389. STARDEW VALLEY

I have no clue what this game looks like or how it differs from Harvest Moon. Please do not tell me anything about it, because I know this is 120% a danger game. I know playing it would wreck my life. Games such as this are, to quote a wise man, not good for the soul. Like if I had a kid I’d let them play maybe 10 games out of the 501 on this list. I’d let my kid listen to every Nate Dogg and Trick Daddy song before I let them touch any game that has loot or quest logs or social links. I would be such a good dad, and if you doubt it, well, my horoscope says otherwise, buddy. Don’t even try and disagree with the stars. That is the ultimate folly.
Many years ago I drew a Harvest Moon tribute comic a gift for a friend. It was romantic, and had boys falling in love, and realizing they were gay. In retrospect I’m not sure if boys falling in love appealed to her in the least but it sure entertained me. That shit is good for the soul, and if you can kiss someone without spending 80 hours tilling fields, well, maybe Stardew Valley is a good game. But I doubt it.
388. SAMMY SOSA HIGH HEAT BASEBALL
I promise once I get rich I will do every kind of steroid available.
I actually find juiced up physiques repulsive and do not want to have one myself but I’ve spent years promising this so I guess I gotta follow through on it. In case you haven’t noticed I am very dedicated and never give up, no matter how bad and self destructive an idea might be.
This is the maybe the only good commercial ever made.
387. MAX PAYNE 3
I haven’t played this but I think someone once subtweeted me by saying someone they knew reminded them of the Max Payne who starred in MAX PAYNE 3 so I assume in this installment he’s very handsome, healthy, humorous, and sexually gifted.
I will never find out the truth firsthand though. I refuse to purchase any game with an install size over 15 gigabytes unless it’s a fighting game or by From Software. This will likely never change unless storage prices drop dramatically or I get really rich, cuz I’d rather use my precious hard drive space to preserve all my favorite parents’ movies classic films.
386. FULL THROTTLE
I still haven’t finished this game. Sorry, Cuba. LucasArts adventures were my favorites when I was younger, but when this came out I hit some weird bug and couldn’t progress and I didn’t know patches were, like, a thing. So I’ve held a grudge against it, and bikers, ever since.
Years back I lost my home and had to move into my dead dad’s place. It had been gutted – rooms with no walls or floors, wires hanging from the ceiling, no back door, no kitchen, shower kinda didn’t work, but there was cable TV and a bed and a vacuum cleaner with a Harley Davidson sticker on it. That vacuum belonged to my father and I’m gonna be dramatic and claim it was the only thing I inherited from him. We’ll ignore the house and all the junk in it, ok? We’ll pretend all my daddy left me was an object that combined his greatest passions: loud shitty motorcycles and compulsively cleaning.
I never used that vacuum cuz why bother, that place was a wreck. But after a time it became livable and I had some good times in there being alone and watching Turner Classic Movies. I saw PSYCHOMANIA in that house. It is a film about Satanic bikers who commit suicide so they can live forever, I think? I recommend it. It is the only thing that’s ever made me think motorcycles might be cool, which is saying something. Not even PURPLE RAIN had that effect on me.
I dunno what happened to that vacuum but while living there I do remember regularly being woken up at sunrise by rich senior citizens cosplaying Easy Rider. Harleys are so loud and so awful. I had these maroon curtains in my room so every morning my room would be cast in this deep red light and whenever those hogs would blast by I’d jolt awake and think “Oh shit, they finally dropped the bomb.” Then I’d feel the relief that comes from realizing you’re not about to perish in nuclear hellfire, followed by the anger that comes with realizing those millionaire motherfuckers weren’t gonna burn either.
Anyway Full Throttle isn’t as good as Maniac Mansion, because it has bikers, and bikers are awful and loud and often very racist.
385. UNISON: REBELS OF RHYTHM & DANCE
I think Vanna White was the first naked lady I ever saw.
Nelly once did a rap about Vanna White.
Thanks to Nelly I often find myself spelling “here” with two r’s.
Nelly is a garbage human but he had a song featured in Unison, which has one of the finest subtitles of all times.
It is a crazy world.
384. PILOTWINGS
Sorry, Tulpa. You are wrong. Pilotwings is better than Sky Odyssey because it has a crying Jo Shishido in it. It has what Sky Odyssey lacks: the human touch.
Never let it be said I am a misanthrope. I love all people, as long as they’re on Select Button, or say nice things about me, or were featured in a launch window Super Famicom game.
383. SECRET OF MANA

I am a natural born genius and I bet I’d totally shame Ken Jennings if I ever went on Jeopardy! but I have my fair share of troubles with what many would consider very simple tasks. I’d like to think this humanizes me and adds to my charm but sometimes people gotta deal with my shit and ain’t no one thinks you’re charming if you’re wasting their fucking time, let me tell you.
Like, I once called that Nintendo Power Game Counselor hotline cuz I was stuck in Secret of Mana, right? Was in some haunted mansion or some shit and couldn’t figure out how to proceed. Spent an hour on the phone with this dude who was just tearing his hair out, to the point where he started really exposing the business. “There’s nothing about this section in this binder,” is something we’ll pretend he said. He kept insisting that I must have been missing something obvious and I kept insisting that no, I’m a child prodigy, there’s no way I ever make mistakes, this game is just fuckin’ busted. But it turned out he was right, and I was wrong, and all I had to do was just shimmy past some bookcase to proceed. I remember sheepishly saying “Sorry it was a bookcase thank you” before slamming down the phone and spending the next month terrified my family would kill me for running up the long distance bill cuz I was dumb enough to be bad at Nintendo.
I don’t think I got in trouble but at one point my family bought me a t-shirt featuring the Far Side strip you see above. Maybe that was a form of punishment. Or maybe my family were fuckin’ dicks.
Also maybe Full Throttle didn’t have a bug in it, I dunno, I doubt it, cuz nothing is ever my fault.
382. STATE OF EMERGENCY
Shortly after moving into my dead dad’s place hurricane Sandy hit. The day after I walked around the neighborhood, surveying the damage, and the only car I saw was this old motherfucker in a convertible Porsche driving very slowly, with the top down, trying to avoid having his rich b car damaged by all the downed trees and telephone poles. His car had a ROMNEY/RYAN 2012 bumper sticker.
One of my biggest regrets in life is not throwing a rock at that dickweed’s head.
I haven’t played State of Emergency but I’m still confident in declaring that the only wholly good violence game Rockstar ever published was Red Dead Redemption.
381. POKÉMON GO
The most 2016 moment of my 2016:
I’m at a urinal in a Las Vegas banh mi shop while two children stand behind me giggling up a storm as they try to catch an augmented reality Pokémon that is hiding in that restroom. On the top of my urinal someone’s carved the words FUCK TRUMP. In the stall next to me a man is having a very unpleasant time, making some very unpleasant sounds, but it is relatively easy to avoid inhaling his very unpleasant smells cuz I’m toally a mouth breather. I have a lovely nose but my nostrils barely work. Thanks to that man’s difficulties I decide not to eat my sandwich; I bring it with me to the airport and throw it in the trash. I spend some time worrying that I might get arrested for being a suspicious character, cuz what kind of monster throws away uneaten food? But I evade detection and return home rejuvenated, and not just because I avoided getting violent diarrhea.
That Vegas trip was my first vacation in many years and I went because Select Button told me “you should go”. I met many good people on that trip. It restored a bit of my confidence. So upon my return I decided to stop being shy. To stop being paranoid. I signed up for on-line dating, and that lead to me going on the first proper dates of my life. And I also played some Pokémon Go, cuz it was very popular and I thought maybe if I roamed around town I’d bump into some cutie who was also in search of an Eevee and I’d bring them home and show them all my Pokémon named BabyJuice and that would prompt them to say “Will you marry me?”
But that never happened. I didn’t meet anyone worthwhile doing on-line dating or playing this shitty NSA-funded spyware game. But I do have memories. Memories of kids laughing at my butt while a nearby man had explosive diarrhea while I thought “I’m so glad that man will never be president.” And memories of going on bad dates with weird people, such as the time a gal surreptitiously photographed me throughout our meal, and weeks after things fizzled out she sent them to me saying “Put these on your profile. They’re better than what you have up.” I’ll carry those memories with me to the grave, but these posts, and all the metadata harvested from my usage of “apps”…those things will live on…forever.