Hi, GameTZers.
Next month, I turn 40. I've been a GameTZ for 15 of those years and a gamer for about 35, kicking off when I received a Nintendo Action Set for my fifth birthday.
As my mid-life crisis, in lieu of buying a Ferrari or leaving my wife for a Laker girl, I've decided to spend it by... uh... unexpectedly expanding everyone's backlog. My initial plan was to just loop this into the Retro Talkshop Thread's October Game of the Month, but since transitioning into an old fart only happens once in a lifetime, I decided to open the festivities up to the rest of the site.
Please join me in celebrating my birthday by replaying a few of the games that defined my history as a gamer for fun, for glory, and yes, even for some prizes.
What are the standings?How do I play?The Birthday Extravaganza is comprised of six different game series of one or more titles. The games span a variety of eras, platforms, and console generations, though the various franchises skew towards "retro." Because I'm old.
The goal is to complete a game in as many series as possible. The first time you finish a game and check off a series, you earn your
R2Kake Badge, which will initially be decorated with the series that you just completed. Continue to finish more series, and your cake will be increasingly blinged out. Completing series also makes you eligible for other prizes and raffles, which we'll talk about later.
Each game series also has an additional objective to "gild" each series' badge and give it a gold border. In some cases, it's completing a specific in-game objective. In others, it's completing a specific game in the series. In all cases, these bonus achievements highlight a certain aspect of each sprawling game series that carries special weight or unlocks a special memory for me. There's a slight raffle bonus for completing them, but don't go to pieces if you feel like a few of them are out of your reach.
Bedazzled badges will be featured here and in the
Retro Talkshop Thread.
The game starts on October 1 and ends on October 31. Feel free to use the lead time to acquire games, research strategies, or make ageist jokes at me.
Why are we playing these games?All the games series featured in the Birthday Extravaganza are important to me and the 35 or so years I've been a gamer. I go into more detail about this in the posts that follow, but needless to say, beyond just pure hours played, each of the games in our scope have been an important part of my gaming identity in some way.
This final list is actually quite a bit different than the one with which I started, which included
Bionic Commando,
Burgertime, and
Crazy Taxi; all of which hold sentimental significance. Since the Retro Talkshop Thread featured each of these games this year, I wanted to keep the lot fresh rather than exhaust an option we recently visited.
Of the series that are left
- They all originate from eras that we universally consider "retro".
- Almost all of them are still accessible in some modern fashion without raiding thrift stores and eBay.
- Almost all of them have modern, semi-modern, or remastered entries that appeal to modern platforms.
- The genres vary: one racing game, one flying game, and a variety of different action titles.
- Most of the games in these series are fairly short. Many entries can be completed in an hour or less, and most of the remaining ones are just a few hours. No hundred-hour epics here.
- Acknowledging this is subjective, the games don't suck. Yes, I did spend an unfortunate amount of time in my youth playing Where's Waldo? for the NES. No, I'm not going to make y'all do it.
That excludes a lot of my favorite franchises.
Tekken has been my favorite fighter since 1995, but we already have a "must include" fighter in the list.
Final Fantasy is a borderline obsession, but all the games take 30+ hours to complete, so it's out. I worship the original
Unreal titles, but Epic yanked them from all the digital marketplaces earlier this year for no obvious reason. There are similar excuses for
Diablo,
Burnout,
WipEout,
SoulCalibur, and a number of other great franchises, but I guess we'll just to have to save them for the 50th Birthday Extravaganza. Ha.
So, what exactly are we playing?
https://youtu.be/gyooSPduTgYIn the posts that follow, I've tried to include the cheapest and/or easiest way to legally get a hold of a game in each series. If you know of a better option, please share, and I'll update these posts.
R2K's Birthday Extravaganza - Games, Glory, & Prizes 
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port, while I'm playing the 
ROM and there are some clear differences, the PC version looks a ton nicer for 1 and levels seem to have a bit more 3D spaces/platforms/etc. His video is 2h27m long and I'm only around the 1h10m mark of progress, even though I've played longer than that. Some sections are simply not clear on what you need to do to progress. 
