What is your collecting goal?

[SheriffHarv]

I dug my NES out of a box in the basement a few years ago after watching a bunch of youtube videos about retro gaming. I got it in 1989 when I was 14 years old and had 18 games for it from back then.  I still had all the manuals and several ads, posters and inserts.  No boxes though.  The boxes were like keeping the wrapper off of your chocolate bar back then, it was garbage.  If only we knew then what we know now eh?
For early goals I started off with buying a three game listing off Ebay for Tetris, Tetris 2 and Dr. Mario with manuals.  Then I started looking for games I wanted as a kid but never got.  I now have 110 NES games with 101 manuals.  My collection would probably be twice as big if I wasn't such a stickler for having the manuals as well.  Some of those were almost as expensive as the games themselves.  I've also bought quite a few complete boxed games.(sorry, none that aren't already in here)  I've probably got every game that I ever rented, played at a friends house, or dreamed about owning from thumbing through the pages of Nintendo Power.
As for my current collecting Goals- I'm working on getting all the launch titles for the NES right now.  I've got 11 of them so have 7 more to go.  Then I will probably finish up some collections ie- I have Double Dragon 1 and 2 but still need 3.  I have Castlevania but will probably also get 2 and 3.  I have no interest in owning every single NES cartridge.  I buy stuff I want to play and there are a good number of games for the NES that I have absolutely no interest in playing.  I'm also not going to pay more than $100 for any game.  I have a little over 400 games in total for 11 consoles and 6 handhelds now.  I'll basically now just buy games that interest me, will work toward finishing a small collecting goal and won't break the bank.

[razielleonhart]

just get whatever chances my eye. i have even picked up broken games/systems just to save them from the trash

[hoverboots]

And mine really stem from magazines I had read as a kid. That's how I found out about Maximo, Katamari Damacy, Guardian's Crusade, and Bomberman Fantasy Race (which I am still looking for).

[Beastman1975]

Im pretty much done with my game collecting for old/rare titles , ill still buy new stuff and maybe the odd impulse buy but ive pretty much found everything on my want list

[NinerWhiskey]

Im pretty much done with my game collecting for old/rare titles , ill still buy new stuff and maybe the odd impulse buy but ive pretty much found everything on my want list

I think making a want list is what has really kept my hobby from spiraling out of control. My list is fluid because I add games to it as I think of them but at the end of the day, it's a smaller list than "every SNES game" or "every Game Boy game".

I have a few big ticket games on there (Chrono Trigger being the most expensive - so mad at myself for selling it in college) but outside of those games, my list is largely common games that don't fluxuate in price that much. I buy a couple of games every paycheck and will do so until I finish my list.

[kzbolin]

My collecting goal is to narrow down a list of the 50 best games for each Nintendo system and find them all and get the manual for each game and case them up with high quality cases and high quality covers! If anyone has a Top Nintendo Games list, please pm me!

[Einhander]

Im pretty much done with my game collecting for old/rare titles , ill still buy new stuff and maybe the odd impulse buy but ive pretty much found everything on my want list

Eventually I'd like to get to the point where I have everything I want or almost everything, and then just wait for new games to come out. But to be honest, that's going to take a long long time and knowing myself, when I have everything, I'll probably start collecting for other retro consoles.

[Seraph Man]

Surprise, surprise, my goal has always been to have a complete collection of Mega Man games. However, my definition of complete is more "Every game" and less "Every game variant complete in box." So, to me, having both version of Mega Man Battle Network 3 is more important than having all 3 variant box covers for Mega Man 3. In that regard, I'm almost there. I'm only missing a handful of games, and I have included certain Rockman games too, like Super Adventure Rockman, or reproduction games, such as Mega Man and Bass for the SNES.

Aside from that, there are certain series where I'd like to have all or most of, such as Legend of Zelda or Kirby, but they're not my goal. For instance, I have the Legend of Zelda Collector's Edition Gamecube disk, which brings LoZ 1 and 2, so I don't need to find an NES copy, or GBA copy for that matter. It's not that important to me. Plus, it saves me having to get a N64, as it brings OoT and MM. In terms of consoles, there's only one console left I want to purchase, and that's the Colecovision. It's the first console I ever had, but was tossed away. I had 3 games for it: Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and a third game. It's my goal to one day own a working Colecovision and those games I once had. Just those. I have no real interest in any other Colecovision games. I only want it as a way to "restore" my collection by having every console I ever owned once again.

[kingjohn3]

I'm looking to collect all my favorites & what's considered to be "the best" for each Nintendo system.

[Polygon]

I have a few goals this year.

1. Play more damn games. Last year I bought a lot of games. Yet I can count on one hand how many I played.

2. Complete my Genesis collection. No, I'm not going for a complete Genesis collection. Just the games I want. I have close to 200 right now and my list has about 50 or so remaining.

3. Get my NES games in cases and find a solution I like for my Game Gear games.

[cynicalmatt]

I could have written the OP's post myself.

My collecting started as just buying the games I remember loving from my youth, but as the meme goes, that escalated quickly.  I too have bought systems I never owned (such as a Master System).  I crossed 1,000 games in less than a year (although, to be fair, that includes a lot of the modern console games I already owned).  Many of them I had never played, but they were so cheap I figured, "Why not?"

I'm not going for complete sets.  I could never justify spending money on an expensive game if it's craptacular, and every game console has its share of shovelware titles that may be cheap individually, but add up over time.  I pretty much just buy games I either remember from my childhood, or look cool and are priced right.