Welcome to Backlogvania!


backยทlog
/หbakหlรดษก,หbakหlรคษก/
noun
-
an accumulation of something, especially uncompleted work or matters that need to be dealt with.
Like most geeks who fancy themselves gamers, I have a backlog of unfinished and mostly unplayed titles. Whatโs difficult to quantify is exactly how many games I currently have in my backlog but I know itโs not a short list. Iโve bought, received, traded and sold hundreds of games in and out of my catalog over the 30 years of my life spent playing video games so it can be easy to lose track of even whatโs actually in my stack of unplayed games let alone how many are there. Whatโs more difficult to measure is if the list of unsullied games from my hoarders pile is larger than the list of games Iโve actually played let alone completed in their entirety; though if I was a betting man I definitely wouldnโt take the under.ย
One of my personality defects that looks to stack even more games to my cache is that Iโm a โcollector.โ I like to hunt for, collect, display and yes, occasionally play the titles I have added in my catalog of games. Depending on the series, I may even have a few set up on shelves to display and with my most favorite series I may even try to โcatch them allโ just to say I did. You could say I have a problem. I wonโt, but you could. I know Scott the Woz wouldnโt judge meโฆ

Worse yet, my collection doesnโt just stop with physical spines resting on a shelf as I also dabble in digital. The realization has dawned on me that collecting physical games makes me a dinosaur in this dangerous online ecosystem where digital games are the inevitable asteroid hurtling towards causing the extinction of physical media. So while I have no partisan convictions to physical or digital, I do prefer physical for certain titles, or series. Even with the preference of buying physical, that doesnโt stop me from adding to my stockpile of games digitally. I purchase digitally when it makes sense to do so. So, when it comes to buying games Iโm as likely to pull the trigger on a digital copy on sale as I am to pop into my local used game store on my way home or troll around eBay before bed. I mean L.A Noire was 50% off and I needed to buy it for the third time on Nintendo Switch so I can screw up interrogations in portable mode! Everyone does this, right?

Why not play the games in my backlog?
For a vast majority of cases, it should be a cardinal sin to buy a game with no intentions of playing it. Shouldnโt the first thing you do with a new game be โplay it?โ Yes and no. I wonโt deny that there may be games Iโve purchased with very little (any) intention of playing ever, say as a second copy to put on display or something just to have in the collection. Iโd say for 99% of the games I own I have at least some intention of playing at least once, even if only for a laugh or to satisfy some sick curiosity of how bad or weird they may be. Outside of those rare, sketchy scenarios I intend to play what I buy but life does happen. Thereโs only so many hours in a day filled with family, work, chores, projects and, maybe the most likely culprit: other (read: newer) games.
It would be fair to say most games in my backlog are there because another (read: newer) game took priority, but that isnโt always why they remain in their shrink-wrapped prisons. Each game in my backlog has an interesting story, a funny anecdote, or at bare minimum a poor justification as to how it ended up getting to the unplayed pile. I can recall a few occasions where I plunged myself further into debt indulged in some retail therapy by purchasing several new games at once with the expectation that Iโd want to and have time to play them all. Iโll let you guess if I had time to play them all. Spoiler: I didnโt.
Digital game sales make the IRL game store buying more games than I can reasonably play all too likely to repeat from a couch. Not only are digital purchases convenient AF, I may feel compelled to buy games during digital sales for several more reasons: maybe a game just looks interesting, has been on my wish-list for a while, or maybe is a game I already own but I want it on a newer, letโs say portable system. The โbuying games to have them on a newer consoleโ scenario happens a lot on the Switch E-Shop since itโs a port powerhouse. Why wouldnโt you want every Doom game on the Switch? Iโd be worried if you said you didnโt.
The Switch makes playing games so convenient that if I can get it on the Switch, I probably will. Even having a game in portable form doesnโt always mean Iโll have the time or the energy to play it right away. Soโฆ into the stack these games will go to make way for more Animal Crossing time. Because the only thing in videogames sadder than the first 15 minutes of The Last of Us is my turnips going bad because I held out for bigger prices while those raccoons tried to rob me all week.ย

Itโs time to finally clear some of the games from my backlog
So, why talk about the games in my backlog? Well, like most gamers with a wife, kids, a house and a job it starts to become clear that my list of games I have yet to play has become a little scary. Like Draculaโs castle in the Castlevania series, my backlog is big, ominous, overwhelming, and treacherous. Despite these daunting traits, thereโs a sense of accomplishment I feel when I finish a game Iโve had sitting on the shelf for a while not unlike the sense of accomplishment I felt when finally completing Castlevania 3: Draculaโs Curse.
Another apt comparison between my backlog and the Castlevania games is that, in most cases, theyโre both fun! I mean most video games are funโฆ who knew? So, I want to start chipping away at the boulders at the bottom of the mountain and playing some of these games. I want to have fun with the games I bought. I want to feel a sense of accomplishment of checking some of them off the list.
I want to give that $12 copy of Starlink a good honest try and use the Arwing controller for more than just plastic decor next to my Amiibo. I need to feel like I truly conquered my fears of that nasty house in Resident Evil 7 without begging my wife to be in the room to ease my anxiety from the pants-shitting jump scares. After all these years I just want to say I actually finished Xenogears. I want to experience great games and I want to share those experiences with my friends.
Which leads us to where you are nowโฆ standing at the gates of Backlogvania!

Welcome to Backlogvania!
Iโve decided to focus my desire to play games from my backlog and document this journey in a new series Iโm calling Backlogvania, which I named for one of my favorite series after being inspired by the challenges of those immensely grievous but wholly fulfilling games. And I hope you like the name, because I bought the domain and had a logo made so, itโs not going anywhere.ย

So, what will Backlogvania entail? Aside from being a way for me to have some solid structure in my videogame life to help me chip away at titles unplayed, Backlogvania is also going to be a way for me to document that experience to share with my fellow gamers. Once a month I will select a game from game mountain (with enough demand, Iโll let the readers choose), do my best to finish the title if not fully complete it, and then write an overview and evaluation of the title and my experiences with it.
Each evaluation will include:
- Overview of my personal history with the game (why did I buy it, what didnโt I play it, etc)
- Whatโs the background on this game (who made it, production, etc)
- A brief review and rating of the game (play it, skip it, backlog it?)
- General commentary and miscellaneous stuff
- Some bits of game trivia
Aside from playing games and completing them to trim down my own list of unplayed games, my goal is also to make this fun and inspire other gamers to do the same. Fun will be a key factor since it shouldnโt be a slog to beat a game. My time is limited and not every game is a winner, after all. I will give every game I start a genuine effort, but if after some time I feel itโs not worth continuing to playโฆ I wonโt. It doesnโt mean I wonโt cover the game in Backlogvania, and I will reiterate what stopped me from playing it as part of the overall analysis and review but I wonโt be wasting what little game time I have on what I can only describe as shitty games games that arenโt for me.

So, there you have it. Welcome to Backlogvania! I hope you enjoy what I have in storageโฆ get it? Because game storage? Itโs a backlog pun. You get it. The first entry is coming sooner than you think as Iโve already completed the first title and am writing out the structure and the details to hopefully have it up for you all to read soon. I hope youโre all looking forward to reading these as I am to be playing them and writing them for you!ย
Check back soon for my first entry which will be, appropriately, Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance on the GameBoy Advance.ย

Keep checking back to Modern Gaming for updates and new posts to Backlogvania as they are published! And follow me on Twitter to read more gaming nonsense!
Thanks for reading and donโt ignore your backlog! Happy gaming!
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