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

[PII | 1,883]

27 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Peter Pan & The Pirates is also done.  What a janky piece of crap that game is, and that's coming from a guy who likes janky piece of crap games.  But now it's done, and I never have to fire up that turd ever again!

Lol.  I kinda like that janky piece of crap, actually; though I've never played it all the way through...

...one of these years..

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

6 hours ago, PII said:

Lol.  I kinda like that janky piece of crap, actually; though I've never played it all the way through...

...one of these years..

I get that.  It's more frustrating than bad, kinda how I felt with Conan, except for some reason I really dug Conan in all it's janky glory.  Peter Pan I just couldn't.

Anyway, I just knocked off another personal albatross (so many done this year!) - Star Voyager has been completed after many, many, many attempts.  Such a cool game, but man does the combat suck donkey balls!

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

Working on Infiltrator now...always been an intriguing game, but also a frustrating one.  Although I've done pretty good so far (got the hang of the helicopter flying, and managed to beat the first mission), I've rescued the doctor twice and not made it back to the helicopter in the second mission.  Still, I'm digging it...it's a bit frustrating but once you know what to do it's not exactly tough.  I'm hoping to have it done in the next couple days, tops.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

Infiltrator is done.  It seems the learning curve is front heavy on this one...once I got the hang of the helicopter, I didn't fail a single flying section.  The ground missions are a bit trickier, and definitely require a ton of memorization, but once you get them down they're pretty simple too.  I gotta say, I dig the game, but man does the ending suck nuts.  They put more effort into setting up each stage than the actual ending, which is just kinda sad in all honesty.  But hey, there's another 10 pointer off the list

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

Top Gun is done.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

The war is over. 1943 has been beaten!

I feel bad for basically disappearing for such a long time and not contributing anymore to this challenge (even more so since it was on the right track). But earlier this year I desperately tried to beat this 1943, but never made it past level 16, which is only two-thirds of the game! Once I even managed to beat that level's boss, but died due to the debris that was flying around after the boss exploded.

On top of that, this game doesn't support autofire. So the constant pressing of the buttons literally caused me physical pain. At one point it was even so bad that I could barely press a button with my right thumb without intense pain. This was probably the first time since Mario Party 1 on the N64 that I actually got injured from playing a video game.

So I wasn't really motivated anymore to beat more NES games, until I started to have that itch again. First I though of playing something that I can beat with some certainty, but my mind always went back to 1943 and how I didn't want to get beaten by that game. Therefore I picked it up last week and after several days and many hours fo trying I finally managed to beat it, despite the game getting even tougher later down the line. Level 16 was already plenty challenging, but level 24 was on a whole different level.

I think what helped me to finally beat this one was a) finally learning that you could charge up your shot by holding the button down for some time and b) the clever use of screen-clearing bombs. Because if your energy is well below 000 you can create some kind of thunder that damages every enemy and kills the small fries. However, it costs you some energy, i.e. life points. But depending on the situation it was actually better to waste some energy instead of getting swarmed by lots of enemies. It was also helpful, when collecting power-ups after shooting down red planes. This is because you have to shoot at the icon several times to switch between them, but not too often or you might miss the one that you actually want. But if you use one of your bombs, all smaller enemies are dead and the screen stops scrolling, so that you have time to collect the power-ups that you want. So spending about 10 energy in order to get the strongest weapon and collecting a 30 energy recovery power-up is a good yield and very helpful for making it through the long and challenging levels.

Anyway, I have really mixed feelings about this game. On the one hand the action is fast and smooth with only the occasional slowdown. Then there are lots of power-ups and even some permanent upgrades! This made the game a lot of fun most of the time. However, the difficulty is absolutely bonkers and soul-crushing, or at least if you don't use turbo buttons, because that's what many of the longplays on Youtube seem to use. But without that, 1943 can be a massive pain at times, both figuratively and literally. On top of that the game ends up being extremely repetitive. There are only very few enemies and all of the locations look exactly the same. This made some of the later levels a real slog. I can imagine that they might have exchanged graphical fidelity for playability, but 24 stages of always the same content gets old eventually. So I'm not sure if I would want to beat this game again. It was very fun at times, but I'm not sure if I could stomach the later levels a second time.

[scaryice | 581]

On 10/17/2022 at 7:56 AM, Gaia Gensouki said:

The war is over. 1943 has been beaten!

 

Congrats! I rank it as one of the best NES shooters, but even I will admit that it does go on a bit too long. I also went many years without using the charge shot, so you're not alone there. Anyway, it certainly feels great once you beat that ridiculous last stage.

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

On 10/17/2022 at 8:56 AM, Gaia Gensouki said:

The war is over. 1943 has been beaten!

I feel bad for basically disappearing for such a long time and not contributing anymore to this challenge (even more so since it was on the right track). But earlier this year I desperately tried to beat this 1943, but never made it past level 16, which is only two-thirds of the game! Once I even managed to beat that level's boss, but died due to the debris that was flying around after the boss exploded.

On top of that, this game doesn't support autofire. So the constant pressing of the buttons literally caused me physical pain. At one point it was even so bad that I could barely press a button with my right thumb without intense pain. This was probably the first time since Mario Party 1 on the N64 that I actually got injured from playing a video game.

So I wasn't really motivated anymore to beat more NES games, until I started to have that itch again. First I though of playing something that I can beat with some certainty, but my mind always went back to 1943 and how I didn't want to get beaten by that game. Therefore I picked it up last week and after several days and many hours fo trying I finally managed to beat it, despite the game getting even tougher later down the line. Level 16 was already plenty challenging, but level 24 was on a whole different level.

I think what helped me to finally beat this one was a) finally learning that you could charge up your shot by holding the button down for some time and b) the clever use of screen-clearing bombs. Because if your energy is well below 000 you can create some kind of thunder that damages every enemy and kills the small fries. However, it costs you some energy, i.e. life points. But depending on the situation it was actually better to waste some energy instead of getting swarmed by lots of enemies. It was also helpful, when collecting power-ups after shooting down red planes. This is because you have to shoot at the icon several times to switch between them, but not too often or you might miss the one that you actually want. But if you use one of your bombs, all smaller enemies are dead and the screen stops scrolling, so that you have time to collect the power-ups that you want. So spending about 10 energy in order to get the strongest weapon and collecting a 30 energy recovery power-up is a good yield and very helpful for making it through the long and challenging levels.

Anyway, I have really mixed feelings about this game. On the one hand the action is fast and smooth with only the occasional slowdown. Then there are lots of power-ups and even some permanent upgrades! This made the game a lot of fun most of the time. However, the difficulty is absolutely bonkers and soul-crushing, or at least if you don't use turbo buttons, because that's what many of the longplays on Youtube seem to use. But without that, 1943 can be a massive pain at times, both figuratively and literally. On top of that the game ends up being extremely repetitive. There are only very few enemies and all of the locations look exactly the same. This made some of the later levels a real slog. I can imagine that they might have exchanged graphical fidelity for playability, but 24 stages of always the same content gets old eventually. So I'm not sure if I would want to beat this game again. It was very fun at times, but I'm not sure if I could stomach the later levels a second time.

 

I had thought about doing this one, but that last stage is insane. Congratulations on taking it down!

[scaryice | 581]

Beat Salamander (aka Life Force) since it was still there. Easy game to run through in 30 minutes, although I almost game over'ed in stage 3.

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

11 hours ago, scaryice said:

Beat Salamander (aka Life Force) since it was still there. Easy game to run through in 30 minutes, although I almost game over'ed in stage 3.

I'm surprised that nobody has beaten an Adventure Island yet. It seems like several people have done it during the weekly contests.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

Just beat Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six.

It was actually kind of okay. The controls might be a bit wonky and the hit detection is just a little bit off at times. But I got used to the range and timing of the attacks so that I eventually got a bit of fun out of punching and kicking the enemies into oblivion. And the sprites of Spider-Man and the sinister six were actually quite well made. They looked good and were recognizable.

But it's a fairly short game overall. They made up for it though by turning up the difficulty and only giving you two lives. Some of the enemies in the later stages were a bit cheap. During the last stage I especially just ran past everyone, because these enemies weren't worth fighting against.

So yeah, it could have needed a bit more tweaking and content, but it wasn't bad by any means.

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

Adventure Island is done since surprisingly no one else finished it by now.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

Sword Master is done as well. Really tough game. Nice graphics, but somewhat clunky controls. The jumping sections were especially egregious and cost me about half of my continues. The boss rush in the final level was also insane and I had to try and find some safe strats to slowly but surely wittle away their health. Some of them I had to blast with magic to preserve my health.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

Metal Mech is done.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

Beauty and the Beast is done.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

Just beat Over Horizon and oh my god, this game was absolutely fantastic! I am over the moon due to how fun and amazing this game was! At its core it's a Gradius clone, but they really put their own spin on it with really creative and unique levels that each have their own gimmick and style. On top of that there was plenty of action with only occasional slowdowns, usually when the screen was very busy.

But I was constantly engaged and it always felt like the challenge was actually fair. Some shmups, like Gradius and especially R-Type, love to throw (cheap) death traps at you, whereas this game felt manageable throughout. Even the bosses had interesting and sometimes really cool patterns or setups. But despite all of that it never felt cheap like the developers were trying to troll me. Whenever I died it felt like it was my own fault, my own carelessness.

Maybe the only real downside is that the game might be a tad easy for experienced/skilled shmup players and maybe they could have integrated difficulty settings or a second loop with higher difficulty. But at least for me this game absolutely hit the sweet spot in terms of challenge.

So, I'm not sure what else to say other than that Over Horizon might be my favorite NES shmup so far and might also have made it into my top 10 favorite NES games. I'm loving it that much!

[PII | 1,883]

7 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

Metal Mech is done.

Were you the one who took care of this beast last year, I forget?

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

42 minutes ago, PII said:

Were you the one who took care of this beast last year, I forget?

Yes, and the year before that as well. So I've beaten that game three years in a row.

[bronzeshield | 293]

OK, this has gotten ridiculous, and a fella has his limits after all, so:

Overlord is done.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

Just beat Moon Crystal. It's an overall good and fun game tht is however marred by some annoying flaws.

On the plus side there are really nice graphics, fluent animations and decent music. The story is told through cutscenes similar to Ninja Gaiden and the like. However, the story feels a bit more involved and was overall quite interesting and endeard me more to this game. That being said, the story wasn't too terribly original.

On the negative side, however, were some annoying obstacle and enemy placements here and there. By the time you reach level 3 the difficulty ramps up and it was at times a bit frustrating. Also, some of the bosses weren't too great and I never managed to figure out some kind of pattern to beat them. Luckily, this game has unlimited continues so I eventually got to beat it.

[Daniel_Doyce | 470]

21 hours ago, bronzeshield said:

OK, this has gotten ridiculous, and a fella has his limits after all, so:

Overlord is done.

oh sure, just taking all the easy 1 pointers

[Daniel_Doyce | 470]

On 10/17/2022 at 8:56 AM, Gaia Gensouki said:

The war is over. 1943 has been beaten!

I feel bad for basically disappearing for such a long time and not contributing anymore to this challenge (even more so since it was on the right track). But earlier this year I desperately tried to beat this 1943, but never made it past level 16, which is only two-thirds of the game! Once I even managed to beat that level's boss, but died due to the debris that was flying around after the boss exploded.

On top of that, this game doesn't support autofire. So the constant pressing of the buttons literally caused me physical pain. At one point it was even so bad that I could barely press a button with my right thumb without intense pain. This was probably the first time since Mario Party 1 on the N64 that I actually got injured from playing a video game.

So I wasn't really motivated anymore to beat more NES games, until I started to have that itch again. First I though of playing something that I can beat with some certainty, but my mind always went back to 1943 and how I didn't want to get beaten by that game. Therefore I picked it up last week and after several days and many hours fo trying I finally managed to beat it, despite the game getting even tougher later down the line. Level 16 was already plenty challenging, but level 24 was on a whole different level.

I think what helped me to finally beat this one was a) finally learning that you could charge up your shot by holding the button down for some time and b) the clever use of screen-clearing bombs. Because if your energy is well below 000 you can create some kind of thunder that damages every enemy and kills the small fries. However, it costs you some energy, i.e. life points. But depending on the situation it was actually better to waste some energy instead of getting swarmed by lots of enemies. It was also helpful, when collecting power-ups after shooting down red planes. This is because you have to shoot at the icon several times to switch between them, but not too often or you might miss the one that you actually want. But if you use one of your bombs, all smaller enemies are dead and the screen stops scrolling, so that you have time to collect the power-ups that you want. So spending about 10 energy in order to get the strongest weapon and collecting a 30 energy recovery power-up is a good yield and very helpful for making it through the long and challenging levels.

Anyway, I have really mixed feelings about this game. On the one hand the action is fast and smooth with only the occasional slowdown. Then there are lots of power-ups and even some permanent upgrades! This made the game a lot of fun most of the time. However, the difficulty is absolutely bonkers and soul-crushing, or at least if you don't use turbo buttons, because that's what many of the longplays on Youtube seem to use. But without that, 1943 can be a massive pain at times, both figuratively and literally. On top of that the game ends up being extremely repetitive. There are only very few enemies and all of the locations look exactly the same. This made some of the later levels a real slog. I can imagine that they might have exchanged graphical fidelity for playability, but 24 stages of always the same content gets old eventually. So I'm not sure if I would want to beat this game again. It was very fun at times, but I'm not sure if I could stomach the later levels a second time.

I'm impressed. I've tried it a few times and the game doesn't beat me, my old man fingers do. Level 4 or 5 is when I say "no mas." I guess I could play it one level at a time, but that last level is intimidating as hell.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

I was just playing Gradius II and got stuck during the boss rush in Level 6 until I suddenly heard strange noises coming from the d-pad of my Xbox One controller. It sounded like a creaking from the foil. A few minutes later and it was completely wrecked. I can't use the d-pad on this controller anymore, so it's basically useless for retro games now.

I tried my PS4 controller instead, but it's just not suitable for these old games with high precision controls. So until I have a new controller I won't be able to continue with NES games. Maybe this is an omen that I should buy an everdrive Fami to play on my famicom in the future. But I'll most likely wait until Black Friday before buying anything new.

Still, it's weirdly funny to think that these old ass games can break modern controllers. But I've used this controller for many years now and beaten many games on it, so it's probably just natural that it got worn down. So RIP Xbox controller.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

On 10/29/2022 at 1:55 PM, Gaia Gensouki said:

Yes, and the year before that as well. So I've beaten that game three years in a row.

Damn, it was on my short list for next game to play...

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

13 hours ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Damn, it was on my short list for next game to play...

I didn't know about that. Sorry.

On the bright side, the year is almost over and you can tackle that game next year.