A Journey Though The Best of Classic Gaming

[fastbilly1]

I thought you could easily do two or three games; one short/arcady, one medium, one long, per month. Granted that may make for several extremes. Hmm a list of pros and cons for each style and/or idea may be in order.

Actually I think the first thing that needs to be decided is what we are going for. I mean racket first stated the greatest games of all time, however now we are bringing in the Jaguar and like. So how about this, lets decide on a list of pros and cons for each way of doing it: Marurun's, doing by genre, doing it by console by month, etc, and then move from there. Roll it around a couple times and see how it works for you. We all will have different ideas of the best way to go at this.

I like Maruruns idea of keeping it simple and easy. But I also think if do it by month, ie June is the NES month, it would give enough time for people who do not have a chance to play games to catch up on all of them. Heck we could even make a contest out of it. Like I said, I am partial to the 3-10 games (depending on lenght) per month setup. Granted with Kalleria we could easily do some multiplayer as well. We could fairly easily come up with a list of defining games on each system, whittling it down is the tricky part.

So in this fictional NES June I spoke of earlier we could have a list of say 10:
Short:
Blades of Steel
Contra
Mike Tysons Punchout/Punchout

Medium:
Mario 1 or 3
Megaman
Kid Icarus

Long:
Final Fantasy
Legend of Zelda
Castlevania 3

Unknown/Import/Uncommon:
Recca 93

Yes they are not the best choices but you get the idea. It is a little disjointed in that there are so many choices but I think it provides just enough choice that anyone can play them and say we introduce all of the longs on the first day of the month along with one of each of the others. Then add one of the others per week until the end. This would provide some suspense as we go and hopefully keep people coming back every week to not only discover the new games but to talk about the old ones. Heck its like the Virtual Console...Granted no matter the amount of tweaking of list, the Atari month is going to be tough, so many bad arcade ports.

Granted what do I know, Im going to go back to Three Dirty Dwarves...

[RadarScope1]

Might be helpful to consider some other lists that would be helpful as a guideline. Not saying these would be gospel, only a place for some ideas. Here's some lists that I've found to be better than most...

1UP's Essential 50 -- chronological, judged by innovation
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3116290

EGM's Top 200 Games of the Their Time -- ranked, judged on the game overall in the context of the time
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3147448

[racketboy]

I agree -- those are a good starting point.
I like the 50 list based on innovation, but just by looking at the list, you quickly notice that it missed a lot of important games.

[marurun]

I don't think we should do more than 2 games at a time. Actually, I think we should stick to one game at a time. Again, if we give people options to play like 1 of 10 games then there will be too little unity and there will be a distinct lack of commonality in the discussion. Book clubs/groups usually stick to 1 book, but they break the book into pages or chapters. Pages 1 - 100 the first week, for example. Maybe we can take a similar approach with games. If everyone finishes the game in a couple weeks, just toss in a second game, but only after it's clear the game isn't sufficient to carry the month.

[racketboy]

I don't think we should do more than 2 games at a time. Actually, I think we should stick to one game at a time. Again, if we give people options to play like 1 of 10 games then there will be too little unity and there will be a distinct lack of commonality in the discussion. Book clubs/groups usually stick to 1 book, but they break the book into pages or chapters. Pages 1 - 100 the first week, for example. Maybe we can take a similar approach with games. If everyone finishes the game in a couple weeks, just toss in a second game, but only after it's clear the game isn't sufficient to carry the month.

Agree completely.

[fastbilly1]

Eh, one every two weeks might work, but I feel once you hit some games to long or to short you will start losing people. And after I rolled it around alittle bit I think that my idea is a bit farfetched for an internet group. Though I have been part of a bookclub that used a list and talked about them. Granted the club was over one hundred active members...

Though, since it all comes down to racket eventually, Ill just wait and see what the man behind the curtain decides. Any way its done I am in.

[marurun]

Yeah, I'm in as well. And I do agree with RB's earlier post that the Dreamcast even is too retro. What about the PS1 and Saturn? They have distinctly 3D games, as well as the N64. But then, the PS and N64 all emulate well. The saturn, however, is a tricky beast...

[floatingyeti]

i have an idea. we could structure it like this

basically view retro periods in spans of five years at a time and have a poll to determine the vote best/ most influential games according to genre. and spend a month or two experiencing those games and then move on to the next 5 year span. that way we don't concentrate on any one console but the best that period had to offer, voted by the forum users.

example

games the defined 1980-1985

action: get results from forum poll
rpg: poll
smup: poll
strategy: poll
action/platformer: poll

[racketboy]

That's kinda my original thoughts (although 1980-1985 in your example is a bit old for most of our tastes)

On a separate note, what do you guys think about having a wiki to come up with some of the game club information?
We could collaborate on the blog posts for each installment, giving a quick summary of the game, giving some basic control information, tips, listing helpful links to guides and such, recommended emulators, and that type of stuff to get people pointing in the right direction.

Your thoughts?

[fastbilly1]

But if you skip 80-85 you miss out on great games like Kings/Space Quest, Zork, Rogue, Mule, Knight Lore (heck the entire Sabreman series), and Oregon Trail. Heck I even did leg work for you today for those years...ok so I use that as an excuse in that I was bored and wanted to write something mindlessly.