We are back with another Game Collectors on Terror-Byte Gaming and we have a special guest for this post.
A gentleman with a certain YouTube channel we’ve been fans of for quite some time. May I introduce Logan from Tek Syndicate. An avid gamer, musician and tech enthusiast.
You can also find Logan on Twitch, streaming some choice retro titles and bringing viewers tech news as well. The icing on the cake, however, is the awesome tunes he has released under the name ‘Zweihänder‘. The entire discography is available in glorious FLAC. We here at TBG have been huge fans for quite a few years now.
Be sure to check out the Bandcamp page!
What platforms do you collect?
I mainly focus on big-box PC but I have a soft spot for SNES, especially Super Famicom boxes… the art is usually much cooler than the western stuff, and I prefer the vertical boxes. I don’t have many, but I may go further down that rabbit hole. Lastly, I do have a few N64 games (The Zelda collectors boxes, etc.), but I don’t plan to buy anymore.
I grab some games just for the artwork, so there are some 80s & 90s fantasy games on the shelf that I have little to no intentions of ever actually playing; they just have awesome box art.
What are you playing at the moment and on which platform?
I’m streaming DOOM WADs and Quake mods some these days. In my own time, I’m just about to finish a playthrough of Beyond Good and Evil on a modern PC with a Gateway VX1120 monitor… which happens to be a rebranded Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2020u. This 22″ CRT has really gotten me back into gaming.
The Diamondtron monitors are incredible… this one is 1920×1440 at 85hz, which looks better than an LCD at 240 Hz. The color and motion can’t be matched with flat monitors (this includes OLED screens).
Do you prefer digital downloads or hard copy games and why?
I prefer a hard copy for some games and a digital download for others. For instance, Beyond Good and Evil has been modified for modern systems, and it’s a pain in the ass to get it running correctly on a 4:3 screen. So, it’s much easier to install the older DVD version of the game and just play the original version.
For most console games, I prefer emulation… I know, “it’s not the same!!!” However, I think that it is better than the original experience in many ways. I’ll explain: Retroacrh added “Run-Ahead to Reduce Latency,” which allows you to measure and set a number of frames ahead the system should run to remove input lag.
It’s an experience I never thought we’d have on PC, and it’s amazing. Couple that with my ability to hook this up to a CRT (and quicksave games) and I don’t think I’ll ever play the physical games again. I played through Super Metroid last month and it was even better than I remember it as a kid.
The quicksave system also helped me save a little time. I don’t have as much time to try stupid things and die… I’m an adult now! The only thing I haven’t gotten working is 240p on my 27″ JVC art TV. I can do this using my Wii (and an emulator), but Retroarch on PC is my preferred platform. So, I’ll keep messing around until I figure out a way to make this work… without hacking the drivers much.
How many physical games do you own?
I never considered myself a collector. I don’t really nerd out over the boxes as much as many true collectors do, but I do like keeping them as set pieces and as conversation starters. I have around 150, and all but about 20 are PC games. I didn’t always keep my game boxes…
I annoyingly used to tell my friends, “You play the game, not the box!” So, I would get a game, put the DVD into a DVD/CD book, then throw away the box… I was a fool in my youth, and I miss many of the boxes I threw away… but if we could, my book of discs the number is likely 250 or more.
What is your favorite platform to date?
I’m a PC gamer before all else. I think the best era for games was the mid-90s to the 2000s, so I played mostly on Windows 98 and XP. I do have a soft spot for DOS adventure games and RPGs as well. If I had to pick a console, it would be the SNES. I feel like console games finally started to get some depth in this era and the SNES had so many gems.
What is your favorite game to date?
Deus Ex is still my favorite game… with one of my favorite soundtracks (but I could nerd out about PC-98 soundtracks for hours if I go down that path). It’s dark, ridiculous, quirky, and has some great dialog that is still pertinent today.
How long have you been collecting?
I usually just keep the games that I buy… My Deus Ex box is in mint condition and I purchased that on launch day in June 2000. Over the past three or four years I have been more actively looking for older game boxes with awesome art… or older games that I love and only have on Steam or GOG. So, let’s say that I’ve been a gamer forever and an active collector for four years.
Having the weird french RPG, Drakkhen, on Steam is whatever… but when people look at me and see the physical copy they are always like, “what the hell is this game with the awesome box art?!” Then we get to nerd out a bit about old RPGs.
Terror-Byte Gaming 