RomsCollect

RomsCollect is a portable, offline video game collection manager for Windows 10/11 (x64). It combines a browsing frontend (grid, wheel/carousel, or a tabular catalog; launch games through configurable emulator profiles) with a full collector's cataloger (condition, purchase info, completeness, personal notes, tags, and a manually entered collection value — no online pricing lookups of any kind).

• Platform: Windows 10/11, x64 only.
• Portable: no installer. The application and all of its data live in one folder; nothing is written outside it and nothing touches the registry.
• Offline: RomsCollect never makes a network request at runtime — no telemetry, no update checks, no online metadata or cover-art lookups. A game's download-link field stores a plain URL the user typed in themselves; clicking it opens the system's default browser only after an explicit confirmation, which is the one point where the user deliberately steps outside the application.
• License: GNU General Public License v3.0 or later (GPL-3.0-or-later). See LICENSE at the repository root, and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for every bundled dependency's license.
• Contact: sandefjord.development@proton.me
• Website: https://patrickjaillet.github.io/RomsCollect

Features

• Grid, wheel, and tabular catalog views of your collection, switchable from the Arrange By menu, with instant search and configurable sort.
• Standard per-system ROM folders (data/Roms/<system>/) and per-system, per-media-type folders (data/Media/<system>/<Media Type>/), so an existing collection using the same conventions can be dropped in directly, plus an assisted importer for both.
• Full cataloging: title, platform, release date, developers, publishers, genres, series, format, edition, region, and a separate "Personal" record per copy (condition, owner, purchase info, storage location, manually entered current value, completeness, tags, rating, notes).
• Per-game download links and manual, opened through the system's default handler only after explicit confirmation.
• Emulator launching through per-system profiles (executable path, command-line template, working directory), with pre-filled templates for RetroArch, Dolphin, PCSX2, and DuckStation — RomsCollect never downloads or bundles an emulator itself.
• Automatic play history (session count, total play time) recorded each time a game is launched and the emulator process exits.

Getting started

RomsCollect is fully portable: download the release archive, extract it anywhere (a USB drive works fine), and run RomsCollect.exe. No installer, no admin rights, no .NET runtime to install separately.

On first launch, data/Roms/<system>/ is where you place your ROM files (one subfolder per system, using RomsCollect's naming convention — snes, nes, megadrive, psx, mame, amiga1200, etc.), and data/Media/<system>/<Media Type>/ is where matching box art, screenshots, fanart, and videos go (using RomsCollect's media-type naming convention — Box - Front, Screenshot - Gameplay, Clear Logo, and so on). Use Menu > Scan for New Games... to pick them up, or Menu > Import Collection... if you already have an existing ROM set or media library organized the same way to bring in.

Configuring emulators

Open Menu > Settings... > Emulators, pick a system, choose a preset (RetroArch, Dolphin, PCSX2, DuckStation) or write a custom command-line template, and point it at an emulator executable you already have installed. The {RomPath} placeholder in the template is replaced with the full, quoted path to the selected game's ROM file when you press Play.

Repository layout

src/RomsCollect/      Application source (WPF, MVVM)
tests/                 Unit tests
docs/                  English documentation (architecture, user guide)
data/                  Portable data root: Roms/, Media/, Database/,
                       Bios/, Saves/, Screenshots/, Themes/, Logs/, Backup/
assets/                Logo, application icon
i18n/                  UI text, JSON, English by default
scripts/               Build and scaffolding scripts

data/Roms/<system>/ follows RomsCollect's system-folder convention. data/Media/<system>/<Media Type>/ follows RomsCollect's media-type convention (Box - Front, Screenshot - Gameplay, etc.), so an existing ROM set or media library organized the same way can be dropped in directly.

Documentation

• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md — solution layout, layers, technical choices.
• docs/USER_GUIDE.md — full user guide (importing a collection, configuring systems and emulators, cataloging, download links).

Third-party dependencies

See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. Every dependency must be verified compatible with GPL-3.0-or-later distribution before being added.