when alphabetical order is not good enough

[Chainclaw]

Lots of questions here, but it's x-mas break and I've still got another week of vacation left.

So, lets talk about how you sort your collection.

When sorting your games, what do you break alphabetical order for?

Last month I resorted my 2600 games by manufacturer / label type, and it looks much nicer.

What about oddly titled sequels? Do you put "The Adventures of Link" in the A's, or after The Legend of Zelda?

Does anyone sort by release date instead of alphabetically?

When a series spans multiple systems, do you put them all together, or leave them with the rest of the games for that system?

Do you put the rare games / special games in with the rest for the system, or in a separate display area?

Everyone's got a system, and I'm sure a lot of you want to share, so lets hear it.

[MASTERWEEDO]

i like the look of the same style cases, but i do those alphabetically. i think my room is done purely alphabetical, doesnt look as nice, but easier to find.

[Leo_A]

Greatest Hits and such are separated from normal releases. Games are placed in genres, so all racing games for a system are together and so on. And for some reason, I like to keep 1st party Nintendo releases for the GameCube and Wii together. I don't follow alphabetical order, so series are all together. For example, the 5 different GameCube Zelda releases are all together.

For classic systems, I devide by manufacturer, then by label type. So all Atari 2600 picture labels are together, then they're divided further by the color of the font used, etc. Looks nicer than being randomly placed on a shelf, or put in alphabetical order.

I'm not quite as picky with cartridges, since they're not on shelfs and the boxes are stored away. And the cd titles up to the Dreamcast are all in binders since I don't like jewel cases and a lot of them were purchased used without their original packages anyways. But all the games released from the PS2 on in DVD style cases (Which I like unlike jewel cases), are on shelfs.

[PapaStu]

I just sort by Alpha for that system. No need to split over genres or any of that other mumbo jumbo. Once you get to a zomg game count, it gets a little over the top. I've got to shuffle enough stuff as it is to get to the C's to have to worry about genres by alpha on top of that.

My only other alphabetical quirk is to drop the 'The' or 'A' from game titles in personal lists (and on shelf), so The Legend of Zelda is in order by L, not T.

DS games stay with DS, PS games stay with PS. Variants go after the primary release.

Now sorting my music....that one really shows my anality.

[SegaAges]

i normally do it alpha with gh variants in alpha coming before the main ones. a bunch of gh games stacked together and then the normal cases next to them looks way better imo

also, some games i keep together and do a mini alpha with them. like my zelda games, i categorize them all under z for zelda. some games i do split, like my star wars games (lego star wars and star wars: jedi outcast just are too far apart alpha-wise)

[StakeRaiser]

I do like carts, by alphabetical order

NES looks so much better if you don't stick the ugly color dreams games in with all the licensed games

[aclbandit]

I sort by system. Each system's games are arranged (roughly) chronologically: Channel F, Atari 2600, 7800, then NES, etc. Alphabetical order for each system's games. I do break alphabetical for series games that are named oddly, especially notable is the case of zelda and zelda 2.

[Daria]

My only other alphabetical quirk is to drop the 'The' or 'A' from game titles in personal lists (and on shelf), so The Legend of Zelda is in order by L, not T.

That's not a quirk. That's the correct way to alphabetize.

[Sabz5150]

I sort by system... beyond that there really isn't a method to my madness, but I can still point out where a specific title is within my shelves. I'll usually group a series together such as the Megaman games, but again nothing special.

What I display is random... whenever I decide to rearrange my display shelves I'll pick through my collection and put up some goodies.

[RASK1904]

I have only sorted my Nes games twice. It takes to long. I need to do this again. It just seems to anal. I just pull play and put back anywhere. Soon I will have to. I'm officially past the half way mark and they need to be where there gonna be. I do anways put system games together but I think thats only becuase they fit together better. I do have the older genesis games with the black and grey squares seperate from the later red ones. It just looks better.

Thanx RASK1904

[MASTERWEEDO]

on top of my video games, i have around 4000 vhs titles organized alphabetically. 2 years ago, one of my shelving units fell, 903 tapes to the ground. :(

[pseudonym]

Wow, 4000 vhs tapes. I have quite a few myself, that must have sucked picking them all up and putting them back into order.

As for games, I usually sort them by company and then alpha within the same company.

[Aussie2B]

I keep games grouped by system, and it goes straight alphabetical. I don't care if games in a series are split up, if Greatest Hits are mixed in with the rest, or anything else. I alphabetize in the unconventional way, though. I just look purely at the letters in the title, ignoring spaces or words that are often skipped. I don't care if it starts with "The"; it's going under "T". :P I used to work at a public library as a shelver, so call me a rebel, I guess, haha (I did everything proper back then, though). The only things that break my alphabetical order are if there are vastly different cases for a single system (I can't reasonably keep PlayStation longboxes with jewel cases), if I have games in varying states of completeness (loose discs are in CD folders, not with the complete games), or if they're Japanese imports (which are gathered in their own group and alphabetized by the English romanizations, not the wonky way the Japanese alphabetize stuff).

[Mayhem]

For the Commodore carts (C64 and Vic20), I have them alphabetically but also grouped by publisher as well. The cart boxes were often randomly different sizes it seemed better to have similar sized ones grouped together as well.

[Giskard]

All games are sorted by system.

Pre-crash games: Sorted alphabetically by publisher and then alphabetically by game. I started this because I didn't like the way the M-network games on 2600 looked when I went with just alphabetical.

Other cartridge games: Licensed games in alpha order in front followed by unlicensed following the same method as pre-crash games. I follow a strict alpha order (Legend of Zelda and Adventures of Link are separated). Label variations are done chronologically when possible.

CD games: US CIB full games in front in alpha order, followed by CIB demos in alpha order, then CIB imports , followed by loose disks, then pirates.

There was a time when all of my 7800 games were sorted by part number but it started to take way too long to sort then that way.

[chrisbid]

system/packaging or cart type/alpha


it looks the best this way, it may be more difficult for somebody that isnt me to find a particular title, but its my collection :D

[PentiumMMX]

For the most part, my games are in alphabetical order, though there's a few exceptions (Metal Gear and Snake's Revenge are grouped together, as is the 2 Zelda games on NES, and Mario Party 5 through 8)

[swlovinist]

I sort my video games many different ways. I dont follow one rule for every system. I do follow one rule I guess: All games for a particular system are together. For my bigger sets of games I subcatorgize by:

Nes, N64, and SMS-alphabetical order

Sega CD, Saturn, Genesis, 32X, TG-16/CD -type of box, brand, and color

The rest-mostly by color, type of box.

link to pics
http://s268.photobucket.com/albums/jj28/swlovinist/

[darkslime]

I just stick all the games for each system together.
Tried alphabetizing the whole thing a couple months ago, but it just got messed up when I had friends over and I didn't want to sound way to anal by saying keeping it alphabetized. Now I just don't bother.

[Draven]

Alphabetize. Otherwise I could never find anything. The Adventure of Link is in the A's, right next to Adventure Island. I have to re-organize soon, my son has been playing the NES lately and everything is out of order. Drives me crazy. I usually look at my game list from DP and go by it. My only gripe is that Bases Loaded says "Jaleco" on the top, instead of the game's name (and of course Tengen titles being obscured by the cart's shape). Looks horrible.

[XYXZYZ]

I don't bother, whatever sorting method I use will get messed up sooner or later. But I used to arrange them by company. (all Konami games here, Capcom games there, etc.)

[Marriott_Guy]

Regarding hardware, I arrange my systems by year of its release (first run consoles) in my main display. Second releases of these systems are displayed separately, once again by the year it was released (for the most part).

For my game collection, games that utilized numbers on the game box (i.e. Fairchild Channel F, Super A'Can, Interton VC-4000, Arcadia 2001. etc.) are organized numerically by their featured game number.

For the Intellivision\Atari 2600 series (and others), I arrange them by genre to coincide with the color coding that the majority of the games abide by.

For the Bally Home Library Computer and like systems (which released their games in multiple packaging), I separate them by packaging type. I.E. --> those crappy cardboard boxes for some of the Sega Genesis system are set apart from the sturdy plastic encasements. Oddly enough, I do not separate my 3DO collection based on this (they are alphabetical ordered).

As stated in a previous post, I agree - games released in different packaging are organized togather. Best example given was the PS1 long boxes. Another example is the CD-i game packaging. I wish all PS1 and CD-i games came in those bigger boxes.

Greatest Hit releases are usually separated at the end for me - since their casing is usually the same (i.e. Sega Genesis and GameCube among others).

In my perfect world, everything would be alphabetically arranged with the same packaging. Since this is not the case (thankfully - I am not necessarily a creative person), game packaging for me overrides this desire of mine.

The best game packaging to display by far is the Neo Geo AES carts. These monstrous SOBs are so easy to display and look awesome with the '## MEGS' on the side of them.

[grolt]

I used to focus on making it all pretty, but when your collection gets big, it becomes a simple question of practicality. Now I just sort alphabetical by each system. I break alphabetical when it comes to sequels and such, though. So Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars goes before Alex Kidd: High-Tech World, since it's the second game in the series and High-Tech is the third.

[Trebuken]

Alphabetical, though I separate carts from boxes. For example I have about 300 boxed Genesis games in alphabetical order, than about 400 loose carts in alphabetical order.

Recently I have been considering arranging my PC games by year. PC game boxes seem to change shape over time, across publishers, so it works. Also this ends up sort of arranging them by OS as well...

[jdc]

Primarily, the same as Papa Stu.....although I HAVE considered total alpha with all Cube, Xbox, and PS2 (and any other "normal" sized dvd-cased games) shuffled together. Might try that in the new year when we dismantle the game room to decorate it. I'd still have to keep my PS3 stuff where it is now.....separate shelf altogether, immediately before my Bluray movies. Handhelds are placed by themselves as well, since they all have proprietary box/case sizes and shapes.

[bcks007]

I sort my ps2 games by slus and scus codes on the side of each case. I like this method. :) Paired with sonyindex.com, it makes it easier to find cases for me.

[Cryomancer]

I once sorted my loose NES carts by primarly label color to make a nice little gradient.

[Joe West]

the only way to go: alphabetical order

[The 1 2 P]

I store alphabetical by system, but I break that up for game series with subtitles of different games. For example, I have 8-10 different Xbox Star Wars games. They are in alphabetical order under the "S"' catergory but the first released Star Wars title is the first in the list, not the one who's subtitle comes first. And thus the last one in the my Star Wars order is the last released Star Wars game for the system.

[BHvrd]

A few posts on this subject in this thread,

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=105944

[Fuyukaze]

Alphabet. It's simple and it works. Doing it by year, publisher, color, and such is posible but just not worth the effort. Maybe if it was 5 years ago when my collection wasnt even 1/5 of what it is now it could be done, but now, no. Just keep it as simple as posible.

[Chainclaw]

How many of you who stick strictly to alphabetical order collect for the Atari 2600, with all the weird case variations?

[DJTrueStory]

System/Brand/Title/ABC

So say you're looking at my SNES games, there's Nintendo brand, the arcade series, capcom, midway, etc... If you do it this way, all the boxes next to eachother look alike and it looks really good... then I go by title, all zelda's go together, all marios go together, all maddens go together, etc... then alphabetical order.

[jcalder8]

I start by the system, then alphabetical with the exception of squeals, those go after the original. Oversize items have their own area because they don't fit on the shelves.

My rare stuff goes in a display area because they just look cool and I like to point them out to people who come over.

[Iron Draggon]

well for starters, I don't subscribe to the belief that games with #'s in their titles go before the A's... so I file them under the letter their #'s begin with

other exceptions are made when there's a long title commonly referred to as something simple... so Amazing Virtual Sea Monkeys goes under Sea Monkeys

sequels go in sequential order after the original, and prequels go before it, but series are filed under the letter the original begins with for easy reference

games on multiple systems give Sega top priority, then Nintendo, Sony, 3DO, and Atari... this is how I decide in what order to file multiplatform duplicates

only CD ROM's are filed with all CD ROM systems together... cart games are kept separated by system, since it looks better to have all carts separated

so in the case of sequels on multiple platforms, it depends on if the games are on carts or CD ROM's... I may change my rules for this someday though

rare games are kept with common games... this helps keep the uninformed in the dark about their value, so no one will try to steal anything when visiting

I'd love to sort all my games by release date, but exact information is too difficult to obtain, as far as I know... share if you know a reliable source for it

also, I should mention that all my CD ROM games are kept in standard sized single disc CD jewel cases, so I buy alot of empty jewel cases for my games! and what about the original boxes and cases? sadly, they all get tossed in the garbage... only Genesis cases and PC DVD cases are kept for storage... I regret that I simply don't have enough space to keep everything, so many of my games only include the cart/disc and the manual... all that really matters!

if longbox manuals would fit in standard DVD cases, I'd keep all my Sega CD, Saturn, PS1 longbox, 3DO longbox, and Atari CD ROM's in DVD cases, and make inserts for all of them, but they're just a little too big, DAMMIT! so all my manuals are kept stacked in boxes, until I find something like a binder made to store each manual in its own sleeved page, or something... so if anyone ever makes such a thing, they'll make a fortune selling me the binders and sleeved pages... I've never liked having to store my manuals in boxes, and would much prefer that they all be kept in nice clamshell cases with the games themselves, like most of my Genesis games are... and I'm also not happy that some Genesis games and all 32X games came in cardboard boxes, but I have kept all of those boxes, and they're the only ones I've kept... I never liked SNES & Jaguar boxes either, but I wish I had kept all of those boxes too... however, if I had kept them, I'd be pissed about all the ones that were damaged... especially the ones that were damaged in shipping... this is why it's actually a good thing that I never kept all those boxes... that way I don't have to leave negatives for sellers just because of their shipping methods... otherwise I'd be pissing alot of sellers off because of my feedback!

[RASK1904]

I am currently going over my Nes collection about 350. I am alpabatising them. They are all spread out on the floor as we speak. But... It is very confusing. I used the Online rarity guide here and dont agree with a few things. Told them and they responded thats how nintendo age does it. Marvel's X-men? anyways. So if I put it in there order witch is 99% good but every once in awhile I wont be able to find a game or buy a nother copy on accident. But my main problem is the top lable. The one that sticks out. Some times the cart is.... I dont know...Attack of the Killer Tomatoes but the edge says Killer Tomatoes. Now I want to put it as Killer tomatoes. But then I run into the same problems again. Or the writing is realy small so all you see is the "main" name. Do you seperate all 3 Castlevanias or put them together? They all have diferent names. Is there a list of every game in alphbetical order by spine name? That would help. Wow.

Thanx RASK1904

[aaron7]

Mine are all alphabetical according to the Digit Press lists that I downloaded... I forget where tho; something to do with a bunny or something.

[Orion Pimpdaddy]

Different systems should have different rules if you ask me.

You did the right thing with the 2600 games. Those M-Network games don't stack well and stick out like sore thumbs. The 2600 games had so many designs, they don't look good together.

Anyway, I'm collecting Genesis games and I like to sort them by genre. All the shooters in the same place, and all the RPGs in another, etc. In each genre, they are alphabetical. It makes it easier to find what I'm in the mood for. Sometimes I just want to shoot a bunch of stuff, so I know to go to the right side of the shelf.

Game with no end labels are the problem I have. I have started buying a few N64 games, but on the shelf they look like a stack of blank cartridges. I can't tell what games they are until I hold each one up to my face. Same with the 5200 ...

[tubeway]

Does anyone go the High Fidelity (film/novel) route and sort them chronologically, according to when they bought the game?

[calthaer]

Collation settings are a very important consideration when installing a new instance of SQL Server. My preferred collation is SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS, which is case sensitive and accent sensitive. This is how things should be ordered.

[crazyjackcsa]

Does anyone go the High Fidelity (film/novel) route and sort them chronologically, according to when they bought the game?

I go chronologically by system. It gets harder for older systems, because you my only have the month a game was released. If that's the case, I then go chronologically by time of purchase.

I really like Chronologically because when I was younger, my newer games were the ones I played most often, and they were right at the "front" of the stack. And you can see how games stack up against others released around the same time. An example would be Vectorman vs. Sonic 3 vs Earthworm Jim.

[Tetsu]

Does anyone go the High Fidelity (film/novel) route and sort them chronologically, according to when they bought the game?

I think he did it "autobiographically", not chronologically (although the the two are very closely related). I use a relational database-type sorting system:

-by genre
-by sequel
-by developer
-by similar genre


This gives me "chunks" or "batches" of similar games, all the Guilty Gear games together, for example, right next to the Street Fighter Games, next to the Capcom Classics Collections, next to the Midway Arcade Treasures, etc.