You might know of Shiraz Malik - he's the longtime commenter Spoony Bard here, and he was also our comment ombudsman last year. He's currently pursuing his MBA at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, and he and his wife are expecting a baby soon.

Although a committed gamer for life, Shiraz is facing some mature decisions on the road to fatherhood, a path that has less time for games, in a household with not much space for them, either. He's written about his decision to sell his video game collection, the nostalgia he feels saying goodbye to those old friends, but knowing there will be new ones as soon, when his son arrives and embarks on his boyhood.

When I was four years old, my dad brought home an Atari 7800. In retrospect, that was his first mistake. I became hopelessly addicted to the wonderful world of video games. I made time for Mario, hung out with Alex Kidd in Miracle World, dreamed about Mega Man while doodling in class, and I soared through the sky with Starfox.

Twenty-six years later, I'm juggling graduate school, married life and a job search, and I still have managed to find the time to get my game on. Somehow I was even able to do some comment moderating for Kotaku in that time, too. Through it all, I've made sure to keep my love of video games alive in some way. But now, we have a new situation.

You see, the day my wife told me that she was pregnant, everything changed. All of a sudden, we're spending our free time taking classes and picking out baby names. Try as I might, the wisdom of hanging on to all of my video games seems to make less sense as time goes by. And in this tough job market, with the mountain of debt school has forced us to carry, we have looked for ways to scrounge up a baby fund.

So after lengthy debate, we decided on my extensive video game collection. I was hoping to hold on to some of my vintage game systems for my future kids, but we simply don't have the space anymore. My wife reminds me that I can play a lot of these games on a virtual console ... but she doesn't understand what game collecting is about. We hardcore gamers take pride in our amassed collections of gaming systems and games; there's just something special about that bygone era when you stayed up all night playing Mega Man II with a friend while your parents were asleep.

Now I look around at the game systems I must sell ... here's my green Xbox Halo Edition along with all my Bioware RPGs ... it has to go. Hey, there's my old N64 ... in college, we played it until the sun came up, and then we played some more. To date, I've never been as good at a single game since Goldeneye. And there goes my silver Gamecube that entertained me and my friends at parties.

I must console (no pun intended) myself with the fact that whatever I make will go towards making sure we can buy my son (yep, it's a boy!) of what he will need, and I certainly hope that one day I can share my love of video games with him along with my other passions. In fact, I've already planned how we're going to watch the Star Wars movies - starting with New Hope and ending with Revenge of the Sith, the only way they should be watched!

But most importantly, I hope he has fond memories of growing up like I did, and if that requires me to expunge some of the things that gave me joy, so be it. In a way, I'm cleaning out my past to make way for his future.

- Shiraz Malik (Spoony Bard)

"The Music Machine" was based on a line of other products, including albums - back when they were, in fact, albums. The seller indicated his elderly mother owned a Christian bookstore, and, while going through her things, came across the game. It puts a real twist on the cliché of your mom chucking out a rare baseball card or comic book you later find out is worth thousands. I

If the guy is taking care of his mom, and it sounds like it, then it sounds like the dough will be put to good use. Or he could be spending it all on hookers and cocaine, who am I to make judgments of people I've never met? C'mon, I'm trying to be a nice guy here.

Sealed Atari Game Sells for Over $5,000 [Hot Blooded Gaming]

The survey also unearthed a few interesting facts, such as the average size of a video game collection (48 titles) and the fact that 11 percent of video game households surveyed have unopened games in their collection. Hit the jump for the full results, and see how game collectors stack up against those filthy DVD collectors.

Video Game and DVD Packaging Not Going Out with the Trash

Few Discs Are Thrown Away or Recycled

ENCINO, CA (October 28, 2008) … Rather than discarding video game and DVD packaging, consumers overwhelmingly store their video games and DVDs in their original cases according to a joint study commissioned by the Content Delivery and Storage Association (CDSA) and the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) and conducted by The NPD Group. The study also found that when consumers no longer want to keep a particular video game or DVD ttitle, they rarely throw it away or recycle it, preferring instead to give it away or sell or trade it.

Eighty-nine percent of DVD owners and 88 percent of video game owners store their DVDs and video games in their original cases. Five percent of DVD owners and eight percent of video game owners store their discs in plastic sleeves but save the original cases. Only six percent of DVD owners and five percent of video game owners said they throw away or recycle the cases.

When they no longer want to own a title, 45 percent of DVD owners give the title to someone else, as will 24 percent of game owners. Fifty-four percent of video game owners will trade it in or sell it; the trade/sell rate is 27 percent for DVD owners. Twenty percent of DVD owners and 17 percent of game owners store the discs. Only two percent of DVD owners and four percent of video game owners recycle or throw the product away.

“In packaged home entertainment, consumers view the packaging cases as part of the product and not something to be tossed,” noted Bo Andersen, President and CEO of EMA. “The cases provide product protection, allow easy title identification, and carry the artwork that is integral to the consumer’s association with the title.”

“The issue of DVD cases being considered as packaging versus as a part of the product has been questioned by some in the industry and without consumer research we could not verify our beliefs that consumers consider the DVD case as part of the product,” commented Charles Van Horn, President of CDSA. “When almost 90 percent of DVD consumers state that they store their DVDs in the original case, they have verified that they consider the case a valuable part of the DVD product.”

Other findings in the study included:

* The average DVD household has 114 DVDs in its collection.
* The average video game collection has 48 titles.
* In the average DVD and video game households there is unwrapped product:
o 26% of the surveyed DVD households own some unopened DVDs.
o 11% of the surveyed video game households own some unopened games.

The NPD Group surveyed a pre-identified sample of DVD and video game purchasers who had purchased a DVD or video game in the past 6 months. The report is based on 557 qualified DVD respondents and 562 video game respondents.

World's Coolest Private Arcade

For Hirschberg, the arcade is a labor of love, not a business. There are change machines on either end of the arcade that freely spit out quarters at the touch of a button — Hirschberg doesn't ask his guests to spend their own money to play. The arcade is illuminated with blacklights, all the better to light up the space-themed carpet. To complete the scene, his personal soundtrack of 1980-era rock tunes by Foreigner and Journey play on the stereo.

A complete list of his arcade games and other stuff can be found at his website.

Heaven in His '80s Arcade [Washington Post, photo credit David Beltran-del-rio]