Added: May 15th 2008

Am I Finished Yet?

We all have a stack of video games lying around that we have never beaten, and as I looked through my collection the other day, I realized that there was just too many gems in my collection that I had never finished.  So, I set a summer goal, beat at least ten different games from my collection this summer.  I decided I would limit myself by not playing any Atari or NES games, but all SNES games up to current-gen games were fair game, this included games downloadable on Virtual Console.  Now, when setting a goal like this, it looks like you should just sit down and start playing, but first you have to decide what is “beating” a game?  Playing through a game quickly and taking a time see all 100% are very different.  In the decision I made, I decided that if I play through a game and beat a final boss to get to a credits screen, I will consider the game “beaten”.  Now, in this definition I also decided not to include Guitar Hero games.  Now I had to decide if previous work on games should stay on the memory card or if I should erase everything and start fresh.  I decided that clearing everything from the memory card was the best way to go.  So with blank memory cards and fresh eyes I began experiment.  So far, I have made pretty good progress, and considering I don’t have a job right now, I should be able too.  I have beaten three games: Kirby 64, Pikmin, and Super Mario Galaxy.  With three down and seven to go, I turned to four new games spanning across four different systems.  Grand Theft Auto 3, Luigi’s Mansion, Kirby’s Adventure (for NES from Virtual Console), and finally one of my all time favorites, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.  I have already made substantial progress in all, with Grand Theft Auto 3 consuming must of my time, due to the fact it is such a deep game.  Now you may be wondering, why didn’t I only play one game at a time?  I felt that if I the played one game at a time, that I would get bored and eventually I would stop playing this game and jump to a new game, so in playing four different games at once, I can do this without feeling I cheated myself.  Another question I have been asked is why I started this endeavor.  I have looked at recent and upcoming game releases, and with all the great game franchises that are coming out with new games, I wanted to beat as many games as I could in each series before I buy the latest installment in the series.  Then when I started doing this, I just decided to beat all the games I owned.  Now the I have started this journey, it has me was wondering, is everyone else like me, or are there people who buy games, and beat them before they buy a new one?  For me, I always seem to buy a game, then start playing it, and then either a new gotta-have game comes out and I start playing that one, or I get side tracked by something else in life and I never end up finishing the games.  So, Bidack Productions has decided to start their first ever interactive blog, we want you to tell us your experiences.  Send us your stories of video game domination, or lack there of to Blog@bidack.com.  We hope to hear from you.