Beat the SNES Library - 305/714

[Reed Rothchild | 9,508]

@behemos beat Bust-A-Move

[MagusSmurf | 577]

I and a lot of other people beat Primal Rage.

[LHCGreg | 111]

It's my first NA/VGS post outside of the marketplace. Here are the SNES games I'm sure I've beaten after the date of the OP that haven't been beaten yet.

Kirby's Avalanche: April 2021. Completed on Easy and Normal. My best on Easy is 3 continues and best on Normal is 23 continues.

Skyblazer: July 3 2020.

 

Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie (SFC): February 2021. 1cc'ed with all characters on Easy and Normal, beat with all characters on Hard. I don't think Scrambled Valkyrie is as hard as people say. It's hard the first time through because it likes to throw things at you quickly that are tough to dodge if you don't know they're coming, but it's not so bad once you know what's coming (at least on Normal and Easy). It's generous with the continues too, giving you effectively unlimited tries. I think this is the first shmup I've ever beaten on the hardest difficulty.

 

Tecmo Super Bowl III: September 2020. My first attempt with my local Giants wasn't the best. I finished the season with a 9-7 record, still made the playoffs, but lost in the divisional championship round. I tried again with my brother's Packers. Having a decent quarterback in Favre definitely helped. I didn't record what my season record was but I made the playoffs and won the Super Bowl.

With the game challenging me to win 2 more I had to keep going. I used the free agent feature to shore up my team's weaknesses. I picked up a nice RB to give me a running game to go with the pass, slight upgrades to a WR, LB, and safety, in exchange for downgrading backup QB, backup RBs, and exchanging a DE for one about the same but worth less points. Those changes worked extremely well and I went 16-0 that season. Unfortunately I lost in the divisional championship playoff round.

TSB III is a bit of a buggy mess. Multiple times my team forced a fumble and took it far, only for the game to give the ball back to the computer. Do you have a key injured player and he didn't recover for the upcoming game? Just exit out of the game setup screen and come back, repeat until he recovers (I did not intentionally abuse this). if you're on defense, you want to run down the clock, and the clock is ticking on the play select screen, pick a formation. As the computer picks a playbook, a few seconds tick off. Then as he picks a play, a few more seconds tick off. Go into the  substitution screen and come out. It's back at the playbook/formation select screen and more time can tick down. I think that only works for up to 10(?) seconds, you can't run the whole game clock out like that. (I did not abuse this either)

Then there are some weirder bugs. One time for an entire game certain(?) players would have practically no limit on their maximum speed so if they got just a little time to accelerate they could zoom all the way across the field. Here's a kickoff showing it. I won that game 87-65.

Another time the computer had the ball, passing play, "interception" came up either as he passed but long before the ball reached its destination, or before passed. Then the ball was on the ground, everyone was trying to get it but couldn't pick it up. The clock ran out but it still kept going. Then I tried going into the end zone and got a touchdown. My player had the actual ball the whole time, the ball on the ground was just an illusion! Check out everyone scrambling for the fake ball.

Tetris Battle Gaiden (SFC): Februrary 2021. 1cc'ed on Normal with the pumpkin guy and the Arabian guy and beat on Normal with continues with the other characters. I tried Hard but hit a brick wall and couldn't beat a single opponent.

 

@Reed Rothchild I saw you talking about Wizardry V. I haven't played that but I played NES Wizardry in December. How HP works in that game is that every time a character levels up, their HP gets re-rolled based on their new level. If the roll is higher than their current max HP, that becomes their new max HP. If the roll isn't higher, they gain 1 HP. When a character changes classes, they retain their old max HP. So if you want to maximize your spellcaster's HP so they can actually survive to cast some spells, you can start them off as fighters and make sure their Vitality is high, grind their level for as long as you can bear, then change them to the spellcaster class. If Wizardry V works the same way and has something like Murphy's Ghost in Wizardry 1 to grind levels on, that could be a viable option.

Side note, I used a ROM hack for NES Wizardry that fixes a bug where your character's armor class does nothing instead of reducing enemy hit rate like it should, as if the game isn't hard enough already. I also save scummed a bit by resetting and by backing up the save from the Everdrive SD card periodically. That came in handy when using the teleport spell for the first time after beating the final boss only to learn after teleporting my party into solid rock for instadeath that the coordinates it takes are relative to your current location, not absolute.

Edited May 15, 2021 by LHCGreg

[Reed Rothchild | 9,508]

Nice work, and thanks for joining us @LHCGreg

[Reed Rothchild | 9,508]

And for a little background, we were a handful of titles away from beating the entire list on NA.

[LHCGreg | 111]

I won the Super Baseball 2020 World Series as the Battle Heroes after going 13-2 in the season.

 

[Richardhead | 2,813]

3 Ninjas Kick Back

 

[Tantalus | 452]

I beat Spanky's Quest earlier in the week. I was a bit surprised to see it added to the Switch's Online library, but it gave me a chance to re-visit it after several years. A bit of an odd game, but I enjoyed my time with it.

[Gloves | 11,759]

Just now, Tantalus said:

I beat Spanky's Quest earlier in the week. I was a bit surprised to see it added to the Switch's Online library, but it gave me a chance to re-visit it after several years. A bit of an odd game, but I enjoyed my time with it.

I love Spanky's Quest. 

[Tantalus | 452]

2 hours ago, Gloves said:

I love Spanky's Quest. 

What's not to love about a game where you play as an anthropomorphic monkey named, of all things, Spanky that bounces bubbles on top of his head that turn into different types of balls when burst, that are used to attack walking fruit? I don't know what the developers were on when they came up with the idea, but I'm glad they did. It's a great game.

[scaryice | 579]

Recently, I've beaten three SNES games that haven't been marked off yet:

• Earthworm Jim 2
• Legend of the Mystical Ninja
• Operation Logic Bomb

For EWJ, that's a game where I played it several years ago, and got to the last level before game over-ing. Of course, I did the same thing again. So I practiced that last hard stage with save states, so I could finally nail it in a real run. First game was better!

Mystical Ninja is the second Goemon game I've cleared, after Goemon's Great Adventure, which was... decent, I guess? I wasn't going to bother to finish this, but I checked an faq to see how long it was, and after barely playing it I was already at least halfway through. The final stages were much harder, though - had to do some grinding for items at the end. I actually knew how to beat the last boss final form thanks to seeing it on an episode of Gamecenter CX. I was barely paying attention at the time, so I didn't know which game in the series was being played. But I clearly remembered the "stay in the corner" trick which made it simple. Overall, I'm not too big of a Goemon fan (or a early SNES Konami fan either, for that matter).

I had to play Operation Logic Bomb after beating Fortified Zone on the Game Boy. I checked the SNES rankings entry for it afterwards, and that sums it up quite well. It's fun while it lasts, but it would've sucked to pay $60 for it back in the day. The combat is much better than Fortified Zone, but that game at least had some items and puzzles, so I think I prefer the Game Boy version.

Edited June 9, 2021 by scaryice

[link463 | 1]

Super Play Action Football is done. I beat this on Nintendo Age before on the NFL mode. This time, I decided to do a college season to change it up a bit. I went 12-0 with Montana, in honor of this thread's original organizer, Brock Landers, and won the national championship. Hopefully, I don't have to play this game again anytime soon.

 

 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,508]

35 minutes ago, link463 said:

I went 12-0 with Montana, in honor of this thread's original organizer, Brock Landers,

Hah!  'bout time we won something 

[LHCGreg | 111]

I beat Aero the Acro-Bat. Boy do I have mixed feelings about this one. The snesrankings.com review mostly sums up my thoughts. The levels are looooong, partly because they just are, partly because you spend a lot of time holding the X button to look around so you don't jump into any instadeaths, partly because you die a lot and have to start again from a checkpoint. It took 8 hours wall clock time (including breaks and dinner) to complete. The later levels tone down the cheapness a bit and there is some genuine precision platforming challenge to be had.

 

[John198X | 55]

I guess I haven't checked this thread all year. Here are some completions:

5/18 Fatal Fury 2

7/5 Samurai Shodown - This plays okay, but everyone is so tiny...

7/26 Fatal Fury Special

8/3 King of Dragons

8/16 Wolfenstein 3D - Yeah, it's censored (not that you will always notice because everything is so pixelated), but I like the cut-down campaign more than the original PC version maps. 60 levels that are way too big and aimless boiled down to 30 levels that are much more dense and focused (plus a couple new weapons).

Edited August 20, 2021 by John198X

[John198X | 55]

Oh, if we're tracking Super Famicom, I've got a few of those too. Sorry if someone has already posted any of these. All were played with a fan translation.

11/30/20 Clock Tower - Really neat, if not exactly thrilling. Nothing else like it on the platform. Well, maybe SOS is? I should play it sometime. Managed to get one of the bad endings, one of the good endings, and (with a little faq help) the bonus S-rank ending (which is pictured).

12/17/20 Ys IV: Mask of the Sun - So, I guess the leads on the first few Ys games had left to go be Quintet, so instead of making a fourth game themselves, Falcom came up with a design document, storyline, and some musical compositions to provide to the license holders that had ported the console versions of the previous games. So, we ended up with two Ys IV's that have very little resemblance to each other outside of the loose plot and return to bump combat. Hudson and Alfa System, who had been doing an awesome job with the PC Engine CD / Turbo CD ports of 1-3, did an awesome job with their version, Ys IV: Dawn of Ys. Tonkin House, who had done a really not awesome job with the SFC/SNES port of Ys III, also did a less than awesome job with Ys IV: Mask of the Sun. I thought it was pretty mediocre. At best, inoffensive.

07/19/21 Dragon Quest V - I know this is the one everyone loves so much. I thought it was okay. Gameplay-wise, I don't think there was anything as interesting as the class system in III or the chapter structure in IV. I admit the story has some affecting, memorable moments.

08/09/21 Sengoku Denshou - Supposedly a port of the Neo Geo beat-em-up, Sengoku, which is really visually interesting and creative, but has real cheap and trashy gameplay, IMO. While this version has stages and enemies based on the Neo game, gameplay has been completely revamped to resemble more of what you'd expect from a decently made 16-bit brawler. Pretty good. A bit easy.

 

P.S. - SNESrankings.com is awesome, and it's really exciting to be down to the final 100.

Edited August 20, 2021 by John198X

[John198X | 55]

08/24 DOOM - Finished all episodes on 'Hurt Me Plenty' difficulty, the equivalent of normal. I thought it was a pretty fun port. Annoyingly, this is the first SNES game I've encountered that did not perform accurately on a MiSTer (at least with the month-old build I was using), so I had to use other methods.  

 

update: I’m determined to get the MiSTer issue solved, as the SNES core seemed otherwise pretty perfect outside of a crazy SFC shogi game that has a freaking ARM processor in the cart. Thankfully, I got a discussion going over on those forums.

The crazy work that went into creating SNES Doom isn’t uncommon knowledge, and, while Yoshi’s Island seems just peachy, it seems Doom may use the Super FX2 in some weird way that hasn’t been accounted for. It’s kinda interesting. 

update: Dunno if anyone else has gotten into the whole MiSTer thing, as a user or contributor... but Jeez Louise, I guess you can't go anywhere without running into some severe boneheadedness (https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3154). I'm not giving up though.

Edited August 27, 2021 by John198X

[Tantalus | 452]

Claymates is all done

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

Recently I was in the mood for some Bomberman and played through Super Bomberman, which still plays surprisingly well.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

Did some quick and relatively easy clears: ACME Animation Factory, Math Blaster Episode 1, Fun 'n Games and Snow White in Happily Ever After.

With ACME it's just a simple matching pairs game with the added difficulty that there are four blanks on every field and once you pick 3 it's game over. So basically, it's mostly just a game of luck as to whether or not you hit three of those.

With Math Blaster they actually tried to turn this into something resembling a game. At first you're in a spaceship and have to shoot garbage with your laser, but in order to find the right piece of garbage you have to solve the math equasion. Sometimes there are enemy ships that you have to shoot as well or they shoot at you and you'll lose a life point. After this you have to fly with a jet pack through some kind of maze where there are invisible barriers that won't let you through and that can hurt you. To the left and right of those barriers there are math equasions and they give the lowest and highest number that you're allowed to have in order to get through. You can change your number if you're getting hit by drops of water that add or subtract to your current number. Meanwhile there are also enemies attacking you. For the last level you have to fly into one of four entrances of a UFO and again there's a math equasion and numbers above the various entrances. Not quite sure if this game can actually teach something, but givent he low bar of edutainment games it's tolerable for maybe a weekend rental.

Fun 'n Games had two mini games, one pack man clone that ended after stage 25 and some kind of space shooting game that went until stage 5. Basically, you shoot a bunch of enemies before they attack you and every now and then you have a boss encounter. For the boss encounter I found it to be the easiest if you just keep pressing to the right while pushing the A button down all the time. Bosses 1 to 4 are unable to take aim since you're constantly moving around. It just takes a long time to beat them this way. For bosses 1 to 3 you can shortly stop when your crosshair rests on the boss and shoot at them for 1 or 2 seconds before moving on. Boss 5 on the other hand is where you're best off just shooting at him.

Snow White seemed like a janky platformer at first, but once you get used to it it can be a serviceable game. You have to collect 40 coins in every level and then find the exit. Meanwhile you have to fight off enemies by throwing apples at them or some super weapon. However, you're getting so many weapons and lives that you can pretty much fire at will all the time. It's also a fairly easy game. My main gripe was that you often ended up doing blind jumps or you didn't know where to go to.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

Just beat Chester Cheetah: Too Cool To Fool. How to sum up this game in one picture:

Other than being the product of absolutely tone deaf executives that try to imagine what young people consider cool, this is an absolutely atrocious game with horrible controls. It's so sluggish and janky, you have to play it to believe it. It also looks like garbage and barely any better than a late NES game. The hit boxes are also extremely erratic and there are only five levels with blatant sequel bait at the end. I tried to play the sequel, but that one is even worse with one hit deaths. These have to be some of the worst SNES games I have played so far.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

Two more small clears: Family Dog and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West.

Family Dog was a pretty lackluster platformer, that feels extremely rushed. It only has three levels with two or three sub levels, so it's extremely short. However, it features clunky controls and some bullshit level design with lots of blind jumps, enemies coming at you out of nowhere and some really stupid death traps. The last level was absolutely atrocious since you had to bounce on tree branches and follow some vague directions. However, if you landed on top of a hollow tree trunk you fall to the bottom of the level where you usually have no other option than to fall to your death. Meanwhile, enemies are constantly harrassing you. It's really terrible once you try it for yourself, especially due to the strange jump mechanics. When you jump to the left or right you just make a very short leap. However, when you jump straight up you jump very high and then can glide to either side as if you were a flying squirrel. It's so bizarre.

Fievel Goes West was a pleasant change of pace as it was a cute and quite fun platformer. I don't think it comes close to something like Mickey's Magical Quest due to a few shortcomings, but it's still a decent playthrough.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

Both modes of Shanghai II are knocked off.  Perusing the list for more easy shit...

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

Knights of the Round is done. Hopefully I can knock some more games off the list soon. 

[tigerwolf | 79]

After many hours of painful grinding, neverending caverns, irritating status effects, and endless random encounters every 2-3 steps, I finally did it. 

I completed Inindo: Way of the Ninja. 

First time I've actually finished this game since the early 90's. There's not much to say about it that Reed hasn't already written. I'll just say that while I am fascinated by the ideas in this game, it took a great deal of willpower and stubbornness to force myself to complete this thing. 

I took a crap smartphone video of some of it. Couldn't be bothered to film the complete ending, but I might try to get better footage via the Retrotink to computer later. In any case, if you want to see how dull the ending is, check it out:

https://youtu.be/BzP5T1tlr74