Video Games, Movies, Comics, & Pop Culture

So it’s probably time to start updating this more frequently.  I thought I’d start off by just going a bit into a little information on my dream collection for video games and the reason I’m pursuing retro games that I’ll be talking about in this blog!

To be honest, I’ve always kept some of my games.  I still have my NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube from growing up as well as my Sega Genesis.  I kept a few games for each of them, but not many.  In fact, I sold a lot of them on eBay a few years ago and just kept my favorites.  Not an uncommon story, but a painful one for anyone who’s done so and then got back into retro games!

Then last year at the recommendation of my GameStop manager friend, I picked up and read Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  The book is filled with pop culture references from the 80s; video games, movies, tabletop, all manner of geekery.  The nostalgia chord was struck for me and I decided I wanted to look into some of the old games (and even movies) of my childhood as well.  I discovered there’s a whole group out there who are into retro games as well and a lot of people who, like me, see video games as a form of art as much as a form of entertainment.  Sure, you have the games, but you also have the artwork that went into the cartridge labels and box art as well as the manuals themselves.  These are pop culture history right here.  So my nostalgia was fueled into a quest to rebuild my gaming library…better, stronger, larger, awesomer…er.

So I decided first that my new collection and library would need to encompass my life of gaming.  The first step was to gather the consoles I wanted in this collection and then to decide which games I would get for each system.  I decided to get every console I played growing up from Atari 2600 to PS4 of today and a “Top 100” library for each system, or equivalent in some cases.  I did Google searches and found IGN “Top 100” lists, message board threads for “Top 100” where games were added and removed based on number of times people included it in their picks.  Eventually, I came up with a list for each console that I’m actively working on tracking down and finding.  I’ve since also added GameBoy, Game Gear, and Nintendo DS to my collection.  It’s going to be a long journey, and it’s probably going to be more expensive than I’ll want to dwell on, but that’s the path I’m going down!

I’ll be chronicling the adventure on this blog, of course, but once I gather the games the mission will of course be to play the games and review them here as well.  That should push me out of my usual comfort zone since a lot of the Top 100 are game genres I don’t generally like.  First Person Shooters, racers, sports games primarily will be on that list, but I’ll still give them a try.

The eventual goal is to buy a bigger television and get a custom build entertainment center in the living room with each system presented in a museum quality presentation, all cables hidden and each one able to be switched on and played easily with their respective game libraries in attractive cabinets.  That, however, is even further down the road.

I’m actually down to just 958 games left to find on my list for all systems.  Not a bad start.  Though there’s a good chance I’ll pass on a few of the more expensive games considered in the top 100 of these systems.

-Jeff