I know… I thought my achievement quest was over once I hit 25,000 Achievement points, and “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” was released.

I was wrong.

I’ve developed the same unlocking fervor for “Smash Bros” challenges that I once had for Xbox Achievements. I didn’t see this coming, even though I knew full well that I have no problems performing arbitrary tasks to unlock virtually meaningless content. In fact, I have six months’ proof in case I ever forget again.

At least I’ve been unlocking some fun stuff while playing through “Smash Bros.” I’ve been rewarded with characters, levels, trophies, classic game demos, music and stickers for performing the same futile tasks that I had during my Achievements quest. For example, I received a Super Scope trophy for clearing Target Smash Level 1 with all the characters, which, in terms of “Smash Bros.” is awesome, but in the grand scheme of life… it’s not so much.

Here I am chasing trivial rewards all over again. I really think it’s a personality flaw.

There are 128 challenges in “Smash Bros. Brawl” to unlock, and after almost two weeks I’ve unlocked 75. That’s pretty good progress, in my opinion. But it still leaves me 53 to go. I’m certain there are some I won’t ever get around to, like collecting Final Smash trophies for all characters. The Final Smash trophies are awarded for completing All-Star mode, and this means I literally need to beat every character with every other character.

It’s just never going to happen, but every day I’m chipping away at the easier ones.

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It took 26 weeks, 59 games, and two “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” delays, but I am finally done with my 25,000 point achievement quest.

It’s over.

“Brawl” is coming out in less than a week, and I can have a little time to relax - detox if you will.

What started as a seemingly good idea at meager 10,000 points in 10 weeks ballooned to 25,000, and 26 weeks, and forced me to explore the seedy depths of achievement whoredom. I’ve played some of the best games of my life, and some of the worst, all in the name of Achievement points… and this is my story.

I originally planned this last week of whoring to be dedicated to cleaning up some of the mess that I started over the course of the last six months, and to scrape together points from titles that I had already started. Unfortunately, after about two hours of giving “skate.” another chance I knew that wasn’t the way to go. Maybe someday I’ll go back and finish collecting everything in “The Simpsons,” but it wouldn’t be this week.

This is what I did instead:

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Almost. I’m almost there. I’m almost done. Only 705 points to go, and then I will have hit my goal of 25,000 achievement points before March 9. Then I will be done.

This lofty goal has changed me. Much like the child who is caught smoking, and his parents subsequently make him smoke an entire carton, I think I have overdosed on Achievement points. I know they have been meaningless since the beginning, yet I felt compelled to collect them, but after whoring myself out for 24,295 points over the course of the last 25 weeks I have really come to appreciate just how little I need them.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think they are the greatest gimmick of this console generation, but I may not be going out of my way as much to get them. The string of games I’ve played has had highs and lows (some very low lows), and I’ve seen the best and the worst of what the Xbox 360 has to offer. I now know, deep in my heart, that I don’t need to get every Achievement point in every game to prove myself to anybody (after all, who really cares) In other words, this quest has changed me - however, I regret nothing.

I still have 705 points to go, and about two weeks to complete that in. I feel very confident I can do that without breaking a sweat (especially if I break down and spend the $3.99 to pick up a used copy of “Madden ‘06“).

So, I may be calling it a little early, but I feel that my first game of “Smash Bros.” will be along with the masses, and I won’t be left behind in anyone’s dust. At the same time, I still have 705 points to go, and I need to focus on completing that, if, for no other reason than to prove it to myself, and close this chapter of my gaming career. It’s almost time to move on.

I’ve pushing my way to the finish line with another one of last year’s biggest titles. Read more…

It happened, again. Two weeks in a row my plans to complete my Achievement quest with a final sprint were dashed by GameFly and another unplayable disk.

I had all intentions of spending my President’s Day racking up 1,000 points in “Madden ‘08,” but instead I was treated to yet another error message. This time, instead of last week’s dirty disk error, I was treated to my Xbox 360 telling me to put my game into an Xbox 360 to play it — while the disc was already in there. That either means my Xbox is going through an identity crisis or the game was damaged. My guess was the latter. So I didn’t get to indulge in my first “Madden” game since the days of the SNES, maybe next week.

Other than that one road block, I was back on track, scoring a total of 1,145 Achievement points this week. That puts my overall total at 23,220, only 1,780 points to go, before my March 9 deadline. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my on-going self-imposed “Smash Bros.” spoiler denial. It’s just not holding up.

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I don’t want to say that one of the worst weeks I have had since I began my Achievement quest was Gamefly’s fault, but it wasn’t not their fault.

In all likelihood it was the fault of the person that rented “Cabela’s Trophy Bucks” before me. Whoever that was, I fear they may have drastically thrown off my quest. With only a few weeks left, my ability to play “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” when it is released, hangs delicately in the balance.

This past week, I only added 370 Achievement points toward my 25,000-point GameScore goal. A minimum of 1,000 P.P.W. (Points Per Week) has been my overall goal, and I have been able to hit that fairly consistently for the past month, as I have needed to ramp up my point production after the holiday slowdown. Instead, this week I drastically dropped off my pace. In weeks three and four of this quest, these may have been acceptable numbers. Now I’m playing with fire.

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It’s been a tough week for me.

The inevitable happened. “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” was officially released - in Japan, and I have spent every waking minute since last Tuesday avoiding the spoilers for the game that have flooded the internet. It’s been rough.

I’ll admit, I spent most of early last week distraught and in denial.

Much like your average 10-year-old, I didn’t even want to play anything, just because it wasn’t “Smash Bros.,” so my quest this week started extremely slow. By Friday of last week I had only scored a measly 30 points playing “Zuma” of all things, and realized that if there was any chance of me keeping pace with the minimum of 1,000 that I needed this week I was going to really need to get back into the game, but really all I could think about was that huge post on GoNintendo that had all the “Brawl” spoilers in it.

I some how persevered, demonstrated a huge amount of willpower, and didn’t look at the post (or any other post for that matter).

Distracted, I moved on.

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I like to collect things. Lots of things. Video games are at the top of that list, and Achievement points are a solid second. However, for the past 21 weeks or so, that list has been a bit flip-flopped - clouded by my anticipation for “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” (which, coincidently, has a ton of things to collect in it).

This past week I collected another 1,415 achievement points, which, put me past my secondary target goal of 20,000 points before February 11 - “Smash Bros.’” second pre-delay release date. I’ve now collected a total of 20,595 points since mid-September, and am well on pace to hit 25,000 points by March 9. I’ve been furiously obsessing over Xbox 360 titles for almost six months now, but, as some of you readers have pointed out, at what cost to my other game systems?

Great games on other systems have come and gone since I started, and I have barely touched them. I’ve been too busy playing games like “Open Season,” “Cars,” and this week’s 1,000 point-getter “NHL 2K6.” I haven’t stopped collecting games, filling in my back catalog of titles that I missed when they were first released. In an attempt to demonstrate just how much I am actually missing out on, I now present a list of games that I have added to my collection since I started this quest back in September.

Atari 2600
“Spider-Man”

Famicom
“Kirby’s Adventure”
“Pac-Man 2″

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It was a very a unique week for my Achievements quest. I spent a significant amount of time playing one game I never thought I would play, and another that I had made fun of some of my co-workers for playing. The weird thing is that I enjoyed both of them.

To catch everyone up, with last week’s heartbreaking news of “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” being delayed into March, I tacked on an extra 5,000 achievement points to my quest. The new addition upped my target goal to 25,000 points (15,000 more than my original number). With more time brings more games. I was able to stay on-point this week, scoring 1,230 points, bringing my overall points scored in this challenge to 19,180. I have 5,820 points to go. I’m so close, yet, so far.

This past week I ran up my Gamerscore with the help of “Viva Pinata,” “Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2008,” “Heavy Weapon,” “Gripshift,” and the ever-present “Scene It: Lights Camera Action.” Prior to this challenge I could have sworn that “Viva Pinata” and “Big Game Hunter” would never enter my Xbox 360, yet, in the name of Achievement points, I played the hell out of them - and liked them.

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It feels like Nintendo is out to screw me, personally. I have a theory that there’s someone really high up at the Big N in Japan reading Multiplayer every week for my column, and going “Let’s push ‘Smash Bros.‘ another few weeks and see what this guy does.”

I’m losing interest, and ambition. You play 40 different (and mostly bad) Xbox 360 games over the course of 19 weeks and see where your faith in the game industry is at. My Achievement quest was only supposed to be 12 weeks and 10,000 points long, but now here we are 19 weeks and 17,950 points in, with (what I thought were) four weeks to go before my endpoint, the release of “Super Smash Brothers Brawl” on the Wii.

Lo and behold we have hit another delay, and “Smash Bros.” wont hit stores until March 9 in the states now (yet somehow it only got delayed a week in Japan). Do I recall NCL President Satoru Iwata saying he wanted this to be a launch title for the Wii?

So where does this leave me? This past week I racked up 1,090 points, pretty much all from playing yet another kids game, “Open Season.” I peppered in a few points from “Guitar Hero 3,” “Puzzle Quest,” and “Scene It?,” but really, I spent another week playing a game targeted at someone at least half my age. It’s starting to get a little old. Now, with eight weeks between today, and the release of the game, I am torn as to whether or not to continue to score more points, or stop at my original 20,000 points.
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A month off from writing about Achievements, and what do I have to show for it? Not a whole lot.

Unfortunately my anticipated time off over the holidays did not translate into as much gaming as I had hoped, and I was only able to make small steps towards my overall goal of 20,000 points before “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” comes out.

I was only able to get 2,510 points over the course of four weeks, a number that I’ve surpassed in just one week during this quest (during Week 6, where I got 2,530 points). The past four weeks of effort really only translates into approximately 628 points per week, a number that I should be ashamed of considering the amount of time I had off from work. However, it was the holidays that got in the way, again. The parties, the traveling, the spending time with family (a state away from my Xbox) were all obstacles, restraining me to only a few prolonged gaming sessions – not the day or two long gaming binges that I had looked forward to. Alas, I didn’t even get to one of the “good” games that I was hoping to in my last post. But, on the plus side, I did get some games out of my way forever.

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As a general rule, I tend to save all my vacation days until the end of the year.

Whether this is just out of fear or being out of the office during the rest of the year, or just general procrastination, it is paying off a bit in terms of my Achievements quest.

This past week I was able to rack up 1,555 points putting my overall score at 14,350.

This leaves me with 5,650 points to go before I reach my goal of 20,000 points before “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” is released in early February.

With the next few weeks freed up due to the holidays, vacation time, and not having to write this column again until after the new year, I’m fairly confident I can pull it off.

I played a mixed bag of games this week for my quest.

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I was supposed to be done with this by now. I already got my 10,000 points, and “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” was supposed to be out. I was only mentally prepared to go on my Achievement quest for about ten weeks, and we are now on to week 13, and I’m losing steam again.

Last week I was hoping that going back and playing some of my older titles would reinvigorate my hopes for completing the quest, however, scoring only a 425 points this week, less than half of my total for last week, putting me 7,205 points away from my goal of 20,000. Basically, I’m having trouble comprehending that this is still going on. A guy needs a break every now and then.

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