It's that time of year yet again! Now to copy over this post from ludist210...

Backlaugust: The Official Negative World Month for Decimating Backlogs!™ is back again for more action! So start looking through your backlog and get started! The idea is to finish games during the month of August.

Here are the "rules":

Games can be on any system, not just Nintendo systems. I know we're a Nintendo fan site, but most everyone here is a multi-console owner. So play a game on any system you want.

Let us know what you're playing. Mostly just so we can cheer each other on.

Play games you already own. A lot of people tend to buy a game then not play it, or play it for a significant amount of time and then put it down. This is what we're aiming for. Games that launch in August don't count.

Try to pick up games you aren't actively playing right now. Games you're currently playing can be allowed, but in the spirit of Backlaugust, let's try to make them games you aren't playing at the moment. Make it a game you haven't touched in a month or more if possible.

When is a game done? That's up to you! Mark a game off your backlog when you've seen the ending or end credits, or once you've seen enough of the game in a game without a "proper ending" (like an arcade-type game). You don't have to do or get everything unless you want to.

Finished games will be posted in the OP. Because everyone likes to see their accomplishments recognized. Just post when you're done and I'll try to update daily.

Last year, we finished a whopping 23 games. That might be a tough number to top, but if everyone pitches in, I think we can do it!

THE FINISHED PILE:
1. Katamari Damacy Reroll - Xbone - Mop it up
2. Mega Man X - SNES (NSwitch) - Mop it up
3. Banjo-Kazooie - N64 (Xbone) - TheBigG753
4. Mega Man X2 - SNES (NSwitch) - Mop it up
5. Mega Man X3 - SNES (NSwitch) - Mop it up
6. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow - DS - Stan McStanly
7. NEO: The World Ends with You - NSwitch - Hero_Of_Hyrule
8. Castlevania: Bloodlines - Genesis (NSwitch) - TriforceBun
9. The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe - NSwitch - nate38
10. Mega Man X4 - PSX (NSwitch) - Mop it up
11. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon - GBA (NSwitch) - TheBigG753
12. Mega Man X5 - PSX (NSwitch) - Mop it up
13. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles - NSwitch - Stan McStanly
14. Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition: Hop's Iconic Hat - PC - pokepal148
15. Mega Man X6 - PSX (NSwitch) - Mop it up
16. Super Metroid - SNES (NSwitch) - Stan McStanly
17. Mega Man X7 - PS2 (NSwitch) - Mop it up
18. Lost Judgment - Xbox S|X- PogueSquadron
19. Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance - GBA (NSwitch) - TheBigG753
20. Mega Man X8 - PS2 (NSwitch) - Mop it up
21. Banjo-Tooie - N64 (Xbone) - TheBigG753
22. Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance - 3DS (PS4) - PogueSquadron
23. Chex Quest HD - NSwitch - Mop it up
24. Super Bomberman R -NSwitch - Mop it up
25. Pokkén Tournament DX - NSwitch - Mop it up
26. Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles - Wii - TriforceBun
27. Donkey Kong - Game Boy - GameDadGrant
28. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - GBA (NSwitch) - TheBigG753
29. Halo 2 Anniversary - PC - Brick
30. Conker's Bad Fur Day - N64 (Xbone) - TheBigG753
31. Castlevania - NES (NSwitch) - Mop it up
32. Castlevania: The Adventure - Game Boy (NSwitch) - Mop it up
33. Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge - Game Boy (NSwitch) - Mop it up
34. Castlevania II: Simon's Quest - NES (NSwitch) - Mop it up
35. Hades - Xbox S|X - Mop it up

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Man, I used to LIVE on Gatorade. I never sullied my throat with anything else. It was a weird time.

Anyway, let's try to actually finish something! I'll start withhh... My Friend Pedro! It's a really fun, score attack-y kind of game. Super-short, but I still haven't reached the end... yet!

Also, it takes up a lot of space in the ol' Switch Fridge, so it'll be nice to clear it out.

I'm in! I haven't been playing a whole lot this year, so I've been looking forward to this as a chance to play a lot of stuff, especially some games that have been on my "wall of shame" for a while.

Goal is to tackle the Rare Replay N64 platformers (Banjo, Conker) and Castlevania Advance Collection and see how much of those I can get done in a month.

Hmm, shockingly I don't have a whole lot on my backlog right now outside of stuff I'm actively playing, and with Xenoblade 3 coming out soon I might not have a lot of free time.

Still, I'll make an attempt here. I'll do Soul Blazer, got decently far into it but haven't really gone back since I moved so it's just sitting there unfinished.

As per usual I'll have a look through my digital library and see if I have any brisk games to tackle. This time I may even go back and see if I still have some on the ol' Wii U and 3DS...!

I may have to get involved this year! I'd really like to finish Castlevania Bloodlines, among others. I'm actually considering making a Master Backlog List in a text document and tackling my favorites first.

Can we nominate games?

Like I would nominate ....as a completely random example....that @Mop it up plays....I don't know. Starfox 64?

I will finally finish Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. I’ve been sitting about halfway done with that game for ages. It’s about time that changes.

So this is a question for anyone here:

Is one month's time enough for me to play through and finish The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild? From basically the beginning? I think I played to the part where you get off the plateau. And that's about it. Is it reasonable for me to be able to finish the game by August 31?

@GameDadGrant
Hooaghf, that's a bit of a tough question to answer. It all depends on what are your goals for the game. If you simply want to roll credits, technically you can head straight for Ganon right away and beat the game in 30 minutes or so. If you're looking to do absolutely everything you can and going for 100%, expect well over 100 hours. If you're just interested in completing the "main" parts of the game, maybe 30-40 hours?

@Shadowlink
Who would be the judges to choose from the nominees? Whatever happens though, just remember, it's an honour simply to be nominated.

@Shadowlink

Mop it up said:

@Shadowlink
Who would be the judges to choose from the nominees?

Me. That's all.




(I mean Zero seconding my notion is a nice gesture, but he has no real authority.)

Getting things started off with Banjo-Kazooie (Xbox 360) and Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (Switch).

@GameDadGrant

I think it'll depend on how many hours you can commit to it. It was around a month, maybe a little over, when I considered myself finished with BotW at ~200 hours. But there were several days where all I did was play, including a 4-day weekend when it launched (which was easily 50 hours by itself!).

Obviously you can finish the game in much less time; I did a pretty thorough exploration of the entire map - though not as thorough as @Shadowlink - before moving onto the final encounter. But it's not a game I would want to rush to finish, as so much of the enjoyment comes from exploring at your own pace.

Actually, now that you mention it, I think I am in the mood for some classic gaming. Perhaps it's about time that I dive in the Mega Man X Legacy Collection collection and make my way through this famous and infamous series. These are probably relatively short games too, right?

@TheBigG753 Is this really your first time playing Banjo-Kazooie? Or had you played it some before but didn't complete it? Either way, you're in for a treat! I'd be curious to hear what someone new thinks of the game these days.

@TheBigG753

HALF A YEAR OF FUN.

Mop it up said:

I'd be curious to hear what someone new thinks of the game these days.

*nudge*

I know what you're doing btw

What happened to you. You used to be cool.

Katamari Damacy Reroll
I had actually started pre-gaming by playing Katamari Damacy Reroll, which ended up being shorter than I thought it would be for some reason so I actually finished it yesterday. I can see why this game was a cult hit as it is a pretty strange game back before that became a more common occurrence with the indie boom. I probably would have appreciated it more back then, as well. It's a neat idea but it's pretty simple with not much variety, so I guess it's good that it's short.

The graphics are pretty simple but get the job done; I guess there can be a lot of objects on screen at once so it was kind of necessary. The music is catchy. I think the main thing that ages this game is the controls, they feel designed by someone who had never made a 3D game before and had no rightly idea how movement should be handled. Fortunately the game rarely requires precision. It's pretty easy to simply complete a stage, especially the constellation ones, so chasing high scores and finding the hidden items seems to be the main challenges here, but I don't like the gameplay enough to go for those.

Mega Man X
Way back when I was younger, I did play Mega Man X on the actual Super Nintendo, but I never finished it. I later sold the cartridge when I bought the PS2 Mega Man X collection, which I proceeded to not play and it wasn't all that long after that the X Legacy collection was announced. Oops! I don't recall liking the game very much but it's been so long, I figured I could give it another shot and see if I can better appreciate it now that I'm older and wiser. And I've gotta say...

...I still find it kinda meh! It's got the usual Mega Man staple of good presentation and a variety of stages, and I like that it features robotic animals to differentiate itself from the original series. When it comes to action games like this, I tend to prefer something more straight-forward and less complex, so for example things like having to replay stages to find upgrades is more of a boring slog than anything. After I completed the eight stages I just used a password to acquire all the items and skip over that nonsense. I've also never particularly cared for challenging games although this one seems harder than the original series for the wrong reasons. It also still has the NES problem of enemies instantly respawning if their start point barely scrolls off screen; I thought this was the Super Nintendo what even is this?!

It doesn't help that the Legacy Collection doesn't have save states or rewind for some odd reason; these are almost a necessity to overcome some of the archaic design decisions of these old games. It's certainly got me worried about how the rest of this series is going to go! But who knows, if the fans thought the later games went downhill from here then maybe I'll think the opposite since this first game missed the mark for me.

Shadowlink said:

What happened to you. You used to be cool.

No I didn't.

My current backlog in roughly the order I plan to play them:

Paper Mario: The Origami King (nearly finished), Nintendo Switch Sports (ongoing), Cadence of Hyrule Skull Kid DLC (just started), Link's Crossbow Training (need to finish), Faces of Evil, Super Mario Galaxy (3D Allstars; I've beaten the original), Wand of Gamelon, Crash Bandicoot (Switch trilogy; never beat original), Spyro (Switch trilogy; never beat original), Bioshock (Switch trilogy; beat original), Banjo-Kazooie (replay), Crash Bandicoot 2 (Switch trilogy; beat original), Spyro 2 (Switch trilogy; never played original), Bioshock 2 (Switch trilogy; beat original), Ocarina of Time (replay), Crash Bandicoot 3 (Switch trilogy; beat original), Spyro 3 (Switch trilogy; never played original), Bioshock Infinite (Switch trilogy; beat original), Crash Bandicoot 4, Metroid Zero Mission (replay), Luigi's Mansion 2 (I lack like two mansions before I'm done), Tri Force Heroes (can't make progress in single player mode so I have to find some other players), Bit.Trip Complete (trying to 100% it), Quest 64, NintendoLand, Earthworms, Typoman, Paper Mario 64 (owned on Wii U), Metroid Prime 3 (replay), Baten Kaitos Origins

@Mop it up

I think “Hooaghf” is my new favorite word/onomatopoeia.

Damn August snuck up on me. I am not sure yet what I want to chip off of my backlog.

Finished Banjo-Kazooie. Grunty can go to Hell!

Mop it up said:

@TheBigG753 Is this really your first time playing Banjo-Kazooie? Or had you played it some before but didn't complete it? Either way, you're in for a treat! I'd be curious to hear what someone new thinks of the game these days.

First time, for all intents and purposes. I messed around a little bit with it back when it first came out but mostly watched my brother play some of it. So I had some familiarity with a couple of the early worlds but this was largely a fresh experience for me.

Overall, I loved it! Honestly it was hard to put the game down once I got started. Exploring Grunty's Lair was a real highlight. Just a great hub level and in a lot of ways it is so much more than that. I appreciated the amount of creative puzzles which required thinking outside the box a bit. I've got a few gripes with some dated aspects of the game, namely the camera often getting in its own way and the platforming not feeling as tight as it needs to be in some spots. But it's a great game, and one that I'm kicking myself for not playing a long time ago. Looking forward to starting Tooie soon...

I've only put a half hour or so into Castlevania: CotM, nothing much to say about it just yet.

@TheBigG753 That's good to hear! I was a little worried you'd hate it due to its age although I don't recall your preferences on platformers and such. Did you go for 100% or just got to the credits roll? Grunty's Lair also has the catchiest tune which gets stuck in my head whenever I play it. Fair warning on Banjo-Tooie, it's pretty divisive. I personally think it's a great sequel and like it more than the first, but I can see why some fans were disappointed and disliked it since it really does have a different feel to it.

Now as for me...

Mega Man X2
Wasting no time I quickly moved on to the next title in the series. In the interest of full disclosure, I have been consulting a weakness chart for these games to counter-balance the lack of save states. Certainly not expecting much, I gotta say...

...I liked it better than the first! While it does have a number of the same issues, the difficulty felt better-balanced, and the presentation is stepped up a notch. Starting with the dash this time is probably a good idea because of how it's pretty much a necessity to have any hope of avoiding damage. It has some neat ideas in it like the bounty hunters that are after X, although it seems odd that they're hidden away in stages as opposed to more actively engaging in battle with him. Whereas the original game was a 6/10 experience for me, I'd probably rate this one a 7/10. Let's see if this upward tick continues into X3, next time!