My standard answer when I was growing up was always: Mario, Metroid, Starfox and Zelda.
If I were to look right now, there's only one missing; that would be Starfox.
Mario = New Super Mario Bros. 2 (3DS)
Metroid = Metroid (NES), Metroid 2 (GB)
Zelda = The Legend of Zelda (NES)
These days, I try not to hold on to specific games as much as always having certain genres represented. For example:
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Rogue Games: Etrian Mystery Dungeon (3DS)
Loot Games: Diablo 3, Borderlands: The Handsome Collection (PS4)
Puzzle: Puzzle and Dragons (3DS)
RPG: XenoBlade Chronicles, etc.
Dungeon Crawler: Etrian Odyssey IV (3DS)
Strategy: Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (DS)
Stealth: The Last of Us (PS4)
Fighting: Mortal Kombat X (PS4), Street Fighter 4 (PS4)
Hardcore: Dark Souls 2, Mega Man Zero Collection (DS)
Open Worlds: Arkham Knight, The Witcher 3 (PS4)
Unique: The World Ends with You, Knights in the Nightmare (DS)
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Now, you could say "That's all the genres, anyway!" But, it's not really. Don't care about:
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Sports: Nope!
Racing: Nope!
Styish Action: Not really!
Tower Defense: Nah!
Simulation: Have to be in the mood!
Real Time Strategy: I prefer turn-based!
FPS: For the most part, Nope! I enjoy Borderlands more for the Loot! than the shooting!
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Probably Metroid Prime. It's a game I revisit once a year.
For me it's a little bit of both:
Dragon Quest: Always have to have one around, even if I don't play it. Currently, DQ 8 and 3 are sitting in my collection.
Gravity Based Puzzle games: Something like Tetris or Puyo Pop. Right now I have Tetris, Yoshi, and Dr. Luigi.
Street Fighter: No other fighting game gets the job done like Street Fighter. And frankly I'm too old to learn move sets for any other. Right now I have SF4: Arcade, SF3: Third Strike, and SSFII.
Harvest Moon: The series has officially gone to shit, but that doesn't stop me from liking the old ones. Still have HM (SNES), HM Back to Nature (PS1), HM Magic Melody (Wii version)
I think I only have the latest Rune Factory on my 3DS, but I need to be in the "sim" mood to play it!
Don't you now have a large never changing digital library?
Nope. Thanks to NIntendo's policy of making it next to impossible to transfer games from one system to another, I have very few digital games on my NEW Nintendo systems and currently no Wii at all. 
phantom_leo said:Nope. Thanks to NIntendo's policy of making it next to impossible to transfer games from one system to another, I have very few digital games on my NEW Nintendo systems and currently no Wii at all.
you do know they will do system to system transfers though right? admittedly it is a pain in the butt because you have to have both systems in your position at the time, and you may have to call customer service to do it, but it can be done and in the long run it's really not that terrible of a process.
For the Wii U, you need some kind of SD Card and a computer to do some kind of transfer... it's either that or the 3DS... Go from SD to micro SD....
For the New 3DS you have to unscrew the backing of the system, which I'm not crazy about doing...
They make it annoying so you just give up and rebuy everything again. Which I won't do again!
If I can't have Super Metroid anymore, I'll settle for Bloodstained or XeoDrifter or Axiom Verge. If Nintendo makes it difficult to keep their games, I'll just buy someone else's! You can transfer any PSN game from any PS to any PS without all the fuss.
And yes you can transfer Ps games from one another, but that doesn't help with PS3 to PS4.
STOP CORRECTING ME, PEASANT!!
OFF WITH HIS HEAD!!
I'll have to appoint a Royal Game Transferer when I ascend to Lordship!
OFF WITH HIS HEAD ANYWAY!!
I always end up with a WWF/WWE game on every console that isn't handheld: PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, Xbox, Xbox 360, N64. None on the Wii though.
By Miu Watanabe.
Yeah, you are right Leo, question does not compute.
At least now I have come off my 'collector' frame of thinking where I thought it was required to buy anything that was:
- a franchise (must own all .hack games becasue there are four)
- anything commercially popular (must own every game that anyone who rocks up to my house wants to play).
- anything critically popular (must own anything the critics say is worthy)
- quirky/jp games
- low production runs
- norm-licensed (garfield, barbie etc...)
Now I just buy games I know I will play to completion.
I'm really not a collector, although I like buying a lot of digital stuff.
I tend to trade in my systems, so I traded in games back when I was a kid too. Although I have been humoring the idea of buying a Retron and hunting down some Snes/genesis stuff. Maybe even some Nes. Don't really care to hunt down 64 stuff though, and realistically emulation covers me whenever I want to go back to a gen 6 golden oldie. Realistically emulation covers a lot of my needs in that regard.
I got the idea for this topic from an old EBGames manager I used to know. As long as he had "a" shooter, or "a" racing game he was satisfied. He claimed he didn't like gaming all that much and didn't want to own too many games, so "a" representative from a genre was enough for him! I guess I would say I am sort of like him, but I --LOVE-- gaming, I just don't like owning a lot of anything at once.
I would say I would make a topic asking the "Best Representative from Every Genre" but I think I tried already and there were way too many and some games were pretty hard to classify. If someone wanted to try again, that would be great, but it's not so clear cut and easy to do!
Prolly doesn't apply to Aspro and maybe Vader because they have a fixed, unchanging collection --BUT-- what game MUST be present in your collections for them to be balanced properly? If not a specific game, what game series or specific genre of game MUST you have represented?