Y'know....sometimes I enjoy having a brain that has three or more things going on in it at once...and other times, it's a bit of a curse. I say that because I've made more progress on "The List" part of the site...but i a completely different direction than I had originally intended.

Basically, I will be breaking The List down into multiple lists. The big, giant list will always be there...but, I also thought I would love to see what games would be in the top 100 if I went backwards in time. So, as a result of my brain thinking too much, I will now be having multiple variations of the list, year-by-year.

Essentially, how I plan to do this is that, let's say I've got a list for the year 1998. That list will contain every game that I reviewed that was released up to and including December 31, 1998. So, if I were to add a game released in 1998, I would add it to this list...and then every other list up to the current year. So it'll be quite a bit of a pain....but I also think that the end results will be worth it.

After giving it some thought, I've decided to start with the year 1980. Originally, I was going to go with 1977 and the Atari 2600 launch...but there simply isn't enough for me to have a decent-sized list. At least not now. As I review more games, I may retroactively add years earlier than 1980. If I fast forward to 1980, it's still not easy to get a quality top 100, but enough games have been released for various platforms that I can work with it.

As a result, I've switched my game-playing focus to early games right now. The hope/goal was to create a list of games from 1980 and earlier and reach a total of 50-100 games on that list....as of right now, I'm at about 102, and I've still got a little bit to go. I'm also switching my focus in terms of the reviews sections. I was picking random platforms and adding them. Now I'll be bringing in older formats...even if I didn't have any reviews for them before. This month, I created the arcade section and added a whopping 47 new reviews for that section, I did my first Channel F reviews, reviewing the first 9 Videocarts and the built-in games on the console, and I've added nine more early Atari 2600 games to the section I already had up at the site's relaunch. I've also added Intellivisiona nd Odyssey2 sections, with over a dozen new reviews added for each console.

What I still plan on adding before putting the "new" list up is...an Astrocade section and an Apple II section. Again, primary focus will be on games from 1980 and earlier, but as I get to the 1981 list, 1982 list, etc, I'll be revisiting these sections and adding newer games.

I've also begun designing what I'd like the new list to look like...if anyone read my first blog entry, you saw my early design for simplifying the list to allow for faster load times. Well, since then, I've taught myself some fancy tricks to make things look quite a bit nicer. I don't know if I'm going to make each year's (or generation's) list look different, aside from color changes, or if this is gonna be the template going forward, but when making the look of the list, I was loosely inspired by the Atari game boxes. Below is how it currently looks as I type this...though, changes may be made before it gets published.

The original "List" redesign:

The current "List" redesign:

The plan is to also keep everything simplistic until I get to the top 10...at which case, I'll add more imagery and make everything look nicer. As the list grows, then the top 100 will be less simplistic, with the top 10 still getting special treatment. Depending on how fancy I get, I'd like the modern list to have the top 500 look nicer, as a nod to my "Top 500 Games of All-Time" lists that I used to do on my old, old website years ago.

Anyway, the other positive for me doing the lists in this way is that I try to score and review games based on when they were released, and other games available at the time...so a game getting a 9 from me in 1980 may get a significantly lower score if the exact same game was released in 2020. But by me doing the lists like this, it also helps serve as a reminder to me what other games of the time were like when I review something...there's a good chance that as I go through and do these list years-by-year, I may adjust my reviews as a result. I've already tweaked a few as I write this.

I've also started implementing a new way to achieve the "average" score...this isn't set in stone at the moment, but here are my current sources that I'll be using to tally up to get the score...

My Score (for everything I review)
Metacritic Critic's Score (for most games released after 2000)
Metacritic User Score (for most games released after 2000)
Howlongtobeat User Score (for most games)
MobyGames Score (for most games)
MobyGames Critics Score (for most games)
MobyGames Players Score (for most games)
Video Game Critic's Score (for most console/handheld games)
Video Game Critics Reader Score (for most console/handheld games)
itch.io User Rating (for obscure PC games)
Steam User Rating (for games on Steam)
Xbox Store User Rating (for games on Xbox)
Playstation Store User Rating (for games on Playstation)
EmuParadise User Rating (for a lot of retro formats)
Vimm User Rating (for a lot of retro formats)
CoolRoms User Rating (for a lot of retro formats)
LaunchBox User Rating (for most games)
MyAbandonWare User Rating (for random formats, mostly older)
Completionator User Rating (for most games)
GameFAQs User Rating (for most games)
GameFAQs User Review Average (for whatever games have written reviews)

If anyone has any other suggestions, I'm open to hear them. I mostly want user ratings more than anything else, though I'm open to critic reviews to a degree, too.

My hope and goal is to get this list up by the end of the year. I'm not 100% certain if I'll be able to obtain that goal...but I'll be tryin'.

With the website stuff out of the way, let's talk about the collection. :) I discovered a new (to me, anyway) gaming/collectibles store about an hour away from me. I stopped in to check them out and was absolutely blown away. Not only do they have video games, but they've got old toys, comic books, trading cards...pretty much anything you can think of. If you're in your 30s or later, and want some nostalgia from when you grew up, this store has it. It's called Freaktoyz, in case anyone is wondering. They've got a website. Support them. They're good people. While there, I was able to nab some more boxed Atari 2600 games for the ol' collection, as well as a boxed Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64 in very good condition. They also allowed me to FINALLY get Castlevania 2 in box for the NES, so now I've finally got all three NES games from the series in box. As a wrestling fan, I was also in awe at all of the wrestling figures and wrestling magazines that they had on hand.

I also checked out a store not too far from me, since I hadn't been there in a while. Their prices are sometimes a bit high, so I don't go there often. This time, I found some lower prices on some games that I wanted, so I was okay with spending a little more on others. The big item there was Biomotor Unitron for the Neo Geo Pocket Color. I don't know what it is this year, but after years of never finding Neo Geo Pocket Color games in person at stores, I've found nearly half a dozen this year. The owner had told me that he just bought a bunch of games from someone, and in that lot was another Neo Geo Pocket Color game in box...I'll likely be back to pick that one up, regardless of what game it is.

I'm not sure about any other collectors out there, but I don't like buying online for retro stuff. Sure, it's easy to get whatever I want from eBay, but to me, the fun in collecting is what I call "the hunt." If I travel around and visit stores, and find a game that I'd been searching for forever, that's an awesome feeling. If I buy it online, it's nice to have it, but I just got rid of all of the fun of finding it by surprise. Plus, by traveling around, eventually store owners start to recognize you and they'll usually give you discounts and all that fun stuff...not to mention, I'm helping support local businesses this way. If anyone else is reading this and also likes traveling around to local stores, what area are you in and what are your favorite stores to visit? Maybe I'll make a little list of stores I like to visit in the state of Wisconsin in a future blog, just in case anyone ever makes their way to this part of the US and is looking for some decent stores.

And on that note, I'll wrap this up. I likely won't have another blog entry up 'til the end of the year....but maybe I'll do some year-end awards. Similar to the list that Mr. tarzanslam asks us to do, but I'll split it up into categories and all that fun stuff....or I'll forget all about it and bore you with more rambling instead. Anyway, if I don't write another blog 'til then, with this being the holiday season, I hope that whatever holiday you celebrate at this time of year, that it's a good one. As usual, thanks for reading this and thanks for allowing me to thank you, you thank-filled thankee. Adios.