Tales From The Backlog

This Valentines’s week, most people will be thinking about the love they share with significant others or another substitution to fill the void. While I tend to not over celebrate the holiday, I do like interesting topics that revolve around the theme of love. Enter Love Your Backlog Week! This fun observation of our backlogs was created by the lovely Kim from Later Levels. Thank you Kim for giving me more reasons to talk about my backlog!

I originally created my site with my backlog in mind. I wanted to create a project to help motivate me to finish games on my backlog. At the time of writing this, I have completed a grand total of 5 games since starting my blog. A small number indeed, but with how busy my schedule was last year, I’m actually really proud of myself. Where does that leave me in the grand scheme of things? Well….

It’s Over 9000!……minus 8518.

If I am counting just games in my personal backlog, I am currently sitting at 482. This is big for me because I could have sworn that number was bigger. I have decided to exclude games that my wife owns, which would add an additional 206 games. I am not technically responsible for those that she has bought, but she does have a lot that I do want to play (all of the Suikoden, Dark Cloud, Wild Arms 3). I don’t expect to be below 500 for very long, but I will enjoy it while I can! With all of that out the way, Kim also provided us some questions to ask associated with our backlogs.

A Game You Are Eager To Play, But Haven’t Started

This was a tough choice since I have a lot of great contenders. Ultimately I will have to go with Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wing and the Lost Ocean. The Gamecube is home to some of my favorite games and I am a sucker for card base games. Baten Kaitos was one of those games that eluded me into wanting to try. At the time I heard mixed reviews about the card element, and it strayed me away from it for a while. Now that I am older and have opinions of my own, I am eager to try to play this one day. Like fine wine, I am waiting for the right moment to crack this bad boy open and enjoy it for what it is.

A Game You Have Started Several Time But Haven’t Yet Finished

There is one game that comes to mind, but I am saving it for a different category. My answer for this questions will have to be Dark Souls: Remastered. I own this game on three different platforms (PC, PS4, and Switch) and I have yet to get beat this game. I am further in the PS4 version, but stuck in Anor Londo fighting Ornstein and Smough. It is only a matter of time until I beat them, but every time I get over one struggle, another pops up that makes me put the game down for a while. Or in the current case, go play Dark Souls II or III for the time being. I will beat it one day and praise the sun for the rest of my life.

The Most Recent Addition To Your Library

Lucky, I keep a track list of all my purchases! After telling myself that I was not going to buy any new games this month (lols) I bought The World Ends With You: Final Remix. I have a good reason though! My GameStop had it on clearance for $21 USD! How could I have passed that up? I’ll tell you how, I didn’t. Not even Cat could stop me because she could not argue that price. On top of that, I had an active $5 coupon, bringing my total to $16 USD! I never felt this giddy buying a game since the time I bought Seikero when it first came out for only $10 USD. I have the DS version of the game, but I think I will start over with the Switch version since I did not get far to begin with.

The Game Which Has Spent The Most Time On Your Backlog

That is very hard to tell if I want to go technical. The oldest game I could come up with is Final Fantasy VI: Advance. I picked this game up on a whim one day and did not realize how popular (or valuable) it was. This would have to be one of the oldest games that I own that I have not finished; but for a good reason. My cartridge is very special in that the slightest tap will erase all the data on it. I have gotten to the second act of the game multiple times, only to have my data erased one way or another. For that reason, this is one game that I have not been able to finish (yet).

The Person Responsible For Adding The Most Entries To Your Backlog

Who are they? What person would do such a thing to me? What motive do they have for adding this responsibility to me? Does such a person exist? Do I know who is responsible for this?

Okay I admit. I have no one to blame but myself on this one. This was never the case in the past however. Growing up we did not have a lot of money to buy video games all the time. The games that we did get I had to share with my other two brothers. Since we only had a small collection for a while, it was easy to pick up a game that was not finished and play the crap out of it. It was also easier since we had all the time in the world when were not in school or band. Even when I got my own job and could start buying my own games, it wasn’t frequent that I would leave a game unfinished. The two contributing factors that started me on this past happened in the same year. My original PlayStation 3 died on me and took all the data I had saved on it with it. This caused me to start over on most of my games at the time; and me being me I did not want to start over on some of them. The second factor was around the same time. My friend gave me his old gaming PC and he taught me how to build a PC from the ground up. After that, games on Steam were no longer an obstacle and I planned on one point to do my main gaming on it. That did not pan out as well, and now my Steam library continues to build as I continue to play Final Fantasy XIV. It also doesn’t help that I like to find old games that I did not have the chance to play in the past. I get a rush finding difficult to find games and immediately snatch them up to add to my collection. Now if I can get around to play said games then I could be dominating my backlog.

For those interested in browsing my collection, I keep an “organized” spreadsheet that is kept up to date frequently. For Steam users, you can view my library here. 2020 is shaping up to be the year I tackle most out of my backlog and I am looking forward to see how far I can go!

Thanks for reading,

DanamesX