Image from technabob.com... sadly, this is not my collection!

How did this happen? I'm going to school full time (ah, Stafford loans...), and my wife can only work a few hours a day from home as we have a young baby. So you'd think I wouldn't have a "game backlog" problem. If anything, you'd think I'd be desperate to scrounge pennies together to buy Smash Brothers Brawl!

Yet I am now buried under a pile o' games. Three of them were purchased thanks for the proceeds from my employers here at House of Nintendo: Eternal Sonata (gasp! An Xbox 360 game!), Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (Nintendo DS), and Battalion Wars 2 (Wii).

I also traded in a bunch of old stuff (yeah, I got ripped, but I was too lazy to sell the games on eBay) and acquired Dragon Quest Swords.

Finally, I got paid a visit by my parents, who graciously handed me a little "end of semester bonus cash," which led to the purchase of Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (Wii), which I partly purchased so I can play something with Dad when he flies in from Ohio to visit (impressions to come).

But wait! That's not all! I discovered a great store at the mall here in Plano.... CGX, or console game Exchange. Yes, racks and racks of retro gaming goodness. So that led to purchases of The Secret of Evermore (SNES) and Bionic Commando (NES). Of course, these pickups were pretty cheap- not much more than you'd pay if these games appeared on the Virtual Console (which they haven't, at least so far).

Of course that would be bad enough. But I had a few titles that I hadn't finished before I moved to Texas. That includes Phoenix Wright III and Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass.

Thus, and you married/soon to be married gamers out there know what I mean (and those racking huge student debts also) when I say that I have to put on the "personal freeze" on gaming acquisitions for awhile. I think I'll wait to get back in the game when Mario Kart and Wii Fit come out!

Speaking of gaming backlogs, read about possibly the world's largest video game collection here.