Casualties of Hurricane Ian.

[zamardii12]

Just a couple pictures gaming-related of losses in our home. My wife and I lost everything... both cars, all our possessions, all of our furniture.... everything. The Nintendo 64 my grandmother bought me when the N64 launched who just happened to pass away the day after Hurricane Ian went over us. The box with the PS2, original Xbox, controllers, and Windows XP gaming laptop were in pristine condition, and the container full of original 60GB backwards compatible PS3s I was working on fixing them and invested a bunch of time and money into. My Nintendo Wii with wireless GameCube controller and everything was destroyed...

Everything in these photos was just chucked into a dumpster which REALLY sucked and was hard to do.

To say the least we are devasted, but just figured I'd share more since now we've relocated to another more stable location, and I have internet to share more things.

 

[Westwood]

try filling up one of those bins with rice?

 

[zamardii12]

try filling up one of those bins with rice?

The water these sat in was contaminated with gasoline and sewage backup. Everything was thrown out.

 

[polonyc2]

sorry for your loss...you're in Florida?

 

[zamardii12]

sorry for your loss...you're in Florida?

Yes.

 

[Comixbooks]

Oh WOW my Uncle lost his roof in Tampa sorry for your loss. You ever consider moving somewhere else? If I was in that situation would just take my Tower and phones leave the consoles behind.

 

[Johnx64]

Some of these could have saved you and countless others.

 

[gvx64]

I am really sorry, that is a devastating loss and I am sorry about your grandmother. Even if you get an insurance payout (which I hope that you do) it will still take a long time to rebuild a collection like that and that still cannot replace the memories/sentimental value that have been lost permanently.

I have a lot of the gaming equipment that you have including the N64 that my parents bought me in Christmas 1996. That said, I could easily see myself in your shoes and it is very upsetting. It doesn't really matter where you live. I live in midwestern Canada (about as far from oceans/hurricane hazards as you can get) and we still have wildfires, tornadoes, regular flooding, theft that can result in basically the same outcome. It's just an unfortunate reality of this world. Life really is not fair.

The good thing is that hopefully you and your wife are in good health and that you can start rebuilding from this mess including your retro game collection. I'll bet that once you start rebuilding your collection you will rediscover some of the lost gems that you forgot about while they were sitting in your basement for all of those years. I know some of the games will probably be pretty expensive to replace, but the good news is that most of your N64 games should still be fairly affordable on the used market.

Honestly, though, this is a perfect example of why I believe it should be an unquestionable legal right for people to be able to make backup copies of their games. For example, if you had a copy of Panzar Dragoon Saga in that box, how on earth are you going to replace that??

 

[ZodaEX]

I am really sorry, that is a devastating loss and I am sorry about your grandmother. Even if you get an insurance payout (which I hope that you do) it will still take a long time to rebuild a collection like that and that still cannot replace the memories/sentimental value that have been lost permanently.

I have a lot of the gaming equipment that you have including the N64 that my parents bought me in Christmas 1996. That said, I could easily see myself in your shoes and it is very upsetting. It doesn't really matter where you live. I live in midwestern Canada (about as far from oceans/hurricane hazards as you can get) and we still have wildfires, tornadoes, regular flooding, theft that can result in basically the same outcome. It's just an unfortunate reality of this world. Life really is not fair.

The good thing is that hopefully you and your wife are in good health and that you can start rebuilding from this mess including your retro game collection. I'll bet that once you start rebuilding your collection you will rediscover some of the lost gems that you forgot about while they were sitting in your basement for all of those years. If you had a copy of Panzar Dragoon Saga in that box, how on earth are you going to replace that??

You could buy one of the ones on eBay

 

[gvx64]

You could buy one of the ones on eBay

I suppose if you get an insurance payout for the appreciated value of the lost item, but if you're only getting coverage for the amount you paid (eg. $60.00 MSRP) then I don't see how this item is replaceable. I mean, a complete-in-box copy of Panzar Dragoon Saga goes for well over $1,000. Maybe some of the folks on this site buying RTX 4090's can afford to pay that for a single game, but I certainly couldn't.

 

[T4rd]

Damn dude.. I have a similar collection from my childhood and am pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to throw those away no matter what. Like I would disassemble everything and bathe them in alcohol or something if I had to. That's pretty rough, but hope insurance pays out enough to replace most of it at least.

 

[gvx64]

Damn dude.. I have a similar collection from my childhood and am pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to throw those away no matter what. Like I would disassemble everything and bathe them in alcohol or something if I had to. That's pretty rough, but hope insurance pays out enough to replace most of it at least.

Yeah, I was wondering that too. At least for the disc-based games, zamardii12 could probably bath those in a mild disinfectant, throw away the cases, and then see what still works. I would have probably tried doing this if there were any particularly expensive PS2 and Gamecube games in the collection. I have noticed that the prices for used Gamecube games have come down a bit from the insanity of a year or so ago but the JRPG's can still be pretty bad.

The carts are a tougher situation because they will likely have corrosion. And I get just wanting to get rid of them if they all smell like sewage and are disgusting. The good news is that I only see N64 carts in the box and unless he has Bomberman 64: The Second Attack or something very rare, most N64 games are still reasonably close to MSRP on Ebay right now, the more popular ones like Goldeneye are still well under.

One thing to be aware of though is that the used market for N64 cartridge games is absolutely saturated with "reproduction" cartridges often masquerading as authentic. Some of them I have heard can be of particularly low quality and can cause shorts that can actually damage your console. When I was adding to my N64 collection a couple of years ago I received multiple counterfeit N64 carts on Ebay, some even from highly reputable sellers who claimed the carts were authentic and charged a price that was inline with an authentic cart (they seller might have not even known it was a fake). Sometimes it is hard to tell, the only surefire way to know is to look at the PCB and compare against a N64 cart board scan repository (there are photos online for boards of every cart available). Another way I found can be helpful was to get a picture of the backside of the cart from the seller before buying (if they won't send you a pic then it is probably a good sign that you shouldn't buy from them) and then look at the shape of the "i" dot in the Nintendo engraving. I have found that most repro's have a circular dot while the authentic carts will always have a square dot:

This isn't as good as getting a photo of the board since reproduction boards can theoretically come in authentic cart plates. Also, I am sure the counterfeiters will eventually fix such an obvious imperfection, if they haven't already done so. That said, if the seller claims to not have a game-bit or a way to open the cart then this might be the only option you are given.