If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

Most people tend to respond with being able to fly, read minds, turn invisible, etc.

For the longest time, my answer was rather tongue in cheek by saying that I wanted the ability to have perfect hair forever. Seriously, really, honestly, I mean… look, it’s hard as a mere mortal to keep my beard straight when I shave and I’m going bald to boot!

But I digress, as I finally have a serious answer to such a question: psychometry.

Now, unless you’re well versed in mid-19th century mesmerism and spiritualism, you’ve probably never heard of psychometry… but I bet you’ve at least seen it in practice. Well, in theory. I mean, you know how sometimes in books, movies, etc. there will be a character who touches an object and then they get flashes of memories tied to that object? That’s psychometry, which is the belief that non-living objects are imbued with memories that were impressed upon them and people can actually tap into those memories… somehow.

Honestly, I only recently became somewhat familiar with the term myself after I went on a search engine and typed in “superpower to see the history of objects,” so there’s that.

At this point you’re probably like, “okay, but why psychometry? Wouldn’t being able to fly be way cooler?” Maybe, but my choice of such an obscure superpower is personal as well as professional. You see, my profession is that of an archivist. With that said, and I feel this goes without saying, imagine how helpful it would be to simply touch an object in an archive or museum and instantly know where it’s actually been, who’s used it before, etc.?

That would be great, but unfortunately without any concrete evidence to back up your visions it would also be rather useless as I hear the scientific community tends to frown on the supernatural or paranormal; is there a difference between the two? Whatever, either way, I’m more concerned with the personal applications of such a superpower. Namely, being able to know the history behind various items I’ve collected… like video games.

Of the almost four hundred and fifty (450) games I own, I’d say that about 75% of those games are previously owned and were acquired by either purchasing them for myself through eBay or they were gifted to me by friends from their own personal collections. Either way, and regardless of how they found their way to me, I still often find myself wondering about the journeys these items had. Who owned them, originally, and how many owners have there been since it was bought new? What kind of memories did said owner(s) attach to these items? Did these games make them happy? Why did they get rid of them?

One of the beautiful things about video games is that, for the most part, everyone experiences a game differently. Unlike a movie, book, or music, video games are never quite a straight line; even the most linear gameplay styles can have slight variations depending on the player. I guess, in some sense, this is why I enjoy watching people play the same game on Twitch, because it’s interesting to watch how different people approach the same game from slightly altered angles and their reactions in turn. Before Twitch, you could only assume that other people had the same experiences as you. Rarely does this seem the case.

Is Twitch, in a way, a form of digital psychometry for video games? Like an archive of recorded memories? In that same vein, can Let’s Plays and Long Plays also be considered an act in preserving the overall experience? What about Speed Runs? Glitches? Boundary Breaks?

As someone who grew up during the heyday of video rental stores, I went from renting games for the NES to SNES, N64 to PlayStation, until eventually such places began to slowly disappear by the time PlayStation 2 was even no longer new. No matter the platform, each time I rented a game I would wonder who rented the game before me. Sometimes, if it was a game where you could save your progress directly onto the cart, there would even be someone’s save data still present when I rented one. Whenever I was presented with such, I would try to do my best to not overwrite their save(s) with my own because it felt wrong to do so; like destroying records of someone’s existence or a moment captured in time.

That and it felt dickish as they might want to rent it again!

(Above) A confession such as this feels like one of those moments where I’m supposed to turn in my “Gamer Card,” but I’ve never played Super Metroid. Yes, I own a legit cart that I purchased off eBay a few years ago but I’ve never played more than an hour in my life. I do plan to someday play it through, but until then I can take a gander at a couple of these saves which were left on the cart. Were they even made by the same person or two different ones?

(Below) The first two save files are mine on Chrono Trigger, but the last one is not as I found it left on the cart when I purchased it off eBay a few years ago; around the same time that I purchased Super Metroid, ironically enough. That said, who is Alvin? Is that their real name or do they just like chipmunks? Whomever they are, they sure have some interesting stats!

Seriously, that is a lot of money…

Sometimes, curiosity will get the best of me and I’ll actually check out these old save files. It’s just interesting for me to see where they left off, and if it’s something like an RPG then it’s equally if not even more interesting to see what level they were, what kind of weapons and armor they had, etc. In a way, one could look at it as a form of “archaeogaming.” Regardless of what I find, I feel it would be wrong to continue playing from the point of their save(s) as much as it would be to delete it them outright; what gives me the right to take that away?

True, said player(s) will probably never have a chance to ever play their old saved games again, and perhaps I romanticize the idea a bit too much in turn, but I still can’t deny that tinge of guilt. I mean, as someone who is an archivist, I don’t collect old games simply to collect; I have an honest interest in the act of preservation. To which, in a roundabout way, I ask: can you ever really preserve all the various memories and experiences associated with every video game? It depends, as after all you only get out what you give or don’t take away.

As an additional anecdote, I feel the need to explain how this whole writeup came about: for the most part, during the course of my game collecting, I’ve purchased only those games that were released in North America. After all, that’s where I live and what I did and can still play. However, in recent months, I’ve been slowly getting into importing games from Japan for various reasons. Despite the fact that I can’t read, write, or speak the language (yet, but that’s a whole other problem, haha), I still find Japanese games fascinating due to their regional differences as well as exclusives that were never released outside of their country. That and Japanese games tend to be a bit on the cheaper side, even with the shipping.

Going back to video game rental stores, I always found RPGs to be the hardest games to rent. Namely due to the fact that there tended to be only one copy of them, they could take untold hours to finish (especially if there were multiple discs), and you only had a finite time to rent them out. Therefore, I found myself in a situation more than once where I’d only get so far in an RPG I rented before I had to return it and then, for whatever reason, I never rented them again. Final Fantasy IX is one of those games, which I’ve still yet to finish to this very day, however the one RPG that really sticks out in my mind the most of all is Grandia.

When I rented Grandia, I did so in late 1999/early 2000 which was soon after it was released on PlayStation in North America. Therein lies the rub, which I did not realize at the time: Grandia was originally released in 1997, exclusively for the Sega Saturn in Japan. There are slight differences between the releases, but overall the position by many is that the PlayStation port is inferior from both a technical and aesthetic standpoint. When I played it on PlayStation, I only got about halfway through before I had to return it but it’s always been in the back of my mind as one of those games that I’ve always wanted to finish, and lately I’ve been wanting to do so on an actual Sega Saturn… but how? Well, luckily…

I learned about a translator/programmer named TrekkiesUnite118 who was working on translating/hacking the original Sega Saturn version of Grandia. I already owned a Sega Saturn before I learned about this endeavor, having purchased one on eBay a few years ago now, but I had no idea how I would be able to go about playing this translation. I know what some of you out there might be saying, “well, why not just play it on an emulator?” True, I could, but I find myself adhering to a foolish sense of pride in playing on original hardware.

Therefore, after a bit of research, I learned about the Psuedo Saturn which goes into the cartridge slot of a Sega Saturn and allows you to play back-ups and imported games. Now I could just download a copy of the game, patch the translation, and then burn a back-up disc but, NOPE, I always have to go the extra mile. That’s why I decided to buy an actual copy of Grandia for the Sega Saturn, burn a copy of that, patch it with the translation, burn a back-up disc of that, and then go from there… in the end, it works great and I can’t wait to play!

Of course, as any collector of anything will tell you, once you start down a certain path it’s hard to veer off course. So, as one tends to do under such circumstances, I suddenly found myself seeking out and buying more imports from Japan. Specifically, I wanted more of such items which were never released in North America. With that said, I ended up buying not only an AV Famicom but also a Famicom Disk System AND a half dozen games too…

Who were Kintaro and Kigunas? Where in Japan did they live? Did they ever think that, when they sold their copy of this game, it would find its way across the world? I could say the same about the AV Famicom and the Famicom Disk System that I own as well… what journeys did they both take to eventually find themselves over to my collection?

By the way, as a quick aside, can I mention just how wild this menu is in regards to the little skulls with knives in their eyes and the blood oozing out? Serious “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter” vibes, which I wouldn’t be surprised if that was intentional given the horror themed nature of the game. Regardless, one thing is for sure: it just goes to show the regional differences you miss out on without importing! It really is like playing a different game.

To round out this foray into “retro gaming show and tell,” one of my most recent imported pick-ups is the Nintendo Power! No, not the magazine of the same name. Rather, it’s a somewhat obscure peripheral for the Super Famicom. Essentially, the Nintendo Power was an official flash cart which allowed you to go to a special kiosk in stores where you’d be able to get game ROMs flashed onto it. The appeal came from the fact that doing so would ultimately be cheaper in the long run rather than buying an actual game, while some theorized it was done as a way to get Super Famicom games off of store shelves in order to make room for the N64. In any case, the Nintendo Power was officially supported for well over ten years, from 1996 to 2007! There was even a Game Boy version released in 2000.

I got mine from eBay (I mean, where else? lol), and the thing with buying a Nintendo Power in this day and age is that you’re essentially paying for whatever was left on the cart. Therefore, some of them are a little bit cheaper or more expensive than others depending on what games they contain. The one that I got was relatively cheap, as all it had on it was “Contra Spirits” (the Japanese version of Contra III) and “The Game of Life: Super Jinsei Game 3,” which is the third entry in a series of Japanese exclusive games based on the board game of the same name. I already own a North American copy of “Contra III: The Alien Wars”, but I figured owning the Japanese version in such a unique way wouldn’t hurt. Especially when you consider there are some regional differences between the two.

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Unfortunately, me being an idiot, I forgot one small detail: Super Famicom games do not fit in a Super Nintendo. There are ways to “hack” (or should I say cut?) a Super Nintendo so that they’ll play Super Famicom games, but I prefer my mods to not alter the physical appearance of a console. Besides, if anything, it gave me the perfect excuse to purchase a Super Famicom! So I did, as I much prefer to play games on their intended hardware: 

Of course, these purchases only add to the ever increasing series of questions that I have concerning the origins of the used and/or imported items in my collection. I mean, where did this Super Famicom come from? Who originally owned it in the first place? Why did they sell it and when? How many games did they play on it and how many owners after them, and before me, were there? In regards to the Nintendo Power, who originally owned that as well and how many games did they get put on to the cart in total? What kind of store did they go to which had a kiosk that put said games on the cart? Why these games specifically?

Needless to say, I could go on and on with these questions but ultimately it’s a pointless exercise in futility; I’ll likely never get any answers. Most of the time, the people who sell these things on eBay are not even the original owners themselves; especially when it comes to imports. Therefore, I’m left to just wonder… but, if anything, I do at least know this: no matter how they found themselves to me, they’re here now and that’s what truly matters. Their original owners might never know, or even care, where their former items ended up but I just want it to be known that they’re in good hands now and I appreciate them too.