2024 Year in Review

Well shit, 2024 was a shitfest of a year, weren’t it? I reckon it’s only a matter of time before one of these sociopaths in charge of all the nukes has a temper tantrum and all these video games I own get EMP’d or just plain vaporized, so the idea is to play them while I can! 

Back in 2020 I decided to go full retrogamer, that is to play various titles from my collection from various eras on various devices, rather than the decades-old drive to play the latest and greatest. This year I decided to formalize that a little, by creating a spreadsheet to track each category that I filled while playing every game I beat.

Some categories are eras in which the game was released, from the 1980s up until the modern decade. Under miscellaneous, the categories are "Play at Release" which is pretty self-explanatory, "Unfinished Business" meaning a game I put some effort into back in the past but never beat, and "Portable" encompasses games played on portable devices, mostly those made by Nintendo.

"System" involves games played on a particular system, and currently includes the last three generations of consoles from Microsoft and Sony. Next year I am definitely adding the Nintendo Switch to that list as I am starting to realize how awesome the Switch library has become.

The results show that portables exploded this year with my acquisition of an Analogue Pocket, which allowed me to beat a whopping four Game Boy games and two Game Boy Advance games, with a 3DS game thrown in for good measure. My love of what I call the eighth generation of games has me still playing lots of stuff on the XBox 360 and PS3, with five games beaten between the two systems. The XBox One and PS4 era took a hit this year with only one game each, while the current generation each provided two games for me to take down. 

As far as eras, the aughts were clearly still the decade my head is at, but other decades still got some attention. The exception is the 1980s, where I failed to beat any game from that era. I was close - level 47 out of 50 on The Adventure of Lolo for the NES, but ultimately I did not dedicate the time to the eighties that it required. I tried to start Ultima 3 Exodus, but the instant grind-or-die from starvation problem at the beginning of the game deterred me.

Noteworthy is that I beat an Atari VCS game, sort of. Blue 21 is a homebrew I had downloaded with hundreds of other Atari VCS ROMS back in the 2010s when I purchased an Atari Flashback Portable. It's strip blackjack for one player against a female opponent, and I beat it just to see how graphic the Atari could be with this. It's an impressive feat:

Other than the games I beat, I tried out a few other games like the aforementioned The Adventures of Lolo for the NES, playable on the Switch via their online library, to scratch my occasional puzzle game itch.  

Over on XBox, Game Pass allowed me to play a good chunk of Gears 5, which I abandoned at some insane boss fight. Also on Game Pass was Squirrel with a Gun, which I only dabbled in a little, and Star Trucker, which was an amazing game to play a little but ultimately was too harsh of a sim type game to dive any deeper. Another Crab's Treasure looked like fun until I realized it was Dark Souls difficult. I hit up STALKER Shadow of Chornobyl, Demon's Tilt, Powersalve Exhumed, and Back 4 Blood on the recent XBox consoles as well.

My heart still remains with my old Xbox 360, as I put a little time into El Shaddai, a stylish action hack and slash, and two of the three legendary Burger King games - Pocketbike Racers and Big Bumpin'.  Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth reminded me of my inability to stay too long in those sorts of strategy games. Kengo: Legend of the 9 similarly reminded me that Japan makes some brutally unforgiving fighting games. Add to the list for the 360 Guncraft: Blocked and Loaded, Yie-Ar Kung Fu, Assault Heroes, Sega Superstars Tennis, A World of Keflings, Risk, and Worms, some of which were last minute downloads before the XBox 360 store closed. 

Over on the Playstation 3 I finally played Tokyo Jungle, a crazy animal survival game. On the PS5 I tried a little of Sekiro Shadows Die Twice and died a lot more than twice.

And as always, I walk around our apartment and stop by the Vectrexes for a quick game, or play an Atari VCS classic on my Atari Flashback Portable, or just see what's in my Odyssey 2 library.

Of course my wife still pushes me to play Mario Kart 8 on the Switch, even though the entire franchise has sucked since Double Dash on the Gamecube. She wants me to help her get 3 stars on all 150cc tracks, so we make a little progress on that here and there. Mario Party Superstars wore out its welcome this year in time for Mario Party Jamboree, which I'll be forced to play until I die thanks to its seemingly endless content.

My goals for 2025 inlcude more of the same - playing all sorts of games from the now forty-plus years of software acquisition. Acquiring classics and new games I want will continue. I really should start looking at Vectrex homebrews too. 

I need to make time for another eighties classic or two. I also plan to acquire an second Switch for the upstairs setup and squeeeze in a few more Switch games, For my portables, my Sony, and my Xbox consoles - I plan to keep building up their libraries as well and beating a few from each.

I also want to devote more time to this website and have already expanded it a little by adding a new section called Mutliplayer Hall of Fame. Be sure to check it out! As the world burns down around us all this year, and my dream of gaming retirement seems to be more of a fantasy than ever, the remaining time left becomes even more special.

Damn right I'm filling those remaining moments with fucking video games.