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

[NESfiend | 1,515]

6 hours ago, PII said:

I had some really irritating controller issues initially, playing Swamp Thing on an emulator, but I've got it figured out and can now make it to the last level.  I'll keep plugging away until I get it...

My insistence on using original controllers is a big part of why I've never emulated. And I'm even picky with originals. Only 1 in 4 or 5 meet my standards. It'll be good to get swamp thing off the list. 4 points is kind of rough for that title, but with how late it went this year, I'd imagine you will get a lot more if you want to repeat it in 2021. 

@nerdynebraskan - I started playing bases loaded 2 again this week. Slow with returning to work, but I've won a couple games each night. I'm 44-2 and need to win 75 plus 4 world series games. I needed that week off. The game is much more enjoyable now. 

@bronzeshield have you started on bases loaded 1? I'll try to move faster if others are. Tables is making good progress on 4 and 3 is done. You know nerdy will finish all pro before long. 

I can't believe no one has claimed Goal 2 with it being on the weekly contest schedule next week. I tried it earlier in the year. Didn't seem like it would be super difficult. Just seemed like a really bad and boring game. I must not have given it enough time though. If @BeaIank chose it for the contest, must be some value there. 

Finally, props to @Gaia Gensouki and @Daniel_Doyce for hammering through one brutal RPG after another. The full season sports are tough, but I think what you guys are doing is way harder and more frustrating. At least once you get good at the sports stuff, there aren't too many frustrating aspects. I still have nightmares imagining Bards Tale after Gaia described it....

Edited May 7, 2020 by NESfiend

[bronzeshield | 293]

28 minutes ago, NESfiend said:

 

@bronzeshield have you started on bases loaded 1? I'll try to move faster if others are. Tables is making good progress on 4 and 3 is done. You know nerdy will finish all pro before long. 

Not yet, no -- work stuff has gotten busy for me, and I've barely been playing anything for the last week or two. However, I was planning to start it within a couple weeks, and definitely crank it out in June if no sooner.

[Gastro | 3]

7 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

I think even video footage can potentially be faked, see the legal battle between Billy Mitchell and Twin Galaxies. I have also heard that some played like to "help" their gameplay a little bit with emulators and then cut everything so together that it seems like they were playing legitimately. If someone wanted to cheat, they would find a way. Or at least that's what I think. The whole system is built on trust. On the flipside, some people would be exluded from this challenge if there were such a high level of entry. Not to mention that recording gameplay footage can sometimes be a pain, imho. It's a bit different from just casually putting on a game and playing for a bit as it requires a whole setup and whatnot.

I looked into the manual of Pool of Radiance and it seemed quite interesting. Of course, it reminds me a lot of Baldurs Gate and the like, which I consider a good thing. I'll give it a try and see if it's up my alley.

I heard that if full audio is included(game and player) there are ways to tell for sure whether it's cheating or not, or atleast it can be extremely difficult to fake. I agree on the rest as I stated in my last post.

[NESfiend | 1,515]

@Gastro - the weekly tourneys have more requirements for posting proof. It would be kind of a strange thing to try to cheat this thread. Its really a collaboration. Scoring is just a motivator. But if someone said they beat a game and didn't, no one would know but that person. No prizes, so not sure what the motive would be. 

I do like posting and seeing the endscreens just because it's fun. Thats what we fought so hard for in our youth and a crackup because most are so underwhelming. Yet that never occurred to any of us in the 90s. I give @nerdynebraskan a pass there for two reasons though. 1. He is the biggest contributor and driver of the thread. 2. The technology he utilizes is on par with that of most great grandparents

[guitarzombie | 924]

4 hours ago, nerdynebraskan said:

As for Mutant Virus only having a base value of 6 points, don't blame scary. @BeaIank beat that beast on New Year's Day in 2016 and that feat kind of tanked its value for a few years. The points system is definitely fair far more often than not.

Yeah?  You try beating it and tell me .  I got Lucky AF that IIRC it took me 4 hours to beat it, compared to the 11 days someone had to leave their NES on.

[nerdynebraskan | 356]

@guitarzombie

I'm not denying Mutant Virus its place as one of the hardest in the NES catalog, dude. For the record, I've never cleared the second stage. All I'm saying is that the games that fall early lose their value, and Bea beating it on January 1, 2016 made it the equivalent of a 2-pointer in one of the five years that factored into this year's values on all the games.

[guitarzombie | 924]

31 minutes ago, nerdynebraskan said:

@guitarzombie

I'm not denying Mutant Virus its place as one of the hardest in the NES catalog, dude. For the record, I've never cleared the second stage. All I'm saying is that the games that fall early lose their value, and Bea beating it on January 1, 2016 made it the equivalent of a 2-pointer in one of the five years that factored into this year's values on all the games.

True, but she did do a lot of work earlier in the year trying to decode those last 2 levels so I dunno how she even beat it so quick haha.  I think she even used my maps I drew!   Its not that the game is the hardest, its just so long and random you can spend HOURS with it getting nowhere.  Its frustrating and boring.  Since theres no password you gotta start all over from the beginning.  Levels 1 and 2 are easy but once you get to 3 you might as well leave the game on.  Alls im sayin is, if people are going for points, all that work for a 6 isn't that enticing for someone to beat it.  Id like to see where that game places this year.

[PII | 1,886]

...Once again the swamp is safe.  He's no longer Alec Holland and I will no longer be nursing gamer thumbs in a bowl of ice water at the end of the night... at least until the next challenge.  Holy Andouille!!, that game is no joke.  Mostly, it reminds me of Bart Meets Radioactive Man, only much more difficult.  Also, level 3 is very reminiscent of the graveyard stage in Bart Vs. The World.  I actually made it to Arcane with all six of Swamp Things life bars, beat him, but managed to take two hits after the fact, killing Swamp Thing and naturally the game did not give it to me.  Somehow, I managed to keep my wits about me and beat him on the next go. 

When I was starting out with it I kept trying to jump pits of doom only to have Swamp thing stop half way and plummet to his death.  I tried two different controllers and same thing.  Finally I realized that I'd need to always be pushing up and right any time I jumped because just pushing right was resulting in down/right and stopping his jump.  Yeeesh!

I guess it's nice to know that I'm not crazy for buying so many old games over the years to play on original hardware.

 

Edited July 25, 2022 by PII

[NESfiend | 1,515]

3 hours ago, nerdynebraskan said:

@guitarzombie

Bea beating it on January 1, 2016 made it the equivalent of a 2-pointer in one of the five years that factored into this year's values on all the games.

Is the scoring system that simple? It's purely based on how far into the list it goes each year? I thought there was a lot more to it. Either way, I have thought the ratings were generally pretty accurate. 

[scaryice | 589]

4 hours ago, NESfiend said:

Is the scoring system that simple? It's purely based on how far into the list it goes each year? I thought there was a lot more to it. Either way, I have thought the ratings were generally pretty accurate. 

 

Yup, that's it, based on the last 5 years. This year is based on results from 2015-19, and next year will be based on 2016-20. BTW, Mutant Virus is already guaranteed to again be worth 6 points next year.  It was the very last game completed in 2015, and it can only improve on that this year.

 

Mutant Virus's placements (excluding the first 15 "unbeatable" games, so out of 1-662)

2015	662
2016	91
2017	441
2018	60
2019	617.5*
Sum	1871.5

 

* It was unbeaten last year. The 617.5 came from taking all 90 unbeaten games, and just giving them the average of all the positions remaining. I do this so the overall numbers don't change from year to year.

This year, it can finish anywhere from 598-662, so it's going to improve its overall total due to 2015 falling off. But 50 spots won't matter too much. Last year, 6 point games were worth anywhere from 1707-1923 in total. It's not finalized yet, but 1687-1943 will be the minimum range for it. Even if Mutant Virus is the last game cleared and is again worth 1871.5, it's already guaranteed to be worth 6 points again in 2021.

 

Average finish for each point value

(so games that are worth 2 points in 2020 finished on average somewhere between 110-171 over those five years)

	2020	2019	2018	2017
1	7-108	9-108	14-109	10-110
2	110-171	110-179	109-174	110-181
3	171-234	179-233	175-240	182-240
4	236-298	237-294	241-290	242-294
5	298-341	295-338	291-338	294-332
6	341-385	338-380	338-382	333-383
7	385-429	381-430	383-427	384-425
8	430-481	431-490	429-486	426-476
9	481-535	491-544	486-542	477-543
10	537-629	544-634	543-628	544-630

 

As far as cheating. There have definitely been a few suspicious things over the years (like the end of 2012, the first year we completed everything), but all I can do is take people's word that they played fairly.

Edited May 8, 2020 by scaryice

[scaryice | 589]

I've been working on Ikari Warriors a bit the last few days. I actually beat the first stage for the first time last night, so that was great. I feel more accomplished just doing that versus completely finishing some other games.

I did use the helicopter glitch which skips the second half of the stage. Well, you still have to watch your character slowly move up the screen, so technically it's not a skip. But you are invincible for that entire time. I watched the top time on speedrun.com, and I calculated how much of the game is done in the helicopter. Came up with this table:

	foot	tank	heli
1	12.3%	35.0%	52.8%
2	49.8%	50.2%
3	21.5%	44.4%	34.1%
4	35.0%	20.3%	44.7%
Total	31.5%	38.5%	30.0%

 

It's almost about 1/3rd for each. The helicopter parts are easy with the glitch, but there isn't one in stage 2, so that may be the hardest part.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,075]

You really love your statistics, do you @scaryice? But it's interesting to know how the scores are calculated.

As for Pool of radiance I may have finished one of, if not the most tedious part, i.e. character creation. It easily took me around 3 hours until I was halfway satisfied with my party after countless stat rerolls. I prefer the system in later games where you could lower attributes and increase others. This way I had numerous times where I was rolling for a cleric and almost never got high wisdom stats, but charisma and intelligence were extremely high. Too bad that intelligence is seemingly useless for anyone but a magic-user. But when I was rolling for a magic-user I constantly got higher wisdom stats than intelligence stats. I felt as if the game was trolling me. Also, it seemed like female characters had a -1 modificator to strength or at least I never got a strength stat of 18 with a female character. Not sure about this one as I couldn't find anything about how the sex affects stats in this game. Dwarves seem to get constitution +1 and elves dexterity +1, but I didn't notice any drawbacks like in later games where dwarves would get -1 to dex and char and elves -1 to const, iirc. Then when I finally equipped my party I noticed that the armor class modificator from dex is seemingly not modified by armor, only movement speed. I still remember from later D&D games that chain or plate armor allowed for a much lower dex modifier than e.g. leather armor. This does not seem to apply here which is why my dwarf warrior may be in a bit of trouble.

Anyway, I did some exploring afterwards, got a bit of loot and died at the hands of a bunch of orcs and an ogre. I tried to run away with the two remaining survivors, but they didn't carry the corpses of their teammates with them and were alone afterwards. Time to reset the game. This is going to be challenging and time-consuming, but at least I'm enjoying this system much more than the one in Ultima III. It just takes a bit of time and patience.

[Crabmaster2000 | 501]

@scaryice - What was suspicious when we did the challenge in 2012? I don't recall anything, but that was also a long time ago. Also thanks for the Ikari tips. Please let me know if you learn any other stuff about the game. I'll definitely be doing a bunch of research before making a serious attempt at it. 

[Daniel_Doyce | 475]

Ultima: Quest of the Avatar is done. FSTNG has served Lord British well with his powerful fist of righteousness.

The tremor spell and the crossbow makes the last dungeon pretty trivial. It was fun though, so I will keep it in mind for next year.

Is anyone actively working on Might and Magic? Please speak up now since I'll start it this weekend otherwise. I think this is the game that took TMR > 80 hours to complete, so it sounds pretty rough.

[Cepp | 34]

Ultima III: Exodus is also complete.

I forgot that the final boss is the fucking floor lmao.

 

 

Edited May 9, 2020 by Cepp

[Tablew/chairs | 250]

Bases Loaded 4 is done, finally- i won the super series 4 games to 1

i finished with a record of 70-12-4 so the ties might as well count as losses since you still have to win 70

my biggest win was 7-0

the highest scoring game was 7-2

the most incredible thing that happened was one game i hit three home runs on three straight pitches

[scaryice | 589]

11 hours ago, Crabmaster2000 said:

@scaryice - What was suspicious when we did the challenge in 2012? I don't recall anything, but that was also a long time ago. Also thanks for the Ikari tips. Please let me know if you learn any other stuff about the game. I'll definitely be doing a bunch of research before making a serious attempt at it. 

I just remember someone who was working on Bases Loaded 4 messaging me near the end and saying, 'hey, I'm not gonna be able to finish this, here's the password where I left off' with only a game or two left. That's probably the biggest one.

Speaking of BL4, it's been a productive day with that and two other long games completed! That's great to see. Incidentally, writing BL4 reminds me of Bloodborne, since "blood level 4" is the minimum level and a lot of people us that abbreviation for challenge runs.

[Daniel_Doyce | 475]

I'm going to start on the Immortal. I'm pretty sure no one is working on Might and Magic, but it can wait for a bit.

[bronzeshield | 293]

Barker Bill's Trick Shooting is done:

Might be an OK game if it weren't for the huge RNG variation from run to run -- and that damned parrot. It's one thing to get dinged for shooting the dog, but the parrot is an adversary, and shooting him should be rewarded if anything. Phooey.

[bronzeshield | 293]

I've completed the first loop of Freedom Force, which I believe is all that's required:

However I should note that I did use pause strats in the final level, so up to scaryice and y'all whether you accept that.

Freedom Force could've been a good game if it didn't troll the player so much -- by giving us at least one weapon that does more harm than good (the grenade launcher); by spawning three enemies at a time so that you literally can't shoot them all at once; and, especially, by having the Health powerup appear onscreen for less than a second. It's just...tiresome.

[scaryice | 589]

I've always counted one loop for Freedom Force. Are you gonna do Shooting Range next? That's another easy one.

[bronzeshield | 293]

23 minutes ago, scaryice said:

I've always counted one loop for Freedom Force. Are you gonna do Shooting Range next? That's another easy one.

I might, and was thinking of doing so, though I've never played it!

I'll also have to load it onto my Everdrive, since it's mysteriously absent from the ROM set I assembled back in (gulp) 2008 and have been using ever since. Probably need to upgrade that one someday...

Edited May 10, 2020 by bronzeshield

[BriGuy82 | 771]

Deadly Towers 

 

[Daniel_Doyce | 475]

The Immortal is done. This one really isn't too bad; the only two things I found tough were that freaking magic carpet and trying to outpaddle a Krakon. Still, the game is pretty forgiving with level passwords and 3 lives per try.

Presumably you and Ana are bumpin uglies once you get to ground level.

Ok, will start on Might n' Magic next

[Daniel_Doyce | 475]

91.4% done by May 1 seems pretty good. I wonder if we can get to 650 before July 1.

@scaryice, what do you think are the 5 hardest ones remaining that no one is actively working on? To The Earth is a game I will never beat.. That's a game for someone in their 20s with quick reflexes and no impending arthritis. Flight of the Intruder is the only 10+5 game, but TMR beat it in 6 1/2 hours, for what that's worth.