Hi everyone - long time lurker decided to sign up, in the wake of the whole "your Wii U might be dying" scare.
I've been avidly collecting systems for quite some time now. Grew up a Nintendo player, got my first console in 1998 - an N64 that I still own to this day, and I'm glad to say it still works. My parents never bought me consoles or handhelds, so I always had to save up my allowance and do chores to get enough money together to buy a new platform; seeing how my cousin was completely into Nintendo, and that was the only other console gamer in the family, I went for what I saw there and ended up loving Nintendo. My first handheld was a DS that I bought on launch day. That system was complete news to me. Back in those days, internet access was scarce (at least for my family) and I didn't read any gaming magazines, so when a friend showed up with his DS and a copy of Metroid Prime Hunters First Hunt, I immediately went to the store and was lucky enough to get my hands on one.
Slowly, however, I got into other platforms; I went from N64 to GameCube at launch, and at the time the 6th generation of homeconsoles ended, I owned both a GameCube and an Xbox (second hand), a DS and a PSP. I tried the Wii as my new main console, but quickly found the Xbox 360 more interesting, and that's where my love for collecting really started. My 360 collection now spans about 150 titles, easily the biggest part of my gaming collection. As I went to uni, my income changed, and I found more and more retro gaming opportunities, and the collection grew, and here we are, 10 years later, with a room in the house completely dedicated to gaming (both retro and modern). I have a whole wall dedicated to retro gaming, where all my games and platforms reside, and I've embraced basically all mainstream platforms at this point: there's some Playstation, some Sega, loads of Nintendo and loads of Xbox. But with greathoarding collecting comes great responsibility, and I find myself increasingly opening up these systems to fix them. The easier stuff, like cleaning consoles and softmodding OG Xbox and PS2 consoles, I can handle that. I know my way around a controller as well, although my soldering skills need work. I've swapped thumbsticks on my Wii U gamepad, and I've been swapping thumbsticks for Xbox One and Switch like crazy (the sticks, not the stickboxes). I've dabbled with Dreamcast modding after I found some sync issues with the PAL60 display, but I find myself increasingly out of depth. Now, with the whole eMMC corruption thing going on with Wii U consoles, I decided it was time for me to man up and start learning.
I want to be able to maintain my consoles, and my friends' units as well. That means not only learning how to solder, but also how to mod stuff properly and use the right tools to analyze problems. So I'm here to learn, to contribute and hopefully make some friend along the way.
I've been avidly collecting systems for quite some time now. Grew up a Nintendo player, got my first console in 1998 - an N64 that I still own to this day, and I'm glad to say it still works. My parents never bought me consoles or handhelds, so I always had to save up my allowance and do chores to get enough money together to buy a new platform; seeing how my cousin was completely into Nintendo, and that was the only other console gamer in the family, I went for what I saw there and ended up loving Nintendo. My first handheld was a DS that I bought on launch day. That system was complete news to me. Back in those days, internet access was scarce (at least for my family) and I didn't read any gaming magazines, so when a friend showed up with his DS and a copy of Metroid Prime Hunters First Hunt, I immediately went to the store and was lucky enough to get my hands on one.
Slowly, however, I got into other platforms; I went from N64 to GameCube at launch, and at the time the 6th generation of homeconsoles ended, I owned both a GameCube and an Xbox (second hand), a DS and a PSP. I tried the Wii as my new main console, but quickly found the Xbox 360 more interesting, and that's where my love for collecting really started. My 360 collection now spans about 150 titles, easily the biggest part of my gaming collection. As I went to uni, my income changed, and I found more and more retro gaming opportunities, and the collection grew, and here we are, 10 years later, with a room in the house completely dedicated to gaming (both retro and modern). I have a whole wall dedicated to retro gaming, where all my games and platforms reside, and I've embraced basically all mainstream platforms at this point: there's some Playstation, some Sega, loads of Nintendo and loads of Xbox. But with great
I want to be able to maintain my consoles, and my friends' units as well. That means not only learning how to solder, but also how to mod stuff properly and use the right tools to analyze problems. So I'm here to learn, to contribute and hopefully make some friend along the way.
