Heroes of Time: Meet Christian Defilippi

Good morning everyone, my name is Christian, born in ’79, and I work as a consultant at a financial institution.  

My greatest passions are traveling around Europe in my Volkswagen van, going on nice road bike rides, and, of course, collecting and playing video games. 

My adventure in the world of gaming began thanks to my childhood friend Alex, when one day he invited me to his house to show me something astonishing: the new Nintendo NES!  

It was love at first sight. We spent hours and hours playing Pro Wrestling, Metroid, Mach Rider, Kid Icarus, Faxanadu, Section Z... Even today I still remember perfectly every screen, every level, and every secret of all those games. 

That Christmas, under the tree, I found a brand-new NES with Super Mario Bros., Gun.Smoke and The Legend of Zelda.  

Games that I loved madly and still cherish to this day; I literally wore them out with the countless hours I spent on them. I’m amazed that, nearly forty years later, those cartridges still work perfectly, save battery included! 

I remember very well the difficulty of progressing through the various levels, whether it was Mega Man or Zelda. There were no online guides: just trial and error, over and over. Often, when you got stuck, you would go to sleep and in the night you’d have a stroke of genius about how to get past the next stage. 

Pure magic. Today I own the historic titles of the era and I’m recovering all those I longed for while looking at the windows of toy stores.

Since then, for every birthday, school promotion, or Christmas, the gift was always one thing: a video game. First for the NES, then for the Super Nintendo, the Nintendo 64, and so on. The collection, of course, really started to take shape once I began working. Throughout my life I have always alternated moments of "real" life, practicing cycling, with sessions of "virtual" experiences with video games, always trying to immerse myself as much as possible in the role of the moment.

What were the main reasons why you wanted to grade the title you brought us? Beyond the nostalgic aspects linked to the game, are there other motivations behind the choice to entrust yourself to TGM's grading procedure. 

I only recently took Grading into consideration, not to speculate on it, but to preserve and enhance in the best possible way the titles I’m most attached to, focusing exclusively on games that I managed to find new and sealed. I have many titles for 8-bit NES and 16-bit Super Nintendo, strictly in the Italian PAL version or at most the European one, all complete. 

Every game has its own story, just like its owner; the bond that is formed goes far beyond the simple owner-object relationship. When the game was finally returned to you graded, what did you feel?

The first games I had graded all belong to the The Legend of Zelda series (for DS, 3DS, Wii, Wii U and GameCube) and have just come back... a spectacle! A true feast for the eyes, beautiful to display in a showcase. Of each of these, however, I always keep an opened copy that I regularly play with.

To conclude, we can only ask you the classic question par excellence: what aspects of our service did you like the most? Thank you not only for giving us your time, but also for choosing to place your trust in us!

At The Games Market I found truly passionate, highly skilled professionals who were very willing to provide information about the service and clarify even the smallest doubt. I’m glad I turned to them: they are one of the very few Italian businesses to offer such a professional service. I really hope they become more and more established internationally as well; they deserve it!