Gotta Catch Them All / Video Games

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• 99 Spirits fits the "Important" template above. Despite the English title, there are actually a bit less than 99 to capture — but if you just want to get through the game and get the Normal Ending, you won't need to capture and train more than a dozen or so — a handful for solving riddles, and a handful for supporting you in combat. However, the Golden Ending requires you to have Caught 'Em All... (Among other things.)
• Each fishing spot in Ace Fishing hosts about 14—17 different fish species that the player should catch for rewards.
• In The Adventures of Lomax, it's the coins and freed lemmings, although they're completely optional.
• A Hat in Time is inspired by collectathon platformers for the N64 and PS1, and thus features the Time Items, hats, attack pins, and even more unusual things like Mafia neckties.
• The puzzle pieces in Alundra 2. They're optional, but if you want better attack, you will be collecting these.
• Animal Crossing. Too many things to collect. Furniture... Clothes... Fish... Bugs... Fruit... Flowers... Gyroids... The list goes on forever!
• In all three games of the Ape Escape series, you must capture all of the monkeys for 100% Completion and access to the True Final Boss.
• In Armillo, each level has many critters and orbs for the player to collect. Orbs can be exchanged for upgrades at the shop, while rescuing critters is necessary to open some paths and increases how much time the player has for the moon section at the end of the level.
• Assassin's Creed:
  • Assassin's Creed has a "quest" needed for 100% Completion and achievements; namely, the collection of minuscule flags on every single map.
  • Assassin's Creed II has a version of this; the feathers you collect for your [Ezio's] mother. Also present is the sidequest to upgrade Monteriggioni. The collection of all armors, weapons, buildings, etc. can be annoying, though the payoff can be worthwhile.
• Astral Chain:
  • Recapturing the four Legions that go berserk during a mission gone wrong is the main narrative hook for the first few hours of the game.
  • You're also encouraged to take pictures of Chimeras in order to fill out the database, and you get rewarded if you do so.
  • Each level has three hidden collectables: a stray cat to rescue, a public toilet to inspect, and an almost-literal Metal Slime to hunt.
  • There are six Lappy-related items obtained by doing Lappy-related cases.
• Both the Baten Kaitos games have the Gathering, a sidequest to document every Magnus in the game. Including pictures of enemies, quest Magnus, and other things that can be easily Permanently Missable. In the first game, one Magnus takes 336 hours, or two weeks in-game time to transform. And it does nothing in battle.
• Barney's Hide & Seek Game has five friends and five presents that Barney can find in each stage. While finding these is the game's objective, it is still possible to clear each stage without them.
• Averted in the 1999 Pokemon knockoff, Battle Pets, which has the player exploring the fantasy world of Avalar while collecting the titular critters. Players can capture up to 6 Battle Pets (5 in the sequel), but that's their limit — in order to collect new pets, they'll need to go to the marketplace and sell off existing pets to empty a slot.
• Beyond Good & Evil has the pearls you need to buy necessary parts for your hovercraft, but the real example is the animals: You get money for photographing them and a prize for finding them all.
• Many BioWare games operate like this.
  • Neverwinter Nights is almost entirely based on this trope.
    • First, you need to collect the bits of fantastic creatures to cure the plague, then you need to collect the journals of the cultists to prove they are in Luskan, then after Luskan you need to collect the Words of Power, after which the final battle begins.
    • Shadows of Undrentide: You begin by collecting the artifacts stolen from Drogan, arranged in such a way so that the important one is last, then you collect the Three Winds to get into the spire on top of the city of Undrentide.
    • Hordes of the Underdark: The second chapter actually does this in a way that makes sense, with your primary quest being to demolish the Big Bad's power base by removing her allies.
    • This trope is much less prominent in fan-made expansions, but collecting the map parts in Tales of Arterra and the seven lessons in the beginning of A Dance With Rogues qualify.
  • In Neverwinter Nights 2 Mask of the Betrayer, hunting for clues to the cause of your curse might qualify, as does hunting for allies in the first chapter.
  • Knights of the Old Republic: You get to collect the Star Maps so that you can find Darth Malak's base of operations and power base.
  • Knights of the Old Republic 2 has the Jedi Masters you have to hunt down and gather at Dantooine or kill.
  • Mass Effect: You collect bits of a coordinate, more coordinates that tell you how to use what you find when you get to the first coordinates, and somebody who can understand the whole thing. A checklist of planets, each with a beginning, middle and end, and each with their own miniature scenario which you must resolve as part of your quest to Save The Galaxy.
  • Mass Effect 2: This is very nearly the entire point of the game. Most of the game revolves around recruiting teammates for your suicide mission (with DLC, there are 12 members in total, though you technically only need 8 to complete the game) and then gaining their loyalty so they don't die during the final mission.
• Bomb Jack and its sequels are about collecting Cartoon Bombs, for reasons that are not very clear.
• The Borderlands DLC "Robot Revolution" has several achievements which involve collecting sizable numbers of excruciatingly rare items that serve no other purpose whatsoever.
• Bully is filled with these. There are the rubber bands, garden gnomes, transistors and Grottos and Gremlins cards. But the only ones worth collecting are the rubber bands and the transistors, because if you get the transistors, the hobo will teach you to fight and the rubber bands will give you the awesome rubber band ball.
• Cars: The Video Game has an optional sidequest involving collecting 20 of Lizzie's letters strewn around Radiator Springs, Ornament Valley and Tailfin Pass.
• Cats in cat planet! No one knows why, no one knows how, you just have to find all the cats!
• In Chack N Pop, Chack'n has to recover a bunch of hearts that have been stolen by Monstas and trapped inside cages. It's just that kind of game.
• Chrono Cross: 45 playable characters, three playthroughs with no mistakes to get all of them. Have fun!
• In Coffee Talk, there are 30 special drinks that are discoverable in your Brewpad and 55 in Episode 2, and there's an achievement for finding them all.
• In Colobot, once you finally find the planet that can replace Earth as humanity's new home, your next task becomes finding the keys to a vault that contains the only weapon that can defeat the Alien Queen, i.e. the source of all the hostile alien lifeforms.
• The Council of Hanwell: You collect Witch eyes and Doctor DNA throughout the game.
• In Crystal's Pony Tale, the main character must save all seven of her friends to complete the game.
• Dark Cloud 2 needs you to go recruit town members, in the initial city by doing a lot of sidequests then put them into various places. This somehow is the method to fix a broken future.
• In Diablo II:
  • The player may collect various armor sets; if you get all the pieces you usually get a special bonus.
  • In Act II, the hero must collect the pieces of the Horadric Staff, then combine them in the Horadric Cube.
  • In Act III, the hero must collect various relics, then combine them in the Horadric Cube to open the entrance to the Durance of Hate.
• Dragon Ball Z: Attack of the Saiyans, of all games, has this as well: you're tasked with using Tien's Mafuuba/Evil Containment Wave on every single non-boss enemy in the game in exchange for various items. Never mind the fact that the reason the attack is never used on anything later in the story is that it kills off the user, while in the game all it does is cost him a chunk of his HP which is easily gained back between turns later in the game.
• Dragon Quest:
  • In the Gameboy Color remake of Dragon Quest III, every monster randomly drops a medal; first Bronze, then Silver, then Gold. Getting enough of them gives you access to Bonus Dungeons. Getting all of them makes the Grandragon fall asleep. Wait, what?
  • The latter had an explanation, although it took a significant amount of work to discover it. They had intended to do a similar Dragon Quest IV remake with the same Monster Coin system. These coins are even hidden in Dragon Quest III's data files. You would have, in theory, been able to transfer your coins to the other game to complete the full set—which they replaced at the last second with Grandragon falling asleep, when they decided to port IV to the PSX instead.
  • Dragon Quest V: While you can't recruit every monster in the game, you can recruit many, many more than you're likely to ever actually use. You can at least catch one palette of every monster. The Big Book of Monsters tells you what monsters can be recruited, and the chances.
• Dynasty Warriors 4, of all games, has two of these. In The Symbol of the Mandate, the objective is to find the Imperial Seal. Meaning that after smashing the enemy force (maybe four minutes if you're taking it nice 'n easy), you have to break all ninety-nine empty crates scattered around the building to make the one with the Imperial Seal appear, three of which aren't even present at the start of the stage. (And of course, Sun Jian will act like it's a normal stage, meaning he'll sit on his royal butt in the corner and periodically whine about how long you're taking.) Even better, the Seal appears automatically once the timer is down to 3 minutes, meaning that if even one crate is still standing by then, you've run all over the place and worked yourself into a lather for nothing. In the Battle of Yi Ling, on the Wu side, you have to destroy all the archer towers before Zhu Ran reaches shore for the fire attack to automatically succeed, otherwise, you have to escort him to the Shu camp. Since leaving even ONE tower standing results in failure, which is very bad if you're hunting down towers instead of taking out the Shu forces which are going to be on Zhu Ran like a pack of rabid wolves, it's a much better idea to forget the towers and just make as safe and simple a trek for Zhu Ran as possible. Needless to say, Koei never used the idea again.
• In EarthBound Beginnings, you needed to collect eight melodies throughout the game (although this wasn't obvious). In EarthBound, most of the game consisted of visiting "Sanctuary" locations, and collecting... eight melodies, with the endgame beginning the moment you collect the eighth (although you can do this out of logical sequence). Finally, a big part of Mother 3 was pulling needles. The catch was, your literal Evil Twin was too.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The main quest of Arena revolves primarily around collecting the eight pieces of the Staff of Chaos — one in each province on the continent — to defeat the Big Bad.
  • Morrowind has the Morag Tong quest to find all 27 Threads of the Webspinner, items created for the Daedric Prince Mephala (patron of the Morag Tong) by the Daedric Prince Sanguine. Each is a piece of clothing or jewelry that gives a minor boost to one of the game's 27 skills. It is nearly impossible to complete without a guide, as some of the items are on NPCs who aren't associated with any quests and who have no indication that they even have one of the items. Very much a That One Sidequest for players of Morrowind. The reward for completing it isn't even that good, though, in the vanilla game, it is the only way to unlock the "Fortify Skill" effect for spellcrafting and enchanting. Even that positive is wiped out by the Tribunal expansion adding another (much easier) way to gain the effect.
  • Skyrim has the sidequest No Stone Unturned, where one must collect multiple Stones of Barenziah, with absolutely no indication of where they are. It is frequently considered the game's That One Sidequest because of this. Your reward is an active effect that causes you to find loads of precious gems all over the place, but by the time you find all the stones, you're not likely to find this useful anymore.
• The Fairly OddParents: Shadow Showdown has stickers hidden in present boxes hidden throughout the levels. Less frequent are video clips.
• Farnham Fables has you collecting things in certain episodes:
  • In Episode 3, Prince Philip was about to give a presentation to schoolkids about rare creatures. However, a lapse in surveillance leads to all of the animals escaping and roaming the school, so Philip has to find each of them and use his special connection to animals to convince them to wait for him in the gym, which requires solving a problem for each one.
  • In Episode 4, Althea the Nightmare visits Theresa's dream and makes her collect six Rainbow Keys before she can wake up.
• Final Fantasy Explorers has lots of things to catch: monsters to tame such that they can fight by your side, Eidolons to capture for their Trance powers and crafting equipment, monster skills to learn as a Blue Mage...
• In every stage of Frogger's Adventures: Temple of the Frog, Frogger has to collect a certain number of elemental tokens throughout each stage before he will be allowed to finish. There are three of these tokens in the first level of each world, and five in the second.
• Forza: as inspired by its biggest rival Gran Turismo. In fact, Turn 10 acknowledges that Pokémon inspired this aspect into the whole franchise, and some cars cannot be bought from the dealership/autoshop, they have to be earned whether by winning championships, special events (unicorns and hard-to-find cars), barn finds, the auction house, etc. Latter games have between 500 and 700+ cars, so good luck!
  • Horizon 5 brings this up to eleven by introducing the Car Collection, which acts as a Pokédex for petrolheads. While there is no actual reward for collecting every single car^note Each month new cars are added to the game, so 100% the collection will be impossible until the developers say so, there are rewards for completing the collection of each manufacturer, ranging from XP points to another car from a manufacturer.
• Fossil Fighters features this in the form of collecting fossils, which in turn are used to revive into dinosaurs known as vivosaurs.
• Glider PRO: "There are 6 stars in the house. Get every star to win."
• Graffiti Kingdom is a platformer/RPG hybrid in which you can draw your own characters, or use any enemy as a base, bosses included, up to and including Satan. And, unlike some games, the way you draw your creature has a huge impact on how it controls and what it's capable of.
  • This also includes several cameos that need to be found... including some VERY unlikely ones. (Flying Maiden^note Reimu Hakurei, anyone?)
• In Gran Turismo, people try to collect every single car available. This counts Duplicates, different versions, racing versions, cars that aren't available to buy and useless ones. The only game that's impossible to do is 2 because your garage has a limit of 100 cars.
• Grand Theft Auto 2 also introduces the illegal car ring. In the Residential Sector, 8 hidden cars are placed around the map, each with a number painted on the roof. Jacking these cars automatically warps you to Wang Car$ (the same dealership from San Andreas) and nets a small bonus. Completing the sidequest unlocks a fleet of rare vehicles in the lot, including a Tank, the Fire Truck with a flamethrower instead of a water cannon (previously used in a Scientist mission), and a Special Agent Car with a mounted machine gun.
• Grand Theft Auto V has a whole bunch of downright sadistic, though thankfully optional sets of collectibles strewn across the huge world map. Finding thirty barrels of nuclear waste on the ocean floor is probably the least annoying one thanks to a tracking device that points you to the closest barrel. The sadistic part comes into play for the spaceship parts and letter scraps, two sets of fifty tiny objects hidden in the most out-of-the-way spots you can think of, with absolutely no hint as to where to find them^note unless you subscribe to one of Rockstar's apps, but not everybody can or wants to do this for various reasons. Even if you do know where they are, getting to them is an entirely different matter altogether (like the spaceship part lying on top of a bridge support, but under the bridge proper, that requires you to perform a perfect on-point landing with a parachute or squeeze the game's smallest helicopter into the opening without blowing yourself up in the process). Have fun. Completing these collections either rewards cash or unlocks additional quests, the latter of which is required for 100% Completion.
• Guild Wars: There are 1,319 skills including 293 elite skills, 26 heroes, and 33 charmable animals to add to your Zaishen Menagerie. Aside from the elite skills, it's all just for fun and/or 100% Completion; the elite skills contribute to four maxed titles toward the thirty required (and thirty-eight available, so you don't technically Gotta Catch Them All, and in fact can't) for the game's ultimate Bragging Rights Reward: the God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals title.
• Haiku, the Robot has several types of collectibles to be found:
  • Power Cells can be given to Quatern for a sidequest. You get a reward for each one you give him (usually a large amount of Spare Parts, but at some points you will get a Capsule Fragment).
  • Capsule Fragments increase your health by one hitpoint for every three you find.
  • Chips can be equipped in order to customize Haiku's abilities, and chip sockets increase how many of them you can have equipped at once. Each chip does something different — generally, red ones enhance your offense in some way, blue ones are for defense, and green ones are for support.
• Half-Life 2: Episode 2 had the optional quest to get every single Antlion Grub. Doing so got you nothing but an achievement, albeit an achievement hardly anyone has got.
• The Ham-Chat words in Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite! and Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak. The stickers for Rainbow Rescue can count as well if you're into that sort of thing.
• Hans Kloss: Gather all the pieces of the secret superweapon plans scattered around the base.
• Good luck collecting all 53 Royal Notes in HarmoKnight.
• The Harvest Moon games have a Gotta Catch Them All aspect in Magical Melody (music notes) and Harvest Moon DS (harvest sprites).
• An Easter egg (Optional) in the Microsoft Space Simulator Hellbender involves capturing pieces of "Bion Technology" (one hidden in each level) to form a Superweapon upon collecting all the pieces.
• MANY classic Interactive Fiction games rely on this concept: learning all the spells (Enchanter, Spiritwrack), assembling the Dismantled MacGuffin or some other piece of machinery (Starcross, Stationfall, Wonderland), or retrieving all the treasures from a dangerous area (Zork, Adventure, Hollywood Hijinx, dozens more).
• In Jables's Adventure, there's an optional sidequest to collect the 10 Hero's Fruit.
• Jackie Chan Stuntmaster have the Red Dragon Heads, ten in each level, and collecting enough of these will grant Jackie a Golden Dragon's Head. Obtaining enough Golden ones will unlock the Secret Level, the Shaolin Temple.
• Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy: The primary objective to advance the game is to collect Power Cells. There are 101 in total, with 72 needed to complete the game and 100 to unlock the secret ending. There are also 2000 Precursor Orbs, but only 1530 are needed to gather all the Power Cells that require them.
• Jigsaw has the player reassembling an ... enchanted? hyper-tech? ... jigsaw puzzle, unlocking more destinations for their time machine with each piece found. Then, at the end of the game, you find out you were also supposed to be sketching animals to achieve the (only slightly different) good ending. Better start over!
• In The Journeyman Project III: Legacy of Time:
  • The player must collect each of the three pieces of the legacy, one from each time period / location in the game.
  • Collecting the piece held by the Shangri-La monastery requires that the player unlock a staircase in a particular chamber. This involves locating each of the six Buddha statues around the monastery, giving each something it requires to get the object that will unlock a corresponding section of the staircase.
• Kakurenbo Battle Monster Tactics has 125 types of monsters to defeat, each with its own type of pawprint (called a Montac) and skill to learn if the defeated monster has enough power. (Some monsters give up the same skills though.)
• Kao The Kangaroo: Round 2 has three types of collectibles, and each is required for unlocking something:
  • The coins allow you to reach the final boss.
  • The crystals unlock minigames.
  • The stars unlock upgrades for your attacks and skills.
• Kingdom Hearts: First of all, keep in mind that the international releases of the final mix versions are on PlayStation 3 or 4 consoles, meaning that you have trophies to collect. Individually, however...
  • The first game gives us treasure chests, puppies, weapons, spells, accessories, trinity marks, synthesis items, Ansem reports, Gummi blocks and blueprints. Its remake, Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, has all of the above (adding more of some) and then some, most notably Gummi missions and ten Metal Slime Heartless to be registered in the journal. There's one for each world, except Olympus Coliseum.^NamelyThe Sniperwild in Traverse Town's Second District, which drops Power Stones; the Gigas Shadow in Wonderland's Bizarre Room, which drops Fury Stones; the Black Ballade in Deep Jungle's Bamboo Thicket, which drops Lightning Stones; the Pot Scorpion in Agrabah's Palace Gates, which drops Mythril Stones; the Grand Ghost in Monstro's Stomach, which drops Frost Stones; the Pink Agaricus in Atlantica's Undersea Cave (which also appears in the Treehouse in Deep Jungle), which drops Serenity Powers; the Chimera in Halloween Town's Manor Ruins, which drops Blaze Stones; the Jet Balloon on the ship's Deck in Neverland, which drops Dazzling Stones; the Stealth Soldier of Hollow Bastion, which appears in both the Entrance Hall and Grand Hall and drops Energy Stones; and the Neoshadow in the final room of End Of The World's Linked Worlds, which drops Stormy Stones.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories gives us cards, cards, and more cards.
  • Kingdom Hearts II has limits, summons, drive forms, abilities, weapons, spells, accessories, synthesis items, treasure chests, and still, more Ansem reports. Its Final Mix version adds puzzle pieces, Absent Silhouettes (though there are only five of those), thirteen Metal Slime Heartless, and the three Proofs, awarded for beating the game's three hardest challenges (the aforementioned Metal Slimes and the Bonus Bosses).
  • Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days gives us panels, emblems, and the insights of the protagonist's fellow Nobodies.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep has commands, shotlocks, keyblades, more commands, ice cream, treasure chests, stickers, still more commands, and Xehanort reports.
  • Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] only has keyblades, treasures, Dream Eaters, and commands.
• In King's Bounty, to find the scepter that was the game's ultimate goal, one had to find the pieces of the map detailing its location. As a Shout-Out, its successor series, Heroes of Might and Magic, has generally allowed you to similarly gather pieces of a map to find some special building or artifact, although it's now a Side Quest, rather than the game's central plot.
• Kirby:
  • The games in the "Dark Matter Trilogy" operate under these, specifically to access the True Final Boss and get the true ending. Kirby's Dream Land 2 has the seven Rainbow Drops, needed to forge the Rainbow Sword, Kirby's Dream Land 3 has the 30 Heart Stars, obtained by making favours to several characters and bring forth the Love-Love Stick, and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards has the Crystal Shards, needed for 100% Completion as well; in the latter game you can also collect enemy data cards if you feel like it.
  • Kirby Super Star: Kirby can win the Great Cave Offensive by just running straight to the right and beating a few bosses ... but it's not a VICTORY unless he picks up the 60 treasures along the way.
  • Kirby's Return to Dream Land: The plot is gathering the scattered pieces of Magolor's dimensional airship, the Lor Starcutter.
  • Likewise, the "Heroes in Another Dimension" sub-game of Kirby Star Allies has 120 Friend Hearts, with only 100 of which needed to get the true ending which ties the originally-unresolved fate of Hyness and the the Three Mage Sisters (though getting all 120 nets you extra artwork which shows they have resolved their conflict with Kirby), as well as unlocking the latter as Dream Friends.
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land:
    • The main plot is rescuing the captured Waddle Dees. Each level has five missions to clear to save all of them; one is always clearing the level and another is always (except for boss levels) finding the three-to-five hidden Waddle Dees in the level, but the rest can vary.
    • Rare Stones and Blueprints go hand-in-hand. The blueprints hidden throughout the game unlock upgrades for your power-ups, but you need Rare Stones to pay for them. The quickest way to find Rare Stones is by clearing the Treasure Roads, obstacle courses corresponding to specific power-ups. Most of the 57 Treasure Roads reveal themselves naturally, but not all of them.
    • In the post-game, you have 300 pieces of Leongar's soul; you need at least 250 to reach the end.
    • 256 figures. Most of them, you can get through the vending machine, but to collect them all, you need to reach 100% completion. On that note...
    • Special pictures. There are ten pictures in the game that you can put in Kirby's house, each obtained by completing an impressive feat. The last one, you can only get by reaching 100% completion.
• Koala Lumpur: Journey to the Edge. The player has to locate four pieces of a sacred scroll, each of them concealed in a different "world" within the game. The gameplay of each world is completely unrelated to the others and except for the first one, can be played in any order as the player chooses. It sort of smacks of a committee of writers who couldn't get along and be separated for their own good.
• Kyle & Lucy: Wonderworld has two main collectibles, one crucial and one optional.
  • The crucial ones are the Mystical Orbs, which are awarded for completing a level's objectives.
  • The optional ones are Mystery Pins, which unlock character art.
• The Legend of Zelda series always have some sort of this; the only exception is Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, in which the hero has to put 6 jewels on statues, but the principle is the same...
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Link has to retrieve the three pendants in the Light World, and save the seven maidens in the Dark World. Optionally, he can collect Heart Pieces to extend his life meter, a first for the series (the two NES games only have full Heart Containers).
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has the Gold Skulltula quest. Technically they're a case of Gotta Kill Them All, but you still have to retrieve the tokens (representing their souls) that they drop when they die. There's a whole hundred of them, and you have to revisit some dungeons with new equipment you didn't have the first time around to get them. The ones located in the overworld can only be found and slain at night, but considering how early and easily you can get the Sun's Song, that's not really a big deal. Every ten Skulltula Tokens earned up to 50, a cursed character is cured and a reward is given to Link, but for the last character, all 100 spiders must be slain.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is one of only three N64 games that was so detailed and complicated in gameplay that it needed the RAM Expansion Pak to play (and the only one of the three that didn't have Rare involved in development), and one of the reasons is the vast number of collectibles. In addition to Pieces of Heart (52, the most in any game in the series), weapons, songs, wallets, Stray Fairies, bottles (six, another record to date), and various other odds and ends, the game has 28 masks (including the 4 collected from bosses, as they're merely plot coupons) to collect. Only six of them are necessary to complete the main storyline^note The Deku Mask, the Goron Mask, the Zora Mask, the Garo Mask, the Captain's Hat, and the Gibdo Mask (though some others make it easier), but the other 18 are necessary for 100% completion. The very last one in particular is accessible only by collecting all of the other masks.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: There are two major groups of collectibles, besides the usual Pieces of Heart and bottles:
    • There's the vast array of sunken treasure in the sea obtainable only by collecting and opening the Treasure Charts hidden through all of the Great Sea. There are 41 standard Treasure Charts, which not only have to be collected by completing sidequests, exploring islands and dungeons, and defeating enemy groups in caves, watchtowers and submarines, but also opened to pinpoint their marked treasures so you can claim them in their corresponding island quadrants (there are 49 quadrants overall, but the remaining 8 hide the fragments of the Triforce of Courage, for which you have to collect, open and decipher the Triforce Charts instead; the Wii U version makes this part easier by only having 3 charts and the other 5 fragments earned directly, thus increasing the number of standard Treasure Charts to 46). There are other 12 charts in the game, which instead pinpoint specific types of collectibles or special locations across the Great Sea (Pieces of Heart, Great Fairy locations, Big Octos that guard treasures, etc.), which greatly help the player achieve 100% Completion.
    • The figurines to complete the Nintendo Gallery. You have to take pictures of every character, enemy (with some exceptions), and boss in the game, for a total of 134. And some of them have limited appearances, so beware. It was easier to complete in the HD remake, as one could even find the formerly missable pictures via Miiverse...until Miiverse was shut down, of course. Knuckle is especially infamous; the only way to make him appear is to collect all five of the Tingle Statues, which are hidden in five of the game's dungeons. In the original version, the only way to find them is with the Tingle Tuner, which will react when you get close. But you need a Game Boy Advance to use that. Then you have to place a Tingle Bomb at each appropriate spot, and only once you've found all five will Knuckle appear on Outset Island. And that's not the worst part, which is twofold: in the original game, it was possible to permanently miss one of the statues, meaning you needed to wait for the New Game Plus to complete the quest. And in the remake, the Tingle Tuner doesn't exist. So, what did the devs put in to help you find the statues instead? Nothing, meaning that unless you have an incentive to bomb every slightly suspicious location in every dungeon, you can only find the Tingle Statues if you look up where they are. Though at least that also means that there's no trick to finding him afterward; instead of finding him on Outset and 'proving yourself' through a few odd tasks, he simply appears on Tingle Island.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap: You have Kinstones, which each matching pair having a different effect (unlocking secret paths, removing barriers, making special items available, etc.)
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has the Golden Bugs and Poe Souls, in addition to the mandatory Tears of Light and Twili-based plot coupons (Fused Shadows and Mirror Shards). The Bugs are given to Agitha to receive money and upgrades for the wallet, while Poe Souls are used to curing a man's curse. The Tears of Light are necessary to restore the power of the Light Spirits in Hyrule. The HD version adds Miiverse Stamps, which could be used in Miiverse before the service's shutdown in November 2017 (getting them all is now purely to satiate completionism needs).
  • The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass has spirit gems and (like in The Wind Waker) treasure charts for sunken treasure. The distant sequel Spirit Tracks has bunnies, album stamps and force gems. They also have boat parts and train parts respectively and eschew Pieces of Heart in favor of full Containers like the NES games, often earned through difficult minigames or bought at expensive prices in shops.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has the Silent Realms- gearless stealth-based sections in which you must collect the 15 Sacred Tears in each while avoiding the Guardians. Among optional collectibles, the Gratitude Crystals (used to help a friendly demon become human) and Goddess Statues (which activate chests that contain treasure - a process analogous to the use of Treasure Charts in The Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass) stand out.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds continues the tradition. Besides the usual goodies like Heart Pieces, 100 baby Maiamais have to be found, and every ten you find lets you upgrade an item. Except when you get all 100, which upgrades your sword.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has the Spirit Orbs, which are the rewards for completing the Shrines, and used to receive Heart Containers and Stamina Vessels). There are also Korok Seeds, which increase inventory space; there are 900 seeds in total to collect, though you only need a little less than half of that to maximize all your pouches. If you do collect all 900 seeds, your reward for the task is Hestu's Gift... which is a pile of golden poo; meant more as a reference to similar good luck charms in Japan, mind you, but still a pile of poo.
  • Hyrule Warriors: Counting all characters and weapons sets (but not the Master Sword, 8-Bit Weapons, or Ganon's Fury mode), there are 42 different weapons to collect in this game. The hardest challenge in this game is not to complete every Legend Mode map on Heroic Difficulty or to complete every Adventure Mode map with an A rank but to collect a perfect variation of every weapon (Level 4+, 5 Stars, 8 Slots).
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: The amount of collectibles has increased considerably in comparison to Breath of the Wild, whose collection numbers were already high on their own. There are now 152 Spirit Orbs courtesy of the Shrines to increase the amount of hearts and the round-shaped stamina gauge, 1000 Korok Seeds to increase the space to store weapons, bows and shields, a newly-added Collection Sidequest of 20 talismans (known as Sage's Wills) located in the sky islands and used to strengthen the sage avatars, another one involving 147 Bubbul Gems to give to Koltin in exchange for rare goodies, and yet another one consisting of 34 Yiga Schematics and 12 Schema Stones to build new contraptions with Zonai tools.
• The Legend of Tian-ding has 28 amulets you can collect, allowing you to unlock all your abilities, though you only need around half to complete the game. But getting all of them will unlock a slightly different ending than the original.
• LittleBigPlanet has the Prize Bubbles in the story mode. They contain a myriad of items, including clothing items, materials, music and sound objects, and stickers and decorations. Of course, it's all completely optional.
• Marvin's Mittens puts a Metroidvania style twist on the collectible hovering objects of typical 2D platformers by having Marvin's double jump be increased for every snowflake he collects. The map keeps track of how many you find in each area.
• The Mass Effect 3 Expanded Galaxy Mod applies this philosophy to several key aspects of the game:
  • The Normandy's shuttle bay now has a Wall of Weapons, encompassing most of the weapons in the game, which automatically updates as weapons are acquired throughout the game and its DLC missions. Notably, these weapon walls can be "activated", and will slide forward so that the player can look at them in more detail.
  • Several different shuttles and small ships can either be purchased from certain merchants (e.g. the Dealer's Ship) or discovered by scanning planets, and can be displayed in the Shuttle Bay. There's even an achievement ("Gas Guzzler") for collecting every possible vehicle and ship.
  • The Prothean Implants are a set of cybernetic upgrades that can be scavenged from various planets and confer different sets of bonuses (with their own disadvantages) for Shepard. These also have the benefit of opening up different playstyles (like a Melee-oriented character).
• The Matrix: Path of Neo has optional briefcases to collect or win by completing bonus objectives, they contain either concept art or extra Combos to perform.
• The Mega Man Battle Network series does this. In each of the 6 games in the series, you battle with battle chips. Each game has a couple of hundred to find by either defeating enemies quickly or simply picking them up. Collecting them all usually allows you to fight an Optional Boss.
• Mega Man Legends: In the first game, you have twelve Special Weapons to collect throughout the game. There's also a sidequest to fill out the island's museum exhibit with treasures you find in the dungeons..and, of course, completing that quest nets you one of the items you need to forge the Shining Laser.
• The Mega Man Zero series until the fourth game also does this, with the cyber-elf computer programs. These little critters are collected all over the place, powered up, and used to give Zero useful bonuses. The games inhibit the latter feature, though, by lowering Zero's rank with each use.
• Metroid encourages players to find all power-ups and expansions in the games, and in most of them, there's the extra challenge of doing so as fast as possible. In the case of the Metroid Prime Trilogy, there are exactly 100 pickups in the first and third games, but in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes the total clocks at 114 (96 standard pickups and 18 Keys which open up the Dark Aether temples where the sacred light of Light Aether is kept captive); the maximum completion percentage is still 100%, however. The Prime games also have the optional collection of logbook entries (divided into the following categories: Creatures, Lore, and Research), and once again Echoes stands out in this regard due to the numerous scannable entries (including individual parts or phases of bosses).
• Miitopia keeps track of every grub, every enemy, every music encountered through the game. Want to achieve 100% Completion? Good luck getting all of them.
• Mischief Makers has a Gold Gem on each stage, some easier to find than others. The more that is collected, the more of the epilogue, end credits, and stinger the player can see. And as if to rub it in the player's face that it's necessary to collect them all, collecting all but one cuts off the video in a way that is both hilarious and frustrating.
• Moco Moco Friends has over 120 Plushkins to collect and befriend.
• Monster Hunter combines Gotta Kill Them All with this trope: each time you kill a monster you earn valuable parts you can use to build armors and weapons. Most, if not all of them are optional, but each monster has its own unique armor set with special abilities that can help you greatly during combat and make quests way easier. Most players only collect a few, others go for 100% Completion and try to build every set. The fact that the armor sets often look impossibly cool certainly helps.
• Monster Rancher has this as a Self-Imposed Challenge and this trope that it imposes depends on the version of the game. Unlocking every monster requires putting in different CDs/DVDs into your console, completing rather dodgy side quests with no other information how to get them available other than detailed online guides, etc.
• Virtually all the Nancy Drew video games require Nancy to track down missing pieces — gears, dolls, crystals, mirrors, whatever — for some sort of mechanism. The Last Train To Blue Moon Canyon interlaces three collect-em-all subplots.
• NetHack variant Slash'EM Extended allows certain characters to throw poke balls at monsters, transforming them into pets. It's possible to assemble a large number of pets that way, and the ball has a bigger chance to catch an actual Pokemon monster. Good luck finding that elusive Steelix or Arcanine! The other way to get them would be catching an Onix or Growlithe, then hope they don't get killed while you try to level them up enough to evolve into their high-level versions. You can look at the caught monsters to get a Pokedex entry, too.
• Nintendo Land: Each of the 12 minigames awards you a star for progressing in them to a certain degree. The credits roll once you obtain all of them.
• Toree 3D:
  • Each level has lots of stars that can be collected. Collecting all the stars in a single run of each stage is required to unlock Macbat.
  • The sequel introduces a hidden disk in each stage, each of which are located in far-off places that only Macbat can reach. Collecting every single one unlocks Glitchy as a playable character.
• The Neverhood requires you to collect twenty videotapes telling the story of the world, narrated by Willie Trombone. You can watch these and get a good idea of what's going on even with several tapes missing, but collecting all twenty is important, since it unlocks the final part of the movie, allowing you to get a key from Willie.
• Nexuiz and its Spiritual Successor Xonotic have the Key Hunt game type, where players must frag their enemies to get all of the other team's keys to score.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Pumpkin King, a video game Prequel to The Nightmare Before Christmas, features this. While it isn't mandatory to beat the game, Jack Skellington can collect the scattered belongings of the citizens of Halloween Town, such as Sally's shoe, Mr. Hyde's hat, Barrel's lollipop, and the Mayor's black widow spider bowtie.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge, meanwhile, is a sequel to the film's events, and it goes a lot heavier on the collection aspects.
  • Holiday Doors. The seven Holiday Doors are the driving force behind the plot, though their exact significance only becomes clear in Chapter 13, just after the halfway point of the game.
  • Jack's powers: you can upgrade the Soul Robber, but it's the Halloween Presents in Santa Jack form that fit this best, with three presents (four in easy mode) that each has upgrades.
  • Figurines, detailing every character, boss, and the baddie in the game; some you only find in Hidden Places, and others you need to clear the levels with good performance for.
  • Level rankings: at the end of each level, the game judges you on Clear Time, Maximum Combo, Damage Taken, and Exclamation Marks collected (by scaring the baddies). The lowest rank is D, and the highest is S; you need to get an A in all four to claim the level's figurine(s), and the game averages out all the ranks after you win to give your overall score.
  • Jack's House: Accessible between Levels or in them, you'll find all the game's special features here, such as all the cutscenes you've seen the soundtracks you've collected, your figurine collection, and the outfits you've collected.
  • Outfits: Clearing the game unlocks up to four alternate outfits for Jack, depending on how well you do. Clear the game with an overall score of C or higher to get Pajama Jack, B or higher to get Dancing Jack, A or higher to get Thespian Jack, and a perfect S, along with both of the Secret Chapters cleared, to get Phantom Jack. And even if you get a perfect S the first time, you still have to beat the final boss four times to get all the outfits.
• No More Heroes: The game has several collectibles in both the overworld and the rank stages. The most notable case, however, is the cards: Only the first 50 can be found in the first playthrough (and all of them are in the rank stages), and they're based on purely fictional wrestlers. In the New Game Plus, 100 more cards are added, and they're based on ranked assassins and supporting characters; some of these extra cards aren't found on the rank stages but on the mainland of Santa Destroy, so Travis has to look for them extensively in order to complete the collection.
• No More Heroes III: In the main areas, various collectibles around the game are figurines of characters, trading cards, scorpions, and Jeane's kittens.
• Odin Sphere: The motivation behind the Pooka running a restaurant chain — they want to recollect all the old Valentine coins to break their curse. Only two Pooka survive to enjoy it, though the dead ones probably also get released from the curse post-mortem. This isn't a small thing, considering the Pooka curse not only makes one agelessly immortal while alive but also ageless and indestructible when dead. Which means that if the curse wasn't broken, all of the Pooka would have spent eternity as forever-rotting corpses in a dreary graveyard world. But now they finally get to move on.
• Ōkami:
  • The Celestial Brush techniques, some of which need to be found before moving on to certain parts of the story. There are also secret variants of the techniques, unlockable via sidequests.
  • Treasures, animals to feed, fishes to catch, martial arts to learn, bestiary to complete, Gold Dust to empower the Divine Instruments, traveler scrolls to find— even if these are all optional, they're still things to catch for the poor completionist attempting them.
  • The Stray Beads. Granted, it unlocks the String Of Beads weapon in the New Game Plus, but good luck finding all 100 without a guide.
• At the most primitive end of this trope in this medium, Pac-Man can be classified as a Gotta Eat Them All game.
• Pikmin: An integral part of the series, similar in execution but different in form for each game.
  • Pikmin (2001): Olimar's ship was hit by a meteor and 30 parts were scattered throughout the planet. You have 30 days to collect at least the 25 essential parts before your life support runs out. Oddly enough, this makes the game's final boss completely optional, but defeating it (as it holds the 30th part) leads to the best ending.
  • Pikmin 2 has Olimar and Louie collecting treasure to pay off their company's debt, this time without a time limit. There are also all of the various organisms in the Piklopedia.
  • Pikmin 3 has Alph, Brittany, and Charlie collecting fruit to save their planet from starvation. While there is a time limit, it extends with each piece of fruit they collect, for a maximum total of 99 days of gameplay. Additionally, this game has data files that Olimar has left for future explorers scattered throughout the planet, and while they're very useful for first-timers, players sometimes have to go out of their way to collect them; there are a total of 120 of them. Ten of those data files form a secret code that unlocks a secret video if it's typed in the right place on the Nintendo website. The catch? There isn't one secret video. There are five, and only one secret code per game file.
  • Pikmin 4 has three main objectives for the Rescue Corps: gather treasure on the planet to use their Sparklium to power the S.S. Shepherd; find the many, many castaways scattered across the planet, including Captain Olimar; and complete night missions to collect Glow Sap for curing the Leaflings. Besides those, the Piklopedia and Treasure Catalog also return from Pikmin 2, the many Dandori Battles in Story Mode require perfect completion to get Platinum ranks, you can buy upgrades and weapons from the lab, you can train Oatchi to do more tasks...overall, this game has more collectibles than the past three combined. As in the second game, though, there's no time limit.
• This is the main mechanic in Pixel Junk Eden, besides jumping and grabbing. You collect thousands of pollen spores to grow seeds, which number from about 30-120 per level, which you use to collect Spectra, of which there is 75 total.
• Pokémon:
  • The Trope Namer was the original U.S. advertising slogan for the first few games, which features both the creatures and the Gym Badges. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company dropped the slogan upon the release of Ruby and Sapphire, possibly due to there being no real legitimate way to catch 'em all thanks to the inability to trade between those games and the previous two sets. The slogan briefly returned in 2013 for nostalgic purposes, but not to its original ubiquity, appearing solely in advertisements rather than the game covers.
  • Ironically, the series itself generally averts this: the catching of the monsters themselves has always been optional. Your only reward in most installments for getting them all is a simple diploma, with later installments throwing in an item called the Shiny Charm that increases the chance to see shiny variants of Pokémon. Actual game progression just requires you to have a team strong enough to beat whatever foes you encounter, and have Pokémon capable of learning the field moves needed to travel the region (with Gen VII onwards not even requiring that). This leaves the player free to capture as few or as many Mons as they want. ^note Starting with Gen V, catching the box legendary does become mandatory, but that's still a single mandatory catch out of literally hundreds of Pokémon. Your actual goal in the vast majority of mainline installments is some variant of "become the Champion of the region's Pokémon League, while foiling the plot of a villainous team on the side." The only times this trope is played straight are Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee (where catching at least 50 Pokémon is required to access the Fuchsia City Gym) and Pokémon Legends: Arceus (which eschews the regular format entirely to have this trope be the goal of the game, with plot progression directly linked to capturing and researching the creatures, as well as collecting the 18 Plates throughout the region).
  • Starting with Generation III, the Pokédex was separated into the "regional dex" (consisting of all the Pokémon that could be obtained in that set of games) and the "National Dex" (consisting of every Pokémon ever released, including those that had to be brought in from other games). Pokémon X and Y and Pokémon Sun and Moon break down the regional dex even further into sections corresponding to different areas of the map, with the latter also abandoning the comprehensive National Dex mode entirely; whether this is a permanent change remains to be seen. The National Dex is now handled by services like Pokémon Bank and Pokémon HOME.
  • As of the Generation IV games, just seeing the different 'mons is enough to satisfy the game's professor and prompt them to give the various rewards usually received in the process of completing the Pokédex, so actually catching them is even more optional. Even then, the game usually forgives you for not having the Mythical Pokémon: a group of promotion-only Pokémon that can't be obtained legitimately through actual gameplay... although, they've started breaking that rule lately, with four of them now available normally.^note Celebi in the Virtual Console re-release of Gold, Silver, and Crystal; Deoxys in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire; Keldeo in the Crown Tundra of Sword and Shield; and Meloetta in the Indigo Disk of Scarlet and Violet The games will give separate diplomas for completion sans Mythical Pokémon and completion with them, with the former also giving you the aforementioned Shiny Charm.
  • Several Pokémon come in a variety of different forms, with you being able to collect all of them. Purely aesthetic examples include Unown, Gastrodon, Florges, and Vivillon, and examples that affect its battling capabilities include Deoxys, Wormadam, Gourgeist, and Oricorio.
  • Sun and Moon have a side quest of this sort: Kalos's Legendary Pokémon, Zygarde, appears in this game, but its cells are scattered throughout the region, and you have to collect them. The more cells you get, the more powerful you can make your Zygarde. But there are 100 of them scattered across the four islands, and while some are always present, some only appear in the daytime, and others only appear in the nighttime.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky has the Time Gears, which are introduced as mysterious artifacts that help keep time in balance, and are revered and feared by all Pokémon, that no one would dare mess with one. It is later revealed however that the gathering of each one is essential to prevent the destruction of time itself.
  • Each of the three games in the Spin-Off series Pokémon Ranger has a Browser to keep track of captured Pokemon. Thankfully, since it will also register any Pokemon the villainous team of each game uses against you, it's somewhat easier to complete than the Pokedex in the main series. The reward for completion is a fight against an Optional Boss in each game: Snorlax in the first, Regigigas in the second, and Lugia in the third game.
• Polyroll: Each level has 3 Gold Gems hidden in it, with the game having 96 in total. It isn't necessary to collect them all unless the player is going for 100% Completion, but some parts of the world map will only open up once a certain amount has been collected, making it necessary to collect some of them to finish the game. Every Gold Gem only needs to be collected once without needing to actually finish the level for it to count, however, which makes it easier to go back and pick up any that were missed.
• Power Pete: Pete needs to get all the Fuzzy Bunnies on each level (anywhere from five to ten) to continue.
• Chapter 4 of Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy is a quest that involves travelling the world to collect five eggs that are segments of an ancient key. Each of the five locations has its own subplot/side-quest in which Layton and his companions must solve a mystery to acquiring the egg.
• Quake III: Team Arena (and, by extension, OpenArena) feature the Harvester game type which is a variation, as your team has to collect skulls dropped by fragging enemies to score. Such skulls can be found at a central obelisk in the map, which spawns them.
• Many Rare games have huge numbers of things you need to collect. To the point where it's lampshaded hilariously at the beginning of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.
  "Now then. In line with Banjo Tradition, your challenge will consist of collecting as many pointless items as possible."
  • Banjo-Kazooie: The original game is comparatively humble, as each regular world has only 100 musical notes, 10 Jiggies (and of these, one is always earned by rescuing 5 Jinjos), and 2 Empty Honeycombs; the only catch is that the collection of musical notes is determined in how many of them are gathered without dying or exiting the level (if one of those two events occur, the player will have first to reach the previous record of notes collected and then get the rest, as that's the only way the lifetime total of notes collected in the game will rise). However, it's worth noting that reaching the final boss and beating the game requires roughly 90% completion. At least 94 of the 100 Jiggies and 810 of the 900 musical notes are required to open the doors to reach the final battle, though the honeycomb pieces are completely optional.
  • In Banjo-Tooie, the amount of items per world is increased, and in turn, many of them are harder to gather due to the worlds' bigger size, complexity and added interconnection (making the game less like a traditional platformer and more like a 3D Metroidvania). Grunty's Revenge dials the trope back for being a handheld game, but in Nuts and Bolts it's back in full force, with a total of 131 Jiggies to collect, among other items (such as vehicle parts).
  • Donkey Kong 64 has a very large amount of items to collect, which can become overwhelming even for fans of the collect-a-thon genre. To make up for this, only half the amount in many cases (and, in some, less than that) is required to finish the game without 100% Completion:
    • 200 Golden Bananas (Plot Coupons; 100 are required).
    • 3500 regular Bananas (used to access each level's boss; there are 100 bananas for each of the five Kongs on each of the seven Levels, and the required amount varies per world).
    • 40 Banana Medals (15 are required to access a mini-game with a prize required to beat the game, each Medal is obtainable only by collecting at least 75 regular Bananas).
    • 20 Banana Fairies (entirely optional; they boost your carrying capacity for Crystal Coconuts, Fairy Camera films and oranges; and unlock the secret 201st Rareware Golden Banana if you collect them all).
    • 40 Blueprints (each of them increases time limit of the final level's Timed Mission by one minute and can be exchanged for Golden Bananas; if you're good enough, you can beat it with just one blueprint, but it's impossible with zero).
    • 10 Battle Crowns (4 are needed to open the door to K. Rool on the last level).
    • 8 Boss Keys (all of them are required to open the way to the final battle).
    • 41 Bananaporters (optional, but very useful as they let you warp from place to place once you've activated both; there are five pairs in the hub level and the first seven levels, and one more in the final level).
    • Nearly 1000 Banana Coins (currency to obtain new skills, which include 3 potions per Kong and three potions for all Kongs, a weapon for each Kong and its subsequent upgrades, a musical instrument for each Kong and its subsequent upgrades, and a payment to play the DK Arcade in Frantic Factory; you only need 160 Coins to pay everything in the game).
    • And last but not least, the Nintendo Coin and Rareware Coin, which are both vital to the game's completion and only attainable by beating in-game arcade games (one being the aforementioned game unlocked by the Banana Medals, and the other being hidden in Frantic Factory, which must be beaten twice to obtain it).
  • Perfect Dark has a large number of weapons to collect... and the countless Easter eggs in the game.
  • Jet Force Gemini has this through The Great Repair, as the characters have to collect the missing twelve parts of an ancient ship to intercept and stop the Big Bad from landing an asteroid towards Earth. And in turn, one of the ship parts can only be earned after rescuing all 282 Tribals in the game, a difficult task for which all levels have to be extensively explored. Among optional stuff, there are many hidden capacity upgrades for the weapons, extra Gemini Holders (though these can be gathered during the first trip if the player pays attention to the surroundings and optional areas), the hidden Bonus Totems which unlock extra content for multiplayer, and the Medals won in the Floyd minigames (of which the exceptionally difficult Expert-rank ones are necessary to unlock one more character in multiplayer). Lastly, the game's hidden cheats require collection of the obliterated Drones' heads to be unlocked: 100 for the first, 200 for the second and 300 for the third.
  • Grabbed by the Ghoulies is a linear puzzle-solving beat-em-up, but even it has the Bonus Books, one for every single scene, which are required to unlock every bonus challenge.
  • Kameo: Elements of Power has the 10 story-mandated elemental sprites, but also the collection tasks of collecting all 100 Elemental Fruits, collecting all four Crystal Eyes, collecting all 12 Elixirs of Life, and collecting every alternate skin for Kameo’s transformations.
  • Their most daunting collection task of all lies in the Compilation Re-release, Rare Replay, a celebration of their 30th anniversary that features 30 of their games from the ZX Spectrum to the Xbox 360. Along with the games are the milestones (5 per pre-Nintendo 64 game, 10 for the post-Nintendo 64 games), which feature tasks that one must do in the games themselves. Competing one gets you a stamp. Some of them are easy enough, while collecting them all usually requires the individual 100% Completion of that game. The older games (which usually suffer from Nintendo Hard) are given cheats and a rewind feature to make them easier, but even that can make the individual games be very time-consuming on their own, particularly the external games which are based on the Achievement Gamerscore earned from them, requiring 75% of it. On top of all of that, there are 80 snapshot challenges (5 per pre-Nintendo 64 game) and six difficult playlists of challenges that are also required. From the extreme difficulty of Battletoads, to the finicky controls of the Sabre Man games, to the extreme patience needed to get a single platinum medal in Blast Corps, to the lengthy grind of Perfect Dark Zero’s multiplayer achievements, to the gargantuan collection task of Jet Force Gemini listed above, the task of collecting all 330 stamps and proving yourself as an “Ultimate Fan” is one that requires incredible endurance and lots of time.
• Runescape: While the player doesn't need to do this, it's implied the gods themselves are fighting over the artefacts left behind by the elder gods. There are twelve, and one of them, a crown, can locate the others. Saradomin wears it.
• Scathe has the Demonstones, magic rune-inscribed artifacts meant to control the forces of hell. You'll need to collect a minimum amount for passing a stage, get over 150 and you unlock the G Olden Ending where you turned against your creator and... took over the heavens.
• Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf is all about stealing all of Sam the Sheepdog's sheep, one by one.
• Demons in Shin Megami Tensei, and Personae in the Persona series. Enjoy filling the Compendium! In later games, Demons and Personae's skill sets are entirely customizable allowing the player to even save their custom layouts. Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey has this with the Exotic Material and Cosmic Eggs
• In Skies of Arcadia:
  • You do this with both the Moon Crystals (the 5 you actually can get are promptly stolen from you when The Dragon ambushes and destroys your base; you do not get them back) and optionally with crew members. Though you need to find all Discoveries and at least 90% of the game's chests in the GameCube remake if you want the Three Secrets an Infinity +1 Sword for Vyse, another Discovery worth lots of money and an Optional Boss.
  • There's also the Chams, tiny moonstones that you feed to Fina's Living Weapon Cupil to make it more powerful (though seeing as Fina is the party healer, this isn't particularly important.) The Legends remake also has moonfish, that you feed to Maria's pet bird, and doing so eventually reveals part of Ramirez's backstory chronicling his Start of Darkness after joining the Armada and unlocks fights with Optional Boss Piastol.
• Sly Cooper did this with the first game collecting pieces of his family's how to be a great thief guide, the second collecting the remains of the first games Big Bad, and the third game revolved around collecting party members for a big heist at the end of the game.
• Spuds Quest has fifty trinkets hidden around the game world.
• In Spyro the Dragon games, at least the first 3, we must look for eggs (first and third game) and orbs (second game). Every time there's an arbitrary minimum limit of how many we must find before we can go to the next world, but finding ALL of them is optional. In the GBA trilogy, there are fairies in the first game and fireflies in the second game which play a role similar to eggs and orbs in the PSX trilogy, while the entire third game is a three-tiered fetch quest where you search for items to allow you to collect other items, which, if you collect an entire set, give you another item which you have to collect the entire set of to complete the game.
• In the Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty campaign, Raynor must complete certain missions to acquire all the pieces of a Xel-Naga artifact before unlocking the final three missions of the game. The artifact is the key to defeating Kerrigan. Other missions are optional, but a certain number must be played to unlock each of the artifact missions.
• The Suikoden series of games does this with the 108 Stars of Destiny to get perfect endings — party members and usually-helpful NPCs for your castle
• Super Mario Bros.: An integral part of the series.
  • Power Stars in Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2; and Shine Sprites in Super Mario Sunshine. Different forms of Plot Coupons with the same format: 120 in the game, and you need 50, 60 or 70 (depending on the game) to reach the final battle with Bowser. Also, some of the Stars and Shine Sprites can only be earned by collecting at least 100 Coins (yellow in the first two games, purple in the following two). In Sunshine, they take it a step further by making the player hunt for blue coins. Normally, blue coins are just uncommon coins worth five normal coins, but in this game, they're collectables. 30 in each of the seven levels with another 19 in the main area, 1 in the tutorial area, and 10 in the final area. The point of that is that a shop on Delfino's pier will trade a Shine Sprite for 10 blue coins, meaning that one-fifth of the game's Shine Sprites are dependent on blue coins.
  • Super Mario Odyssey takes it up to eleven with 880 Power Moons to collect (though you only need 500 to unlock all levels), with the option to buy additional moons with coins, for a total of 999 Moons. Each normal level in Odyssey also has 50 to 100 purple coins to collect, which are necessary to buy all of each respective level's collectibles.
  • Every Mario RPG has this. Super Mario RPG has Star Pieces, Paper Mario has Star Spirits, The Thousand-Year Door has Crystal Stars, Super Paper Mario has Pure Hearts, Sticker Star has pieces of the Sticker Comet, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga has pieces of the Beanstar, Partners in Time has pieces of the Cobalt Star and Bowser's Inside Story has Star Cures. All are crucial, although their importance varies.
  • Super Paper Mario also has Catch Cards. The game says these Catch Cards increase the damage done to an enemy (plus, they stack). However, some of these Catch Cards do nothing and are there just for the sake of collecting them, like the Pixl cards and the cards containing the partners from the previous Paper Mario games.
  • Luigi's Mansion has the overarching collection quest of getting all of the portrait ghosts (and providing them with a golden frame by getting the largest pearls during the capture process), the required tasks of collecting all of the elemental medallions and Mario's possessions, the additional goal of collecting the 50 Boos throughout the mansion, and the extra credit goal of collecting all the treasure you can for the best possible rank (in particular the two highly-valuable Gold Diamonds: One for capturing all Boss, and another for feeding a certain plant with water in a yard during all area chapters except the first).
  • Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon: The main plot has you working to collect the five missing pieces of the eponymous moon to return peace to Evershade Valley. Along with that, each area also has a collection of gemstones; get them all and you get a figurine. Each level also contains a hidden Boo to capture, and getting them all in one area unlocks its secret mission. The treasure in this game serves a smaller purpose; you can upgrade the Poltergust 5000 by collecting enough money, but the game has way more treasure than you'll ever need.
  • Luigi's Mansion 3: The game's main objective is capturing all boss ghosts (equivalent to the Portrait Ghosts in the first game) in order to retrieve the elevator's buttons, each taking you to a new floor. Each floor also has six hidden gemstones and one hidden Boo, the latter of which you can only find after beating the floor's boss. As before, you can also collect a ton of money. You don't buy upgrades to the Poltergust G-00 in this game, but you can buy extra lives as well as location devices for the Boos and gems until you've collected them all.
  • Mario Party Advance: The Gaddgets, which are miniature toys invented by E. Gadd that have to be gathered after Bowser sabotaged their supply at the start of the game (and kept some for himself, requiring the player to beat his challenges to get them back). There are 61 in total.
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has Spirits, taking over the role of trophies in the previous games. There's several ways to find them; most spirits have to be battled in either World of Light or the lucky-dip Spirit Board, several can only be purchased in the World of Light shops, a few can only be gotten be releasing spirits and using the cores they leave to summon different ones (which then means you have to get the spirits you released again), some are earned by leveling specific spirits to 99 so they can be enhanced into a new form, and a select few are locked behind Challenges that need to be completed before you earn them and have them start appearing normally. Spirits can also be snagged from the Vault shop, and received as rewards in modes like Classic Mode, Home-Run Contest, and Online Tourney. A special category of Spirits, Fighter Spirits, can only be gotten via Classic Mode or the shop in the Vault; these can't be equipped, and instead represent the fighters themselves. Ultimate also has regularly-occurring events that introduce more spirits to the game, which last for a few days at a time; while the events are limited-time, the spirits eventually get added to the base game a few months later. Additionally, there's the Partner Pikachu and Partner Eevee spirits and Tockles spirit, which were exclusive to Old Save Bonuses of their respective games, but they were made obtainable through normal means in updates (2.0.0 for the former, and 6.0.0, only fightable on Hero's Spirit Board, for the latter). As of the Street Figher 35th anniversary event introduced in version 13.0.1, seemingly the game’s final update, there are 1,513 spirits.
• Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal had fifteen trophies; nine found in various levels, two found be collecting 40 titanium bolts and 30 skill points respectively, two found by completing every type of a certain challenge, and two found by maxing out your health and every weapon. The kicker? You had to beat the game once, then play through it again just to get everything.
• In Resident Evil 5, there is an achievement/trophy which requires you to get every single type of treasure in the game. This may require a guide or FAQ due to a few obscure ones: e.g. from killing many enemies during a part where the game wants you to run.
• The vast majority of The Riddle of Master Lu is spent collecting the pieces of information that comprise the titular riddle. The ancient Chinese sage Lu has built the tomb of China's first emperor so that it can only be entered after interpreting a tablet he left behind, requiring knowledge of ancient scripts from three different places around the world he'd traveled to and a sort of key that shows which parts are to be read.
• In Sticky Business, there are achievements for buying all the upgrades and sticker components, and there are counters tracking which ones you've already bought. For the latter, you have to use your existing components in the stickers you sell to level them up and gain hearts, which are used to buy more sticker parts and colors. The other upgrades, on the other hand, are simply bought with coins.
• There was a heavy degree of Pokémon-ness in Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. Finding all the cores and catching (AND evolving) all those monsters definitely caused a heavy sense of nostalgia.
• In Tales of Xillia 2, a long term sidequest has you go out and find a total of 100 cats hidden all over the world, in places ranging from normal (Like towns and fields) to downright bizarre (A volcano and an Eldritch Location in another dimension, for some examples).
• Temtem is a Spiritual Successor to Pokémon, and the player gains an achievement for obtaining 151 out of the total 164 available species called "Back to the Roots".
• In The Vision Of The Ant, there are around 60 monsters each with their own stats and skills, if you manage to catch them all you will get the strongest armor in the game.
• In Thief: The Dark Project, you must find each of the four elemental talismans to unlock the wards on the Haunted Cathedral. In Dark Project this involves two quests, while in the Gold version each talisman has its own quest.
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater has gaps, areas where you have to grind, manual, or jump from point A to point B. Finding all of them nets 100% Completion.
• Total War: Warhammer:
  • Several characters' and factions' campaigns are focused on tracking down several foes, either roving armies or unique monsters, which must be defeated in battle. Doing so unlocks a Plot Coupon themed to the specific campaign, some other item or ability reward, or the ability to recruit the vanquished foe into your army. These battles are scattered quite far apart, forcing you to send armies or agents ranging over most of the campaign map to do them all.
  • The Tomb Kings' campaign requires them to track down and defeat several rogue armies, with success being rewarded with one of the Four Books of Nagash needed to win the Tomb King campaign.
  • The Vampire Coast similarly needs to find and defeat a series of rogue armies and pirate fleets for several reasons. Eight will yield Pieces of Eight needed to unlock the faction's Regiments of Renown, and four more must be fought for the campaign's specific plot coupons.
  • The Norscans are tasked with hunting down a series of fearsome monsters, including dragons, dragon ogres, giants, feral mammoths, phoenixes dinosaurs and hydras. Two of these hunts, those for the frost wyrm Frigustrex and the Great Mawherd of Bloodfjord, reward you with the ability to recruit the monsters into your forces.
  • Imrik's campaign has him track down five unique dragons — one for each of the High Elves' dragon units, one for the Wood Elves' and one for the Dark Elves' — to defeat and recruit into his army.
• Ultima Underworld II required the Avatar to collect a blackrock gem from each of eight different worlds.
• In Ultima IX: Ascension the Avatar had to collect each of eight corrupted runes of the virtues and their eight corresponding sigils to cleanse the eight shrines of the virtues. Eventually, he also needs to collect three additional sigils for various virtues.
• Universal Studios Theme Park Adventure has sixteen letters scattered throughout the park that spell "UNIVERSAL STUDIOS". You need to collect them all in order to earn one of the stamps necessary to beat the game.
• Unreal II: The Awakening's Tosc-unlocking thing. You hop around all but two missions (the first and the defense one) gathering pieces of the artifact. Then it turns out that it alters the most harmless sentient creatures in the game into killing machines with black hole guns, so what you just spent the entire game doing turned out to be a really bad idea.
• Unreal Tournament III features a variation with the gametype Greed, similar to Q3A's Harvester, but with the skulls falling from the enemy team's dead warriors rather than from a central receptacle.
• In An Untitled Story, you have to collect at least some number of gold beads to open the way into the final dungeon.
• Warzone 2100's campaign practically revolves around finding new parts to upgrade your forces — lest you get stomped to bits by your enemy.
• In Wick there are tokens from each of the five ghost children scattered throughout the game. Collecting all of them unlocks 5 am and the secret ending.
• WildStar: This is the focal point of the Scientist Path. The Galactic Archive isn't going to fill itself!
• Wonder Boy: Each level contains a Doll, sometimes hidden, all of which you must collect to reach the True Final Stage.
• Ys: Many of the games revolve around such a quest, such as the Books of Ys in the first game, the Statues in Wanderers from Ys and Ys: The Oath in Felghana, the elemental power crystals in Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand, and the pieces of the Mirror of Zeme in Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, as well as the optional Tabulas in that game.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction, all seven Millennium Items are needed to free the Egyptian God Cards.
• Yume Nikki has you collecting the 24 effects.
• ZanZarah: The Hidden Portal: There are 77 fairy species in the game, all with unique appearance, attributes, and spell preferences. Obtaining all of them is quite a feat (that you can lock yourself out of), but not necessary to win the game.

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