2020 Gaming/Collecting Goals

[bikingjahuty]

I think it's interesting and fun to think about what your plans are for the coming year, especially in relation to our favorite hobby here, gaming. What are your plans for 2020 in regards to gaming and collecting?


Participate in and complete the 52-Games Challenge: I've said it several times before, but this challenge has become my favorite part of VGcollect for the last few years. It keeps me motivated on actually playing all the games I've amassed over the years, and working on chipping away at that massive backlog. Going along with this challenge I plan on only 13 of the overall 52-games being games I've already played before. I've had a habit of going back and replaying games I've already finished at one point, which there's nothing wrong with, but I feel like it's been at the expense of me actually playing games I have little to no experience playing. So next year, there will definitely be a lot more games I've never played before added to my list of games beat in 2020.


Continue to downsize collection: Since I started downsizing my collecting I have not kept up with tracing it on here, but if I had to guess, my collection is probably about 100 games lighter than it was the beginning of the summer. My goal is to get to the point where literally every single game in my collection is one that I can actually see myself playing at some point, or is a game I have played and has found itself worthy of being in my collection. I imagine over the next year my collection will probably shrink by about another 100 games or so. It would be more, but I still plan on buying and keeping games as well during this time, which will offset the amount of games I sell overall.


Work on my CIB N64, Genesis, and SNES collecting: One area pertaining to retro games that still interests and excites me is working on tracking down boxes, manuals, and inserts for my various cartridge based games. I would eventually like to have all my loose carts for these systems housed in their original boxes, but this will be something that will take place over many, many years. The N64 takes priority by far since it's way more important to me than either the Genesis or SNES, but I would like to add at least a few CIB Genesis and SNES games to the collection this year. If I can convert/add at least 20 CIB cart based games to my collection this year I'll call this one a good.

[Warmsignal]

I have no date to complete any of my goals, but I'll start with the unrealistic goals for 2020 -

- Finish collecting "retro" games. Let me just go ahead and say I've failed this for next year because we all know it's impossible.

- Build some kind of game room to actually house all of my gaming collecting.

- Start playing more games than what I buy.

"Realistic" goals -

- Build a Gameboy and GBA collection from scratch. This I've already started. After having a debate a while back on the forum, I was intrigued for the first time ever into actually collecting for GB platforms after never doing so in 10 years of collecting and game hunting. So by the end of the next year, I hope to have a fairly comprehensive collection representing my interests in those libraries. I also hope to acquire a Gameboy Player unit for which to actually play all of these games on.

- Expand on my GameCube collection. It's another Nintendo platform that I've somewhat neglected over the years as probably my least played Nintendo console. Recently it's come to my attention that there are quite a number of interesting titles I'd like to add. As much as I thought I was basically finished with GC collecting, I'm not.

- Expand on my Game Gear collection, as well as find a video out solution, or install a modern LCD. Still a lot of premium titles I'm missing from when I stopped actively collecting, and I really would like to experience these games with better picture than what original hardware allowed.

- Expand upon my arcade, puzzle, racing, and sports collection. Yes, I said sports. What I mean by this is arcade style sports games, i.e. Mario Superstar Baseball, Sega Superstar Tennis and the like. I've had a recent epiphany that in my early years of collecting, there were certain genres which I almost completely ignored which now have quite a bit of appeal to me. I'm left wondering why my selection of racers, pinball, puzzle, and blow-shit-up games was so meager while I actually do enjoy playing those quite a bit, meanwhile I have all of these RPGs and massive action/adventure sagas which I really doubt I'll ever get around to investing the time into. I need more pick up and play games. So I'm attempting to rectify this, as my eyes have been opened to so many games I would have passed over before that I shouldn't have. The good news is, many of them are quite inexpensive since they're not so popular to collect.

- Complete my Nintendo DS collection. I'm actually getting pretty close to owning all of the titles that intrigue me with respect to the genres I like to collect for on NDS. I've thoroughly researched the library, and I've fairly confident given the prices of DS that I could possibly finish out my collection soon. It's something I've wanted to attempt completing for a while. Maybe a bit unrealistic, but I'm hoping.

- Complete my Vita collection. Another neglected platform, but with a small library that I've researched (and I don't collect LRG), it's very doable.

- Complete my 3DS collection. Another neglected platform I've been expanding. Researched the entire library and my wish list is relatively small, while the games aren't terribly expensive. It's doable.

- Attempt to fully catch up and keep up with current Nintendo Switch releases which appeal to me, so that I can buy them new and never have to buy a Switch game second hand, or retroactively collect for the platform at all.

- Attempt to gradually box my Nintendo 64 collection with more original game boxes.

- Acquire the very expensive Saturn Bomberman, and complete a collection of all NA released Bomberman games for the consoles that I own.


Yeah, it's a lot. A whole lot. But, I'm not giving myself a time frame to really complete anything. That never works. I'll move at the pace I'm comfortable with and we'll see if anything here actually makes progress.

[koemo1]

Reach 200 unique good PAL playstation 2 games

[hatkid]

I think the only thing collecting wise would be to buy Revelations: Persona, but that is entirely dependent on someone listing a cheap disk-only copy.

Gaming wise, beat a lot of new/unfinished games and spend less time on replays. And, try to actually finish games I start.

[bunnybear]

1. Build the dedicated game room. This has been a point of frustration for me. We have a large enough house, and it made sense to house my games in the bar/man cave, but wife veto’ed that to turn it into another family friendly room (she initially wanted to turn it a guest bedroom but I veto’ed that hard.... it’s got a fucking built in bar and roof mounted projector set up!). Then it was decided (for my own house) I could use one of the bedrooms in the legal suite (which is occupied by my mother, yet she obviously only needs one of the two bedrooms in there). That took a while, for reasons I don’t want to delve into here, but finally today looks like I have a clear path to do it. I’ll have to make an IKEA run to get the shelving I want (which means taking the van over a ferry and back), but the plus side is I can shape this room the way I want, from the ground up. The plan will be for it to house all my games, and also to a 40-ish in TV to play retro titles through my framemeister (all modern consoles go through the main living room TV).

2. “Complete” my DS and PSP collections. The word is in quotations because chances are there will always be a game I want or decide I want down the road, so I consider this goal accomplished if I acquire 90% of the games on my “to get” list. I’m just about there for both, meaning....

3. Go all in on the GBA, and the cheap titles for all the other platforms I’m still on the hunt for. PS1/2, NES, SNES, GameCube. GBA will be my focus platform for 2020 (like Vita was in 2018, DS and PSP in 2019), but I won’t turn away the cheap games on my list for all the other platforms. But this goal has to be in conjunction with...

4. Find a way to get empty DS cases in bulk. I need them to house my GBA carts, which I will jazz up with printed out covers and manuals.

5. Slow the eff down. I’m not looking to build a massive collection. Just stuff I like and want to keep. I went hard in 2018, slowed down somewhat for 2019.... honestly I’ll be happy if in 2020 I only acquire roughly 50% of the product I did in 2019. I want to reach a point where I only buy 1-2 games a month. Unlike most of you, I’m looking forward to the digital age because at that point I will bow out entirely.

[bikingjahuty]

I think the only thing collecting wise would be to buy Revelations: Persona, but that is entirely dependent on someone listing a cheap disk-only copy.

Sweet wounded Jesus!!! When did that game get so insanely expensive?!


I bought my copy about a decade ago and if memory serves me correct I think I paid $40 for it complete. I'm assuming this is a rarity thing, because I have never heard a ton about the quality of the game before.

[bunnybear]

I think the only thing collecting wise would be to buy Revelations: Persona, but that is entirely dependent on someone listing a cheap disk-only copy.

Sweet wounded Jesus!!! When did that game get so insanely expensive?!


I bought my copy about a decade ago and if memory serves me correct I think I paid $40 for it complete. I'm assuming this is a rarity thing, because I have never heard a ton about the quality of the game before.

Actually it’s one of the few games whose secondary value predates the modern retro collecting phenomenon. I bought Persona 2 brand new back in 2000 or whatever, and even then Persona 1 was nudging triple figures.

FWIW, unless someone’s gotta have the PS1 version for completion purposes, the PSP version is far superior in terms of the game itself.

[medisto]

I'm gonna go for the 52-Game Challenge as well. This will be my first time participating and looking very much forward to it. My backlog is stupid big, so I will mostly go for games I haven't completed before.

Other than that I am hoping to be more selective game purchase wise. I would like to see my PC Engine, Famicom Disk System, Saturn, and Mega Drive/Genesis collections grow, and I really need to cut down on current gen purchases. I didn't get a Switch until February this year but it instantly won me over and I figure this will be the current gen system I will be buying for the most.

Also, if I happen to stumble upon the right deal for an Amiga 500/600/1200 computer I will start rebuilding my Amiga collection from scratch (sold everything i owned some 15 years ago - my biggest game collecting regret).

[bikingjahuty]

I think the only thing collecting wise would be to buy Revelations: Persona, but that is entirely dependent on someone listing a cheap disk-only copy.

Sweet wounded Jesus!!! When did that game get so insanely expensive?!


I bought my copy about a decade ago and if memory serves me correct I think I paid $40 for it complete. I'm assuming this is a rarity thing, because I have never heard a ton about the quality of the game before.

Actually it’s one of the few games whose secondary value predates the modern retro collecting phenomenon. I bought Persona 2 brand new back in 2000 or whatever, and even then Persona 1 was nudging triple figures.

FWIW, unless someone’s gotta have the PS1 version for completion purposes, the PSP version is far superior in terms of the game itself.

Interesting. I got my copy of Persona 2 from a local game store around the same time and I think I paid $30 for that. I'm pretty sure Persona 1 was an ebay purchase. I'm guessing I just got lucky on a BIN or maybe I won a cheap auction, probably the latter.


I totally forgot that they remade it on the PSP.

[hoshichiri]

I think I'm gonna start having some systems refurbished. I bought the last of the retro systems I wanted this year, but I've got a couple that are a bit finicky. It would be nice to get those into proper working order.

Aside from that, it's putting away money for the couple of expensive games still on the wishlist, as well as preparing for a couple niche console releases *coughplaydatecough* & the impending next gen stuff. Nothing too concrete this year though.

[oldgamerz]

#1 Play more of my games,


 but I'm vary sick now, and I might not live that much longer, but I don't know that another story. My health has been declining even before I came to this community


so lets just stay on topic I'm fine, let's not go offtopic

it just a number of health problems multiple problems that once I only had mental issues. Now, I'm getting physical health problems. With everything from migraines, to allergies, to coughing, to stomach and intestinal issues I even had problems breathing in 2016 and only doctors could tell.

[shfan]

Participate in the 52 Game Challenge - with zero expectation of completing it, still a good encouragement to play some favourites and try new games.

Weed out more mediocre games - the above has enabled me to get rid of no end of games which looked worth keeping at first blush.

Slowly pick up Switch games - in the last month I've jettisoned 3 handheld sub-collections; 3DS, PSP and Vita. Handhelds are useful to me now, but the more recent 2 have limited ranges and I always hated the clunky nature of the PSP. At least with the Switch I'll be able to play full-fat Nintendo games and much more besides on the go rather than be stuck with a bunch of cut-downs.

Be a lot more selective - read reviews and watch gameplay videos as often as is possible before taking the plunge. I was very interested in Castle of Heart on Switch, for instance, it's the sort of game I could convince myself to buy, until I hit Metacritic and saw that reviewers say it the controls are delayed and generally awful - lucky escape.

Pick up a Windows XP gaming rig - I'm getting hold of a lot of interesting CD-ROM games from the early noughties, but most of them aren't compatible with my work/office PC (which I'm typing on now), so a rig with XP and a decent graphics card should enable me to play these. I'm currently unable to play the Geneforge series, which is really annoying!

[kashell]

Other than the obvious "play more games" I do have a couple other goals for next year.

Find more strategy guides. I love strategy guides. Especially for my favorite games. They're great for reliving certain parts in a game without having to play up to it.

Buy less new releases. I actually did pretty well with this so far. But, there are times I still get an impulse to get the next best thing ASAP. I'm going to try to curtail that even more.

[NickAwesome]

2020 Goals

Complete my PS1 Set- I'm 3 away!  Definitely did way better on this than I was expecting for 2019.  If anyone has Madden 2004, Fifa 2004, or Geom Cube longbox- hit me up! 

Participate in the 52 game challenge and shoot for at least 26.  I stopped keeping track but I finished at least 15 games in 2019.  2019 was so crazy busy- got married, moved twice, graduated law school, passed the bar, I should be able to finish more games next year.

Add at least 20 CIB 3DO games and 10 CIB Atari Jaguar games.  (53) and (26).   Collecting for these two systems is so much fun.  I have had a couple of great local finds in the last year but mostly have to camp out on eBay for new additions.  Here's hoping I can continue to find good titles!

Also focus on Genesis and DS- At least 20 CIB titles for each.

Decide on whether I want to go for a full set on any other system- either Dreamcast or Saturn would be likely targets.

Play more current gen stuff next year- Right now I'm playing Death Stranding and Outer Worlds.  Both are pretty fun. 

[masamune]

My 2020 Gaming/Collecting Goals are very simple.

Buy fewer games!

I think my spending was a bit out of control this year, and I'm hopeful I can curb my spending behavior for the new year.