Playing Through A Systems Library

[snes_collector]

My NES collection has grown substantially over the past year or so, with me now owning over half of the systems library. I love collecting for NES, but the problem is whenever I get new games I just stick them with the rest and never play them, or even test them. I want to change this though and start playing through the games, but I am not completely sure how to do it. I was thinking playing them by release date, starting with the black box games and going from there all the way through the systems lifespan. That way I can see how the system progressed, since I never owned one back them, and wasn't evenborn until the system was in its decline. I think this will be a fun way of doing things, but I am curious, has anyone done something like this before with their collection? Or is there another way I should go about playing through the system? Thanks

[sloan]

Do you have a job or family life? If so, then forget playing through the NES library anytime soon. Games like legend of Zelda and Faxanadu will literally take months to complete. SMB, SMB2, and SMB3 will take a while as well, not to mention the Lolo's, Mega Man's, etc. I would accept collecting and mainly focus on the games that interest you the most. After you are through those, then maybe move onto others. Are you planning on finishing within your lifetime?

[TonyTheTiger]

If you're talking about playing every game...yeah, it's possible if not a bit annoying. But if you're talking playing through every game then you're really just asking if you should torture yourself. It's not just an issue of volume. The NES has a substantial number of games that barely function.

[snes_collector]

I do have a job and I don't really have a ton of time to play but I do have a little. Maybe you guys are right, and I should play through the games I want to play first, and then work from there. If I start chronologically I could realistically never even to play some of the better titles.

[MyTurnToPlay]

You know what the best way to play NES games is? To just play them.

Seriously, stop making excuses and just pick a game and play it.

Why are you over analyzing which order to play a bunch of games in? Just start playing and be done with it.

thank you.

[treismac]

You know what the best way to play NES games is? To just play them.

Ahhh... come on now. Why not have a little fun in the way you have fun? Here are some ideas that I can think of that would add a little twist to choosing what NES games to play:

1) Choose a theme like racing games, beat 'em ups, shooters, platformers, horrible games, acclaimed games, games by a certain developer, etc...

2) Play games randomly by copy n' pasting your list of games (you do have a list, right?) into http://www.random.org/lists/. Play each game for 5 minutes or until you beat the first board or whatever.

3) Play the games that you have that are on a top/best of NES games list. Satoshi Matrix has a top 100 list and he is just about to reveal #1. Of course, you could google up any list and play through the games you have.

[Zombiewski]

For a little over three years I've been blogging playing through the NES' library and I had the same problem at the outset. I settled on alphabetical because at the time it seemed as logical as any other choice, but now (I'm up to The Little Mermaid), I kind of wished I'd gone in chronological order to better see how different concepts and genres evolved over time.

I also only make myself play games for as long as I remain interested. Otherwise I'd have to suffer through Kung Fu Heroes for hours and I don't know that I could handle that kind of pain.

[Gamevet]

Why not start with the arcade style games?

[Gameguy]

I love collecting for NES, but the problem is whenever I get new games I just stick them with the rest and never play them, or even test them.

I bought an NES collection locally off somebody who was like this, nothing was cleaned or tested. It took me 3-4 months to clean and test everything. The outside of the games were dusty/dirty, I had to remove price stickers, rental stickers, grease pencil marks(from thrift stores), and then clean the connectors. The best connectors were just oxidised, others were coated in dust or dirt, even corrosion. Out of around 280 games, 4 were defective(including Contra and Castlevania III). This guy even had several variants of some games, 3-screw/5-screw, or CAN/US variants. I know he was mostly on NintendoAge, and it's a big reason why I avoid that site. It seems like a major theme with NintendoAge is to just collect them to say you own them. He's a nice guy, but he was buying games just to own them and never played them. I would never mix uncleaned or untested games with my personal collection, I would have to know if they're working first. For how much work I had to do with these games, I paid too much for them. I only bought the collection to keep a handful of games for myself.

To get started, I found that it was best to take a row of games from a box and first clean the outside of each cartridge. Then move onto another row, each row in the boxes I got had about 18 games. Once you do every row in the box, start cleaning the connectors in a row. Once you do every row and finish a box, take each row out and test them in a system. Repeat the steps for each box of games you have. It will take days or weeks to finish cleaning a single box, it can get boring and it's easy to just avoid doing it. While testing out each game, you can play it for a bit to see if you like it. Make a note to come back to it later. I haven't played through each game I own, but I've played each game as least somewhat briefly. You should at least test every game in your collection to make sure they work.