Video games have been one of my favorite past times since I was eight years old. Throughout my childhood, I would have contests with my other friends to see who could complete the most video games. I used to record my accomplishments in a list and that number continued to grow well past two hundred entries. At this time the best proof of a completed video game accomplishment was either showing the process itself or taking a Polaroid photograph of the television, which was a challenge in itself.

This is the ending of the Illusion of Gaia for the Super Nintendo captured back in the early 90's with a Polaroid camera. This was the best proof of accomplishment available back in the late 80's and early 90's. Sometimes these pictures were awesome but sometimes you get something like this. You can still make out the super nintendo on top of my old 1985 Zenith television and enough of the final ending screen to see the accomplishment.

I started off with the action adventure genre but soon found that those games were too easy to beat. I would rent a game each weekend with my allowance and then have it completed by the time the rental had to be returned on Sunday. If I already completed the game, no matter how awesome it was, why would I want to pay the fifty or sixty dollars to buy it? It was at this time that I moved from the adventure realm into other genres, including role playing games (RPGs). RPGs took a lot longer to complete and offered different challenges such as collecting all items within the game, completing the game with a lower character level, or allowing you to carry items and current levels over to another iteration of the game.

Now that technology has advanced past photo proof, I can now record these console game accomplishments with a set of splitter cables and my own computer, much the same way you can record console accomplishments on a VCR. I choose to record these accomplishments because I get a lot of requests to see the endings of games that I finish.

You will notice that I will refrain from using emulators and play the console games whenever possible. This decision was made because emulators allow you to adjust certain aspects of a game’s challenge, such as frame rate and allowing you to save a game at any given point in the game play.

I have divided the video game endings from the video game challenges. If you are interested in seeing the ending battle and corresponding epilogue cinema scenes, I will refer you to the video game endings section. If you would like to see challenges that go beyond merely completing the game itself, then the video game challenges section is for you.

I have recorded these accomplishments and encoded the video utilizing a program called virtual Dub. Once the video has been captured, I upload the full version on www.viddler.com because they allow you to have an infinite length as long as the video size is less than 500MB. The primary reason I decided to choose Viddler to host my videos was because most accomplishments and walkthroughs are longer than 10 minutes. A second reason is because I also didn’t want to pay for more server space with my current hosting company and I am perfectly happy embedding the video, instead of streaming it myself.

Despite the shortcoming of YouTube, you will also see ten minute “fragmented” versions of the video on my “mev1978” YouTube account with a link to the full video on Viddler, in the description portion of the video. For anyone interested, you are welcome to visit my Viddler account or YouTube channel. (links)