The Art of Obsessing Over Which Games to Play

     Over the course of my life, I have gone through several distinct periods of how I approached video games. As a kid I played what was available to me. By my teenage years, I had amassed quite the collection of games, but I played them with little intent and often abandoned games as quickly as I had found them. Around the time I graduated from high school, I decided that enough was enough. Playing games at random was no longer gratifying for me. I created a list of games which I considered to be "top priority" and set out to finish them.

    Years went by, and while there were a few distractions along the way, the list by and large was completed. Simultaneously I was completing my BA in History. As I became immersed in the study and practice of history, I realized that gaming history was something that I was intensely passionate about. So with the top priority list finished, I decided that it was time to create a new list. This time around, I wanted to play every video game that could be considered important to the history of the medium. 

    And that has been my life for roughly the past year. I started with some classic Infocom games like Zork and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and more recently started delving into more JRPGs like Dragon Quest VIII and the Etrian Odyssey series. But simply playing the games still does not feel like it is enough. Much like how Infocom packaged "feelies" in with their games, I too want something beyond just what I experience in game. I'm hoping that I blog will fulfill that desire.

    This blog will be a way for me to catalogue and review the games I play. Additionally, I hope to use it as a place to write about the history of the games I am playing (gotta use my degree for something) and to put them into a broader context within the medium as a whole. This idea was directly inspired by the CRPG Addict. I believe that we will have relatively little crossover, as his goal is to play every CRPG ever, where as mine is to play every "important" game irregardless of genre. (Edit: I'm a few posts in now, and am formatting them similarly to CRPG Addict's posts. It feels like the most natural way to write. Just wanted to be upfront and give him credit.)

    For the time being, I will be focusing on DS, 3DS, and old computer games. The DS and 3DS games I play are picked just by my inherent desire to play them. As for old computer games, I have chosen to play most of them in a specific order. I recently bought a book titled "The Art of Point and Click Adventure Games". It catalogues a wide selection of adventure games from 1984 through 2020. I thought it would be fun to play them as I'm reading along in the book, so it'll serve as my guide for that particular genre at least. 

The book that motivated me to start this

 

    If you've read this far, then congrats you're probably the only one. I'm writing this more for myself at this point, but of course it'd be awesome if even just a few people cared enough to read any of the future posts on here. Thank you to any who do!