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

[scaryice | 587]

I think that's good enough to count. You still fight the same final boss, and there's no credits or "The End" screen either way.

EDIT: That means we've now hit 550 games completed before the end of March! We didn't reach this point until October 21st last year. Second fastest year so far... We're also over 50% on Pain Points too, with Table still in the lead there.

 

	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
50	2-Jan	1-Jan	1-Jan	1-Jan	1-Jan	1-Jan	1-Jan	1-Jan	1-Jan
100	4-Jan	1-Jan	1-Jan	1-Jan	1-Jan	1-Jan	1-Jan	2-Jan	3-Jan
150	9-Jan	1-Jan	1-Jan	2-Jan	2-Jan	1-Jan	2-Jan	5-Jan	5-Jan
200	16-Jan	3-Jan	3-Jan	3-Jan	3-Jan	2-Jan	4-Jan	10-Jan	8-Jan
250	29-Jan	7-Jan	6-Jan	4-Jan	5-Jan	4-Jan	6-Jan	22-Jan	11-Jan
300	6-Feb	14-Jan	11-Jan	6-Jan	8-Jan	10-Jan	9-Jan	14-Feb	17-Jan
350	17-Mar	25-Jan	17-Jan	10-Jan	12-Jan	16-Jan	15-Jan	19-Mar	22-Jan
400	26-Apr	17-Feb	26-Jan	16-Jan	19-Jan	27-Jan	30-Jan	14-Apr	30-Jan
450	7-Jun	2-May	16-Feb	21-Jan	31-Jan	7-Feb	10-Mar	19-May	14-Feb
500	22-Jul	10-Jul	9-Mar	31-Jan	21-Feb	10-Apr	11-Jul	20-Jul	1-Mar
550	16-Aug	8-Nov	7-Jun	10-Feb	21-Apr	2-Sep	13-Nov	21-Oct	31-Mar
600	14-Oct	xxx	13-Sep	24-Feb	29-May	xxx	xxx	xxx
650	30-Nov	xxx	xxx	8-Apr	26-Aug	xxx	xxx	xxx
677	31-Dec	xxx	xxx	12-Jun	13-Dec	xxx	xxx	xxx
Total	677	562	638	677	677	589	582	587

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by scaryice

[scaryice | 587]

On 3/29/2020 at 9:44 PM, NESfiend said:

I'm playing galaxy 5000 and it's going to take a lot of time. It will be fun to play through though

Make sure you don't continue to get to Planet X, so you can actually get the credits.

[NESfiend | 1,515]

7 hours ago, scaryice said:

Make sure you don't continue to get to Planet X, so you can actually get the credits.

@scaryice I've hardly scratched the surface of it. I assume you have that option after completing the nine planets?

Edit: Watched a youtube video of @crabmaster2000 completing the game. Didnt realize I was playing with people who create the long play videos. Wild. Anyway, didnt look like there was a choice to go on to planet x or not to. Just looked like that was the next level he had to play. Anyone, feel free to weigh in

Edited March 31, 2020 by NESfiend

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,075]

3 hours ago, scaryice said:

I think that's good enough to count. You still fight the same final boss, and there's no credits or "The End" screen either way.

Thanks. That's actually a relief not having to replay this game. In my opinion this game is way worse than Bartman Meets Radioactive man.

Anyway, I have beaten Times of Lore. It was a short but surprisingly sweet playthrough. It had a great atmosphere, which is partially due to the well written manual, and the music is quite good as well. Only the gameplay was a bit simplistic for an Action RPG/Adventure.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,075]

Fun House is done. I used warps to get it done a bit faster, but since you have to redo a whole level once it's game over I actually did end up playing most of the levels anyway. It's a fun idea for a game and many of the levels are enjoyable too, but later on there are more and more ice levels where the controls get extremely slippery. This combined with the strict time limit made some of the levels actually quite frustrating.

Btw. is anybody playing Ghost Lion right now? I have the famicom cart here and am interested in giving this one a try unless somebody is already playing it for this challenge.

[NESfiend | 1,515]

For what little I remember about ghost lion, I'm sure everyone would be more than happy if you went ahead and got that one out of the way

Really enjoy the write ups. Wanted to mention that in case you wonder how much people are reading them. Anytime I look to play something new, I'll reference back to them as well. 

[Crabmaster2000 | 501]

14 hours ago, NESfiend said:

@scaryice I've hardly scratched the surface of it. I assume you have that option after completing the nine planets?

Edit: Watched a youtube video of @crabmaster2000 completing the game. Didnt realize I was playing with people who create the long play videos. Wild. Anyway, didnt look like there was a choice to go on to planet x or not to. Just looked like that was the next level he had to play. Anyone, feel free to weigh in

It been a long time, but if I remember correctly as long as you don't use a continue before that point it just automatically takes you to Planet X.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,075]

9 hours ago, NESfiend said:

For what little I remember about ghost lion, I'm sure everyone would be more than happy if you went ahead and got that one out of the way

Okay, reading this worries me. But I'll give it a try and see what I can do.

Glad that someone is reading the write ups and enjoying them. I was concerned at first that I'm just stating the obvious and things that have been said a thousand times since this challenge has been beaten several times already. I actually had more to say about Bart vs. the World and Times of Lore, but unfortunately Firefox crashed when I uploaded the picture and everything was lost.

I think I have watched a few longplays from some users here as well. Really cool to see.

[scaryice | 587]

The writeups are great, keep 'em coming!

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,075]

I have beaten Legend of Ghost Lion on my AV Famicom as it was long in my collection and on my playlist. But I can now understand why there aren't exactly people clamoring to clear this game for this challenge. And it's a crying shame, because this game has so many good aspects going for it that it could almost have been a true classic. First of, it's pretty obvious that this is a Dragon Warrior/Quest clone and many parts of the overworld or the dungeons look pretty similar to its source of inspiration. But you can see that they weren't just trying to create a shameless rip-off by how they've carrefully created original elements to this fictional fantasy world: you have fairies living at lakes or in mushroom villages, many human towns are built on the top of a tower or even inside a tree? This game also has a slight African vibe to it with its huts, palm trees, deserts and pyramids.

Another nice touch is how every party member is represented by a well-designed image of their faces during combat. This is definitely an upgrade to the pure numbers you saw in Dragon Warrior games during combat. However, only one of the enemies is shown at the same time, but their sprites are often pretty to look at. Only very few, like the zombies, are bland and boring as it's hard to identify their features in this almost monochrome mass of pixels. Some highlights were the Goblins in their armor, Chimeras in their terrifying glory and of course some of the bosses like a dragon or the eponymous ghost lion (which is actually just a white lion). Some characters were also really weird, like the giant slug, giant toad or the Winged Man that can be summoned via a stone bone and is depicted as a bare-naked man with wings and a long, bony, elongated thing peering out of his crotch. Meanwhile other portrayals are a bit confusing as well, e.g. the protagonist Maria is shown as a blond teenage girl or young woman on the cover artwork or in some of the images in the game, but during other times she looks like a little child and her overworld sprite has brown hair. Couldn't they decide on a uniform look? And then there's the American cover of the game, which is hilariously awesome btw, but does a poor job of telling you what to expect in this game.

So where does this promising game fall apart? Well, that's in the gameplay department. You might have heard that you don't gain experience points in this game and that level ups are acquired not by beating enemies, but by collecting shards of hope. They increase your level and with it your hopes (HP) and dreams (MP). You also don't equip weapons, instead you have to select the weapon you want to use every single time when inputting a command during battles. Moreover, the heroine doesn't gain stat boosts either except for HP and MP of course. So she always has the same strength and armor class, which is going to be important. It's probably most similar to The Legend of Zelda or Breath of the Wild. While this works in an action-oriented game as shown by the incredible success of the Zelda franchise, it does not work so well in a slow, turn-based RPG. Because after a while you will inevitably ask yourself why you're even fighting. Why bother with all of these fights if they only steal your time and waste your ressources when all you get is just money? I can't overstate how much of a blow to my enjoyment of a game this was. Times of Lore had a somewhat similar system, but that was more of an action game and the battles were mercifully short or you could avoid them altogether. Not here however. Not even the escape spell, holy, works reliably!

Another unique featre of this game is the summon system. You do not have your allies with you all the time. Instead you summon them from one of many items that you can find throughout the game. But summoning takes one full turn! Luckily your summon can attack in the same turn, but this still drags out the fights quite a lot since you usually have to summon one or two allies for every battle. Summoning also drains dreams (MP), so you should be careful with this. What also bothered me with this mechanic was how unbalanced the summons were. There were some that I never used or only during the final battle. In most battles you're fine just summoning Moja and/or Elf which you get very early on. Attack magic gets useless pretty quickly too and later battles can get pretty long, difficult but also very dull due to this summoning and whatnot.

What bothered me the most however was how often my attacks and spells would miss during combat. I shit you not, but I frequently missed several attacks in a row which not only made the battles painfully long, but also messed up my party completely! This is because your summons have a power meter and every action they take requires power, 20 for a physical attack and something between 15 and 30 for a magic spell. With a power level of 60 to 80 in the early game and up to 160 in the late game you effectively only have a few attacks available for every summon until you will have to summon them again thereby wasting another turn with Maria. But not only that, your summons even take up to two times the damage that Maria does! So later on your summons frequently take 40 to 60 damage with every hit. Now imagine if their actions themselves drain their HP and enemies quickly bash them into oblivion and on top of all that you frequently miss with your attacks and spells. This sucks so hard I can't put this into words without sounding like the AVGN. You sit there watching while the enemies never ever fail a physical attack and pummel your summons and you to death all while you can't land a single blow! I searched for help on the itnernet where I found the advice to summon Elf and cast Hold on the enemies, which will stop them entirely and allow you to hit 100%, but even that spell fails about 50% of the time and your Elf is so vulnerable that it might be dead before it can even cast a single damn spell! This whole system ruined my enjoyment of the game so hard that I can't tell whether I'll ever feel inclined to play this game again.

And I don't enjoy bashing games. I really wanted to like this game. The visuals were nice, the music sounded good too and the overall adventure or story was interesting as well. Because you follow Maria as she tries to find her missing parents that were previously searching for the Ghost Lion. This mystical creature is said to guard the gates to hell and you'll uncover really neat facts about the lore of this world and so on. It was really cool and I wanted to love it, but due to the gameplay my overall experience was so soured that I don't know judge this experience. It could have been a classic, but unfortunately it's just a footnote in RPG history. Maybe you could find a lot of enjoyment in this game, provided that these downsides don't turn you off as much as they did for me. Sorry for the long rant, but I am really conflicted about this game. Luckily this game was quite short and only took me about 9 hours.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,075]

Btw. I just noticed that I haven't yet uploaded my picture for Bart vs. the World. Here it is, just pro forma. I also gave Krusty's Funhouse a try. The first level was actually quite fun and well-designed, but in level 2 they're already starting to get pretty crazy with their level design. It now has the same flaw as Fun House, i.e. that you will most likely lose during a stage if you're trying it for the first time, because you may have to rush through the level against time or maybe the layout is so complex that you can't quite fathom what to do and what consequences your actions might have later on in the level. This combined with limited lives, i.e. tries, makes for a frustrating experience. Is maybe someone else playing that game or better at it?

Edited April 2, 2020 by Gaia Gensouki

[NESfiend | 1,515]

On 3/31/2020 at 2:37 PM, Gaia Gensouki said:

Nice job with Ghost Lion, Gaia. Took one for the team!

If anyone is wondering how galaxy 5000 is going, I've gone from completely hopeless to simply miserable. Great game. I got the piloting mechanics pretty quick, but the damage aspect is brutal. You need to know every inch of 36 tracks to stay in good enough shape to upgrade. I'm inching my way through, but the quality is great aside from the difficulty. Great way to kill time stuck at home for a long while. If I get there, it will be among the most rewarding beats. 

Edit: I have now completed 5 of the 9 levels. Learning levels 5 and 6 is taking a while. I'm sure it will get stupid hard at the end, but progress is being made. 

Edited April 3, 2020 by NESfiend
Update

[Crabmaster2000 | 501]

17 hours ago, NESfiend said:

If anyone is wondering how galaxy 5000 is going, I've gone from completely hopeless to simply miserable. Great game. I got the piloting mechanics pretty quick, but the damage aspect is brutal. You need to know every inch of 36 tracks to stay in good enough shape to upgrade. I'm inching my way through, but the quality is great aside from the difficulty. Great way to kill time stuck at home for a long while. If I get there, it will be among the most rewarding beats. 

Edit: I have now completed 5 of the 9 levels. Learning levels 5 and 6 is taking a while. I'm sure it will get stupid hard at the end, but progress is being made. 

Keep at it, you've got this!!

 

I've been working on Destiny of an Emperor the last couple days. I'm really loving it. Super surprised I don't ever hear anyone talk about this one.

[Tablew/chairs | 250]

Temple of Doom is done, one of my favorites growing up

[Crabmaster2000 | 501]

11 minutes ago, Tablew/chairs said:

Temple of Doom is done, one of my favorites growing up

You're crazy. Even as a kid growing up with this game I didn't find any joy in Temple of Doom.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,075]

Zoda's Revenge - StarTropics II is done. What an awesome playthrough! I was surprised to find such a gem still in the unbeaten list at this point, but I am very glad that I finally played it. It's imho a bit more of a pick up and play game since it throws you pretty quickly into the action. The adventure elements are rather limited compared to the first game, but at least you don't have to go around and talk to every villager in hopes of finding the trigger that advances the plot. This may make the story overall a little bit weaker, but the improved gameplay easily makes up for this!

In this game you can move around freely, aren't so limited in your jumping anymore and you don't have to slowly jump on every platform in hopes of finding a trigger for a door or whatever. Instead you just walk over it. The battles also profit a bit from this added freedom since you can now shoot your weapon diagonally which can be quite the help. Apart from this they greatly improved the balance of this game. Whereas the first game was extremely challenged in the later levels this one was way more manageable and fairer overall. If you look around carefully you will always find helpful items or additional lives that help with difficult parts or bosses of the game. They also made the dungeons shorter and less confusing. Some people may miss the challenge, but I enjoyed such a shorter and more compact experience quite a bit. The hardest part though was the boss rush at the end, which took me a bunch of tries, but which is still doable with a bit of practice.

Another improvement over the original is the time travel plot since it offers great opportunities for level variety. In the first game you were strictly limited to the tropics and caves and such. Here you're traveling to the ice age, Egypt, Italy, London and other places. Variety is the spice of life and it certainly helped keep this game fresh. I had a really great time with this one and would put this in my top 3 list of top-down action adventures/RPGs alongside The Legend of Zelda and Crystalis.

[scaryice | 587]

As a big StarTropics fan, I'll disagree and say that I think the first game is much better. While you may have more control over Mike Jones in the sequel, I find that it's actually much harder to avoid dumb deaths while jumping as a result, and it also takes away one of the most unique things about the original (the tile-based movement). The plot is also kind of dumb, because it just feels like an excuse to have a bunch of different themed levels. It could've been something else entirely without the StarTropics name, and little would've changed. There's also some minor things like how they still have stars in the second game, but 95% of the enemies never drop them.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,075]

1 hour ago, scaryice said:

While you may have more control over Mike Jones in the sequel, I find that it's actually much harder to avoid dumb deaths while jumping as a result

I'll have to agree with that. It happened to me quite often as well, but after a while I got used to the different jumping controls and it ultimately allowed for different challenges like jumping over moving platforms, sometimes even with additional obstacles, or that boss fight where you have to jump from platform to platform and hit the boss. For me it made the levels and boss encounters a bit more dynamic whereas those tile-based movements were a bit stiff, imho.

Btw. in the first game you also had dumb deaths from jumps, like when you would cross from one screen to the next, but unknowingly went the wrong way and ended up drowning. The first game had so many frustrating moments and player-unfriendly design, that it was detrimental to the experience for me.

1 hour ago, scaryice said:

The plot is also kind of dumb, because it just feels like an excuse to have a bunch of different themed levels.

That's true as well and the story was indeed the most boring and disappointing part of this game. But because I enjoyed the gameplay so much it didn't bother me too much. Apart from that I appreciated the different level themes and the variety. On top of that, there was a neat throwback to the first game at the end. It's also true that it could have been an entirely different game, but I'm just wondering right now how they could have made a second game that felt truer to the original without just rehashing most of the enemies and environments.

[Tablew/chairs | 250]

beat solstice

[arnpoly | 198]

Where is Time is Carmen Sandiego is done!  Definitely felt some pain points on this one even though none were up for grabs.

https://twitter.com/arnpoly/status/1246678538675249152

Edited April 5, 2020 by arnpoly

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,075]

Krusty's Funhouse is finally done. I'm definitely feeling the pain with this one! It was long and very tough with ear-piercing music. And what do you get for completing this game? This lousy ending screen.

[nerdynebraskan | 356]

NES Play Action Football is done.

@Gaia Gensouki

Congratulations on passing 400 points! That's an elite performance, and you only seem to be growing stronger as this goes on. It looks like you'll be in second place by next week, and then you'll be gunning for me!

Edited April 5, 2020 by nerdynebraskan

[NESfiend | 1,515]

I have turned a big corner on galaxy 5000. Just as I managed to get good, my game decided it wants to glitch out. Second to last run, I was on level 35 of 36. With 35 seconds left, the screen turned black, my ship froze in place, and the clock ticked down to zero. Then the screen stayed frozen and I took the below pic. Next run, got to Neptune 3 (level 31), and my ship got stuck to a wall. 100 seconds ticked down as I tried every button combo. 

Had no issues with this cart to that point. But I did see a YouTube video where a guy played for 15 minutes or so and it froze out in similar fashion to my game with the photo. 

[bronzeshield | 293]

I didn't really Juana play this game, but I took one for the team:

Racket Attack is done.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,075]

7 hours ago, nerdynebraskan said:

Congratulations on passing 400 points! That's an elite performance, and you only seem to be growing stronger as this goes on. It looks like you'll be in second place by next week, and then you'll be gunning for me!

Thank you, Nerdy! I'm actually surprised myself that I managed to beat so many of these games since the remaining games aren't always the best or easiest on the system. My personal goal would be 500 points, but I can't tell how far I can really go. It's getting increasingly difficult to still find games that I can beat. And I think my recent streak is partially due to the pandemic as many other activities are no longer possible so there's more time for playing NES games.

@NESfiend

Damn, that sucks. I can't imagine how frustrating that must have been after all the effort you've put into this game. Does this also occur on an emulator? Maybe that would be worth a try?