I’m not sure whether my “launch” of this site qualifies as an abortion or a miscarriage; either way, it was more or less dead on arrival. Today, I begin the resuscitation process.

I’ve decided to begin by absolutely ruining my credentials as a “gamer” — a title which I will analyze more thoroughly in a coming blog.

A while back, some friends of mine began volleying back and forth on Twitter over the trending topic #gameshame. The results were comedic: people who regret having used a GameShark, or who needed help on games for children, or who never finished that one game that everyone loves. It was both cathartic and ironic, for in the wake of acknowledging actual shame we acknowledged how silly it was to assume that such a thing as “game cred” existed, that your viability as a person who games is quantifiably tied to things you have or haven’t done.

I love video games. But that hasn’t kept me from, well, missing out on (or flat-out ignoring) a lot of them. Just how many? Welcome to my list of shame.

• I have never owned a Nintendo console.
• I have never played more than a few isolated hours of any Mario, Metroid, or Zelda game.
• I can’t stand Super Smash Brothers (or, in fact, most fighting games).
• I have never played Tomb Raider, Mega Man, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Uncharted, God of War, Castlevania, or Devil May Cry.
• I have never played an MMO other than Runescape (when it was free).
• I have not played PC games since the MSDOS days. No Counterstrike, No Starcraft, No WoW, No Diablo, No Unreal.
• I have played Counterstrike, Unreal Championship, and TF2 on XBOX and at the time thought that counted as having really played those franchises.
• I hate strategy games, which means no Civ, Sims, or Age of Empires. I also hate games like Settlers of Catan and Dominion — anything involving resource management.
• I don’t like Star Wars OR Star Trek (though I don’t hate them either), and as such I have never owned or played a single game under either license, including KOTOR.
• I don’t like space-based games in general, and so have played neither Mass Effect nor Dead Space.
• I hate Tetris.
• The earliest Final Fantasy I’ve played is X.
• I tried playing Final Fantasy VII once, but couldn’t get past the graphics and stopped playing before I was an hour in.
• I hate stealth, and so have never played more than a few hours of any Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid game.
• The only Prince of Persia game I’ve played is the 2008 one.
• The hardest game I’ve ever played is called The Adventures of Cookie & Cream.
• I got to the final boss in Kingdom Hearts II but decided to go finish side quests and never ended up coming back to actually beat the game.
• I have never beaten a single Sega Genesis game.

The list could go on, but you’re probably numb already. And really, that’s what this list is — nothing I actually regret, but plenty for which I will undoubtedly be judged. Judge away.

Hopefully, going forward, this serves more as a reference frame than anything else. My appreciation (or lack thereof) for new games may make more sense in the context of what I haven’t played or liked.

Meanwhile, it’s your turn. Let me know how unacceptable I am, or share some shame of your own. Read my few other posts if you haven’t, and then subscribe, because I’m bringing this baby back to life.