Beat Every Game Boy Game - 2023

[Floating Platforms 462]

Alright, so I haven't started Bond yet (hopefully tomorrow). It's been too cold to be in that basement. I've been making some progress in emulating Turn & Burn though and I'm now past where I stopped last year on my real run.  I beat level 16 back then. Levels 17, 18, 19, & 20 all have the same conditions as 16.  I haven't played 20 yet, but I'll be surprised if there's an ending afterwards (or ever). Nothing special after level 20. 21 will be the same.

Edited February 1 by Floating Platforms

[LHCGreg 80]

Kirby's Pinball Land is done. I looped the game 3 times and beat my high score from 25 years ago with a score of 6,852,090. After looping the first time I had an amazing run on the soccer bonus stage. I didn't know until now, but if you keep scoring goals and getting the points per goal to 64000, then 99000, each goal after that gives you an extra life. I got 5 or 6 extra lives that way. Nearly every shot went in.

 

 

 

[Floating Platforms 462]

I took a 1.5 weeks off from streaming but started up James Bond 007 yesterday and finished it tonight

@SplainLet me know if you have other knowledge, but it seems I got the good ending just from finding the marble early on which extended the cutscene at the end. If there's a different ending besides that, I'd love to know and would be happy to replay it to add that to my challenge archive.

This was pretty great. It's like if Link's Awakening was segmented into smaller unconnected maps, but also most of the items are a little worthless or only used once.  The combat was weirdly simple and it was easy to punch most dudes at an angle to avoid their bullets.  Still, the locations were diverse and surprisingly sprawling. I got a little lost in the Tibetan mountains... Plenty of characters and NPCs to talk to with decent dialogue for the most part.  It was strange to see the game take dark turns like the guy in the desert who dies and gets buried by the sand if you keep revisiting his location, or the town you come back to and see buzzards picking at bodies.  Aside from more in depth or varied combat, the only other thing I would have wanted is some better character sprites. All of the people look rough. Overall this is the game that I think Who Framed Roger Rabbit was trying to be and it really hit most of the marks.

I also ended up beating The Adventures of Star Saver, although it took longer than I wanted.

There's a fun game hiding in here, but for me the flaws took over too often for me to truly enjoy myself. There are a couple of places where the enemies will literally spawn right on top of you. The checkpoints are nice, but sometimes you get instantly hit on those too. The hit boxes in general are quite annoying. Several times the enemy clearly hit white space in front of or behind me and it still counted as damage.  The boss hit boxes are the opposite - teeny tiny slivers on a massive sprite. If you lose your mech and are wandering as the human with one shot on screen allowed, those bosses become extremely tedious. They can be tedious with the fully powered mech.  I had a ton of trouble figuring out the level 8 bosses pattern but finally got the rhythm down and the last level (#9) was an absolute cake walk - or frog bounce. Weird of them to introduce a new mechanic for that stage but then basically make it enemy free.  The graphics look great but the controls were not crisp. A&B together will release a grappling hook. I never intentionally did it, but the game sure did interpret my jump and shooting as pressing them together. That sucks because jumping and shooting is how you progress in some areas or find secrets (jump in place and shoot 3 times to reveal something). Tighter controls and better hit detection would have made this game great. Instead it is mediocre.

Tomorrow I'll start up Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and if that is as quick as it seems, I'll be starting the Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 combo cartridge.

[Floating Platforms 462]

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is done

This took far too long, almost 5 hours. I think that a big reason for that is if you fail the bonus games after you beat the boss, you lose some of your health bar. Well, I lost them all and I kept hitting continue (because they are unlimited).  It wasn't until I was getting really sick of slogging through that 5th level with only 4-5 hits before dying that I tried hitting "No" on the continue and inputting the password.  Magically, my health was back up to more than double what it was for most of the game.  If I would have understood this for levels 3 and 4, my playtime would have been far less.  An example of best endings making things harder for me in stupid ways.  Anyway, the game is not good.  It's not terrible, but it lacks some polish. The graphics are good, but the enemies are lacking (putty and bats only basically). On SGB, the character you choose affects the color of the level, but otherwise there is no gameplay differences and each character feels almost neutered with tiny punches and a jump kick that's not all that effective. The boss fights as the robot had much of the same limitations. You can use a special weapon, but it drained your health. The first level was alright, but the farther I got, the more it felt like the designers of the game lacked any faith in themselves and created levels and unpredictable or nearly unavoidable damage spots to elongate the stupid thing.  Not looking forward to playing the game based on the movie in the future.

Next week I'm tackling Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 through the combo cart.

[Splain 1,982]

11 hours ago, Floating Platforms said:

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is done

 

This took far too long, almost 5 hours. I think that a big reason for that is if you fail the bonus games after you beat the boss, you lose some of your health bar. Well, I lost them all and I kept hitting continue (because they are unlimited).  It wasn't until I was getting really sick of slogging through that 5th level with only 4-5 hits before dying that I tried hitting "No" on the continue and inputting the password.  Magically, my health was back up to more than double what it was for most of the game.  If I would have understood this for levels 3 and 4, my playtime would have been far less.  An example of best endings making things harder for me in stupid ways.  Anyway, the game is not good.  It's not terrible, but it lacks some polish. The graphics are good, but the enemies are lacking (putty and bats only basically). On SGB, the character you choose affects the color of the level, but otherwise there is no gameplay differences and each character feels almost neutered with tiny punches and a jump kick that's not all that effective. The boss fights as the robot had much of the same limitations. You can use a special weapon, but it drained your health. The first level was alright, but the farther I got, the more it felt like the designers of the game lacked any faith in themselves and created levels and unpredictable or nearly unavoidable damage spots to elongate the stupid thing.  Not looking forward to playing the game based on the movie in the future.

Next week I'm tackling Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 through the combo cart.

Ha yes, I played this last year, as soon as I saw that the special attack uses up health, I was like "ok! I'm never gonna use that!"

[Floating Platforms 462]

1 hour ago, Splain said:

Ha yes, I played this last year, as soon as I saw that the special attack uses up health, I was like "ok! I'm never gonna use that!"

I only used it against the bosses because that made them a lot quicker, but when all the normal guys die in one hit, and with little reaction time before they show up, it's not worth it to try.  Looking back at my video, it seems the low life bar was there from level 1. The manual says the bonus game will give you life upgrades if you get a good score and penalize you if you fail. I wonder if the password simply assumes passing all of the bonus stages and that's why the health bar grew so much.  Whatever the reason, it's a function of the game so I'm counting it.

Updating my soft dibs as I ran the raffle last night to lock in games 146-150.

Game #	Genre Type	Game
146	Fighting	Mortal Kombat 1 & 2
147	Sports	WWF King of the Ring
148	Arcade	Alleyway
149	Platform/Action	Nemesis
150	Milestone	Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan

I know TMNT has been done on here already, but all of my milestone games are set in stone so that won't be changing. I've never played TMNT 2 or 3, so this will finally open Part 2 to be selected sometime in the future (after game #175, per my complex rules)

[Matt 4120 180]

Had some free time and a reason to try out the new Gameboy emulator on switch, and I beat Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins.

Emulator is good. Just wish that they would have an option to change the colors for GBC mode. I have really been enjoying Wario Land 3, but I found time to sneak in Mario Land 2. Despite this being a good option, I still like my trusty Super Game Boy for playing.

 

For anyone wondering, I currently have these games on my list for  this year:

Atomic Punk

Mario's Picross (already have a save file started from January) and it's sequel Picross 2

Game and Watch Gallery (I also already have a save on this too but I suck at this game lol)

Kirby's Dream Land 2

 

Also quick question regarding the Game Boy Gallery clear condition. I noticed it says to "play each game". I've never played it, but is there a certain points requirement we have to meet, or is it literally just playing each game for 5 minutes or something?

Edited February 13 by Matt 4120

[darkchylde28 1,517]

1 hour ago, Matt 4120 said:

Had some free time and a reason to try out the new Gameboy emulator on switch, and I beat Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins.

Just a heads up, it looks like you tried to link to a photo that's in your Gmail, and, as such, none of us are able to see it, just the big link which goes nowhere.  If I open it in another tab it shows the Gmail logo in the tab and just says "Gone" and "Error 410" in the tab.

[Floating Platforms 462]

Mortal Kombat is done

I magically got it done on my first attempt. I remember on the dual matches needing to sweep the leg non-stop, but I couldn't get that to work properly. I couldn't get any special moves to work reliably, and honestly even basic attacks didn't seem to register all the time. I'm not sure if this dual cart is an even worse port than the standalone GB, or if the timing is wonky, or if the game simply eats a lot of inputs.  Anyway, I ended up switching tactics to nothing but jump kicks and Liu Kang was able to beat the last 4 matches while hardly getting touched.

Mortal Kombat II is a cheating SOB of an experience that will read your inputs an react unnaturally by dodging and blocking everything, countering moves and pre-loading their specials to unleash moves that require 2-3 second wait times for me instantly after blocking/kicking/throwing.  Garbage. And this is on Normal.  Granted I suck at fighting games, but I can still smell BS when I see it. Special moves are a lot easier to do reliably and punches and kicks work as expected (even if the CPU always gets priority if you attack at the same time), so that leads me to believe the programming is simply abysmal in MK1. Anyway, I was trying that for a few hours last night but couldn't get past Shang Tsung - tried several different characters. Will try again tomorrow and hopefully knock that out to start King of the Ring.

[Floating Platforms 462]

Mortal Kombat II is done.

I decided to try playing as Shang Tsung as I hadn't actually done that yet.  It still took a couple tries, but the re-learning I did on Monday paid off as did all of the leg sweeps I used to cheese victories when things looked dire.

I also quickly beat WWF King of the Ring two different ways.

First, I played King of the Ring mode with Macho Man. That involved only winning 3 matches. I love the stupid crown they plopped on the sprite.

Then I played the tournament mode as Mr. Perfect which made me beat all 7 wrestlers to earn the belt. I couldn't find a manual for the GB version and tried playing totally blind, but that didn't work. I found the NES manual to learn the basic controls and as soon as I knew what the buttons did, it was a total cake walk.  I breezed through everyone (playing on normal difficulty). The depth of what you can do is not really there. Maybe you can pull of special moves for each wrestler, but the manual didn't say how. It's honestly not very easy to tell what is happening in close combat anyway. There's no music during the match, but when you win, you do get to hear their themes.  The sprites looked okay. At least you could tell who was who even if everyone's face is busted.  It was a nice diversion and welcome change from the cheating MK 2.

Since it only took an hour to do both modes in WWF, I played a couple hours of Alleyway, but need more practice. I got to level 17 on my best run.

 

Lastly, two new games for the soft dibs:

151) 4-in-1 Fun Pak Volume 1
152) Dragon's Lair: The Legend - Ugh...it had a 1/9 chance of winning the poll and it did.  Oh well, I guess it'll be nice to not having it hanging over my head anymore soon.

[koifish 388]

I'm back, baby. Can you dig it?

Cool World is almost done. I got to the last level (I think) but ran out of lives. Should have it tonight.

Next game will be Ninja Boy 2. That game is weird and I want to beat it.

@Splain

Tempted to offer a run of Pokemon Picross this year, but not sure if unreleased leaked games can count toward our ambitions. It's all but finished, as far as I can tell, but I don't know if anyone has actually completed it.

[Floating Platforms 462]

2 hours ago, koifish said:

I'm back, baby. Can you dig it?

Woo!  Are you asking if Pokemon Picross can be finished/has credits?  I think someone in my twitch chat has gone through the whole thing. I'll ask them next time I stream.

I almost beat Alleyway yesterday. I keep mucking up my runs by losing 3-4 lives on a single level like a fool. My PB is 21 out of 24.

[Splain 1,982]

4 hours ago, koifish said:

I'm back, baby. Can you dig it?

Cool World is almost done. I got to the last level (I think) but ran out of lives. Should have it tonight.

Next game will be Ninja Boy 2. That game is weird and I want to beat it.

@Splain

Tempted to offer a run of Pokemon Picross this year, but not sure if unreleased leaked games can count toward our ambitions. It's all but finished, as far as I can tell, but I don't know if anyone has actually completed it.

I think that's a GBC game, isn't it?

[koifish 388]

8 hours ago, Splain said:

I think that's a GBC game, isn't it?

 

 

I forgot that it was a GBC game. I suppose it don't matta then.

The last world of Cool World is even worse than I remember. I got there with no deaths and still ran out of lives due to the timer system. I'm going to hopefully get it in the next few days.

[koifish 388]

Cool World  is done. The game applied stockholm syndrome and made me sort of like it, but overall I don't care for it much. The first three worlds are pretty easy, and then the last world sucks. Fortunately, it's very short; You can beat it in maybe 15 minutes. Let me know if you want a short write-up of how to beat it.

[koifish 388]

Trying it out earlier, I learned that I really don't understand football. Madden 95 filtered me pretty well. It was a hell of a lot better than NFL Football was though!

Ninja Boy 2 is a bizarre game. I don't know who thought up a chinese kung-fu kid traveling through space beating up dinosaur men in an RPG/beat'em up hybrid, but it plays pretty well. There are probably a few games that do this in a more modern format and I might like to try them sometime.

[LHCGreg 80]

Boomer's Adventure in Asmik World is done. That was wayyyyy harder than I was expecting. You move slow, you dig slow, the enemies are numerous, and the bosses are ridiculously hard.

 

[Floating Platforms 462]

Alleyway is finally done.

I think I may be bad at games, guys. Took me 18 hours and far too many tries. I've always enjoyed Breakout style games and this one is also a lot of fun. I found it generally to be a very relaxing experience, even with all the failures. I knew that they were virtually all my fault anyway. I do wish there was some background music during the levels. They put it in the bonus stages, but not the main levels, which made them feel a bit too empty. The bonus stages are a nice incentive since they each feature a different Mario enemy. Plus if you do well, you can get some much needed extra lives (until you pass 9000 points that is). I'm looking forward to seeing how Super Breakout and Kirby's Block Ball compare to this eventually.

Next up I'll be playing Nemesis. I'm hoping to get through that pretty quickly and then also tackle game #150 TMNT (which won't count for this thread)

[Floating Platforms 462]

Nemesis is done.

I didn't realize going in that to see the ending, you had to beat all the stages in one go. So, I played the game twice. Once with the default 2 lives and stage selecting from where I left off. When that led to no ending, I figured I had to do it again and took with me all 99 lives the game allows.  The game isn't too difficult, but I am not great at shooters. Even though this is a slower one, there are some enemies that basically appear out of nowhere (especially in stage 5). Dying in certain places means you're at a disadvantage with all your power-ups gone and less chance to get equipped before reaching the mini-boss and then final boss of each stage.  The bosses are all a breeze. I had some trouble with the mini-boss area in level 2 on my second run since it's a bunch of stuff that appears randomly and will occasionally spawn too close, making it really hard to dodge.  I love the Gradius family of shooters with the power-up bar that allows you the choice of upgrading certain things or holding out for more, but I'm glad this wasn't more difficult. I still think SolarStriker is better (even if it's more simplistic).

Because I played through it twice, I didn't have time to go into TMNT for game #150, so I'll tackle that Monday followed by 4-in-1 Fun Pak.

I also ran another poll tonight. Game #153) Star Trek: The Next Generation & Game #154) Final Fantasy Legend II

[Floating Platforms 462]

Two more finished tonight - one counts for the thread.

TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan is finished and I've now crossed over 150 games completed in my personal challenge. It took 2 tries as I died on Shredder with my 3 remaining turtles the first time. Cheesed the hell out of Krang on accident, though.

Then I decided to start 4-in-1 Fun Pak: Volume 1 and actually managed to beat all 4 games in about 2.5 hours.

Chess was done on difficulty level 3 (of 6). I played aggressively to start, then had to retreat but then when the CPU had me on the ropes, they straight up gave me their queen and then a couple more high value pieces. Anyway, I ended up with 2 queens and cornered their king. The game would have been much faster, but their thinking time between moves was amazingly long for the middle difficulty.

The rest of the three were played on level 2 (of 3) difficulty. Checkers was tough for me and took a few games. I don't know strategies at all and sort of threw things against the wall until I was able to grab several kings and luck it out. You can see I also changed colors for each game to better match the board.

Reversi was my most feared and again I tried just plugging pieces down a few times with no luck. Then I actually tried to look for decent moves and managed a solid victory with 3 of 4 corners.

Backgammon threw me for a loop as I am used to moving my pieces counter clockwise towards the bottom right. Nope, this had me moving clockwise to the bottom left. So I lost the first game as I fumbled through the confusing orientation and didn't get to set up proper blocks. The second game was pretty simple with very few captures and no doubles rolled, but I still got it done.

My next game is supposed to be Dragon's Lair: The Legend, but instead I'm going to spend the rest of this week revisiting some of my older games that either have some unfinished business or modes I've been meaning to explore.

[Splain 1,982]

On 2/13/2023 at 2:23 PM, Matt 4120 said:

Also quick question regarding the Game Boy Gallery clear condition. I noticed it says to "play each game". I've never played it, but is there a certain points requirement we have to meet, or is it literally just playing each game for 5 minutes or something?

There's nothing in that game to count as any kind of progress marker at all, to my knowledge. It's just a simple presentation of those G&W games with no frills at all. We could say something like "get 1000 points in each game" but that's just an arbitrary number of points. If you see anything in there that you think might work, let us know!

 

On 2/24/2023 at 6:31 PM, koifish said:

Let me know if you want a short write-up of how to beat it.

Yes plz, lol. I've never managed to do well in that game.

[Tantalus 220]

Forgot to take a picture, but Donkey Kong Land 2 is done. I'm sometimes hard on this game because I would have preferred something more unique/original rather than what feels like a greatly scaled down DKC 2 port. However, it is still impressive what they were able to do with the Game Boy hardware and it is a solid game. The graphics fit the limitations of the hardware much better than the first Land game and the hit detection and controls also seem greatly improved. It was also nice this time around to scratch the DKC 2 itch with a game that I don't know quite like the back of my hand to the same degree as the SNES game.

[bronzeshield 236]

Really interesting data point about Flipull, from tobiasvl over at ROMHacking.net:

"The Game Boy version of Flipull simply contains 48 levels. The manual claims there are 50 levels, as the Japanese article alludes to, but the ROM only has 48 (and not all of those are unique, as the article also says). So when the game tries to load level 49, it loads some unrelated data and interprets it as level data, causing the bugged "remaining blocks" count which is displayed as a non-number tile, which internally has a higher ID number than the actual remaning blocks on the board, making it impossible to beat."

And:

"The game doesn't contain an ending animation like the Famicom version does. However, it does contain other animations that were supposed to appear after every 10th level, but they're skipped over in the final product and seem a bit unfinished. I'll also upload a patch that reinstates them."

So the game has no ending animation, but seems to have intended a defined ending point -- and yet, also claims to have 50 levels in the manual. Hmmm. Is this a case for one of Guru Larry's "developers that deliberately made the game impossible to beat" videos?

[Floating Platforms 462]

I remember this coming up in a previous year's thread as well. From the videos I've seen, the game does indeed basically glitch out and level 48 is essentially the end thanks to bad programming. So you can access and play level 49 but can never get past it.

No matter how many levels, it's a game I'm scared to try as I can't wrap my head around what I'm seeing in gameplay, plus there's a timer and limited continues.... If you're going for it, more power to you!

[bronzeshield 236]

On 3/21/2023 at 9:59 AM, Floating Platforms said:

I remember this coming up in a previous year's thread as well. From the videos I've seen, the game does indeed basically glitch out and level 48 is essentially the end thanks to bad programming. So you can access and play level 49 but can never get past it.

No matter how many levels, it's a game I'm scared to try as I can't wrap my head around what I'm seeing in gameplay, plus there's a timer and limited continues.... If you're going for it, more power to you!

I think the key point for me is that it's not just that Level 49 is glitched, but that -- according to tobiasvl's analysis of the game's code -- it wasn't even meant to exist at all.

Since Flipull's manual promises 50 levels, it suggests they might have made that promise in bad faith -- for example, if they knew they didn't have time to program a proper ending (unlike the Famicom version which has one), and used the glitch to hide the fact.

It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened, and the unused animations suggest something wasn't right with the development.

(Reminds me of Shadow: War of Succession on the 3DO somehow, a fighting game where the fatalities kept crashing the game. So they commented them out at the last minute -- IMDb and TV Tropes are wrong, they did program them -- but despite the game's prompt to "FINISH HIM/HER!", you literally can't!)

As for me and Flipull, heh, not now, I don't think. I'm barely playing video games right now -- most of my free time goes to our baby.