These are the essential guidelines I will be following with this blog:
I
intend to play and review video games, in chronological order,
beginning from the birth of the arcade in 1971. [Ed. not anymore. A few games prior to this date have been scored.] These reviews will
hopefully include some historical trivia and tidbits if I can find
any. Information on most games from the 70s (and even much in the
80s and beyond) is scarce at the best of times.
All
these games will be compiled on my master chronological list, also
including games of historical or personal interest that might not be
playable that I may also write about. This master list will contain
information collated from online databases: Gaming-History, IGDB,
MobyGames and Wikipedia primarily, and will also have my ratings for
each game alongside. I also include a tier list for quick reference
to know what games are worth playing (anything C-tier and above I
would consider worth your time). No doubt this will inevitably
become the 'world's-biggest-video-game-tier-list-ever.' Or something
like that.
Note
that this will be a selective
chronology. I'm not adding absolutely everything to my master list,
since not absolutely everything is actually playable, and
that would bloat my research time and master list to astronomical
proportions. For
the 70s in particular, the majority of games are either lost to
time, cannot be emulated, or are the swamp of literally hundreds of
redundant Pong clones. I'm only including games of interest that do not violate my redundancy clause:
Direct
clones and plagiarised titles are immediately excluded (this
amusingly removes
around 80%
of games from the 70s)
Same
game, different name; such
as exported / licensed games identical to the original.
Alternative
names will be acknowledged in the master list for reference,
however. The only exception to this is when the game receives
significant change almost
to the point of being a different game entirely
(i.e. Taito's Western
Gun
being an almost completely different game to its Midway-licensed
counterpart Gun
Fight.)
Ports are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Those that are 1:1 or near 1:1 to the original are excluded. They will be
added to the list for reference, however, and
mentioned in the review of the original.
Ports that receive significant change (i.e. Arcade
Space Invaders
vs.
Atari 2600 Space
Invaders)
will be treated as separate games
and will receive individual reviews.
As this is a selective list, I
also reserve the right to veto any game of my choosing. Some games I'm simply not interested in, whether that be due to their themes, genre, content or otherwise. These sorts of games will be noted on the master list if they are accessible to me.
I
am approaching all games from an exclusively single-player
perspective.
Personally, I have little interest in multiplayer games (I am far
too competitive for my own good), nor do I have any friends or
associates who'd likely be silly enough to dabble in ancient gaming
history with me. I fully understand this walls off some classic games entirely, however I am likely to still write about some of
them, they just won't receive an 'official' review score, and will
not be added to the tier list. Any primarily multiplayer game that
has a single-player mode will receive a proper review, but the game
will be judged purely on its single-player component.
I also write from a Christian Perspective. I need to be upfront about this because it is the defining factor in how I interact with and review every game on this blog (it's also my guiding light for determining which games to veto and why). For most games, I suspect there won't be any issues, but I will call out questionable things when I see them, and they will impact the scores I give. Also worth nothing that this won't give "Christian" games immunity from criticism.
In every post I write about my first, blind playthrough of a game where possible. There are many games I have played before or have knowledge of, so this isn't a hard-and-fast rule, but will be in most cases.
Following on from the previous point: starting in 2025, I decided to create a supplementary YouTube channel to provide video integration for the blog. The playthroughs in these videos are - more often than not - not the same as my first playthrough I write about in the blog. In most cases they are a second playthrough that may or may not be referenced in the article on that specific game. I do this because I do not do commentary on the videos, and desire the gameplay to be of high standard, after I've come to understand the inner workings of a game. I also want to show off the entire game as best I can, and put it in the best light possible, which often cannot be done on a blind playthrough.
I expect these guidelines will be expanded on in the future when unforeseen problems arise.
Guide to My Rating System
I score each game based on 8 individual categories, which are collected together to provide an overall score out of 90. Seeing as this doesn't get us to 100, and since not every game will score in all criteria, i.e. early text-based games have so sound, each game is tiered according to percentage rather than the base score.
- Game Design: Maximum 20 points
- Competent level design
- Complementary mechanics
- Substance (Quality vs Quantity)
- Replay value
- Do my choices matter?
- Controls: Maximum 10 points
- Character control ("feel")- Responsiveness
- Simple, logical inputs
- Quality and appropriateness of SFX- Soundtrack
- Visual: Maximum 10 points
- Pleasant, well-crafted graphics- Appealing colour choices
For text-based games:
- Clarity of text formatting
- Writing competency
For Arcade games:
- Cabinet design
- Compelling, coherent narrative- Character development
- World building
- Storytelling
- Functionality: Maximum 5 points
- UI Navigation
- Stability
- Bugs & glitches
- Accessibility: Maximum 5 points
- Easy or hard to get into?
- Intimidating or inviting?
- Is the difficulty a turn off?
- 'Fun' Factor: Maximum 20 points
- How much I enjoyed playing the game
You can think of the 20-pointers as being like a 10 point system including .5 decimals.
What Does Each Number Mean?
It's worthwhile giving an overview of how I determine the score I give to each game. Of course it's overwhelmingly subjective in most parts, but there is room for objectivity in terms of scoring a game's technical components. Here, though, I'm more concerned with "what does a 5/10 mean?" and questions of that nature.
To answer the above question, I consider a 5/10 (or 10/20 in the case of gameplay and fun factor) to be the average/mediocre score. It means that the game is sufficiently adequate in that metric, but doesn't do anything above or beyond, or worse, than the norm. What the "norm" is is contingent on the platform, era and genre of any particular game. For a purely subjective metric like fun factor, the "norm" would be if I had no particular feelings one way or another with a game - as if I said at the end of playing "eh, that was fine, I guess."
Obviously a maximum score is reserved for games that truly stand out and are faultless in particular metrics, and the same of the inverse - a minimum score for games that stand out in terribleness.
To give a visual reference, here's what each number would generally represent:
0 - Completely lacking, with no redeeming features. Painful to play, listen to or look at.
1 - Maybe has one positive quality buried in an otherwise irredeemable mess.
2 - Riddled with issues. Most of the game doesn't work, but has a couple of shining moments.
3 - There are some serious problems with the game, but it's playable.
4 - The game has a bit more bad than good. Was probably a bit on the boring side.
5 - Just "okay." I would react with indifference, but no sort of dislike towards anything.
6 - I start to enjoy the game a bit. Maybe has one standout characteristic.
7 - Here I would start to think "hey, this is pretty good." I'd still have a few critiques.
8 - Several standout features, but a few small flaws.
9 - Not flawless, but pretty close. Almost everything is exceptional except a handful of things.
10 - Flawless, this is when I'd start gawking and wanting to tell everyone about the game and getting truly obsessive over it.
Just multiply these by two for the gameplay and fun factor scores. They have more nuance. Like, the difference between a 5/20 game and a 6/20 game might just be one extra small flaw. Obviously these descriptions involve a lot of subjectivity, which is simply unavoidable. I can analyse the game components as technically and objectively as I want, but a lot of the scoring comes down to how those components make me feel as I play the game.
Fun Factor works slightly differently, as that is totally subjective and involves no objective analysis. It probably is going to run closest to gameplay, as I value gameplay far more than the other metrics, hence why both get a 20 point scale instead of 10. A 20/20 would require me to enjoy every single minute of a playthrough and want to immediately come back to replay the game in a different way. That, or I keep restarting part way through to learn the game better.
Functionality and Accessibility work differently. Being only 5 point metrics makes the process much simpler. If a game has no technical faults, it gets a 5/5 in Functionality. Accessibility is rather self-explanatory - how accessible is the game? Does it require a lot of reading? Is it difficult to get running? Is a specialty controller required to play the game properly? The better a game fares with these questions, the higher its rating is. A 5/5 would mean that it's easy for anyone to pick up and play, regardless of ability. A 0/5 would mean it either has a massive amount of hoops to jump through just to play, or is only playable to a very slim niche of people.
As I play more games, and understand what I most like and most dislike, the factors constituting a particular score will become more refined in my mind. It means I'll have to come back regularly to do rescores, but hopefully those should become less frequent as I gain experience.
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