I realized recently that this December, 2025, marks 30 years since the fateful day I got my Sega Genesis on what would be my favorite Christmas Day as a child. I’ve seen a lot of Christmas since then and being an optimist I plan to have more ahead of me than I have behind.
Back in 2013, hard to believe but nearly 12 years ago, I started this blog with an insane quest in mind for someone with my ADHD. I wanted to play every Sega Genesis game in chronological order, beat “most” of them, master “some”, and review every single one. The wikipedia article ‘List of Sega Genesis Games’ lists over 800 titles. I made it through 9.
I didn’t stop playing video games, or even Sega Genesis, after that 9th review. But I did stop working on the blog - though I never forgot about it. I’d even revisit it from time to time. Realizing this anniversary was coming up had me stopping by again. I’ve experimented so many times with projects like this one - and not always with the Sega Genesis. They always looked good on paper but I could never make them work. Revisiting the blog this time, I started to see one reason why.
I wanted to do something to celebrate this event. I wanted, once again, to go back to my most cherished console of all time and again try to give it the full exploration I think it is due. I came back to my old blog after telling someone else about it during a session of nostalgic reminiscence. A lightbulb went off in my head - is this the answer? Is it time to try this again? For real this time? Should I start over or - continue where I left off.
I was reminded then, not of a Genesis but of a Master System game I once played. A shooter called Astro Warrior with a bit of funny English. Every boss had a name like Zanoni. Upon beating one the screen would read “Surely Revive, Zanoni.”
Surely Revive. It rang in my head like a sign from Sega headquarters itself. Do I start over? Should I try something totally different? Just like Astro Warrior’s looping level structure the answer was clear: Surely Revive. Revive the old blog, the old mission, but do it better, harder, cooler. Let age and experience be the asset not the guardrail.
But soon after I discovered something else, a forgotten relic and one this post will be the only record of now, for like a Lovecraftian professor discovering an accursed tome, I found on the administrator side of the blog a blight. It was a draft of an unposted article. In it I had expressed a desire to abandon my quest completely due to burn out and focus instead only on games I already knew I liked. I deleted this article. It isn’t the point of the mission, it never was.
But why did my mission take a hiatus of over a decade? I think one reason for the burnout was the mistaken belief that I’d set out to correct from the onset but failed to; a belief that I had to be always working on this thing. That there was a mysterious ghost audience out there that needed posts weekly and that I should jump from game to game quickly. This isn’t and indeed never was the case. Any cursory glance around will tell you there were only a few scattered views and comments. But I pushed and pushed myself to get through each one.
I believe age and wisdom has washed me clean of this compulsion and allowed me to recognize some important facts about this hobby. It is a labor of love and is not meant to be completed. Even if I did somehow reach the end of this list - and maybe I will - it will just mean I find ways to expand it into indie developed games, Japanese exclusive, Master System and game gear libraries, Saturn and Dreamcast. There is more than enough to keep me going forever. But at the same time, there is no rush and it really doesn’t matter if I only finish a year of games so long as I love the path through it - even through the bad ones.
So here I will surely revive. And that means a few things.
First I’ll be replaying all the games I already reviewed briefly just as a refresher. I plan to then do a quick quality edit of my old article with a Surely Revive note as I think some of my opinions have changed. Articles will mostly then be kept in tact with only a minor change or two where my tastes have differed. Not even Star Wars Special Edition level editing.
Once I’m caught up I’ll put up the 10th review. We continue right where we left off, with the rules mostly intact as they were before.
A special feature is being added called “Be Kind, Rewind” in which I will select a game to re-play after every ten mainline reviews. This need not be from the last ten, but can be any game I’ve played previously and can even be selected more than once. This is a way for me to keep enjoying games beyond the initial review and to go into mastering them at a higher level. I think a focus on being truly great at 1/10th of the library adds a lot of spice to our setup!
Special Articles are going to start pouring in. I’m not sure how frequently yet but we are going to start featuring guest games of importance from both before and after the Genesis library, as well as articles about culture and gaming, historical context, articles on the technology behind the console, the hobby as it stands today, and many others. I want to do enough of these to be interesting and a fun break from the typical play and review but also not so many that I am not playing enough.
I can’t promise how often there will be a new article - and that is the whole point. Certainly not another 11 or 12 years. I will try to post something every month - be it a review or a special article. But I think there will be times of feast and times of famine. I do have other things in my life I want to accomplish as well, and even other games I want to play totally unrelated to this blog. It's the absence that makes the heart grow fonder and the best way to avoid burnout and avoid smearing my perspective with boredom is to NOT play Genesis games back to back endlessly till I learn to hate it, but to pace myself reasonably. Nothing feels so good as a Genesis controller in your hands after a week or two without.
So I think that's it. It may not be the last update article, but I believe this is my plan for now. Edits and notes are next, with hopefully the first new article out in January at the latest.
Surely Revive.
It may have taken over a decade to return to this blog,
But being this good takes AGES.
Being this good takes SEGA!
