If you play them, they will come…
Field of Streams is my look at the 16-bit libraries of my adolesence in a more complete fashion. Taking inspiration from Jeff Gerstmann’s scientific ranking of the NES library and the ongoing ranking of the N64 library , I decided I wanted to look more in depth at the SNES library.
What I’m most interested in exploring is whether or not all consoles collapse under the weight of their entire library. I’ve never been a fan of the N64 as a platform, but I do acknowledge that it also has multiple titles on it that were hugely influential to the evolution of gaming. I don’t see these ideas as contradictory.
When the N64 series started, I saw it as a chance to get in on the ground floor so to speak, and find out if maybe I was wrong all these years and haven’t been giving the platform a fair shake. A few months in and I feel more justified than ever in my opinion of the machine.
But I’m not just writing this to slander the N64. I think the videos he releases do a good enough job of that own their own.
I have much more positive feelings about the 16-bit era, which ran almost its entire course during the teenage years of my life. I have an enduring love for the SNES, but I wondered…if I were to play every game on the system (within reason, not sure if I’m going to get a Super Scope or whatever), would my assessment hold up? Does it have a good library, or does it just have a handful of games that I loved and remember fondly? To me it’s an interesting question.
From there I had to figure out some parameters on how to approach this thing. Do I finish every game? Impossible. What about PAL releases? Japan? Bootlegs? Homebrew? For the sake of my own sanity, I landed on a few guidelines. I say guidelines because above all else I want flexibility, not a prison of my own making.
I landed on hour long looks at each game, as that gives me enough time to get a good look at it, and that felt like enough time that I would know if I really enjoyed it or not. If I bounced off it in ten minutes but stuck around, it might grow on me a little.
I also went with North American releases only. That’s the region I am from, so it was a natural fit. I always reserve the right to do whatever the hell I want, so I might look at games from other regions, but that is not going to be the main focus.
I’m not a game reviewer, and I don’t share the internet’s obsession with rankings. I also didn’t want to just copy what Jeff Gerstmann is doing, as I would surely do a worse job. But I do love puns both good and bad and thought it would be fun to have some kind of conceit behind the project.
Since I was trying to figure out if a system was “good” by looking at the library as a whole, I landed on a simple pass or fail metric for each game. From there, I could calculate an average, which immediately lent itself to a batting average in baseball. From there, I realized I also wanted to look at the Sega Genesis, which brought to mind the console wars of old, and thus Field of Streams was born. I’ll be playing through the SNES and Genesis library in some semblance of North American release order. The dates are hard to source, and not wanting to get bogged down in a bunch of BS is always a guiding principle of mine.
Each game is either a hit or a strikeout, which simply means I liked the game or I did not. The whole thing is obviously my highly subjective opinions, so if I kill one of your sacred cows, I mean no harm. I also have an affinity for garbage. But I think overall this will be a fun look at a whole bunch of games I’ve never played before.