#oneaday Day 35: Collection Pondering

A little while back, I decided that, as much effort as it would be to get started, I wanted to catalogue my game collection. So I fired up Google Sheets and got underway. You can take a look for yourself here.

I'm glad I did this. I find it interesting and satisfying to look at. I'll probably add some more data to it at some point — such as whether I've played, beaten and/or written about the game already, and, since this only covers physical releases at present, I might think about some means of including digital titles too. Digital games are people too!

I enjoyed putting together the "analysis" tab, too, even if it's largely pointless. It's interesting to see how my collection has naturally developed over the years, and where my priorities have clearly been.

For those who don't care to look at the sheet directly or aren't able to where they are, here are a few facts about my collection:

• I have a total of 1,077 physical copies in my collection at the time of writing. Assuming I haven't forgotten to add anything I've picked up recently!

• The platform I have the most individual games for in physical form is PS2, with 216 titles at the time of writing (20.06% of my collection). This is closely followed by the Atari ST, with 183 (16.99%).

• The platforms I have the fewest games for are Game Boy and Game Boy Color, with two each.

• The most popular genre in my collection is the RPG (not including DRPGs, ARPGs and SRPGs, with 171 titles, making up 15.88% of the collection. If you include DRPGs, ARPGs and SRPGs, this figure goes up to 258, or 23.96% of the total collection. Nearly a quarter RPGs of various descriptions! That sounds like me.

• My Atari 8-bit library of physical games only consists of 16 games… but this isn't counting the mountains and mountains of pirated floppy disks I have, each of which have five or six games on them along with a bunch of utilities and other pieces of software. The situation is same for the ST, though we have a lot more "legal" copies of games on that platform as my brother got them as review copies.

• Of the current generation, PS4 has been my favoured system to date, with 65 games. Switch is on the way up with 26 physical releases acquired since I got the system last Christmas, and with Sony being dickheads about ecchi content now, most of the time I will be picking the Switch versions of Japanese games wherever possible.

• From the previous generation, PS3 is currently beating out Xbox 360. I have a few duplicates between these two systems, because the PS3 versions were typically expanded from the Xbox 360 releases. Eternal Sonata is a good example. Each system has a selection of good exclusives, however; interesting RPGs on PS3, shoot 'em ups on 360.

• I have no Saturn games despite technically owning a Saturn. This is because I have no idea where the controller, power cable and TV cables are for the Saturn, so it is mostly a display piece in my "retro room" at present. I should probably get it up and running sometime.

• I own all of the Atelier games released physically to date except (Shallie Plus on Vita) despite, before this month on MoeGamer, having only ever played Rorona and Rorona Plus.

• The copy of Shadow of Memories I still own today is the first game I ever bought for my own PS2.

• I own copies of the first games I ever played on SNES (Super Mario World), PS1 (Ridge Racer) and PS2 (Orphen: Scion of Sorcery).

• Five of the SNES games I own now are the same cartridges I had growing up, though the boxes and manuals are long gone as I used to keep the cartridges in the SNES carry case. I've only added Top Gear and Top Gear 2 to that collection since.

• The most expensive and/or valuable game I own is probably Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. Other noteworthy games in this regard include Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (GCN), Vib-Ribbon (PS1), the original .hack series (PS2), the Shadow Hearts series (PS2) and Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water (Wii U).

• That last point has reminded me that I picked up Koudelka on PS1 a while back and forgot to add it to the list, so now all the figures I've quoted are slightly off. I probably better finish there then before I drive myself insane…