Welcome,
I am MrKane and I will be your host through this most challenging and unlikely journey through the history of video games (as far as 1990 at least).
Who am I?
I am MrKane, can't you read? Oh oh, you were looking for information beyond the alias, I see. Well, I'm 25 years old, I'm German and I am currently heading into the third semester of university. I've already completed an apprenticeship in the business field before and looking to make a career in finance over the next few years. Whilst I am welcoming of improving my skills in all areas, I am otherwise very much a person living in the "routine" as far as the typical layout of a day, week and even year is concerned. I enjoy what I do, so why not stick with it, and in my free time what I do is, among other things, playing video games. But let's walk it back a little bit.
I've owned a SNES as a kid and played your typical Mario and Yoshi games, I've had all PlayStations from the PS1 as a little child to the PS4 as a young adult, and as of today, with more any money available to me compared to before, I own a high-end PC, a PS5, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.
So it's apparent that playing games is a big passion of mine. However, what is not apparent is the following: I have next to no experience with iconic and/or retro games prior to 2015. Mario and Yoshi? Yeah, those were the only games I played on the SNES. No Zelda, no Donkey Kong, no Mario Kart etc. The PlayStations? Almost exclusively used to play FIFA, plus some GTA San Andreas.
Back in 2015, I bought my first ever PC with my own money. A GTX 750 Ti was the highlight of that rig, nothing too impressive even back then, but it did it's job. But with that PC came the thirst to play a video game and experience what people online kept calling "framerates above 30 FPS". The problem was, I owned 0, that's 1,2,3,4... 0!, video games on PC. All I had was a copy of Alan Wake's American Nightmare thanks to a video game magazine I had bought for the first time that month. So I slipped in the CD, opened up the game and would you believe it, 60 FPS gaming!
I had no idea who Alan Wake was or why he had American Nightmares when I played this back in 2015
Now let me get this out of the way first, the game was utter shite. You play through the same 90-minute level three times and the credits roll. Even my "non-GTA singles player experience lacking" self could tell that this game was not a masterpiece or close to it (By now I am happy to report to have played and very much enjoyed Alan Wake).
HOWEVER. Coming off of a PC that couldn't even run "Slender: The Eight Pages" (remember that?) at anything above 10 FPS, playing Alan Wake's American Nightmare ignited at least an interest in single player video games, so I bought and played a few others. Murdered: Soul Suspect came with the magazine's next copy, so I played that. Saints Row: The Third was offered up for 1€ somewhere I don't even remember, which I snagged up and played a bit. Fallout 4 kept coming up in my gaming website visits, so I gave Fallout 3 a try and ... woah.
If Alan Wake's American Nightmare ignited an interest in single player games, leaving the Vault in Fallout 3 ignited a passion for them. You all know the feeling of your first true open world game I'm sure. "You're telling me I can just .. go wherever I want?" And I did. And I haven't looked back since. Among the other games that I got to experience quickly after where The Witcher 3 (to this day my favorite game of all time), Skyrim (since modded the isht out of it), Fallout: New Vegas and many many more. If I had to count up all the games I have played from start to finish since, it would easily be in the 300+ mark.
What is this project?
So with that said, let's segue into this question. Well, while I have played quite a lot of amazing and horrible games through the years, I always feel left out whenever a remake of a beloved 90s classic is announced, or whenever people reminisce about those first Zelda games they've played etc. Recently, the Resident Evil 4 Remake got announced and as a fan of the original (how can one not be?), I lost my mind.
So then I started thinking. How good must those games be from way back when, if the fans are losing their minds over a remake as well? "I gotta play them". The idea to start this blog then quickly become more realistic when I stumbled upon a blog called "CRPGaddict". The blog has been running since 2010, and the goal of the blogger is to go through all RPGs since the 1970s. 12 years later and he is in 1993 (!). As someone who loves to record information on games he is playing himself - mostly due to two reasons, the joy in sharing and because this helps me remember my past experiences which are otherwise mostly forgotten - and as someone who is in awe with the discipline and passion the "CRPGaddict" is showing, I got the final nudge I needed to start this blog today myself.
While he is focusing on RPGs only, I am interested in games from a much larger variety of genres. That said, I am unlikely to go back to the 70s and 80s and play those ultra-retro games at this point, like he does. And unlike him, who does not shy away from playing ANY games that meet his requirements (seriously it's fascinating, check out the blog if you don't know of it), I personally will be a bit more picky in game selection and the time I spent before moving on.
So what exactly will you be playing? Well thanks for asking. For this project/challenge, I will be playing games starting in January 1st, 1990 and log my progress in written form on this blog. I may record parts of the playthrough here and there and share some clips as well. The "ultimate goal" is to reach the 2010s some day. Naturally, this is impossible, so the more achievable objective is to simply experience a lot of different games, catalogue and share experiences with you and try to get as far as I can.
In addition, I will be using my past reviews on other forums and posting them on here for games I have played before, including a lot of games from the more recent years. Ultimately, this will be a blog on my gaming journey and hopefully at some point even a website that you check out to potentially find some gems to play yourself.
Are there any rules?
Actually, yes there are.
1) In the spreadsheet, I have noted the initial platforms the games have released on. Since I don't own the majority of them, I will be playing the games through the best means of availability. In most cases, this will be on Steam/GOG. For Nintendo games, I'm hoping the Switch/Online library has some of these available. For PlayStation games, I'm hoping the same with the PS Network and the recently released PS Plus Premium.
2) I will be playing each game for at least one hour. If a game is not beatable, I will play it as long as I want to form an educated opinion. For any other game, the goal is to finish each of course, but I will not shy away from abandoning a game if I feel like I've experienced most of what the game is about and finishing it would just take too long for little additional benefit other than the fact that I can say "I beat it". This often will apply to arcade-type games from the early 90s that would be very hard on purpose to push the game's playing time. I will note whether I have beaten a game in the spreadsheet and in the review of said game.
3) I will be playing the original versions of these games in most cases. The only times where I will consider playing newer versions is if we're talking about a "remaster" that doesn't change the core game in any notable way apart from UI and other quality of life changes. Since I am aware that games from the 90s will be lackluster graphically and UI-wise in most cases, they wouldn't have negatively factored in to the overall rating either way. I will not be playing "remakes" in place of the originals however, as those usually come with major changes to not only the visuals but to gameplay and story as well (see Final Fantasy VII and FFVII Remake). Those remakes I will play at the time they released in, or, if I really want to, I may choose to play it right after I played the original. Once we make it to 1997 and I finish Final Fantasy VII, and I really like it, I might play the Remake soon after for example.
4) I will generally avoid using cheats unless two specific things happen. (1) I'm playing a story game and am very close to the end and (2) to fight the final boss, there is A LOT of grinding involved previously because I didn't level enough up to this point (we're talking hours and hours of grinding). Instead of putting myself through the agony, I'd rather use cheats in such a scenario, if available, to finish up and witness how the game ends. I will also try to avoid using walkthroughs/guides to be able to have a fresh experience, though of course I'm going to check a game's manual before playing. But if I'm stuck at a puzzle/level/segment and feel like I've tried everything that's possible, I'll check out a guide to be able to progress faster. I'd rather experience the entire game by checking a guide for once than be stuck at a simple segment for pride's sake.
5) I will generally try to play games on "normal" difficulty. I may choose "easy" whenever I've tried "normal" and utterly failed. I can imagine Strategy games to be especially difficult and to make me go down a difficulty level.
6) There may be numbered titles in 1990 and onward of games that I haven't played the previous iterations of. For example, there is Ninja Gaiden II in my 1990 list, but I haven't played Ninja Gaiden 1. For those instances, I will check out a playthrough on YT and share key differences that I find between both versions, plus let you know what the story in the previous game was, if relevant.
7) I might make a list of "pre 1990 classics" filled with games before the start date that are all considered to be among the best the 70s/80s have to offer. This would come at a later date though.
And those are all the rules.
Will you review the games you play?
Yes, definitely. If a game is particularly long, I might make update posts where I share initial impressions and thoughts, but otherwise expect a review after a full playthrough. A separate post will explain how my rating system looks like. It's subjective, naturally, and seeing a numbered rating system might irk people the wrong way, but the rating number will not be displayed on the website review, only in the spreadsheet. You can read the review, check out the total rating on the spreadsheet OR list by specific criteria (gameplay, story) if you're looking for games that do a great job in something specific. There are multiple ways to gain some insight on these games from how I plan to do my reviews.
Let me give you a very brief rundown on how I plan to review games, but more details will be found in the separate post, that I will link here soon. There will be 10 criteria and each criteria will be rated by 1-10, with all numbers combined creating the final score. While a 6 is given to very bad games by professional reviewers and Metacritic scores rarely fall below that, I am more traditional in the way I use the numbers 1 to 10. A 5 is an average game, 6 above average and a 3 is poor. I'm unlikely to dish out 10s to most games but I'm also unlikely to go below a 3 unless something is barely working or is barely there. A game with no story for example would get a 1 for story. It could still get a 91 but to me a game is not worth 100 points (no game will ever reach that point I'd assume) unless it has everything and is a perfectly well rounded experience. Even infuriatingly bad features of games, like the level design of Dragon Age 2, would get a 2 or 3 from me based on this system. To get a 1, we're probably talking about 15 FPS on average in a "Performance" category (Deadly Premonition), if I will even end up having that category. But here is how I would describe the numbers:
10 - as good as it gets. Even the best games will more often than not see only a few 10s in their rating sheet, if even that.
9 - amazing. Few games do it better. Significantly improves enjoyment of the overall game.
8 - very good. Simultaneously, I have nothing to complain about and could see a few additions/improvements be made here and there. Overall my feelings are very positive and it increases the enjoyment of the overall game a lot.
7 - good. It's all in all very well done, though I have only a few complaints on certain aspects. It increases the enjoyment of the overall game.
6 - above average. It's better than most games and more than respectable, yet falls short in some areas.
5 - average. It's solid and doesn't take away from the experience, yet it doesn't add anything either and you've seen it before in other games.
4 - below average. It's worse than most games, but still more than acceptable if the game is better in other areas.
3 - poor. It's detrimental to the enjoyment of the overall game at least somewhat and could have been done a lot better.
2 - very little exists OR very bad. It's very detrimental to the enjoyment of the overall game and it's clear that little to no effort were made here.
1 - doesn't exist (or barely exists) OR horrible. Don't know what's worse. No effort being made or effort being made just for this part to completely suck. It works on a functional level, but they might as well not have bothered.
Looking at the scores, a game with all 5's would get a 50 and would be considered an average game. Definitely playable, but doesn't stand out at all (Far Cry 5). Or it could be a game with a lot of 3s but also some 7/8s, which make it an OK - yet not special - experience overall (Trek to Yomi). You get the idea.
While a game with a 50 score would be average, a game with a 35 score would be poor, yet still a relatively fun experience to the right player potentially. As we get closer to 25 territory, I'd say a game becomes more and more objectively bad. Meanwhile, a game with a 60 score would be considered a solid game, a 70 score would make the game a very good one (we're probably talking 2013 Tomb Raider or Batman Arkham City levels of good), an 80 score would probably put a game among the Top 25, if not Top 10 of all GOTY lists (Fallouts, Bioshocks, Resident Evil 4) and games with a rating close to or above 90 will be your must-play "masterpieces" (The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Marvel's Spider-Man, God of War).
Of course which games you place in what category will be subjective, but I think giving examples will help you guys understand the ratings regardless. As a takeaway, keep in mind that games starting at close to 60 will already be considered good games, while we're talking about "you're very likely to enjoy this as an average gamer" territory in the 70s. Don't expect to see more than a handful or so 80s or better in a given year.
Are you going to play newer games as well?
Yes, as I mentioned elsewhere in this post. I will release reviews of games I have already played on a quasi-daily basis and while I plan to focus most of the playing time I get on games in this challenge, I will probably play current titles whenever one releases that I am interested in (God of War, Starfield).
But that's all I got for the introduction today. How this all works will become apparent pretty fast once I make some more posts. To see which games I'm playing, just check the sidebar to the right. To see the spreadsheet, just check the sidebar to the right.
Other than that, thank you all for reading, hope you enjoy the content this blog will provide you with and I'm looking forward to engaging with you in the comments. Cheers.
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