Collector’s Corner
Mark Howlett shows us his impressive collection
This month we catch up with Matt ‘Lord Arse’ Howlett and marvel at his cool stuff
Long before he became known as his internet alter ego, Lord Arse, Mark Howlett was happily building a retro collection the oldfashioned way. “Most of what I own is what I bought new, back in the day. Apart from my Spectrum collection, which I sold to purchase my Atari ST,” he begins. “Everything else eventually found its way to my parents’ loft and fortunately for me, it never got thrown out!”
Mark’s collecting taste covers an eclectic range of systems, from the obscure to the common, so we were keen to know if there was anything he was particularly focusing on. “As I have a limited amount of space, I tend not to focus on systems with large libraries,” he explains. “I’ve a way to go but I’d like a full Jaguar set and I’m close to having a full Vectrex set. One system I didn’t own until recently is the Sega Master System, and I like to collect the games for those as they look fantastic on the shelf, and the majority aren’t expensive or hard to come by.” The Vectrex collection has become a particular favourite of Mark’s, especially as he got a great deal on it. “The majority was an extremely lucky
online auction find,” he admits. “In the photo for the lot, all I could see was the Vectrex and a large cardboard box underneath. As it was, I got the Vectrex for a very decent £90 but when I opened the accompanying box to find eight boxed games and a boxed controller, I knew I’d struck gold!”
While Mark is having fun tracking down games to finish off his Vectrex and Jaguar collections, he still hasn’t forgotten his first love. “My first computer was a ZX81, my second a 48K Spectrum and my third a 128+2, so Sinclair is very close to my heart,” he tells us about his love for the 8-bit manufacturer. “Now I’m an adult and can afford to buy items I missed out on in my youth. Sir Clive has always been a hero of mine and his numerous inventions fascinate me. I’ve acquired a fair amount of Sinclair gadgets over the last few years (including a ZX80 and an unbuilt Sinclair Black Watch kit) but
I’ll probably stop at the C5, as my wife would certainly kill me!”
That fascination with computers continued on strongly as Mark moved over to 16-bit systems, which explains his impressive collection of big box games. “Most of my big box PC and Atari ST games are my original collection,” he tells us. “I love everything about big boxes! The instruction manuals, the novellas, the maps, the feelies… just something that you rarely get these days, unless you want to pay silly money for collector editions.” And that’s a good point, as we all know that retro gaming isn’t a cheap hobby anymore. “Soughtafter titles are getting older and rarer and harder to find in the wild for a reasonable fee,” Mark laments. “Sellers are becoming savvier and ‘Holy Grail’ items are demanding ludicrous sums of money. It’s akin to collecting art and if you want to complete that full set, you’d better be prepared to pay through the nose for it.”
So what advice does Mark have for anyone that wants to start their own special collection? “Start small!,” he concludes. “If you’re looking for a full set, concentrate on something doable rather than a complete ZX Spectrum collection or a complete SNES collection. Also, try and collect something that you’d want to play yourself. Games look great on the shelf but if the only time you touch them is to dust them, what’s the point?”