NES Completions thread 2021 - 665/677

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,073]

Finally beat Ultima V!

This was a weird game overall. You just get thrown into a pretty big open world without a clear idea of what you have to do. I even read the manual online and was still just aimlessly roaming throughout the world, speaking to all kinds of people and occasionally trying out a dungeon or two. But you don't get anything out of them so I was still clueless.

Roughly 8 hours or so into the game I finally came someone on an island who told me what I had to do. Basically it goes like this: Go to eight shrines of virtues, then to the Codex and back to the shrines for permanent stat boosts. After that you have to go through the dungeons and find certain key items before tackling the final dungeon. But before you can accept any of the shrine quests or enter any of the dungeons you have to get the passwords from certain people all over the world. So that means travelling to all kinds of places, talking to people over and over again, because sometimes new dialogue choices open up, and buying a bunch of key items.

First of all you will want to buy the lockpick in Paws and then the skiff and magic key in Serpent's Hold far to the south. The manual or online guides say that the keys are single use items, but it's not true. Just buy one of each and you can use them indefinitely. In Paws you'll also get a Music Sheet and with that and the lockpick you can get into Lord British's chamber to steal, I mean rent, his flying carpet and the sandalwood box by playing on his piano. Finally, you need a grappling hook for which you have to talk to someone in Buccaneer's Den and then Empathy Abbey. After that you're pretty much free to go wherever you want.

After obtaining all of these items (and a few more) you'll have to find three shards in the dungeons, summon the shadowlords in certain places and kill them by throwing the shards into an open fire. After that you'll need to collect all of Lord British's items and bring them to the final dungeon called "Doom".

That's it. There's no final boss or epic fight. You just walk around endlessly throughout the world looking for key items and only sometimes beating up baddies. However, the battles have next to zero depth. You just spam your attack and usually that's enough. 90% of the enemies can't even hurt you and the remaining enemies will kill you with one or two hits until you get better equipment. What sucks though is that most of the spells or support and healing items are just useless garbage. All I ever needed were a few ingredients for the cure poison and heal spell and that was it. They're dirt cheap and you can spam those spells as much as you want. I didn't even need any elaborate strategy since all of those fights were completely trivial.

Even searching through the dungeons hoping to find useful equipment is mostly useless. The useful equipment is way too expensive for you to afford regularly, instead you can just find all of the good stuff in the dungeon Covetus. After that you'll probably never need to buy any piece of armor or any weapon ever again. Besides, getting gold is awful and tedious. This is because enemies don't drop money or loot. Instead you have to find the occasional armor or weapon inside a dungeon and sell them. However, you can't sell them to any merchant. Instead you will have to travel the entire damn world only to find a specific merchant who will buy and sell maces or halberds or chain mails or whatever.

Even the looting and buying and selling is extremely annoying and tedious! Especially when you consider your extremely limited inventory space. So the whole economy of the game is pretty bonkers. Besides, there's only a limited amount of equipment and gold that you can find in the dungeons meaning that the money in the entire game is very limited and not enough to buy the best equipment. Btw. the battles are also pointless since you don't gain anything from them other than a few experience points for youor protagonist. But gaining a few levels didn't do much for me. Actually, I didn't notice any difference to before.

So overall this is a really weak RPG in my book. Battles are nothing but a nuisance and you don't get any satisfaction from killing a bunch of enemies or searching and looting dungeons. Instead this game seemed more like an adventure game to me with its constant fetch quests and the collecting of key items. In that way it was sort of decent, but it didn't scratch that itch that normal RPGs usually do. After this and Ultima Exodus (which I only tried for a few hours) I somehow doubt that I will ever become a fan of the Ultima series. Also, sorry for the long rant.

Edited October 27, 2021 by Gaia Gensouki

[NESfiend | 1,515]

8 hours ago, Khromak said:

Finally beat tecmo cup soccer game.

Actually quite fun 

 

You beat the second half of the game in one day!? Thats crazy impressive. And it makes sense that you have to lose some to get players skill sets up. That makes it in even wilder you did it that fast. 

Glad the tecmo cup soccer game has another person in the fan club. I think now we can almost fill the chairs at a standard sized dinner table. Ive been saying its underrated for years, but no one seems to care lol

[scaryice | 587]

Power Punch II - It's not good, but based on what I've played of Ring King and George Foreman, it's better than those two. I was able to beat most of the guys without any help, at least until I got to the second tank guy. Him, Hammerhands, and Fly Mo were very tough and thankfully there's a nice guide to make things manageable. The best tip is simply to nail the training sessions. Abuse the pause button to make sure you get every one, because those increase your stats. If you start the game failing or skipping the training, you'll have no chance.

Edited October 28, 2021 by scaryice

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,073]

Does anybody maybe have some advice for The Black Bass? I gave this game a bunch of tries and managed to get to rank B. However, now that I'm at Japan lake I can hardly catch any fish. They bite even less often than before and even when they do, they usually tear the fishing line apart. As a result I've been constantly falling back to rank C and I can't figure out how to progress.

[Khromak | 768]

Can someone clarify for me what beating all modes in Dance Aerobics consists of? Ditto seems to just go on for a while and then stop and reset. Is there a goal, like get 100 points or something?

For Mat Melodies is there an end or is it just infinite looping song(s)?

Wikipedia says that Aerobics mode has no progression, do I still need to "clear" that by getting through all 4 songs?

Normal mode seems pretty straightforward, clear all 8 classes.

Are there end screens after any/all of these modes? Not only for this contest but for my own little collection of video game end screens, I'd like to get all the end game captures there are to be gotten here.

[Tablew/chairs | 242]

2 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

Does anybody maybe have some advice for The Black Bass? I gave this game a bunch of tries and managed to get to rank B. However, now that I'm at Japan lake I can hardly catch any fish. They bite even less often than before and even when they do, they usually tear the fishing line apart. As a result I've been constantly falling back to rank C and I can't figure out how to progress.

It’s a tough game for sure especially when the thread’s still requiring being ranked first on the last day.  Are you using the hint from the manual that changes the meter to show how well you’re using the lure?  I beat it a few years ago I probably shared my thoughts then but that was on nintendoage so not sure if you’ll be able to find it.  There’s a good amount of luck involved. 
 

edit: I found some of my pictures looks like I used red pencil bait and it appears that on the winning day I caught 5 bass ranging from 10-18 lbs and that was enough to do it

Edited October 28, 2021 by Tablew/chairs

[Tablew/chairs | 242]

6 minutes ago, Khromak said:

Can someone clarify for me what beating all modes in Dance Aerobics consists of? Ditto seems to just go on for a while and then stop and reset. Is there a goal, like get 100 points or something?

For Mat Melodies is there an end or is it just infinite looping song(s)?

Wikipedia says that Aerobics mode has no progression, do I still need to "clear" that by getting through all 4 songs?

Normal mode seems pretty straightforward, clear all 8 classes.

Are there end screens after any/all of these modes? Not only for this contest but for my own little collection of video game end screens, I'd like to get all the end game captures there are to be gotten here.

Not sure about all the modes but there’s definitely an ending screen where your character is wearing like a crown or something 

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,073]

7 hours ago, Tablew/chairs said:

It’s a tough game for sure especially when the thread’s still requiring being ranked first on the last day.  Are you using the hint from the manual that changes the meter to show how well you’re using the lure?  I beat it a few years ago I probably shared my thoughts then but that was on nintendoage so not sure if you’ll be able to find it.  There’s a good amount of luck involved. 

Thanks. That would explain why this game is still up there on the unbeaten list. I'll try some, but I'm not sure if I can actually beat it. So if anybody else wants to give it a try, then you don't need to be considerate of me.

[scaryice | 587]

9 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

Thanks. That would explain why this game is still up there on the unbeaten list. I'll try some, but I'm not sure if I can actually beat it. So if anybody else wants to give it a try, then you don't need to be considerate of me.

I know Black Bass is a game where people talked before about the winning condition maybe should be changed to just winning a single class A tournament (and then finishing the season). It seems like that might be a decent idea, what do you guys think?

[Crabmaster2000 | 501]

I know it's not technically part of the challenge, but after 119 days since starting I was able to finally finish every lesson on Miracle Piano. It was a HUGE endurance test for me especially the last 6 or so songs. Really proud to be done with this one, which only leaves me with 4 more NES games to beat for the entire licensed library!

 

 

Edited October 29, 2021 by Crabmaster2000
Spelled

[Crabmaster2000 | 501]

5 hours ago, scaryice said:

I know Black Bass is a game where people talked before about the winning condition maybe should be changed to just winning a single class A tournament (and then finishing the season). It seems like that might be a decent idea, what do you guys think?

Yeah just winning a Class A Tournament and then running out the season is the way to go I think. The ending is identical either way. You're only lining up your tournament win with the last lake with the current condition even though it doesn't make a difference to the ending. 

[NESfiend | 1,515]

On 10/28/2021 at 5:21 AM, scaryice said:

Power Punch II - It's not good, but based on what I've played of Ring King and George Foreman, it's better than those two. I was able to beat most of the guys without any help, at least until I got to the second tank guy. Him, Hammerhands, and Fly Mo were very tough and thankfully there's a nice guide to make things manageable. The best tip is simply to nail the training sessions. Abuse the pause button to make sure you get every one, because those increase your stats. If you start the game failing or skipping the training, you'll have no chance.

I bought this game at some point in part to play through it for the completions thread. Not sure what I was doing that I never really played it, but hopefully Ill tackle it for 2022. Video makes it look like it has to be decent at least. 

For you, @Gaia Gensouki, @Daniel_Doyce, @Khromakand anyone else I am missing who is playing through tough games late, I am now 21-1 in BL2. Looking like your efforts wont be in vain if the list is otherwise cleared

Edited October 30, 2021 by NESfiend

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

1 hour ago, NESfiend said:

I bought this game at some point in part to play through it for the completions thread. Not sure what I was doing that I never really played it, but hopefully Ill tackle it for 2022. Video makes it look like it has to be decent at least.

It's not great, but not terrible either.  Doesn't live up to the first one though...

[NESfiend | 1,515]

10 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

It's not great, but not terrible either.  Doesn't live up to the first one though...

Its a great baseball game imo. I like 3s gameplay the best, then 2, and Ive never been able to get into 1. I played 2 and 3 as a kid, but never 1, so that probably has a lot to do with it

Even being a big fan of the game, the season is just stupidly long. 80 games of anything will wear you down. But a couple games here and there half asleep and watching tv isnt a bad way to pass time 

Edited October 30, 2021 by NESfiend

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

3 hours ago, NESfiend said:

Its a great baseball game imo. I like 3s gameplay the best, then 2, and Ive never been able to get into 1. I played 2 and 3 as a kid, but never 1, so that probably has a lot to do with it

Even being a big fan of the game, the season is just stupidly long. 80 games of anything will wear you down. But a couple games here and there half asleep and watching tv isnt a bad way to pass time 

Note that I was replying to the first half of the quoted post (which is why I deleted the bottom).  I was referring to Power Punch II, not Bases Loaded II

[NESfiend | 1,515]

1 hour ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Note that I was replying to the first half of the quoted post (which is why I deleted the bottom).  I was referring to Power Punch II, not Bases Loaded II

Ahh my mistake. What is the first power punch? Famicom only?

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

14 minutes ago, NESfiend said:

Ahh my mistake. What is the first power punch? Famicom only?

Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!

Seriously, there's a whole story about it, but it was basically pitched as a sequel to Punch Out, where Mike Tyson would go intergalactic.  Nintendo rejected it, and Tyson was in jail, so they rebranded it and put it out themselves.  There actually was no Power Punch 1.

[NESfiend | 1,515]

12 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!

Seriously, there's a whole story about it, but it was basically pitched as a sequel to Punch Out, where Mike Tyson would go intergalactic.  Nintendo rejected it, and Tyson was in jail, so they rebranded it and put it out themselves.  There actually was no Power Punch 1.

Actually that rings a bell now that you mention it and the back of the character looks just like tyson

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

44 minutes ago, NESfiend said:

Actually that rings a bell now that you mention it and the back of the character looks just like tyson

He's also named "Mike Tyler"

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,073]

I'm finally done with The Black Bass! Once I've figured out how it works it was quite decent, but even winning the final tournament and getting first place was just insanely difficult, imho. No wonder that it's a 9 point game. Still, catching a 12+ lb black bass felt more like luck than anything else.

Spoiler

 

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

23 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

He's also named "Mike Tyler"

I guess "Tyson Michaels" would have been too obvious.  

[scaryice | 587]

On 10/30/2021 at 4:49 PM, the_wizard_666 said:

He's also named "Mike Tyler"

It's Mark Tyler. Also, he knew he could win and he came here to fight.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

26 minutes ago, scaryice said:

It's Mark Tyler. Also, he knew he could win and he came here to fight.

My bad.  Forgot they took an extra step away

[scaryice | 587]

Lethal Weapon done. It only took a few attempts, so not bad at all compared to everything else remaining.

[Strikezone1 | 154]

5 hours ago, scaryice said:

Lethal Weapon done. It only took a few attempts, so not bad at all compared to everything else remaining.

Nice. I'm surprised Lethal Weapon lasted on the list as long as it did this year. 

I beat it 2-3 years ago for the thread, and didn't think it was all that difficult.