Taking on the NES library sure seems to me like a massive undertaking. I think that’s because it is! To attempt to make it a little easier, I would like to define what my vision is both for this project from the point-of-view of game playing as well as what kind of content to expect on this website. What better way than to make a page and outline my intentions up front!

I want to say right off the bat that I am neither interested in reviewing games nor assigning some kind of score. I think my writing about my experience with the games after I play them will speak for itself as far as my interest in the game or quality of the game.

First and foremost, this website is about cataloging my effort to beat as many licensed NES games as I can. I am starting from scratch and keeping track of each NES game I beat so have an official tally of how many games I have finished. The site has a Game List page that lists out all the games I beat and I will keep it updated as I make progress. Every game that I complete will have its own blog entry containing three types of criteria: The minimum criteria required to beating the game, my goal if it’s more difficult than the minimum, and actually what I accomplished. Also each blog will end with a picture of my TV screen showing the ending if possible as proof. As far as additional content for these posts, I hope to tell interesting stories about my time spent with the game, my history with the game, the general idea or flow of the game, how I acquired the game (if the story is interesting enough), my favorite parts of the game, weird things that happened while playing, and anything else I can think of that is relevant or interesting. This is primarily for me to keep track of my progress, but I hope that my insights and experiences will be interesting enough to keep the reader both entertained and informed.

Now I know that there are over 600 licensed NES games to play through and some of them are going to either be extremely long or extremely challenging. Some of them may even turn out to be quite boring! I do have a list of games in mind that I plan to stick with, but in case there are long breaks between updates due to any of those factors I do plan to have additional posts related to 8-bit gaming. There will probably be a number of miscellaneous posts providing status updates if there are any significant delays. I mean, I have a personal life too, you know! You will notice that I am leaving out unlicensed NES games from this project, so I might sprinkle one in from time to time. I will also occasionally highlight NES homebrew games, PAL exclusives, and Famicom exclusives. Famicom is really interesting to me right now and there are many games that are fully playable for Engligh-speaking people. There also are a number of games that appear to be unplayable for non-Japanese speakers but are in fact fully playable with just a little bit of guidance, and those are the types of games I am very interested in writing about so I can show how to approach them. I have also dabbled in programming my own NES homebrew games, and even though I don’t really have time to devote to that fully it might sneak into the website as well.

I think that covers pretty well what I want to do here. It may very well go in an unexpected direction and I’m willing to call an audible if that’s where it leads!