No pictures! I'm very curious as to your new setup.

The pictures didn't show up? That is really weird cause they are showing up on my end... guess pictures will have to wait until the end now :P

I will work on adding them in, I was trying not to have to save them all to my computer, but I guess that isn't going to work.

Thanks for letting me know!

Very curious as well as to how your game room is coming along. I'll check back later and hope that the pics are up. I recently got in on the Skylanders bandwagon and bought the mega pack for the 360 for $50 at BB. I haven't opened it yet but I'm really looking forward to playing it with my son (although he's only 20 months old - I'll actually do all the playing while he watches and gets a kick out of the figures coming to life on the screen). Since I'm new to Skylanders, can every character be bought as part of a 3 pack? I get confused as to whether or not I should buy a character by itself or if it's offered in the 3 pack...just way too many choices! I was at Sam's Club recently and saw several 3 packs for $17.99 each. I'm thinking of picking one up, especially if the characters are of a different element than the ones that are included in the mega pack.

Okay, so I have reloaded the pictures now and actually put them into an album on CAG. For some reason, last blog the pictures worked, so I'm not sure why this blog it isn't. So, I will just go back to the old method. I can't get the last two pictures rotated, so I apologize for that, they are right on my computer but save to CAG wrong?

@MidnightMarauder74, the deal at Best Buy was amazing. Up until they knocked the price down on the Mega Pack so far my parents had been able to get the best deal available, but I think that will be hard to beat.

The game really is awesome. A lot of people don't want to give it a chance because they think it is a gimmick, but the gameplay is actually really fun. As for the characters, as far as I know all of the characters can be bought in the packs of 3 and most characters can be bought on their own. At least all of the characters I have been looking at come both ways. If you can find the three packs for $18 I would definitely get one or two. You don't have to have one of each element in order to play the game and the mega pack actually comes with most of what you need to get started (you could definitely get by with only the ones included) but it allows you to get more points and things in the game when you are using the correct element for the characters. So having one of each will allow you more points and give you the ability to open the elemental gates within the levels. Buying extra characters of the same element has two benefits. The first is that you can have a backup character of each element to avoid dying in a level. There are certain challenges in each level, one of which is to never die, I like to have a backup so if my health gets low I can switch out but continue to get the extra points for using the correct element. The other benefit is that there are challenges added to the game for each character that you put on the portal, each character has their own challenge. They are very difficult and really extend the overall gameplay. You can also get more achievements by having more characters if you are looking for extra achievements.

Personally, I received the Mega Pack for Christmas (I still remember the night I was Christmas shopping with my mom and she asked me if I was interested in the game cause it was everywhere at that point, and all the characters were easy to find... my answer was while I would like it I would probably end up wanting to buy everything for it, therefore making it dangerous to add to my collection, I was definitely right ) and used that for a while without extra characters. I liked the game so much that when I found out the 3DS version was completely different I got that which added a few more characters to the collection. Since then I have purchased the last element I needed as well as the adventure packs. I have added a few characters as well, just because I really like them and think they look cool... I'm very tempted to get the triple pack with Stump Smash and Zook (I think that is his name) and whatever the third character is in, but I hate adding more to my collection.

I'm really excited for Skylander's Giants and I have heard there will only be 8 characters for that game, so I plan to get all of them... see, I should have listened to myself at Christmas time

Anyhow, hope this helps... even though I rambled a little. Let me know how you like the game!

One more question, you say "I'm scanning all of my games into an Android App and then organizing them all and figuring out where to place them in the unit! I'm thinking the entire top will just before Wii, DS and 3DS games!!!"

What is this App and what exactly does it do?

The app is just called game free... Obviously it is the free version, there is a paid version but I think it is like seven dollars and the app isn't quite what I'm looking for yet, so I don't want to pay that much.

Basically is just an inventory app, which is what I have been looking for. It keeps track of all the games you have, how many in each genre, system, games completed etc. there are a few extra things you can do as well, I.e. have it pick a random game, for example to help decide what game to play next. You can also note if you borrowed the game out and things like that. It is a nice app for free, but to exactly what I'm looking for, plus it still requires a lot of work. You can input the games my scanning the UPC, which is what I'm doing, but a lot of times you get titles from auctions and things so it may say used, like new, etc, so just about every title needs edited. You also have to select which system it is for a lot of the time and genre. It isnt perfect but it is still fun. A while back I went through my collection and made an excel file for my inventory of games but it is really out of date now because first the computer I had it on crashed and the other one I had didn't run excel very well, so I just let it go for a while. Then I got my Mac and would have had to redo basically the entire thing because of switching to Mac the formatting and things were all off. It was nice being able to put in the details I wanted, but was a lot of work and I still couldn't get stats and things, I.e. how many games I finished and things unless I went through and calculated on my own.

I'm definitely still working on trying to find the perfect app, but it doesn't seem to be a popular app, so I don't know that the perfect one will ever be created. I just figured while I was moving all my games any way I might as well have a little fun and see what this app can do.

Wow! That entertainment center pretty much takes up an entire wall! Keep us posted on the final product. Thanks for the detailed feedback. I didn't really think about having a backup for each element, but it makes sense. I knew that once I committed to buying the mega pack, I would probably end up trying to get every character to complete the collection. I even started watching youtube videos on ideas on how to best organize the figures. The best one I found is using Stanley organizers. The cover is clear so that you can still see inside. A great use of the stickers is placing them on the outside to keep everything labeled and organized. Sorry to digress. Anyways, I do plan on picking up a couple of the 3 packs at Sam's Club especially since they're below MSRP. Did I also mention that while I was contemplating on whether or not to get the mega pack at BB, I asked one of the guys in the gaming dept if they still had the Skylanders promo tshirt. Well he gave me a Skylanders tshirt plus the volcanic vault (which I didn't know fetched a good price on ebay at the time) saying it was the last pair that he had and that I could have them for free! That was a sign that I had to get the mega pack! So I did! LOL

Nice of your friend to give you games that had $43 worth of trade in value.

How come you didn't just add all your games to your collection here on CAG?

EDIT: Looks like you have, unless that's not up to date.

@MidnightMarauder74 for some reason when I moved I decided I liked the idea of having furniture that really filled a room. So my current media center in my family room (I have the picture on CAG somewhere, mostly likely in my albums but I'm on my iPad and is low on battery) as well as my desk in my office take up basically the entire wall. In those rooms however there is a little cut out so it looks nicer in my opinion. The reason it happened in this room was because I wanted as much space as I could and this was the biggest option... It isn't that big, like less than ten feet, but the room is small... I.e. I had a closet that was larger in Ohio... But anyway

I watched some YouTube videos on how to store my figures as well..l I'm still on the fence about buying all of them, but there is a good chance I will have them all eventually... I liked the Stanley box idea as well, but then when I bought this media center I decided instead to put them in front of the games on the shelf.l. Kind of like I did in one of the photos... It may change but I think that is the best idea, for now for me... Cause I hate to not be able to see them... I really don't know.

You are really lucky that the guy gave you both things free... I missed out on the volcanic vault twice! I want it for my collection but not enough to pay eBay prices. So when my parents first bought me the mega pack they that best buy was the only place to get ethe vault. So before they bought it they asked if the mega pack included it as well since the box didn't say. The salesperson was like of course it does... But it doesn't. So I was a little upset about that. Then, I was there when they were giving it free with a $25 purchase only to find out that everything I wanted was sold out and all they had were a few figures I already had. So, I missed out again.l. I really hope to get it eventually.

@tylerh1701 yeah, it is very nice. He doesn't collect games so once he is done, he is done and he doesn't bother with trading so he just gives them away and doesnt care what anyone does with them. Overall I have had well over $150 in trades thanks to him!

@raarar yep I have added my games on here as well. I like this option and it is up to date, but I kind of wanted something that was a little more mobile. I was also wanting to be able to have more options for like sorting and things. Like sometimes I want to pull up just my DS games for example and the site is a little limited. So I just thought I would try it and see what happens. I don't love it, but it is an okay app... Really hoping for something better down the road.

Thanks to everyone for all the replies!

I'm getting pretty close to finishing so the next blog should have the finished product, though it will be a work in progress while I try to get some other things in the room.l. Two chairs and a media center a nice, and kind of fill the room,but it needs more