The Hunt to Complete the CollectionBy Clark DeVitisSeptember 3rd, 2012Posted in Features
Ever since I was little, I have always considered myself a collector. There are random things that I become greatly fascinated with, such as owning every song by a certain band, collecting quarters for the U.S. map, collecting all seasons of a show, and collecting video games. One thing that I became very obsessed with that I wanted to have all of was the colored Dreamcast controllers, and nothing was going to stop me from getting them all.I decided to write a quick article about these because I felt that it was an interesting collection I made that was very hard to complete and wanted to share my journey towards this completion. I had the red Dreamcast controller for a very long time, in fact, I got it the day I got my Dreamcast. When I was on eBay one day searching for Dreamcast accessories, I discovered that there was a blue controller and I was set to get my hands on it. I purchased it, and then went on the internet to see if there were more of these colored controllers, and I found that there were a green and yellow one also. I then began my “collection” of controllers. I learned that there was a colored VMU to correspond with every controller so I fist tried to get blue and red ones for the controllers I already owned.As soon as I acquired these, I moved on to the blue controller. I found this one quickly and purchased it for a relatively low cost. I also purchased the blue VMU that day to go along with it when it arrived. Now I moved on to the final one: The yellow one. This one became a big problem with me because to my surprise, this one was very rare. For about a month after I started trying to find a yellow one, I would check eBay and Amazon and other online stores every day, just hoping it would show up there one out of the dozens of times I tried. Eventually, one surfaced, and I immediately forked over about $40.00 to the seller. I had finally collected all of the controllers but the last problem was to find a yellow VMU. I took the same route as when I looked for the controllers and checked online every day. For months, I could not find one. I started checking places like The Exchange very frequently in hopes of finding one but I had no luck. One day, probably 4 months after my initial search, I found a yellow VMU bundled with a yellow controller. It was a high price because both parts of the bundle were very rare, but I managed to buy it. I was a bit hesitant because I already had a yellow controller, but I made the purchase anyway because I thought this may be the only opportunity to find a yellow VMU. When it came in the mail, I found myself relieved because I was done with the collection and I finally could get to business. In every controller, I put the standard colored VMU in Slot 2 with the colorful one in slot 1, so that the colored VMU would be in the front with the colored face of the controller, and the white one in the back just like the back of the controller is white. I also made games on the VMUs have a certain order, with Sonic and other Sonic Team games being on the blue controller (for obvious reasons), Seaman is on the Green controller because the cover of the game is green, and the microphone matches it with the green foam on the end, which is used in the game. I like to think that I am done with my collection, but being the way I am, I feel as if I have to acquire 4x Memory cards for all of the controllers (other than the Green one because the mic is in slot 2), to make the ultimate controller collection complete. |