Topic: Gaming Tat (...Return of the Tat!)

I'll post this in the collector/tat thread @GirlVersusGame as it will mostly focus on that, and i've been meaning to post in here again with some new gaming tat. But, in answer to your question... I store my games on my console/SSD fully digital, as for me the benefits outweigh the negatives in the 'patch required to play' times. It's just the bits and bobs of the Collector's Editions that I pop around the place. The boxes themselves are quite cool, so I intend to have them visible somewhere, and maybe keep using them to store other things.

The statues etc I just have around and about, filling the boring empty spaces with gaming tat rather than having a case to display them. And at the moment I only have items from 3 games. These are the 3 statues popped on a sieboard for the sake of taking a photo of them, and they have since been placed elsewhere. But you get the idea with that...

The games themselves, like I say, digitally stored on the SSD. So I don't have to worry about shelves worth of discs being organised from every game i've ever owned as that would really eat into my space even more, and I find digital gaming so much more palatable these days, anyway

Tat! More glorious tat, here! Death Stranding 2 tat, to be specific.

Kojima is definitely a weird one. Here is the totally normal Magellen Man & the notorious Dollman from the CE...

("Or not" - imgbb) 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

The box is also quite nice with a shiny silver handprint on matte black.

I'll probably add more of the Ghost of Yotei tat here at some point, too. (If imgbb isn't being a tw** 😂 I had made little gifs with lighting on the Kojima statues too. Boo)

@Ravix I like your choice of home defense, are those all from Kingdom Come Deliverance? Dollman I recognize but not his friend. I played about six hours of Death Stranding 2 then something clicked and I went back outside into the sun. It was an odd feeling, there was so much hype to just get on there and start delivering packages. Instead I questioned my life and turned the game off, it was probably because I'd recently seen my stats for the first game and felt history was trying to repeat itself. The helmet polishes up really nicely too, miles apart from the last collectible I picked up. The less said about that Snake Eater diorama the better. They really did a good job with painting the Ghost mask, it's hard to tell how a finished collectors item is actually going to look now. You just have to have faith and hope they'll get it right, you definitely picked some good ones.

@GirlVersusGame haha, hopefully it wouldn't be needed for that. Just got a couple of historical replicas that fit in with an aesthetic I like, it's all a circle, I have an interest in history, in human craft, and I love KCD. And each of these things makes my love for the other stronger, so they go hand in hand, really. Slap a bit of fantasy about the place and i'm satisfied, as that shares a similar leaning towards worlds that focus on old technology, crafting and the like.

Yeah, I saw the article about Snake Eater 👀 questionable, at best. This is why I like to combine genuine items that have been crafted by a person with gaming stuff that has been pooped out of a factory, as gaming tat can be quite tacky. I will mostly try to lean towards more grounded stuff.

That said, the Kojima stuff is pretty nuts, so much so that imgbb seems to want to block uploading it 😂 but dollman hark's back to puppetry which itself is also an interesting craft and skill with a deep history, so... justified!

@Ravix Have you played Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord? It was on Plus+ for a while. It's more about building up your kingdom and trying to manage each fortification, army and trying to stave off attacks and invaders from other nations and neighbours. The battles are really enjoyable but every single time I started to amass enough riches to fund bigger kingdoms, armies and trade routes the AI would break ties and form alliances with any other nation and march on every one of my fortifications. The same thing happened in Age of Wonders Planetfall. You'd build your nation up and at a certain point the AI would begin to throw an endless supply of resources at everything but you, then march across the map and destroy everything you built. If they could get that under control on Bannerlord it would be a really good game. It seems historically accurate, there's no monsters etc, just other armies.

I picked up some cool gaming tat in the sales, including a Knuckles squishmallow, a Lara Croft Tubbz duck, and a Marvel Legends figure of Spidey in his Boricua Suit from Marvel's Spider-Man 2. I have one more bit of nerdy clutter to grab from eBay before I can attempt to re-organise!

@Tjuz @Werehog I moved us here from the SOP thread, as this thread seemed more appropriate.
Here's the original prize package and the t-shirts aren't all that exciting (the white one on the left and the black one on the right):

T-shirt wise, my favourite is an "unofficial" tee I bought with Tali on it and the words "Keelah se'lai" underneath.

I don't think they sell the games, they are strictly a merch/gear shop, but they do have a lot of cool stuff for obsessed people like me That may change in time for ME5; maybe they'll stock some limited edition with awesome tat when that arrives. Either way, I can pretty much guarantee that I won't be able to hang on to my voucher for that long

I'll update you in this thread with info on what I wind up getting.
I may wait and see if they'll add any more statues/figurines to go along with Tali, Liara, Wrex, Garrus, Mordin and Thane already on my shelf (there should be a picture posted earlier in this thread of that, but I think that was from before I got Wrex)

EDIT: Here it is

@FuriousMachine Darn it, I can't see your shelf shot because Imgur is blocked in my country! But that sure does sound like a sweet line-up of statues! And those t-shirts look pretty classy, too. Shame about the rest of it up there, but honestly? If given the choice, I reckon I'd have taken the voucher!

@Werehog Yeah, I'm feeling the voucher is a way better deal, too
I hate those imagesharing sites, they typically leave just a bunch of broken images in their wake, for various reasons.

@FuriousMachine That's a gamer model for that shoot if I ever saw one! Definitely some fun merch in that package. Is the helmet something you're able to get off the store as well? That looks like the coolest of them all to me, even if impratical to wear comparatively. That's something you could wear to the eventual premiere of whatever TV/film Mass Effect project they're working on right now... if the beard doesn't get in the way. 😉

Love the figures, though! I also chuckled that they're surrounded by Assassin's Creed, Keanu Reeves and Scarlet Witch as a support crew. I can't help but note that you promised me a Wrex statue though... and he is disgustingly absent from this picture. I'm guessing he might've been a more recent purchase, but I need to see him too! If ever I'd start filling shelves of tat, he'd be my first purchase from the Mass Effect crew.

@Tjuz That "helmet" pictured in the prize pack is actually a "crossbody" bag, which can be seen (and pre-ordered) here, and can't be said to be the item in the pack I was most excited for. Pretty sure it won't be in my cart when the voucher gets used
The helmet I do own, however, is perfectly wearable, but it was on the small side for my big noggin', so it would be a highly uncomfortable prospect to wear it for any length of time... and, yes, the beard does get in the way
The picture was taken before Wrex joined the crew and I have had to move some things around since then (as you can see, there was no more room for him on that particular shelf), but I'll see if I can get out the duster and snap some new pics after the weekend. I'll be sure to include a shot of the helmet as well.

@FuriousMachine I have been bamboozled! I will concur that knowing this helmet is actually just a weird bag, it has ruined my opinion of it tremendously. That doesn't even look useful as a small handbag nor as a shopping bag, what's the purpose?! I'm glad you still own the proper helmet, even if only for display. I'll be eagerly awaiting your new pics whenever you have the time to take some!

@Tjuz I'll try and remember, but I'll be honest with you: The fact that the task requires even light housekeeping ensures that it will be postponed when faced with more pressing matters such as removing bellybutton lint, checking the internet to see if somebody is wrong about something, etc.

Forgive the poor lighting (need to get some spotlights) but I thought I'd share early progress on getting my gaming shelves... well, perhaps not "sorted" sorted, but at least a little tidy.

Various representation from Metal Gear Solid, Shenmue, and Sonic the Hedgehog...

...and my Tomb Raider collection (minus two Funko Pops I have on pre-order).

Got two more shelves on the same unit, which will hopefully end up displaying my Horizon figures, some more Metal Gear, and a heck of a lot more Sonic stuff... provided it all fits, of course!

@Werehog I know some of these, Metal Gear Ray, Ninja, Solid Snake, Metal Gear Rex, white Sonic? (no idea, I only played the ones on PS4 collection) And a lot of Lara Croft, is there a story behind duck one? That one in the red and black looks like Spike from buffy. It's not though? I'm sure I have him boxed away/unopened etc. He looks like that.

Edit: I was right they look similar. Also the lighting looks fine.

@FuriousMachine but there will always be more lint, and there will always be people being wrong about something and thus you will realise that you can actually multitask by cleaning shelves, removing lint, grumbling under your breath about the youth today, and posting images of whatever Tjuz wanted to see all at once. This will also leave exactly enough time to browse and purchase more tat if done correctly 😁

Never really been into it, but we did fork out for the collector's edition (or whatever it was called) for Assassin's Creed Black Flag and we got the statue of Edward hanging off the flagpole. Aside from a few metal case editions, that's about it.

I don't know if this counts as tat, but for Christmas many years ago, I got a PlayStation disc wallet that came with my copy of Spyro for PS1 and I STILL USE IT. The zip still works fine; the only signs of wear and tear is some pilling inside the sleeves but is otherwise great.

@Ravix You are of course absolutely right, those are poor excuses to avoid swinging the duster. I obviously need far better excuses!

@Werehog That's a sweet collection! Back when I had the surplus money to spend on these things I was looking for a decent statue of Aloy, but couldn't find anything back then (that was in stock, that is), so I'm curious to see your "Horizon" stuff

@GirlVersusGame Top marks, and cool Spike figure, too! The chap on my shelf isn't Spike, but rather Karel, one of the villains from Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. They do look very alike, though! To the point where methinks Karel would have been based on, or at least heavily inspired by, Spike.

No story behind the rubber duck, I'm afraid. She's from a range called Tubbz which sells rubber ducks based on characters from pop culture licences. They're not my favourite things in the whole wide world, but she was on sale, and the fact they made an effort to sculpt an angular polygonal duck, rather than just stick a regular sculpt in a tank top and call it a day, kinda impressed me.

Oh, and apologies for my nerdiness, but "White Sonic" is actually Silver the Hedgehog, from Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). He's one of my all-time favourite Sonic characters, but he's still pretty obscure!

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@FuriousMachine Alas, my Horizon stuff isn't anything too impressive. I wish I had the space for something bigger, but my collection is limited to some LEGO, a couple of Totaku, some pins from Insert Coin, and the Spin Master action figures of both Aloy and Varl. As it sounds like you're already aware, there's some gorgeous Horizon tat out there, but the one-two punch of it all being ridiculously expensive and ludicrously oversized means I consider myself lucky enough to rep with what I have!

@Werehog That still sounds pretty damn cool, if you ask me Maybe the next Horizon main release will bring an Aloy figurine/statue that hits the Goldilocks spot in both size and price? Fingers crossed!