10 YEARS OF PLANNED ALL ALONG!

Today, July 19th, 2023, is a very special day; this very blog, Planned All Along, has existed for 10 years. It's a landmark anniversary and I'm going to celebrate it, this time not with a huge review, but with a look back at these past 10 years. Quick Reviews will properly resume this Friday. There's a lot to cover, so let's start right away, shall we?

The beginning

How did this blog begin? Well, as simple as that: I was very bored one day. I was studying in Social Communications at the local university, I was between semesters, and looking for things to do. At the time, I already owned a fair number of games on three Nintendo consoles: Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and Wii. More games on the DS than the other two combined, I feel. At the time, I didn't have a job, so I had a lot of free time. 

At the time, I was a fan of many online reviewers, be it The Nostalgia Critic or others from Channel Awesome, so I had grown interested in doing online reviews, even if only as a hobby. And my original train of thought was that this would make me go through my collection of games again, which was pretty small when compared to what it is now. Hey, how hard can it be? Give it a year or two and I'll be through, right? ....Right.

From the very beginning, much like the online critics I enjoyed, my idea was to review the games, cover their entire story, and crack jokes. I wanted to focus on telling the story of the games. At the time (and still now), I believed that when designing a video game, the story had to be decided fairly early on, seeing as a lot of the development phase would then involve building the game around that story. e it thinking up gameplay mechanics, new areas to visit, the characters we encounter, and so on. Therefore, the story has been "Planned all along". Even the blog's title was meant to convey what I wanted to focus on above all else.

However, that focus would inevitably stretch out the length of my articles. Well, it's alright. As I found out, I have no problem writing articles that reach 2,000 words... sometimes, multiple for the same game. Thus, some of my big projects just... happened. As early as my first cycle of reviews, I would experiment with review length; the first Wii game I reviewed, Castle of Shikigami III, already had to have its review split in two 2,000-word parts. At the time, I had no idea I would end up writing reviews split across 5, 6, 7 or even 8 parts down the line...

A humble start

Since I didn't have tons of games at first, I just picked whichever I felt like talking about. Or those I was especially opiniated on. At times, I was forcing myself through the games I cared less about; I had bought them, I had barely played them, I wanted to give them their fair dues regardless. The very first game I went with was the GBA Crash Purple / Spyro Orange Superpack, because I had a lot to say about it specifically, a lot of it not too positive. The advantage of reviewing games I owned was that I already knew the subject matter a little, having played those games previously.

My original plan was to divide my schedule on the blog based by console: First would be a GBA title, followed by two DS games (since I had so many in comparison) and one Wii game (I had acquired that console a mere two years prior, so I didn't have a ton of games for it yet). Following this, I would cover a game I owned on the Wii's Virtual Console or WiiWare, switching back and forth each cycle since I didn't own a lot of those. Each cycle would then be topped off by a Top 12 list covering a topic that interested me.

Why Top 12, instead of 10? Remember when I said I was a fan of the Nostalgia Critic? He would make "Top 11"s during the first part of his career, saying he "liked to go one step beyond", so I figured, why not go yet another step beyond? Especially considering the sheer length of my articles... Overall, I'm glad to stick by that decision, it feels special to have something better than just Top 10s.

Early on, I also wanted to include articles on various topics, like Editorial-style columns (which I dropped early on, barring the very occasional commentary on a gaming situation, and instead incorporated into my reviews), and articles about fun stuff related to video games (such as interesting webcomics, fan initiatives, etc.). Both ended up being dropped fairly early on.

It didn't take long for me to grow interested in making themed months. The first one, early in the blog's life (October 2013), was all about Pokémon. At the time, university had resumed, so I was now living the life of a student with some time on the side for this hobby of his. On the menu, a Top 12 about Pokémon that could get new evolutions or pre-evolutions (at the time, I never thought I would turn out right for some of them: Qwilfish, Dunsparce, Farfetch’d and Girafarig, specifically...), and reviews of Pokémon FireRed, Pokémon Snap and Pokémon Rumble (a WiiWare title). I stretched the formula some, but found it worked quite well.

Another one of my early Top 12s covered game franchises I'd be interested in trying out someday. Of titles in the list, I have since tested games in the Portal, Metroid and Kingdom Hearts franchises, and I have Assassin's Creed games sagely waiting over on UPlay. (Still no word on the other eight: Halo, American McGee's Alice, Animal Crossing, Ratchet & Clank, Batman: Arkham, Fire Emblem, Jak & Daxter or Earthbound...)

For a while, I would also end each year with reviews of musical games. I started out with Just Dance 3, because that franchise means a lot to me. It is after playing that same game, during an Easter family gathering at my cousin's place, that I got hooked and decided I wanted a Nintendo Wii. Past this, I would end up reviewing more Just Dance games in 2015, 2017 and 2022, and cover other music games during other Decembers (one example being Rock Band 3 DS in 2014), ultimately letting go of thbe concept once I ran out of music games to cover, instead focusing on more nostalgic titles (one example being the Disney Afternoon Collection, covered in 2017).

Also a thing I did early in the blog's life was the occasional Demo Review, in which I covered the free demo of a game available on WiiWare. Those lasted from December 19th, 2013 to December 26th, 2015.

2014: An important year for the blog

As the blog went on, I began settling what would become the norm. On most April 1sts, I would write a comical review befitting the April Fools theme; in 2014, I reviewed a game I didn't own but knew well; in 2015, I reviewed a song, pretending to be another critic; in 2016, I reviewed an "adult" game; and so on.

In May of 2014, something special happened: I ran out of GBA games. I knew I didn't have a lot, just about 7 to cover, so it wouldn't take too long to get through those, but I was nonetheless surprised it happened so quickly. The last GBA game I reviewed was Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards, which alkso became my longest review at the time, at a whopping 4 parts. However, that left me with a void to fill...

I found the idea pretty quickly; movie reviews! Thus the VGFlicks segment was born. My idea was to review one of two things: Either a movie that's an adaptation of an existing video game, or a movie whose general story and topic involves video games in some capacity. This meant that I could cover "adaptations" like the Super Mario Bros. Movie or Prince of Persia, as well as original stories like WarGames or Wreck-It Ralph.

Most notably, though, the first movie I covered under the VGFlicks banner remains, to this day, the worst I've reviewed: Gamer, which I still nowadays use as a regular punching bag whenever I talk about bad video game movies, and comes up frequently as one of the worst films I've seen, period. In hindsight, maybe I should have kept it for a later article... Oh well! Though I'm surprised at the space the movie reviews would eventually take on the blog. It helps that after a while, I'd just start collecting DVDs of video game movies, on top of new games to play and review...

My first anniversary review was a big piece: Super Smash Bros. Brawl, for the Wii. Split in six parts, it was officially my biggest project at the time, and set the tone for the future anniversary reviews (the big ones, at least), which would always consist of 5 parts or more. For this one, I split the review somewhat evenly between the game''s features and modes, and coverage of the Story Mode known as the Subspace Emissary.

In the second half of 2014, I would have my first job, thanks to which I acquired a Nintendo 3DS. I would come to consider the console and its games as secondary, at least while I still had a lot of DS games to review. Even nowadays, it feels like I can barely squeeze in one 3DS game review a year, maybe two (an example being this year, with Super Mario 3D Land and Ocarina of Time 3D).

Yet another important event in 2014: My review of the "worst game I've ever seen". With hindsight, that may not be all that accurate anymore, but the game still stands out, by reputation alone: Anubis II, a Wii shovelware adapted from a PS2 shovelware, that is identical to several other crappy games, all by the same company. I guess I hate this game even more for what it represents (boundless, scammy greed, above the desire to make something good) than for what it is.

In fact, Anubis II angered me so much that I started the review with something new: A title card! (Where I brandish a knife at the game...) Title cards would become a major component of the blog afterwards, with me adding them to most articles (barring some times where I would either forget or not find the time to make one). Through them, I would hone in my image editing skills... well, not so much through Photoshop than through the free GIMP 2, but still. My skills in that department remain minor, but I'm actually impressed by some of the title cards I've made.

Keep moving forward

2015 would start with me meeting the Nostalgia Critic at my first ever convention, G-Anime, set in Gatineau in January. While I loved the event (and discovered a lot of content creators from Quebec thanks to it), meeting my inspiration has left me soured. I won't go over the details. Let's just say that whenever I need to make fun of someone, he'd become my go-to. I was disappointed by that turn of events, but I realized I enjoyed what I was doing and would keep at it, no matter what happened. On the plus side, before and after that weekend, I published a review of the Super Mario Bros. Movie (1993).

2015 is when I settled on more themed months, with a Rabbids month in February, a Sonic month in April, and another Poké-Month in October. That year also saw the release of two huge reviews back to back: A VGFlicks of Scott Pilgrim VS The World (in which I compare the film to the graphic novels, AND slip in a whole bunch of musical references!), and an anniversary review of Super Paper Mario. To date still my longest review, that one included a bit of a storyline element that, in hindsight, feels cringe-inducing. Oh well, it happens! (On the other hand, a failed experiment is better than no experiment at all!)

Later in 2015, I would also purchase Kirby's Dream Collection, and thus I would decide to cover one Kirby game at each cycle until I had played through all six available games on it, a venture that ended in August the next year.

2016 followed, with more themed months. Notably, an M-Rated Month in April of that year. Also around that time, I started toying around with a new idea: "An Episode in Gaming", where instead of movies I would review episodes of TV shows (cartoons or otherwise) that are about video games. Or cartoon adaptations of games. That idea ultimately didn't go too far, with only three shows "reviewed" through it and only one instance of a video game episode from an unrelated TV show being made. 

The most important change, though, is me joining Steam in June 2016. Compared to my Nintendo games, my Steam collection would grow immensely fast, in part thanks to websites such as Humble Bundle. I started out downloading just about any free game I got my hands on. This led to a big collection from the start.

My first idea with Steam games was to review many of them at once in what I would call "Steam Packs", precursors to today's Quick Reviews. In them, I would cover four, occasionally five, Steam games that could be finished rather quickly. I would use a website such as HowLongToBeat in order to keep track of game lengths, and would focus on the short ones. I would eventually give up on the idea of Steam Packs after the 20th such article in 2019, because I felt it made cataloguing the games reviewed a lot more difficult and needlessly complicated, and each game was better off having its own article from then on.

Later that year, I would also join UPlay, and on it I would get most of my games for free thanks to various events held by Ubisoft on the platform. For the longest time I would almost forget about those, but as of late I'm making an effort to remember them. As an example, the Rayman Month from last year, or Beyond Good and Evil this year.

The later years

There's not a ton to be said about the blog's history from 2017 onwards. I had settled into my routine and still enjoyed what I was doing. The most notable event in 2017 involves my coverage of the last Nintendo DS game that remained: Fossil Fighters. As if to celebrate this finale, the review had 5 parts. I'm a bit disappointed that my reviews of 3DS games would take a backseat afterwards.

Perhaps more notably, however, is how I was hired as a nighttime cashier at a gas station in March 2017. This made it a little more difficult to keep up both my work life and my hobby, in no small part due to the erratic sleeping schedule caused by my employment. This would be more noticeable through longer hiatus periods at times, between reviews. 

Still, the creativity was still around. My favorite review of all was published in 2018, and it was my anniversary review of that year. Complete coverage of Undertale, both major paths. With a storyline added to it, no less! And one that I'm actually proud of, compared to previous attempts.

Themed months would keep going from time to time: A Rabbids Month and a Yu-Gi-Oh! month in 2018, another Sonic Month and a VGFlicks month in 2020... September and October 2021 had a greater focus on horror games...

Although I would try not to have hiatuses that go on for too long, I guess there was a period in 2019 where I wasn't doing too well as far as gaming goes, as I didn't post anything from July to October. Maybe that's because I was working... and also working on some bigger games. If I recall, during that time, I fell into Skyrim and ended up spending a few hundred hours exploring that Bethesda title. Though, as promised, Steam Packs ended that year, with proper Quick Reviews beginning in November.

In January 2020, my massive review of Skyrim was published. It was my first time trying out a new review format, in which I would split the article by the game's main story missions. I ended up enjoying that format enough to start using it in all of my long reviews, starting with Ralph Breaks the Internet that October.

The pandemic years

Everyone's schedule got all kinds of weird due to the pandemic that (began in December 2019 but) struck the whole world in March 2020. I had been planning to leave my night-time job that same month, and ended up toughing it out another six months because it was a necessary job in those trying times and I was guaranteed employment while others had to make do without work for a while. This did give me some time to get through a couple more games.

Fun fact: I played Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon at work, because there were much fewer customers due to the pandemic, and several tasks I had to do every night had been cut (because there were things we could no longer sell for some time, like muffins and coffee), so I had a lot of free time. Not saying I played it at work a lot, but... that I did, at all, is so strange to think about.

I eventually left my nighttime job in late September of 2020, six months later than I expected, and found a new (daytime) job exactly a month later. I stil work there at the moment. That did not stop me, at the time, from posting four movie reviews in one month!

(Word to the wise: When you start building up a collection of things to review, it gets really difficult to stop. That goes for any and all media. Before you know it, you're in over your head!)

Not sure if it is also because of the pandemic, but 2021 is the year in which I reviewed the most games, in part thanks to two sets of Quick Reviews. Final total was 65 games. That's more than one a week.

2022 was a lot more relaxed in terms of the number of games played, but I remember it as a year in which my tone was a lot more socially involved. A lot of my articles touched on difficult subjects such as fascism, mental health and transphobia. It wasn't voluntary and I don't regret it, but it did make for a very serious and heavy year for the blog. I am trying to be more light-hearted this year. Speaking of, 2023 is for now the year where I feel I've published the least. I hope to see to that thanks to the Quick Reviews I've began.

Other thoughts

There are things that I would have liked to come up with earlier, such as the Index page (set up in 2021). It lists all the reviewed games in alphabetical order, in a way that's much more practical than the Archive listing the reviews chronologically. I also added in 2023 a new page called "Year Plans" showing games I'd like to go through. Wished I had thought of that long before.

Notable events: This blog saw the end of Google+ in 2019. I used to publish links to my reviews there. It's weird to think that, with how things go, Google+ might not be the only social media to die down while this blog exists. Meanwhile, if you have suggestions as to where else I could advertise, I'll take them!

Abandoned projects: As mentioned, "An Episode In Gaming" was dropped relatively quickly, even though I made some good articles for it. I was afraid this would happen to my reviews of games on UPlay, though I've been improving on that aspect. For a while, after buying two massive bundles of games of all kinds, I was tempted to write articles about products available on itch.io, though that never manifested.

I'm a little disappointed that, despite this blog being clearly a hobby, I haven't made a single cent out of it. I also never got it to get the visibility I would have liked, as it hasn't even hit the million views yet. I'm also sad that I never actually evolved towards video production, because of a lack of funds, resources and skill.

As for what gives me pride, well: One YouTuber from Quebec used an article of mine as basis for a video; some of my articles are legitimately good and unique; and it's actually been a pretty fun ride so far.

Here's to more Planned All Along! 10 more? I don't know. We'll see.