i have started a debate with my tired talk
i probably should have said $1 shovelware to be absolutely clear. there's a lot of titles out there that aren't worth your dollar. so unless you're a hoarder, or a masochist, why even buy it?
there are plenty of titles under $ 15 wich are basicly trash. I'd say at the very least 80%
Ofcourse there are trash titles above this value but i'm just saying that not only dollar titles are trash.
well, yes.
but i speak from a little bit of experience when i say that... if you begin late (i didn't start collecting until i was ~15?) that you'll be highly tempted to inflate your collection number with cheap $1 trash. the problem is, is then you still have 'all these games, but nothing to play' syndrome. and that sucks. but it's really tempting to buy shitty games that are vvv cheap just to inflate your numbers. or, well, it was for me. maybe not everyone, but then, that's why i went ahead and warned ;'D
there are definitely plenty of $5-15 games that are trash, many of which are featured as shitty games by people like james rolfe or angry joe (ride to hell retribution is like $20+ on ebay because of him, after all, from a quick look). but it's hard to pad out a collection with $10+ games. it's easy to amass 50 games quickly if you just buy a bunch of $1 junk. while most people aren't in collecting for a number game... i very much was, and i imagine that many people might be starting out. you change as you get more into it. where my goal once was "have a fuckload of games!" it's now more along the lines of "have at my disposal any game i could ever want to play, when i want to play it". it's a much healthier reason to have a collection, and maybe i'm an outlier and speaking to the wind, but maybe i'm not, and that's why i mentioned it.
OTOH it depends on the console we're speaking about too. OG xbox's entire library sparing about 20-30 games is under $15 and psp is very close the same, but then you have GCN where any title worth having is over $15. you can argue that the majority of games on any console are trash tho, maybe even 80%, but that's a lot more subjective and a subject for a different topic ;')
also, i didn't mention it, but my other advice would be: don't get overwhelmed. this goes with the 'don't overpay for shit just cause it's there' that i mentioned in my tired initial post, but it's a little different. it's easy to write a list of every game you want for a console(s) but it's also easy to get overwhelmed when looking at pages of 'games i want eventually'. it's easier to get games as the urge hits. my buying patterns usually reflect this... ie, i want some shmup action, i buy shmups. i want some grand RTS, i buy grand RTS games. i want JRPGs....... well i always want JRPGs so... well oops. i want a sonic title, i bought sonic generations. and so on. it's a little different now that i'm in clean-up stage on a console (PS3 is about to be finished) and gamestop is likely to be phasing out last gen consoles soon, but i've only got ~30 to go before i close the books on that, so...
my point is, is take is easy. you don't amass a 1000 game collection overnight... or over a year. it just won't happen. plenty of people get big collections by only spending $100 a month, or buying say 3 games a month, or whatever their parameters are. so, too, will you, given enough time.