So I finally made it to the magic 100. As achievements go, it’s hardly on a par with discovering the cure for…well, anything, but hey, if you can’t put a little note about reaching a milestone on your own website without feeling like you’re blowing your own trumpet rather too loudly, then you probably shouldn’t bother putting your words on the internet in the hope of people reading them [Good idea – FFG reader].

Don’t worry, though, we’ll save the self-indulgent retrospective for our 200th site review or our 10-year anniversary, whichever seems more appropriate. For now, we’ll make do with the briefest of glances over my personal list of reviews (list kindly supplied by Stoo).

The site started with a clear mandate for covering old games that we’d enjoyed in the past and that we wanted to recommend to others. For me, that meant tapping out some brief words of praise for Blade Runner and Wing Commander 3 and e-mailing them to Stoo for him to add to the site. My own contributions were pretty flaky back then, with my esteemed colleague cranking out 3000-word epics on some strategy game or other, while I did little more than occasionally cast an eye over some late-90s favourites that I’d revisited during a particularly dreary weekend. The stats don’t lie: no reviews for Rik in 2003. But I can’t honestly say what I was doing instead.

Things got a little better from that point, with review #25 – the awesomely cool Full Throttle coming in the middle of a period of semi-regular content during 2005.

Even so, I was still lagging well below 50 reviews (although I honestly wasn’t keeping count back then – but #50 was Tiberian Sun) by the time we got into 2007, whereupon I launched myself into a frenzy of reviewing activity which saw two and sometimes three(!) reviews being added at once. I can’t say exactly what prompted such enthusiasm and focus, although it has to be said, discovering the entertaining and regularly maintained content at Just Games Retro did sort of shame me into trying harder.

By this stage, newer games were coming onto the radar (#75 – XIII being a case in point), with the old philosophy of previously-loved favourites being abandoned by necessity in order to keep the new content a-coming.

Which brings us to the present day. Looking down the list, I’d have to say that it’s a fair reflection of my gaming habits over the years. Possibly there’s a slight indication of having acquired and played rather more games of average quality than I might care to remember, but that’s probably fair enough – give me a choice of buying a single, well-thought-of game for £30 or a whole heap of miscellaneous budget nonsense from the bargain bucket, and I’d choose the bargain bucket every time.

Perhaps then, it’s fitting that these latest reviews represent not only the worst of what can happen when you go fishing in the ‘reduced’ pile, but also the rewards that splashing out on a quality title on the day of release can reap.

And when you find yourself writing that kind of nonsense, you know it’s time to stop. If anyone’s out there – thanks for reading…