Samuel “Acegamersam” Girand owns a a lot of of video games. The 32-year-old Québécois has a massive library of classic console titles, including full collections of North American Dreamcast and N64 games. Five years ago with a chick Twitch ChannelGirand started streaming the Nintendo titles to a tiny audience. That audience began to grow rapidly as he set about tackling his goal Completely all 296 of them, a feat that no one has claimed before.
As of last week, half a decade later, Girand has completed this monolithic task. Based on rules agreed upon by a Discord community of others attempting this completion task, the streamer has beaten every Nintendo 64 game that has been released on North American shelves. Yes, even included superman.
Ironically, Acegamersam’s interest in collecting retro games began in 2009: it was sparked when he first parted ways with one. “I just sold some retro games that I didn’t play anymore and it broke my heart to part with games from my childhood,” he said kotaku. “I figured I’d rather find and keep my childhood games.”
In attempting to fill these gaps, Girand found he took great pleasure in seeking them out. “I really enjoyed looking for games online or visiting retro game stores. Two or three years later I already had a few hundred games and I kept going!”
With a focus on the NES, SNES, N64, Master System, Genesis, and Dreamcast, the focus at this point was collecting rather than gaming. And as with any attempt to complete a collection, there are games that are far more difficult to find than others, or at least reasonably priced. For this complete N64 shelf, Girand told me, “It took me a while to find good specimens at reasonable prices Clay Fighters Sculptor’s Cut, stunt racer, super bowling, Worms Armageddonand Transformers Beast Wars Transmetal.” But once he had them all, he figured they would be fun to play on Twitch.
“I started playing games like Super Mario 64, Sonic games from Sega Genesis and a few Disney games. Mostly childhood games. Super Mario 64 brought me some viewers who were fans of the Nintendo 64 growing up.” During these streams, Girand mentioned to viewers that he had amassed an entire collection and began receiving requests from people to share their favorite childhood games games “After a few games,” explains Girand, “I decided to create an official challenge where viewers would request games for me.”
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This then turned, as it often does, into a challenge to finish the games. But as Sam Girand said Radio Canada, the viewer suggestion format meant he only looked through the most popular titles. “I wanted to… end up with the bad guys.” He created a points-based incentive for his handful of viewers to suggest more obscure games.
But of course, “complete” a game is often not easy. Sure you beat the last Bowser fight mario 64 and the game is ready, but how does it work for, say, International Superstar Soccer 64? To establish such rules: a discord group of the other actors would discuss and debate the agreed criteria. I wondered how the others reacted when it became clear that Acegamersam would likely be the first to set this arduous record.
“Our Discord is a fantastic place,” Girand replies. “All people with the same passion for completing console challenges. There was never any competition between members of the team. We all share our knowledge and everyone plays games at their own pace.” There is no race, he explains. “It is important that in the end everyone achieves the same goal.”
Of course, it is not an easy task to combine this extraordinary marathon with an attempt to offer the spectators something worth seeing. I wondered how the audience was sustained during the dullest or worst games. As it turned out, that wasn’t a problem at all. “People love to see someone suffer during a bad game on Twitch.” He posted a social media message saying how “terrible or difficult” a game was, and people flocked to his to see reactions. “I got some of my best [numbers] to play the worst games for the Nintendo 64. That’s a good thing because it got me through the worst parts of the challenge.”
296 is a lot of games, and while some would be a grind, there had to be others he wouldn’t otherwise have played that really surprised him. “I had a chance to play games that I never had as a kid, didn’t I [had] never heard of it,” Girand told me. A list, in fact, including Mystical Ninja with Goemon, Win back, mischief maker, Jet Force Gemini, Ogre fight 64, Goemon’s great adventureand even Paper Mario 64.
Well, he’s done with this crazy task, isn’t he? Certainly? Well no. Girand now intends to start a new challenge: Complete all 200 games with Sonic. Which sounds like fun until you realize that means multiple re-releases of the same games, and you know, the 3D games. “I’m afraid to discover such games Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Sonic and the Secret Ringsor Sonic and the Black Knight‘ he tells me, as well as spin-offs like sound maze and Sonic Shuffle. “The last part that scares me about this challenge is that I have included official builds if at least one Sonic game is included. This includes a game like Sega Genesis Classic, which includes over 50 Sega classics. This will take far too many hours!”
But that doesn’t seem to deter him. But he is fully aware of how bad it could get. “There’s a lot more games I don’t know about, so maybe I’ll find more terrifying games along the way.”
You can watch any game of full N64 completion via Acegamersam YouTube channeland keep an eye out for his sonic adventures (sorry) via his twitch.