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

[Zombeaver]

11 minutes ago, Agent47 said:

There are some things I could safely delete and have no worries about missing (text adventures for example) but drives are relatively cheap.

But there are some good text adventures

Planetfall, Zork, The Lurking Horror... most of Infocom's stuff is pretty good.

[DOS76]

Good example of how things are subjective and people shouldn't label them with absolutes.

[harryoke]

My first incarnation of launchbox had over 70,000 titles.

then I got a virus and didn't want to take any chances so I wiped everything and started building up again.

im currently at over 60,000. But unlike last time I have missed some really obscure Eastern European systems and have only downloaded about 30 ps2 games & 1 PS3 game which is Ni-No-Kuni.

i do have games that I will never play but that's just the data hoarder in me.

every day I go through every system and try out 1 game I've have never played.

you never know where those hidden gems ? that time forget may arise.

[Agent47]

11 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

But there are some good text adventures

Planetfall, Zork, The Lurking Horror... most of Infocom's stuff is pretty good.

I was waiting for someone to call me out on that

I'm sure there are some that I would enjoy, but at the same time I wouldn't lose any sleep if I got rid of them. Don't worry though, like I said, I still have them on-hand so I may get around to them someday. It's a matter of opportunity cost. We only have a finite amount of gaming time and there are many other games in my huge Steam backlog, current-ish gen systems backlog, and of course retro/emulated backlogs that I would probably enjoy more than text adventures.

 

8 minutes ago, DOS76 said:

Good example of how things are subjective and people shouldn't label them with absolutes.

 

Yup, I agree completely. That's why unlike a fair bit of people who have trimmed sets I don't really put any stock in those "Top xxxx" game lists that are a dime a dozen. Obviously some of the top games that you see in every list are pretty universal in terms of appeal but if you can't stand a certain genre or main mechanics that negates the ranking. That being said, I think I still have some lists like that as playlists and started working on including others just because.

Nostalgia is also a huge factor in determining essential games for people. There are some systems that I probably wouldn't touch at all or only even consider a small handful of games because they simply don't stand the test of time quality wise or appeal wise unless you played them back in the day.

[cleverest]

56 minutes ago, candre23 said:

Why not both?  My total collection is a bit under 11TB and consists of ~350k files.  Like with pokemon, gotta catch em all.

But it would be overwhelming to have all those ROMs in launchbox.  These are complete romsets, so there are a ton of versions/dupes.  Most Japanese games are unplayable unless you can read Japanese (which I don't).  A lot of the old computer stuff isn't even games, and even much of what is doesn't lend itself well to my livingroom setup.  Hell, I have a bunch of old mainframe and minicomputer software that isn't even emulatable at this time.

It's important to me to have it all, but it's counterproductive to have it all in launchbox.  That's why I hoard everything, but I'm selective as to what I import.

I'll probably archive it, but still have it as a massive master Lauunchbox library, it's still fun to set it up and show it off in BigBox, even if it loads slowly....but you're right, I'll also build a second smaller collection of favorites/games I want to play (seriously plan to), or believe I would like on a smaller drive...I'll just shelve the bigger one.

[Zombeaver]

11 minutes ago, Agent47 said:

It's why unlike a fair bit of people who have trimmed sets I don't really put any stock in those "Top xxxx" game lists that are a dime a dozen.

That's actually why I prefer video snap browsing for finding stuff - I trust my own eyes and insight a lot more than the opinion of most others. That's not to say that you can't still find things through lists, but I find that most the time they're either really well-known, obvious things or things that are kindof questionable.

[candre23]

1 hour ago, Agent47 said:

I don't really put any stock in those "Top xxxx" game lists that are a dime a dozen.

They're a good starting point.  They're also very helpful for reminding you of generally-good and/or popular games that you would not have thought of yourself due to personal preference.  I've never liked sports games, but no best-of collection would be complete without tecmo bowl or NBA jam.  Conversely, no best-of list would include Navy Seals for the gameboy or Dynamite Cop for the dreamcast as "great", but I personally can't live without them because I spent a lot of time playing them in my youth.

You want your collection to be personal, but unless you're the only person who will ever browse it, you should try to include generally-popular titles.  Any one "top xx games" lists is far from authoritative, but going through several for a system will give you an idea of what was popular, even though it might not be your cup of tea.

[Agent47]

18 minutes ago, candre23 said:

They're a good starting point.  They're also very helpful for reminding you of generally-good and/or popular games that you would not have thought of yourself due to personal preference.  I've never liked sports games, but no best-of collection would be complete without tecmo bowl or NBA jam.  Conversely, no best-of list would include Navy Seals for the gameboy or Dynamite Cop for the dreamcast as "great", but I personally can't live without them because I spent a lot of time playing them in my youth.

You want your collection to be personal, but unless you're the only person who will ever browse it, you should try to include generally-popular titles.  Any one "top xx games" lists is far from authoritative, but going through several for a system will give you an idea of what was popular, even though it might not be your cup of tea.

That's why I mentioned the games which are ranked well across multiple lists are good in the eyes of most and that I include some of those lists as playlists. I probably should've been more clear that my comments about lists were geared towards my personal lists. I keep full collections on my machine, use brolly's HS database standards for what I actually import into my frontend, and make playlists for personal lists and other random things.

[wallmachine]

1 hour ago, Agent47 said:

That's why I mentioned the games which are ranked well across multiple lists are good in the eyes of most and that I include some of those lists as playlists. I probably should've been more clear that my comments about lists were geared towards my personal lists. I keep full collections on my machine, use brolly's HS database standards for what I actually import into my frontend, and make playlists for personal lists and other random things.

We are much the same

[JerseyXS97]

When I initially got LaunchBox I decided to hand-import every single ROM I had because I had a very selective game collection to begin with. It took a while, but I like consistency (Which is why you'll see me getting new Clear Logos and stuff so often). I still import everything by hand whenever I get a new game, and my collection has grown to a nice, comfortable 370 games across Steam, Origin, Uplay, emulated, and other installations.

[JamesBond@ge]

Regarding hoarding native PC games:

You know, I don't think collecting as many ROMS as possible is such a bad thing. They are fairly portable so you can move ROMS and emulators around from machine to machine and as long as the paths and drive letters stay the same, you can pretty much slot everything back in place and carry on as before.

Native PC games however, are an absolute pain in the ass to hoard. I have about 140 retail PC games, 60 Indie games, 40 homebrew games and 350 Steam games that I have had to re-install after rebuilding my PC with a new mainboard and CPU and re-installing Windows. It's taken me over 2 weeks (getting on to 3) to re-install them all the way I had them before.....and that is with the media and artwork already in place.

Re-installing 18000 ROMS with their respective emulators after my PC rebuild was a breeze.  Re-installing a relatively paltry 300 odd native PC games has deleted about 3 weeks of my life.

[shinra358]

You must dont care about background image quality because some of them have such low quality or just plain suck

I literally have to go through and photoshop every image AND change the music provided (which is only available for like 5 old systems).

[FreeSoftwareServers]

On 2/3/2018 at 10:56 AM, JamesBond@ge said:

Regarding hoarding native PC games:

You know, I don't think collecting as many ROMS as possible is such a bad thing. They are fairly portable so you can move ROMS and emulators around from machine to machine and as long as the paths and drive letters stay the same, you can pretty much slot everything back in place and carry on as before.

Native PC games however, are an absolute pain in the ass to hoard. I have about 140 retail PC games, 60 Indie games, 40 homebrew games and 350 Steam games that I have had to re-install after rebuilding my PC with a new mainboard and CPU and re-installing Windows. It's taken me over 2 weeks (getting on to 3) to re-install them all the way I had them before.....and that is with the media and artwork already in place.

Re-installing 18000 ROMS with their respective emulators after my PC rebuild was a breeze.  Re-installing a relatively paltry 300 odd native PC games has deleted about 3 weeks of my life.

I install most of my games onto a separate partition and dont need to reinstall after windows, most games can be run without reinstall but installers make sure you have all the dlls on your system. When i reinstall windows i only have to worry about installing steam and pointing it to my library and also redistributeables. Some other things like Social Plugin for GTA, but its not too bad.

[JamesBond@ge]

On 2/6/2018 at 10:01 AM, FreeSoftwareServers said:

I install most of my games onto a separate partition and dont need to reinstall after windows, most games can be run without reinstall but installers make sure you have all the dlls on your system. When i reinstall windows i only have to worry about installing steam and pointing it to my library and also redistributeables. Some other things like Social Plugin for GTA, but its not too bad.

Ok right. So if you run into a sticky patch with a game, you just re-install over it? So most of your games on the separate partition run ok afterwards? You know, I might have to do this the next time I ever re-install Windows. I can't put myself through all that again lol.

[FreeSoftwareServers]

On 2/7/2018 at 8:56 AM, JamesBond@ge said:

Ok right. So if you run into a sticky patch with a game, you just re-install over it? So most of your games on the separate partition run ok afterwards? You know, I might have to do this the next time I ever re-install Windows. I can't put myself through all that again lol.

I'm a data horder lol, but I have a small folder with any "extras" that need to be installed, its got things like SocialClub for GTA and GFWL for Halo2 and then just a bunch of vcredist_X's. But all my games are installed on a networked drive. Only Blizzard doesn't allow this, which can be worked around by a networked VHDX drive if you want. I do that as well but it requires mount/unmount scripts. But I dont play much blizzard since I got BigBox lol.

[onebadveggie]

I used to have "everything" for the systems I bother with (around 25 + arcade stuff). Now I'm trying to narrow it down to just stuff released in USA, and then adding in choice stuff from PAL and Japan over time. The hardest part is finding a comprehensive list of games for every system, which you'd think would be easy.

[Chris Kant]

I rethink my collection now and will also go with the selective ones... as long as I cannot compare if I have a real full set or not I am not motivated anymore to have everything of everything. it breaks my heart a bit when deleting stuff like Famicom Disk System and so one but I know I will never play these games. NEVER.

if there would be a comparison plus a different why of "selecting" full set and favourite sets in BigBox I may rethink it again. selecting system would be like going into the system then open filter and there is something like "full", "only favourites" and so on and not with the Playlist option.

yesterday in short I reduce the arcade section to now 400 games. coming from around 5.000

[cleverest]

3 hours ago, Chris Kant said:

I rethink my collection now and will also go with the selective ones... as long as I cannot compare if I have a real full set or not I am not motivated anymore to have everything of everything. it breaks my heart a bit when deleting stuff like Famicom Disk System and so one but I know I will never play these games. NEVER.

if there would be a comparison plus a different why of "selecting" full set and favourite sets in BigBox I may rethink it again. selecting system would be like going into the system then open filter and there is something like "full", "only favourites" and so on and not with the Playlist option.

yesterday in short I reduce the arcade section to now 400 games. coming from around 5.000

I plan on doing the same, but will first hide somewhere in my closet my main collection, and buy a smaller hard drive for this cut down version....that way I avoid the feeling of heartache, LOL...of course that costs more, but...

[Chris Kant]

unfortunalty, it will also lower my motivation to bring new games to the DB plus artworks. because the bigger games are already completed in the DB.

 

maybe sooner or later Launcbox / BigBox will have some time to concentrate into the Games DB again.

[Drakkorcia]

I collected for several years, been into emulation since the mid 90's, and am now starting to trim the fat on a morbidly obese collection. I hand pick CD based systems but as far as the older systems are concerned I find a Top List and add the specific titles I remember playing. The older or less popular the system, the smaller the Top List. So I might import 25 Atari 2600, 10-15 Colecovision or Intellivision, a handful of Apple II, Amiga, etc. Then I use no-intro sets for 8-bit on up where I spent a lot of time gaming, getting rid of duplicates and foreign titles where necessary. I played some titles when I went to Japan but other than that, gone. Some systems like the 3D0 are treasured to me because I wanted one but didn't have one. MAME has the worst calorie count and I am going to use Lord Monkus tools for dealing with that. I just see no point in collecting a ton of Colecovision and Intellivision arcade ports when you can have the real game in MAME, or 2,000 Apple II disk images when all you ever played was Oregon Trail and Zork in the school library. Of course, the full sets are backed up and I can draw from it as needed, but I want a more manageable and playable library.