NES Library Finished

[Crabmaster2000 | 501]

17 minutes ago, mbd39 said:

What were the top 5 most difficult games in your opinion?

 

I'm actually working on an article about that very subject right now. I don't want to just blurt out 5 that I think are the hardest right now. I'm putting a lot of thought into the subject, research, getting outside opinions from others with expertise on the subject, and replaying some games to compare them head to head. Every single top hardest NES games list I've seen online (and I've read dozens of them now) are very, very bad. Hoping to educate others on the subject because I find it pretty fascinating. 

[mbd39 | 2,020]

6 minutes ago, Crabmaster2000 said:

I'm actually working on an article about that very subject right now. I don't want to just blurt out 5 that I think are the hardest right now. I'm putting a lot of thought into the subject, research, getting outside opinions from others with expertise on the subject, and replaying some games to compare them head to head. Every single top hardest NES games list I've seen online (and I've read dozens of them now) are very, very bad. Hoping to educate others on the subject because I find it pretty fascinating. 

Ikari Warriors, Qbert, Championship Pool and Miracle Piano are some of the hardest according to the Mexican Runner. Arkanoid.

I know "hardest" lists on the internet are full of average difficulty stuff like Contra and Castlevania. Even Adventure Island is harder than most games on these lists.

 

Edited December 5, 2021 by mbd39

[Crabmaster2000 | 501]

3 minutes ago, mbd39 said:

Ikari Warriors, Qbert, Championship Pool and Miracle Piano are some of the hardest according to the Mexican Runner. Arkanoid.

I know "hardest" lists on the internet are full of average difficulty stuff like Contra and Castlevania. Even Adventure Island is harder than most games on these lists.

 

I've already been in contact the TMR and he's provided a list to me, along with my own list and using the data I've got from scaryice and the NES completion threads I'm putting all those together to come up with a more definitive list than I've seen anywhere else. TMR and myself had a ton of overlap in what we considered hardest, but also a few games that didn't match up at all that was pretty interesting to me.

[guitarzombie | 924]

1 hour ago, Crabmaster2000 said:

I've already been in contact the TMR and he's provided a list to me, along with my own list and using the data I've got from scaryice and the NES completion threads I'm putting all those together to come up with a more definitive list than I've seen anywhere else. TMR and myself had a ton of overlap in what we considered hardest, but also a few games that didn't match up at all that was pretty interesting to me.

I really love this idea.  Also I think when you make this list, and i'm not sure if you know this already, its about memorization.  Is the game memory hard, or reactionary hard.  For example, Maniac Mansion.  If you've never played it before you will more likely not beat it on the first try, or even within a few days.  But I can play it and beat it in 8 mins.  Is the game really hard because it requires you to memorize a lot of stuff, like enemy placement, exploits etc.  Or a game like Mutant Virus, yeah its really hard, but with infinite continues, you can grind it out the first time you play.  I think these kind of examples are important to get a really true list.  

Perhaps the easiest way to do it is, what games (aside from puzzle/adventure games/rpgs) took the longest to beat, because you had to learn so much of it.

Edited December 5, 2021 by guitarzombie

[cartman | 195]

On 12/2/2021 at 7:44 PM, Crabmaster2000 said:

Hey everyone. I realize most of you guys wont know me, but I want to say this anyway. Today I beat the final game I needed to beat in order to finish every single licensed NES game all on original hardware with no cheats. I started this on October 8th 2011 and it took me until today to finally complete this challenge. Nintendoage, and subsequently videogamesage, was a HUGE part of my collecting and playing journey that's why I wanted to start this thread. 

When I started this endeavor I didn't quite grasp how monumental it would be. Nintendoage was such a crucial resource for me completing my collection, figuring out win conditions, asking other forum members for help, deciding which games to play next, and just helping me stay motivated and encouraged. I was kind of crushed when I went to login one day and it didn't exist anymore. I'm so thankful the spirit of that place lives on here at videogamesage. 

And I need to give a massive thank you to @scaryicefor running the "can Nintendoage/videogamesage beat every NES game in 20xx" threads for the past decade. Those threads and the data he's been keeping on them are treasure troves of NES information, they are a fantastic community building challenge, and just a lot of fun to be a part of. I've only really spent time in that one thread since videogamesage started, but that's been enough for me. Every member that posts in there has been nothing but supportive and encouraging from going out of their way to send me tips and advice, asking me questions about my progress, virtual high fives when hitting big milestones and loads of fun banter about games that no one else cares about. 

Thanks everybody for helping me achieve this goal of mine. It means a lot. 

 

Kelsy

If you finished Ikari Warriors with only the credits they give you you should've recorded that because almost nobody has succeeded. 

[Crabmaster2000 | 501]

4 hours ago, cartman said:

If you finished Ikari Warriors with only the credits they give you you should've recorded that because almost nobody has succeeded. 

I recorded EVERYTHING!! 

 

https://youtu.be/hYyzGkztYCI

[Tanooki | 4,933]

Ehhh good on you recording it, but also while I'd not have a shred of a chance now, 25 years ago I could drop that game on the lives given on NES along with various others I can't anymore.  It's hard, bad even, but not that bad that it's borderline impossible.

[Crabmaster2000 | 501]

10 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Ehhh good on you recording it, but also while I'd not have a shred of a chance now, 25 years ago I could drop that game on the lives given on NES along with various others I can't anymore.  It's hard, bad even, but not that bad that it's borderline impossible.

You sound like my dad watching Football

[Tanooki | 4,933]

Ugh football...

The thing is my time is limited anymore to play compared to earlier decades, so my patience is shot wasting time dying a 100+ times doing a game to get back to what I did long ago.  I'm sure if I bothered I could, but it would be work, not fun.

[Strikezone1 | 154]

Congrats Crabmaster! A fine accomplishment! 

[LifeGame | 760]

Amaze  

[NostalgicMachine | 235]

Congrats, OP! Myself and a buddy were just discussing how challenging it was to get an entire NES set back in 2010-2014, let alone now. Massive feat completed!

[Crabmaster2000 | 501]

1 hour ago, Nostalgic_Machine said:

Congrats, OP! Myself and a buddy were just discussing how challenging it was to get an entire NES set back in 2010-2014, let alone now. Massive feat completed!

Thanks! It would have been right around 2014 that I finished up my collection. Thankfully I had all the big games out of the way years prior to that. 

Edited December 9, 2021 by Crabmaster2000
bad spells

[CMR | 519]

I'm impressed.  Maybe I'll try this one day, just go down the list of a no-intro set and see what I can beat.

[GPX | 1,369]

@Crabmaster2000, big congrats on the awesome/insane achievement! Completing an entire NES library is just too much for me to comprehend! 

The number of NES games I’ve completed is exactly...zero. Lol Though I’m more a Snes/Megadrive lover. However, I’m confident I don’t have the patience nor supreme level of masochism to complete an entire library of games on any platform. So cool to hear about someone doing it! 

 

[G-type | 2,481]

On 12/5/2021 at 10:53 AM, Crabmaster2000 said:

I'm actually working on an article about that very subject right now. I don't want to just blurt out 5 that I think are the hardest right now. I'm putting a lot of thought into the subject, research, getting outside opinions from others with expertise on the subject, and replaying some games to compare them head to head. Every single top hardest NES games list I've seen online (and I've read dozens of them now) are very, very bad. Hoping to educate others on the subject because I find it pretty fascinating. 

where/when are you going to post it? I'm interested to read what you come up with.

[Crabmaster2000 | 501]

7 hours ago, G-type said:

where/when are you going to post it? I'm interested to read what you come up with.

Not sure yet. Getting some input from a few others while I work on it. I'll definitely post a link somewhere on here when it's ready though

[Tanooki | 4,933]

I await this, perhaps if you keep going deeper and deeper, real write ups, not the same parroted bullshit most people do while coin begging on youtube do it could be a remarkable good read/watch however it's handled.  Something like that massive SNES tops list thats been stewing along for years now creeping toward and into the final 100.  You can get into honest personal rankings, hardest, easist, quirkiest, unique, by genre some would never consider, oddballs that need 2 controllers as a choice or for full function -- you name it.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

Major congrats, man!  I don't videotape my completions, just record them in a file, but my goal is similar to yours only with US unlicensed, Famicom and Euro exclusives added in as well.  I've been doing it for twenty years now and I'm only 400+ games in, so accomplishing what you did in only a decade is pretty crazy!

One question: how did you beat the Chess games?  They are the ones I'm most scared of (now that I've got the Koei library behind me) because I only count a game as beaten personally if I beat it on the highest difficulty it has to offer and/or attain the best ending.  So with Chess, winning a game against a super high level cpu algorithm seems to be all but impossible to me, so I'm wondering what exactly you did for games like Chessmaster and the like...

[Crabmaster2000 | 501]

7 hours ago, Dr. Morbis said:

Major congrats, man!  I don't videotape my completions, just record them in a file, but my goal is similar to yours only with US unlicensed, Famicom and Euro exclusives added in as well.  I've been doing it for twenty years now and I'm only 400+ games in, so accomplishing what you did in only a decade is pretty crazy!

One question: how did you beat the Chess games?  They are the ones I'm most scared of (now that I've got the Koei library behind me) because I only count a game as beaten personally if I beat it on the highest difficulty it has to offer and/or attain the best ending.  So with Chess, winning a game against a super high level cpu algorithm seems to be all but impossible to me, so I'm wondering what exactly you did for games like Chessmaster and the like...

Just depends what your goal for games like that is. Mine was rarely to beat it on the hardest difficulty unless that provided a different ending (something like Overlord or TMNT Tournament Fighters as examples). I checked my video and I did beat Chessmaster on infinite which is the highest difficulty, but with a huge caveat. So the higher you crank up the difficulty on Chessmaster the longer the CPU takes to make moves and like it can be a SUPER long time. So while I was playing on infinite I was also using the "Force Chessmaster to move" option. This would make the CPU take the best move they had thought of so far instead of giving them an hour to calculate the actual best move. 

Edited December 16, 2021 by Crabmaster2000
grammar

[Tulpa | 3,494]

Yeah, if you are playing Chessmaster on infinite, you're talking about a game that could potentially last days. 

[Estil | 1,264]

43 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

Yeah, if you are playing Chessmaster on infinite, you're talking about a game that could potentially last days. 

I doubt even most grandmasters could beat NES or SNES Chessmaster on its max difficulty.  It's a wonder chess hasn't been "solved" by now.  

[Tulpa | 3,494]

57 minutes ago, Estil said:

I doubt even most grandmasters could beat NES or SNES Chessmaster on its max difficulty.

Sure they could. It's not that strong of a chess engine. Heck, its ELO rating is about that of an expert, not even a master. It just takes an inordinate amount of time at its strongest level, but that doesn't mean it finds the best possible move every time.

57 minutes ago, Estil said:

It's a wonder chess hasn't been "solved" by now.  

That's because there are more possible positions in chess than there are estimated atoms in the observable universe.

Edited December 16, 2021 by Tulpa

[NostalgicMachine | 235]

10 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

Sure they could. It's not that strong of a chess engine. Heck, its ELO rating is about that of an expert, not even a master. It just takes an inordinate amount of time at its strongest level, but that doesn't mean it finds the best possible move every time.

That's because there are more possible positions in chess than there are estimated atoms in the observable universe.

Bobby Fisher approves!

[Estil | 1,264]

3 hours ago, Tulpa said:

Sure they could. It's not that strong of a chess engine. Heck, its ELO rating is about that of an expert, not even a master. It just takes an inordinate amount of time at its strongest level, but that doesn't mean it finds the best possible move every time.

That's because there are more possible positions in chess than there are estimated atoms in the observable universe.

That's true for the number of possible combinations of a 52 card deck right?  I think in math terms it's called 52! (or 52x51x50x49x...)