Show Us Yours: A Real Gamer’s Den

First impression: “Dude, what’s this crap?” Second impression: “Whoa, this is awesome!”

The semi-regular but now hopefully weekly Show Us Yours returns with reader Hayden D’s amazingly varied collection of retro game gear.

Hayden actually sent in a bunch of photos illustrating how his current collection has grown over time, from humble beginnings (pictured left) to the remarkable digital – and occasionally analogue – junkyard it is now.

“I started my collection after I bought a Wii, my first console since 1995 when I bought my SNES,” he explains. “Dad had an N64, and the PS2 is my brother’s (which I have permanently borrowed now). Unfortunately I sold all my SNES games when I was in grade 6 to help fund my purchase of a Tamagotchi.

“After I while I bought a NES and some Game Cube games. The NES was a bargain at $1 (no leads or controllers), but on the same day I picked up a controller for $3 and Super Mario Bros for $2, so I had the full NES experience for $6.”

Then his collecting started to really pick up. Describing the two pics below, Hayden says: “As you can see I have now got a lot of extra consoles… I have no idea where they all came from. I’ve also managed to start filling a shelf with games. I think the biggest purchase out of this lot was a CD-i with a few games, one of note being Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (at this point in time I thought it would be cool to try and complete every series for a Nintendo character, which I now think is impossible).

I’m pretty sure that’s the first CD-i we’ve had featured in Show Us Yours to date.

Next, came some Sega consoles.

“This is pretty much my last photo before a big change in where everything rests. I still have space for DVDs, which will soon disappear as the video games take over. I’ve never really had a lot of love for Sega, but the Dreamcast soon turned this around. It’s a terrific console and it definitely is a shame that they died out because of the mistakes before this console’s release. The Saturn really is quite horrible, but I always remember that when I was a kid I wanted one based purely on it having Daytona USA.”

Check out some more detailed close-ups of the rest of Hayden’s awesome collection below. Just click on each pic to enlarge it.

If you’d like to Show Us Yours, you can do so by emailing us some (hi-res) snaps of your collection of gaming paraphernalia. Oh, and please include a brief description. Look out for more Show Us Yours every Thursday.