A Journey Though The Best of Classic Gaming

[racketboy]

Well, it depends how much you want to help out

Coming up with a list of games that kind of build off each other would be a start. Perhaps a couple people can come up with lists and we can discuss a bit on coming up with an "official" list.

Going chronological would make sense for the most part, but having a few games of the same genre back-to-back would be nice so you could see developments that were made throughout the genre.

If you want to help me a lot, coming up with a paragraph or two for the games that we will be featuring would really help me out for the blog posts announcing the game of the month.

Listing solutions for different ways to play to obtain and/or play the featured game would be nice as well. I'm mainly thinking of emulators as that would be the easiest way for the most people to try certain games.

And of course, once the project gets started, spreading the word is always a big help

[marurun]

Stupid forums won't let me post my reply! Keeps bouncing me to the damn main site! Bastards!

WTF, I've tried to edit the punctuation down to the system doesn't think it's reading control code, but it still won't take the message. This is really starting to piss me the hell off.

Wow, I had to completely reword everything and, most importantly, leave out CDi, for it to work.

And now, it doesn't even include hard coded spaces so if you try and line stuff up it just breaks. I'm starting to hate this forum software for anything even remotely complex.

[marurun]

This being a retro gaming site, I think having Xbox360, Wii, or PS3 games is somewhat inappropriate. So, we draw up a list of significant retro consoles. And we do one game per month (or 2 weeks for the shorter, action-oriented games) for each system until we've traversed the entire span of consoles. Then, when the cycle is completed, start over at the beginning with a different game. That way we're not stuck on the NES for 6 months straight.

Here's a sample cycle:

1 - 2 weeks- Atari 2600, 5200 & 7800
2 - 2 weeks- Arcade: 1970 - 1985
3 - 1 month- NES
4 - 2 weeks- SMS & Game Gear
5 - 1 month- PC Engine, TG-16 & Super CD
6 - 1 month- Game Boy, GB Color & GBA (GBA is easily emulated but may be too recent to be "retro")
7 - 1 month- Genesis, Sega CD & 32x
8 - 1 month- SNES
9 - 2 weeks- Neo Geo
10- 2 weeks- Arcade: 1986 - 1990
11- 1 month- Saturn
12- 1 month- Playstation
13- 1 month- N64
14- 2 weeks- Arcade: 1991 - 1999
15- 1 month- Dreamcast

I really think the Dreamcast is the newest system I would consider "retro" in any sense of the word. I've crafted this list so that it'll come out to pretty much a 1 year cycle. It can be changed, however. If Phantasy Star is chosen for the SMS it can be expanded to 1 month and some other system can have a game selected specifically so that we can limit it to 2 weeks to accommodate.

Also, systems that are difficult or impossible to emulate and are simply too uncommon/sold poorly should be excluded, like the Jaguar, CDI, and 3DO.

Opinions, anyone? I didn't leave out anything important, did I?

[Funk, E]

Also, systems that are difficult or impossible to emulate and are simply too uncommon/sold poorly should be excluded, like the Jaguar, CDI, and 3DO.

Bull! I think those systems should be included BECAUSE of the fact that they're uncommon--The Jag and the 3DO at least are emulated just fine, and are home to some wonderful games that few people know about--it would be a great thing to fire up some interest in them.

[racketboy]

That's an interesting idea, marurun.
The only issue I see is that if we are stuck on a certain genre for a long period of time, that could turn off some people that don't like those types of games.
I guess you can't win completely on either extreme -- we almost need to develop a happy medium of genres and modernism without making it feel too random.

[diehllane]

How about giving people options for this?

We can do the monthly thing for people who have little free time and for the longer, more complex games.

And we could also do every 2 weeks for people who have more time and for the shorter games that can be just picked up and played (Atari 2600, NES, etc).

This way people can choose what they want to do. I'm sure we'd get enough people on each.

[RadarScope1]

I'll toss this idea out there too....
What about something like a book club, only with games?
Something that the community as a whole get participate in together and share thoughts on a particular game.
Maybe like a game of the week or something?

philipofmacedon, you also bring up some good points as well.

That is a good idea. I think a few other sites/communities do something like this, but it's usually for new games, and usually just to do online multiplayer.

Getting a good discussion going about the classics would be pretty cool.

[racketboy]

How about giving people options for this?

We can do the monthly thing for people who have little free time and for the longer, more complex games.

And we could also do every 2 weeks for people who have more time and for the shorter games that can be just picked up and played (Atari 2600, NES, etc).

This way people can choose what they want to do. I'm sure we'd get enough people on each.

But the more options you give, the less unity you have, which kinda defeats the purpose...

[marurun]

I still stand by my list. The order can be rearranged, if you like, quite easily. And it's certainly easy to mix things up. I could probably consolidate the arcade categories. But frankly, RPGs and other truly time-consuming games should be few and far between, just because the amount of time it takes to play them means even many well-meaning people may not make it through in a month.

I also think there needs to be a cutoff. Retro is more than just the last generation. If we're going to do platforms like the PS2, GC, and Xbox we should have a separate thing for them since they are distinctly more modern.

As for the Jag, CDI, and 3DO, eh... Gotta draw the line somewhere. The more open-ended this project is, the more inclusive we try and make it, the harder it will be to keep people on-board, the longer it will stretch out, and the greater the chance of getting off-track.

If we consolidate all the arcade time-spans into one, we could have a slot called "lesser known systems" and wedge the odd ones in there.

[racketboy]

In regards to the less-popular consoles, there aren't a lot of good exclusive games for them. When we discuss a certain game, we may have a recommended platform, but we can also list the other good ports for them, and if you want to play them on another platform like the 3DO, that's fine.

Maybe someday, we can throw in Aliens vs Predator for the Jaguar in there just for kicks.
But, to be honest, I can't think of too many must-play games for some of those machines that you can't play on a more popular system.

And yes, there should be a cut-off for modern machines.
Even as much as I love the Dreamcast, I think we should limit how much we cover that one at least for a while -- especially for the 3D games.
Assuming we keep this concept going for a while, the Dreamcast and then the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube will become increasingly retro.
We have a lot of ground to cover, so there is plenty of older games to play until then.