NES Completions thread 2020 - 677/677 (All Clear!)

[nerdynebraskan | 356]

Spider-Man is done.

@bronzeshield

I agree with you about still counting Ghostbusters as beaten if the door glitch is used. I figure it's fair to use a bad game's programming against it. Ghostbusters was one of my first five NES games growing up, and it's always been a bitter disappointment of a game to me because of how much I liked the movie and how bad the game was.

@Kid Dracula

My last entry to the personal list was Space Shuttle Project, as my last three completions were games I've beaten before. It was entry #344, but my list includes not just the licensed North American set, but also games from other regions as well as modern ROM hacks and homebrews. Essentially, I just put every game I beat on my NES into the master list. And I'm not really in the hunt to beat the whole NA set, like some of these other players. I don't think I have the same skill, reflexes, or patience as some of the titans on this forum. I just kinda play what I want to and like competing in this annual tradition. I've never been a god at any one game or genre of games, but I'm well suited to this thread because I enjoy playing a little bit of everything on my beloved NES.

Oh, and good luck with your imminent fatherhood!

[nerdynebraskan | 356]

Tag Team Wrestling is done.

[NESfiend | 1,515]

Finally beat heavy shreddin after playing it exclusivley for around a month. I didnt mind at all. Its hard as nails but gets way more and more fun as you get good. I may keep playing to try to no death it. I was getting to backwood 6 with 8 or 9 lives each time, just couldn't get the timing on the bridge right. Its insanely difficult.

[Tablew/chairs | 246]

Adventures of Rad Gravity is finished

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,074]

Swords and Serpents is done. A pretty decent dungeon crawler on the NES. I really liked the detailed monster designs with even featured some animation. The music was pretty decent too, and the game itself was relatively easy to get into. However, the game lacks in variety and gets a little bit dull sooner than I would have liked. It's also quite tough and features some obscure riddles.

[nerdynebraskan | 356]

Willow is done.

With this completion, I go over 600 points for the third consecutive year.

Edited March 23, 2020 by nerdynebraskan

[Kid Dracula | 126]

I was just playing Championship Bowling for the first time and I noticed the Hi score is 200. The requirements in this thread are just to complete a game of bowling. Just curious why it isn't to beat the high score of 200?

[nerdynebraskan | 356]

Ghoul School is done.

[NESfiend | 1,515]

I am getting started on Race America. Never beat it and only played it multiplayer casually. I'll post if I give up, which is likely. 

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,074]

I beat Golgo-13!!! This game was sooo difficult and frustrating at times. At first I was intrigued by the gameplay variety and cool espionage story. The settings and the atmosphere are great, imho. But the individual gameplay modes are extremely simplistic and lack polish. As a result I died a lot fo times, but it seemed like I had unlimited continues. This however turned out to be false, which I noticed when I saw the game over screen at the end of level 12. This game has 13 levels overall, so this hit really hard. What made this even more frustrating was that I mostly died during those shoot 'em up sections (they don't control so well and I did not know that you could destroy those floating object that have something rotating around them and that mercilessly follow you around) and while trying to avoid those lasers in the 3D dungeon sections. So because of all that I had to redo the whole game!

But the worst was yet to come! The final level was incredibly difficult followed by such an insane boss fight. I died over and over and was sometimes even sent back 2 levels instead of one! Once I even had the final boss practically killed, but one projectile, that you can not evade, hit me. Only 2 out of 200 hit points more and I would have survived! So back to redoing all these levels over and over again while wasting so many of my continues. But after about an hour of trying I finally beat the boss, which felt so relieving.

However, I am still wondering how his game avoided censorship. There's not only blood, but also a swastika and the protagonist has quite obviously sex several times. And all of this in a Nintendo game! That one swear word in Rambo seems harmless compared to this. Anyway, this was an interesting game, but due to the long and repetitive gameplay as well as the high levels of frustration I probably won't be touching this game again any time soon.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,074]

Monster Truck Rally is done, or at least I played through the monster truck rally mode with standard settings, i.e. one computer on difficulty 1 and I got first place, even though there's no specific screen to celebrate the victory or no ending whatsoever, which is very disappointing. This racing game is a bit slow and dull for the most part, but it can grow on you a little bit once you learn how to control it etc. The individual challenges are a little hit-or-miss. Some are pretty fun for a short while, while others like TUG-O-WAR is long and tedious and somewhat depends on luck (I actually won one round and the other one was a draw). SLED PULL makes no sense to me and DRAWBRIDGE is mostly dependent on luck. All the other one's were at least okay.

What lowered my enjoyment of this game quite a bit though was that as a human player one is seemingly always at a disadvantage, e.g. whenever the CPU truck and mine collide I ALWAYS turn like crazy and eventually even face the wrong direction. The CPU however is hardly ever even inconvenienced. This makes the races more difficult than they have to be. Also, in the DRAG RACE I always had the obstacles on my lane whereas the CPU could just drive straightforward. My only chance of winning this one was to shift up gears earlier than the CPU so that I'm slightly smaller and can get in front of the CPU. Anyway, it might be itneresting to play with a human player (if possible) and/or to create and race your own tracks.

[NESfiend | 1,515]

Race America is done. Rules say best ending isnt required. Not sure how many endings there are, but I'm sure I got the worst. The drag race portion is tough maneuvering, but the full races are fair. Cool game overall. 

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,074]

Super Cars is done.

[Kid Dracula | 126]

Captain Planet has been completed! Similar blend of shooting as Air Fortress though not done as well. 

[Kid Dracula | 126]

Nice work Gaia, knocking off some of those undesirable titles and earning those pain points. Glad you could find some enjoyment out of it! On that note Treasure Master is finished. Almost definitely my least favorite game this year. Close call between that and Day Dreamin Davey. 

 Nice work too nesfiend, nerdy and all. I like our chances this year with this group! 

[NESfiend | 1,515]

2 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

Super Cars is done.

No game review? I had pulled this from the shelf and was looking at playing it down the line. Gameplay didnt look terrible on YouTube. 

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,074]

Sorry for not writing about this game, @NESfiend. I somehow wasn't quite in the mood for writing something, when I posted it.

As for my thought about Super Cars, I think that this is actually a pretty decent game and I had quite some fun racing against the CPU. You race in a top-down perspective, earn money depending on your rank and use that money to buy new cars or upgrades. Upgrades are much cheaper, but last only for one race. You can increase your speed, acceleration, steering or even buy weapons. This reminded me quite a bit of Rock 'n Roll Racing and was an interesting mechanic. So you have to rank at least third place in 9 races before you can complete a class of which there are 3. The tracks themselves don't vary significantly between each class, so the game can become a bit repetitive. But at least the tracks are overall quite decent and varied, even if they lack more complex mechanics such as ramps etc.

However, this game had a few flaws that drag it down and that can cause quite a bit of frustration. First of all, the individual parts of your car deteriorate over time. These are gas, body, tires and the engine. So for example if the track has a lot of long straight roads you will mostly be driving at max speed which causes the engine to deteriorate very fast. Colliding with walls or other vehicles will affect your gas and especially the body. How tires are affected I don't know. So between each track you will have to repair some or all of these four parts which is really costly. Finishing first will earn you $20k, finishing second only $10k and third place only $5k. Repairing these parts however costs usually between $2k and $3k. This means that if you're not careful, a big chunk of your earned money will be wasted on repairs only or you might not even be able to afford repairs later on and if only one of these four parts is broken, you will face the game over screen. While this introduces an interesting management aspect to this game, it ultimately becomes very frustrating. This could have been significantly improved, if the costs for repairs had been dependent on how damaged these parts are.

Another frustrating issue is that whenever you hit other cars or walls you will be slowed down extremely or stop completely. Crashing with other cars might even thrust you in another direction, but the CPU cars are almost always not affected. You can drive with highspeed into another slowly driving car while taking a sharp turn and the one who will be thrown around will be you. This inconsistencies in the physics is extremely annoying and frustrating, since the streets are usually very narrow thus turning every passing maneuver into finicky situation for you. And not only that: CPU cars are almost never affected by puddles of water or oil. You only have to get into the vicinity of these and you will turn around or get flown around the track whereas the CPU usually can just drive over these compeltely fine. This means that you're constantly at a huge disadvantage causing later levels to be way more frustrating than they have to be.

Overall I see the game over screen a few times, either because I was too frugal with the repairs or because I just messed up a race. Also, when you've advanced to a later class you can take some of your money with you giving you a huge advantage. But if you fail and have to do that class over again, you will start with the standard car again and without additional cash making the game much more difficult. My strategy was to buy a better car as quickly as possible and then later on to mostly just spend money on repairs and temporary upgrades. Better steering and acceleration are especially useful and increased speed in a select few levels.

Finally I would like to give a shoutout to the music of this game which is pretty good and reminded me of the Follin brothers Just listens to one of the tracks:

 

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,074]

I have beaten Faxanadu. It's a really good side-scrolling action RPG similar to Zelda II or Ys III, the latter of which was obviously also done by Nihon Falcom. But Faxanadu is not quite as huge as Zelda II and lacking some of that Nintendo polish. However, it's a bit easier than Zelda II while still offering a decent challenge.

In Faxanadu you control an adventurer who returns to his home town and finds it in ruins. A meteor has crashed into the world tree that is standing right next to the village. Following the impact the wildlife has been going crazy, dwarfs were attacking the peaceful elves and the wells have dried up. So of course you have to save everyone and bring back peace, which you do by killing and slashing everything in your way! The controls are fairly good and precise, but your jumps are a little stiff, which makes some of the jumping segments quite frustrating. Meanwhile the enemies jump and bounce and fly around all over the place. This can make it somewhat difficult to hit them or evade their attacks, especially when enemies stand atop or right below a ladder waiting to corner you. Sometimes enemies also run straight into you upon entering a new screen so that you get knocked back into the previous screen or sometimes off a ledge so that you have to climb up to several screens. These are some frustrating parts of the game where I would have wished that they could have found another solution.

Anyway, in typical RPG fashion you fight enemies, gain EXP, earn money and buy helpful items and equipment from shops. What's unusual though is that you have to buy keys to progress and there are several kinds of keys, all of which you will eventually need to beat the dungeons and progress. It could get a bit annoying now and then when you had to back travel quite a bit just because you would have needed another key or because you had the wrong type of key etc. The keys also cost quite a bit of money and like other pieces of equipment they become progressively more expensive. So you will probably have to do some grinding for items etc., but at least it's all fairly reasonable.

What impressed me the most about this game was the setting as it takes place inside the world tree. Therefore you have a very unique look to the places in this game. What makes this even weirder is that even towns and castles are inside(?) the tree. Anyway, minus some quirks I had a lot of fun with this game and I could see myself returning to the world of Faxanadu one day.

 

Edited March 27, 2020 by Gaia Gensouki

[scaryice | 587]

I've been busy with Nioh 2 & Doom Eternal, and then coming up there's Resident Evil 3 & Final Fantasy 7, so it might be a little while until I get back to NES stuff. I did try out Just Breed for a couple hours recently - it didn't stand out to me, so I probably won't continue with it.

[arnpoly | 198]

I was thumbing through the requirements and it looks like I inadvertently beat Short Order/Eggsplode.  The Power Pad is helping as a distraction for my daughter and me during all the shelter-in-place stuff, so it's possible I'll knock out more of the Power Pad stuff as we go.

I'm at 35/80 cases completed in Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?  It's gonna take a little more than a week to complete that at my current rate.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,074]

I beat Rocket Ranger!

Honestly, whenever I try out such a 10 point game or a game with many pain points I'm usually expecting the worst, i.e. a game that is awful, no fun at all and/or way too difficult. But luckily Rocket Ranger seems to be an exception similar to Super Cars. Yes, it's not the best looking game, actually it's pretty ugly and occasionally only marginally better looking than an Atari 2600 game (okay, I'm exagerrating, but it's really not pretty to look at). Then there's the minimalistic music and the Atari-like sound effect, the latter of which isn't really a minus since those explosions sound pretty cool. It's also a pretty unintuitive game where you're looking at a map similar to the board game risk and wondering what you have to do.

But the cool part begins when you actually invest a bit of time into this game and start to understand the whole picture. On the one hand you have to thwart an evil alien empire that is located in Germany and whose soldiers don't look like WW German soldiers at all! You do this by capturing 5 alien space craft parts and gathering fuel to launch this into the air so that you can destroy the alien homebase. But you also have to take care of the aliens on earth and keep them from overtaking the whole world! So in order to do this you have to send out your five spies which can locate enemy facilities randomly spread across the world. And once they have located an enemy base you can attack it as rocket ranger where you will encounter one of several mini games. These aren't particularly exciting or polished and remind me a little bit of Golgo 13, i.e. while the individual aprts may not be particularly impressive, the whole package is what's fun. Because you're in a constant race against time and have to manage your ressources, keeping your spies alive and trying to locate every base. This had me on the edge of my seat as I was trying and trying until I eventually beat this. In this way it also reminded me a bit of Raid on Bungeling Bay since you could go on missions yourself and the game was getting increasingly harder the more you advance.

Ultimately this game ends with a showdown on the moon where you're fighting off alien amazons trying to do kill you with snu snu. Unfortunately I had to fight them off so that I could confront the real alien leader, which was one ugly bastard. Just look at it yourself! Anyway, this game ended with the Rocket Ranger saving the world and getting the girl. On the one hand this is very clichee and many parts of the game could be described as simplistic or unpolished, but it somehow captured me and was quite fun.

Maybe some final pieces of advise if anybody wants to give this game a try as well: Your spies are your eyes and ears, so use them to locate enemy bases. It seems like they're infixed spots and don't reappear, do remember where you put them and search every country except for the enym home country. I think it's best to move your spy away asap. Then just wait until the professor gets kidnapped and rescue him from the zeppelin. If you fail, reset the game and start over again. You don't lose much progress yet. Then as your spies are uncovering enemy bases you can eventually prepare to take off and destroy some of them. However, it's best to save as much fuel as possible, so you definitely want to wait until you have uncovered several bases in order to save fuel. Before taking off take all of the fuel that is left at your baseand when you have uncovered a fuel factory you can visit that one as often as you'd like to gather fuel! It's most efficient to first fly to a fuel factory, then to another base and back to the factory again. Do this over and over and you will never again have to worry about fuel. You can also unload some of your fuel and put it into the rocket. You can also command a spy to cause civil urnest in a country where there is a fuel factory. After they are successful, transfer the spy elsewhere and enjoy your free 12 to 15 fuel every month. Anyway, after a successful raid during which you are stocking up on fuel and destroying enemy bases you should return to the USA to relocate your spies again hoping to uncover further bases. An FAQ recommended to always use the S.O.S. signal to return to your homebase, but I strongly advise against that since you are wasting a lot of time this way! If you follow the trick with the fuel factories you won't have to worry about fuel anymore and have to instead only worry about the time.

Edited March 27, 2020 by Gaia Gensouki

[NESfiend | 1,515]

Been playing around with lee trevinos fighting golf last couple days. Love golf games, even bad ones generally. This is by far the worst I've ever played. I'm currently about +20 handicap, so this could take a while if it happens at all. 

[Kid Dracula | 126]

I played through Werewolf! My friend had this game back in the day and we could never get far. It's not too bad once you get going. And it even comes with a comic! 

[T-Pac | 7,548]

12 hours ago, Kid Dracula said:

I played through Werewolf! My friend had this game back in the day and we could never get far. It's not too bad once you get going. And it even comes with a comic! 

I've always wanted to give Werewolf a chance, but I can't figure out how to get past those hallways right at the beginning where squiggly lasers randomly strike you and drain all your health before you can get through. Any tips on that part?

-CasualCart

[scaryice | 587]

You have to backflip through it to avoid taking damage. I only know that because I was watching Kusogrande on Twitch recently (which is a bad game tournament), and that was one of the games featured. There were four people playing the game blind, and I think only one of them figured out how to do that correctly.

Edited March 28, 2020 by scaryice