#full clear

I do not 100% clear games very often. Especially once we started getting in to the late 90's and early 2000's where collectibles numbered in the hundreds.

In Super Mario 64, the most stars I ever got was like, 109, I think. I never got all the emblems in Sonic Adventure, or Sonic Adventure 2. And when it came to Pokemon, once I learned that there were Pokemon you could only get via trading, I basically immediately resigned myself to the idea of "Well that's never happening."

I think the highest I ever got was, like, 92 or 97 Pokemon, in that first game? And after that I just straight up gave up caring. I used what I had and did not go out of my way to get Pokemon I didn't need.

The list of games I've 100% cleared is pretty short:

Sonic 1, 2, 3&K, CD, Mania (All emeralds)

Super Mario World (All exits)

Donkey Kong Country (101%)

Donkey Kong Country 2 (102%)

Parappa the Rapper (Rappin' Cool on every stage)

NiGHTS into Dreams (Full A-Rank clear)

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (200% map completion)

Klonoa PS1 (All rescue panels)

New Super Mario Bros. (All star coins)

Super Mario 3D Land (Unlocked Champion's Road)

Super Mario Odyssey (Darker Side unlocked)

Banjo-Kazooie XBLA (All jiggies and notes)

Sonic Generations (All Red Star Rings)

There might be a few more I'm forgetting, but that feels like the complete list to the best of my memory.

And for the Sonic games, I don't count ones where getting the emeralds is part of the mandatory story. So like, I "fully cleared" Sonic Rush, but of course I did. That's just beating the game. It doesn't count.

I don’t usually care about getting the platinum (full-clear) in a game unless:

I really, really like it  

I don’t have anything else to play

So, like, I was lukewarm on New Super Mario Bros. on the DS, but I didn’t have anything else to play, so I got a full-clear. On the other hand, I didn’t have anything else to play, but I also really liked Super Mario 3D Land on the 3DS, so I got the full-clear there. Well, almost. The highest rank you can get is 5 stars on your save file, but if you trigger Super Guide even once, even if you never actually use it, you’re locked out of a 5 star rating.

The last game I bothered to full-clear.... hm. Probably Breath of the Wild in 2017. I did all the shrines and got all the gear in that game -- I found roughly 115-118 shrines all by myself, and then used a guide for the last few I couldn’t find. All put together, I’ve probably played Breath of the Wild for close to 300 hours. Around 270 hours on the Wii U, and then another 30-40 in an emulator.

I came close to a full-clear in Super Mario Odyssey. It’s sort of impossible to get all the moons in that game, because there’s technically infinite moons to collect (some objectives can be repeated, and moons can also just be bought from the store). But I did unlock Dark Side and I think even Darker Side. I just... never actually did those things.

Before that, there was that period in... April 2017, I think, where I was very depressed about having to move away from Colorado and I just... full-cleared Banjo-Kazooie on Xbox Live Arcade. Every jiggy, every note, every jinjo. I’m not entirely sure why I did that, but it was fun, so I’m not going to complain. I was a casual Banjo fan at best before then and I’d never beaten the game before, but... it was just real easy to chill out and explore levels when I wanted to escape being sad, I guess. Getting a full clear was just a side effect of that.

Note that a full-clear in Banjo-Kazooie doesn’t include every Achievement. You can find a full list of those here. There are probably a lot of games I’m just one or two achievements away from a full-clear, but some weird garbage is preventing me from doing that. Like, I was close to a full-clear in Sonic Unleashed, but I was mainly grinding towards the “eat all food in the game” achievement, which requires doing all of the time trial missions. Then I accidentally erased my save and getting back to where I was on that progress would take forever, because you have to play every Werehog level in the game a minimum of 9 times each.