The year 2012 marks the 25th anniversary of some of gaming's most influential franchises--Mega Man, Final Fantasy, and Metal Gear.
To commemorate the occasion, I will play through every game in each of these series by the end of the year, most likely destroying any desire I will have to ever play them again in the process.
Since I'm currently finishing up graduate school and looking for a job, I only have so much free time, so there will be some stipulations. I will stick only to main-series games--no spinoffs, unless I have some time left by the end of the year. This means I'll be playing the original Mega Man through Mega Man 10 and Final Fantasy through Final Fantasy XIII-2 (though I will substitute X-2 in place of XI). For Metal Gear, I'll be playing Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid through Metal Gear Solid 4, and MGS: Peace Walker.
I'll be kicking this off in the next week or so with the first Mega Man games, so be on the lookout for that.
About Mega Man
Rock was an android created by Dr. Light to help out around the lab, because building a fully functioning intelligent robotic boy somehow made more sense than hiring an unpaid intern, I guess. When rival scientist and mustache aficionado Dr. Wily went bonkers, Dr. Light put a cannon on Rock's arm, rechristened him Mega Man, and cut him loose to ruin Wily's day, every day, forever.
There have been ten mainline Mega Man games (eleven if you count Mega Man & Bass), several more games in several other spinoff series, and one inexplicable soccer game. Overall, there have been over fifty games released under the Mega Man banner, moving 29 million units worldwide as of December 2010. Developer Capcom has been very busy announcing and subsequently cancelling Mega Man games in the last two years, because they probably hate their fans.
About Final Fantasy
Drawing inspiration from games like Dragon Quest and The Legend of Zelda, Hironobu Sakaguchi created a new fantasy-role-playing game for the NES in 1987. Knowing that this game was his last shot at making it in the video game industry, he titled it Final Fantasy. It was a bit of a success, spawning dozens of sequels and spinoffs, making the title sound more and more silly as the years go by.
The series, including spinoffs, has sold more than 100 million units to date and made up nearly as many faux-Latin gibberish words to use in its titles.
About Metal Gear
Rookie FOXHOUND agent Solid Snake is sent to infiltrate Outer Heaven, a fortress in South Africa, in order to rescue fellow agent Gray Fox and investigate rumors of a secret weapon called Metal Gear. Against all odds, he saves Gray Fox, infiltrates the fortress, destroys Metal Gear, and reveals FOXHOUND commander Big Boss to be a traitor.
From there the series gets more and more ridiculous, so I'll just drop a few keywords on you: top-secret cloning projects, nuclear conspiracies, bisexual vampires, nanomachines, cyborg ninjas, returning from the dead, references to the movie Titanic, guy who shoots bees out of his mouth, sexy ladies in robotic animal armor, obese rollerblading mad bomber, hiding in cardboard boxes, slipping on seagull poop.
The franchise has moved 30 million units worldwide.
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