This is me. I'm hoping it will give you a better sense of who's doing all this crazy stuff.
I’ve been using emulators for a while. Since middle school when one of my teachers kids told me about them. I’ve always had tons of games because I would get giant packs that would include everything, or at least a lot of things. I’ve had games sitting around for years that have never been played because I didn’t know how good they were and would always go for the games I knew. Which I think is really kind of sad.
In really late May or Early June 2010 I got the idea to play through every NES game ever released. I was subbing in a computer class and during a free period I had I got a list of every NES game from Wikipedia, randomized it, and figured I could go from there.
Unfortunately I’m a bit of a nerd and over thought this process once I saw how things turned out. I don’t have that random list anymore, but I do remember that The Legend of Zelda II was much higher on it than The Legend of Zelda.
I decided that approach was stupid. The biggest issue in my mind was that I’d be looking at sequels before the original came out. A close second though was that I’d be looking at games that came out pretty late into the NES’s lifespan first and inevitably comparing them to early NES games at the end of the list. Really, is it fair to look at Tecmo Super Bowl without having first seen 10 Yard Fight? I don’t think so.
On June 21st I saw a post on MetaFilter about Chrontendo. In my mind that sealed things up. Chronologically was the way to go. At the end of July I started things off with Super Mario Bros., blitzed through the launch titles, and from there it’s been an adventure that I’ve loved every step of the way.
Doctor Sparkle is over there looking at the historical significance of each game, my plan is to just look at each game as a game. I’ll admit that I probably can’t escape getting at some of the significance as well. But the important thing for me is the game.
So in the end this is a giant attempt to review every NES game ever released in North America. I’m going to skip the Japanese only games. I can’t read it, I don’t know anyone who can read all of it, and I’m not going to spend time trying to figure it out. I’m also going to skip some of the unlicensed games. The ones centered around porn especially, but possibly some of the multi-game carts as well.
Really, that’s all I have to say. You can either start at the beginning with Super Mario Bros. or go for a random post. The point is to learn something, and both ways should give you a chance to do that.
