In part one I focused on larger plastic drawers to hold almost anything you’ll ever need, but today I’m going to focus on something geared a little more toward a single usage. That would be the copious amounts of plywood boxes with plastic pull out drawers! A lot of people love them, and when I can find them cheap enough I do too!

The first one I ever owned was found at a local Goodwill on half off day, with the name Nintendo sprawled right across the front I often wonder why it wasn’t gone before I even showed up that day. The unit is nothing more than a plywood box covered in a black plastic wood grained veneer, holding 2 plastic drawers. The top has enough room for the Zapper, 4 rectangle controllers (because they stack, unlike the dog bone) and possibly even an RF adapter/AV cables. The bottom drawer is slotted off to hold up to 28 NES games, although they don’t fit very well without a sleeve.

Although seemingly cheaply made (as you can see the corners are coming loose and the black plastic veneer between the drawers was never put on straight) the unit is holding together quite well and holds everything I ask it to, even holding my NES control deck on top. As you can see the wires tend to clutter up the top drawer, but I’ve managed to make things fit as I need them. If you look hard you can see there is another controller under the Famicom shaped turbo controller.

The next unit I happened to find for $1 at a local flea market, originally I passed this over but it sat in my mind for a whole day so I knew I had to go back and pick it up. The name on the outside was Video Matic, which made no sense to me, but when I pulled out the drawer I saw plenty of storage for CDs, which meant Playstation games would fit just as well. More recently I managed to pick up a second one identical to the first, but this one had a nice little surprise sitting on one side of the drawer, which I had never seen before.

The second one was found at another local Goodwill, sitting on a shelf next to a stack of SNES sports games, I assume which came from inside this! When I pulled out the drawer one side looked the same as my Video Matic, but the other side had an insert that held SNES and N64 games. Even if it was only one side I have plenty of Playstation games, so I would figure something out.

These units are pretty much the same as the others, plywood construction covered in a lightly textured black plastic veneer. My only issue with these are that sometimes I have trouble getting the games from the very back slots, so I’ve had to put the least desirable games in the back. A great feature for the CD storage side is that I can flip through the cases and when I remove one I know exactly where it needs to go when I’m done with it.

The next drawer I found at the outlet store, literally as I had track down the plywood box for it. This one is absolutely identical to the Video Matic units, but the front of this one says Game Stuff, which pretty much says all there needs to be said about what its for. Again this one holds a lot of Playstation cases, and if you organize it well you can even fit double case in there, but it doesn’t always close very well.

The very last one of my video game drawers is the all too famous Nintendo 64 unit, which is oddly shorter than all the others as I had just assumed they used the exact same plywood box for these as they did the Video Matic and Game Stuff. I found this one at the outlet store as well, again the drawer was ripped from the box and put in a completely different bin, for some stupid reason. Unsurprisingly the whole drawer is the exact same design as the insert I got with my second Video Matic, meaning this whole drawer is more versatile than it claims on the outside.

I learned from that small insert that not only does it fit SNES and N64 games, but it will loosely hold Genesis, Master System, Famicom and even Jaguar cartridges. They do make a Genesis and SNES drawer, neither of which I’ve managed to find but I assume the inside of them looks identical to the N64 and the Video Matic insert. My only real issue with the Nintendo 64 drawer is the N64 carts themselves, namely their lack of labels on the top, making it hard to figure out what game you’re grabbing.

With all the drawers I have I can chose from a lot of video games just by simply pulling out a drawer, which slide in and out without issue, no binding or creaking noises which I would have expected from plastic on wood. As you can see they’re versatile and there are many different kinds to choose from, some are hidden under cryptic names. But overall they do their job of keeping the video games organized and ready to be played when I want to play them.

In part 3 I will be discussing some less than elegant ways to store your video games, I’m sure many of you will be familiar with a few of these methods. Sometimes when you can’t find the right tools for the job, you make due with what is around, and video game organization is no exception! I will also be giving a tip that I found a while ago that may help you come up with some of your own video game storage methods.