I think I bought more games this year than I ever have previously. The CLZ Games app lets me sort and filter by a number of fields, and I discovered one of them is "Year Added" meaning the year I added the game into the database. I got the app last year, so there are a ton of 2022 entries obviously, but I was a little shocked to see my 2023 number...
494 games - and with Christmas plus a few incoming in the mail, it seems likely that by the end of the year i will have added over 500 games to my collection in one year.
I would say that's probably way too many, even with running game rooms at multiple conventions this year.
But some highlights!
On the US side of things...
Throughout the year I picked up a bunch of cheapy NES games to fill out the convention library. Classics like Kung Fu, Skate or Die, Blades of Steel, Pro Wrestling, Legendary Wings, Micro Machines, Marble Madness, Gyruss, and Base Wars to name a few. Stuff that isn't on the NES Mini and stuff that either plays 2 player simo or is relatively quick to play. Overall ended up with 43 NES pickups for the year.
The Genesis Mini 1 and 2 have an incredible selection of games between the two of them, but there were also several physical games I picked up, including Urban Strike, Bubsy, the James Pond Trilogy, Cool Spot and a few others. We have an AtGames Genesis that we also take to conventions for playing cart based games. Sound is a little wonky but in a loud convention hall that doesn't matter so much.
Picked up all the new Evercade carts for the year of course.
In September, a friend dug up her old Atari 2600 so I bought that from her with all her games. So that was kind of fun. Will probably upgrade to a Retron 77 at some point in the future. Thr Atari 2600+ is cool too, but after watching videos on both, I'm more inclined to go for the Retron.
This year is also the first year in a long time that I had the ability to play Turbografx games so naturally I balked at the prices of most of them, and bought Keith courage, Final Lap Twin, and Tricky Kick. Will rely on the PCE Mini for most of my Turbo fix.
My DS and 3DS buying spree of previous years slowed to a crawl this year, with only 13 games between the two systems.
Between PS4/5 and Xbox One/Series X, I got about 20 games. Most of them used or heavily discounted. WRC23 and Street Fighter 6 are the only ones I got at launch.
Bought most of my current-gen games on Switch, including staples like Kirby, Metroid, and Mario of course but also stuff like Fashion Dreamer, Boulder Dash Ultimate Collection, and Rhapsody Marl Kingdom Chronicles. 26 games total for switch.
I picked up 2 Wii games this year, both of them Prince of Persia.
The biggest surprise was how many PS1 games I picked up this year. Satan gave me Bubsy 3D, but as for games I willingly bought myself, I added some standards like Tony Hawk 2, Twisted Metal 2, Jet Moto, and Wipeout 3. A few off the beaten path additions include Spider, Jupiter Strike, RC de Go, One Piece Mansion, and the much anticipated Swagman.
On the import side of things...
I rekindled my love of the Touhou series and picked up all of thr official mainline releases for PC. 24 games. I also picked up one of the Densha de D games, which is a hilarious parody of Initial D, but instead of drama around drifting cars around mountain roads, you are now drifting TRAINS. It's mad and it's amazing.
I got 10 new Famicom games this year including Booby Kids (teehee), Nuts and Milk (giggle), Donald Land, Rampart, and Route 16 Turbo.
Picked up a crapton of Beatmania games on PS1/2 plus the appropriate controllers.
I got 32 DS games, of which only 20 were Mahjong games.
Picked up 2 Import PS4 games, Parappa and Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection.
Got 8 switch imports, from the Toaplan Arcade Garage games to River City Girls 1&2 to Tears of the Kingdom because someone here had it way cheap.
And that isn't even counting the plethora of digital games I bought... those are tougher to count since this year I also added the individual games on all thr Mini systems I own so it throws off the total.
I did buy 11 new C64 games digitally from itch.io though this year. So that was cool. Not a system I have a whole lot of nostalgia for personally (the only c64 game I remember playing as a lad is Silicon Warrior) but I did play a lot of EGA graphics DOS PC games so I have nostalgia for the aesthetic. C64 is still a pretty big scene nowadays with dozens of new releases every year (not bad for a system that predates the Famicom)
I seriously need to slow down next year.
