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


scaryice

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1 hour ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

I didn't know about that. Sorry.

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

Speaking of which, how can we bring in new players next year?  Like I've had a personal record year, which has clearly helped with some tougher titles, but aside from you and @nerdynebraskan, I haven't seen much in terms of participation the last while.  I'm not worried about the end "goal" (when I started the thread, I never even conceived of the goal ever actually being reached), but I'd love to see some new blood competing just so they can experience some of the outer reaches of the library.

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31 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Speaking of which, how can we bring in new players next year?  Like I've had a personal record year, which has clearly helped with some tougher titles, but aside from you and @nerdynebraskan, I haven't seen much in terms of participation the last while.  I'm not worried about the end "goal" (when I started the thread, I never even conceived of the goal ever actually being reached), but I'd love to see some new blood competing just so they can experience some of the outer reaches of the library.

It does seem like it's been pretty quiet in here for a while. I don't remember there being this many four and five point games still on the board this late in the year in some time.

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

The war is over. 1943 has been beaten!

...this game doesn't support autofire. 

Great job on beating this tough game!  I did want to mention something about autofire since you seemed to struggle with it:

There are actually a few weapons in 1943 that DO support autofire: 3-Way, Auto, and Shell (the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th POW items).  When armed with any of these weapons, you can hold down the button for (almost) continuous fire.  The best part about this is you can charge your laser at the same time, allowing you to alternate between the weapon and the laser.  Note that the 3-Way and Auto weapons will stop the autofire after a short burst, but this happens right at the moment the laser is fully charged.

With this in mind, my favorite early game strategy is to add a skill point to Special Weapon once to enable the 3-Way weapon and sink everything else into the SW Time Limit, so that I can stay with autofire for as long as possible.  I usually try to max this out first, along with the energy level (since the long missions inevitably run you low on HP).

Anyway, I hope this helps you feel better about this game and perhaps makes you want to try it again sometime.  Congrats on the win!

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Finally managed to beat Gradius II. Excellent game that improves on the original in pretty much every way. But it also highlights what I liked to so much about Over Horizon, i.e. the difficulty in Gradius II relies very heavily on instant death traps. You basically have to know the levels by heart to avoid those traps or else you'll have to start at the beginning with zero upgrades which makes this game infinitely harder.

Gradius II.jpg

Edited by Gaia Gensouki
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Just beat Grand Master.

This game is the answer to the question: "What would happen, if you combined The Legend of Zelda with Mega Man?" So basically you're playing in the top-down perspective and fight against lots of enemies with your sword similar to Zelda all while you can decide which level/dungeon you're clearing first before entering a series of levels that end up with the final boss fight, similar to the Wily stages.

You can even find permanent power-ups within the levels that can help you in other levels. You can even gain experience points and levels to increase your HP and MP. MP functions similar to the energy meter of the sub weapons in Mega Man.

So the combination sounds pretty cool and it mostly is. However, the battle system doesn't feel quite as satisfying as what you would find in Zelda I, let alone Crystalis. Grand Master also has a weird difficulty curve, where the first level is the hardest in the entire game, but then it becomes easier and easier as time goes on. This is because you're gaining levels and finding permanent power-ups. So for the most part it wasn't particularly difficult, which made for a mostly chill playthrough.

That being said, there are ways to ruin your entire playthrough of this game! For one, you can miss the permanent power-ups, which would leave you quite weak in the later stages with little means to become stronger.

Then there's apparently the possibility to break your entire playthrough and get a bad ending. How? You do this by playing the stages in the "wrong" order. For example, to get the good ending you need to beat level x and trigger a certain event before you beat level y. If you do this the other way, then you can no longer encounter and beat the final boss. So why would they even give you the option to choose which level to play, if you can fuck yourself over? This seems really weird and also somewhat mean to me. I avoided this by not actively choosing any level and instead doing whichever level the game recommended by default. I only found out about this problem by looking into a guide near the end of the game to see what I missed.

Anyway, all in all it was still a fairly fun and decent game despite some issues. That's why I don't think it belongs quite in the top tier of NES/Famicom games, but it's still worth a playthrough or two.

Grand Master.jpg

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  • The title was changed to NES Completions thread 2022 - 556/677 (bonus games - 80/100)
On 11/7/2022 at 4:48 PM, the_wizard_666 said:

Speaking of which, how can we bring in new players next year?  Like I've had a personal record year, which has clearly helped with some tougher titles, but aside from you and @nerdynebraskan, I haven't seen much in terms of participation the last while.  I'm not worried about the end "goal" (when I started the thread, I never even conceived of the goal ever actually being reached), but I'd love to see some new blood competing just so they can experience some of the outer reaches of the library.

I saw the thread about the traffic on VGS being lower... I think we would just need more people to join this site for activity to pick up. There may not be a lot of new blood, but we've still had about the same number of participants for the last five years, so that's decent:

 

Number of people beating a game

2012 88
2013 85
2014 64
2015 43
2016 58
2017 58
2018 40
2019 45
2020 35
2021 41
2022 39+

 

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43 minutes ago, scaryice said:

 

Crossfire next, to finish off the Famicom list? I remember it being a short, fun, not too difficult game.

Sure, I can give it a try. A few weeks ago I also tried to beat Prince Valiant, but found it to be a bit difficult with some really lame instant death traps. Maybe I'll give it another try at some point, because it wasn't bad at all. Just could have needed more continues if they decided to put so many cheesy deaths in there.

Also, I wanted to say that the selection of Famicom and PAL games was really quite excellent and I found a whole bunch of good games and even some new favorites! So thanks for that, scary!

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  • The title was changed to NES Completions thread 2022 - 558/677 (bonus games - 82/100)

Ikari Warriors II: Victory Road is beaten.

It wasn’t quite as brutal as I anticipated considering it’s still on the board this late in the year. Once I figured out the ins & outs of the game it really just came down to the final boss battle, which was kind of a pain.

The hit detection is generous, especially with the boomerang weapon. Boss battles were pretty easy too once you have them figured out, with the exception of the final boss.

Overall a pretty meh game I thought. Better than the first game at least.

 

384F074E-4510-4AB6-874F-1EB735DE6887.jpeg

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I've resumed Carmen Sandiego and Mario Adventure. I'm roughly 1/4th of the way through Carmen, and it's already repetitive and tedious. It actually gets easier, as there actually seems to be enough time to solve every case. That wasn't always true for the shorter cases at the beginning of the game. I beat the 3rd world of Mario Adventure (the ice/water world), but I haven't been able to find the hidden key. Something about it being near the bottom of the ocean? 

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  • The title was changed to NES Completions thread 2022 - 559/677 (bonus games - 83/100)
  • 3 weeks later...

I caught Carmen Sandiego, and about 5 more of her stooges after that. So I should be about 25 cases from the end of the game.  I know everyone says that this game is too long, but they're right. It's so excessive and anticlimactic to have hours more of the same repetitive gameplay after nabbing the titular villain! 

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On 12/9/2022 at 6:36 AM, nerdynebraskan said:

I caught Carmen Sandiego, and about 5 more of her stooges after that. So I should be about 25 cases from the end of the game.  I know everyone says that this game is too long, but they're right. It's so excessive and anticlimactic to have hours more of the same repetitive gameplay after nabbing the titular villain! 

Nowadays that would be post-game content, I guess. Although this game doesn't even have a real ending in the first place. Maybe this is just copium, but there's something exciting about the randomness of NES endings. You can get something good, one line that just says congratulations, or nothing at all. And some of the worst endings are the most memorable just for how terrible they are.

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41 minutes ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

My least favorite ending has to be from the Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle and Friends. It was such a slog of a game and then you'd get something that looks like straight out of MS Paint.

https://tcrf.net/images/d/d3/TAORABAF-rich_dumbasses00.png

I just played that game recently too. Lol yeah the whole game’s colors & graphics looks like something out of MS paint!

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James Bond Jr is beaten.

All in all a decent game, certainly not without a few flaws/frustrations. Graphics and sound are good, and I thought the stage layouts were nice. It’s pretty forgiving with unlimited continues, plenty of lives & health, and a password system.

The fact that it requires you to beat 2 loops is kind of annoying, especially considering 1 loop is already and 1+ hour playthrough. Enemies are absolute bullet sponges too.

 

 

28AE5A33-36DA-428A-9D14-CF2516C6A632.jpeg

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  • The title was changed to NES Completions thread 2022 - 561/677 (bonus games - 83/100)

Hey all! I’m surprised to see Ultima Exodus and Werewolf are still unbeaten. I’ve Taken care of those in previous years back on NA
 

It’s a bit late in the year for me to start grinding Ultima, but maybe I can knock the rust off of Werewolf and be ready to beat it after the new year. 

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Werewolf: The Last Warrior is done. 
 

The waterfall stage and the last level were a nightmare of cheap deaths. Had to plod along carefully and spam attacks while jumping to kill the fish and flying enemies. 
 

Since I’m still pretty fresh on playing this game, I’ll probably knock it out again after New Year’s day next week. 

F702FA98-21FA-431B-8B75-263AADB7134F.jpeg

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