I've been a LONG time visitor of this site, and figured this was the best place to post this as I'm sure I'm not the only one here to have this problem. I've been simming since the late 90's (the glory days of EAW, LB2, and F4), and while I moved from flight sims to racing sims many years ago, I never got rid of any of my flight simming stuff (install discs, manuals, controllers, etc). Now, as I find myself in the grip of middle age (I'm 44 years old), I'm going through my house and decluttering every room, though I'm struggling to get rid of my old flight simming artifacts (and I have a BUNCH,,,if it came out between 1997 and 2001, I bought it...beyond the typical sims of the day, think of things like Flying Corps Gold, B-17 2 The Mighty Eighth, Red Baron 3D, F/A-18 Hornet Korea, Fighter Squadron, TAW, etc, and you'll get an idea of the types of things I'm talking about).

In the past, I kept this stuff because I thought that 'someday' I'd get around to loading it back up on a retro PC and playing it, but now I'm experienced enough in life to know that that's just never going to happen. Nor am I likely to ever just sit back in my chair with a glass of wine to read the tactics section of something like the Falcon 3.0 manual, although that was something else I'd previously thought I'd do in later years. The truth is that on any given day I'd rather be playing something current, binge watching Netflix, etc.

This stuff is a reminder of a happier time in my life (the young-adult and very happy days with my now ex-wife), so I can't bring myself to just throw it in the trash, nor am I delusional enough to think it'll make me any money on eBay. So I'm feeling stuck...do I keep this stuff in boxes and taking up space for the next 20 years without being looked at, or do I just pitch/recycle it so that it's not taking up space, and just move on while losing a bittersweet reminder of what life used to be like (and what I'd hoped it would someday be again)?

This probably sounds like a silly thing to be stuck on, but I'm really struggling with it. What have others done in this situation?

I could have written that post, right down to the ex-wife bit

I keep it in boxes, a hundred old games easy. Why? I don't know. Every now and then it pays off like if I have a hankering to play an old game like Grand Prix Legends, Close Combat 2 or Combat Mission Barbarossa to Berlin. These games all still work.

Hey, you never know. One day the technology might evolve to where you have an app you plug an old game in to and it's made new somehow.

Isn't Golden where the corporate HQ for Coors is located?


To answer your question, I also have a large collection of old PC game boxes, CD's and manuals and I have elected to hold onto them for now just in case I ever get the urge to take photos of my collection and share them with fellow gamers. Then again, I do have some extra space at home that I can spare for such things. If for whatever reason I ever had to move to a much smaller place then I would have to make the sacrifice and dump it.

"Hey, you never know. One day the technology might evolve to where you have an app you plug an old game in to and it's made new somehow."

Sounds like those people who had their bodies frozen when they died, in hopes that one day in the future they would have the technology to bring them back! But really, I don't see a problem. There are lots of retro gamers out there. We still have a section here devoted to EAW. Ugliest game at Sim Hq, but it still has it's devotees. I personally, don't understand why you'd fly that instead of DCS or IL-2....but that's just me.
Put them up for sale on Craig's list or E -bay and see what happens.

Funnily enough i was just going through a heap of boxes today looking for a book for my daughter. I resisted the urge to go all nostalgic over the old games, trackir, mobos, cards etc. Three decent boxes of gear hoarded away full of the stuff and another five full of books. Never found the one i was looking for of course. I've still got two good sized boxes full of cds and some more with several hundred dvds..maybe it's time to pawn a bunch of stuff and stop hoarding it all.

So you think reverse engineered cryo-gaming will not be a thing? I'm kinda counting on it

But yeah, I still am holding on to zip drives and Turtle Beach sounds cards from 1996. Maybe time for a clean out myself. Bah, I can just put that off for a while lol.

Got a box of them in the cellar here too, and an old HDD with Dos 6 on it so I can read them on my old Dell laptop.

Got 2.5" HDDs for my Dell with Dos5, Win 3.1, Win 98 that runs on it, Vista will run but not well, I have to use Win98 for some of the car related software for the OBD2 and CAN bus reading/writing and I have to put the date back to pre May 2004 for some of it to run

In the closet, on the top shelf is a box...

I also have a box on the top closet shelf, with sim stuff dating back 20+ years.

Been there recently.
Dumped everything, forcing myself to not even have a last glance back to save the odd booklet and foldout.
I thought i would be “traumatised”, absolutely not. A no-event, all of it is gone and zero regret, no particular relief either.

It’s just not there

Cheers,
Slug

I have a box of old games, and it's not often, but I do sometimes go back and read the manuals. I even recently installed - correction: Hornet: Iraqi Freedom - on a new laptop and it ran, but even though it had 1920x1080 as a resolution choice, it just stretched the image, so that was kind of disappointing.

I realize it's not likely, but given that there are updates out there that require the existing game (BMS for Falcon and WOFF/WOTR for CFS, for example), I am hesitant to just toss everything out.

But, this is from a guy that has his original Atari 800, TV and daisy wheel printer in the garage, as well as my Atari ST, so maybe I am not one to listen to for making rational choices .

I don't throw away books Ive read and won't read again, likewise I keep all my old games. My grandkids might get a kick out of seeing them some day

Gave them all to my son.

Wow, it's great to know I'm not alone in this situation! I'd always suspected that others were in a similar boat, but until now I wasn't actually sure. Thanks a ton for all the helpful responses - it sounds like most have made the decision to keep this stuff, so it's nice to have positive reinforcement that I'm not insane in how I perceive the personal value of this stuff and hating the idea of getting rid of it!

Based on all of the thoughts here, I've decided to keep holding onto this stuff, tucked away in a safe corner of a closet. I really appreciate everyone's input!


Haha, yes it sure is! I drive by there every day on my way to work, and ask myself 'why don't I just get a job THERE?!?' The liquor store across the street from the place advertises that it has the 'freshest Coors Light available anywhere on the planet'!

I have a a box of old games too. In fact, whenever I actually get around to it, I'm going to post them here as "Free to a good home". Not sure what shipping will be though...

There's a retro gaming store that just opened up right by my house, and this thread just gave me the idea I'm going to simply give them a bunch of my ancient games. I never could bring myself to toss them but I could do that.

I don't think I could get rid of mine unless for some extreme circumstance I had too. Unfortunately I almost never saved my boxes which I wish I had. Because of that though all my games and manuals don't take up too much space. I could probably fit it all in two boxes. I've always hoped that someday, like DBond said, a PC tech would come along that could automatically fix, patch, optimize and make work any old game. I wouldn't just outright pitch stuff out though. I think if you had to get rid of it, donating it, preferably to some collector/retro PC person would be best. As a last resort, it could be donated to a thrift store. It might make it into someone's hands who finds these old games to be a real treasure of a find. A few years ago I found a complete edition of Age of Empires 3. It was just the game disk box but it, the disks and the thick manual insert were all in mint condition. The disks looked brand new. I was able to get it for $5. It still sells digitally for $40 ten years later. So those things could definitely brighten someone's day.

Keep your old sims if you want, but the more time that passes the less enjoyable they become. Those low-poly aircraft with simplified flight models and questionable damage models you used to love with suspended disbelief 20 years ago will be almost unbearable to play now.

Retro games, now that's a whole different matter. I love old PS1 and PS2 games, PC shooters, etc., -- even if the graphics make my eyeballs bleed!

That's not the point. The first Superman comic book isn't much of a read nowadays, but a perfect condition copy is worth millions.

Now I don't expect "Chuck Yeager's Air Combat" to be worth a million any time soon but it does have nostalgia value nonetheless.

I have most of my old controllers, and all of my old games, boxes manuals and so on. I guess I'm unique in this group in that I got most of my old sim stuff running in DOSBox and/or Windows.

Now a lot of my old PC hardware I have given away or trashed/recycled. I do still have some select pieces (Voodoo cards, Thrustmaster speed adjustable game controller card, hard drives that I need to wipe)