On CQ Podcast #294 Johnny and I each created an ideal collection of just 100 video games. This isn’t “The most collectible 100 video games”. If you sorted all video game sales by highest price you’d have things like the Nintendo Playstation or sealed Clu Clu Lands on NES which I don’t personally care about.
An ideal collection to me is a mix of historic relevance, iconic rarities, and my personal taste.
It’s not the most important 100 games, the rarest 100 games, or most nostalgic games. It’s somewhere in the middle.
I’m more a pinball player than an arcade player, but I think I’d slice out a small percentage of the 100 to a little historical arcade.
The yellow cabinet is iconic and Pong represents the start of an era. It’s between this and Computer Space for the first slot, but I went with Pong for the name recognition.
Space Invaders is kind of boring, but at least the cabinet looks rad. It’s here for its historical importance.
I don’t even like maze games. This is purely here for historical relevance.
Donkey Kong is one of the most important, influential games ever and of course the origin of Mario. It’s maybe even the first major game to tell a complete narrative. I’d get one of the rare 2000 red cabinets converted from a Radar Scope (the vast majority of which are now gone).
Defender is a personal golden age pick. I flip flopped between Defender and Robotron 2084. It represents skill-based gameplay that a more serious player gravitated to.
SF2 scores high for historical importance and high skill ceiling. It both solidified the fighting genre and represents the 90s arcade revival.
The two OutRun games are my picks for both the greatest classic and modern arcade games. Whether you’re good or bad you get a solid 5 minute experience for your credit, no more, no less. It doesn’t waste your time, it lets you adjust difficulty on the fly, and there’s plenty of different high scores to chase. Features like force feedback and the shaking cabinet are things you don’t get at home. This is what arcade games should be.
I specifically don’t want the OutRun deluxe motion cabinet which is much harder to play.
Nintendo rarities are overrated. There are a lot of very rare, insignificant contest prizes and unlicensed trash games. Still, I grew up collecting in an era where NES was the end all, be all. Having a shelf of the rarest Nintendo games would make me feel like I won collecting.
Stadium Events is the rarest game usually considered in the US licensed set. There is an even rarer 5-screw variant of Stadium Events, so I’d want one of those.
NWC gray is from the actual NWC competition, so you need one of those. It seems like the kind of thing you’re not supposed to have because they were probably stolen or given away by people who didn’t own them. NWC gold is a magazine contest prize limited to merely 26. Arguably, NWC Gold is the rarest game in the US licensed set since it was technically released to the public, although collectors like to slice out set pieces that are too hard to own.
Myriad 6-in-1 is a rare publisher variant with fewer than 1000 copies produced. It’s the rarer version of the used-to-be-rare Caltron 6-in-1, so it felt doubly rare back in the day.
Cheetahmen II was never released but 1500 copies were found in a warehouse in Florida.
Charumera Zelda is a limited to 1500 contest prize version of the original TLOZ. On a rarity and significance scale it is very hard to beat.
The Golf Champion’s Course disk is arguably the rarest Nintendo game ever made, limited to 100 copies. It’s the grand prize of Nintendo’s first ever contest and the game takes place on a very difficult course.
Mah Jong is this weird mythically rare Hong Kong exclusive and arguably the rarest licensed NES game.
Papillon Gals is perhaps the rarest unlicensed NES game “released” in the US, and the Sachen game most likely to be missing from Sachen lists. Very few people care about this but I’ve always thought it was a cool outlier. It’s a porn version of Galactic Crusader!
Eight gold copies of Rockman 4 were given to art contest prize winners who designed that game’s Robot Masters. This is essentially the “Pikachu Illustrator” of video games, although much less prominent as a collectible because top collectibles are all fake and determined by hype. It is unlikely anyone outside Japan has ever owned one.
The first ever sold physical NES homebrew, limited to 24 copies. The NES has the most interesting life of any console due to the rich licensed, unlicensed, pirate, and ongoing history. This is emblematic of the rebirth of NES after its retail death.
Atari has lots of rare “grail” type stuff, but I spent a significant chunk of my list on Nintendo rarities, so I’m only hitting my highlights here.
One of the coolest competition cartridges ever because it wasn’t intended to be part of the competition. Atlantis II had to be made because Atlantis was too easy. I love the story! It’s unknown how many were produced but guesses are low double digits produced.
I don’t care about Gamma Attack. It’s just a rare mail order exclusive. But there’s only 2 known copies and it’s often considered “the rarest ever video game”. And if I have a collection of anything I want, I want to be the Gamma Attack guy.
A promotional hack of Spacer Invaders limited to 125 copies only given to Coke executives who would’ve seen it as a kid’s toy. Such a unique way for a rare game to be distributed!
Potentially the first tactical RPG and potentially the rarest video game ever? (at least that’s how the current owner is marketing it since there’s only one known copy). I personally dumped and made a Youtube video on this previously lost game and I think it’s super rad in the way all pre-Ultima/Wizardry RPGs are.
This was a giveaway at E3 1998 limited to around 40-50 copies. It’s just a briefcase with a copy of the game and a gold spray-painted GunCon. As a teenager for some reason I thought this was the coolest thing you could possibly own, probably because it frequently came up as a top rarity on forums like DigitPress. I still want one.
A big dumb modern collectors edition notable for 2 reasons. One, Uncharted 2 is one of the best games of the era. Two, it’s actually rare with only 250 copies made. I played Playstation Home for hours back in the day trying to win one of these.
These are games I’m personally attached to that I suspect wouldn’t show up on similar lists.
The best action game. You get a gigantic sword, the power-ups and enemies are perfectly placed, and the music and graphics are the best on NES. I can’t stand modern ninja games that have 3 hours of boring ramp-up before the game gets fun.
I want to pick RCT1 since it’s more historically interesting, but the improvements of RCT2 (and the ongoing development of OpenRCT2) make it obsolete. It’s not even a super good game because it’s super exploitable, but it is an amazing sandbox.
The game that taught me why quest markers are bad. The contrast between discovering Vvardenfell in this game and being guided through Cyrodiil on rails in Oblivion is perhaps the single biggest thing that defined my gaming tastes. I don’t think there’s a better RPG.
I guess I’d get a sealed Made in Japan copy. This game is better than Super Metroid. Super Metroid. There aren’t many console games past 2000 I’d put on this list.
The only CRPG I’d say has a perfect co-op campaign, down to both players being main story characters rather than Player 2 being a guy in Player 1’s party. This game has ZERO filler! Every encounter is unique! This Kickstarter-exclusive version (limited to 200) doesn’t even have a copy of the game. It’s a digital download inside this stupid big box, and I’d still put this in my top 100!
The best platform game of all time and high up on my list of games I’d actually play forever. The combination of tech and community creativity in this game is genuinely unbelievable. There are multiple entire genres of games contained within.
A punch tape copy of Spacewar! for the PDP-1 came up a couple years ago from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s collection. It’s the most I ever bid on any video game and I lost. Spacewar! isn’t the first video game, but it’s maybe the most significant early video game and potentially the earliest video game media you can physically own at all.
Magnavox Odyssey is the biggest gap in most people’s video game collection. It’s the first console! There’s so much stuff in the box! It’s such a piece of history! It’s so 1970s! And, man, video game collectors do not care about this for some reason.
Akalabeth is one of the earliest RPGs you can own at all and happens to be the foundation of one of the greatest and most influential franchises ever. The first edition is extremely rare, being sold by Richard Garriott himself while he worked at a store called Computerland. It’s considered the holy grail of computer games. Most (all?) known copies today were assembled with NOS parts and given out by Garriott over the years.
This is an interesting one! When Zork was first developed in the 70s it could played by anyone with access to the MIT PDP-10 it was running on over ARPANET. Personal Software published the first home computer version of Zork for the TRS-80, but they didn’t want to publish a PDP-11 mainframe version. Infocom advertised the PDP-11 version in user groups and sold “about 20 copies”, none of which are known to exist today. However, one manual does exist! So wishful thinking, I want a PDP-11 copy of Zork, but if all the copies are gone I want the one remaining manual!
The first graphical adventure game, and also kind of computer gaming grail in general since it’s the first Sierra (On-Line Software) game as well. The first edition is the baggie release with the blue card, and make sure the “48 K REQ” text in the top right is hand-written.
Only a few games get to be the namesake of entire genres, and games that do name genres (like Doom Clones) sometimes fall off. Roguelike has stuck around. Is it fair that we don’t call the genre Beneath-Apple-Manor-likes? No, it isn’t. Both games have rare first editions. I want both. But I’m only picking one and it’s Rogue. The striking black and red first edition DOS version is both rad and rare.
Almost every RPG, Eastern and Western, can trace its roots through Wizardry. The genre is also deeply tied to 1970s PLATO network games, but I can’t own those so they don’t count. The Apple II first edition has a copyright misprint on the box where Robert Woodhead’s name was replaced by Sir Tech Software and an errata stamp on the inside of the box.
Almost every RPG, Eastern and Western, can trace its roots through Ultima. The genre is also deeply tied to 1970s Dungeons and Dragons, but that’s not a video game so it doesn’t count. The Apple II first edition was published by California Pacific Computers in a giant zip-loc baggie.
The MSX2 original is Hideo Kojima’s first game, the first game in the franchise, and the first stealth game that matters (sorry 1979’s Shoplifting Boy). Out of 100 mere games to collect, I have 3 Metal Gear games. It’s safe to say I’m a big fan.
Alright, one of two things is going to make my list. Either it’s John Madden Football, the 1988 Apple II game that’s the uncommon-ish first entry in one of the biggest sports franchises ever, or John Madden Football, the arcade-style Genesis game that actually defined all sports games going forward. I only get excited when I see the Apple game so that’s the one I want in my collection.
It’s the foundational simulation and management game. The Amiga and Macintosh versions were the very first releases. You want the Godzilla art on the front and a black and white Mac screenshot on the back of the box. You could also get the Commodore 64 v1.0 version which was technically the first version in development but released commercially very shortly afterwards.
You can’t have a fun collection without some quirky picks. Windows 3.0 was the introduction of Solitaire. The Entertainment pack was the introduction of Minesweeper. Games built into your operating system! This is the real foundation of casual gaming, and you can own complete in box copies of this stuff!
My favorite childhood adventure game is the never-discussed Dark Side of the Moon from Southpeak Interactive. I wouldn’t call that game very collectible. Fortunately for everyone else, everyone loves TSOMI and it is very collectible. The first release is the 5.25” floppy IBM PC release. Look for the beige “IBM 16 Color” box on the bottom right of the cover.
I am a Civ 4 guy, but in terms of collectibility I think Civ 1 is it for the 4X genre. I could put some hipster pick like the first commercial port of Empire (which I do have kicking around my collection) but I’m trying to take this list seriously.
UU is probably the most ahead of its time video game ever created. Most RPGs can trace their roots back through Ultima. Most first person video games can trace their roots through Ultima Underworld, let alone that it invented immersive sims and first person RPGs as we know them today. It’s one of the most key, influential games in a series full of key influential games. It easily makes this list.
Myst was, somehow, the bestselling game ever for a while. I’ve played the first three Myst games and while Riven is the standout, all of them are just kind of… fine. The art, the sounds, and the vibes of Myst are outstanding. I wish the puzzles excited me as much as I know the puzzle designers desperately want them to. The first edition is the Macintosh version with the filmstrip sticker on the top left on the box.
This might be the #1 game on this entire list. Not only is Doom influential and overall rad, it’s still fun to play today, has an endless amount of content, a speedrunning scene, and it’s still a relevant franchise. The original release was only sold via mail order and while it isn’t super rare, it’s not as common as most influential games are. The v1.1 floppy release is the version to have. Ideally the 5.25” disk version which isn’t any earlier, but is rarer!
Quake has the coolest style of any video game. Industrial, medieval gothic, Lovecraftian cosmic fantasy. For the life of me I’ll never understand how this franchise turned into a generic boring space marine game. The first release has “Full registered version” on the bottom left of the box and has a jewel case instead of a digipak. Careful, there are similar looking jewel cases from anthology and foreign versions of the game!
Alright, technically the first release of Tomb Raider was the European Sega Saturn release. I’m a stickler for technicalities like this. I love having real first releases. There is no f’in way if my collection is limited to 100 games, I’m getting the stupid, crappy European cardboard longbox Sega Saturn version of Tomb Raider. I’m getting the PC version with the trapezoid box. The early prints had circular stickers sealing it instead of square ones.
I’m going to the original country for this one. I want the UK PC Collector’s Edition. Usually I don’t go for Collector’s Editions but this one is the same size as the regular copy and it’s neat that it only came out in the game’s home country. If you want an early US release, you want the ASC Games release that doesn’t have the “Original and Uncensored” yellow text on it.
The bedrock of a certain kind of ARPG and ironically also a game that introduced loot mechanics that were later twisted into addicting traps that I personally hate now. But for a few years this genre was great before games were intentionally designed to ruin your life. Looking at you Path of Exile. The early PC releases don’t have a Game of the Year starflash on the box.
An easy pick for the top 10. People see games as a narrative medium now and Half-Life was the first game that told a worthwhile narrative through gameplay itself. No cut-scenes, no text boxes. I don’t understand how we got it so right in 1998, and now video games are so bogged down by endless, boring narratives. The first release has the orange gatefold box and if you’re extremely picky it has circular stickers instead of rectangular ones.
There are two RTSs that matter. Starcraft and Starcraft 2. I won’t accept Warcraft II as an answer. Starcraft surpassed it in every single way. The early stuff like Dune II and Herzog Zwei is neat but come on. Starcraft is the one. OK, Age of Empires 2 is the other one but it got cut from the list. I’d get one of the three big box collector’s editions. Probably Terran because Terran is OP.
One of those games where I wonder if I’m making up how influential it is because no one these days talks about TRIBES. The technical floaty jetpack movement can be seen in games like Rocket League and Fortnite today. The huge outdoor maps felt so different from Quake or Unreal Tournament. The mod TRIBES RPG was an incredible, wacky, pseudo-MMORPG built on top of an FPS that I played for hours as a kid who couldn’t afford Everquest or UO. My online handle DefaultGen started from two of my TRIBES RPG characters Default and Genesis! There is an incredibly rare tall box release that wasn’t published by Sierra, but I’ve forgotten everything about it and don’t have a picture anymore.
This is historical vs. better game pick. UT99 is the better and more nostalgic game, but Unreal is not just the foundation of the franchise, but Unreal Engine in general. It’s as much an FPS pick as it is a gaming industry pick. Plus the original windowbox box for Unreal is rad.
I considered Little Computer People as the genre progenitor for the cozy life sim slot, but The Sims is clearly way more influential. The original release is the big box with no GOTY or hype stickers.
I’m not going to lie, I don’t actually know what the retail version of CS is. I played CS 1.6 as a free mod for Half-Life. Is this the same thing packaged as its own game? Part of me has always thought this is a weird collectible because I feel like most people played the mod, not a standalone retail release.
There’s a hipster part of me that wishes I could slot Brigand Oaxaca into this immersive sim slot, but alas there’s no physical release. Deus Ex is the GOAT. Of course I’d get the big box PC release.
Next to Runescape, this is the game I have wasted the most hours of my life on. I guess I’d get the not-very-rare Collector’s Edition, limited to 70,000, even though it comes in an inconveniently oversized box.
Do I care enough about Call of Duty as a franchise for it to make the top 100? I guess so. Call of Duty 4 might be the most influential, but it’s hard to resist just picking the first and calling it a day. I’d get the true big box release exclusive to Sam’s Club.
Between UO, Everquest, and WOW, I think WOW obviously wins for the MMO slot. The original Collector’s Edition has always been a relatively big ticket collectible PC game as well. If there was somehow a physical Runescape, I’d swap that into this slot in a second.
This is the original release of both Portal and Team Fortress 2. The PC version comes in either an orange or black box. I assume the black box is first based on RP concept art but I don’t actually know.
Minecraft has always been a digital-only game on PC. If you’re looking for an early physical collectible you have 3 real options: The early print gift card for the original Minecraft Java version, the PC Gamer beta demo from June 2011, or the first print of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Version. The Xbox Minecraft port never felt like the “real game” to me, so I like the first two as collectibles. An early gift card with the Steve art and orange text is hard to track down!
Starcraft 2 is the best RTS that will ever exist and the only esport I ever seriously followed. It’s an unpopular genre and very few games could revive it. If a Starcraft 3 ever existed, Activision-f’in-Blizzard in the modern era would certainly make it a mess, so this is what we got. I’d get one of those collector’s editions with all the developer signatures on the box.
One of the newest games on the list just because I think it’s a fine choice for the greatest game of all time. I’d get the standalone PC DVD case release.
The most influential game of all time, the game that saved the industry, etc. The Famicom version is first. You have to have it. The original release has no UPC on the back of the box, no locking tabs on the box, and comes with an errata insert correcting a minor error in the manual.
Only 3 games are greedy enough to take up two slots in my 100 game collection: Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, and Nintendo World Championships. SMB is the only one where both versions are just regular retail copies of the game. It’s important enough that I refuse to decide between the Japanese and US version of the game. I’d get a 1985 release which came with a matte Nintendo sticker on the box, misprinted 4-digit PO Box on the rear of the manual, TM after Bros on the end label, and 1985 copyright date on the poster. There’s a CIB copy with an in-tact sticker that sold for around $80,000. I’d get that copy, which I’d put as one of the very top games you could possibly own.
Not the first platform-adventure game, but the landmark entry in the genre. It’s a good thing that genre doesn’t have a much, much stupider name. It’s also a big deal for early female protagonists. I’d get an early US variant with a hangtab box.
Iconic game and Tyson’s name attached to it makes it a huge sports collectible. It edges out other NES GOATs like Contra for that reason. I’d get the original NES release with the white bullets on the box.
The sealed market for Mega Man 1 is nuts. People are out here spending $100,000 on Mega Man, a sort of B-tier video game franchise where no one even really likes the first game. The original is more collectible and important than the others though, and yes I’m counting the rare variants of MM2 and MM3 in that calculation. I’d get the early misprint Dr. Wright version.
Classic horror platformer. Almost as good as Ninja Gaiden even. I’d get an early US print with a hangtab box.
A first print Zelda is the best sealed NES game you can own. The available sealed Super Mario Bros. are all later prints and to me it feels dumb to spend house-money on the second best thing. You’re looking for a TM after “Nintendo Entertainment System” on the bottom of the box for a first print.
The version of Tetris to have should be some Elektronika 60 disk from the Soviet Union or the first commercial PC release from Spectrum Holobyte or the Game Boy version that blew up both the game and handheld gaming in general. But I’m going with the NES version. This is the most competitive version still played in the Classic Tetris World Championships. That kind of continued community support means a lot for the overall legacy of a game to me.
I’m just getting both DW1 and FF1 on the list. Yeah, Dragon Quest came first and set the prototype for console JRPGs, but also… it’s Final Fantasy. They’re both individually huge games and franchises.
I seriously considered cutting SMB3. It’s perhaps the greatest NES game. The thing is, not only does Super Mario Maker 2 make it obsolete, I think I like New Super Mario Bros U more than SMB3. I don’t know man. I just look for places in my life to tell people that NSMBU is better than SMB3. It’s still on the list and NSMBU isn’t, okay? The early print is the “Left Bros.” box.
It’s baffling to me that this isn’t seen as a straight up A-list, top shelf collectible game. It’s the first Mario Kart! #2 selling game on N64, #2 on Gamecube, #1 on Wii, #1 on Wii U, #1 on 3DS, #1 on Switch. It outsells Pokemon games… In the video game collecting canon though, Super Mario Kart just feels like “One of those 20 or so great SNES games everyone gets”. Some millennials would take Mario Kart 64 instead out of pure nostalgia! SMK is A-list.
Most SNES games sort of middle releases. The original games came out on NES, then some revolutionary version of it came out in 3D on N64/Gamecube, which leaves the SNES versions as mostly better versions of NES games. Super Mario World falls into that category for me and thus it normally wouldn’t make my 100 games to collect list. What’s interesting though is that SMW was packed in with every original Super Nintendo Super Set. The boxed release came out a year later around July 1992 when the Control Deck was released. That makes Super Mario World one of the rarest major Nintendo releases to own CIB. It’s certainly not rare, but the vast majority of copies sold were pack-ins. It’s like seeing a DVD case of Wii Sports. Who the hell didn’t get Wii Sports with their Wii?
In the initial “game draft” episode of Collector’s Quest, Johnny and I went back and forth picking games to build a perfect collection within a certain budget. Super Metroid was my #1 pick and it was going to be Johnny’s #1 pick before I took it from here. The first release has the green “Only For” text in the top right of the box.
Undertale is better than Earthbound. I was never fully an “Earthbound guy” as much as I appreciate unique games. But it’s iconic as a collectible so I want that big dumb box on my shelf.
Perhaps the “greatest” RPG in not just quality but reputation. It deserves its notoriety though. I’d get the Super Famicom V Jump version limited to 2000 copies.
Just stack all the Japanese gen 1 Pokemon games into a bigger rectangle then tape them together. I mean, they basically are all the same game. The early release of Red/Green has a bigger UPC in the white box on the pack. The early CoroCoro release of Pokemon Blue has no UPC on the back. I don’t know what the early print of Pokemon Yellow is. Who cares? To preserve the sanctity of the list, I’ll just buy Pokemon Red.
It’s my favorite game of all time and one of the most influential games of all time. Of course it’s in my collection.
A historic console FPS up there with Halo. The objective-based levels are perfect and it follows the movie unreasonably well, plus you’ve got that super high framerate multiplayer. I’d get an early black label copy without the GOTY badge on front.
This was my favorite game since I played it in 1998 for a long time. When I grew up, I found myself sitting down to replay through 120-star SM64 in one sitting in a way I couldn’t imagine doing with OOT though. I still love the game. I think it’s time for millennials to admit it’s perhaps not still the best game ever made.
The one barely makes the list. I considered putting Melee instead because it’s obviously the much more storied competitive game, but the first in a huge franchise is hard to resist.
This is a rare game on the list that I haven’t actually played! I’ve played a ton of Animal Crossing and its sequels, but owning the original N64 game feels more substantial as a collectible to represent the series. There are two variants of the original game: one with a memory card and one without a memory card. I would get the version without a memory card since it actually seems less common. It’s like the version for rich kids who already had a memory card!
E.T. didn’t cause the video game crash, but it is the symbol of the video game crash. And symbols have power! I’d specifically want one of the copies of E.T. dug up from the Alamogordo landfill.
Sonic 1 is the only Sonic game I’d care to collect in a top 100 and even then it feels out of obligation to have Sega mascot representation. Look for Printed in Japan on the back for an early release (according to a launch day receipt from my buddy Andrew!).
One of the few games ever brought into US Congress! And just slightly more significant than Night Trap! I’d get the Sega Genesis version. With no budget constraint it might make more sense to move this to the arcade section, but this is a case where I’d rather have the smaller, more convenient thing. I’d never play an MK1 cabinet.
A mega influential JRPG both in storytelling and showing what’s possible on CD-ROM media. Depending on your console of choice you probably thought this or OOT was the best game ever made in the 90s! The first print has “Realistic Violence” listed in the ESRB details.
I need to own a physical copy of this or else I wouldn’t be able to beat the game.
It’s interesting just how much survival horror is in the RE-predecessor Sweet Home on Famicom, but this is the real landmark horror game. I was personally a Silent Hill kid, but RE1 is the better collectible in the original longbox.
The platform adventure game that ultimately coined the name of the worst-named video game genre and shaped not only the rest of the Castlevania franchise, but 50% of all indie games ever to be released.
Haloooooooo. I’d get the Not For Resale gigantic air quotes “launch team exclusive” version. An identical NFR was also available as a console pack-in from Canada, so I’d need my copy to come with provenance from Bill Gates or someone so I know it’s the real deal.
I couldn’t comprehend that in GTA3 you could still go anywhere and steal whatever car you wanted in 3D. I was coming off the original Driver. This game changed everything about video games! I’d get the US PS2 release, which came out first.
Another game that named a genre and a game that takes a decidedly old-fashioned approach to game design that appreciate. I wish I had room for Dark Souls on the list as well. I’d get the deluxe limited edition with the art book shrink wrapped to it.
This game weaves through and wraps up one the most convoluted story in video game history. Video games are generally a poor storytelling medium full of fluff, tropes, bad pacing, and sub-par writing. MGS4 is unlike any other piece of media and it’s also kind of barely a video game, but it tells a story unlike anything else. I’d get a signed limited edition. Kojima did a signings on release in both NY and CA.
Lots of cuts were made to this list of course. That means Microsoft Windows 3.0 beat out ALTTP, BOTW, Braid, and GTA: SA. Sorry about that.
Many historical games were cut for a little more representation from newer games. A2-FS1, Pitfall!, Fallout, King’s Quest, and Prince of Persia didn’t make it.
Some rarities I couldn’t squeeze in are Mega Drive Tetris, NBA Elite 11, Air Raid, Campus Challenge/Powerfest, and other Famicom prize disks/carts.
I love rhythm games but all of them were cut for more significant games than Parappa, Guitar Hero, Beatmania IIDX, DDR, and Pump it Up.
There are also many significant recent games like League of Legends, Overwatch, PUBG, Fortnite, Rocket League, Roblox. If there are collectible artifacts for these newer largely-digital genres, I just don’t personally care.