The Top 7... steps to becoming a videogame snob

Step 7 - Obsessing over packaging

And finally, the ultimate in gaming snobbery - the collection. Do you have to keep all your games in their original boxes for them to be considered "complete?" Or is just owning the game enough for you? For us mega elitist ogres, however, there is no greater bane than the greatest hits reissue.

Some people don't care about that bright green/red/yellow/silver banner that runs across the box screaming "LOOK NOW I'M CHEAP AND OLD!" Others, like us, avoid it at all costs. A few of us will even refuse to buy games solely because they're only available as greatest hits (the outstanding Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution comes to mind). If you really want to dig, we could comment on specially colored cartridges (Zelda, SNES Doom and N64 shooter The World is Not Enough ) and their vast preference over regular old black or gray carts, but you probably get the idea by now.

Above: What's that? It's averaging a 9/10 everywhere, and is considered by many to be the best 3D fighter ever? Screw that. it's got a red label

Even "Game of the Year" re-releases bother some of us. If it's not the original packaging, you can keep it. To have all our PS2 games lined up on a shelf with one or two slivers of red jutting out at our eyeballs from 50 paces is just too much to bear. Other titles, like Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition, Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Remix, andtheultimate example,the aforementioned Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution,have enough tweaked or even brand new content in them to warrant a purchase, but would perhaps have to be kept somewhere else. It's all about being flush with the same color. You know what we're talking about.

So that's the list. If you read this and nodded in agreement the whole time, congrats! You're a video game snob. If you got all mad and are hammering out hate to spew at us at random, congrats as well. You too are an insufferable ass. If you don't quite get what all of this is about, sorry, man - you're just not a snob. But keep at it. You'll get there someday.