Beat every Game Boy game - 2020 - 225/497

[Floating Platforms | 720]

I was thinking I might get a chance to play Penguin Wars in the next couple days and since it's such a short game I was considering beating it with every character.

So, I did a quick YouTube search to confirm the end screens are different (they are), and I saw a random comment from someone claiming there is a secret ending?

"There actually IS an ending, but to see it you have to win 40 games in a row (defeat everyone ten times). Have you tried that?"

I've been trying to find some sort of confirmation, but have come up empty. Have any of you heard of this before?  If true, it really makes me wonder how many other secrets are still hiding.

[Splain | 2,571]

4 hours ago, Floating Platforms said:

I was thinking I might get a chance to play Penguin Wars in the next couple days and since it's such a short game I was considering beating it with every character.

So, I did a quick YouTube search to confirm the end screens are different (they are), and I saw a random comment from someone claiming there is a secret ending?

"There actually IS an ending, but to see it you have to win 40 games in a row (defeat everyone ten times). Have you tried that?"

I've been trying to find some sort of confirmation, but have come up empty. Have any of you heard of this before?  If true, it really makes me wonder how many other secrets are still hiding.

Seems fake, like someone's trying to start their own rumors or make someone waste a lot of time on the game. Buuuut, then I found this:

 

(King of the Zoo is the PAL-region title.)

[Floating Platforms | 720]

I didn't even think to check the PAL name. Great find!

Well, looks like I have my marching orders!  Anyone on this forum a data miner that can dig up more fun stuff like this?

[acromite53 | 337]

Hi everyone. I just beat Looney Tunes. Fun game by Sunsoft!

[Splain | 2,571]

I "beat" Super Off Road, using the tips that @koifish posted last year when he beat it. I can't remember where "complete 16 circuits" came from, since there's no ending or noticeable loop at 16. Some of the tracks have already repeated themselves, forward and backward, before then. So I'm going to update the requirement to max all powerups, and hold 99 nitros, which I did shortly after 16 rounds anyway. And I've updated the Penguin Wars requirement as well.

[Floating Platforms | 720]

Very nice!  I loved Off-Road in the Arcade, but still haven't taken the plunge to try out the GB version more than 2 minutes.

I put my first real effort into Penguin Wars tonight.  My Personal Best so far is Game 19 of 40.  The biggest thing I'm struggling with right now is that if you get knocked down as of Game 5 or later, then you're pretty much guaranteed to lose that round.  The enemies will home in the powered up ball which keeps you on the ground longer and I can't move fast enough to avoid the next super ball (at least as the Penguin). The manual says you can mash buttons to get up faster, but I haven't found that to be true.  I doubt anyone has any advance tactics for the later rounds, but I'm open to hearing them as right now it's quite a bit of luck required to get "far."

What is interesting is that each cycle changes the gameplay a bit more. The animals are more aggressive from cycle 2, but also the obstacles start showing up earlier in the round, and in cycle 5 the balls fall from mid-screen at random, varying speeds so you have to do some quick dodging and planning to avoid the enemy's incoming projectiles as well as your slower to arrive starting balls.  This will certainly be a challenge and I'll be upset if it turns out that extra cut scene is just in the PAL region!

[Floating Platforms | 720]

Update on Penguin Wars: New PB is only slightly improved to Game 21 of 40 after about 12.5 hours of trying and moving over to the Bat.  I really wish there was some more documentation of later rounds so I could see what strategies other people used, especially when they get knocked down.  Looking at this video of the 10th cycle, it seems they're playing defensively the whole time and hoping for the best. The hit detection also looks a lot different than what I've experienced and they only got knocked down temporarily once.  Wonder if there was any TAS stuff happening or just a super lucky run.  The one thing I have noticed from the video is that the opponents will get up instantly if they get knocked over. That means their down-time decreases with each round (as far as I can tell, my character's stay the same no matter the round), and probably confirms I don't bother with the super shots after a while.

Mostly talking to myself here, I suppose, but all that to say that I'll probably give it a few more serious attempts, but if I'm still not making progress I'll probably switch to something else.

[Splain | 2,571]

1 hour ago, Floating Platforms said:

Update on Penguin Wars: New PB is only slightly improved to Game 21 of 40 after about 12.5 hours of trying and moving over to the Bat.  I really wish there was some more documentation of later rounds so I could see what strategies other people used, especially when they get knocked down.  Looking at this video of the 10th cycle, it seems they're playing defensively the whole time and hoping for the best. The hit detection also looks a lot different than what I've experienced and they only got knocked down temporarily once.  Wonder if there was any TAS stuff happening or just a super lucky run.  The one thing I have noticed from the video is that the opponents will get up instantly if they get knocked over. That means their down-time decreases with each round (as far as I can tell, my character's stay the same no matter the round), and probably confirms I don't bother with the super shots after a while.

Mostly talking to myself here, I suppose, but all that to say that I'll probably give it a few more serious attempts, but if I'm still not making progress I'll probably switch to something else.

Sounds terrible. Drives me crazy when the CPU gives itself a built-in advantage in what was supposed to be a game of strategy.

[Splain | 2,571]

I beat Desert Strike. I thought it was a really bad adaptation from console because I couldn't figure out why I was failing missions, and I figured there was more explanation in some other version. But I checked the manual and they actually give you loads of info about everything, you just have to learn the button combos to be able to view it all. So it ended up being a pretty dope game. Easy top 100.

[Splain | 2,571]

I beat Jeopardy. Nothing to be proud of, but I need to report what happened on my first attempt, which is an example of why I consider the 4 Jeopardy games as among the very worst games in the GB library.

There I was, playing along, largely letting the CPU answer as many as possible, so I could let it run while I did other things. The CPU tends to do slightly better than 50/50. Ideally, you want to reach Final Jeopardy with enough of a lead that you can wager $0 and still win. Well, I hadn't; I had only answered (questioned) a handful of questions (answers), and I was only a couple hundred bucks in the lead, so I went ahead and bet it all. The clue was "the number of zeroes in a trillion." I counted them on my fingers and entered "12," having given responses earlier in the game that accepted nothing but numerals, when the correct response was supposed to be a number. Do you know what the correct response was? It was "12/TWELVE" and I lost it all. I was supposed to enter 12, then a slash, then the word twelve. Just 12 was not correct. Will I at least get that one right the next time I see it? No. THERE IS NO SLASH ON THE IN-GAME KEYBOARD. Realllllly bottom of the barrel stuff here.

I took a deep breath and tried again. I wanted to get a picture of the ending screen, but it cycled to the title before I had focused the camera.

[koifish | 556]

Glad that my Ivan Stewart strat helped you. Jeopardy has some horrific design. You can get a few 1000 dollar questions right in the first round and then just set the game down; the AI will never fail to answer questions wrong and defeat their own progress. I may be exaggerating as it has been over a year since I conquered those games, but that's how I remember it going down. It was better that way tbh, actually playing the game was not very fun.

 

[Splain | 2,571]

Beat Word Zap again. Love me some Word Zap.

[Floating Platforms | 720]

Took a break from Game Boy last week and taking a further break from Penguin Wars this week (did reach 22/40, though).

Last night I moved to the next game on my list and beat T2: The Arcade Game with the best ending.

There are actually two different endings for this one as far as I know. From what I could tell with SNES documentation, it's all based on the Cyberdyne level.  If you destroy all the equipment (there is a counter), then you get the good ending.  The screen below the image I pasted says "Cyberdyne has been destroyed."  If you leave even one piece of equipment, then it says that Judgment Day could still happen and you don't get this screen at all - I referenced NintendoComplete's GB playthrough video to confirm the difference afterwards.

As for the game itself, it's not good.  The hit boxes are very finicky and small.  The enemies will drain your health extremely quickly, especially if you have more than one on the screen shooting you.  There are a couple areas where you are guaranteed to die at least once if not twice due to the onslaught and bad hit detection.  You only get three continues before the game over and starting from scratch, so every life counts. The basic grunt robot enemies will appear semi-randomly and also drop random power-ups, so while you can learn the levels to a degree, there will always be a bit of RNG at play. There's no music during the stages and I imagine that's to maximize the graphical side. Even with a bunch of robots on the screen, I didn't notice any slowdown. The levels have a great amount of detail and the sprites look great.  Unfortunately the story is told in text only.  It would be great to see a couple digitized screenshots to flesh it out.  I had a hell of a time with the final boss. I was trying everything I could think of and eventually did look it up to find out I was doing the right thing, but the stinking hit box was evidently off-line just enough all those previous shots to not finish him off.  Glad to be done with this, but I know the T-1000 will return when I get around to playing "Judgment Day"

Next up for me is going to be Dragonheart and then I'll throw some more hours into Penguin Wars.

[Floating Platforms | 720]

On 7/17/2020 at 11:39 PM, Splain said:

Beat Word Zap again. Love me some Word Zap.

 

How is Word Zap time-wise?  I saw one streamer put in 20 hours into that.  With no passwords or saves, seems intimidating, but maybe it's all about being good at that type of puzzle?

[Splain | 2,571]

2 hours ago, Floating Platforms said:

How is Word Zap time-wise?  I saw one streamer put in 20 hours into that.  With no passwords or saves, seems intimidating, but maybe it's all about being good at that type of puzzle?

There are 2 game modes, one that goes on forever, and one with a definite ending. The forever one is a strictly 2-player game, so you play against the CPU. I've played that mode up past round 99 and the round counter glitches, if I remember right. I took that mode out of the requirement because of the other mode, but maybe I should check out some streams to see if/how they consider it beaten. The beatable mode usually takes me a couple of hours to beat, or even longer if I set my SP down in the middle of a game, and my 1-year-old happens to find it and yank the game out lol.

If there's some end to the first mode, then I'm happy to chase after it, because I'm a total word game nerd. I'll look into it.

[Floating Platforms | 720]

4 hours ago, Splain said:

The beatable mode usually takes me a couple of hours to beat, or even longer if I set my SP down in the middle of a game, and my 1-year-old happens to find it and yank the game out lol.

Interesting.  As far as I know the 20 hours was for the beatable mode.  I keep a spreadsheet to try to track completion times for streamers/YouTubers that are doing or tried doing the GB console challenge.  I only have two times to reference - one was 4 hours, and the other was 20.  Maybe he explored other modes first and that was most of the time spent.  Doubt I'll get to it myself for a long time either way, but good to know that I may not have to keep the system on for days straight!

[Splain | 2,571]

@Floating Platforms Do you have a link to the 20-hour? I'd be interested to skim it. There are 3 difficulty settings, and the in-game dictionary saves the harder, less-common words for the higher difficulty settings. That definitely increases the time, when you have to literally just try random stuff to see if it's a word. Because nobody knows all those words lol. Maybe that had something to do with it.

[Floating Platforms | 720]

@Splain Unfortunately no.  The guy only posted the end screens/final minutes and not the full playthroughs.  And looking today, it seems like he deleted his entire YouTube channel now, which is too bad.  He was doing the GB library in chronological release order and almost got through 1992 before apparently stopping for good.

Oh, another random question on a game I won't play for years.  Any reason why Arcade Classics 4 hasn't been conquered yet that you know of? Of the 5-pointers, that one seems like it would be finished nearly every year like the other 3.

[bronzeshield | 293]

3 hours ago, Floating Platforms said:

@Splain Unfortunately no.  The guy only posted the end screens/final minutes and not the full playthroughs.  And looking today, it seems like he deleted his entire YouTube channel now, which is too bad.  He was doing the GB library in chronological release order and almost got through 1992 before apparently stopping for good.

Out of curiosity, what was the username? I keep track of all the people who do full libraries, so if that project's been nuked I'd like to update my records.

[Floating Platforms | 720]

3 hours ago, bronzeshield said:

Out of curiosity, what was the username? I keep track of all the people who do full libraries, so if that project's been nuked I'd like to update my records.

Sure. The one I was referencing was Playcated.  Currently for Original GB, I track times for these console challengers besides him and myself.  John Carls (largely inactive), Belthic Gaming (formerly eBloodyCandy - also on a hiatus, but understand he will return at some point), Moelleuh (currently active), Atroz (nothing in 2020), Zenic Reverie (nothing in 2020), Sprinting Legs (largely inactive), Grannen Hiro (done with his SCN coded challenge).

If there are any other Original GB runners that you have that I'm missing, I'd be happy to learn about them.

[Splain | 2,571]

Great list. There's a few I haven't heard of, I'll have to check them out. I never would have gotten through Gear Works if it weren't for Zenic Reverie's video. I even credited him when I wrote a Gear Works FAQ on GameFaqs a couple years back.

As for Arcade Classics 4, I was wondering the same thing recently. But I can't stand Defender for some reason, so that's why I personally haven't cleared it

[Splain | 2,571]

Beat Urban Strike. This game is a funny entry in the Desert/Jungle/Urban Strike trilogy, because it's a lot jankier than the previous 2, and it has a crazy over-the-top storyline. I expected an epic ending after I completed the game, but it just flashes this credits screen and that's it.

[bronzeshield | 293]

On 7/23/2020 at 1:35 AM, Floating Platforms said:

Sure. The one I was referencing was Playcated.  Currently for Original GB, I track times for these console challengers besides him and myself.  John Carls (largely inactive), Belthic Gaming (formerly eBloodyCandy - also on a hiatus, but understand he will return at some point), Moelleuh (currently active), Atroz (nothing in 2020), Zenic Reverie (nothing in 2020), Sprinting Legs (largely inactive), Grannen Hiro (done with his SCN coded challenge).

If there are any other Original GB runners that you have that I'm missing, I'd be happy to learn about them.

Wow, that's many more than I knew about! I had you, johncarls, Zenic, and Grannen Hiro. I'll have to check out the others, especially Moelleuh. Too bad Playcated pulled down all his (?) videos; it looks like the Twitch channel is pretty bare as well.

[koifish | 556]

I'm working now on completing Avenging Spirit, currently halfway through. It is tougher than I expected.

Afterward, I'd like to tackle Altered Space, it's a pretty fun game now that I've tried it.

 

[Floating Platforms | 720]

I spent the last couple nights working on Penguin Wars through an emulator using save states after each and every win, and it still took me around 4 hours to get through the last 20 matches.  I wanted to do this to see what kind of progression I was looking at and confirm the NA version has the end screen, since the video Splain found was PAL region.

I couldn't really tell a difference in those last 20 matches.  The obstacles show up 10 seconds in and the balls will fall down from half way at varying speeds each of those rounds. The opponents are always aggressive and didn't notice any difference in their strategy.  I did notice that I'm not good at combating their strategy.

As for the ending screen, unfortunately it does indeed exist.  I was kinda hoping it was PAL only.

I don't think I have the ability to do all 40 in one full run.  For my personal challenge, I've decided I'm going to use the stage select code (which is really a cycle select as it will put you at the start of whichever of the 10 cycles of 4 matches chosen) and beat each cycle in one run.  My current PB on 1 "credit" was stage 23, so I would do 21-24 with one life as many times as needed and if I pass, allow myself to use the code for 25-28, etc.

So while it won't count for this challenge, it will be enough for me to be satisfied to claim some sort of victory and put it aside for now with the asterisk attached.

Then I'll move on to Dragonheart, because I haven't started that one yet.