When Do You Pack Up Your Games?B (Kotaku 8/3/09)

It's 4PM on a Saturday, I'm up to my ass in moving boxes, and though I am moving in three days, Star Ocean is calling to me. When do you pack away your games?

It's a serious question, really. This is my second apartment move in two years, and I could have sworn things went much smoother last time. March of last year things were relatively slow as far as game releases were concerned, so packing up the television was one of the first things I did. Not so this year.

Things started off well enough. I did manage to pack away the PlayStation 3 and the Wii, though every time I placed a game or a system into a box I felt a little twinge. Was it too soon? What if I needed to play Killzone 2 all of the sudden? Hell, even packing away my NES games had me itching to plug it up to the television and play a little Yoshi's Cookie.

When I got to the Xbox 360 I floundered. I placed a stack consisting of Street Fighter IV, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, and Star Ocean: The Last Hope into the box, and then took them back out again. Then I rummaged through the box for my copy of Burnout Paradise, because I didn't want to miss the release of the Toy Car Pack. I unpacked my DS and PSP next, figuring that they would help me forget about the Xbox 360, and wound up playing Puzzle Quest: Galactrix for three hours, which was really only about 2 hours plus load times.

How should I go about this? Should I suck it up and just seal everything tightly away, using the promise of a return to gaming motivate me to get the whole apartment ready to move, or do I leave myself the odd gaming nugget here and there, just in case I hit a slow spot and need a break?

How do you folks do it? I've seen some of the magnificent game rooms you guys and girls have. Do you set about tearing down your monument to your hobby first thing, or do you leave the up and running until the last possible minute - a shining beacon amidst a sea of boxes and bags?

a choice i would really struggle with