There's a difference between collecting/playing and just collecting. Especially that I'm an artwork guy, I like the classic artwork and it pains me to see that games don't have manuals anymore and even before they stopped making them... the art and manuals lacked creativity. I've been selling my loose NES games lately, but I've been keeping the manuals. I have a bunch of everdrives or their equivalent for many of my systems. However, you get "game overlord", since there's sooo many to play or choose from. I like the days where you had to pay $60 for a NES game and you played the shit out of it, because you didn't have $60 to buy another one and some asshole at Blockbuster kept the game you wanted for longer than his 5 days LOL. The simple times before I had expendable income.
It's the same reason, why I like buying dvds/blu-rays, instead of just playing a movie from the hard drive. I have my fairshare of AVI, MKV's ,etc. but when you can buy a movie on Blu-Ray for $4-$7, instead of $19.99 or more, you bet you ass if I like the movie, I'll be picking it up.
Don't be grumpy EG, come to the darkside.
Edit: I had my Wii filled with emulators, Wii Pak games, etc. It wasn't the same. Emulation sucks... especially slowdown. I was hoping the retropie would be great, but it's SNES emulation is garbage (unless someone can point me in the direction of a better emulator).