Introduction and Ratings Data

OK so if you're in the secret autistic shitposting group for whom this blog is intended you already kind of know what's going on but if not and in any case I'd like to explain. This blog has been created for the purpose of reviewing computer and video games from the 80s through to (mostly) the early 90s. The majority of these titles will have been released for DOS and Win95, hence the kerned A E S T H E T I C in the title and hence the hasty vaporwave color scheme which I may refine later on. Why these in particular? Autists love vaporwave and also live much or even most of their lives through the digital computer in general and vidya in particular. I thought that by creating this resource I could help other autists live richer, more fulfilling lives by uniting non-threatening, asocial interaction with a computer with the sort of ironic pseudo-nostalgia for the heady days of the Reagan administration that vaporwave embodies. It's time to go retro!

As said I do plan to be playing mainly DOS and Win95 titles partly because of the vaporwave connotations of these particular operating systems but mainly because of the sheer volume of titles available which predominates over all else in the personal computer category. However I will likely at some point branch into Amiga and possibly even other platforms doomed to ash heap of computing history, as well as SNES and Sega Genesis titles. (NES? I'd be hard-pressed to play anything that's not complex enough to need save data.) This project is far more about a particular era and A E S T H E T I C than any one particular hardware or software platform. Furthermore, most but not all of these titles will be abandonware and I will provide the raw ratings data scraped from My Abandonware so that they could easily be sorted to get recommendations—the website does not have this functionality—in this same post. Some are not but they can be snapped up usually at amazing bargain prices on GOG.com and sometimes even on Steam as well, or otherwise "acquired". In either way my choices here will remain conscious of the stringent NEETbux budgetary limits that many autists face.

What kind of titles will be reviewed here? Mainly strategy and RPG titles. Furthermore, I tend to prefer the turn-based variety because it frees me to jerk off or commiserate with other autists in between turns. It is also true that seeing too much movement on screen at once confuses and angers me and has sometimes resulted in me breaking things with my forehead. But there will be a good faith effort to diversify here. I will look into RTS games, the Wing Commander series and so forth. Perhaps some of the huge compilations that look really shitty on their face might not be. Maybe even a first-person shooter or something.

In addition to reviews, I mean to provide strategy and overall playing hints as well as technical advice specific to given games (e.g. how many cycles to use in DOSBox). As for general instructions, My Abandonware has a good how-to. I will be available in the comments and elsewhere if you know where to look.

Now regarding these data I was talking about. They are CSV files with nothing more than the game title, the average rating (out of a possible 5) and the number of ratings for each row, in addition to the headers. These can be loaded into a spreadsheet or any other such software to be worked on. What I recommend doing actually is sorting the rows first by number of ratings descending, then by average rating descending. Not two sorts, mind you, but a single sort where number of ratings has precedence over the average. You can do this easily in Excel or Calc and I used Gnumeric for the same purpose. The reason for this is that some turbo-autistic game might get a handful of 5-star ratings which doesn't necessarily mean it's likely to be a decent experience. What's better is to see a game with lots of ratings where the average is high. For me this has been a far better proxy for quality. The categories are those from the genre browser on My Abandonware, all of which I included regardless of personal interest. Later I will post data for a few narrower rubrics from the theme browser which interested me personally. Without further adieu, the genre ratings to start with:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4NCn8v5YnqhWWhqcnRCSGQwcjg

Bear in mind that these data are only a snapshot of the My Abandonware repertoire. They will become outdated as new entries are added and the distribution of ratings changes. But they are a good start and as said I will be drawing most of my suggestions from them. You have the power to do much the same now. And at any rate this concludes my first post for what I hope will be an altogether fruitful blog in the coming weeks and months. See you later space robots!