Being a longtime video game enthusiast and a devout Nintendo fan, I’ve become accustomed to hearing my fellow gamers bemoan a lack of new games to play. Especially during the days of the N64, the GameCube, even the Wii, and most definitely the Wii U, when third-party support for Nintendo consoles was almost nonexistent, the general outcry was, “Where are all the games?!”

We eagerly anticipated the release (or even just the reveal) of the next Zelda, the next Mario, the next—godforbid—Metroid, with baited breath. The constant refrain, “We want new games, and we want them now!”

These days however, circumstances are considerably different. With the phenomenal success of the Switch, Nintendo console fans are spoiled for choice. It seems like absolutely everything—from Nintendo classics new & old, to third-party behemoths like Doom and The Witcher, to niche indie titles—everything is coming to Switch. So even if the Switch was your sole game console, options abound.

And yet, even in this time of plenty, a familiar war cry sounds from certain corners of the interwebs: “We want new games, and we want them now!” It seems that some players are still itching for something to play.

And, well...I genuinely do not understand that. Because I’m finding I have the exact opposite problem.

For example: Do you ever have trouble deciding what video game to play right now? When you sit down to play some games, do you find yourself paralyzed the sheer number of games at your disposal? And when you do finally pick something, do you ever find it difficult to simply enjoy one game because so many other titles are vying for your immediate attention?

Is this just me? Or just me and my brothers? I know it can’t just be us….

In fact, I recently came across this video of gaming handheld YouTuber Taki discussing a similar topic. He calls this phenomenon the “Illusion of Choice”, and recommends playing a GBA SP (the AGS 101) for the benefit of limiting the games you have to choose from at a given time. Personally, I see nothing illusory about the sheer number of options gamers have these days. It’s simply a matter of overwhelming choice not being a wholly positive thing.

The problem of overabundance has been commonplace in PC gaming for years now. Apparently I have 206 games in my Steam library (thanks Humble Bundle!), but I’ve only played a handful of them, like even one time. This discrepancy then gets exacerbated by the fact that I don’t currently have a Windows machine to play games on, but I still snatch up games now and again. One day I’ll have a gaming PC, I tell myself.

With digital distribution on consoles now, Steam isn’t the only video game library that’s grown bloated and unwieldy. My PSN library at last count is up to at least 140 games. The majority of these (80+) come from my annual PS Plus subscription, which divvies out a few “free” games each month. That’s obviously way more gigs than my merger PS4 harddrive could hope to accommodate, but it’s also loads of games which I simply will never, ever find the time to play.

And then there’s Switch, the platform which gives me the most consistent analysis paralysis these days. By my most recent count, I have 77 games for Nintendo Switch. Some of these I even have the physical cartridge for, forcing me to decide on one game cart to have loaded at a time. Compared to Steam and PSN, this doesn’t sound too overwhelming. However, many of the games in my Switch library are actually compilations; collections of other complete games.

The most obvious collections are the Switch Online service’s NES and SNES apps, which currently contain 72 and 42 games respectively. Then there’s the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection (12 games), Capcom Beat’Em Up Bundle (7 games), Mega Man Legacy Collection (6), Mega Man X Legacy Collection (4), and Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection (7). There are small collections like Super Mario 3D All-Stars (3) and Collection of Mana (3), medium collections like the Namco Museum (12), and huge collections like Sega Genesis Classics (50+ games).

Plus, if we wanted to get technical about it, Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove contains five games, OlliOlli: Switch Stance has two, and Capcom Arcade Stadium is only two games for me right now, but actually maxes out at 32 titles.

So depending how you count it, when I pick up my Nintendo Switch, I have either 77 or 293 individual games to choose from. That’s…(sigh)...that's just too many games….

And don’t even get me started on all the classic video games I’ve amassed over the years, or the staggering number of arcade/console/handheld titles I can emulate on a laptop or a Raspberry Pi. It’s legitimately overwhelming!

This is something the Kelleher Brothers end up discussing often. As new, cool-looking games are revealed, it’s sometimes hard to us find any enthusiasm for them, because we can’t find the time to play the games we already have. Which isn’t to say that the current situation is completely a bad thing.

When my friends discover a box of old Nintendo stuff, they’ll often give it to me.

It goes without saying that an overabundance of games one actually wants to play is a damn good problem to have. And I especially love the explosion of indie games we’ve seen in the past few years. The indie wave has brought so many new and diverse voices to the fore, it’s truly a wonderful thing. I’ve been so impressed, and often inspired, by the likes of Celeste, Spelunky, and A Short Hike among others; I feel compelled to write about indie titles more and more these days.

Thus today finds me looking at the Spring Indie World Sale on Nintendo’s website, feeling genuinely tempted by a few choice deals. Somehow, the impulse to collect more & more & more games still overcomes me. This insatiable lust to hoard media—even if it’s merely digital, not physical copies—is unrelenting. But this compulsion only serves to widen the gap between what I own and what I will actually ever play.

The human attention span is a finite resource. My focus can only really be directed at one thing at a time. Our lifespans too, are similarly limited. So when I die, let it be written:

He owned millions of games, yet played very few.
Spent most of his time on Dr. Mario too.