Sweet merciful heavens, we did it. We moved into our new house. It’s… well, it’s a freaking mess. There are boxes everywhere. And behind those boxes? More boxes. But behind those boxes? Unlimited potential.

Obviously, moving typically comes with a set of challenges, and our move was no different. There were some catastrophic last-minute changes to the plans that really messed up our weekend, but with the help of some friends and family, we made it work. So having finally made it into our new house with all our stuff, it was time to start putting together the rudimentary video game setup. Just enough to get me started. See, there’s a metric ton of stuff that needs doing around the house. Rooms need painting, boxes need unpacking, exterminators need to be called (there’s a mouse problem) and some pretty hefty repairs like the chimney and the roof are all things we need to take care of. I want my games all set up more than anything in the world, but I acknowledge that in the grand scheme of things, it’s pretty low on the totem pole. So for now, it’s just the basics, and lots of preliminary planning.

As I had originally intended, the Switch got set up in the living room. That was basic and easy. Video games are in the living room. Done. Next, my big ol’ plasma TV that used to be in my living room made its way down to the basement, and I started stacking up systems I thought would wind up connected to it in front. I need some new equipment though because as I said in an earlier post, the HDMI ports are fried, and I’m currently using the only HDMI switch box I have upstairs, so I only have 2 usable inputs via this HDMI to component switcher thingy I have, and slot #1 went right to my Wii U. I know, I know. Wii U? Why not PS3 or Xbox 360? Well, I’ve got a little thing called the Stone Age Gamer Podcast Summer Series to attend to, and Faxanadu and Neutopia II are both on my Wii U Virtual Console. So Wii U gets the nod. Plus, I have like a million Virtual Console games to boot. As far as easily accessible retro games go, my Wii U is my best and most diverse bet. That said, I can’t find the box with my Wii U controllers in it, which is a bigger problem than it may seem.

Thanks to the complete bass ackwards way the Wii U accesses the old (and vastly superior) Wii Virtual console, I needed a Wii Remote in order to access it at all. Faxanadu and Neutopia II are only on the Wii VC and not the Wii U VC, so I can’t just use the gamepad. Fortunately I remembered I had packed away a Wii Remote with my original Wii, so I grabbed that one, synced it up, and got to work. When I went to actually hook up my Wii U, I noticed something really cool about this place I hadn’t seen before.

What you see in this picture is, there are outlets in almost every one of these built-in shelves. I’m not quite sure how to snake the wires from the shelves to the TV in an attractive manner yet, but if I can figure that out it’s going to be so freaking cool. This house is full of these nice little touches, but I have to say that these extra outlets might just be my favorite so far.

Now onto the big guy, my Sony Trinitron. HOLY CRAP OLD CRTs ARE HEAVY. Easily the biggest challenge of the day was getting my Trinitron out of my parents’ garage and into our basement. My friends Evan and Jim are freaking superheroes for volunteering to take the brunt of that particular chore, and it was a chore. It made it down there though, and it wound up in a very fortuitous position. I had half a mind to get rid of the pool table and set things up over in the corner, but this spot actually works quite well. Once I clear the boxes, there’s going to be plenty of space for a small couch, maybe one of the couches I’m replacing upstairs, and some shelves under/next to it for all the consoles I intend to hook up to it. The Trinitron has some picture issues I need to see if I can mess with, though. It has been in storage for a very long time. But either way, the picture quality on this beast is just beautiful.

In order to test the sucker out, the first thing I did was look for my NES, which was thankfully pretty easy to find. The problem was I couldn’t find my Everdrive anywhere, and all my games were elsewhere. So I grabbed the only system that landed in the basement that I knew I had easy access to a game with just so I could test my old TV out. That system was a Sega Genesis 2 with Sonic the Hedgehog. In what has been one of my favorite moments in this new house, there was something delightfully nostalgic about curling up on the floor in front of a giant CRT and playing some no-lag retro games. Happy as a pig in poo, I was. Anyway, as I mentioned a few sentences ago, my games aren’t in my basement quite yet. They’re elsewhere, and that elsewhere is my garage.

The basement got rather full during the move, and adding my whole game collection to that particular mess would have been a bit too much crazy. Plus, some of this stuff is either going away or going into my attic for storage, so it was smarter to keep it in the garage for now to avoid carrying heavy stuff down a flight of stairs only to have to bring them right backup and into the attic in the future. So my game collection has gone from sitting in my parents garage to my own garage. Hey, it’s one step closer now, right?

Once more work is done and more things start to fall into place in the house, I’ll be able to start seriously working on the basement, but for now it’s all about the small stuff and slowly putting it together when I can. I’ve got to keep picking away at making the skeletal structure of the game room as solid as can be so when I finally do get the time to really dedicate to the project, it’s everything I want it to be. I’m going to be hitting up some flea markets in search of a stand for the Trinitron, and the right shelves for the consoles. Unfortunately the games themselves are going to have to wait for a while, but there’s plenty to keep me occupied in the meantime. I see it coming together nicely though, and that’s the best I can hope for.