Jen's Introduction

Well, I guess an introduction is in order. My name is Jen, I am 27 and am the quiet part of the team.I am currently working a full-time job overnights and working towards an accounting degree during the day. My main collecting interests are cels, video games, sailor moon oddities, and all things cats. In my humble beginnings I started out with about five games for the NES, the Genesis, and the Playstation. Now our combined collection is well into the hundreds for almost every system. I don't know if it is a good thing or a bad thing but because of the anality that comes with being a collector, most of our games are in perfect condition. I can't buy anything less these days.

At this point in my life I would call myself a gamer. Yeah, I haven't played and beat every game in our collection, but that is due to having too many games and not enough time. However, I have been playing since I was old enough to hold a controller. I still have very fond memories of playing Pitfall on the Atari 2600 when it was still relatively new. I can also remember the release of the Genesis system and how I saved up all my Christmas money one year to buy myself one. My parents are not the gamer sorts.

When it comes to my other main collection, I have Stephanie to thank. It all started one Christmas with a present of a cel of Prince Diamond from Sailor Moon. It was then I realized that I could own something from my favorite show that no one else had. It started so simply and has grow into something so great. It is a fun hobby but not for the weak of heart. I can't tell you how many times I had to watch that dream cel walk away due to lack of funds, or someone got to it first. It isn't for everyone, but once you get hooked, it's almost impossible to walk away for good.

Now, Stephanie is to blame for my third main collection which are the Sailor Moon Oddities. These are things that should have never seen the light of day. They are things that said "Sailor Moon" but honestly shouldn't have. Since everyone collects the toys/wands/brooches, why not collect something a little stranger? One of my favorites it the pancake maker. Sadly we have no pictures up of that right now, but one day we will. If nothing else, they make for interesting conversation pieces.

If it isn't evident by the fact that I run a separate cel gallery for it, I love cats. We currently have seven running around our house, and hope NOT to get any more. All of our cats were shelter or strays. Ever since I was a child I have love cats and if you look around my house, this is still very true. I collect figures, blankets, pillows (I have a love to flat animal pillows), plushies, ect. I'm not sure of what draws me to the furry little devils but my life would incomplete without them.

So there you go. You know a little bit more about the girl who refuses to do anything but a Genesis game review. I unfortunately don't get time to post much, but hopefully that will change in the future.

Richard's Introduction

My name is Richard, and I'm the younger brother of one half of the owners of this blog, Stephanie.

Like them, I have an undying love for vintage video games, and all of my contributions to this blog will be video game related (never much cared for anime, myself). Primarily, I'll be the author of some of the reviews found here, such as my masterpiece and first review written here, Contra III: The Alien Wars. I also collect all of the screenshots featured in reviews written by me and also many of the shots in those not written by me.

Video games were a part of my life since before I had a steady memory. I believe my earliest distinct memory of the Super Nintendo, my favorite system (and the greatest video game achievement of all time, for that matter), would be us walking into the living room while Dad was playing F-Zero (the first time I had ever seen it) and causing him to lose control and smash back and forth into the walls. But despite that being the earliest thing I remember, I can't help but think that I also played Mortal Kombat before that time, MK probably being my first "favorite" game. Having been born just in time to grow up with the SNES and the NES, I have to be thankful that I didn't get hooked on the Playstation, or even the Nintendo 64, really. I truly was born into the golden age of video games, and now I spend a lot of my time trying to keep it a living part of my life for as long as I can. So if I hear anybody say that their favorite system would be the PS2 or the dreadful Xbox, I might be kind enough to smile and nod, but I truly have little respect for them or their opinions on video games.

Over the years, I've completed some of the most difficult games ever concocted, and take much pride in that. They would include Contra, Super Contra, Contra III (On Normal), Friday the 13th, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!(though that review was done by Stephanie), and some others. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I feel that they entitle me to consider myself a gamer; a title that's otherwise meaningless when awarded to those silly online FPS players. So if you're content to beat HALO 3 three times in a week, fine. But you just be aware that the will and devotion of greatest generation of video game history made it possible for you to save your game, go back, and try again when things don't go so well. If today's generation had been around in the 80s, video games would have never lasted.


~RM

Stephanie's Introduction

As this the first post I thought it best if I do an introduction post. I'm one half of the collecting team, Stephanie. As of these writing I'm 26 and as one could easily guess I collect bits of geekery. I like to collect lots of things and have the cluttered shelves to prove it. My favorite collections though are easily animation cels and vintage video games.

I started collecting animation cels because I was on the look out for a unique Christmas present for Jen. I chanced on a sailor moon cel on ebay and was suddenly amazed that you could own an actual piece of your favorite show. You could own a frame millions of people have seen and enjoyed for a fraction of what a movie prop or similarly exposed painting would cost. So I eventually bought some cheap ones for myself and I was hooked. If you're interested in cels I suggest checking out keys cel FAQ for your basic information, Rubberslug for some gorgegous galleries and anime-beta to meet other collectors. There are lots of other sites devoted to cel collecting/collections but those are some of the most accessible. We have a joint online collection gallery at rubberslug which showcases our art collection quite nicely so be sure to stop over there if you're interested in our collection. We'll probably post here when we've updated over there if we remember. On that note we have some in the works as our gallery hasn't seen a new cel in months but we've purchased several. Though compensate for the new we've had to take out a few old. They're being slowly updated to our shop so head on over and take a peak. I'd love to see our celluloid babies in new homes.

For video games, I've been playing games for as long as I can remeber starting with the intellevision and just blossoming from there as I've aged. Jen and I have many of the major gaming systems released from the early 1980's to the present, our most recent acquisition being the red limited edition Resident Evil 5 Xbox 360 with the game (RE5 is fabulous and we've already beat it twice). We have hundreds of games, so many in fact we have trouble keeping count and sometimes buy doubles.(pictures documenting pieces of it to come soon) Hopefully keeping a collection blog will help us catalog our collection a little better. In all honesty I actually love video games a lot more than anime so most of the collectibles I tend to buy for myself are video game related. I can't get enough of weird video game related bits and baubles especially from the Super Mario brothers and the Zelda game series.

My other collections include: unicorns (in general), x-men comics, vinyl records, D&D 1st & 2nd edition manuals, Star trek memorobilia related to spock/leonard Nimoy, Star wars memoribilia primarily relating to the sith and the more minor alien races, fossils, and other weird things I'm too lazy to think of at the moment. Not to mention all the things I really love but don't collect much from like Dr. Who (mostly the Tom Baker seasons) and the early Godzilla films.

So I think that's it I think that gives a pretty good overview of my mainline geekery. I promise that subsquent entries will be at least a little more interesting.

~Stephanie