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Friday, January 6, 2012

The Retro Games Room: The Greater Plan


Behind every retro games collector, is a room. In this room they store everything; the couch, the consoles, the tv, the sound system (usually) and most importantly, the games. I myself am quite proud of my room, but I feel that it can constantly always be improved.
I've had a greater plan for a while in my head, so I thought I would share it with my humble internet audience.

First off, the start of everything. Power.

So many awesome LED's!
My first step was to improve the power-board, which is so far the only step I've completed out of my whole plan.
Originally I only had a dodgy four way powering everything. This was so old it was yellowing (the console are suppose to be old, not the power source) and it wasn't even surge protected. Besides from the fact that it was potentially dangerous, it was just too small. Two were already taken up the tv and the stereo, leaving only another two for consoles. It was always a pain in the ass to keep swapping them around, so to upgrade to a fancy eight way (with all the bells and whistles) made me feel like a king. For the first time in forever, I actually have all my Australian consoles plugged in at the same time. Feels good.

Next step, the AV switch box:


For the time being, I'm content with my current $2 switch box I got from a garage sale. It's doing it's job at the moment, and doesn't need to be urgently replaced like the power-board was. Having said that though, it is completely full. I may have more than four consoles, but the Super Famicom and the SNES currently share the same AV lead and the Famicom plugs in via RF. I am a collector though, which will most probably mean that my collection will grow eventually. So of course my AV switch will need to be upgraded soon, most probably to an eight way.
I was thinking of something like this, but of course a lot of research still needs to be done. If I'm going to upgrade though I feel as if I should go the full nine. You can get ones that have a remote and have a LCD display which tell you which device is currently connected. A bit unnecessary, but cool non the less. 

Next up, games and portables storage:


As you can see, everything is a slightly organised mess. I ninja'd a book case next to the tv, moved half the books and placed in all my games and portables. When I started out it wasn't much of a problem since my collection wasn't that large. But of course as every little thing gets added, space comes more of an issue.
There was a book shelf down at the local Ikea for $89 which would of be perfect, but space in the room as a whole is already tight. I would have nowhere to put it, so the space problem is in limbo right now as I have no idea what to do.

Next step, the consoles:


At the moment they're just strewn all over the floor, ready to be tripped on. I want to actually build something to hold them in front of the tv as nothing I can buy in the shops will cater to my needs. I have built shelving in the past (still using a shelf for all my PS3 games which I made about four years ago) so I feel as if I could pull this off. It would be nothing advanced, but I would make it to be clean cut, usable, and I would make sure it would fit in with the rest of the environment.
I of course haven't really made a solid plan for this yet (bar some scribbles on scrap paper) but I would like it to be a simple, fairly thick three shelve high shelf with no backing. It would be big enough that I can place it in front of my tv, but not too big so it doesn't block anything. I would varnish it off to have a similar finish as the speakers.

That's just about it really. I'll update accordingly when I do (and hopefully I do) get all this done. Hopefully over the course of this year as well!

3 comments:

  1. Hi there,

    Good luck with your projects. Will be interesting to follow the development in the future. :)

    I agree that having the consoles on the floor is a bit risky. Maybe some kind of TV-furniture with several shelves would work for you? The one we've got in the living-room could easily hold many game consoles and it was cheap too.

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  2. Yes that might work, although I have to be concious of space as the room is smaller than it looks unfortunately.

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  3. Space is always on issue, that's for sure. :( Hope you'll get it sorted in the end. :)

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