Love the shelves, everything looks neat.
What’s the picture you have framed up above the PC?
Club Nintendo platinum poster from the Year of Luigi:
I have the other two posters around the room as well.
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That is lovely! I would very much like to see the other two.
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I love the flow. You are invited to sit down and play but you’re not going to feel overwhelmed with shelves and shelves packed with games. Is the white PS2 a backup?
I agree with you there. I love game rooms where you walk in and go “This is a game room!”
But I also love game rooms that have a nice robust +10 console setup where you can still walk in and go “Wait is this a game room?” And Poptart’s is kind of like that.
We have a mix of both of those in this thread and it’s what I think is so cool about retro setups.
Anyone can stick the latest console under their TV with a raspberry Pi for retro games and call it a day. That’s easy. A full retro setup with a dozen-plus components, however, is basically seeing someone’s puzzle solving skills in action. And everyone solves it differently which is a cool sort of meta-game, itself.
I should clarify. As long as the passion is present there really isn’t a wrong way to set up a game room. The only ones that fire up my OCD are the ones that have games stuffed everywhere and to me look more like a hoarders room than a game room.
I love game rooms where things are thought out and you can quickly start a game up and play. If it takes longer than 2-3 minutes to start up a game/system most people aren’t going to bother. I especially love the PC set up in poptart’s game room as those require a lot of planning and work to set up.
Let’s see what’s on that shelf to the left of the TV imo. I spy some gundam.
The white PS2 is my wife’s childhood one, a Japanese exclusive SCPH-55000GT. I have it hooked up to play original JP PS2 games, as well as to serve as a JP / region 2 DVD player.
The other one is a recent pickup – a US region SCPH-39001. I have several other PS2s but I got this one as it has a reputation for reliability, plus has the full proper sound chip / ps1 CPU unlike the Slim I was using before. I have it set up with an SD->IDE adapter inside for use with OpenPS2Loader as well as FreeMcBoot for ESR backup play. Plus for playing original US region PS2 games.
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We’re planning to paint so hopefully I can redecorate the walls a bit to be more kid-fun rather than just gamer gauche.
I decided to set up the retro PC in the first place because I liked diving into 90s PC games but hated fiddling with getting them to work in modern Windows. Especially the moment that pushed me to ordering parts for the first one (a K6-III+ based system) was having trouble running a childhood favourite, Titanic: Adventure Out of Time even inside of DOSBox. Instead now I can just pop my disk in, or mount the ISO in daemon tools, install, and run like it’s 1998.
I used to really love Gundam, especially Gundam Wing. Nowadays I don’t watch anime (except Anpanman with my son haha) but making the models is still fun.
The Tallgeese and Wing Gundam here are these really great re-imagining of some non-Endless Waltz mobile suits to imagine what they would look like if they were done in the EW style. The Tallgeese especially has such a great look.
I don’t really have the time to sit down with this stuff any more… I haven’t made any since end-of-2015, and have a box of HG Hyaku Shiki that I’ve been meaning to sit down to put together for ages.
I also don’t quite know where to keep it now so since I rearranged stuff I’ve been keeping my controller box on top of that display case:
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She sounds like a keeper with good taste.
Congrats on the great room/wife/life. 
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That is where I’m at with gunpla. I fucking love it but I also have so many other time consuming hobbies/obligations. I find that Lego scratches the same itch for me without as much of a time/effort constraint, but I still have a bunch of models I would love to make. Knowing the commitment as well as knowing I’d want to do a bunch of high grade ones first to get my skills back up first really holds me back on it.
The SCPH-39001 comment is interesting to me. Is that the de facto standard best PS2 to own? I did not know that there is a difference between the fats and slims with sound chip and PS1. I assume the Slims don’t have the PS1’s main CPU in them? I’m sure I knew that before… is that right though?
I can dive back into MG just fine but I got into painting them too in late 2014 which like triples the amount of time it takes to make them. It’s strictly optional but even a bit of paint helps make them look much nicer.
FYI building Ikea furniture scratches that itch too, it’s like building giant gundams in the shape of mostly square furniture.
PS2s before that model have dodgy / picky lasers; the infamous DRE. You’ll find especially that CD / blue bottom games and DVD9 / gold bottom games might just not work. They also run hot.
Models after have some oddities… the 5000X and 5500X original size PS2s also have good lasers but the drive tray is not made as robustly. I personally had a 50001 disc tray snap some plastic off on the right hand side and not work property like 6 months after I bought it; I ended up making a DIY flip top case mod.
Some models starting around 5500X (and I think ending before the slim PS2) have this intentional design to cause the laser mechanism to overheat over time if it’s reading DVD-Rs. Yikes right!? There was a class action lawsuit about it.
The first model slim is OK, you can even do a complicated mod to restore the IDE interface, but it’s easier to just use an original PS2 if you want to load games from a hard disk / etc.
Every model after that has the MIPS cpu used for PS1 backwards compatibility and PS2 sound controller replaced with a PowerPC chip called “DECKARD” that runs an on-chip emulation of the MIPS cpu. If that sounds insane and buggy, well it is… works well considering but PS1 compatibility goes down, more concerning is that some PS2 games (even notable ones) get missing sound, sound hitches and skips, etc. It’s rare of course, you might not be fussed about it, but if you have other options might as well avoid.
The last models of slim units can’t run FreeMcBoot as the bug that uses was patched.
So really by process of elimination you’re best off with 3900X systems. The 5X00X series is OK as well if you stick to original media or are OK with the laser potentially failing with a lot of burned game use, allegedly especially lower grade DVD-Rs.
Nice thing about the 5X00X systems is that the PSU uses less power and generates less heat whereas the 3900X model I find if I leave it plugged in even when “off” (w/ red light on) it gets warm to the touch on the bottom, so I usually also turn that one off with the switch at the back.
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If you are going for fats it is generally considered the “best” of the bunch. Other versions may have better drive trays and power supplies, which people swap out, but the 39001 has/can have the “best” motherboard revision and was before a lot of the cost cutting stuff went in iirc.
Edit: @poptart went over it better then I did.
I never did full painting, just panel lines and then a nice matte top coat and I am happy with that. Even the time and effort commitment is already too high for my other stuff so glad I never started full painting.
Thanks! That’s a lot of great information! I am definitely going to keep an eye out for one in that 3900X line. I really liked the fat PS2 more than the Slim I have now because the Slim is … too small. It just disappears into my retro setup and it ticks me off. Knowing which one to get is excellent. Thanks again!
Thanks for your comments about the 39001. I wasn’t aware of those details and ended up getting a well-maintained, single owner unit off ebay for pretty cheap. Also gives me something to keep my eye out for in the future. 
A 39001 is a workhorse. I own two and they are still running. I love the white JPN PS2! I want to grab a JPN PS2 for Thunder Force VI. Thanks for sharing!
I love those NES box posters.
I have a 3900X PS2 and I can vouch for it also. Super reliable, works as well as the day I bought it all those years later.
That New Years Resolution thread really got me motivated to downsize. So starting with all of my Sega games I pulled about a 100 games off and did some rearranging. It’s a waste of space to have them like this, but I have it, so I’ll use it. Now I can enjoy the boxart of my favorite games on the system.
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