If your hobby is collecting something, you can really get deep into the weeds (and deep into your wallet)

This was my collection of Atari 2600 game cartridges about a month ago, when I had something like 102 of them. The collection is larger now, and if I have my way, it's going to get much larger.

About a year ago, I wrote here about the fact that I had acquired an Atari 2600+ and was enjoying playing the primitive video games of my youth.

I still play those games on our basement TV, but now that pastime has evolved into an honest to goodness hobby: collecting old Atari 2600 cartridges.

I use the world "old' intentionally because, believe it or not, there are many people in 2026 designing "homebrew" games for the venerable 2600, a console that came out in 1977 that still holds a place in the hearts of Gen Xers like me.

My focus is the games that were commercially released during the golden era of the Atari 2600 from '77 through roughly 1991.

The numbers vary, but according to this list on Wikipedia, a whopping 472 games "were released during the system's lifetime." Many of those are easy and relatively inexpensive to get your hands on (here I'm thinking of the games many, many of us played back then like Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Combat, etc.)

eBay, Facebook Marketplace, retro video game stores and garage sales are havens for these "staple" cartridges. In most cases, sellers are more interested in having you take these ancient games off their hands than they are in making any real profit from them.

As it turns out, though, there are many other Atari games considered rare or scarce that can only be had if you're willing to shell out $100 or more.

One is Crazy Climber, a popular arcade game that was adapted for the Atari 2600 but offered only to members of the Atari Fan Club. Not many copies were made back in the 80s, so not many are available now.

My go-to spot for buying old cartridges is Video Game Nirvana in Madison, Ohio. The owner, RJ, is a great guy and a fount of classic gaming knowledge. He has one copy of Crazy Climber in his store, and the price tag is $150.

I'm determined to have it...eventually.

Initially my intention was to acquire every commercially available cartridge for the Atari 2600 over a period of several years. But already I've realized that's an unlikely feat for me.

For one thing, some of those games are twice the price of Crazy Climber (or more), which seems pretty excessive. Then there's the fact that I'm not sure where I would even store 472 Atari cartridges.

So I think that, with the possible exception of Crazy Climber, I'm just going to focus on games that are $50 or less that I know I'll want to play. That should limit my collection to around 300 cartridges, which is still borderline ridiculous but at least defensible.

"Defensible," that is, to my wife, who has been kind enough to indulge this little passion of mine so far.

If someday I come home and find my Atari consoles and cartridges in trash bags on the curb, that will be a sign I probably crossed the line at some point.

At some point (probably 1990), video games passed me by

Good old Atari 2600 "Combat."

Back in The Day™ (1982-85), I played a lot of video games.

Arcade games, Atari games, Commodore 64 games, etc. The term "gamer" didn't exist back then, but I was one.

We always knew that computer technology was going to advance and that the games we played would soon seem primitive compared with what was to come. But that didn't make them any less fun.

Once gaming systems and the games themselves started taking their expected quantum leaps forward in terms of graphics, sound and general sophistication, that's when I fell off the cutting edge.

Soon, I feel behind even the trailing edge.

After not too many years, I couldn't even see the edge.

It's not that I didn't like video games anymore. It's just that school, marriage, my career, kids and a host of other things got in the way. The spare time I once had available for gaming simply evaporated.

I never realized how behind the times I was until my kids started getting older and we bought them Xboxes.

The games were amazingly realistic. And often (to me, anyway) confusing.

The controllers went from the simple one joystick, one button approach of the Atari 2600 to the sort of thing you would use to pilot an F-16. One button? Try six. Or eight. And two joystick-like thumb controllers.

Then they all became multi-player games in which you wear a headset and talk to your friends (and total strangers) in the middle of the game.

That's when I knew I would never, ever catch up.

One of my favorite things to do on the laptop Terry got me for Christmas is play many of my old, classic games. You can download emulators that allow you to play the arcade and home video games of your youth, which is wonderful.

These aren't reproductions or close facsimiles of the games I loved in the 80s. These are the actual games. The ROMs (as they're called) for each one contain the exact computer code as the originals. There's no difference at all between the Ms. Pac-Man I play on my laptop and the Ms. Pac-Man I played at Galaxy Gardens game room in 1983.

It's mind blowing. And fun.

It also, like so many things these days, reminds me of a simpler time. I am an early GenXer, born in 1969. We are Baby Boomers in all but birth year. We straddled the analog and digital ages. We know what it's like to have one corded telephone in the house AND for everyone in the family to have their own phones, own numbers, etc.

We've seen both sides of the revolution. Some of us are equally adept living in either time period. I like to think of myself that way, but when it comes to video games, I am irrevocably stuck in the 80s.

And I like it that way.