Gaming Shames

 So far my blog posts have come in the forms of impressions, reviews, and my special series "Demo Hotness". Today I'd like to roll out another special post series, "Gaming Shames". In a couple of posts in the past, I've made mention of the term "gaming shames", but never really gotten into much detail about what this term means for my purposes with this blog. A gaming shame is a major game or franchise that, as a seasoned life-long gamer, I'm embarrassed to say I have zero experience with. Throughout 2016 I've managed to play through the majority of my backlog, so as a new year's resolution of sorts, I've decided to finally fill in some of these gaps in my gaming background. Here's a quick list of a couple of my gaming shames with a little blurb about why each is on the list:

• Chrono Trigger
• I love the SNES, I love RPGs, but somehow missed the game that is supposed to be the pinnacle of 16-bit role-playing.
• Phoenix Wright
•  It popularized visual novels in the West and is referenced in the gaming media all the time.
• Dragon Quest 4 or 8
• My social media avatar is a Dragon Quest sprite, yet I've only ever played the first 3 games in the series... kinda makes feel like a phony
• Castlevania Symphony of the Night
•  I've played almost every single Castlevania game, except for the one that many claim is the best.
• Persona
•  I hadn't even heard of this series until about a year ago, and now I feel like I hear people singing its praises all the time. I'll probably start with P4.
•  Secret of Mana or Ys
• I'm still trying to figure out where the line is drawn between "action adventure" and "action RPG", maybe some of these classic examples will help me sort it out.

Since I still have a lot of other games to tackle this year, I'm not committing to playing all of these in 2017. Over time this list will likely expand as I find out about more must-play classics that I missed back in the day. Next week I'll cover some of my impressions of the first of these gaming shames I'll be taking on, Chrono Trigger!  I'd love to hear if some of my fellow gamers have similar lists like this, so feel free to give some of examples of your own gaming shames in the comments below or tweet them using the hashtag "#GamingShames"!

Acknowledgement: The word cloud image used in this post was created with Tagul. Check them out at https://tagul.com!