Documentary: The Evolution of Your Gaming Setup (aka Happy Place)

[Medic_wheat]

Anyone ever think Cd will have the kind of resurgence viynl has had?

[cjameslv]

Better?

Yep ty

[bust3dstr8]

Can we post the devolution of your gaming setup? (aka the Not so Happy Place anymore)

[DeshDildo]

So the Queen of the kingdom I live in ordered me to a different claim.  The good news is I now have free reign.  Hopefully, continuing evolution will allow me to create a full on "man cave" 

The following is the new setup as of 9/15/15

[VenomMacbeth]

That's looking pretty swanky, man!  Quite the collection ya got there, too. :3

I was in a similar predicament.  I had a separate room for my games & what-have-you, but the lady didn't have a space to do arts & crafts and such.  After an evening of heated discussion eventually culminating into a panic attack, I calmly pitched the idea of giving up my room to her & moving my things to the living room (a more logical place for the TV, anyway).  This ended up working out in my favor.  For my birthday, she helped her stepfather make some wall-mounting shelves, so I could get rid of many of the behemoths crowding the space.  The rest of the room's a mess, but here's what I've done with the shelves:






(The empty space on the middle shelf is for my Dreamcast, which I'm currently playing)

This is a WIP, and I've got more shelves coming with which to put up the rest of my games, and some more toys, so there'll be more pictures soon.  Yes, it may be odd to have all this set up in the living room...but we fly our freak flags high. 

[Gredler]

Not much has changed in the 2 years since this photo was taken I am a creature of habit:

Bar/Game Room:



Home office:

[DeshDildo]

I love it gredler.  I am the family Foosball champion.  We have a tournament every Christmas.  I unfortunately left my vintage table at my old town house that my brother now lives in.

[jtucci31]

Bumping this old thread because I just rearranged my dorm and am pretty happy with it for a few reasons. 1) Because the setup is great for me and everything is neat and tidy. 2) Because I've got all the gaming machines I've been wanting/could ever want and have them all in perfect/playable positions. I have no idea how I got good grades last year, but this should be no different. I like to think of this as the "stress-reliever" section

Obviously this isn't everything, but right now my dorm gaming station is looking much better than anything I had back home. Not all the games are here, but there are certainly enough.

[Mathius]

^^Nice X68000 XIV (or is it XVI?)

[RyuHayabusa]

My collection thus far. Trying to keep them separated by console but running out of room. Time to get another shelf.

[xcrement5x]

LaserActive love, me likey.

[Ozzy_98]

This is a cool thread, and while I'm a bit late to the party, I came prepared.  Well actually I came some sticky white stuff, but we don't need to talk about that

So here's the setup before I owned the house:


The person before me was a record collector, the whole down stairs area was wall to wall records.  This picture was October 18th, 2013, so this is right before we moved in.



Here it is on the 3rd, 2014.  Yes, it's one hell of a mess.  For those who don't know me, I got my Duo with my own money from working as a kid, and I've been "collecting" since 14ish.  Or just buying a shit ton of old games, depending on what you call it; I was too messy to be considered a collector for a long time.  Anyways, shit happened, and my games were stored in boxes at my parents house.  At some point, someone moved said collection into the barn, and they didn't even use the same boxes.  They just dumped them into larger boxes, and put in the barn where bats could poop on it, and rats could eat them.  And the cords, I think they used them as jump ropes to tangle them all up.  Took me FOREVER to untangle.

In this picture I'm messing around some with system placement ideas a shelf area in the center of the room where he used to keep his records.  That's a crap-tastic 33" CRT with way too much over scan.

Note the perforated peg board in the middle.  It didn't last too long.



Here it is in June, 2014 with a new coat of primer, the center part ripped out, and my $5 goodwill speakers (Still using them). You can see my kick ass Extron video switch in the center, I'll show pics of what it can do later


And a bit later on in the month, I started painting it.  While it looks like I didn't finish, I painted all I needed too; I was going to make a "face" for in front of the shelves, and paint it black.  Then put hooks in it to hold the controllers for each system.  Ran into a shit ton of design issues though, think I got them all figured out now though.  Note the baby CRT, think it's a 19", it's now off to the left somewhere.  I keep it around, due in part cause of the power of my Extron switch.



Lookie what I got for $60 at goodwill.  It's a LCD projection TV, so has most of the benefits of CRT and LCD combined (But requires bulbs every so often; I get them for $20 each)



And here's me trying it out some.  This isn't actually a console, that's an emulator running in that pic. I dislike modding hardware, this way I can keep it all stock, and still get many of the picture benefits + play games I don't own.  A best of both worlds setup.



And how here it is today (Nov. 17th, 2015)


Almost nothing's hooked up, I still need a lot of wires to show up; the Extron uses BNC and I just now got the adapters, but I'm still waiting on some spools of instrument cable and RCA ends to start making all my interconnects.  And power, that won't be for ages; I'm getting my first switched power block tomorrow to test out.

Anyways, first thing's first, there's no place to sit yet.  One reason it goes slow down there. And yes, that is a C64 on the coffee table.  The Denon receiver ($8 goodwill again) runs it's speakers into a switcher, so I can run the speakers on the game stand itself, plus enable the surrounds or turn them off if I don't want to bother the wife.


I mentioned the Extron, it's a big boy video switch.  It's a 6U case if you know what that means, and it's a 16 input, 8 output matrix switcher:


If you're going to go big on a setup, you really should look into a matrix switcher.  It let's me take any input, and send it to any output.  I could play nes on the CRT for some duck hunt goodness, then switch it over to the LCD and run snes on the CRT.  Or I could run the Duo on both, just because I feel like it. The coffee table has a LCD on it, one new part I'm waiting on is a composite -> HDMI converter, meaning yes, I have 3 monitors I can run systems too, all right there.  One of the outputs of the switch runs to the Denon, meaning I can have nes on the CRT, using the CRT's speakers, and snes on the LCD, playing through the sound system, only to flip it and have nes on the sound system.  Or, I can play a CD in the DUO, and not even have it on the TV.

If you know me, or if you looked at the fucking wall of text I just wrote, you know I don't half ass stuff.  When I do something, I fucking over do it.  4 of the outputs from the switch run into a CCTV processor, for security cameras.  If you don't know about these amazing devices, they're in a sense a picture-in-picture device with all sorts of options.  With a matrix switcher, this gives you amazing abilities,



For example, I decided to send my xbox to all 4 inputs on the CCTV, then sent the CCTV back to both TVs.  The result is 8 XBOXs.  And now I decide to send Turrican (TG-16 version of course) to the CRT, and port #1 of the CCTV:


But I changed my mind, and now want him on the LCD, I just send the CCTV to the CRT, and the Duo to the LCD (And it's still also going to the CCTV):


I'm sure a bunch of you think this is dumb as fucking hell.  Well besides the ability to have more systems going, it's great for a few other tricks.  Playstation had some games that used the link cable, now I can use those on the two TVs, or send them both to the LCD.  I'm planning on getting 3 more gamecubes, and the GBA players.  4 of the gamecubes will be setup will pretend to be GBA's, but rather than play say, 4 swords on tiny GBA screens, I can now route the 4 sub-cubes to the LCD, and the main gamecube runs on the CRT for some kick-ass 5 player action.

[Sadler]

 

Holy shit, that's awesome!

[xcrement5x]

Dear ozzy_98,

I would like to come to your house and play WipeoutXL via link cable.

Best,
Me

[johnnykonami]

Ozzy, I am mad jelly of all that shelf space.  The first empty pic you posted alone shows what a cool space it is, with lots of great spots to store and display games in.

[Gentlegamer]

Ozzy, I just skimmed your pics, don't you have a MAME cab?

[bob]

I love the center island. Must be so nice to have easy access to the back of everyrhing.

[LostFlunky]

Nice room Ozzy!  Some of those shelves on the back wall in the first picture look really wide for records - they weigh a ton! Are there brackets on there I can't see?

[Ozzy_98]

Ozzy, I just skimmed your pics, don't you have a MAME cab?

Half of one, it's a single player bartop.  I planned on making a second one, but no PC inside, just a monitor, controls, power, and USB, then link the two cabs using a VGA screen mirror.  So each person sees the same screen, but it's a head to head, no elbow poking setup.  Never did get around to it.

But in this setup I'm one of the few people who's arcade machine can keep their drinks cold:




And since I'm here, show the rest off for good measure:


I work from home, and it's nothing for me to have 6-8 PuTTY windows open, so I need 3 monitors.  I used 3 at my old job too, thought it was a bit much, I took this new gig, and when I went to meet my coworkers, most of them had 4-6 monitors on their desks, just not all the same thing.   

If you're wondering, yes, that's three monitors on one laptop.  They're connected to USB video cards, and those plus the usb sound card runs into a heavy duty USB hub (I've burned up many cheap ones), and that runs into a mechanical USB switcher.  I have my laptop's docking station plugged into port 1, so when I dock the laptop, it reads the speakers and monitors.  If I want to use my personal laptop on here, I just plug it into the usb and press button 2, and boom.



This isn't even close to my home lab, before we moved the front of the rack was filled, I was working on the back. Now I only work directly with Fortigate firewalls, no Cisco gear, so I've not bothered mounting the rest, or wiring it up.

[Ozzy_98]

Nice room Ozzy!  Some of those shelves on the back wall in the first picture look really wide for records - they weigh a ton! Are there brackets on there I can't see?

Yea when people think of weight on shelves, they always think stuff like the big, thick hardcover books are bad.  But for me, I collect D&D manuals, these thin hard cover books are the worse cause so many pack in, same with records.  One record weighs nothing, but you fit SOOO many in them.

He has supports for the long runs with boards placed randomly, and not all of them are the same size:


Most of them are the 2x12s he used for the shelves, but some are 2x8s, and 2 to 4 of them are OSD it looks like.

And the top of the TV stand is a closet door.  We were living at the house almost 6 months before I noticed that.

[NecroPhile]

Quite the game room, ozzy.  I enjoyed seeing it go from a blank slate, to a big ol' mess as you first moved in, to the nicely organized current state.

But there's too much nobey. 

[ToyMachine78]

So the Queen of the kingdom I live in ordered me to a different claim.  The good news is I now have free reign.  Hopefully, continuing evolution will allow me to create a full on "man cave" 

The following is the new setup as of 9/15/15

What kind of shelves are these? I like.

The other taller ones too

[Bloufo]

My setup is in a constant state of "evolution".

The thing is the lack of space in displaying everything properly.
If I'm at a stage where I can't find the space, then I'm kinda into "project mode" thinking of maybe a room extension or addition.

This is a part of my Ninty collection where I've yet to decide where it will go. So currently it just sits all kind of disorganized.

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Another "temporary" setup where I still need to organize everything.

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And here are my main gaming room setups:

(excuse the mess on the couch)

/2ligcif.jpg

That game room started life like this:

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This is adjacent to the above room,

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This is a small setup where it's more convenient for the kids to mess around,

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[Medic_wheat]

My setup is in a constant state of "evolution.

/2ligcif.jpg

I like how these shelving units really utilize that corner and have a closed off are at the bottom for bulked items. Where did you get these at?  Also how the shelf part is adjustable and can easily accommodate older retro and CD case sized items.

[esteban]

I want to go to bloufo's house.

Damn.

[xcrement5x]

Are you in Europe bloufo?  I'm trying to identify the tall cases in the second from top shelf and the only thing that seems to click are PAL Saturn cases. 

[Bloufo]

quote author=Medic_wheat link=msg=445694 date=1454263496]I like how these shelving units really utilize that corner and have a closed off are at the bottom for bulked items. Where did you get these at?

Got them locally. Johannesburg.

I want to go to bloufo's house.

Damn.

You're welcome. Guessing from where you're at, it's a lengthy flight time to reach me, though.
No guarantee the on-flight entertainment will be very good to pass the time.

I'm trying to identify the tall cases in the second from top shelf and the only thing that seems to click are PAL Saturn cases.

You're spot on. Those are indeed PAL Saturn games.

[DeshDildo]

So the Queen of the kingdom I live in ordered me to a different claim.  The good news is I now have free reign.  Hopefully, continuing evolution will allow me to create a full on "man cave" 

The following is the new setup as of 9/15/15

What kind of shelves are these? I like.

The other taller ones too

These are all cheap shelves from Walmart.  The taller skinny shelves I think they call a media shelf and are like $30.  The short one with the Sega stuff is just a bookshelf from the same company and is also sold at Walmart.

[ClodBusted]

...time to revive this old thread.

My happy gaming place as it looks at this very moment.



Please... don't mind the alcohol. We were in the middle of a Devil's Crush session, six people trying to beat the highscore.

The HiFi/AV shelf on the right was constructed and built by myself, just so you know. The rest is Ikea stuff.


EDIT: So funny, I just noticed the infrared glow of the Wii sensor bar being visible on the photo.

[turboswimbz]

THE START:

I don't quite have everything in yet, And I got to find a way to mount the PVM, but I at least have the start of stuff moved in.  Still, 4 more consoles and a ton of random games and accessories to move in.

gdurl.com/9pmG

[Mathius]

^^That may be the single largest pic this site has ever seen! If you were trying to make everything to scale then I think you succeeded lol. 

[Gypsy]

RESIZE YO SHIZ DAWG.

[Medic_wheat]

That's what she said.

She wouldn't talk with her mouth full like that. Not very lady like.

[turboswimbz]

^^That may be the single largest pic this site has ever seen! If you were trying to make everything to scale then I think you succeeded lol. 

DUDE I HAD TO KEEP IT THAT BIGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG . . . Funniest poop ever

That and I was having issues resizing,  on a real compy now and resized.

I think all my pictures are going to be that big from now on.

[turboswimbz]

RESIZE YO SHIZ DAWG.

MAKE ME