NES Completions thread 2021 - 665/677

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

16 minutes ago, NESfiend said:

That would mean australian only release HES and games would be included as well. Are roms for HES and Sachen available? 

I'd really have to go back to check, but I believe the HES games were included in the PAL list when I made the initial thread.  And a quick check on my go-to ROM site (aka the first one on Google that popped up when I first started emulating) shows that the ROMs are definitely available.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

1 minute ago, Dr. Morbis said:

The reason Nintendo sued Tengen, is because of how they illegally obtained the CIC lockout information, not because they were releasing NES games; companies releasing unlicensed NES games was and is  entirely legal...

IIRC, Tengen actually won that lawsuit as well.  Reverse engineering a console falls within fair use of your own property.  Although I may be mistaken on that, but for some reason that's what sticks in my brain.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

3 minutes ago, bronzeshield said:

Fair enough! It'd be interesting to look back at the newsgroups from the 1990s and see if anyone floated an idea like that. I've never gone after a full set on any Nintendo platform, so the issue's never been on my personal radar...

I'd actually be curious to see that...but my guess is that because the games back then were dirt cheap anyway, nobody gave a shit about it.  Literally, the "licensed only" thing seems to have come up with rising prices in the market, and the fact that most unlicensed games are at least moderately rare.  Hell, of the "Big 7" top rares, six of them were unlicensed.  That coupled with a massive increase in interest (and prices) in and around 2009, and you clearly have the reason most n00bs coming in decided to forego ~ 1/8 of the library.

[bronzeshield | 293]

Just now, Dr. Morbis said:

As for the "legit" part, I'm starting to wonder if a lot of people aren't collecting unlicensed games because they think they are illegal?!?!

Naah, I wouldn't think so. I think it's more a perception that unlicensed games aren't as good (which certainly isn't correct, though there are plenty of bad unlicensed games), combined with a feeling that it opens up an endless rabbit hole. On the Famicom side, collecting or even specifying a full set of unlicensed games would be pretty much impossible; maybe people don't realize that it's much more achievable on the NES.

Also, they tend to be expensive with crappy packaging, which doesn't help. Maybe there's also a Nintendo loyalist angle of "the big N doesn't approve"? I certainly can't relate to that. Like I said, Captain Comic was the first NES game I ever bought in the post-NES era.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,090]

15 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

IIRC, Tengen actually won that lawsuit as well.  Reverse engineering a console falls within fair use of your own property.  Although I may be mistaken on that, but for some reason that's what sticks in my brain.

I believe Tengen was actually bankrupted by the never-ending court fees before the drawn out case(s) were ever fully settled...

Edited December 19, 2021 by Dr. Morbis

[NESfiend | 1,515]

6 minutes ago, Dr. Morbis said:

Yeah, most of us collectors were well aware of the difference between licensed and unlicensed; the difference is that I don't remember every coming across a "licensed-ONLY" collector back then; that is to say: specifically excluding unlicensed games from a "full set" or specifically choosing not to collect them wasn't really a thing...

Im probably a half decade or more behind you on when I passed the line on casually collecting and got into nintendo age. But I bought a lot of unlicensed shit just because the carts are unique and cool as hell. People werent hating on them or distinguishing as not part of the set, but prices were always really stagnant compared to licensed. That was another reason I bought a bunch. I thought eventually their rarity vs price margins would catch up to collectors, but it never did for whatever reason. 

Id be up for adding them. Itd be fun to try to find some cool shit in the pile because I havent given them any real shake. 

I see the merit behind the idea of shortening it to make it more realistic to finish. It was a fine idea and I enjoyed being in. But seems like most are up for playing some unlicensed stuff in 2022, so lets do it

[Dr. Morbis | 2,090]

3 minutes ago, bronzeshield said:

Also, they tend to be expensive with crappy packaging, which doesn't help.

Actually, this whole "Licensed Only" crap has actually suppressed unlicensed prices across the board to a severe degree.  For a long time the price of SE and Myriad went up hand in hand, and a list of the most expensive NES games would be almost entirely made up of unlicensed titles.  Nowadays, unlicensed prices are stagnant, while licensed prices don't seem to have a ceiling.  I mean, Myriad is by far the hardest to find US NES game, but look at it's value compared to SE (or first print black box titles, but we won't get into that.....)

[Dr. Morbis | 2,090]

3 minutes ago, NESfiend said:

I see the merit behind the idea of shortening it to make it more realistic to finish. It was a fine idea and I enjoyed being in. But seems like most are up for playing some unlicensed stuff in 2022, so lets do it

Well it's pretty much always been the case that a single man was against including unlicensed, the same guy who manually took them off the list, but he's also the best person at running a project like this that I have ever seen.  So what can you do?

I think the overwhelming majority of us or for it, but there's only guy's opinion who matters, so you'll have to take it up with him...

[bronzeshield | 293]

I found an example of a collector who sold off his licensed collection in 2007:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070203051048/https://digg.com/hardware/Guy_selling_every_NES_game_ever_made_on_eBay_With_pics

EDIT: Never mind, he sold off his unlicensed games separately. Still interesting that he divided them up, though. I wonder if this auction played a part in defining "all the NES games" as licensed-only in some people's minds?

Edited December 19, 2021 by bronzeshield

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

18 minutes ago, bronzeshield said:

EDIT: Never mind, he sold off his unlicensed games separately. Still interesting that he divided them up, though. I wonder if this auction played a part in defining "all the NES games" as licensed-only in some people's minds?

Likely the unlicensed were sold off because that's where all the money was...aside from SE, which was still pretty affordable, all the expensive games were unlicensed.

[bronzeshield | 293]

6 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Likely the unlicensed were sold off because that's where all the money was...aside from SE, which was still pretty affordable, all the expensive games were unlicensed.

Could be. I'm trying to find what the final bid was on each -- no luck so far, though the main auction looks to have reached $30K. He did describe the licensed set as "every game ever made" for the NES, apparently.

Meanwhile this was (according to the comments) a "licensed-only" auction in 2008:

https://blog.pricecharting.com/2008/04/every-nes-game-ever-made-costs-11388.html

Edited December 19, 2021 by bronzeshield

[NESfiend | 1,515]

5 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Likely the unlicensed were sold off because that's where all the money was...aside from SE, which was still pretty affordable, all the expensive games were unlicensed.

Plenty of them are still expensive enough that I wont jump to buy, but compared to their rarity, its stupid. The higher end stuff I do have, l would have a lot more trouble getting rid of than licensed stuff thats twice the price. I have an action 52 cart that is an anomaly. In a hypothetical desperate situation where Im selling like crazy, Id have a lot more trouble parting with that than an 800 dollar licensed cart, and it would probably only bring in like 250

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,075]

15 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

I feel ya man...I just don't understand collectors these days...

This is a silly and toxic attidude to take, that unfortunately seems to be present in almost any hobby out there. Just because you were there first doesn't make you any better than others. Rather, leaving other people out of the hobby by gatekeeping and elitism just hurts everyone in the long run. Your precious games would fall out of favor, which in turn would also affect modern homebrews, new third-party peripherals or even new consoles to replace the old ones that will inevitably fail some day. Then you'd be left sitting alone on a pile of useless plastic and paper.

Besides, this isn't even your lawn in the first place. NES games in general don't belong to you, neither does collecting them. Even this challenge no longer seems to belong to you since you seemed to have forfeit your rights to it by leaving the organisation of this event to scary. So collecting is not YOUR lawn. It is everyone's.

It's also ironic that you've chosen this picture considering what that movie and its story is actually about.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,075]

On 12/18/2021 at 8:20 AM, Dr. Morbis said:

...No, they're not and you're not, or both you and they would be a lot more vocal about the fact that 10% of the games are missing...

That's a lot of assumptions you make. My understanding of these threads the past 2 or 3 years was, that there was a clear goal of completing this game library, which is why this is the NES completions thread and not a "check out the US NES library" with some kind of participation trophy for trying out a game.

Some of these games I would not have played until completion during the past two years, if it wasn't for this specific goal of the challenge. To me there is a huge difference between casually playing a game or beating it with save states/cheats/rewinding etc. versus playing and beating it legitimately. E.g. Pirates is a lot of fun to mess around with, but getting 100/100 is rough. Or I really liked Air Fortress and James Bond Jr., but having to beat these twice in a row is fairly difficult and/or takes a lot of time, something that I usually wouldn't do within the span of a year.

And yet, what is the driving force for this? It's the challenge of beating all of these games within a year! If it were an all-time challenge, people would lose interest once most or all of the popular/good games had been cleared (cf. the SNES/Genesis threads). If the challenge were too huge and unrealistic to beat, then most people would give up and barely even try anymore (cf. the GB/N64 threads). Meanwhile this NES challenge is just like in that story with the three bears, i.e. not too much, but not too little. It's just right. And I think Scary does a fantastic job of managing this here and the people here had been really nice and welcoming.

As for the unlicensed games I don't really care that much about them or at least I've never felt that anything was missing. Honestly, I'd rather have PAL NES games or Famicom games added to this list rather than unlicensed, because I've never felt that they even really belonged to the library. Meanwhile PAL NES games and Famicom games are legit games that saw legit releases back in the day, so they hold much more appeal or interest to me. Beating an unlicensed NES game would feel more like beating a Steam Greenlight game to me versus beating a current AAA game.

Also, if it's about beating ALL the games, then please include all the other official releases to the challenge (but then it would become too bloated). Or if this challenge was about trying out new games, then it would be all the more reason to include international releases as well, because they are games, too. And why would you leave out the games from this device's country of origin to begin with, if your motivation really was to get people to try out new games? I bet there are many Famicom games that you've never heard of or at least never played or beat. And not every one of these games requires knowledge of Japanese. For some there are even translation patches available.

[scaryice | 588]

8 hours ago, Dr. Morbis said:

Well it's pretty much always been the case that a single man was against including unlicensed, the same guy who manually took them off the list, but he's also the best person at running a project like this that I have ever seen.  So what can you do?

I think the overwhelming majority of us or for it, but there's only guy's opinion who matters, so you'll have to take it up with him...

Not true, most people were in favor of dropping unlicensed at the time. I mean, I have the actual threads saved from NA. Of course, that only includes those who bothered to respond, and I'm sure if you two were paying attention at the time you would've opposed it. But I counted 5 people in favor, 1 against, and 1 who suggested something different:

Spoiler

My post from late 2014:

Dec 14, 2014 at 9:27:26 AM
scaryice (115)
So, I've been thinking about next year's thread. I remember last year around this time saying that I didn't want to do unlicensed again, but a number of people wanted otherwise, so we gave it another go. Unfortunately, we have even fewer unlicensed games completed this year. And even though it says 74/91, it's actually not very close to being finished. That's because of all the multicarts (especially Action 52), so in reality we're 99/156 with everything taken into consideration. There's actually quite a few more games to complete when you break it down like that.

I think for 2015, rather than try to complete unlicensed games for a third year, we should instead try to beat all licensed PAL games that weren't released in the Americas (I would say "exclusives," but some of the games were released in Japan). That should be our "side goal" for next year. Here's my reasoning (and don't say do them all, because that's not gonna happen):

1) The list is much shorter, and much more doable. It's about 35 games.

2) There's a lot of excellent games, like Gimmick & Ufouria. Plus, Banana Prince, Devil World, Hammerin' Harry, New Ghostbusters II, Over Horizon, Parodius Da - the average quality is much higher.

3) It gives us a new challenge and new games to play after two years of doing the same thing.

Thoughts?

 

 

Then, the responses (some parts of the posts removed that were talking about other stuff):

Dec 14, 2014 at 10:59:22 AM
bronzeshield (44)
^I think that's a great idea, and a wise change of scenery. Then, if 2015 meets with success, NA can try for the whole thing once and for all (US + PAL + unlicensed) in 2016.

Dec 14, 2014 at 11:15:59 AM
MrWunderful (289)
Excellent Idea- if anything, maybe a sub section *Can NA beat all PAL Exclusives in one year*

Dec 14, 2014 at 12:31:46 PM
nerdynebraskan (68)
I think that sounds ok too, scary. I do feel bad about tucking tail and running from the unlicensed list. Also, I wonder if we won't be a bit more reliant on our European members for completing some of those. Many of us here are original-only, and some of those games just don't work on US systems. (There's also fewer people around here excited to drop big bucks on rare sports carts like Rackets & Rivals and Tecmo World Cup Soccer.)

Dec 14, 2014 at 7:10:16 PM
DoctorNick (76)
The PAL idea sounds cool, I guess my vote on it would be no though, as I don't have any of those games nor any interest acquiring them (I don't play on emulators). If enough people are into it though I'd say go for it. Unlicensed seems to have minimal interest, especially considering how many of those games are pretty awful .

Dec 15, 2014 at 10:37:36 PM
Rickstilwell1 (19)
If the US licensed set was already completed in 2012, I would just remove it to force people to do something different like try to beat the SNES or Game Boy games the following year instead or go for the full PAL set including games that were released in other regions rather than just counting the exclusives. Just eliminate games that were released in the USA but weren't released in PAL regions. The SNES and Game Boy sections don't seem to get nearly as much activity because everyone's focused on redoing the NES time and again when that goal was already reached.

Dec 16, 2014 at 12:06:34 AM
Vectrex28 (130)
PAL games?! Count me in!

Dec 20, 2014 at 3:03:41 PM
WashYourFace (4)
Fine with me.
I own them all, except Mr. Gimmick.
I've even beaten some of them before and you're right, some of them are good like Parodius.

I think we got almost as far as we can with unlicensed in 2013.
Some of those games are just too buggy/unbalanced...

 

 

[Dr. Morbis | 2,090]

6 hours ago, scaryice said:

Not true, most people were in favor of dropping unlicensed at the time. I mean, I have the actual threads saved from NA. Of course, that only includes those who bothered to respond, and I'm sure if you two were paying attention at the time you would've opposed it. But I counted 5 people in favor, 1 against, and 1 who suggested something different:

  Reveal hidden contents

My post from late 2014:

Dec 14, 2014 at 9:27:26 AM
scaryice (115)
So, I've been thinking about next year's thread. I remember last year around this time saying that I didn't want to do unlicensed again, but a number of people wanted otherwise, so we gave it another go. Unfortunately, we have even fewer unlicensed games completed this year. And even though it says 74/91, it's actually not very close to being finished. That's because of all the multicarts (especially Action 52), so in reality we're 99/156 with everything taken into consideration. There's actually quite a few more games to complete when you break it down like that.

I think for 2015, rather than try to complete unlicensed games for a third year, we should instead try to beat all licensed PAL games that weren't released in the Americas (I would say "exclusives," but some of the games were released in Japan). That should be our "side goal" for next year. Here's my reasoning (and don't say do them all, because that's not gonna happen):

1) The list is much shorter, and much more doable. It's about 35 games.

2) There's a lot of excellent games, like Gimmick & Ufouria. Plus, Banana Prince, Devil World, Hammerin' Harry, New Ghostbusters II, Over Horizon, Parodius Da - the average quality is much higher.

3) It gives us a new challenge and new games to play after two years of doing the same thing.

Thoughts?

 

 

Then, the responses (some parts of the posts removed that were talking about other stuff):

Dec 14, 2014 at 10:59:22 AM
bronzeshield (44)
^I think that's a great idea, and a wise change of scenery. Then, if 2015 meets with success, NA can try for the whole thing once and for all (US + PAL + unlicensed) in 2016.

Dec 14, 2014 at 11:15:59 AM
MrWunderful (289)
Excellent Idea- if anything, maybe a sub section *Can NA beat all PAL Exclusives in one year*

Dec 14, 2014 at 12:31:46 PM
nerdynebraskan (68)
I think that sounds ok too, scary. I do feel bad about tucking tail and running from the unlicensed list. Also, I wonder if we won't be a bit more reliant on our European members for completing some of those. Many of us here are original-only, and some of those games just don't work on US systems. (There's also fewer people around here excited to drop big bucks on rare sports carts like Rackets & Rivals and Tecmo World Cup Soccer.)

Dec 14, 2014 at 7:10:16 PM
DoctorNick (76)
The PAL idea sounds cool, I guess my vote on it would be no though, as I don't have any of those games nor any interest acquiring them (I don't play on emulators). If enough people are into it though I'd say go for it. Unlicensed seems to have minimal interest, especially considering how many of those games are pretty awful .

Dec 15, 2014 at 10:37:36 PM
Rickstilwell1 (19)
If the US licensed set was already completed in 2012, I would just remove it to force people to do something different like try to beat the SNES or Game Boy games the following year instead or go for the full PAL set including games that were released in other regions rather than just counting the exclusives. Just eliminate games that were released in the USA but weren't released in PAL regions. The SNES and Game Boy sections don't seem to get nearly as much activity because everyone's focused on redoing the NES time and again when that goal was already reached.

Dec 16, 2014 at 12:06:34 AM
Vectrex28 (130)
PAL games?! Count me in!

Dec 20, 2014 at 3:03:41 PM
WashYourFace (4)
Fine with me.
I own them all, except Mr. Gimmick.
I've even beaten some of them before and you're right, some of them are good like Parodius.

I think we got almost as far as we can with unlicensed in 2013.
Some of those games are just too buggy/unbalanced...

 

 

I don't remember that post, but fair enough; at the end of the day, it's your decision, so do whatever you feel is the best both for yourself and the project in general.  Just so long as you are aware that the decision to remove unlicensed games is in direct opposition to the original scope and purpose of this project.  But it's your baby now, so do whatever you want with it...

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

14 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

This is a silly and toxic attidude to take, that unfortunately seems to be present in almost any hobby out there. Just because you were there first doesn't make you any better than others. Rather, leaving other people out of the hobby by gatekeeping and elitism just hurts everyone in the long run. Your precious games would fall out of favor, which in turn would also affect modern homebrews, new third-party peripherals or even new consoles to replace the old ones that will inevitably fail some day. Then you'd be left sitting alone on a pile of useless plastic and paper.

Besides, this isn't even your lawn in the first place. NES games in general don't belong to you, neither does collecting them. Even this challenge no longer seems to belong to you since you seemed to have forfeit your rights to it by leaving the organisation of this event to scary. So collecting is not YOUR lawn. It is everyone's.

It's also ironic that you've chosen this picture considering what that movie and its story is actually about.

You clearly missed the irony in that post...I was pretty obviously calling myself a grumpy old man in what I thought was an obvious self-depreciating way.  But I guess that's the way you youngins think these days.

 

13 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

That's a lot of assumptions you make. My understanding of these threads the past 2 or 3 years was, that there was a clear goal of completing this game library, which is why this is the NES completions thread and not a "check out the US NES library" with some kind of participation trophy for trying out a game.

Some of these games I would not have played until completion during the past two years, if it wasn't for this specific goal of the challenge. To me there is a huge difference between casually playing a game or beating it with save states/cheats/rewinding etc. versus playing and beating it legitimately. E.g. Pirates is a lot of fun to mess around with, but getting 100/100 is rough. Or I really liked Air Fortress and James Bond Jr., but having to beat these twice in a row is fairly difficult and/or takes a lot of time, something that I usually wouldn't do within the span of a year.

And yet, what is the driving force for this? It's the challenge of beating all of these games within a year! If it were an all-time challenge, people would lose interest once most or all of the popular/good games had been cleared (cf. the SNES/Genesis threads). If the challenge were too huge and unrealistic to beat, then most people would give up and barely even try anymore (cf. the GB/N64 threads). Meanwhile this NES challenge is just like in that story with the three bears, i.e. not too much, but not too little. It's just right. And I think Scary does a fantastic job of managing this here and the people here had been really nice and welcoming.

As for the unlicensed games I don't really care that much about them or at least I've never felt that anything was missing. Honestly, I'd rather have PAL NES games or Famicom games added to this list rather than unlicensed, because I've never felt that they even really belonged to the library. Meanwhile PAL NES games and Famicom games are legit games that saw legit releases back in the day, so they hold much more appeal or interest to me. Beating an unlicensed NES game would feel more like beating a Steam Greenlight game to me versus beating a current AAA game.

Also, if it's about beating ALL the games, then please include all the other official releases to the challenge (but then it would become too bloated). Or if this challenge was about trying out new games, then it would be all the more reason to include international releases as well, because they are games, too. And why would you leave out the games from this device's country of origin to begin with, if your motivation really was to get people to try out new games? I bet there are many Famicom games that you've never heard of or at least never played or beat. And not every one of these games requires knowledge of Japanese. For some there are even translation patches available.

Being that I originated the thread, I would say his "assumptions" of the intent of the thread are entirely accurate. I started it with the thinking that there were so many games I had played that take time to get into and get the full spectrum of enjoyment out of - the stated intent in my initial post was to get people to play those games that might otherwise collect dust, and see them through to the end - the good, the bad, and the horrid.  I used the "challenge" aspect to  keep the thread from stagnating when it got to the nitty-gritty (hence the 1 year instead of a never-ending timeline) and to encourage participation to get people playing those games.  You may find a new favourite, or never touch the game again, but you'd be richer for experiencing it.  The goal was never to actually succeed at the challenge, but to play the games as a community and have a bit of fun.  Also, the exclusion of Famicom was done a) because of the language barrier, and b) because it was specifically NES.  Literally every NES game was represented on my original list, insofar as was known to exist at the time (I believe it started in '09 or '10, but it may have been earlier/later...I'm getting old and the years all seem the same).  Hell, I'd be open to adding the entire Famicom library, all the Sachens, homebrews, etc, because that was the original intention - to play the games.

13 hours ago, scaryice said:

Not true, most people were in favor of dropping unlicensed at the time. I mean, I have the actual threads saved from NA. Of course, that only includes those who bothered to respond, and I'm sure if you two were paying attention at the time you would've opposed it. But I counted 5 people in favor, 1 against, and 1 who suggested something different:

  Reveal hidden contents

My post from late 2014:

Dec 14, 2014 at 9:27:26 AM
scaryice (115)
So, I've been thinking about next year's thread. I remember last year around this time saying that I didn't want to do unlicensed again, but a number of people wanted otherwise, so we gave it another go. Unfortunately, we have even fewer unlicensed games completed this year. And even though it says 74/91, it's actually not very close to being finished. That's because of all the multicarts (especially Action 52), so in reality we're 99/156 with everything taken into consideration. There's actually quite a few more games to complete when you break it down like that.

I think for 2015, rather than try to complete unlicensed games for a third year, we should instead try to beat all licensed PAL games that weren't released in the Americas (I would say "exclusives," but some of the games were released in Japan). That should be our "side goal" for next year. Here's my reasoning (and don't say do them all, because that's not gonna happen):

1) The list is much shorter, and much more doable. It's about 35 games.

2) There's a lot of excellent games, like Gimmick & Ufouria. Plus, Banana Prince, Devil World, Hammerin' Harry, New Ghostbusters II, Over Horizon, Parodius Da - the average quality is much higher.

3) It gives us a new challenge and new games to play after two years of doing the same thing.

Thoughts?

 

 

Then, the responses (some parts of the posts removed that were talking about other stuff):

Dec 14, 2014 at 10:59:22 AM
bronzeshield (44)
^I think that's a great idea, and a wise change of scenery. Then, if 2015 meets with success, NA can try for the whole thing once and for all (US + PAL + unlicensed) in 2016.

Dec 14, 2014 at 11:15:59 AM
MrWunderful (289)
Excellent Idea- if anything, maybe a sub section *Can NA beat all PAL Exclusives in one year*

Dec 14, 2014 at 12:31:46 PM
nerdynebraskan (68)
I think that sounds ok too, scary. I do feel bad about tucking tail and running from the unlicensed list. Also, I wonder if we won't be a bit more reliant on our European members for completing some of those. Many of us here are original-only, and some of those games just don't work on US systems. (There's also fewer people around here excited to drop big bucks on rare sports carts like Rackets & Rivals and Tecmo World Cup Soccer.)

Dec 14, 2014 at 7:10:16 PM
DoctorNick (76)
The PAL idea sounds cool, I guess my vote on it would be no though, as I don't have any of those games nor any interest acquiring them (I don't play on emulators). If enough people are into it though I'd say go for it. Unlicensed seems to have minimal interest, especially considering how many of those games are pretty awful .

Dec 15, 2014 at 10:37:36 PM
Rickstilwell1 (19)
If the US licensed set was already completed in 2012, I would just remove it to force people to do something different like try to beat the SNES or Game Boy games the following year instead or go for the full PAL set including games that were released in other regions rather than just counting the exclusives. Just eliminate games that were released in the USA but weren't released in PAL regions. The SNES and Game Boy sections don't seem to get nearly as much activity because everyone's focused on redoing the NES time and again when that goal was already reached.

Dec 16, 2014 at 12:06:34 AM
Vectrex28 (130)
PAL games?! Count me in!

Dec 20, 2014 at 3:03:41 PM
WashYourFace (4)
Fine with me.
I own them all, except Mr. Gimmick.
I've even beaten some of them before and you're right, some of them are good like Parodius.

I think we got almost as far as we can with unlicensed in 2013.
Some of those games are just too buggy/unbalanced...

 

 

The posts you reference are from 2014, the first time you dropped the unlicensed games.  That time it was fine, majority rules and all that.  The fact is, they were added back in 2016, and the goal was reached.  Then instead of extending the goalposts a bit further, you shrank the goal.  So basically, those posts are meaningless to the context being discussed.  Also, of those people quoted, how many are still here?  I see two names - Bronze and Nerdy.   And both their posts were in favour of adding them back in if the goal was met.  If anything, in 2017 we should've added MORE games, not fewer (iirc, you dropped ~85ish unlicensed games and added like 20 arbitrary Famicom games). 

Let me be clear, I love the way you run things.  You're on the ball, the stat management I know from experience is a LOT of work, and you also participate as much as you feasibly can.

I'm also gonna post this publicly for all to see: If you run a poll about adding the unlicensed games back in, and the majority are against it, I'll start participating again.  But the fact that they seem to have been arbitrarily excluded after success was achieved is infuriating to me.  It should be a community decision either way, because at the end of the day, this is a community challenge.  Separate the lists if you must...that seemed silly to me too, but segregation is better than outright exclusion in my books.  Oh, and if the big stumbling block is Action 52, I'm okay with removing that one...frankly, it seems more like an unfinished proto than an actual release anyway...and if one game's exclusion is what it takes to include the other 80ish games, then that's what it takes.

[Daniel_Doyce | 475]

L'Empereur is done, and saved from being in the last 10. That's all for me this year.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

Just a thought...why is Miracle Piano listed as "unbeatable" when it very clearly has an ending...

It's balls fucking hard to ever reach, but it exists.

[PII | 1,886]

2 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Just a thought...why is Miracle Piano listed as "unbeatable" when it very clearly has an ending...

It's balls fucking hard to ever reach, but it exists.

Oh, Damn!  Now I Really Gotta Get Me One A Them Keyboards!!  This Looks Like Fun !!!

[bronzeshield | 293]

If you play piano already, it doesn't look too bad. From memory (watching parts of TMR's playthrough) it has some weirdly finicky input handlers but that's really the main obstacle.

Also if you got together two people who played piano and had one person handle each hand, it'd be fairly trivial. Not sure if the rules would allow that. The game lets you go right to the Habanera so only one piece is needed to beat the game (right?).

I used to have an incomplete Miracle Piano set but got rid of it, as it didn't have the power cord or a couple other bits and bobs. Have any emulators supported MIDI input to make this doable without needing real hardware?

Edited December 24, 2021 by bronzeshield

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

1 hour ago, bronzeshield said:

If you play piano already, it doesn't look too bad. From memory (watching parts of TMR's playthrough) it has some weirdly finicky input handlers but that's really the main obstacle.

Also if you got together two people who played piano and had one person handle each hand, it'd be fairly trivial. Not sure if the rules would allow that. The game lets you go right to the Habanera so only one piece is needed to beat the game (right?).

I used to have an incomplete Miracle Piano set but got rid of it, as it didn't have the power cord or a couple other bits and bobs. Have any emulators supported MIDI input to make this doable without needing real hardware?

Yeah, the extra hardware is prohibitive for it, but that's also what should be listed, not "unbeatable," which would make it seem like it doesn't have an ending.  Not advocating for it to be added, just to be "edited for accuracy"  

[bronzeshield | 293]

It looks like some work was done in MAME to support Miracle Piano MIDI for NES and SNES, but it's not clear whether anyone's actually gotten it to work.  Will look into it!

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

There's still a week left. It might take a Christmas miracle to finish the list with a dozen games on the board.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,075]

Recently I couldn't play much due to moving and other issues. Is anybody still trying to go for some games or is this year's challenge lost? Or maybe some people haven't found their way here since the server troubles?