NES Completions thread 2024 - 665/677

[BriGuy82 | 806]

8 hours ago, T-Pac said:

Congrats, dude!

How do you identify the loop-point in Xevious? So much of the game looks so similar - is there a clear indicator somewhere?

[T-Pac]

Yeah, so every time you pass a wide green forest is when a new level starts. So that pic I took is past the last level and starting back to like level 6 or 7 I think. There's a distinctive upside down y shaped pattern on the ground, and then a distinctive group of ground enemies right past that point. Once you play it a hundred times it becomes alot easier to differentiate the enemies and landscape . But yes, when I first started playing, I didn't even realize that there were levels.

[BriGuy82 | 806]

5 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

I'm unfortunately still at eight countries. I found a relatively safe method to expand my territory, but it takes long and gets a bit boring after a while. I ended up playing a few games of Master of Orion 2 instead. I'm sorry.

 

@T-Pac

The gamefaqs site for Xevious shows all of the 16 maps: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/nes/579616-xevious/faqs

I only ever made it until 9, because of those stupid enemies, that separate into many smaller homing projectiles.

Yes, I learned about pause buffering to beat those guys. Once you do that, they are actually pretty easy. Otherwise it's almost like 50/50 getting by those things.

[BriGuy82 | 806]

Just a little side note about Xevious, you can get a bunch of extra lives by points, but also there are 4 hidden flag locations where if you bomb the ground you get extra lives as well. I didn't see any video on YouTube where they utilized that in the NES version. I watched the Mexican runners video and one or two others and they all skipped over the extra lives. 

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,079]

4 minutes ago, BriGuy82 said:

Just a little side note about Xevious, you can get a bunch of extra lives by points, but also there are 4 hidden flag locations where if you bomb the ground you get extra lives as well. I didn't see any video on YouTube where they utilized that in the NES version. I watched the Mexican runners video and one or two others and they all skipped over the extra lives. 

Do you still know the locations of these hidden flags? Those would be a huge help for future personal attempts.

 

3 hours ago, Daniel_Doyce said:

Ok, I didn't know if you hunkered down on a bit more than you expected and got into a One Man One Jar-type situation, but it sounds like you're making progress. Don't forget to make those stupid crafts and sell them for cash too.

That's actually what I've been doing most of the time. Make a lot of money selling, buying and re-selling goods until my pockets are full. Then I buy a bunch of mercenaries and invade an enemy country. I use the survivors as farmes, craftsmen and of course for defense. I then wait until I get my defenses up and earn enough money to buy another army to invade another country. This takes quite a bit of time and gets very repetitive, but it has been pretty reliable so far.

However, the problem is that my leader is eventually running out points so that I have to train him in order to do something again. This is a bit tedious. On top of that, I don't like handing my provinces over to one of my leaders/princes. Because in the worst case scenario, they're going to rebel against me, which is obviously awful and a real dealbreaker. But even in the best cases, where they're part of my family and won't betray me, they're also not really adding anything useful to my empire. They don't give me money and barely increase their forces. It's really a waste. So I prefer to give orders for all of my provinces every turn, which unfortunately takes a lot of time.

I'm sure there's much better stragies out there, but I'm new at Koei strategy games and this was the best that I could come up with so far.

[BriGuy82 | 806]

@Gaia Gensouki

https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Xevious/Walkthrough

This link shows where they are. It's for the arcade version, but as it turns out they are in the same locations on the NES version. I verified all 4 when playing. The only thing is, they are always somewhere in the same horizontal strip on the map, but they move along that strip. So you basically have to bomb horizontaly along as much of the strip as you can because they aren't always in the exact same spot each time.

[Daniel_Doyce | 478]

2 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

Do you still know the locations of these hidden flags? Those would be a huge help for future personal attempts.

 

That's actually what I've been doing most of the time. Make a lot of money selling, buying and re-selling goods until my pockets are full. Then I buy a bunch of mercenaries and invade an enemy country. I use the survivors as farmes, craftsmen and of course for defense. I then wait until I get my defenses up and earn enough money to buy another army to invade another country. This takes quite a bit of time and gets very repetitive, but it has been pretty reliable so far.

However, the problem is that my leader is eventually running out points so that I have to train him in order to do something again. This is a bit tedious. On top of that, I don't like handing my provinces over to one of my leaders/princes. Because in the worst case scenario, they're going to rebel against me, which is obviously awful and a real dealbreaker. But even in the best cases, where they're part of my family and won't betray me, they're also not really adding anything useful to my empire. They don't give me money and barely increase their forces. It's really a waste. So I prefer to give orders for all of my provinces every turn, which unfortunately takes a lot of time.

I'm sure there's much better stragies out there, but I'm new at Koei strategy games and this was the best that I could come up with so far.

Yeah the body point thing is a huge PITA. I'd say put your best people in the territories adjacent to enemies, set them to aggressive, and see what happens. Agree on not giving non-family members any power, but make sure you arrange as many marriages as you can.

 

[scaryice | 608]

Rally Bike is finished! The first loop is not too hard, but the second one is tough. The 9th race is particular, I got to several times before the winning run. It's not enough to just survive, you have to really speed through it to finish high enough to advance. Even though I beat the game before in 2021, it's still a huge pain. Amusingly, the 10th and final race is the only one to not require any particular placement because the game ends after it regardless.

Edited May 13 by scaryice

[mbd39 | 2,041]

3 hours ago, scaryice said:

Rally Bike is finished! The first loop is not too hard, but the second one is tough. The 9th race is particular, I got to several times before the winning run. It's not enough to just survive, you have to really speed through it to finish high enough to advance. Even though I beat the game before in 2021, it's still a huge pain. Amusingly, the 10th and final race is the only one to not require any particular placement because the game ends after it regardless.

Congrats. I tried and tried and tried and couldn't even beat the first race. Or maybe it was the second race. Having to start over every time you crash is ridiculous.

[BriGuy82 | 806]

Started on Star Soldier, not a big fan. I don't like going in and out through the structure crap in the background. Hopefully I can make quick work of it.

[Khromak | 792]

I've gotten up to the last boss in Athena now so technically I've experienced the whole game, but this has all been on everdrive with save states, doing lots of practicing on the bosses and certain sections. Not sure if I can beat the levels when my power ups are reset on deaths. 

I'm also really hesitant about the final level which is essentially a boss rush and restarts you back to the beginning of the boss rush if you die. That seems really tough to do in a single shot, again especially so if you lose all your power ups. 

I'm going to practice the final boss a few more times until I can actually kill him reasonably often, then make a few attempts at the game on the cart to see how ridiculous it is. No guarantees I'll ever be able to beat this POS, but I'm gonna give it a legit try

Edited June 1 by Khromak

[BriGuy82 | 806]

19 hours ago, Khromak said:

I've gotten up to the last boss in Athena now so technically I've experienced the whole game, but this has all been on everdrive with save states, doing lots of practicing on the bosses and certain sections. Not sure if I can beat the levels when my power ups are reset on deaths. 

I'm also really hesitant about the final level which is essentially a boss rush and restarts you back to the beginning of the boss rush of you die. That seems really tough to do in a single shot, again especially so if you lose all your power ups. 

I'm going to practice the final boss a few more times until I can actually kill him reasonably often, then make a few attempts at the game on the cart to see how ridiculous it is. No guarantees I'll ever be able to beat this POS, but I'm gonna give it a legit try

U can do ittttt!

[Khromak | 792]

Had a huge breakthrough and realized it might actually be possible to do this. 

The hardest part in my opinion was facing the final boss rush plus the final boss with the potential of having to start back at the beginning with no armor, weapons, or health. 

Well, I found a bunch of easy spots to pick up the K powerup in the last stage, which Keeps all your items on death. 

Employing this strategy, I beat the final boss (After a few tries). I think I'm ready to take on the whole game, but it might be a slog to get through all the stages, especially some of the maze like ones. But with infinite tries, I think I can do it. 

[Khromak | 792]

Another update here. There are basically 6 stages and then the final stage. I got to the 6th stage without using a continue, but using some lives. Got to the final boss a few times and pounded the shit out of him a few times...before realizing that I was missing the item you need to damage him....which you can only get from the previous stage boss.

So I guess I'm starting that over again....tomorrow. This is a real shit sandwich. I got some pretty good practice in on that stage though, which I guess could be considered a plus.

I think if I can get past that stage and have a decent weapon/armor setup and not-terrible health, I can definitely take down the final stage with enough time.

This one's definitely going down, though it will be a very frustrating process with lots of restarts.

[Khromak | 792]

Boom, Athena is done! What a piece of shit.

If you pick up the wrong weapon at the wrong time, sometimes you're fucked, often you're penalized heavily. You really need to know where the critical upgrades are (and it can vary based on your current items). The bosses are mostly total bs, and even regular enemies can chain damage you to death very quickly.

In the end though, once you understand how the hit boxes, damage, and upgrades work, you can make it happen. Took me hours for a single win, including tons of resetting, but bad luck or execution can be recovered from if you need to. 

This time I got to the final stage with no weapons, armor, or health and it was brutal, but after a dozen attempts at it, I got myself into a decent loop of powering up and eventually, on my 4th attempt at the final boss, took him down. Fuck this game

Edited June 1 by Khromak

[BriGuy82 | 806]

STAR SOLDIER 

[BriGuy82 | 806]

I judged Star Soldier too quickly. It's actually a fun game.

[scaryice | 608]

With Athena and Star Soldier completed, we're down to 13 games left. That also means there's only 176 points still available. Which means that nerdynebraskan (562) could only max out at 738, which is less than Gaia Gensouki's 741. That means we have a 2024 champion!

Congrats to @Gaia Gensouki for becoming the new champion after four straight second place finishes! And congrats to @nerdynebraskan for an esteemed six year reign on top! Now to finish these last few titles...

Edited June 6 by scaryice

[nerdynebraskan | 356]

That last completion also guaranteed that I will finish in second place. I knew that I wouldn't win it all again this year, but it was still good to register my 11th straight Top-3 finish. 

[Khromak | 792]

Good job @BriGuy82! I agree with you, I was playing Star Soldier a little bit last night and I enjoyed it, though I'm not very good at Shmups so I only made it to stage 5 at best, usually only 2 or 3...

I have tried most of the games on the list and had a really tough time making progress on most of them. If I'm going to be able to contribute I'll need to spend a significant amount of time practicing the same game over and over. I might pick one and go for it, but right now it's not looking great.

Was someone working on Genghis Khan already? I thought I saw something about that, but it must've been a long time ago now...If nobody is playing it I could give it a try, especially if there's any advice/guides that would help me understand how the mechanics work.

[mbd39 | 2,041]

That gimmick of going under the background in Star Soldier always drove me crazy. Besides that it would be fine.

[TheGameDisplay | 60]

Star Force is done!
 

On 5/13/2024 at 10:43 AM, scaryice said:

Rally Bike is finished! The first loop is not too hard, but the second one is tough. The 9th race is particular, I got to several times before the winning run. It's not enough to just survive, you have to really speed through it to finish high enough to advance. Even though I beat the game before in 2021, it's still a huge pain. Amusingly, the 10th and final race is the only one to not require any particular placement because the game ends after it regardless.

Race 9 really is the make or break point, many of my runs ended there as well. I found that despite the gas meter making you think speed matters, it actually seems to decrease relative to distance travelled so speeding up doesn't help you progress further into the level. The exception to this is when you pick up the turbo engine item, then your gas meter lasts longer but it still doesn't actually matter how fast you are. This made beating Race 9 entirely dependent on getting the turbo engines from the random item drop, and if not, your run is essentially over.

[Khromak | 792]

7 hours ago, TheGameDisplay said:

Star Force is done!
 

I saw it live! Incredible work Andrew, especially after the notes with the patterns on it. I only realized you were working on this game recently, but I've watched hours of your attempts since then and it's really been fun watching it. I was amped to see you getting close and eventually clearing it live.

I was thinking of practicing this one and seeing if I could take it on (for this thread) but after having watched you take it on I can say with a high degree of certainty that my shmup skills are nowhere near good enough to beat this game.

Maybe some time in the distant future I'll be there. I'd like to eventually beat the library myself, but certain games seem really out of reach.

I'll probably get back to trying some more of what's left on the list for this year, maybe I can grab another clear or two. Is anyone working on Genghis Khan...?

[TheGameDisplay | 60]

4 hours ago, Khromak said:

I saw it live! Incredible work Andrew, especially after the notes with the patterns on it. I only realized you were working on this game recently, but I've watched hours of your attempts since then and it's really been fun watching it. I was amped to see you getting close and eventually clearing it live.

I was thinking of practicing this one and seeing if I could take it on (for this thread) but after having watched you take it on I can say with a high degree of certainty that my shmup skills are nowhere near good enough to beat this game.

Maybe some time in the distant future I'll be there. I'd like to eventually beat the library myself, but certain games seem really out of reach.

I'll probably get back to trying some more of what's left on the list for this year, maybe I can grab another clear or two. Is anyone working on Genghis Khan...?

Thank you so much for watching! Haha, it's going to feel weird to finally stream something different for a change. I forget where I had heard that Star Force was a rather formidable game, although it certainly exceeded expectations.

[nerdynebraskan | 356]

17 hours ago, Khromak said:

 

I'll probably get back to trying some more of what's left on the list for this year, maybe I can grab another clear or two. Is anyone working on Genghis Khan...?

@Gaia Gensouki was chipping away very slowly at last report, but that was a couple of weeks ago. 

[Khromak | 792]

For Arkanoid since the code in the manual (start plus a) lets you skip the first 16 stages, does that mean to claim victory you "just" need to do 17-35?

I would expect the levels to get more difficult as the game goes on so this isn't quite the advantage it might seem, but that's still a lot of levels to "clear" without having to worry about losing a life on them.

Those who have beaten it in the past: is it a situation where you want to play 1-35 anyway, to build up extra lives, or is it safer to just do the back half and ignore the entire first half of the game?