I had a different idea for this blog entry initially...and I had a good chunk of it written, where I would go into a little more detail about the top lists from the previous blog...and then I did it - I went and changed it all up. I tend to have a mind that never stops going...as a result, I constantly have new ideas popping in my head. So, I decided to go and do a deep search for websites and references that I could use for including in the average scores. The more data, the better. And despite how I initially worded stuff above, I do think it was a good call - it's way less work to find these sources and include them in the data now than it would be to add it later and retroactively go back and fix everything.

The new sources are...
Screenscraper - A French video game database
UVL - A good video game database that also includes a lot of obscure stuff
RF Generation - A decent game database with more focus on older games
Glitchwave - A database with a lot of obscure stuff...it also has some VERY stingy users - the scores from here drop the averages of almost every game
AtariAge - A website for Atari fans, they scrape the web and include reviews for specific games, showing the average score
Various Magazines - Not a website...just as it says, I'm pulling scores from a bunch of magazines. Won't happen overnight, but since the list will be year-by-year, I can slowly compile reviews from the magazines that I've got available to me.

I would really, really love to find a Japanese video game database with user ratings. I feel like I have North American and European-based sites covered, but with Japan being such a major part of the video game industry, I would love to pull scores from a website that represents the gaming preferences over there. If anyone reading this happens to know of any, please let me know. I did some Google searches both in English and in Japanese and came up empty...but, maybe someone will have some info for me. I do have access to magazines from there, however, so if push comes to shove, that'll be what I go with.

I also found a few older magazines that, I assume, didn't live very long after the video game crash. I started playing games in the late 80s, so I knew what folks were thinking/saying at that time, especially in school, but In the 70s and early-to-mid 80s, I've got no clue. Like many folks, I just go by what people say today about those games. Paging through these magazines and seeing what people thought of those games when they were released is good fun, and I feel like some of it either offsets (or in some cases, it justifies) some of the poor scores that many of those early games get on websites where you're able to log in a review score. Likewise, I'm surprised to see some games, like Yars' Revenge, and Indy 500 get LOWER scores back when it was released than they get now...for example, one publication scored Yars' Revenge just slightly higher than how they scored the 2600 version of Pac-Man and E.T.

Anyway, as a result of me getting these magazines, and logging in review scores, I've decided to add a new section to the site for magazines. I will display the cover and table of contents for each magazine and list all reviews from that magazine. If I know of a link to a digital copy, I'll put in a link. The table of contents is displayed just in case anyone wants to see if they can find anything interesting in the magazine before clicking on some links (or hunting down a copy on eBay) to gain access to read it. At the moment, I have the entire (almost) run of Electronic Fun with Computers and Games and the first year (1986) of Famitsu magazine covered. I'm hoping to have plenty of regions across the globe covered by including these scores...and likewise, I'm hoping to find some hidden or forgotten gems by going through these magazines as well.

Back to Famitsu, it had an interesting review method, for those of you who never read any of the early editions. Their in-depth reviews are "weather reports" with numbered scores being replaced with weather icons. After a few issues, they merge in "quick" reviews with a 1-10 numbered rating...and some of those quick reviews get full-length weather reports in future issues. The fun for me, not fluent in Japanese, is that I get to try to translate the names of the games reviewed to English. Google translate doesn't always work well with the colored backgrounds interfering with the Japanese text, so I often write out the Japanese that I see and use Google translate on that, which seems to work well - waaaay back in college, when I took Japanese, I was told that I had very good penmanship for the language, so I'm putting that to use. So if you want to translate some stuff using the help of Google, and you've got some artistic skills, you may find yourself having better success writing out what you see and having Google translate that, rather than the stylized fonts in some magazine articles.

Anyway, with all of that out of the way...let's talk about collection news. There is none. Next topic. :) I took a break since I've been on a roll in terms of finding things that I've wanted for the collection, and while that's a good thing, it also hurts my wallet. I might take a road trip in a few weeks, though...we'll see if I feel like it and/or if I can afford it. I won't lie - part of me is hoping for a very uneventful road trip if I do decide to go.

In "what I'm playing" news, I started up the original Animal Crossing. I love that game, but I haven't played it in probably 20 years. It's still fun, but when comparing it to New Horizons, they've really tweaked the formula and streamlined how to do everything over the years. I plan to stick with it until I've got my house upgraded and paid off, but we'll see how it goes. I've also started Grandia, another game that I probably haven't completed in 20 years. I'm spending a bit of time grinding levels/skills, just so I can play that game in the background while trying to simultaneously work on website stuff. I also revisted Super Metroid earlier this month, though it's only been a couple of years since I last played through that one. If Super Metroid isn't my favorite game, it's got to be in the top five, easily. Playing through it again just reminded me of how excellent it was for its time and how it still holds up well today. Aside from all of that, I've also been plugging away at Commodore PET games and 1980-and-earlier arcade games...hopefully reviews for them will be published to the website in the very near future....probably along with the magazine section in one, big update.

On that note, I suppose I'll wrap this one up. I'm hoping that by next month I FINALLY have the 1980 list up and published, and if that is the case, I may do a little side-by-side top 25, 50, or 100 (depends on how ambitious I am) here, using the list on the site, based on averages, versus a different spin on ranking the games, with a priority on my, personal scores. We'll see how "my" rankings compare to the average rankings if I stick with that plan...but we'll see what happens, though.

'Til next time, tata and toodles and...whatever other word that starts with a "t" that means goodbye. Tasta la vista, baby?....eh, close enough. Adios.