What? Why?

Talking about videogames on the internet? What a concept!

Anyway, unnecessary poorly edited meme aside, this post is to lay down what this blog is all about.

As a child of the 80s, videogames was very much an industry that felt like it was growing up with me. It's not a perfect analogy, but goodness: the 1990s were the awkward teen years where you tried desperately to be liked; the 2000s were the twenties where you *think* you're gown up but you really have no idea what you're doing; and the 2010s are the thirties where you're actually getting your act together, and might finally contribute something important. No idea where this analogy puts the 2020s, but I guess it is whatever the games industry equivalent of "miscellaneous back-pain" is.

And so, as a gamer since I saw my friend Owen playing Moon Patrol on parents 386, I've gamed my way through the decades. I'm sure I'll forget something, but my gaming history went something like this:

Atari Lynx>Sega MegaDrive>Nintendo 64>Gameboy Advance>Nintendo Gamecube>Nintendo DS>Nintendo Wii>Steam>Nintendo 3DS>Playstation Vita>Nintendo WiiU>Nintendo Switch.

I am sure you can see a pattern here, and yes, once Nintendo got into my veins, I was hooked. Mario 64 was a revelation to 16 year old Connell.

But there's more to it. Around the time I was ready to move from my Nintendo 64 to a Gamecube, I realised, I wanted to keep most of my games. And that was the moment when the problem began: I was now A COLLECTOR.

Now while I may not be as curiously attractive as this MCU Elder God, I do share his problem. I've been acquiring cool things (and some honestly not really that cool things) without the time or intention to actually use them for 25 years now, but more on that later.

As a result, I have an office that shares a wall with someone you might expect to tell you to "smash that like button", "ring that bell" and get extremely mad about products for children. I promise you, I don't even know what G Fuel or Raid Shadow Legends even are.

This collection is indeed absurd, I admit it. But it's my thing and I like it! However, what was perhaps a reasonable pace of acquisition took a turn for the worse when I discovered facebook marketplace. Over a period of about 5 months, I bought a big chunk of games I had been wanting for some time at pretty reasonable prices. At least, that was my justification. My last purchase was this extremely decent haul of DS games (for only $50):

As I was proudly showing off this excellent use of my money and time (I only had to drive 100km at 10PM on a work night), rather than the "wow, aren't you an intelligent and wise person to invest your hard earned money in such a manner", I was instead bashed over the head with "Are you actually going to play them though?" That's right dear reader, I had been Called Out.

More than that, it became an outright challenge from my friend Mark (the tallest horticulturalist): If I play at LEAST ten hours of games (over at least 3 of them) I will acquire a Good Wine. Now, do I want a Good Wine? Probably not, I have only ever enjoyed wine three times, once of which I was already extremely drunk when I did so, and was mixing it with equal parts Coca-Cola. But, this challenge hit something in the back of my mind that had been bothering me, as was previously mentioned: I'm not playing these games.

And so, I expanded upon this idea. I would play at least 1 hour of the 25 games I had bought recently. And then further: why not use this as a means to be creative? Do some writing outside the confines of work or (shudder) twitter? And you know, why limit it to just those 25? I had games going back to the recesses of my collection that for one reason or another had been looked over. And thus, we arrive at this blog.

I've compiled a list of all games I either have not played or played for only a very short time, which you can view here: https://bit.ly/3JgjETy. They're ordered completely randomly, I assure you. For each game listed, I will create a blog, which will cover what I know about the game, why I got it, and then, after playing an hour, what my thoughts on it are, and see how those line up with what the general consensus for the game is. At least, that's what I'll cover if I think it's worth doing so, the format isn't going to be so rigid that I won't play around with it. I'm trying to entertain myself as much as you, dear reader.

So, see you soon for the first game: Final Fantasy 3 on the Super Nintendo Mini (or Final Fantasy 6 for those who insisted upon "Aerith" in the late 90s).