PixlBit

How to play what I want to play and get it done. I often end up with these gigantic lists that are impossible to get through. I also end up buying games that just end up in the backloggery. So how to solve this? I think I have an answer. 

Based on my end of year summaries by Xbox (1264 hrs) and Playstation (56 hrs), I know about how many hours I log a week for this hobby. It's about 24 hours per week, or approximatly 100 hrs per month). So, I only have to figure out the average length of games for each console generation, and then I'll have the number of games I can finish in a month if I assign a generation to each month like I'm doing in 2025. I did some rough estimates using Howlongtobeat.com and wikipedia's console generation pages and came up with this list. 

Gen 1 (Pong or roughly the 70s) - 30 minutes average game time per game = 200 games per month. (obviously, I'm not going to play 200 games, but this number just means I can make my list any length I choose).

Gen 2 (Atari, arcades, early 80s) - 1 hour = 100 games (I probably can put together a list of 100 games from this period, but I will probably have more like 50 I actually want to play). 

Gen 3 (NES, late 80s) - 5 hours = 20 games (I can easily make a list of 20 games for this generation)

Gen 4 (SNES, Genesis, early 90s) - 10 hours = 10 games (There will be some tough choices to keep it to 10. I may start what I call a Pantheon (an idea I got from a music podcast I used to listen to) and put games I've played many times there as a sort of special list for replays. I want my play lists to be largely stuff new to me). 

Gen 5 (N64, PS, late 90s) - 15 hours = 7 games (some very tough choices here but a super fun task ahead of me). 

Gen 6 (Xbox, PS2, NGC, early 2000s) - 20 hrs = 5 games (Is it possible to only choose 5 games? I think I can. I think I can). 

Gen 7 (X360, PS3, Wii, late 2000s) - 25 hrs = 4 games (Whoa! Now that's a short list. Luckily I will be asigning two months to this gen and have 8 games to choose from). 

Gen 8 (XOne, PS4, Switch, mid to late 2010s) - 30 hrs = 3 games (This seems impossible even over two months and 6 games, but games have gotten long at this stage, and I must get through them and not leave any unfinished this time). 

Gen 9 (Xbox Series, PS5, Switch 2?, 2020s) - 35 hrs = 2 games (Ahhh! How do I choose? The task gets grueling, but I shall accept the challenge). 

I'm excited to start a killer list starting in January. I'm going to resist the urge to do the whole year at once. I'll go month-to-month slowly. I'm going to repeat that word all year, "slowly". 

Happy holidays!