Quick Tour

Navigating the main screen

When you opened your trial edition, you probably noticed that there were already some games in there. This is the example database.

The nice thing about the sample database is that you can browse around, try out all the great features, and really get a feel for Game Collector... without messing anything up or losing any personal data.

So, give it a whirl... browse around and have some fun!
Here are some things you may want to try:

• Click around in the game list on the left to make the game details appear in the Details panel on the right.
• Click on the Images tab. This switches the screen into Images view (a nice overview of game cover images). Click the List tab to switch back to List view, a columnar view showing multiple columns of data.
• Use View / Folders / Platform, to group the demo games into Platform folders.
  Click a Platform on the left side of the screen to see the games for that Platform.
  Use View / Folders / No Folders to go back to a simple list of all games.
• Maybe try some automatic sorting features? Just click on the column headers of the game list to sort the list. E.g. click on the Release Year column header to sort your list by Release Year. Click again to reverse the sort order. Click the Title header to go back to Title sorting.
• See the white box on the toolbar? That's for searching. Try typing "mario" into the box and hit Enter. Clear the box and hit Enter another time to see the full database again.

Modifying game details

Now let me show you how to modify a game's details: Select a game in the list, then click the Edit Game button on the toolbar (3rd button from the left).
This will open the Edit Game screen. Now change or add some data (don't be afraid to break something, this is just the example database). When you're done, click the OK button and watch the Details panel change to reflect the changes you made.

Adding your first Game

Before adding your first game, you should start your own database:

• First... choose File / New Database from the menu. This will create a new empty database.
• Second... Now save the new database and give it a name. Do this using File / Save Database.
• Third... In the Save screen that appears, enter a name for the database, e.g. "My Game Collection", then click Save.

So, how do you add that first game? It couldn't be easier.

First, click the Add Games Automatically button (the leftmost button on the toolbar). This opens the Add Games Automatically screen. In this screen, adding a game takes just 3 easy steps...

• Step 1... Enter the game title (e.g. "mirrors edge") and click Search Now. Game Collector will now search our online game database for games that match the entered title.
• Step 2... Select your game and edition from the Search Results. Game Collector will display a list of games and their special/region editions. Just select the game edition you own. You can use the Preview panel to make sure it is the right one, just double-click a result.
• Step 3... Click Add Selected to add the game to your database. Game Collector will now connect to our online game database to download all game information (genre, publisher, developer, release year, game description, audience rating, cover image and more).

Or, if you really want to get organized super-fast, then simply scan in the barcode (of course you'll need one of our inexpensive barcode scanners...). Here's how you do that...

• Step 1... Scan the barcode
• Step 2... Click Add Selected. Done!