Consoles you had the most and least fun collecting for?

[shawndude82]

Most fun: Big box PC games.  They haven't been hit by the price surge that much.  The only real problem is lack of shelf space.

Least fun: Any game from overseas.  I like looking at games from Japan that never released here (I.e. Wonder Project J, Slayers, or the og Fire Emblem) and usually buy them cib as well, but unless I am lucky enough to find an American seller, the shipping fee alone will jack the price up, and more often than not, at least for me, it gets lost in the mail and I have to make a bunch of calls to find it.

[jipsy]

I have to agree on PS2 being my favorite, it's my childhood console and the game are readily available.

My least favorite is 100% the Gamecube. I've never been a big Nintendo fan and the games are really expensive.

[marvelvscapcom2]

Most Fun Wii U

Wii U is what it is but nobody can deny that it's library is approachable, easy to collect for casually and was packed with hidden gems that the purist of Wii U would care for   This was before switch took almost all of it's library but I still think Wii U complete libraries are one of the most obtainable. The pursuit of knocking off all the games for it was fun for me and even though I sold a good portion once Switch made owning Wii U software a waste of time, I still loved the memories I made at gamestop collecting the ones I was missing and how happy I was. Some games would be 5 to 10 for titles I needed and I hadn't seen that since PS2 days.

Least Fun Super Nintendo And PS1

They are just really too expensive.  As for PS1 they have a black disc that shows any scratch like a hyrogliph of anyone who has ever so much as held it, and the clear glass like cases break easily making it hard to find good copies in the wild with books.  Sometimes you find books with no games, games with no manuals or just neither and a clear case with a back in a pile of nothing.  SNES labels seem to not stick as good as NES, the cartridges are capable of yellowing and paying 45 for the most common game for the console will never feel right to me.  2 of the greatest consoles ever ot play for but not collect for to me

[bikingjahuty]

I have to agree on PS2 being my favorite, it's my childhood console and the game are readily available.

My least favorite is 100% the Gamecube. I've never been a big Nintendo fan and the games are really expensive.

What's funny is Gamecube used to be incredibly easy and cheap to collect for. I amassed 90% of my Gamecube collection when there was just a handful of $50+ dollar games. This was between probably 2009 and 2016. After that it got insanely expensive. The same can be said of N64 which also used to be way more affordable up until 5 or 6 years ago. And i guess if you really want to go back, SNES and NES were a lot easier to collect for from the late 90s up until the late 2000s. Unfortunaely I just caught the tail end of cheap and easy NES and SNES collecting because the getting was really good for a while; I know a guy who did a complete NES set in the 2000s including games like Stadium Events, Little Samson, and a bunch of the other heavy hitters he would just buy from flea markets and garage sales.

[ferraroso]

Most fun:
Sega Saturn - Living in Japan, collecting for the Saturn has been lots of fun for over 10 years now. It seems no matter how much I research about this console, there's always something new to discover about it. Even better: with rare exceptions, most good Saturn games are still dirt cheap around here. And when I say "cheap", I really mean it! Like the equivalent to US$1.00〜US$5.00 or so.

Least fun:
Apple/Bandai Pippin - In my whole life I've only found ONE game for that piece of junk (and a pretty crappy one, by the way): Gundam Tactics: Mobility Fleet 0079. I have to say, the Pippin controller is way better than it looks though.

[telekill]

At one point, I was collecting many game systems and games but with little to no extra space when I moved in with my girlfriend at the time (now wife), I decided to sell off most of my collection and only keep my absolute favorites. I'll still occasionally pick up a PS1 game from time to time but I did have fun collecting for it back in the day.

My least favorite to collect for was probably my Game Gear but it's not the system's library fault. I think due to times changing and retro game stores becoming scarce with online being the primary resource... it took a lot of fun out of collecting. Half the fun was going into the physical stores and looking at the items on the shelves to see what there was. Now it would seem that most games are too hard to find in the limited physical store locations and overly pricey online.

My days of regularly collecting retro games are over though I may pick one up from time to time.

[tripredacus]

Most fun: Sega Genesis
I had once decided to try to get all of the games, which turned into including variations. That led to having to determine all of the differences in boxes and carts and the cart stampings or whatever else. Going out to a store and looking at all the copies of something to find that one version I didn't have yet was pretty fun.

Least fun: Sega Master System
This is one situation that wasn't fun because it was almost impossible to ever find anything that wasn't a "Great" sports title or Parlor Games. It wasn't like I could find things but they were expensive, it was the opposite, just not finding anything.

Transitionary fun: Sega Saturn
I wanted to put this on here because the Saturn fits into both situations. Like the Master System, collecting for Saturn had the same issue where I would never find any games that I didn't already have. And what I already had was mostly the sports games and VF/2, Fighting Vipers and the two main Daytona USA releases. I always knew that the Japanese games were cheap on Ebay but I didn't really get many of those because I couldn't play them. In fact, I had only purchased a few from Ebay because I knew they had different music and I could make MP3 or put them in a CD player. I had never been keen on doing the disc swap and never got around to getting an Action Replay cart.

Everything changed when I was able to get a Japanese Saturn at a good price. Then I was buying tons of Japanese games on Ebay. And to a point where I had decided that I needed to learn Japanese to play some of them. I love the fact that many games you buy from Japan still have the goodies that come with them, even some regular releases had stuff just like the Genteiban. Certainly not relatable to any US games in that regard. The only thing that put a halt to collecting Japanese Saturn was the pandemic.

[98dgreen]

Favorite:PS2

Least Favorite:Wii

[Warmsignal]

It's a difficult one to answer, because for the most part I do have fond memories collecting for most of my platforms, otherwise I wouldn't have continued collecting for them.

For me, it's hard to deny the fun factor in collecting anything 7th gen and forward, just because it has always been so widely available and often discounted and that makes collecting more fun to me. Then again, when I got into collecting, a lot of classic Nintendo platforms were also widely available and heavily discounted. On the other hand, I never had a lot of fun collecting any SEGA platform because I struggled to find them, and when I did, it was either junk or priced higher than I wanted, and that goes for Master System, Genesis, Saturn and Dreamcast. It was just hard to collect these and very gradual, over the years picking games off one by and one and usually paying top dollar for the titles I wanted. That's less fun to me.

So as for right now I will say -

Favorite - Xbox 360. It was always so easy to find the titles I wanted, and pick them up for a thrifty price. Even now, it's a breeze to do whenever I decide I want to add another to the library. I even have my pick of condition, so that if I want all my games to be fresh and mint I'll hold off for that pristine copy, no problem.

Least favorite - Genesis. It's always been a headache to find the titles I actually wanted to pick up. Sure, finding Genesis games isn't all that hard, but find titles other than commons and shovelware is extremely difficult in most of those instances. You see a lot of the same crap, over and over. Like Combat plagues Atari 2600, you spot a Shaq Fu and a Desert Strike all the time, but you'll never come across an Outrun, or an Alex Kid, or Mystic Defender or something that's actually desirable. My Genesis collection has probably averaged 2 to 3 additions per year since I began collecting because I generally don't pick up Gen titles online. Instead, I roll the dice with game hunting and usually find nothing notable.

Lots of people will say Saturn, generally because of price. That doesn't completely kill it for me, because I have such a fascination with the titles available on the system. I kind have a respect for the fact that they're genuinely hard to find, very popular, and very expensive for that reason. Same deal with Jaguar collecting. It's like pulling teeth, but still satisfying in a way.

[sworddude]

Least favorite - Genesis. It's always been a headache to find the titles I actually wanted to pick up. Sure, finding Genesis games isn't all that hard, but find titles other than commons and shovelware is extremely difficult in most of those instances. You see a lot of the same crap, over and over. Like Combat plagues Atari 2600, you spot a Shaq Fu and a Desert Strike all the time, but you'll never come across an Outrun, or an Alex Kid, or Mystic Defender or something that's actually desirable. My Genesis collection has probably averaged 2 to 3 additions per year since I began collecting because I generally don't pick up Gen titles online. Instead, I roll the dice with game hunting and usually find nothing notable.

That's unfortunate thought genesis sold the best in the states and prices where also pretty cheap and less people after sega for the good stuff years ago. Recent years it's quite competitve but if you started early and it was a tough experience, that's some bad luck I guess. years ago it was definitely one of the more easy consoles to get into collecting wise since most people focussed on just Nintendo. far far easier than snes and just overall quite cheap.

You still got a pretty nice genesis collection at the end of the day though.

[megasilverx1]

Favorite: Game Boy series (more so the original and Color games)

While a lot of the GB's library can be crap, their are still plenty of fun little bit sized games to be found and played that don't command Pokemon prices. While the GBA is one of my favorite consoles, I struggle way more finding games for that console that interest me; like 90% of the GBA games I run into are licensed games that I'm fairly sure aren't very good.

Least Favorite: WonderSwan

Language barrier is a hug issue with a majority of the games on this handheld for me thanks to a most of the library being RPGs or text heavy. At least it has a Picross game on it which I would like to get someday since I love nonograms.

I could also add the Game Gear to least favorite, but I'm super indifferent towards the console. If Sega ever made a Super Game Boy equivalent for the Genesis/Mega Drive so you could play Game Gear games on a TV, I'm sure I would be far more interested in playing games for the system. I'm a little surprised they didn't since Sega had the power base converter to play Master System games on the Genesis/Mega Drive and the Game Gear is more or less a Master System but with a slightly higher color pallet.

[AstralSoul]

Most fun: Nintendo DS - Lots of hidden gems on this handheld. Probably in my top 3 favorite consoles of all time. I collected a lot of DS titles before the prices skyrocketed, so now I'm kind of bummed I didn't get everything I wanted but I still buy games here and there. Also not to mention collecting DS system variants is fun too. Not as hard to come by as GBA and not as pricey as 3DS.

Least fun: GBA - So I got a bunch of these when they were easy to find and less expensive but like an idiot I sold a lot of them when prices started going up. As usual, I regretted it and have been trying to get a lot of my favorites back, Not only have the prices skyrocketed but I've never had such a ridiculously hard time with any other console or handheld finding games that were actually authentic. All GBA systems seem to be aftermarket refurbished and a majority of the games seem to be fakes from China. This seriously dampens my mood to collect for it. I don't want to shell out $100 on a game that isn't even real.

Runner-ups:
Second most fun: PS4 because it's easy and cheap and there is so much good stuff.
Second least fun: Sega Saturn, would be first place but I only had one for a couple months and decided it was basically impossible for me with my budget and straight-up not worth it.

[rockleevk]

Most fun:
Original JP PS and its software/odd accessories and strange hardware in general.
3DO also is still quite fun.

Least fun collecting:
Xbox 360, getting anything in a “good condition” even going to Japanese region games, was a constant battle to get a good disc or even a game that the seller wasn’t lying about condition or even suprises like instructions seem ok, and once opening missing pages or even veery worn out or “humidity smell” on them. Quite difficult to get things that are known as “region free” which idc as I have JP & PAL systems myself, but in the end gave up and got my elite 360 just RGH and sold most of the stuff to pay for that mod itself, quite hard. And...
- Game gear
- SuperGrafx
- GP32

[sworddude]

Pretty suprised to see some cheap console libraries as being the least fun to collect for.

But hey everyone has a different experience when they are collecting.

[lipebittencourt]

Most fun: Genesis/Mega Drive games;
Least fun: PS2 games