I was watching some YouTube, trying to find some forgotten gems from retro systems. I ran into one about the Jaguar and decided to watch it.
Well, the fellow said a lot of the games were great, and I was kind of curious about that because I don't think it's controversial to say there's only a handful of decent games on the Jag, but this fellow was rating everything highly.
Later on I sat down to think about it and I realized something... after every game the fellow would say "Oh, and you can get it for about $XX.XX."
At that point the light-bulb went off and I realized this fellow is probably deriving enjoyment from collecting the Jaguar games, not playing them. To him, if he buys a game, plays it for a few minutes to make sure it works, it's probably a winner for him.
For me, who is getting Jaguar games from uhhhh a friend, I don't care about collecting them, I just want some fun stuff to play.
Anyway, I learned my lesson: I'll believe non-collectors' opinions more than collectors because they are mostly concerned with gameplay instead of how it looks on the shelf, or how rare and difficult it was to acquire.
P.S. I don't know how "hot" of a take this is, but I figure it'll probably hurt the feelings of collectors, so that's why I prefixed it.
I'd go even further - get them from people who emulatecthe games rather than people who play them on (or merely buy them for) the original hardware.
People who emulate retro games are demonstrably SOLELY interested in playing the games, without any of the collector cachet getting in the way.
Great point!