Quality or Quantity. What does your collection look like?
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I chose to go with quality games rather than inundate myself with huge lists of games I would never play. I still managed around 400 games excluding MAME. I also spent countless hours retouching and cleaning up box-art in anticipation for a grid-view when and if it comes for ES.
Did a lot of you just dump sets? Does the varying quality in box-art bother you?
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@afiction I'll get a full rom set and pick and choose the games I know for a fact I'll want to play, delete the rest. I will then play those games, if good they stay, if bad they go. I'll also add more games as I see them.
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@afiction Definitely quality over quantity for me.
I started out on a modded PSP which had quite limited storage space (I had a 32 gb card) so I spent a lot of time selecting great games for each system. Now I just carried those over to the Pi and added some systems the PSP couldn't handle (arcade games, N64, msdos). I have about 800 games on a 64 gb card. More than I will ever play, but at least there is always something new to try and I know they are all great quality games.
I don't see the point of full romsets..so much bad games in there.
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@afiction I also go quality wise, but I added more and games than I was planning before. I also added some games just to be able to make Custom Collections of SNES Mini and NES Mini selection. In example, I was planning to have only 60 to max 80 SNES games, carefully selected. But after some time it grew with some new findings and rethinking about excluded games and some genius mods to over 150 games. Same for Arcade. First, I started to have only one version of game, regardless which system it is, it should only be one best version of the game. In example Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo for Arcade. But then I added different version for different reasons .
Now, I have more than 800 games in my library, all of them tested several times and every game with preview video. Those who didn't have one or wasn't working are converted from elsewhere "by hand". But there is really so much to do, if I look to all those image files and what not. The varying quality in box art bothers me, but its so much to do there, I even didn't think about to start sorting them out.
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In short, quantity, but that's only because I'm constantly finding amazing quality in the quantity that I was previously unaware of. It's great to navigate through the 'Favorites' list and be surrounded by the titles that I know I like, but there are many times I want a new gaming experience. For those times, I really appreciate the 'All Games' list. I'll open it up and press the random select button until I find a game that I've never played before and either try to beat it, check off a few RetroAchievements, or just kill a little time messing around outside my comfort zone. Just the other day I found a GameBoy falling puzzle game called 'Square Deal', where each round has 52 cards falling that you have to eliminate in rows based on Poker hands. It's very challenging and a lot of fun, but I never would have found it without a little exploration into the unknown.
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I have full romsets for all the systems I use. This way I can try new games or I'll have what other people want to play when they come over. I pick and choose by using "Favorites" lists whether in RetroPie or on my PC using GameEx.
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I too, have gone for quantity for a number of reasons. I don’t use Windows, so haven’t used files to clear out my mame. I have three mame sets, but only really use 2003, I really should just take Star Wars out of mame4all and put it in arcade, as that’s probably the only one I use from that set. But I love the the versatility of mame4all. As for most other systems I tend to pick and choose to save space, use eboots for ease, early systems don’t take up much space so I can get away with whole sets.
I love being able to just ‘find’ a game already on my system rather than having to source it.
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Quality. I only install games I know/like/want to play on C64/NES/Amiga, (the very few) arcade games I played in the 80's and stuff from top 10, top 25 or top 50-lists for systems I don't know. I have more than enough games to play.
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My arcade setup is built around quality, but I often wish for the quantity for reasons @mediamogul mentioned above. It is tedious to participate in MAMEROW selections when I need to move the rom over from my computer because I want/need to tidy up all of the quality loose ends (artwork and gamelists stuff). I suppose I could use a scraper but I have always done that work manually.
I am starting to move into a partial quantity model by transferring ALL videos/images along with a complete gameslist so that all I have to do is move a ROM file into place (arcade folder). I think using the Arcade folder is great for quality setups, but gets tricky with quantity if you like a diverse set of emulators. I think my solution to this is going to be to take what I have now (2003 default, Advmame for vector and a handful of others, FBA for titles I know I can get away with it) and then just drop in everything else from lr-mame2003. At least with this setup, I can take advantage of quantity, preserve existing quality where I have swapped to other emus, and the future effort will be more about subtracting than adding. I don't need all of the clones, or the Mah Jong. I know, there is a DAT for this.
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@caver01 I should note, with console games, it is more quantity for me because the ROM situation is less complicated for early era systems, but due the large file sizes of later systems, it switches back to quality just to save space.
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I actually emphasized quantity, but I did so only to an extent, excluding any un-translated games, most prototypes, and most unlicensed games. In my mind, I wanted to create a kind of history museum or archival library, showcasing the console's life through its titles. You can flip to any one console and see the styles of box art, the genres and trends that were popular, the character designs that reflected the era, the relevant pop culture icons of the time, and whatever else. Sure, I won't ever play the vast majority of the games I added, but it's a beautiful and eloquent way to look back on gaming history from the late 1970's to the early 2000's.
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