How To Beat 400 Games In 4.5 Years

In January of 2010, I decided to change my outlook on how I manage my gaming time, how I collect games, and how I contend with the nemesis that so many gamers share: the dreaded backlog.

I got involved in a forum thread in an online gaming community called “Games Beaten 2010.” It encouraged members to begin listing the games they finished over the course of the year.

I believe that my success in moving through a big chunk of my own collection in the past four and a half years (something I’d never dreamed would be possible beforehand) is something anyone can replicate, and I want to pass on nine tips I came to learn in the process to help others do so.

Find a friendly online community interested in beating games together.

The role of public discussion around the list of games you beat can be vital to your motivation for moving through to the credits.

Gamers who share an interest in tackling their backlog love to tell each other what they think of one another’s accumulating lists. Once I’d finish one of the games on my list, the idea of then getting to talk about it afterwards with a community of interested participants was exciting. That conversation was far more of an incentive to get to the credits than any ending cinematic, trophies, or achievements were.

Many online gaming communities have threads like the one I participated in. Sites such as The Backloggery or Playfire are dedicated to enabling this kind of discussion, and are places where you may find a home. There are even some communities that form discussions around specific games that they play together, too, like Kotaku‘s own current Summer of Old JRPGs.

In my experience, the positive reinforcement from a community when you finish a game does much more to encourage you to check a game off your list than the act of simply moving it to another category in a database, another section of your shelf, or another column on a spreadsheet.

Most importantly, I recommend that other gamers find a community that sees beating games as a basis for having friendly discussion about each game’s merits, not as a competition to see who can rack up the biggest list. Though that might be a counterproductive atmosphere to some who seek motivation through competition, it was a great context for me to actually feel like I was making progress.

Get in the habit of tracking your games.

At the very least, you should begin by listing the games you’ve beaten this year. Past that, it may also be helpful to make a list of all the games you own (perhaps on a site like RF Generation) so that you can plan ahead.

Which games do you want to prioritise? Which systems have you been ignoring? Which series do you have a lot games for?

Eventually you can use game-tracking to keep a count of the number of games that you acquire, the number of games you beat year to year or month to month, the number of older vs. newer games you are playing, the number of games you are actively playing at once, etc. The idea here is to get data over time so that you can more strategically plan your game choices and your game time.

If you find that, like me, you typically don’t have a lot of free time in March, you may not want to start that 40-hour RPG at the end of February. If you notice that you rarely play any N64 games, you may temporarily stop picking up games for that system until it actually piques your interest again. Alternatively, if you have eight Dragon Warrior games and have never played any of them, maybe you want to finally give them a crack.

Lists and stats are your friend. Don’t fear them!

Learn to use HowLongToBeat.com and plan your time carefully.

This site didn’t exist the first few years I was making my annual list, but it has since become a godsend. Part of planning to beat X number of games a year involves staggering your list with long games and short games in a way that fits your schedule. It can be immensely frustrating trying to play 2-3 games at once that each last 30 hours or more.

If you want to play multiple games at a time, try to balance them out and play at least one short one and one long one simultaneously. If you know, for example, that you have two hours free on two nights this upcoming week, try to pick a game to beat that sits at around the 4-5 hour mark so you can get through it in your planned available time. Do this over the course of the month, and you might find that you easily beat 1-2 of the longer games while also polishing off a half dozen shorter titles from your backlog. Figure out how to use this resource in an effective way for you.

Most importantly, don’t dramatically change your current habits for allocating gaming time; one of the quickest ways to burn out of a serious attempt at tackling the backlog is to start piling a lot more hours of game time into your week than you currently afford. Game smarter and more carefully, not harder and longer.

Allow yourself to occasionally play games without the intent of finishing them.

Not every game in your backlog can or has to be beaten. Some genres might prove tough to focus on as part of your regular efforts to clear a backlog.

Take time here and there to get in some time with a shmup that you have no realistic hope of beating, to play a few rounds of that obscure Genesis football title, etc. Part of tackling your backlog involves having first-hand familiarity with the games you own — and that doesn’t always have to mean beating them. For example, I haven’t “beaten” Truxton on Sega Genesis, but I have spent enough time with it to consider it one of my favourite shmups and I wouldn’t consider it as being part of my backlog any longer.

Embrace the accessibility of digital, mobile and portable games.

One way to ensure that you can plow through games in your backlog is to make the games you are playing accessible to you across multiple formats. It might be hard to find an hour every night to hook up your PlayStation 2 to tackle the original Sly Cooper trilogy, but you might have an hour break at work every day where you could play the remade Sly Cooper Collection found on the Vita. Or maybe you want to play the original Mega Man games on the eShop. Maybe you’re having a hard time screwing around with your PC to get an old DOS game going, but can opt for the ported iOS option instead.

If the “most authentic original experience possible” is really important to you, it will likely end up hampering your efforts at beating your backlog.

Determine for yourself what counts as “beating” a game.

The most traditional definition for completing a game is probably reaching some kind of ending after which credits will roll. Some people argue that a game isn’t “beaten” unless you finish it at 100% without dying while playing on the hardest difficulty. These opinions for “beating” a game vary by game, by genre, and by person, and that debate can certainly be part of the fun of playing through your backlog.

But you’re not in competition with others. Tackling your backlog is about challenging yourself. It is ultimately up to you whether or not to decide if you’ve “legitimately” beaten a game. Make judgments that you feel you can defend to yourself and feel satisfied with. That said, sites like The Backloggery list various categories of game completion, some of which may be helpful for you if you are on the fence on deciding if you can put a game on your big board.

I typically count a game as beaten once the credits roll, but I almost always require myself to play on default or harder settings for games that have adjustable difficulty. In arcade games like fighters and shmups, I generally shoot for a 1cc or 4cc, depending on how fair I perceive the game to be. To count a sports game as beaten, I aim to complete a season and/or a playoff run as a league champion. I strictly avoid any kinds of cheats or hacks. Again, those rules are specific to me based on what I found to provide the right balance of challenge versus accomplishment, but everyone’s own criteria will likely be different.

Move on.

Don’t spend much gaming time playing things you’ve already beaten. Don’t spend your time trying to 100% everything if you’ve already completed the main questline. Don’t worry about reading every last line of dialogue and uncovering every last secret by working on multiple playthroughs. These activities are fine and fun if you aren’t on a quest to get through a hefty backlog, but they can be kryptonite to any serious attempt.

Certainly you can enjoy games to their fullest and try to get the most out of them. I personally prefer to start up a new game when I’ve hit the campaign credits and will only dip back into games like Borderlands 2 or Dragon Age with 20 hours or more of post-game content in little bits and pieces as I find time (including when a significant new piece of DLC comes along).

Think about short-term goals.

A big problem for me early on was splitting my play time across five or six games at once, picking games to play randomly, or otherwise playing with no real goals in mind.

Over time, as I decided to get serious about beating my backlog, I found ways to provide interesting challenges to myself in each yearly thread. One year, I wanted to beat at least one game for every system I owned. Another year, I decided to play through a few series in their entirety. I’ve made it a point to occasionally focus on runs of certain genres or systems. I’ve occasionally made it a goal to hit a certain number of games by a certain date (e.g. fifty by mid-July).

These extra motivators also helped to give me a sense of my own gaming habits, providing an idea of which times of the year worked best to play certain kinds of games based on my schedule, which kinds of games I was neglecting, and which kinds of games I might want to pick up for future play.

Remember that beating your backlog is a long-term goal.

Beating a huge backlog is, in most cases, more of a mental block than a physical limitation.

No, most of you will not get through your backlog in 1-2 years. But in 10-20 years? You could make some very serious dents in it. It would be easier still if you only wanted to reasonably experience but not necessarily beat every game. The size and scope of backlogs vary. Some gamers only want to include “current gen” games in their backlogs. Some who haven’t adopted the latest generation of systems will only include games for systems they already own.

Many gamers have a backlog that encompasses selected titles across 30-40 years of gaming’s history. But no matter how far back your backlog goes or what it entails — and even though games come out at an increasingly faster rate today — it certainly isn’t unreasonable to think that you could focus much of your attention on the present while also playing a respectable number of older games every year.

In the end you likely won’t ever finish every game in your backlog, but you should get to a point where you’ve made a substantive dent in it and have the satisfaction of knocking out a lot of classic games, too.

I’ve included with this post a list of the 400 games I’ve beaten over the past four and a half years (as of mid-June 2014). The number of games isn’t ultimately very important — people will have differing amounts of free time or playing skills that will make this list an unhelpful comparison, and it isn’t intended to be used that way. Instead, I’ve pasted the list primarily to give a sense of how I have personally approached attacking my backlog. You’ll notice plenty of shorter arcade style games (shmups and fighters, for example), but I also think that there’s a fair number of RPGs or longer action/adventure games in the final balance. There are more games for newer systems than older systems, but there’s clearly a lot of retro stuff on the list as well. There are a few repeats of games I couldn’t resist revisiting in a different year (and a couple that are meatier add-ons for games), but these are minimal.

These nine tips are the general strategy that I plan to continue to use and that I hope will get me close to clearing around half of my backlog — which sits at around a couple of thousand games — in the next decade or so.

If you’ve got other ideas and strategies you’ve used, be sure to sound off with your own tips or questions in the comments below!

Games Beaten in 2010

1. Raiden IV 360

2. Shatter PS3

3. After Burner 32X

4. Dragon Age: Origins PS3

5. Red Faction: Guerrilla PS3

6. RayStorm PS1

7. RayCrisis: Series Termination PS1

8. Call of Duty: World at War 360

9. Contra NES

10. In the Hunt PS1

11. Philosoma PS1

12. F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point 360

13. God of War III PS3

14. Electronic Table Soccer! Odyssey2

15. Gigawing DC

16. Gigawing 2 DC

17. Shoot 1UP 360

18. Dragon Age Origins: Awakening PS3

19. 1942: Joint Strike- PS3

20. Little Big Planet – PSP

21. Strikers 1945 Plus Portable- PSP

22. Madden NFL 10 – PS3

23. Gunstar Heroes -PS3 (GEN)

24. Astro Boy: Omega Factor – GBA

25. Final Fight – PS2 (Arcade)

26. The Conduit – Wii

27. Dark Sector- PS3

28. Super Street Fighter IV – PS3

29. The Great Ragtime Show (aka Boogie Wings)- MAME

30. Metal Slug XX – PSP

31. House of the Dead: Overkill – Wii

32. F.E.A.R. – The Perseus Mandate- 360

33. Radio Allergy – Wii

34. Karous-Wii

35. Half-Minute Hero – PSP

36. Metro 2033 – 360

37. Bioshock 2 – 360

38. Outrun – SMS

39. Outrun (Sega AGES 3D) – PS2

40. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night – PS1

41. Outrun 2019 – Genesis

42. Ico – PS2

43. Panzer Dragoon II: Zwei – Saturn

44. Soldner-X 2: Final Prototype – PS3

45. Gears of War – 360

46. Bad Dudes – Wii (Arcade)

47. Caveman Ninja – – Wii (Arcade)

48. Zombie Wasteland – iPhone

49. Espgaluda II – iPhone

50. Bayonetta – 360

51. Angry Birds -iPhone

52. Deathsmiles – 360

53. Bonk’s Adventure – PCE

54. Halo: ODST – 360

55. Need For Speed: Undercover -iPhone

56. Dante’s Inferno -PS3

57. BlazBlu: Calamaity Trigger -PS3

58. Space Invaders: Infinity Gene -iPhone

59. Ridge Racer – PS1

60. Tiki Totems – iPhone

61. Fallout 3 – PS3

62. Cyvern – The Dragon Weapons – MAME

63. DoDonPachi Resurrection – iPhone

64. Battlefield Bad Company 2 – PS3

65. Cameltry – PSP/Arcade (Taito Collection)

66. Psyvariar – PS2

67. Alien vs. Predator – Arcade (MAME)

68. Halo: Reach – 360

69. Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee – XBOX

70. King of the Monsters – PS2/Arcade (SNK Arcade Classics)

71. Haunted House – Atari 2600

72. Soul Calibur IV -PS3

73. Mutant League Football – Genesis

74. Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ – DS

75. Peggle – iPhone

76. Resistance Retribution – PSP

77. God of War: Ghost of Sparta -PSP

78. Quiz & Dragons: Capcom Quiz Game -PSP/Arcade (Capcom Classics Remixed)

79. Portal – PC

80. Uniracers – SNES

81. Half Life 2: Episode 1 – PC

82. Assassin’s Creed – 360

83. Rage HD – iPhone

84. Sonic CD – Sega CD

85. Dark Nebula: Episode 1 – iPhone

86. Tempest 2000 (Traditional Tempest mode) – – Atari Jaguar

87. Ikaruga – Gamecube

88. Tetris (Rev A and Rev B) – Game Boy

89. Halo 2600 – Atari 2600

90. Super Mario Bros. – NES

91. Aliens vs Predator – PS3

92. X-Men Arcade – PS3 (Arcade)

93. Donkey Kong Jr. – Atari 7800

94. Iridion II – GBA

95. Killer Instinct Gold – N64

96. Super Mario Galaxy 2 – Wii

97. Dragon Age: The Darkspawn Chronicles – PS3

98. Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner – PS2

99. Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo – PSP

100. Renny Blaster – PCE-CD

Games Beaten in 2011

101. Metal Torrent- DSiWare

102. Kirby Super Star Ultra – NDS

103. DoDonPachi – PS1

104. Cruis’n USA – N64

105. Cruis’n World – N64

106. DonPachi – PS1

107. Cut the Rope – iPhone

108. Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift – iPhone

109. Mass Effect – 360

110. Galaga Remix – Wii

111. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom – Wii

112. Mushihimesama Futari 1.5 – 360

113. DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou – PS2

114. DoDonPachi Resurrection – iPhone

115. Triggerheart Exelcia – Dreamcast

116. Heavy Barrel – Wii/Arcade

117. Tetris (Rev A and Rev B) – Game Boy

118. Street Fighter IV – iPhone

119. Killzone – PS2

120. Dead Space 2 – PS3

121. Marvel vs Capcom 3- PS3

122. Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess – PSP

123. Killzone 3- PS3

124. Lost Planet 2 – PS3

125. Star Wars: Dark Forces – PC

126. Nemesis – Game Boy

127. Space Invaders Extreme 2 -NDS

128. Kirby’s Dream Land – Game Boy

129. Mass Effect 2 – 360

130. Mass Effect 2: Shadow Broker – 360

131. Mass Effect 2: Kasumi – Stolen Memory – 360

132. Kirby’s Dream Land 2- Game Boy

133. Ginga Fukei Densetsu: Sapphire- PCE-CD

134. Soul Calibur – Dreamcast

135. Dragon Age II – PS3

136. Espgaluda II – iPhone

137. Portal 2 -PC

138. Metroid: Zero Mission – GBA

139. Vanquish – PS3

140. Terraforming -PCE-CD

141. Dark Nebula 2 – iPhone

142. Gunblade NY – Wii

143. LA Machine Guns – Wii

144. F.E.A.R. 2 – PS3

145. F.E.A.R. 2: Reborn PS3

146. Chrono Trigger – SNES

147. Guardian Heroes – SAT

148. F.E.A.R. 3 – PS3

149. Prehistoric Isle in 1930 – PSP

150. Gears of War 2 – 360

151. Adventure – Atari 2600

152. Gunhed – PCE

153. Limbo – 360

154. Crimzon Clover – PC

155. Army of Darkness Defence- iPhone

156. Psycho Soldier – PSP

157. Shank – PS3

158. Jamestown – PC

159. MUSHA – Genesis

160. Dragon Age II: Legacy – PS3

161. Kingdom Grand Prix – Arcade (MAME)

162. Blade Buster – NES

163. Alien vs. Predator – Arcade (MAME)

164. Metamorphic Force – Arcade (MAME)

165. Jetpack Joyride- iPhone

166. Medal of Honour – PS3

167. Dimahoo – Arcade (MAME)

168. Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker – Arcade (MAME)

169. Gears of War 3 – 360

170. Dementium: The Ward – NDS

171. Brutal Sports Football – – Atari Jaguar

172. Splatterhouse – PCE

173. Resistance 3 – PS3

174. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception – PS3

175. Battlefield 3 – PS3

176. Espgaluda II: Black Label (BL mode) – 360

177. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – PS3

178. Knights of the Round – Arcade (MAME)

179. Sonic the Hedgehog – Genesis

180. Shining Force – Genesis

181. Muchi Muchi Pork – 360

182. Dragon Age II: Mark of the Assassin – PS3

183. Shienryu Explosion – PS2

184. Little Big Planet 2 – PS3

185. Pink Sweets – 360

186. Sonic Generations – PC

187. Homefront – PS3

188. Groove Coaster – iPad

189. No More Heroes – Wii

190. Double Dragon – SMS

Games Beaten in 2012

191. Golden Axe Warrior – SMS

192. Current – iOS

193. Golden Axe: The Duel – Saturn

194. Golden Axe – Genesis

195. Capcom Fighting Evolution – PS2

196. Metal Slug XX – PSP

197. Ketsui: Death Label – NDS

198. DoDonPachi: Blissful Death – iOS

199. Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad – Arcade (MAME)

200. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary -360

201. The Simpsons Arcade Game – PS3

202. Soul Edge – PS1

203. HamsterBall – PS3

204. BlazBlu: Continuum Shift Extend – Vita

205. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3- Vita

206. Uncharted: Golden Abyss – Vita

207. Ys 1 – PSP

208. Journey – PS3

209. X-Men vs. Street Fighter – Arcade (MAME)

210. Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter – Arcade (MAME)

211. Street Fighter X Tekken – PS3

212. Mass Effect 3 – 360

213. Mass Effect 3: From Ashes – 360

214. Mystic Warriors – Wrath of the Ninja – Arcade (MAME)

215. Dragon Blaze – Arcade (MAME)

216. Shadows of the Damned – 360

217. Arabian Nights (from Pinball Arcade) – Vita

218. Driver: San Francisco 360

219. Skull Girls – PS3

220. Wolfenstien 3D – iOS

221. Skull and Crossbones – Arcade (MAME)

222. Diablo III – PC

223. Resistance: Burning Skies – Vita

224. Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown -PS3

225. Final Fantasy IV – PSP

226. Capcom vs SNK 2 EO – Gamecube

227. Bride of Pin*Bot (from Pinball Arcade) – Vita

228. Pac-Man Championship Edition DX – PS3

229. Super Stardust Delta – Vita

230. DoDonPachi Resurrection – 360

231. Bit.Trip Beat – PC

232. Dear Esther – PC

233. Wizorb – PC

234. Sound Shapes – Vita

235. Infinity Blade – iOS

236. Infinity Blade II – iOS

237. Super Star Shooter – X68000

238. Mortal Kombat (2012) – Vita

239. Super Mario 3D Land – 3DS

240. Centipede: Infestation – 3DS

241. Commando – 7800

242. Shadow Gun – iOS

243. Borderlands 2 – PC

244. Unfinished Swan – PS3

245. Borderlands 2: Captain Scarlett and Her Captain’s Booty – PC

246. House of the Dead 4 – PS3

247. Vampire Saviour (Darkstalkers 3) – Arcade (MAME)

248. D – PS1

249. Vampire Hunter (Darkstalkers 2) – PSP

250. He-Man: The Most Powerful Game in the Universe – iOS

251. Halo 4 – 360

252. Little Big Planet – Vita

253. Super Crate Box – Vita

254. Street Fighter X Tekken – iOS

255. 007: Goldeneye Reloaded – PS3

256. 007: Blood Stone 360

257. Angry Birds: Star Wars – iOS

258. After Burner Climax – PS3

259. Sonic 4: Episode 1 – PS3

260. Borderlands 2: Mr. Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage – PC

261. Street Fighter Alpha: Warrior’s Dreams – PS1

262. Killer Instinct – SNES

263. Sonic 4: Episode 2 – PS3

264. Hotline Miami – PC

265. NightSky – PC

266. Super Burnout – – Atari Jaguar

267. Dead or Alive 3 – Xbox

268. Mario vs. Donkey Kong – GBA

269. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 – PS3

270. Marvel Land – Genesis

Games Beaten in 2013

271. Twisted Metal – PS1

272. Twisted Metal 2 – PS1

273. Twisted Metal III – PS1

274. Twisted Metal 4 – PS1

275. Screaming Mad George’s Paranoiascape – PS1

276. N.O.V.A. – PSP

277. Jetpack Joyride – Vita

278. Devil May Cry (2013) – 360

279. BlazBlu: Continuum Shift Extend – Vita

280. Fighting Masters – Genesis

281. Kirby’s Epic Yarn – Wii

282. Cruis’n – Wii

283. Foosball 2012 – Vita

284. Electronic Table Soccer! – Odyssey2

285. Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown -PS3

286. Asura’s Wrath – PS3

287. Showdown in 2100 A.D. – Odyssey2

288. CoD of Duty – PC

289. Little Big Planet Karting – PS3

290. Gattling Gears – PS3

291. Monster Maulers – Arcade (MAME)

292. Angry Birds Rio – iOS

293. The Last Story – Wii

294. Retro/Grade – PS3

295. Sonic Fighters – 360

296. Spec Ops: The Line – PS3

297. God of War: Ascension – PS3

298. Bioshock Infinite – PS3

299. Half-Life: Source – PC

300. Guacamelee – Vita

301. Tekken 6 – PSP

302. Half-Life: Blue Shift – PC

303. Power Stone – PSP

304. Power Stone 2 – PSP

305. Torchlight – PC

306. Torchlight II – PC

307. Gorgar (from Pinball Arcade) – Vita

308. Metro: Last Light – 360

309. The Last Blade – Arcade (MAME)

310. Fatal Fury Special – Arcade (PS2)

311. Halo 2600 – Atari 2600

312. Lollipop Chainsaw – PS3

313. Sonic Colours – Wii

314. Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara -Arcade (360)

315. Final Fight – Arcade (360)

316. The Last of Us – PS3

317. Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom – Arcade (360)

318. Aliens: Colonial Marines – PC

319. Dodonpachi Resurrection – 360

320. Boxing – Atari 2600 (PS2)

321. Commander Keen Episode 1: Marooned on Mars – PC

322. DLC Quest – PC

323. Live Freemium or Die – PC

324. Borderlands 2: Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt – PC

325. Marvel vs Capcom 3 – PS3

326. Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep – PC

327. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger – PC

328. Street Fighter IV – iOS

329. Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R – Vita

330. The Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim – 360/PC

331. The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages – GBC

332. Killzone: Mercenary – Vita

333. Galaga Legions DX – PS3

334. Angry Birds Star Wars II – iOS

335. Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack – Vita

336. Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower – PSP

337. Little Inferno – iOS

338. The Stanley Parable – PC

339. Plants vs. Zombies – – Vita

340. Device 6 – iOS

341. Gone Home – PC

342. Touch My Katamari – Vita

343. Bulletstorm – 360

344. Call of Duty: Ghosts – PS4

345. Killzone Shadowfall – – PS4

346. Gun Commando – Vita

347. XMAS Doom ’99 – PC

348. Hero of Sparta – PSP

349. Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition – PS3

350. Fez – PC

351. Resogun – PS4

352. Shelter – PC

353. To The Moon – PC

354. Tearaway – Vita

355. After Burner: Climax – PS3

Games Beaten in 2014 (so far)

356. Primal Rage – 32X

357. Golden Axe – Genesis

358. To the Moon: Holiday Special – PC

359. Need for Speed: Rivals – PS4

360. Halo: Spartan Assault – Xbox One

361. Kolibri – 32X

362. Motocross Championship – 32X

363. Shank 2 – PS3

364. Colassatron: Massive World Threat – iOS

365. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons – PS3

366. Snafu – Intellivision – Intellivision

367. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom – Wii

368. Street Fighter vs. Tekken – Vita

369. Wolf Fang – PS1/Vita

370. Mirror’s Edge – iOS

371. Infamous: Festival of Blood – PS3

372. The Last of Us: Left Behind – PS3

373. Flappy Bird – iOS

374. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag – PS4

375. Titanfall – Xbox One

376. Infamous: Second Son – PS4

377. Diablo III: Reaper of Souls – PC

378. Killzone: Mercenaries – Vita

379. Shock Troopers – Arcade (PS2)

380. Borderlands – PC/PS3

381. Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012) – Vita

382. PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale – PS3

383. Muramasa Rebirth – Vita

384. Spyro The Dragon – PS1/Vita

385. Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished – PC

386. Gears of War: Judgment – 360

387. Raiden III – Arcade (PS2)

388. Strider – Arcade (PS2)

389. Mario Kart Wii – Wii

390. Mario Kart 8 – Wii U

391. Eye of the Beholder – – Sega CD

392. Code of Princess – 3DS

393. Crimzon Clover World Ignition – PC

394. Bushido Blade – PS1

395. New Super Mario Bros. 2 – 3DS

396. Mario Kart DS – NDS

397. Ketsui: Death Label (Very Hard Mode) – NDS

398. Marvel vs Capcom – Dreamcast

399. Wario Land – Virtual Boy

400. The Typing of the Dead – Dreamcast

Number of games for “retro” systems: 162

Number of games for “current” systems: 238

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David Heineman is a professor who writes and teaches about rhetoric and new media, including video games. He can be reached via Twitter @DrHeineman.