Happy New Year! Now that 2021 is almost in our rearview mirror I wanted to hit the pause button and reflect upon the year and what lies ahead.
On January 3rd of this year I officially challenged myself and others to play 100 games in 2021. I also set a goal of trying to publish 100 blog posts this year as well. Let’s take a look at the scorecard and see how I fared.
In 2021 I managed to tackle and beat 85 games. Wow. I fell short of my 100 game goal but if we’re being honest I’m amazed that I played as many as 85 games all the way through. It is an extremely high number that I doubt I’ll be able to replicate again for a couple of reasons.
Remember that I started this series of posts so that I could chronicle my journey through time as I attempt to play every single CRPG and adventure game in order in which they were created or published. I started with the year 1975 and began to methodically play each of these games in order. I am currently finishing up the 1982 CRPG offerings and still traveling back in time to 1980 to clean up games I have not yet completed from that year.
One of the reasons why I feel I will never replicate having played 85 games in one year again is that as we move through time and hardware capabilities improve so do the games. A byproduct of this is that the games become larger and longer and require more time to finish. I’m beginning to see this already with some of the offerings from 1982. I don’t want to rush my experience in any way but give each game their due so I think the focus this year is going to be on the quality of my experience and not the quantity.
The second reason is time. Time is something that we cannot control nor can we ever get it back. The COVID epidemic created more time at home to pursue this hobby and while things are far from better I find myself struggling to find a balance between work, play, and my personal life. My passion for this project has not waned and while I recognize the scope of the project can seem daunting at times; I remind myself to take pleasure in it and not to rush. Quality over quantity will be my theme for 2022.
Looking ahead here is the list of CRPGs for 1983 that I will be tackling (in no particular order). If you want to see the entire list of games from 1983 you can click on the link in the sidebar from the homepage of the website.
One of the improvements or additions I made to the site this year was a link which allows you to read through the blog posts and my journey in chronological order. When I switched to the website from a normal blog page finding earlier posts became a bit more difficult so I set out to make it easier for folks to access earlier blog entries. I am also going to work on creating a MASTER games list in addition to the yearly tabs which I’ve created.
I wish everyone health and happiness as we look ahead to 2022. Be kind to others and reach out to let me know what your own gaming goals are for 2022. I look forward to hearing from you.