Beat the SNES Library - 305/714

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

14 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Top 25 on the system imo

Your probably right. Super Nintendo kinda sucks like that.

Edited May 28, 2022 by docile tapeworm

[Reed Rothchild | 9,520]

Knocked out more low-hanging fruit: Battle Blaze and Emmitt Smith Football are done.

And then reviewing the list, I cleared Brawl Brothers, Peacekeepers, and Civilization in the last year or so for my project, but evidently never think to check here.

[MagusSmurf | 577]

In some “totally unhelpful for the main goal of the thread” news, beat SMT I, II, and If...

i and II were okay (6/10), If... was fairly poor (4/10). If anything that might be slightly generous to all the games involved there.

Spoiler

Special mention to SMT1’s Gabriel boss fight. Gamefaqs claims she has 1700 HP, which is kinda low for that part of the game (the final bosses aren’t far from her and have 10k each) but she has an annoying immunity to normal sword attacks so it would make sense. In both my recent playthrough and my previous one around 2015ish, she...certainly did not have 1700 HP. I strongly suspect she had whatever the maximum possible value was (probably 65,536 or 65,535?) or maybe that minus 1700. It says a lot about SMT1’s combat system that the fight was still easily manageable like this, just really time consuming - put on autobattle, go watch something while putting the emulator in a small window, stop to heal when she actually manages to have racked up decent damage on you, win like half an hour later.

This has happened to me twice now yet doesn’t seem to be widely noted as a thing despite the game being fairly notable and having been fan-translated for 20 years so I strongly suspect Orden’s “bug fix” patch improving on Aeon Genesis’s original broke some additional things at some version. This wasn’t even the only big glitch I got in SMT1 or even the worst, but was probably the funniest. Sane people should just go play the now-translated GBA version instead.

I’m starting to wonder (haven’t played it myself yet) if part of the reason for Nocturne’s enduring reputation is that nothing before it in this franchise really holds up and people are too polite or too big a fan of the franchise to say it that directly? Was unimpressed with Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei as well, Last Bible 1 was bad and 2 was underwhelming although I honestly didn’t expect much better from early 90s Game Boy RPGs, am midway through Majin Tensei 1 and it’s terrible, nobody seems to like Persona 1, I always hear “good story, bad gameplay” for the Persona 2 games...At this point if Jack Bros. on Virtual Boy turns out to be the best pre-Nocturne SMT game just from being a decent action game I will not be surprised.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,520]

On 5/30/2022 at 11:03 AM, MagusSmurf said:

beat SMT I, II, and If...

Holy God...

edit: Or maybe I should say "Holy Satan"

[Reed Rothchild | 9,520]

My only insight is that Persona and Soul Hackers (the two pre-Nocturne titles I've played extensively) are indeed rough in many ways, and lacking in QoL stuff.

Nocturne itself is pretty brutal and unforgiving in many ways, especially if you don't already have the franchise's general strategy beats down.  But it's super playable today.

The stuff after Nocturne is were they really honed it.  4 (and it's sequel) are my favorites.

[MagusSmurf | 577]

Finally beat Majin Tensei.

If you’ve ever wondered why this game went untranslated until like 2019 and after its sequel already had a patch, turns out there was probably a good reason: it sucks.

It’s the worst JRPG I’ve beaten.

The mechanics, map design, and balancing are bad and would have resulted in a below average game regardless. And then toss in how slow the whole thing is. There’s no way to turn off the battle screens or speed things up and combined with some particular quirks of this game it’s basically the slowest Strategy RPG ever with gameplay that wouldn’t be good even if it was fast.

If the developers had called it a day at that point and completely phoned things in, this game might have merely been some level of bad rather than totally awful. Unfortunately, instead it’s 59 maps long. There’s an unbelievable amount of dreadful content you have to get through to beat the game. Combined with the slow speed and a lot of overly big, boring maps and the game is over 60 hours long. If you’re making a bad game anyways, don’t make so damn much of it! I only got through this by watching anime while playing it.

This is now the only game I have given a 1/10 to. 

[Daniel_Doyce | 470]

On 5/14/2022 at 8:46 PM, Daniel_Doyce said:

I am going to try King Arthur & the Knights of Justice next

This was a bad choice, but I'll see it through. I don't like it at all though.

Excited about some of the games in Reed's top 25 SNES games that still haven't been beaten yet, like Brandish and RoTK2. Liberty or Death and Inindo too but those have been beaten already.

[MagusSmurf | 577]

Tenchi Muyo Game-Hen. 4/10

It’s a generally pretty easy, basic, and short Strategy-RPG (12 playable characters, only 4 can come to any particular map, the level cap is 8). It’s based on the anime franchise you might recognize from the Toonami days.

Big problems:

1. Enemy reinforcements appear out of nowhere without warning, generally act before you get a chance to react, and almost every map in the game had “destroy all enemies” as its victory condition so more suddenly appearing totally screws with your plans.

2. Around halfway through the game took away one of my party members? Eh. She was Level 6 and the game just gave me two new ones at Level 4, not too bad. And then after the next battle, another of my main party was also made unavailable for story reason. And then the game threw a six-battle no-saving gauntlet at me wherein I had to alternate between two groups of four....but the game never warned me about this until I was choosing who to use on battle 2/6 and, being down to my 7th through 10th choices of characters, all of whom were at Level 1 and 2, I game overed for the only time in the playthrough. 

The final battle being a seven-map gauntlet (and with the first missing character still not back yet at the start) was also not exactly my favorite design decision.

If you’re not a Tenchi fan you should stay away and if you are...well, the game’s still not particularly good, including the story. It’s kind of neat that this game exists I guess?

It was certainly a hell of a lot better than Majin Tensei though!

[LHCGreg | 111]

Mr. Nutz is done. It was harder than I expected for a mascot platformer. The final boss is ridiculous.

 

[LHCGreg | 111]

And Rival Turf is done. Hitboxes are wonky and Jack can't safely combo enemies except when in Angry Mode so you rely a lot on grabs, turning this beat em up into a throw em up.

 

[Philosoraptor | 468]

Kirby Super Star is done. 

I've never played this one before, but it lived up to the hype. It's amazing how much it improves upon the previous games in the series and how much was borrowed from this game and reused in the Smash franchise.

[Daniel_Doyce | 470]

On 7/10/2022 at 12:49 PM, LHCGreg said:

Mr. Nutz is done. It was harder than I expected for a mascot platformer. The final boss is ridiculous.

 

looks like you handled doze Nutz like a pro!

[Philosoraptor | 468]

On 7/2/2022 at 6:22 AM, MagusSmurf said:

Tenchi Muyo Game-Hen. 4/10

Honestly, because I saw the grade you gave this game, I ended up beating this one yesterday. I figured since it's been on my shelf since 2015 and I'm a massive Tenchi Muyo fan, maybe I'll find something redeeming about it. How bad could it be?

Well, to add on to the great points brought up by MagusSmurf:

• The sprites are nice and the well-executed translation captures the spirit of the show, but the story isn't anything to write home about.
• The game chugs with the maximum number of characters on the map (8 — 4 allies and 4 enemies). Simply using fewer characters causes the game to run significantly smoother, but the character limitation significantly hampers any creativity that the devs could have had with the stage designs. 
• At most, 4 additional reinforcements/enemies may spawn if you don't kill the first 4 quick enough.
• The characters and enemies who canonically can teleport do so to move. The rest lumber or slowly penguin walk like an action figure without any leg articulation.
• The stages are all basically the same. They're all 5x10 - 5x20 corridors with maybe some holes in the floor thrown in to spice things up. Feast your eyes on THIS SPICINESS: 

          

• The game is mercifully short. Less than 10 hours. It's honestly what keeps the score as high as it is. If it was significantly longer, it would be much, much worse.
• There are no advanced mechanics to be found here: no weapon triangles, no equipment, no items, no elemental attacks, no height advantages, and no terrain. Also, no new mechanics are introduced throughout the playthrough, making this one of the simplest SPRGs out there.
• Some bosses have AoE attacks, but the standard enemies will only attack one character at a time. Depending on whether your allies can transform, they have either 4 or 8 attacks when they hit the maximum level. 

Overall...

I agree with @MagusSmurf and give it a sad Ayeka/10.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,520]

Took a break from UWNH to knock out short low-hanging fruit: Blues Brothers and Combatribes

[Philosoraptor | 468]

Doomsday Warrior is done. 

When I was reading through snesrankings.com, I noticed that this game was the lowest rated game I owned. By a lot. a lot a lot. #680 of 714. Ouch.

I popped this in hoping to have at least a modicum of fun, and there really wasn't any to be had. How do they have nine button configuration options and zero that are actually good? Why is block LT or RT? Why is jump assigned to a button and not up on the D-pad? WHY?

I did appreciate the attempt at an RPG-style leveling system between fights, but punches and kicks never did enough to do noticeable damage. Specials use Guile-style button inputs that make you easily hit by opponents' specials (hold back and then press forward plus a button, for example). In later rounds, opponents slowly heal damage ans take less damage at the end of their health bar, making slower strategies ineffective. So, what's left? Throws. Lots and lots of throws. Daisy is the quickest and has the easiest throws to execute (hold forward and push kick when close to an enemy), so that's who I beat the game with. 

I've played a few other bad fighters this year, and, shockingly, this isn't the absolute worst. I ended up giving it a 3.5. Doomsday Warrior currently holds the silver, but Brutal: Paws of Fury on the Sega CD is the Lance Armstrong of the "worst 2D fighter" bicycle race.

[Philosoraptor | 468]

On the Ball is done!

This is a fantastic game. It makes great use of Mode 7 and the controls are spot on. The difficulty is really fair, as the game gives you three continues in each round, and each continue refills your timer. The courses never get same-y, either. It's a good time that I'd gladly return to in the coming years. I may be a bit biased because I love these types of games, but IMO, this game is a solid 9/10. 

[MagusSmurf | 577]

"A 16-bit 2-D platformer by a well-known, well-liked Japanese developer? It can't be bad!"

*A few hours later.*

Eh. I guess it wasn't bad, really, but a bit subpar. 4/10 for Smart Ball.

[MagusSmurf | 577]

Didn’t take a picture but I beat HyperZone.

I guess its passable. 5/10

[LHCGreg | 111]

On 6/25/2022 at 1:08 AM, Daniel_Doyce said:

This was a bad choice, but I'll see it through. I don't like it at all though.

Excited about some of the games in Reed's top 25 SNES games that still haven't been beaten yet, like Brandish and RoTK2. Liberty or Death and Inindo too but those have been beaten already.

Are you ok @Daniel_Doyce? Did the knights of justice defeat you?

[Daniel_Doyce | 470]

3 hours ago, LHCGreg said:

Are you ok @Daniel_Doyce? Did the knights of justice defeat you?

ugh, are you going to hold me accountable to finish that damn game? yeah yeah I will

[Tablew/chairs | 242]

Looney tunes b-ball

[MagusSmurf | 577]

So, the completion criteria for Super Off-Road of "1st place after 99 races" seems to have been inappropriately copied from the NES thread a couple years back. Both threads seem to have originally had a different requirement but then the_wizard_666 made this post over there:

Quote

So I was just looking on the requirements list, and saw Super Off Road has a lesser requirement than it should...

IVAN IRONMAN STEWART'S SUPER OFF-ROAD (Tradewest)
-For years this was one of those games that I thought went on forever. I don't
even remember how many races I went through to mark this game as "beaten"
back when I beat it around 1990. It always bugged me that I wasn't sure
exactly, so for some reason I decided to get back into it, figuring it would
eventually end around the magic number of 255 races. However, I was surprised
when I finished Race 99 and instead of going to the next race after showing
my racer on the stand with the trophy as usual, it went to a high scorer's
screen called "The Ironman Club." Leave it at this screen for a bit and it
returns you to the number of players selection screen. So after all these
years, it turns out we have a definitive answer to a game that I always
thought repeated infinitely. 99 races in all!

There's actually a definitive ending, so using a "loop point" rule doesn't work for it.

This sounds like probably the appropriate requirement for the NES version

Problem: This concept of an "overall 1st place" doesn't exist in the SNES version. The game just doesn't openly track overall standings or even the number of races you're done so far. So yeah, the one we've got just doesn't work.

(to clarify, Bearcat_Doug's completion of the SNES game predated the_wizard_666's above quoted post so he's done nothing dishonest here; presumably he did complete, uh, whatever requirement we had previously?)

[Reed Rothchild | 9,520]

My memory says if you reach some sort of hidden milestone, "something" happens...

An amount of cash? 

[TDIRunner | 2,733]

A few nights ago, I was playing Top Gear 2 while testing my new 8BitDo SNES gamepad and I completed and won several tournaments in a row.  I'm not sure what you are using to determine "beating" Top Gear 2, but maybe that's enough.  If you are using different requirements, let me know.  Unfortunately I didn't take a picture because, I completely forgot about this thread until just now when I saw it appear in my unread content.  However, I could probably do it again pretty easily if need be.  I've always loved that game, so I don't mind playing it a little more if I have to.

[MagusSmurf | 577]

Super Ninja Boy.

That was bad but not really notably so. Squeaks out a 4/10.