It’s been a busy month for nostalgic video game collections. Sonic Origins collects the first four Sonic the Hedgehog titles, the Capcom Fighting Collection brings together various titles from the Darkstalkers and Street Fighter ranges as well as a couple of rarities, and Pac-Man Museum + collects 14 games Amazing Pac-Man from the last 40 years. Cynics may suggest that we live in an age of endless nostalgia and brand revival, but collections have always been an integral part of the video game industry. I know, because I’ve bought most of them.
Back in the home computer era of the 1980s, game collections were a common way to scrape a little more revenue from titles that had slipped off the software charts. Four or five releases would be pressed onto two tapes and distributed in large boxes, two cassettes with exciting names like Solid Gold, Heatwave and Mega-Hot. Legendary Manchester publisher Ocean was an absolute master of these, creating themed collections, with vibrant and exciting packaging similar to action film video covers of the era. I had Live Ammo, which included the great WWII strategy adventure Great Escape as well as Green Beret and Rambo scrolling shooters. Meanwhile, Magnificent Seven boasted the classics Wizball and Head Over Heels as well as the not-so-classic tie-in with Sylvester Stallone’s 1986 Cobra film. But that was the thing with these collections: you accepted that there would be a couple of stinkers in there, and it was fun to discover terrible B games amidst the gold.
In a pre-internet era, it was also harder to know if a new game was good, and not everyone could afford a magazine subscription – so there was a lot of curation involved in game collections. Collections such as They Sold a Million and the Zzap! 64 The Sizzler Collection provided a way to ensure you had quality games to play, even if you had never seen them before. For me, a school kid with 50p a week pocket money and a high quality control bar, they were a revelation.
But this was also the period of exploitation and chicanery in the games business, which was still in its infancy. If you were a young gamer in the early 1980s, reading magazines or comics, you would have seen the famous ad for the mail order only collection Cascade Cassette 50, a collection of games written mostly in BASIC and never commercially available elsewhere. Originally programmed by Cascade founder Guy Wilhelmy, they were the types of games you would normally type into the computer yourself from magazine listings or early programming books. But Wilhelmy’s excellent print ads promised a spectacular collection of gem treasures, and offered buyers a free Timex digital watch. The collection sold hundreds of thousands of copies across several computers, and when Wilhelmy found he didn’t have time to program them all, he placed ads in local papers offering a tenner for new games.
There was also Firebird’s equally infamous Don’t Buy This compilation, a budget compilation of the five worst games submitted to the publisher. It was launched almost as a joke on 1 April 1985, and went on to commercial success. The publisher doubled down on the fun, releasing the copyright so anyone could copy it and sending stickers to anyone who wrote to complain.
In the 1990s, with the arrival of the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn, things got a little more serious. The increased storage space offered by CD-Roms and advances in simulation coding ushered in a new era of serious collections acting almost as academic archives of precious works of art. Namco’s Museum series for the PlayStation matched beautiful packaging and presentation with authentic arcade classics such as Pac-Man, Galaga and Pole Position, as well as a wealth of extras including digital copies of the original advertising leaflets and cabinet art photos .
Many veteran Japanese developers came up with their own versions – Sega’s Ages Commemorative Selection, Konami Antiques, Capcom Generation – all lovingly ported over and loaded with extras. Similar to deluxe special edition music CDs or director’s cut DVDs, these collections were an acknowledgment that the gaming audience was maturing and becoming savvy about their collections. Fans saw games not just as momentary time wasters, but as cultural artifacts.
This was also the period when we started to see collections of Japanese titles that never made it to the west in their original formats. My favorite example was Bishi Bashi Special, the PlayStation collection of Konami’s hilarious Bishi Bashi arcade titles, which featured a huge range of weird mini-games.
In the 2000s, Nintendo catered to the new mainstream audiences attracted to its Game Boy and DS handheld consoles with a range of collections, based on comforting, recognizable experiences. The Nintendo DS Classic Games collection included everything from chess, backgammon and drafts to poker, while the Wii’s most successful titles were often mini game collections – Wii Sports, Mario Party, Carnival Games – designed to appeal to such a demographic. as wide as possible.
Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 and PS3 provided much more computing power, and thus a wider range of emulated and updated titles. The market moved on from collections of old arcade games to classic 8- and 16bit console titles. The fantastic Mega Drive Mega collections and SNK’s Neo Geo Battle assortments were rich with nostalgic delights from the recent past, providing instant libraries of retro games. We also started seeing high definition remasters of almost contemporary hits: the sweet Devil May Cry HD and Metal Gear Solid HD compilations, the absolutely essential release Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, the ridiculously good value Orange Box games had become favorite albums and movies, updated and released for each new generation.
My best days as a young gamer were when I went to WH Smith or Debenhams in Stockport town center and found a Commodore 64 collection on sale, and I’d get a few commendable games (and a couple of interesting stinkers) for two or three . pounds. I would be excited all the way home on the bus. Whether the games were good or bad or weird, it didn’t matter: my weekend was set.
I still love collections, even in this age of mini MAME consoles. I like to see games packaged and presented together, I like to think about the curation process; I like to skip between each game, noticing similarities and divergences, and seeing how ideas evolved. In this age of instant mass availability, aggregation is very valuable. A video game collection is like a good display in a bookstore: titles you barely know, along with those you may have always loved and want to experience again, put together in a pleasant way .
