NES Completions thread 2022 - 564/677 (bonus games - 83/100)

[nerdynebraskan | 354]

Goonies II is done.

Another first-time clear. Even with a detailed walkthrough and maps, I got lost many times. I don't think I would have ever had the patience to play this blind. I know this one gets compared to Dr. Chaos sometimes, and I may be biased because I think I was one of the few who grew up with the latter, but I would much rather play Dr. Chaos.

[Khromak | 768]

Just beat getsu fuuma den. An excellent action platformer, it's a real shame we never got it in the US. was a little on the easy side, but the bosses were a little tricky.

I've been playing a lot of final fantasy 11 so I've been pretty distracted from retro games, but I still have a couple on my desk I've been meaning to get around to

[nerdynebraskan | 354]

Tag-Team Wrestling is done.

With this completion, I am now exactly 100 points away from setting a new single-year record. (And 14 completions away from setting a new single-year record there, too.) I was thinking about slowing down a little bit this year, but y'all left me too many good games for too long. And now that I can see the record book on the horizon, I have to finish the job.

[Strikezone1 | 154]

I just beat Parodius (repro cart) on normal difficulty.

This game is okay. But certainly isn’t as good as Life Force, Gradius II, or Crisis Force.

I find the random ‘roulette’ feature to be super annoying. So I choose automatic for the powerup system which apparently negates it.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Strikezone1

[nerdynebraskan | 354]

Metal Fighter is done.

This is another first-time clear for me. It's pretty bad, but not outrageously hard.

[Khromak | 768]

Crisis force is done, another game i had in my collection because of a lot of famicom and fds games i bought, so I figured why not take the recommendation and play it? It's just the right difficulty (on easy) for me, since I'm not great at shooters but the transforming modes plus the fairly generous lives and continues allowed me to beat it

[scaryice | 585]

17 hours ago, Strikezone1 said:

I just beat Parodius (repro cart) on normal difficulty.

This game is okay. But certainly isn’t as good as Life Force, Gradius II, or Crisis Force.

Yeah, I didn't think it was too great either when I gave it a shot earlier this year. Very laggy, even compared to something like Life Force. I have to imagine that the other ports might be better.

[Foochie776 | 1,051]

Rainbow Islands is done! One of my favorites from my childhood. Good challenge at the end and great graphics throughout 

[nerdynebraskan | 354]

45 minutes ago, Foochie776 said:

Rainbow Islands is done! One of my favorites from my childhood. Good challenge at the end and great graphics throughout

Nice. I'll get around to giving it a proper play-through one of these years, as I'm a big fan of the Bubble Bobble games. But what a weird concept for this sequel! And then they followed up on this with Parasol Stars.

Are you back onto Lolo 3 now, or are you planning to play anything else this year?

[Foochie776 | 1,051]

1 hour ago, nerdynebraskan said:

Nice. I'll get around to giving it a proper play-through one of these years, as I'm a big fan of the Bubble Bobble games. But what a weird concept for this sequel! And then they followed up on this with Parasol Stars.

Are you back onto Lolo 3 now, or are you planning to play anything else this year?

I’m going to keep slow rolling Lolo, it’s getting tough and I’m not nearly as familiar with this one as I am the first two. 
 

Rainbow Islands is a great platform we, it’s such a unique design and theme. I think you’d like it if you are into platformers! 
 

I plan to play something else too, I haven’t done much NES gaming outside of the staples and the stuff I played as a kid so I’ll look at the list 

[Strikezone1 | 154]

5 hours ago, scaryice said:

Yeah, I didn't think it was too great either when I gave it a shot earlier this year. Very laggy, even compared to something like Life Force. I have to imagine that the other ports might be better.

For sure. I mean being a Konami shoot’em up game makes you want to like it and get excited to play it, but it just falls a bit short of expectations gameplay-wise.

The aforementioned random ‘roulette’ with the powerups is super annoying… the hitbox of the shield is a lot bigger than in other games, making it not last long and hinders it’s effectiveness… and some of the boss battles are quite underwhelming - especially the ones that don’t take damage where you just have to wait it out until they pass.

 

Edited April 8, 2022 by Strikezone1

[PII | 1,884]

Silver Surfer

 

Edited September 25, 2023 by PII

[DefaultGen | 5,401]

Ultima: Quest of the Avatar is done

This is by far the longest, grindiest NES game I've ever beaten. It's interesting how involved and complex it is, but I think if I was to recommend one Ultima for anyone interested I'd recommend Exodus over this. Ultima 3 has a simpler quest, but it's less tedious to explore and experiment. 10 well deserved IMO...

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

7 hours ago, DefaultGen said:

Ultima: Quest of the Avatar is done

This is by far the longest, grindiest NES game I've ever beaten. It's interesting how involved and complex it is, but I think if I was to recommend one Ultima for anyone interested I'd recommend Exodus over this. Ultima 3 has a simpler quest, but it's less tedious to explore and experiment. 10 well deserved IMO...

Funny, I've beat both and I vastly prefer Quest over Exodus.  Sadly the NES wasn't capable of doing justice to Ultima 5, as according to my buddy it's by far his favourite (he still boots up his dad's Apple II every couple years to play it).

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

9 hours ago, DefaultGen said:

Ultima: Quest of the Avatar is done

This is by far the longest, grindiest NES game I've ever beaten. It's interesting how involved and complex it is, but I think if I was to recommend one Ultima for anyone interested I'd recommend Exodus over this. Ultima 3 has a simpler quest, but it's less tedious to explore and experiment. 10 well deserved IMO...

Who did you start as?  I've only played through once, but I was the guy who begins right beside Lord British, making the beginning far easier, and I've heard if you choose the Shepherd it's basically sadist mode, so I guess you could've had a tough time if you had a tougher character/starting position combo from the outset.  I, myself, found the game rather easy (just very tedious), whereas I'm deathly afraid to even start up the NES version of Ultima Exodus...

[DefaultGen | 5,401]

50 minutes ago, Dr. Morbis said:

Who did you start as?  I've only played through once, but I was the guy who begins right beside Lord British, making the beginning far easier, and I've heard if you choose the Shepherd it's basically sadist mode, so I guess you could've had a tough time if you had a tougher character/starting position combo from the outset.  I, myself, found the game rather easy (just very tedious), whereas I'm deathly afraid to even start up the NES version of Ultima Exodus...

I was a mage but I didn't have any trouble with dying or anything. It was just super tedious traversing the world because once you level up "too much" you constantly hit big groups of tough monsters who use AOE sleep spells. They don't hit hard, it's just makes going anywhere take forever and the whole game is about running all over the world map to figure out what to do.

In Ultima 3 once I got the god team together, my wizards 2 shot any group of enemies before they could attack, so encounters became a non-factor. Plus you can avoid them to begin with on the world map. Ultima 4 just felt like I got weaker as I leveled up. I didn't find any godly repeatable AOE combo this time so maybe I just missed something.

I kind of hate frequent random encounters in general, so I could only get into these games so much. I love the exploring and figuring out what to do part of the game though.

Edited April 10, 2022 by DefaultGen

[nerdynebraskan | 354]

Day Dreamin' Davey is done.

[fusoyaff2 | 50]

15 hours ago, DefaultGen said:

I was a mage but I didn't have any trouble with dying or anything. It was just super tedious traversing the world because once you level up "too much" you constantly hit big groups of tough monsters who use AOE sleep spells.

The trick with both Exodus and Avatar is to not level up any more than you have to, which means getting your character high enough to get the pirate ships to appear and then stopping. Avatar is actually easier to do solo except when doing the dungeons (which you can save until the latter half) since a smaller party also means fighting less enemies each battle but still getting the same gold. Also in Exodus don't level up at all until you have enough experience to go straight to 5 because all level 1 fights can be beaten with those free attack spells.

I like playing Avatar with the Druid, since she has a good balance of magic and defence and being able to use the bows. For Exodus it's pretty boring but 3 wizards and a cleric will get you through the early grind to level 5 and then bring in a Knight and Ranger to deal with the meleeing.

Neither of those games are that time consuming once you know what you're doing. I've beaten both for this challenge in previous years.

Warriors of Destiny may be a great PC game, but the NES port is absolute garbage in every form and I don't know how they ever got Nintendo to approve it, or how the same people who ported Avatar so we'll could mess up Destiny so badly. It's such a miserable game to play on NES that it'll probably be one of the last games I ever try to beat for that system.

Edited April 10, 2022 by fusoyaff2
Druid

[scaryice | 585]

Nintendo World Cup finished, this time with Brazil:

 

[scaryice | 585]

Lethal Weapon done:

 

[scaryice | 585]

Continuing my run with Ninja Kid (the Japanese version, Gegege no Kitarou):

[mbd39 | 2,020]

On 4/10/2022 at 5:37 PM, fusoyaff2 said:

Warriors of Destiny may be a great PC game, but the NES port is absolute garbage in every form and I don't know how they ever got Nintendo to approve it, or how the same people who ported Avatar so we'll could mess up Destiny so badly. It's such a miserable game to play on NES that it'll probably be one of the last games I ever try to beat for that system.

Warriors of Destiny looks horrendous. I want to know why the scrolling is so choppy on a console that has smooth hardware scrolling. There's no excuse for it.

 

[nerdynebraskan | 354]

Fire N Ice is done. I'll probably start Puzznic again in the next few days for my next puzzle game to be played in small chunks fix, unless someone has already started it or plans to immediately. I also want to start an RPG right after I hit 800 points. Has anyone started either Dragon Warrior II or IV?

[Daniel_Doyce | 470]

13 hours ago, mbd39 said:

Warriors of Destiny looks horrendous. I want to know why the scrolling is so choppy on a console that has smooth hardware scrolling. There's no excuse for it.

 

Given that the game was released in 1993, the quality is inexcusably bad. Even if it were a 1985 release, it would have looked terrible.

[nerdynebraskan | 354]

Warriors of Destiny has to be one of my biggest disappointments in the entire NES catalog.

It has one of the coolest stories I've ever heard of in a video game. The hero has to rescue the kingdom from religious and political corruption? Sign me up! 

I had previously tried Exodus and Quest of the Avatar, and I had quickly lost interest in them. The Ultima games just don't have the It factor for me that the Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy series does. But I would have tolerated that degree of mediocrity to play a story like Warriors of Destiny. 

When I actually got my hands on a cartridge, I couldn't believe how bad it was. The lag just walking through the first town was absolutely unbearable. I don't think I even played it for an hour before I chucked it into my box of games to resell.