What do you think/hope your collection will be like in 5-years from now?
How many games do you hope to have? What collections will you hope to be finished with and what new collecting goals do you think/hope you'll be working on? Feel free to answer these however you want, just be as descriptive about your collection as possible.
For me I am hoping to be 95% done with collecting NTSC games other than newer titles and probably some very expensive/rare titles that I haven't found or haven't bit the bullet and purchased. I'll hopefully be focusing collecting imports (especially Saturn, Dreamcast, and PS2 imports), completing my cartridge games (particularly for the n64), and I want to have at least a few Arcade cabs at this time too (currently have none). If I am 95% or more done with collecting, I'll easily be at over 2000 games as well. While it doesn't directly relate to games, I'll also have to have a place of my own at this point instead of renting since I have big plans for how my game room will look some day. Renting unfortunately does not permit me to have the freedom or money to do this now. Those arcade cabs take up a lot of space too.
My wife and I are wrapping Christmas presents while we have Die Hard on in the background. I finished early and started looking at old threads and stumbled upon this one. I thought it would be fun and interesting to follow up on this thread where I was predicting my collection in 5 years as of 2016. Here we are on the verge of 10 years since i created this thread which maybe makes it even more interesting than it would have been before.
In 2021 I had become mostly disenchanted with collecting games, especially retro. I had most of the games I wanted in 2021 or had owned them at one point or another prior to that. For the most part I was trying to find any nook or cranny I hadn't looked into yet when it came to stuff to collect. This led me to collect a lot of boxes and manuals for loose cartridge games I owned at the time, mostly on Genesis, SNES, and N64. I was still doing some light US SATURN and import game collecting around this time too, but it was mostly completing my loose games. Unfortunately, looking back my heart was barely into it and I was mostly just looking for something to collect since I'd already obtained most of the stuff I'd ever had any interest in owning. Also, in 2021 I got heavily into flash carts, ODEs, and just modding old consoles in general. Playing games has always been my top priority and throwing an ODE into a Saturn or PS1 allowed me to play all the games I'd ever wanted for those consoles without spending a fortune buying the actual physical games. In relation to having my own place and arcade machines, I still didn't have either at the time. In fact, I'd move twice between 2016 and 2021, first to an apartment, then I'd rent another house.
And here we are now in late 2025! Pretty much the only thing I collect is newer games since I either have all the retro games I really want or I have them covered via flash carts and ODEs. For the most part, I actually don't care that much for collecting, but at least at the moment, its the easiest way for me to play more modern games so that's why I collect for those...mostly. I have really tempered by collecting for PS5 due to longevity issues with some of those games, but I guess in a technical sense, I do collect for it. I now have my own house (since 2022) and have owned an arcade cabinet since moving. I actually sold that machine last summer due to how little I used it after obtaining it and it needed work on the CRT I wasn't willing to risk life and limb to do myself. Funny enough, I actually don't have much of a desire to own any other arcade machines for the most part. There are a handful I might go after if it was very convenient and the price was right, but I'm honestly content just playing stuff in MAME or various other arcade emulators. However, I do really want to get pinball machines at some point. There are pinball emulators, but they can only do so much capturing a completely analogue experience in a completely digital medium. But for the most part, I'm pretty content with what I got gaming wise, and if anything I've continued to downsize a lot of my collection in recent years. It's funny how much your perspective on something can change in less than 10 years, but here I am.
