This is it! The 100th post I have made here on my website! What an occasion!
A Brief KREATIVEassassin.com History
In late 2011, some friends/acquaintances of mine in California created a podcast called Laser Time. The site featured many different articles and features in addition to the podcasts. I really liked the aesthetics of the site, and I began thinking that it might be fun if I had my own site similar to it, but focused entirely on video games. Specifically retro games.
I had a website before this. I had several, actually. I just wrote up a little piece about what they looked like throughout the years. My old sites were basically just fancy ways to show off my game collection. They were relatively pointless, to tell you the truth. I knew I couldn't do what I had in mind by continuing to use the old site, so I asked around and did a bit of research on which blogging site I should use, and I found that Blogger would serve my purposes well.
On Sunday, April 7th 2013 at 7:16pm, I posted the first entry on this site. The original goal was to eventually monetize it so I could get some additional income. That's pretty much out of the question now, but it was a nice idea at the time.
I started the site with a seven part series about my history with video games dating from the Atari 2600 to the then current Xbox 360. Once I finished that up it was basically anything I could think of. I kind of miss those shoot from the hip days where the content was game related but still kind of random. I tried to bring that back recently with my Wizards & Warriors Quadrilogy feature where I just wanted to talk about the series.
During this beginning time I posted some of my most popular articles. The articles back then took much, much longer to create, though. Content was sparse, and I'm not trying to imply I'm firing on all cylinders now, but it was definitely more sparse back then. I write when I can and if I have an idea for something to talk about. Any time I have an idea for an article I'll draft up something real quick so I can come back to it later. I currently have 23 articles drafted up that I can work on and hopefully post one day.
I hope to continue on with this site. I have more things in mind that I want to do with it and I enjoy writing, so I really don't see any reason to stop.
KREATIVEassassin.com's 10 Most Popular Articles
And now, the point of this 100th post. Here are links to the top 10 most popular articles on my site. Click the name to jump directly to the feature.
#1: Gaming's Distant (And Not So Distant) Relatives
Of everything I have ever written, I am most proud of this one. The amount of work that went into this article was insane. I knew about a lot of the games featured in this article before I wrote it (that's how I knew to write it in the first place), but I admittedly found out about several more while researching it. This is far and away the most popular thing I have ever done on this site.
#2: Variants!
This article could definitely be done better, but for what it was, it was pretty popular. I should have tried to have every NES variant in the article, but instead I chose to just talk about some of them. Even the image linking to the article there of Wayne Gretzky Hockey only has two of the three variants.
#3: Publisher Themed Labels on Classic NES Games, Part 2
This was something I knew people were aware of, but I didn't know if they were aware it was as prominent as it is on the NES. Fans of the NES know about the black box games all having the same style for the label, but did they know about the similarities from other companies? This article was a nice showcase of other NES games that do just that.
I changed the name of the series after posting it. Never did like the original name, but I didn't know how else to phrase what I was trying to say. Eventually it came to me, but not before I posted it with the original awful title.
#4: 20 Boobs and Butts Censored for Your Sanity
It was a joke article that turned into something pretty popular. Popular enough that I have made two more of them. I started noticing games with obviously censored box art when they were released here in America, and I thought I could find enough to fill up an entire article with them. I made it to 20 games and stopped, but afterwards more games kept getting released and I was able to find 10 more for the first follow-up and 12 more for the second.
So, the origin of the article name. I used to have a VHS tape of a movie called Varan the Unbelievable. My friend Brett Elston and myself got it from a local mom and pop store by my grandparents' house called Horn's Market. We got it because we knew Varan from the NES game Godzilla: Monster of Monsters. Anyway, at the end of the movie there were a ton of previews for really bad 60s and 70s horror movies. One of the previews for a movie which I can't recall now said that it was "censored for your sanity." The expression has stuck in my mind ever since.
#5: Publisher Themed Labels on Classic NES Games, Part 1
Same idea as the other article, but this one was about the spines of the games like what's shown in the image above. In retrospect, it's kind of strange that I opened with this one and not the other one because the second one is more interesting. Then again, this is the one I thought for sure people wouldn't notice as much because people tend to not ever have their games organized by publisher and wouldn't notice.
#6: Tips and Tactics for Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
People seem to have difficulties with Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. They put it on blast a lot because it's drastically different from the original Zelda game and it's considered to be a very difficult game. I play through this game quite often, and I have gotten to the point where it's not even slightly challenging to me. I thought folks might benefit from some tips regarding the game, so I wrote this up to help. It is apparently more useful than the actual walkthrough I wrote for the game.
#7: No Guts, No Glory: What the Inside of Your Carts Look Like
This article almost didn't happen. To someone like myself who opens up every used cart to clean it, I didn't know how interesting this would be to people. It would seem it was pretty dang interesting.
It could be more interesting if I knew literally anything about what is going on inside those carts, but I don't. If I could point at aspects of it and tell what does what it might have done even better. Though maybe the simplicity of it is what is so appealing. I mean, not everyone has a security bit to open these games. It's probably more interesting to those people than I'm giving it credit for.
#8: Walkthrough - Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
This gets a lot of traffic, and in time it'll probably move up this list higher than the 8th most popular article. This wasn't my first walkthrough, but it is the most popular of the three I've written so far. Maybe because one of the walkthroughs is for a game no one really knows about and the other was posted last week.
#9: A Look at the Monster in My Pocket Toys and Game
It's surprising to me that this is even on here. For one, I didn't realize Monster in My Pocket toys were popular enough that people today would even remember them. I also didn't think anyone would care about this game!
Monster in My Pocket was huge when I was a kid. Everyone had these (probably in a fanny pack) and they were the coolest thing since M.U.S.C.L.E. and Battle Beasts. So simplistic, but so incredible. I still have all mine from when I was a kid. I wouldn't get rid of them for anything.
#10: The (Not So) Terrible Twos
Interesting that I have now written walkthroughs for two of the three games this article is about. With this article, the name actually came before the article itself. I think I heard someone use the phrase somewhere with its intended meaning about two year old children. It occurred to me then that it could also be used when talking about the second entry in the Zelda, Castlevania, and Mario series. I wrote the article based off of that.
And those are the 10 most popular articles on my site! I hope you enjoyed reading a bit about my site and the things I have written. Here's to 100 more!
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