A visit to Scandinavia for our next collection, Sweden to be precise and the awesome collection of Heidi. Heidi (@Retro_Game_Blog) who many of you may already know from her retro gaming website or her Instagram pictures has a freshly refurbished game room and gaming collection to die for. We saw it and immediately knew we just had to show it here. Enjoy.

The Collection

Click on images to enlarge

Q and A with Heidi

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

Heidi: I’ve always been interested in video games! When I was really young, 5 or so, I found my 13 year older brother’s forgotten Donkey Kong Game & Watch. It was orange and pretty, with a multi screen, and the game was really simplistic yet difficult! I played this thing constantly! Until one day it got lost, and I don’t know where it went. Perhaps I had forgotten it someplace, or maybe my parents just hid it. They have never been fans of video games, they assumed games would make you stupid… So I basically never got any games, even when we were going on road trips around Europe and both my cousins had a Game Boy, I never got one. I played games whenever I got the chance! At friend’s places, or my cousins’ places, everything from NES to Sega Mega Drive and I was always quite good at it. My friends used to sometimes call me to come over and help them with a boss, even though I didn’t even have the games myself I could usually figure it out ^_^ I remember fondly playing Super Mario Bros 1, 2 & 3, Metroid, Castlevania, Ice Climbers, Alex the Kidd in Miracle World, Sonic 1 & 2 and many of these common games that people usually had.

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

Heidi: When growing up into our early teens my friends starting getting bored of their games, but I hadn’t gotten enough of it. I still always wanted to play games whenever I went to friend’s places. After years and years of begging my parents eventually got me a used Sega Mega Drive briefly, I think I was around 12 or 13, they later borrowed it out to a 5 year old when I wasn’t home, and the kid broke it after I’ve had it just for about a year.

What got you into collecting videogames, computers and consoles?

Heidi: One Christmas when I was 18 or 19 I convinced my Dad to buy me a PS2, making him think it was a special kind of DVD player! He bought it and after that my collecting started escalating. I bought sooo many games for the PS2, and then I bought an Xbox and just kept collecting. By this time I had my own income and I spent most of it on games! (Just imagine how much my Dad regretted ever having bought me that PS2). It didn’t take long until I realized that I could buy all the old systems I never got as a kid online, so I started getting it all! NES, SMS, SMD, SNES, N64 and so on.

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

Heidi: Ebay, and some specialized retro game retailers online here in Sweden. Also a Swedish auction site that is like Ebay, called Tradera. Flea markets aren’t very big here, and especially where I live it’s far from any big city that might have a range of retro games, so I have to do most of my hunting and purchases online.

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

Heidi: I think most people would really appreciate my Nintendo sealed Zelda a Link to the Past, but I don’t really like Zelda (!), so I don’t really care about that possession that much, I still like having it in my collection, and I got it as a gift from a dear friend so I want to keep it ^_^ But something I really care about a lot would be my CiB Bucky O’Hare, since I love that game, and I’m also quite proud of my Virtual Boy collection, I’m only missing 1 or 2 games for that system.

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

Heidi: Sega… and Nintendo! I can’t choose >-< and I would also like to throw in NEC!! For the fantastic PC Engine ^_^

What is your favourite console or computer?

Heidi: Aaah! That is such a hard question.. well recently I’ve been collecting mostly PC Engine and Famicom games. The PC Engine is really special, and it has some amazing games!! But Nintendo is of course also great, lots of fantastic franchises from Konami & Capcom etc. But I also have a dear place in my heart for the Sega Mega Drive, since I played it a lot as a kid and I love the SMD music ^_^ So I can’t choose just one, I will have to say (in no particular order), NES/Famicom, PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive!

Where do you want to go now with the collection?

Heidi: Well I’ve never been aiming at completing any collection, neither do I collect games that are sealed. I buy games that I can play, and I love trying “new” games that I haven’t heard about before. I usually just browse around Ebay and buy stuff that either looks interesting on the cover art or that has an interesting name, and it doesn’t matter the platform. I have over 60 different systems now, and that is just so that I can play any game I come across. I’m up to over 3000 games, and I’ve mainly been searching for platformers, action, adventure, shmups or puzzle games which are the type of games that I enjoy playing, and that is probably what I will continue to search for.

I also love photographing, I have a Canon d mark 5 so I take a lot of pictures of my gems and spread the love for retro gaming on my blog and through instagram and pinterest. I will definitely continue doing so ^_^

Have you any tips for budding retro games collectors?

Heidi: I import a lot of japanese games, and even though I know some basic japanese it is hard to read what the game is called if it’s only in kanji, for this I found out a great function on Google! If you go to images instead of web you can just drag and drop a picture you take of the game cartridge in there and it will search for similar pictures. This almost always works for finding out the name of the game.
Another advice for NES fans is to get a Famicom, there were more games released for the Famicom than the NES (at least the European one) and also the famicom games are usually much cheaper! You can find amazing games that never left Japan, and you can also find a lot of the desirable games like Mega Man series etc to a much better price for the Famicom than the NES, and it’s still the exact same game!