PlayStation: Summer Gaming Challenge

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Last Summer on the http://Racketboy.com forums a member by the name of Snickerd00dle came up with a Summer Gaming Challenge for himself. He decided he would compile a list of ten classics that he had never beaten and attempt to beat them all during the Summer months. The thread was popular enough that not only did many of us follow is progress, but several members even joined in with him. About a month ago he mentioned he was planning to do it again this year, inspiring some of us to come up with our own lists -- myself included.

The hardest part was of course coming up with the list. My list went through many major revisions over the course of the month. My original idea was to try to pick so-called classics that I had never played, representing ten unique genres and stretched over many systems from 2600 to PS3. However a funny thing happened. Once my first list draft was done I noticed that it was basically a bunch of PlayStation games book-ended by a handful of older and newer games. You see I had just finished reading the wonderful GameSpite book chronicling the history of the PlayStation. Not to mention the PS1 seems to be the console I've been focusing my collecting on the most these days.

I then decided that I'd just make my whole list PlayStation games. That would at least help me narrow things down. And I'd stick to keeping it ten different genres. But classics? That was tricky. As an early adopter of PS1 back in the day, I really knew a lot of classics. Really this list should be games that I personally always meant to play, but had put off for some reason or another. I figured how about a list that finally gives me an excuse to play some of these games that I had always planned to.

So here's the list I finally decided on:

Chrono Trigger
Dead Or Alive
Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown
Mega Man X4
Metal Gear Solid
Mr. Driller
Myst
Ridge Racer
R-Type Delta
Silent Hill

For the most part, these are all games I have never played at all. There's a few small exceptions. For instance I've of course played many Mega Man games, just not X4. I have briefly played DOA2, but never the original Dead Or Alive. I've played Duke Nukem Advance, but never the classic Duke Nukem 3D. And I have tried both Ridge Racer and Silent Hill, but not for any expanded period of time. So my attempt to seriously sit down with these games and try to beat them all will be a very new experience to me with each of them.

As far as time-frame is concerned, I decided to start playing during Memorial Day weekend -- the unofficial start of Summer as they say. And I suppose I'll aim to wrap it up by the first of September. So three solid months to get ten games under my belt. For the most part I think that's reasonable, with the only really long games being Chrono Trigger, Metal Gear Solid and possibly Myst. I also have no sequence in mind. Originally I thought maybe I'd do them chronologically, but I've decided I'll just play them as I wish. If I feel like focusing on one until it's beat, then fine. If I want to work on Chrono Trigger and R-Type back and forth, so be it. If I want to juggle them all at once until something gets beaten, whatever. This is just supposed to be fun, right? And of course I plan to keep the blog updated with my progress on each. Stay tuned!