Best methods to organize thousands of ROMs?

[Popcorn]

So, I've been spending time trying to configure Retropie so it's simple and easily playable on the GBZ, once that's finally built. One thing that is incredibly frustrating is trying to go through thousands of ROMs to find the ones that you want. It's going to be a nightmare pressing the down key for like 5 minutes until you reach Zelda.

I just wanted to start this thread to see what others are doing.

One thing that I noticed is that if there is a parent directory, you can drill down into them, and then it lists the subfolders and you can continue to traverse through the tree with as many children sub-folders as you want.

So, my thoughts on organizing them is to create an Alphabet index of folders on the very top level, and then have the relevant Rom folders inside those per letter(s). Inside those, I will also have container Rom folders to contain all the multiple rom versions of the same game. Usually just different international versions. I might even script through and delete the Roms in international languages that I would never use.

I'll probably write a script to automate all of this, and would release it here when that time comes.

But first, do you guys have any tips for organizing your Roms? Love to hear them!

[crispy_tofu]

My way of doing this is to have an alphabetised list like you said, but also have a 'commonly played' folder at the top to put in games that I play a lot.

[Deadtime]

I have the same as Tofu. I organize them like the Alphabet in a GB, GBA, NES, SNES order. Meaning they all have folder in folders. Haha. I usually have a rom favorite folder too. It usually had the more famous games in it like Mario, Kirby, Pokémon, Zelda but also games I really liked as a kid.

[jlane52641]

@Tofu - great idea!

I've been scouring "best of" lists and "greatest "X system" games ever" lists to try to winnow down the final list, keeping in mind that I can always add games later.

Been kinda fun rediscovering games I've long forgot about and even finding "new" ones I never knew about - like Mr. Gimmick and Earthbound for NES

[Popcorn]

Move me to the Retropie forum please!

[Robvp]

I'm probably not gonna put that many on it but they are alphabetized and you can browse by page with the L+R buttons instead of one by one with the dpad

[Fleder]

I haven't tried this, but is it possible to just create subfolder in the respective Emulators Rom folders without changing anything?
Like
SNES/Mario
SNES/Racing Games
NES/Mario
NES/Games with angry Carrots as Protagonists
GB/Tetris
GB/everything else

[Popcorn]

I haven't tried this, but is it possible to just create subfolder in the respective Emulators Rom folders without changing anything?
Like
SNES/Mario
SNES/Racing Games
NES/Mario
NES/Games with angry Carrots as Protagonists
GB/Tetris
GB/everything else

Yes, totally possible

[Fleder]

Yes, totally possible

Really good. Thanks!

[Skywalkez]

I was thinkink about this issue and found this...
Can you test if / Do you know if symlinks work?
I'd like to have my ROMS organized in many different ways such as:
Snes/adventure
Snes/rpg
Snes/<other categories>
Snes/all
Snes/all/a
Snes/all/b
Snes/all/<remain 1st letters>
But i dont want to duplicate the roms on the different folders.
I can automate the 'ln -s' command based on rom classification (this is the easy part) but need soneone to test this first...