Converting my loft (click here to see the finished games room) gave me space enough and an excuse to sort out and catalogue my own hardware collection. I now actually know what I have, what works, what’s boxed or unboxed and what I need to complete certain elements of the collection. It also gave me an opportunity to photograph it all. What follows in this post is not ALL of the collection but most of what I class as the good stuff. I can’t sort out my software just yet, there is crate upon crate of the stuff to go through. So I have just included a few overview shots of the software crates just so you get the idea.

To see my Sinclair hardware collection almost in its entirety see this post.
See my flyer/poster collection here.

The collection

Click on images for titles and to enlarge

Ant Harper interviews himself!

When did you become interested in video games and what was the first video game you played?

Ant: I became interested in arcade games when I was around 6 years old. The mid to late 70s were an exciting time and the arcades were full of strange electro-mechanical beasts where the new-fangled microprocessor based machines like Boot Hill and Space Invaders were being played alongside machines like Killer Shark, Grand Prix and Jet Rocket. I was hooked and every chance I got (mainly during summer holidays), I was in an arcade pumping 10 pence pieces into them.

What was the first games console or computer you owned and how old were you?

Ant: The first home video game console I ever owned (well, family owned) was a Grandstand TV game sometime in the mid 70’s. I can’t actually remember the exact model now, there were so many of them, but I do know it had colour (only one TV in our house was colour at the time), it had built in games mainly based around variations of pong and that it had a light-gun you could make up/break down to use as a pistol or a rifle. We used to love playing as a family on that early games system. The first computer I owned was a Sinclair ZX81 purchased for me by my parents. I learned to program in basic and compile machine code on that little thing.

What got you into collecting videogames, computers and consoles?

Ant: I suppose I didn’t actually collect as such until I was earning a proper wage, around the late 80s. Even then I didn’t have much of a collection, I mainly rented Sega carts from a Video rental store that had diversified to sell and rent video games. When I did finally get into collecting properly (not sure exactly when this was) it was then just a case of getting everything I had longed for as a kid. Nostalgia, reliving the past; call it what you will.

Where do you source most of your retro purchases from (ebay, flea markets etc) ?

Ant: Years gone by I used to source most of my retro stuff from car boot sales, table top sales, jumble sales etc. but since the current retro boom started this has all but dried up. So now I am resigned to buying collections in bulk (I advertise), trading with other collectors or trawling eBay looking for the odd bargain. You can still find bargains on eBay if you know where (and how) to look.

What is your most prized retrogaming possession and how much did it cost you?

Ant: Wow, I’ve been asking this everyone else and now I know how hard this is to answer. Hmm, if I had to pick one it would have to be my old ZX81. I still have my original working computer from 1982 and wouldn’t part with it for all the money on earth. That’s a lie, all the money on earth would be fine. I have no idea how much it cost because it was a present from my parents for Christmas.

What is your favourite hardware manufacturer (Sega, Nintendo, Atari Commodore etc.) ?

Ant: Easy one this. Sinclair without a doubt. Sir Clive made computers accessible to everyone by making them cheap, and this is where their strength lay. OK, they had lousy speakers, colour clash and no sprites but they were easy to program and introduced people to programming like no Commodore or Atari ever could. This is where people miss (or forget) the point. Sinclair machines were for hobbyists, not gamers. The fact that they actually had some great games written for them afterwards was because they taught people to program well and the great games were just the icing on the cake.

What is your favourite console or computer?

Ant: Console? Probably the Atari VCS. Although surprisingly I didn’t actually own one in the late 70s. I used to go to a friends house down the street to play on his around 1978/79 and remember being amazed that I could now play arcade games at home, albeit with graphics hardly recognisable on occasion! Computer? Sinclair’s diminutive little black wedge – the ZX81, for all the reasons I have given in my other answers.

Where do you want to go now with the collection?

Ant: I think I have almost hit the limit where hardware is concerned, there are a few 80s home computers that I would like but don’t crave, namely a Jupiter Ace, Enterprise 64/128 and a SAM Coupe. I more now want to concentrate on software. Specifically, I want to finish my Atari 7800 collection and continue collecting for ZX81, ZX Spectrum and 2600.

Have you any tips for budding retro games collectors?

Ant: As a few of the great gamers I have interviewed previously have said: play what you have. Don’t just put it behind glass, consoles are to be played. Nothing saddens me more to think that there are consoles in boxes out there that will never see the light of day again. If something in them wears out then so what? They are not complex and a little practice with a soldering iron and a trawl on eBay for parts will fix most problems. Get them out, dust them off and play them. If you can’t, sell them to someone who will! My advice concerning software is simple; collect what you enjoy. There are too many collecting sites out there encouraging people to get the rarest carts available for a system. Often (not always!) the reason a cart is rare is because the game was rubbish and it didn’t sell, and do you really want shelf upon shelf of low quality games you don’t want to play? Ask yourself “am I collecting for my own enjoyment, or for someone elses?”.