Methodology

The goal of the project is to play, or at least “sample,” every game released for every notable home console and handheld system released since the launch of the Family Computer in 1983 until the end of the standard definition era in the late 2000s. Notable here has no real definition and is decided on a case-by-case basis, but as as baseline includes “major” consoles and handhelds released by Nintendo and Sega, and eventually Sony should we get that far. Hardware from companies other than these three are “minor” and whether they get included will be decided when we get there.

The games are limited primarily to NTSC releases, hence the name of the site. As an American who learned Japanese, my interests historically are in the Japanese and North American video game markets, in that order. We will be leaving some history on the floor by not covering European games that never left the continent, but that can be a task for someone else.

The methodology for considering a game “played” is deliberately left vague. There is a lot of chaff even in the Famicom/NES library and it will only get worse as time goes on, thus I define no minimum amount of playing necessary to mark a game as “covered.” The bare minimum is booting it up and pressing start, and compiling enough thoughts that I can write at least a one sentence review on the game log. Games that are actually good will be, ideally, played through to their endings or until I give up on them. This too is a subjective and case-by-case consideration.

The release dates for games have been compiled to the best of my ability so that we can go through history chronologically, but some allowance must be made for the fact that games did not have clear release dates in some regions historically. Japanese games generally have known release dates, but in North America games often only have release months. These are listed as coming out on the first of the month in my database, but may be woven into other releases as feels appropriate.

The actual gameplay will happen in emulators (obviously), with some effort made to recreate the actual conditions of play appropriate for that platform. Accordingly, home console games will be played at home, and handheld games will be played on handhelds. Arcade games are not an official part of the project, but where I do sample arcade titles, I will make an effort to play them only when outside of the home, whether on a handheld system or on a laptop computer.

The use of save states and emulator speed-up is fully on the table to make getting through thousands of games more efficient. These conveniences arguably detract from the “actual play feel” of the games by eliminating a lot of frustration contemporary players would have experienced, but this is a sacrifice worth making in my opinion.

The log is located on Tumblr. Individual game log entries are posted here. Longer reviews, as well as tertiary articles, will be published on this site.

There are no ratings published for the games, though I am maintaining a rating system privately so I can remember which games were good and which were merely mediocre. When a system’s library is finally finished, I may publish a ranking of what I think the top 50 or 100 games on the platform were.