43 Games I Haven't Reviewed Yet

For years, I've been doing mini-reviews of my video games. I started with the "100 Games" project in January 2013, and since then have done a roundup of everything I beat each year. But that means that some games got left out - ones I didn't include on my initial list.

Not getting on the original 100 Games list doesn't mean these games are bad. On the contrary, I rather enjoyed quite a few of them, and some of them probably deserved to make the list. I never claimed to be good at ranking stuff, as fun as it is.

As usual, only games I cared about enough to see to the end get listed here, and everything I haven't already written about is up for grabs. Sifting through my Backloggery turned up 43 entries' worth of games (a few games are combined into one entry). Instead of trying to rank them, I'll cover them alphabetically.

I've also linked a gameplay video for each game. It's a longplay whenever one is available. Looking at how few games DIDN'T have a complete longplay up on YouTube speaks volumes as to how good longplayers are at doing their job.

GB's 100 Games: 20-16

 
It feels like it's been ages since I began this series, and now the final twenty entries are here. These were the games that truly hooked me. I played them top to bottom and fell in love with their miniature worlds.

Let's begin.

GB's 100 Games: 25-21

 A good mix of the obscure and not-obscure today, including what is probably the highest-rated game on this list that nobody reading has ever heard of.

GB's 100 Games: 35-31

As we reach the upper echelons of the 100 Games, we are starting to pass from "games that were pretty great" into "classics". Right now it's a bit of a hazy zone between the two categories.

Five different games from five different systems are the stars of today's installment. And yes, all five systems are from Nintendo. Again, though, a fair mix of the known and the unknown here, plus the highest-rated licensed game!

GB's 100 Games: 45-41

As you've probably guessed from the list so far, I'm a bit of a Nintendo loyalist. I was a Sega fan in the early and mid-90s before Pokemon drove me to Nintendo. In recent years I've been taking advantage of my brother's purchases of a PS2 and Xbox 360 to branch out a bit, but I've always had a connection to family-friendly Nintendo fare, and it makes up the backbone of my collection.

Here, we have five different games from four different time periods - pre-Nintendo, Nintendo, late Nintendo, and the branching-out period. And only two of them are actually Nintendo-produced games, so... variety, I guess?

GB's 100 Games: 55-51

We're all over the map in today's installment of GB's 100 Games! A game that everyone's heard of, a game that next to nobody's heard of, long entries, short entries, and everything in between.

And remember, U R MR GAY. And a hipster, as well.

GB's 100 Games: 65-61

Another day, another group of five video games I'd like to share. Today's batch includes games from across my entire life, some obscure and some less so.

GB's 100 Games: 70-66

I'D BUY THAT FOR A DOLLAR Edition.

All five games in today's group are older titles I played for the first time years after they were made, either as very late purchases or in collections. In one case I played a game three full decades after its' release!

Let's get this wagon train a-rolling.

GB's 100 Games: 75-71

DOES EVERYBODY KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?

VIDYA TIME!!

Okay yeah, on reflection I definitely ranked Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine too low. But it's not like Mario had trouble finding his way onto this list, so whatever. Away we go with yet another batch of five games in the ongoing GB's 100 Games series. Over a fourth done, folks...

GB's 100 Games: 80-76

I should probably mention at this point that from here until around 35th place I had very little idea of where to rank what, so it's just gonna be sort of a flood of "GB liked this" rather than any definitive ranking. I know I said when we started this wasn't a straight ranking, but it's especially evident here. I have no idea why some games are in one place and some are in another, so let's just take them as they come and when we near the end things should get less muddled as the true giants begin to emerge.

So! With that said, away we go with the next batch of five games. With Mario and Pokemon returning for the second batch in a row, it's mostly Nintendo here again with one exception: Ariel's favorite shmup!

GB's 100 Games: 85-81

Nintendo Home Consoles from the 2000s Edition!

After this next installment, GB's 100 Games will have covered twenty entries across seven systems. And we still haven't seen any entries from my N64, DS, and GBA collections, so look out for those plus more of every other system (except the poor old Game Gear) as we continue to climb the ranks of gaming.

An interesting theme in this set of five is "Games my brother bought that I wound up liking more than him", which has happened numerous times in the last decade. I can usually sense when he buys a new game whether he's going to actually play it or not, and I'm usually right.

GB's 100 Games: 100-96

Welcome to the first installment of GB's 100 Games!

I have been gaming for two decades this year - ever since I was old enough to hold a controller. Over the course of the last twenty years, I've played a ton of different video games on a wide variety of systems - not as many as some, but enough to have a good grasp on what I like and what I don't like. Here, I have assembled 100 games to offer my thoughts on. First, a few important notes.

1: Only games I have beaten as of today will appear on this list, with the exception of a few arcade games that have no ending.
2: In order to cover a wide variety of games (and because I sometimes have difficulty choosing one game in a series to rank above others), I have grouped some games that are similar together.
3: This is not a definitive ranking. Games from different genres - and especially from different eras of gaming - are difficult for me to compare solidly against each other. There is a vague progression from "games I liked" leading up to "games I absolutely cherish", however, and the top fifteen or so is full of what I consider to be AAA titles.
4: For release dates, I use the American date, as that is where I live. Many games release earlier or later in different territories. Some older games may not have full release info.
5: For systems, I use the system I played the game on (unless it was part of a compilation).

With that settled, let's get started with Number 100...

Mixed Blessing

Several days ago my computer monitor broke. There was absolutely no warning - I went to bed and it was fine, woke up and saw my mom had it by the trash. I hate it when stuff goes wrong with electronics for no discernable reason.

Anyway, with the monitor gone, obviously the computer can't be used until our ordered replacement arrives. With less online time, I've turned to video games, and the funny thing is that I've wound up playing a few games I was just sorta sitting on.

The first is MySims Agents for the Wii. It's not a terribly exciting game, all minigames and fetch quests, but it's a pleasant diversion for when I feel like gaming, but not like GAMING gaming, ya know?

I named my main character Sarah - not because of Zoofights, but because years ago when I played the original MySims I named the character Sarah. I've just always liked that name, and I've also used it to name mages in Disgaea (also before Zoofights).

The second is Advance Wars: Days of Ruin for the DS. I've had this thing sitting around for over a year since buying it for nine bucks on my birthday last year. I'm glad I finally played it - it's a pretty solid turn-based strategy game.

Using my mom's laptop for schoolwork is a pain, though. No mouse, just that stupid touchpad, and it's buggy and unable to run any browser but Internet Explorer. It also occasionally closes windows for no reason. Even the iPod I'm typing this blog post with is better for most things - but with no keyboard or word processor, using an iPod for school is out of the question, heh.

Gaming Retrospective (Part 6)

While I have stuck behind Nintendo, getting the DS and Wii and planning on a 3DS, my brother has been branching out to other companies. The trigger was Guitar Hero. He showed interest in the series, and when Guitar Hero 3 released he snatched up the Wii version on launch day and played the absolute living daylights out of it, forever ruining Dragonforce in the process. That next spring, he used his Christmas money to buy a PS2 Slim and Guitar Hero 2. He ordered them online, and much to his dismay GH2 arrived first. What a tease!

A few years later he opted to get a 360 since the Wii always got the shit end of the stick when it came to multiplatform releases. He now plays Microsoft's system almost exclusively, and his library is almost entirely first-person shooters and music games - genres I've never cared for. We used to like the same games, but around when he found Guitar Hero we started drifting apart. The last game we extensively enjoyed together was Super Smash Brothers Brawl.

Neither of these systems has really been played by me a great deal - they're not really "mine". The 360 in particular is just where I've played a couple Xbox Live Arcade games I liked. The PS2, meanwhile, has seen a lot more use from me, first in the form of compilation games like Capcom Classics Collection and then later some of Nippon Ichi's strategy games after I played and thoroughly enjoyed Disgaea DS. So keep in mind my experience with both systems is pretty weak.

As for the DS and Wii, there's not much in the way of interesting anecdotes surrounding them - it's pretty brief. First there was my mom's heroic efforts in acquiring a DS in November 2004, managing to get an employee to hold the systems for her at Toys R Us so she could drive down there and claim them, even though the employee wasn't supposed to do that. Our Wii, meanwhile, hails from Florida. My father was taking his annual trip to Florida and my brother and I gave him our money so he could buy a Wii and Super Paper Mario. My brother and I have had a complicated relationship with my dad I won't go in-depth with here, but suffice it to say 1) My parents divorced over a decade ago, 2) I no longer see my father, and 3) Recently he took off to live in Florida permanently, and if my mom hadn't spied on his mother's FaceBook we wouldn't have known until he sent us a court summons ordering that he wanted to pay less child support (my brother is still a minor). In short, he's a douche and I hope he dies, but at least we were able to use him as a Wii-retrieving pack mule back in '07.

GB's DS Favorites
-Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and every sequel (LOCALIZE AAI2 CAPCOM YOU MORONS)
-Pokemon DPP
-Pokemon BW
-Disgaea DS
-Kirby Super Star Ultra
-Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
-New Super Mario Brothers
-WarioWare: Touched
-The Legendary Starfy
-Mario Kart DS

GB's Wii Favorites
-Super Smash Brothers Brawl
-Super Paper Mario
-Space Invaders Get Even
-Blast Works
-Deadly Creatures
-Godzilla Unleashed
-MySims
-Mortal Kombat Armageddon

What GB has liked so far on PlayStation 2
-Capcom Classics Collection 1 and 2
-Disgaea 2
-La Pucelle Tactics

What GB has liked so far on Xbox 360
-Castle Crashers
-Assault Heroes