Anyone use a "Selective" Rom Collection? (Rather than trying to own everything)

[Zombeaver]

It's really not a matter of space for me - I've got about 500 PSX games but only about 300 SNES games, for example. It's certainly more time-consuming to do it the way I do, you'll get no argument from me, but I just like knowing exactly what's in my library. To me it's satisfying to find that one new title that I've never heard of and being like "Woah, this is really cool, how come I've never seen or heard anything about this before?" and adding it in; and it could be because in reality it's actually shit or it might be a hidden gem.

The fastest/easiest way I've found to identify new stuff is to just grab a complete video snap set for a platform, load it up in Media Player Classic or whatever and just watch a couple seconds, hit the hotkey for next video, and so on. Anything that looks interesting I add to my emulation to-do spreadsheet. I also watch a lot of retro gaming channels and read a lot of older gaming magazines like Zzap!64 (especially useful when you're dealing with some older stuff like C64) to get more ideas, but a full video snap set is the fastest/easiest way. I'll go through a couple letters at a time, add them to my library, and continue on through the alphabet. It's time-consuming, but worth it to me.

[neil9000]

2 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

Anything that looks interesting I add to my emulation to-do spreadsheet.

lol that spreadsheet is probably using more space on your PC than the whole 2600 collection though.  

[Lordmonkus]

Yup, I agree with everything you said and I watch a lot of the youtube channels like MetalJesus for the CD based stuff since i'm on a relatively shit internet speed and don't want to waste time downloading the larger games.

I guess i'm just too lazy to be bothered to go through and delete all the trash from my cart based collections

[newyears1978]

2 hours ago, Lordmonkus said:

Yup, I agree with everything you said and I watch a lot of the youtube channels like MetalJesus for the CD based stuff since i'm on a relatively shit internet speed and don't want to waste time downloading the larger games.

I guess i'm just too lazy to be bothered to go through and delete all the trash from my cart based collections

I was just watching some Hidden Gem videos from Metal Jesus last night..that's part of what I used to create my SNES list. I used your file, some hand pick, some Top 100 lists from online, then some Hidden Gem Videos. Then I manually added all RPG's if they were not already added.

 

I like your snaps idea, pretty good idea. Hard to tell just from a game's name...but video can at least inform if it is interesting.

[LogicalEgo]

Just to chime in yes I do as well. I went from a 15k collection down to around 3k at most. To me I like having a much more clean collection of fully working games and games I personally chose and would play. 

[CriticalCid]

I’m a digital hoarder (I have over 3.5k Games on Steam alone *cough* *cough*) as I see my FE setup more like a digital museum of video game history but it’s indeed a problem to find all games worth your time in a huge collection. That’s why I love the playlist feature as it allows to easily create “Best of” lists. I’m currently working on 2 giant playlists projects called “Best Games of All-Time™“ and “The Top 100 notable games of every year” which will hopefully be my own compass to navigate through every worthwhile game in video game history.

The best games lists will be a merge of various other lists of that kind and will feature a final ranking for every game. This playlist will then serve as base for my second project which will be a merge of hundreds various top lists with different focuses (and not ranked as it also includes not so great, but still notable for one reason or another, games). I also include remakes, remasters, notable ports and “definitve” versions of every game if something in that regard exists.

With that said, it’s a tremendous and time consuming work to get through hundreds of lists which will hopefully cover the entire video game history in the end. I’m working on it since over 1.5 years, have currently over 5.4k different games in my work sheet and went through over 200 lists/podcasts/videos so far and there is still no end in sight…

Sorry for the big tease but I just wanted to tell you guys that a (play)list like you have in mind is in the works. I'm also gonna make it to my New Year's resolution to finish these projects in 2018

[kmoney]

I think a lot of us are Steam horders

[cleverest]

I only have 500+ Steam games, you guys make me look like I'm not trying hard enough, LOL

[bmonomad]

Yes.  I manually organized my collection, removing games that were rated poorly; usually below 60% (or whatever equivalent) on sites like mobygames, gamefaqs, or metacritic.  I also got rid of dupes, keeping what is typically seen as the best version of games.  I did keep, and add to, completed hacks and translations of games that were highly rated, getting all available for every system.

I did this as I preferred the aspect of scrolling through games knowing that whatever I picked would most likely be enjoyable in some way, and rationalized the effort knowing I wouldn't have to do it more than once.  This was very time consuming but was able to do it over the course of this year.

This was done from NES to ps2/wii era, as well as full mame set and Dos/PC games.  Still comes to around 6700 games, not including recent PC and a few ps3/wiiu/3ds games.

Edited January 9, 2018 by bmonomad

[damageinc86]

On 1/4/2018 at 12:21 PM, cleverest said:

I only have 500+ Steam games, you guys make me look like I'm not trying hard enough, LOL

Wow, I only have like 8 games on steam. I only use steam if there's no other way to get a game. 

[Zombeaver]

47 minutes ago, bmonomad said:

removing games that were rated poorly; usually below 60% (or whatever equivalent) on sites like mobygames, gamefaqs, or metacritic

To each their own, but personally I would never use this as a deciding factor for anything. There are plenty of good games that weren't well-received critically (and shit games that were rated highly). If you played (or even watched) the game and made the decision that "Nope, this does not look like something I'd be interested in," fair enough (this is why I really like Quick Looks on Giantbomb, because just playing through some of the game, unedited, pretty much always tells me the vast majority of what I need to know), but I'd never use an arbitrary number handed out by a bunch of strangers as some kind of metric for whether or not I'd check out a game.

[Zombeaver]

Also, I'm no match for Cid, but I've got 900+ on Steam and 400+ on GOG

The backlog never ends.

[neil9000]

13 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

To each their own, but personally I would never use this as a deciding factor for anything. There are plenty of good games that weren't well-received critically (and shit games that were rated highly). If you played (or even watched) the game and made the decision that "Nope, this does not look like something I'd be interested in," fair enough (this is why I really like Quick Looks on Giantbomb, because just playing through some of the game, unedited, pretty much always tells me the vast majority of what I need to know), but I'd never use an arbitrary number handed out by a bunch of strangers as some kind of metric for whether or not I'd check out a game.

Alpha Protocol is better than that score suggests.

[Zombeaver]

4 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Alpha Protocol is better than that score suggests.

thatsthejoke.jpg

I'd say all of those are better than their scores suggest. That's my point. There are plenty of games that weren't well-received critically (overall) that are good (and vice versa). Now if you have a specific reviewer that you've followed for a long time that you've come to trust, I think that's a little bit different. Getting their opinion on it, when you've established that it's one that you're generally in sync with, is a much better indicator than an aggregate made up of a bunch of people that you don't know. I really like ACG on Youtube, for example. If he says something's great or that it's shit, I'm usually on the same page with him; not always, but it's a good starting point. Meanwhile you have sites factoring into the aggregate score that could be made up primarily of asshats - IGN gave God Hand a 3/10...

[neil9000]

Just now, Zombeaver said:

thatsthejoke.jpg

I'd say all of those are better than their scores suggest. That's my point. There are plenty of games that weren't well-received critically (overall) that are good (and vice versa). Now if you have a specific reviewer that you've followed for a long time that you've come to trust, I think that's a little bit different. Getting their opinion on it, when you've established that it's one that you're generally in sync with, is a much better indicator than an aggregate made up of a bunch of people that you don't know. I really like ACG on Youtube, for example. If he says something's great or that it's shit, I'm usually on the same page with him; not always, but it's a good starting point. Meanwhile you have sites factoring into the aggregate score that could be made up primarily of asshats - IGN gave God Hand a 3/10...

lol, yeah i know, but Alpha Protocol is the only one of those i have played, and i personally think it's better than that score, hence i was agreeing with your point.  

[bmonomad]

6 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

thatsthejoke.jpg

I'd say all of those are better than their scores suggest. That's my point. There are plenty of games that weren't well-received critically (overall) that are good (and vice versa). Now if you have a specific reviewer that you've followed for a long time that you've come to trust, I think that's a little bit different. Getting their opinion on it, when you've established that it's one that you're generally in sync with, is a much better indicator than an aggregate made up of a bunch of people that you don't know. I really like ACG on Youtube, for example. If he says something's great or that it's shit, I'm usually on the same page with him; not always, but it's a good starting point. Meanwhile you have sites factoring into the aggregate score that could be made up primarily of asshats - IGN gave God Hand a 3/10...

Although I don't disagree, there is something to be said to the bell curve extremes.  I played a lot of games when younger in the 80's and 90's on nes/snes/gen, and there was a *lot* of bad games, subjective of course.  If a game was very mediocre back then, I wouldn't want to presume it got better with age.  Budgets and quality of games are on par with blockbuster movies now, whereas games in that generation were often pumped out cheaply to facilitate the marketing of external products like toys, soda, chips, etc.  I found this as an efficient way to filter through a lot of that.

The reason I took this approach is due to there being 1000's of games, and I'm not looking to discover that 1 game out of 500 mediocre ones that may be good and may slip through the cracks, nor be some sort of collection historian.  I would rather fire up a random game solo or with my spouse, knowing that there is a much higher probability it will be enjoyable and we wont have to waste time finding one that is. 

Knowing the average quality of games is higher these days, I was much more lenient on newer systems like ps2 and wii, and modern pc games.  I would often compare reviews on gamefaqs *and* meta to get a general consensus.  I would read reviews rather than look solely at scores, and use some common sense based on what was said as well.  I actually have all the games you listed above (available for ps2 and pc), so it must have been based on reviews or higher ratings on other systems as you chose xbox examples.

[cleverest]

1 hour ago, damageinc86 said:

Wow, I only have like 8 games on steam. I only use steam if there's no other way to get a game. 

I only buy during Steam sales generally, when games are 80+% off sometimes 90% off...

[cleverest]

1 hour ago, bmonomad said:

Yes.  I manually organized my collection, removing games that were rated poorly; usually below 60% (or whatever equivalent) on sites like mobygames, gamefaqs, or metacritic.  I also got rid of dupes, keeping what is typically seen as the best version of games.  I did keep, and add to, completed hacks and translations of games that were highly rated, getting all available for every system.

I did this as I preferred the aspect of scrolling through games knowing that whatever I picked would most likely be enjoyable in some way, and rationalized the effort knowing I wouldn't have to do it more than once.  This was very time consuming but was able to do it over the course of this year.

This was done from NES to ps2/wii era, as well as full mame set and Dos/PC games.  Still comes to around 6700 games, not including recent PC and a few ps3/wiiu/3ds games.

I want to do this with a second collection, just not my main "library of gaming history collection I have now"....how much space does yours take up on a drive with all media assets that you have?

[bmonomad]

12 minutes ago, cleverest said:

I want to do this with a second collection, just not my main "library of gaming history collection I have now"....how much space does yours take up on a drive with all media assets that you have?

Almost 4 TB even, excluding dos/pc and any games from modern systems: wiiu, 3ds, ps3

The media assets alone I think are around 100gb; pics, manuals, movies, themes+theme pics/vids

Edited January 9, 2018 by bmonomad

[Zombeaver]

39 minutes ago, bmonomad said:

I played a lot of games when younger in the 80's and 90's on nes/snes/gen, and there was a *lot* of bad games, subjective of course.

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything, honestly. It's true for every generation. There are a lot of bad games for every platform ever. Bad games outnumber good ones, full stop. It's the reason people gravitate so strongly to the same exceptions - because they're surrounded by a sea of shit. People still talk about how much they love the N64 today, and gloss over the fact that what they love isn't, in fact, the N64 itself - it's about a dozen specific games for the N64. Those same dozen games come up over and over and are lauded, justifiably, as good games; but the library overall is pretty much garbage. PSX is my favorite console of all time, but there's a metric ton of garbage games on it. If you had every single game for it that was even debatably good, you'd probably be looking at about 500 games - that's about 25% of the total library and I'd say that's actually a pretty good ratio comparatively speaking.

39 minutes ago, bmonomad said:

Budgets and quality of games are on par with blockbuster movies now, whereas games in that generation were often pumped out cheaply to facilitate the marketing of external products like toys, soda, chips, etc.

39 minutes ago, bmonomad said:

Knowing the average quality of games is higher these days, I was much more lenient on newer systems like ps2 and wii, and modern pc games.

I take it you haven't taken a gander at Steam any time recently then? There's more shovelware garbage now than ever before. More games were released on Steam in 2017 alone than were released between 2006 and 2014 combined. I think you're conflating "games now" with what's typically referred to as "AAA" games, which probably represents less than 1%  of games released each year. This is also beside the point that budget absolutely does not equal quality.

39 minutes ago, bmonomad said:

The reason I took this approach is due to there being 1000's of games, and I'm not looking to discover that 1 game out of 500 mediocre ones that may be good and may slip through the cracks, nor be some sort of collection historian.  I would rather fire up a random game solo or with my spouse, knowing that there is a much higher probability it will be enjoyable and we wont have to waste time finding one that is. 

This is absolutely understandable. There's nothing that says you need to seek out hidden gems if you don't want to; it's most definitely a time sink that requires a certain amount of dedication that's not for everyone. You'll be missing out on some stuff for sure, but like you said, there's a much better chance that you don't boot up complete trash this way. And I think any pruning at all is better than none.