Love Your Backlog month is back and it is slowly becoming one of my new favorite holidays. If you don’t know what this is, Kim from Later Levels and Genni from Ace Asunder created this event for all of us to celebrate the existence of our physical and digital mountain of joy. This event was created to celebrate something that is special to you and own it with pride. This is my second year participating in this event, and I wish I could say that I prepared for it. Well jokes on me, I kinda, sorta did when I decided to re-inventory my entire game collection last year. Being able to catalog all of my games all over again was an eye opening experience that helped me reconnect with some games that I completely forgot that I had, and some that I wonder why I have in the first place. Nevertheless, I cherish each game in my collection since I never thought I would have something like this in the past.

With the introductory paragraph out of the way now, I can start talking about my backlog! The pictures below shows how my collection grew from last year:

A whole new shelf had to be added last year. It’s kinda odd to see how it has exploded in what feels like a short time. I don’t want to spend a lot of time speculating how that happen, since this post would be even longer.

To also help visualize how much my collection has grown, I recreated my video game collection spreadsheet that I created back in 2015. This new version contains all of the games that me and Kat have currently in our physical and digital collection. This new version also fixes some issues that I had with the old spreadsheet (all of the different colors to start with). If you would like to view it, you can click the link above, the giant badge in this post, or the link on my homepage.

So, with all of my games recounted and accounted for, my new grand total of unfinished games is:

763

*Damn. I really wanted that 1000+ badge….

So. How did this happen? Last year I had reported that I only had 482 games in my backlog. How did I almost double that number!? I will answer that question towards the end of this post (the suspenseful hook!) For now, let’s answer some questions that Kim has prepared for us!

The effect that the 2020 apocalypse had on your backlog

Uh. I didn’t leave my house. Since I didn’t leave my house, I didn’t spend it all on eating out almost all the time. The result? I saved a bunch of money for gaming thanks to switching to isolation. The pandemic allowed me to save money and invest in a lot of things that I wanted. The biggest thing I was able to do was buy new components for my PC, so now I can play almost anything on PC comfortably. The sad thing is that I still haven’t touched most of my games on PC…

The oldest game in terms of release date

Um let’s see here….

Technically it would be Super Mario Bros 3, but my brother has that along with our Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis games. In terms of what I currently have on the shelf, I think it is Super Mario 64, which is a shame because I don’t think I will finish it anytime soon. Not that I think it is a bad game, or its not for me, or I’ve seen my brother finish it a gazillion times, but because I don’t know if the cartridge works anymore. I think it does, but I haven’t checked in a while. *Edit: It does work!

A game you bought on day one, only to not play it

I surprisingly don’t do this a lot. The only exceptions is I buy it a day or week later and then don’t play it. I did found one game though that fits this bill, Persona 4 Golden on Steam. I remember being at my in-laws house when I heard the news that it got released on Steam. I immediately bought it after seeing the announcement since it was for only $15/$20 dollars, and have not touched it yet. I love that game, so playing it will happen soon.

The game which has spent the most time on your backlog

Oh boy. Here comes the hard question. The original purpose of my spreadsheet was to help me remember when I bought something. I like to think if I got this before starting college, then I’ve had it for a long time. With that, I’m going to nominate Yu Gi Oh! GX: Duel Academy. I would consider this my second favorite Yu Gi Oh! game, and it is one that I have not finished since it requires you to actually past test and be good at the game. I think with how simple this game is compared to the current ruleset, I might be able to reach King of Games now.

The most recent addition to your library

As of writing this, the last game that I bought was Fallout 76. It was during a Walmart purge I guess and they had tons of copies for just $15. We got two copies so Kat and I could share the wasteland shenanigans together.

The person responsible for adding the most entries to your backlog, due to their good recommendations

This is it! The answer you were all waiting for! If you have been waiting to find out why my backlog grew so much in a year, then I’m sorry that the answer is kinda anticlimactic. It goes back to my spreadsheet (where all bad decisions are made). I originally did not want to include Kat’s games in my collection, since there are some games that I’m just never going to play (I’m looking at you Neopets: The Darkest Faerie). But, there are some games that she has that we both want to play, but it just happens that she went out of her way to buy it and play it first. So, I changed my mind about not including her games as part of my collection. We both contribute to the shelves that might be worth a fortune down the road, so I will share in the burden of finishing it one day. Also blame my friend Eric for making me buy games on Steam that I’m never going to finish if I just keep playing Overwatch.

So that’s all I got. A special thanks to Kim and Genni for once again bringing this event back this year, and I will see you next month for part 2!

DanamesX