OK, I don't want to dig up bad feelings.  Advice:  make the best of it.  Maybe have one console out at a time if you don't have shelves to organize.  Or get some milk crates to make shelves?  You're a creative guy, you'll figure this out.

Milk crates for shelves? Now that is interesting. How does one make shelves out of those? I believe we have a few floating around somewhere.

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You simply lay them on their sides.  They should click together as you stack them. 

Pros:

  • Easy wire management.  Wires can be strung out the back.
  • Good airflow
  • Inexpensive.  (I think Target sells them for less than $5 and you can pick whatever colors you like). 
  • Easily penetrated by disco-ball lights. 
Edited by RickR
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These old wooden shelves are remnants of the days when my grandparents called this place home. This used to be my grandpa’s workshop. There are lots of workbenches, vices, and leftover tools from when he used to live here. For years, these shelves have sat here filled with movies on tape, board games, and other junk. Today I realized that it is in fact quite easy to reposition the shelves and so, with a little reorganization and dusting, our NES, SNES, and Game Boy collections have a new home. I still have N64 and the disc-based games to worry about, but since those systems aren’t down here yet they aren’t a top priority. As you can see, the movies are still here on the top shelf. That may have to change in the future. The board games have been put with their kin on another basement shelf.

I imagine that it would be pretty easy to grab some more boards to add to the shelf. I found some shelf-mounting thingies on the top shelf before I repositioned them, so I should be good if I wanted to add another four shelves in the future, which is somewhat inevitable at this point.

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I made these today because Nintendo didn’t bother to. I just put some masking tape on there. It’s not pretty, but I’d rather have this than spend $30 on some aftermarket labels. All I want is to know what my games are without pulling them out. Doesn’t have to be aesthetically pleasing.

The problem is: where to put them?

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I've also been using shoe boxes now that I've collected a small amount of loose cartridges. I never paid any attention to shoe boxes and had always thrown them away immediately, but I found some empty ones in the house from my wife and kids' shoes. They come in different sizes 😮 I suppose that makes sense since shoe sizes can vary quite a bit, but like I said, I never paid any attention before 🙂 

Edited by socrates63
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Not that this is the cheapest method, but I found out sometime back that a N64 game storage holder, will actually hold N64 games and SNES games as each slot has notches for each one. But the shoebox idea works well as I did that for several years with my loose atari 2600 carts in the early 80s before I found some scrap wood one day and built my own little cartridge game holder out of it one weekend when I was about 13 or so?

Wonder what ever happened to that? I had it painted red and had found some Atari/video game related stickers that I put on the outside of it.... Hmmm?

 

See what I'm up to over at the Ivory Tower Collections: http://www.youtube.com/ivorytowercollections

 

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2 minutes ago, CrossBow said:

Not that this is the cheapest method, but I found out sometime back that a N64 game storage holder, will actually hold N64 games and SNES games as each slot has notches for each one. But the shoebox idea works well as I did that for several years with my loose atari 2600 carts in the early 80s before I found some scrap wood one day and built my own little cartridge game holder out of it one weekend when I was about 13 or so?

Wonder what ever happened to that? I had it painted red and had found some Atari/video game related stickers that I put on the outside of it.... Hmmm?

 

I've got a couple of Atari cart holders that I made in 8th grade wood shop.  They've served me well for (ahem) well, I don't want to admit how many decades. 

 

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3 minutes ago, RickR said:

I've got a couple of Atari cart holders that I made in 8th grade wood shop.  They've served me well for (ahem) well, I don't want to admit how many decades. 

Mine was only large enough to house the 30 or games I owned loose back then. I never kept the boxes when I was younger because...well who knew we needed to back then right?! Anyway, it wasn't anything fancy as I never took wood shop but I did know how to use my step dads router saw etc so I was able to get something that was stable and didn't look completely dumb at the time LOL!

See what I'm up to over at the Ivory Tower Collections: http://www.youtube.com/ivorytowercollections

 

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A shoebox isn’t a bad idea. My mom has about 830 of them in her closet. I’m sure she’d let me use one or two.

Making a shelf might be something I try at one point in the future. My grandfather has taught me many things about woodworking (though I’m very far from being great at it). A decent shelf is probably in my wheelhouse.

1 hour ago, socrates63 said:

 

I've also been using shoe boxes now that I've collected a small amount of loose cartridges

 

For my purposes I don’t often collect CIB. Sure, they look nice, but in so many cases they are much more expensive than loose games. Only CIB games I have (other than ones I got from when I was younger like DS) are 2600.

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5 hours ago, HDN said:

For my purposes I don’t often collect CIB.

That's a good way to go, Harry. Collecting CIB games is a sickness. I started out with wanting just one CIB game -- the 2600 Pac-Man, the game that left a scar in my childhood video gaming memory. And then I got bit by the bug, so being content without boxes is 👍👍 

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16 minutes ago, socrates63 said:

That's a good way to go, Harry. Collecting CIB games is a sickness. I started out with wanting just one CIB game -- the 2600 Pac-Man, the game that left a scar in my childhood video gaming memory. And then I got bit by the bug, so being content without boxes is 👍👍 

I can see how that could happen. When I first started collecting many years ago, I felt like in-box games were a complete waste of money. When I got the 2600 and noticed that many CIB games cost the same amount as their loose counterparts, I was pretty excited. Now I’m seeing things. “Oh, x is only a few more dollars in the box than loose,” I find myself thinking more often nowadays. “It’s worth the few extra dollars to look nice on a shelf.” But then, thankfully, I get a hold of and stop myself. So far, I haven’t gotten any games CIB that cost me any more than if I were to buy it loose.

Oh yeah, I should make note of the one exception. Discs. I need a case for those. I mean, come on.

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