RPG Experience Project: Prologue

Watching all the movies is a hard prospect, there's just so many.  No matter how well versed you are in film, there are those movies you have not gotten around to seeing.  As a person who loves to discuss movies, there is always the "OMG YOU HAVEN"T WATCH THIS?" that happens every time.  Unless your job is to review movies, you've had this said to you.  Anyways, as much of a film buff as I am, it is JRPG's that are my true media fascination.

I have a rather large list of JRPG's I have beaten.  Not only have I beaten them, I can generally walk someone through them and discuss the game on many different levels.  My mind can remember details about these games really well, its a part of my brain that didn't rot in my 20's.  Still, I have gaps, just like everyone, and I want to identify what I need to play to feel "satisfied".  After the millennium, I have hit many of the high notes of the genre, but nowhere near as many as the decade before.  I do not even have playing experience with many of the RPG's that are renowned of the last generation because most of them are on handhelds, or at least that's how it feels.  That's one of the points of this.

I'm not bragging or showing my credentials.  I'm going through and discussing things and expressing my opinion and finding what I have missed and what I want to work on.  Much of this is already in note form, I wanted to get a "big picture" of my experience over the weekend, and so over the course of a few nights I made a list and figured out how I'd split up "eras" and what exactly I would include.  For the most part, with the exception of the earlier time periods, I have split time up into a period of 2 years.  Some of you might think "well that's not a lot of RPG's in just 2 years" and I have to say you are vastly mistaken.  While in the past 5 or so it has slowed down, the amount in the 90's was staggering.

What will you get out of this?  I have no idea.  Maybe its a good time waster to help you wake up in the mornings, or something to read on your coffee breaks.  If you are an RPG fan, you'll learn some history, and maybe find some games you did not know about.  Maybe there is a game you do know about, but do not realize its importance.  I am sticking with mainly the big "3" of any period(Sega, Sony, Nintendo), but will make deviations for particularly important Western developed RPG's.  I plan to talk about action and tactical RPG's, and those that defy classification.  Mainly though, I focus on the "classic" JRPG style.  I'll also keep some "in Japan" posts of the time, because a lot of stuff got started well before we got exposed to it.