Challenging One Shelf

There's a small shelving unit next to the TV in my living room that has the majority of the disc-based console games I own on it.

Today, on a whim, I decided I'd organise it alphabetically, irrespective of format. In what's got to be a definitive sign that my nerdiness is increasing rather than diminishing with age, I'm quite pleased with the results:

Click for a larger, blurrier picture

It makes all kinds of sense really: I never think, “ooh, I want to play a Playstation game today”, I think, “I fancy a spot of Resident Evil today”. Now I can find my Playstation copy of Resident Evil 2 right next to my Gamecube version of Resident Evil 4, and then decide whether I'm after original survival horror thrills or more arcadey blasty fun.

And in case that weren't exciting enough, this is also going to help when I buy new games. With the shelves more-or-less at capacity, I've had to operate a one-in-one-out policy for some time now, with a lesser game finding itself banished to the dusty box at the bottom of my cupboard whenever I get a new one. With the games now arranged alphabetically, it's become obvious I've made some terrible blunders in the past. How, for example, has the dreadful, fun-free “party game” Fusion Frenzy 2 survived, whilst Chu Chu Rocket on the Dreamcast has not?

(Do not fear- I expect that the arrival of L.A. Noire on Friday will soon restore some sense of order and Fusion Frenzy 2 will find its rightful place in obscurity.)

Anyway, aside from thinking of new obsessive-compulsive (and slightly pathetic) things to do with the collection of videogames I've amassed over the past fifteen years, I've also been thinking: I miss writing about videogames. And whilst thinking about how I've missed writing about videogames, I've also been thinking: I've tended to be too precious about writing about videogames.

It's something I have found myself thinking before. In September last year, I started posting 200 word reviews of games, in an attempt to increase the total number of games I could say I'd written about. Unfortunately, I also gave myself the pointless (and obsessive-compulsive (and slightly pathetic)) requirement they be exactly 200 words. In this way I spent embarrassingly large amounts of time agonising over how best to achieve an entirely arbitrary and self-imposed word limit, intead of y'know, actually writing about games.

Tragic on oh-so-many levels, I know, but the point is this: from today, I will write about every videogame I have on my shelf, in order. And I will finish this task before the end of the year. It'll be like one of those "one-a-day" blog things other insane people do, except I'll excuse myself from those kind of situations where you have to write, "despite the pool of tears I have shed for the beloved friend whose funeral I went to today, I feel I must tell you why Hogs of War on the PSOne is an under-rated gem".

I am thinking this will be a fun, unpretentious way to shift my head back into game writing mode. I've obviously never broken a promise I've made on this blog before, so what could possibly go wrong?