With the TV shows, movies and books, I'm surprised you have time to write this blog entry! I count you're trying to play 11 games at once! That's ape-#$@# insane. You're spreading yourself waaay too thin.

Super Mario RPG and Secret of Mana alone should be enough to keep anyone busy. Not to mention Dragon Quest IV? That's a RPG meltdown waiting to happen! Also, if you're playing Killer 7 for the 1st time, that's going to take a minute too, since they are some quirky puzzles.

My personal recommendation is to prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. Unless you're reviewing something, I'd say no more than 4 games, and that's pushing it. You can't play 'em all. 1-2 epic games, followed by 1-2 'shorter' games,or games that don't demand hours and hours of your time. I play 2-3 games at any given time, otherwise I find myself making little progress, trying to blaze through it, and not really getting the enjoyment out of the experience.

You're doing yourself a disservice by letting it sit on the shelf. Episode 2 is far more interesting than Episode 1, which just felt like it was going through the motions. Valve has been mum about Episode 3, so definitely keep Episode 2 on the brain when they make an announcement. hopefully we'll hear something by the end of the decade.

Right now, I'm re-playing Tales of Symphonia in preparation of Dawn of the New world, and FFVI advance trying to spot the translation differences from the SNES version. Those two titles have my full attention, and should be able to complete them by the time the November Rain of games comes pouring down. 

Though the publishers do have a hand in this. They do this every year, trying to cram as many hits/crap during the holiday season, leaving many older gamers such as yourself, myself, and many others forced to make choices we don't really want to make. And that's just the informed gamers. I weep for the parents, especially those trying to pick up a Wii/DS this season. A good/great/stellar game should sell any time of the year. I would like to see more summer releases, akin to summer blockbuster movies.

So yeah, start putting some of those titles on the 'Things to play when there's a drought' list.

I'm insane enough to have bought 12 games on October 1st, the day I bought my 360. I still haven't played 5 of them, and all but 2 have them have been played for less than an hour. Since then I've also bought another game and preordered another, with the full intention to buy at least two more in the near future plus probably several more for Christmas, not to mention however many dozen downloadable games I've got and intend to get. I have a serious problem and am desperately hoping that the first few months of 2009 don't bring too much.

Give money to charity so you don't use so much on new games. Win-win.

Whoops, I just fixed the list (added break tags so it doesn't all run together).  Weird quirk of our site's formatting.

Good suggestions, DJ.  I am trying to prioritize my gaming (rentals and reviews at the top), but am too strongly drawn to the others to put them off completely.  I didn't even include some games that I play off and on long-term, like CoD4 and X-COM.

Edit: And Team Fortress 2.

I understand where you are coming from Jonny, I have Fable II, Far Cry 2, Saints Row 2 (wow lots of twos), Wii Music, Guitar Hero World Tour, and at the end of this month Fallout 3! Not to mention the new Castlevania for DS.

I can totally feel your pain. Things were somewhat managable for me before several delays; I had Madden, Crysis Warhead and Spore lined up for September, Wario Land Shake It and a few downloadables in early October, Naruto UNS and LittleBigPlanet in the second half, GTA4 in November and Tales of Symphonia 2 for December. I did get through Spore, but it was a rush job and I'd like to give it a second playthrough, finished Warhead, and I wasn't in the football mood when I bought Madden....and am just getting into that NOW. I put off the Wario Land purchase to cover bills, and Wipeout HD was far more engrossing than I ever anticipated.

The Naruto and LBP delays freed up room for.....PS3 DEMO HELL. Seriously, you get roped into way more stuff than you'd ever imagine because of free demos every week. So now I've added NBA 2k9 and Valkyria Chronicles to the purchase list! I'm picking up 2k9 for PC this weekend, which now leaves Wario Land, LBP, Naruto UNS, Valkyria Chronicles, GTA4, and Tales 2 (which I've only recently found out now comes out in November and not December) for the next two months. LBP, 2k9 and Madden have endless gameplay, and GTA, Valkyria and Tales 2 combined are probably at least 150 hours. And god the backlog....Baten Kaitos 2, DMC4, World Of Goo, Super Paper Mario, Assassin's Creed, The Witcher, and the Strong Bad games all sit unfinished in their various places.

But I think I'll manage. ;)

EDIT: Gah, and I forgot about Left 4 Dead! Though I'm only getting it if I can get some friends of mine to buy it as well because I'm way too pansy to play that game alone.

It's already out. I got it today.

Oh, and I most likely have a list of games to play and finish at least 10 times that comprehensive list you wrote, so don't be so hard on yourself.

LOL, good to know that someone is always worse than you, Caliban.  What's hard for me right now is that I'm not used to having a backlog at all.  I have always had a greater appetite for games than supply, even when reviewing two or three games at a time for the site.  It's just recently that things have gotten out of hand for me.

And I just realized that I forgot to mention my ridiculous lineup of podcasts.  iTunes currently lists 11 new ones that I haven't listened to yet.  Most are at least an hour long!

The trick with podcasts is to listen to them while playing games, arcade type stuff works best. I spend most of my time listening to RFN playing Geometry Wars. The next one I'll probably play Lux Delux, a Risk clone I'm obsessed with these days, during.

I'm with Caliban, my backlog is so large I stopped trying to keep track.  And I just picked up Warhammer Online, which is amazing BTW.

That is why I appreciate games like Wii Music or Guitar Hero because I don't feel bad for not completing them, but just having fun (while forgetting my billion other unfinished games for a bit).

That candy isn't as good as you would think.

I've intentionally cut back on my game consumption this fall, too many other things going on. I need to take a month's vacation just to play the Wiiware games I would like to play.

I've started referring to my ever-growing backlog as my "retirement plan" since I won't have time to play everything until I retire.  I know what causes it, though.  I'm overcompensating for two issues from my gaming past:  1.) When I was a kid, I played every game until I was utterly bored with it because I couldn't have new games very often.  2.) When I was a teen, I was picky with my purchases because I didn't have much money, which led to me missing out on games when they eventually disappeared from store shelves.

Also, you should check your tags, Jonnyboy.  The post is a mess here in Talkback.

Weird, it didn't look that way last night.  There's nothing I can do about it; those are bugs in the Talkback conversion routine that automatically posts our stories here.

Oh man, Penny Arcade Adventures: Episode 2 comes out next week too!  For someone who complains so much about the overloaded release schedule, I can't believe Tycho is letting them release this in late October.  But I'll buy and play it anyway.

Holy crap? Already? I know it's been like five months but I'm totally not ready for another Penny Arcade Adventure.

No problemo regarding Killer 7.

And my pile of shame (kind of) is currently: Fable II, de Blob, Wario Land: Shake It, No More Heroes, Wii Fit, Rock Band 2, Okami, Geometry Wars: Galaxies, World of Goo, Mega Man 9, Tetris Party...
This is not including the new Spider-Man game, GH:WT, Fallout 3, and the numerous other games I want that come out soon.

I actually just cancelled Gamefly because it didn't make much sense to spend money on games that I only mildly care about. I might pick it up again in January or something.

Currently I'm focusing only on 2 games, Pipe Mania DS for review and Persona 3: FES. When I finish with Pipe Mania I'll probably grab and start on Order of Ecclesia. By the time I finish Persona, Banjo Kazooie should be dropping so I can move onto that. After that Persona 4 comes out, so I guess we'll see what I can focus on after that.

My backlog of other games I've gotten and have yet to play is still absolutely massive. I had to grab them all though since Gamestop has been running ongoing clearance sales on last gen games. Currently at 831 games, just to gauge that a bit, when I wrote my Hello, My Name is Nick … and I'm an Addict blog post I had 711 games. That was on June 18, so let's do the math...

831 - 711              = 120 games
                                   in
10/23/08 - 6/18/08 =  4 months

Hope the moving company doesn't "lose" your game collection!

I seem to have a similar problem since I bought Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia and Fable II at the same time. I also have to finish off World Of Goo and start Secret of Mana. The Orange Box is still sitting around too. I highly recommend Fable II to anyone who has a 360; The amount of content is unbelievable . and quite intimidating sometimes.

I agree, Fable II is amazing and any Zelda fan should really appreciate the game.

I'm gonna try and check out that game, my roommate will probably pick it up.

Yay, I just beat World of Goo, and I'm about to write a review of Cubello that will cross it off the list too.  Almost finished with Too Human but may keep it another couple of days to try co-op.

So far this week, I've ordered 11 PS2 games that I felt like I missed out on in my Nintendo-only days, but it's okay because Mr. Jack makes me look completely sane by comparison.  In spite of this spike, I can't come anywhere close to him.

Hell, I still have PS2 games I need to finish, like Fatal Frame 3 and the time trials in Tomb Raider: Anniversary. I also have to sit down and knock out some MM9 achievements, play through that game as Proto Man, too. I've got an enormous backlog of virtual console games I need to beat. I'm dragging my heels on getting all 120 stars with Luigi in Super Mario Galaxy, and I'm still deeply in love with Wario Land (must...get...achievements!).

As for the PS3, it's gonna be a looong year. I need to beat MGS4 on my own PS3 (before, I beat it on my friend's PS3). I just bought Guitar Hero 4, and my drums don't work, so I can focus on the guitar part while I wait for the drum replacement. Today I'm picking up Fallout 3, which will own my soul for a few weeks. My birthday/Christmas lists have other PS3 games on them, like Bioshock, Tomb Raider: Underworld, and LittleBigPlanet.

On the DS front, I'm still playing Ecclesia, Dinosaur King, and I just got a game to review in the mail (Spectrobes). The only system not seeing play time is my PSP, because games I actually want for it so rarely come out.

PSP makes me sad because I really want to play my PSP but there is NOTHING coming out for it in the near or far future that looks interesting beyond Patapon 2.

Yes, Patapon 2. I cannot wait. PON PON PATA PON!

I found Patapon boring, but I still somehow found a few games I'm interested in (Star Ocean and that weird possession RPG "Ushiro" by Level 5)...Other than that, yeah, PSP is a flop and a half...

Well, technically you can play Mother 3 on your PSP, which is more than we can say for your GBA and DS.  ;)

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc48/BillAurion/Screencaps/majutsupouty.jpg

It's possible to play Mother 3 on a GBA or DS if you have the right hardware.

For the cost of that hardware you're better of purchasing a used PSP.  (I'm actually considering it.)

Mother is crap. You guys should ride BMX bikes instead, it's way better.