NES Completion Thread Requirement Discussion

[Sisor | 14]

For MagMax the Pastebin has "Loops after second boss; there's a brief transition period and then you return to stage 1". The NES Ending FAQ has "beating Babylon the 2nd time in the metal city will constitute beating this game." but there is actually a hidden "meigetsu" message that appears after you've finished three loops on a single continue. Should the requirement be changed to completing three loops on a single continue?

[Dr. Morbis | 2,105]

For T & C Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage: the Pastebin says to "finish Stage 10 of Wood and Water Rage" which is the third game mode option, but this is wrong, and doesn't even go halfway to the loop point.  The way it works is that the difficulty maxes out in both the skating level and the surfing level on Round 12, meaning that there are no new enemies or obstacles introduced after that point, and you start with the lowest amount of health possible (one life symbol) beginning with this Round.  Every single level after Round 12 in both modes is identical in every way to Round 12, making completion of Round 12 the de facto loop point of the first two game modes.

As for the third game option, "Wood and Water Rage" it mixes the two game styles together, alternating between skating and surfing with every subsequent round, such that all odd-numbered rounds are skating rounds and all even-numbered rounds are surfing rounds.  The difficulty ramp-up and level layout, however, remains the same for each individual stage type, such that Round 9 of Wood and Water Rage, being the 5th skating round, is identical to the 5th skating round in the stand-alone street skating game mode.  Similarly, Round 10 of Wood & Water Rage, being the 5th surfing round, is equivelant in difficulty and enemies to the 5th surfing round in the surfing-only game mode.  As a result, completing Round 10 of Wood and Water Rage, as per the requirements in the pastebin file, is inherently easier than completing Round 10 of either of the stand-alone modes, as it doesn't even bring you halfway to the loop points of either of the two stage types that it comprises.

As someone who has owned the game since childhood and can play it essentially forever, here are the real loop points of each of the three game modes, signifying what is actually required to consider this game beaten, for anyone who cares:

Game Mode #1 "Street Skate Session" - Complete Round 12
Game Mode #2 "Big Wave Encounter" - Complete Round 12
Game Mode #3 "Wood and Water Rage" - Complete Round 24

[Crabmaster2000 | 512]

Since what constitutes beating NES games is of great interest to me I finally got around to making a youtube video about how messy it is. If you aren't deep into the "Beat every NES game" threads on here I'd bet you may not know how much grey area there is when trying to beat DOZENS of games on the system. Hoping this video can shed some light on the many circumstance in which it isn't very straightforward to "beat" a game. This is my first attempt at a video like this so I'd appreciate any and all feedback on it too. 

 

 

[Khromak | 792]

33 minutes ago, Crabmaster2000 said:

Since what constitutes beating NES games is of great interest to me I finally got around to making a youtube video about how messy it is. If you aren't deep into the "Beat every NES game" threads on here I'd bet you may not know how much grey area there is when trying to beat DOZENS of games on the system. Hoping this video can shed some light on the many circumstance in which it isn't very straightforward to "beat" a game. This is my first attempt at a video like this so I'd appreciate any and all feedback on it too. 

 

 

Really interesting video, thanks for sharing!

IDK if you kept a spreadsheet of your win conditions, but I think something like that, with some notes about your logic/decision-making process, would be REALLY interesting for other people seeking to do this challenge to reference.

I agree with what seems to be the overarching theme of your video, "what counts as a win depends on the person playing and their goals" because it really is incredibly unclear what the "win condition" or "beating" a game means in a large percentage of the games on the system. Some people will nitpick the tiniest difference in the gameplay loop, demand the highest difficulty, include playing every stage, every character, getting the "best" ending, etc. but others are satisfied with lower requirements.

Ultimately, anyone who "beats" a game, or all the games, will have some caveats to it. I doubt anyone is crazy enough (including the guy attempting it on this site and recording it) to actually 100% complete every game, to the satisfaction of every possible nitpick anyone could make, like beating all the baseball games with each team, so there will always be some asterisks involved in saying you "beat" every game or even experienced all the content in every game. It just comes down to the individual (or group in the case of a challenge like we do every year) to draw those lines where they see fit.

[Crabmaster2000 | 512]

26 minutes ago, Khromak said:

Really interesting video, thanks for sharing!

IDK if you kept a spreadsheet of your win conditions, but I think something like that, with some notes about your logic/decision-making process, would be REALLY interesting for other people seeking to do this challenge to reference.

I agree with what seems to be the overarching theme of your video, "what counts as a win depends on the person playing and their goals" because it really is incredibly unclear what the "win condition" or "beating" a game means in a large percentage of the games on the system. Some people will nitpick the tiniest difference in the gameplay loop, demand the highest difficulty, include playing every stage, every character, getting the "best" ending, etc. but others are satisfied with lower requirements.

Ultimately, anyone who "beats" a game, or all the games, will have some caveats to it. I doubt anyone is crazy enough (including the guy attempting it on this site and recording it) to actually 100% complete every game, to the satisfaction of every possible nitpick anyone could make, like beating all the baseball games with each team, so there will always be some asterisks involved in saying you "beat" every game or even experienced all the content in every game. It just comes down to the individual (or group in the case of a challenge like we do every year) to draw those lines where they see fit.

Thanks so much for watching and the feedback!

I do have a spreadsheet actually of all the win conditions I ended up using. I'll see about digging it up to share.

There been some really cool discussions on here over the years about win conditions and when I check others players like TMRs win conditions I always find it fascinating when we both have different goals for the same game. Really makes me think hard about why we differ on the few games we do. 

[Crabmaster2000 | 512]

@Khromak here's a link to my spreadsheet with the win conditions I used for each game:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RlVezcaP_dn3VHhBeuoOBiH7chx0dLaEchzj5cqhU5M/edit?usp=drivesdk