Crabmaster2000

13 hours ago, Gloves said:

It's great to see someone discovering and enjoying this series, I love Ys personally. And the next few games do stick to the 10-12 hours of gameplay formula. Ys Seven gets a bit longer as the gameplay style changes pretty drastically, and they get longer from there.

I've got a couple local friends that have been playing the newer games in the series and really talking them up lately. I'm excited to see how the series has evolved and kept up over the years. It's been a total blind spot for me.

Started and finished Ys III Wanderers from Ys today. Short and sweet. Really digging these games and want to continue on with the series from here. Love the music and being able to beat an RPG in less than 10 hours is amazing. 

Finished up with Ys Book 2 now as well. It was also really solid. Strong start for the series so I'm eager to see if Ys III can keep it up!

On 6/13/2024 at 2:46 PM, Khromak said:

For Arkanoid since the code in the manual (start plus a) lets you skip the first 16 stages, does that mean to claim victory you "just" need to do 17-35?

I would expect the levels to get more difficult as the game goes on so this isn't quite the advantage it might seem, but that's still a lot of levels to "clear" without having to worry about losing a life on them.

Those who have beaten it in the past: is it a situation where you want to play 1-35 anyway, to build up extra lives, or is it safer to just do the back half and ignore the entire first half of the game?

I found I needed to have a bit of a lives buffer from the early stages to get through. I didn't think I could make it from 17 onward without that.

Finished up Book 1 of Ys today. It was fantastic! Immediately drop you into Ys 2 so I'm hyped to keep it going!

Started playing Ys Book 1 yesterday and much of today. I think I'm nearing the end and might start Book 2 tomorrow if I finish in time. 

Been very busy for a while and then had quite a bit of trouble wrapping my head around this game, but was finally able to beat Lords of the Rising Sun. It was a pretty neat game once I figured out how to play, but it had a pretty steep learning curve. Unlike the NES KOEI games it was real time and pretty unintuitive at times (with a horrible interface considering you need to be quick). 

Once I got good at the mini-games that defend your castle and figured out how to win a military battle it wasn't too bad though. Just long. 

On 5/30/2024 at 10:02 AM, RH said:

@Crabmaster2000

Oh man... I'm getting old.  This was posted almost 4 years ago, but here's the thread.

 

 

By buddy @arnpoly did some digging and figured out the Dino-Riki stuff!!

8 hours ago, peg said:

Didn't silver surfer have additional quests if you had a password or something. Can't remember and too lazy to look it up.

 

Also if you want to include famicom games recca has a hard mode you can access after clearing the normal mode.

Silver Surfer loops again, but doesn't offer an extra ending for doing so

2 hours ago, RH said:

Oh yeah, that interview with Ken is awesome.  I had no clue he was such an avid gamer, and my knowledge of him and his history had only picked up with his days at Rare an the N64.  He sounds like a truly awesome guy.

Ken was so great to talk with. He just oozes love for games of all kinds, old and new, and was really kind to speak with. He mentioned that he wrote a letter to EGM complaining that Ikari Warriors II was too easy when we were talking. I dug around and found that it was in the pre-egm newsletters that he wrote that letter and sent him a copy. He thought that was pretty entertaining. 

Thanks for the link to the Dino-Riki stuff. That was all new info for me!

52 minutes ago, RH said:

I didn't want to post this in the comments to seem like I was throwing shade, but should Dino-Riki be on this list? I recall last year or so, one of you guys found out that after multiple loops or something, the Dino Riki sprite changes to a new character.  More than just a couple of loops, I think you might have had to breach a certain score, but I can't recall, nor find that discussion.

That is news to me! I'll look into that right away.

Also I wouldn't consider that throwing shade. There's always new stuff to learn or that I could have missed. And Im happy to have someone correct me if I'm wrong on something. Helps me get better

7 hours ago, Sumez said:

I've always thought of "Second quest" as strictly a Zelda thing because of this.

The Mario thing is wishy-washy. They just replaced Goombas with Buzzy Beetles and called it a day.
For both games, though, you go back to the title screen, and the second quest is a separate playthrough of sorts. The game doesn't actually loop like a typical arcade style game.

Because the ending of the game changes in Ghosts n Goblins. You get the illusion ending the first loop of the game and the real ending for the second loop. Nothing like that in Contra. 

1 hour ago, T-Pac said:

I knew about the "second quest" in Metal Storm (probably my favorite action-platformer ever), but I didn't realize that it gave you the definitive ending, and I know I haven't got the skills for expert mode.

But I guess it all just leads to the question of your own personal criteria for "beating" a game. Like - I'd say I beat Burai Fighter even though I only ever finished it on easy mode. And I could probably convince myself that one loop of Metal Storm is good enough, too haha.

In any case - I applaud the effort you went through to document all these. You're a madman and I salute you.

[T-Pac]

That 2nd Quest is Metal Storm is Brutal!! Extremely hard. Like one of the most challenging things you can do in an NES game.

Ultimate Difficulty on Burai Fighter was very challenging too. It's so hard to keep weapons leveled up enough and the bosses take SO many hits.

2 hours ago, T-Pac said:

@Crabmaster2000 that was soooo good, dude!

Although I kinda regret watching it now, since I feel like I haven't truly "finished" some of my favorite games haha.

Knowledge is a blessing and a curse, I guess...

[T-Pac]

Oh no! Which games did I ruin for you?

On 5/27/2024 at 5:59 AM, Sumez said:

Man, there's something extremely endearing seeing people still so strictly married to the NES, that they insist on labeling game loops as "multiple quests".

Looking forward to checking this out.

I feel like they are different and Ken Lobb might back me up on this. Loops are just the same thing again with no new reward. And a game with a multiple quest would offer the player something extra for being the new experience. Like Contra loops, but Ghosts n Goblins offers a second quest. Similar, but different in execution 

Just uploaded a YouTube video I've been working on that covers every single NES game that features multiple quests. I did an interview with Ken Lobb last year for a book I'm working on about NES difficulty, and was also able to slide in some questions about games with multiple quests since he worked on so many of them with Taxan/KID back in the day. So half the video is me diving into every single multi-quest games endings and half is Ken Lobb talking about how they came to be and his where the inspiration came to have them included in the first place. 

Would love any and all feedback if you have the time to check it out. 

@Khromak here's a link to my spreadsheet with the win conditions I used for each game:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RlVezcaP_dn3VHhBeuoOBiH7chx0dLaEchzj5cqhU5M/edit?usp=drivesdk

26 minutes ago, Khromak said:

Really interesting video, thanks for sharing!

IDK if you kept a spreadsheet of your win conditions, but I think something like that, with some notes about your logic/decision-making process, would be REALLY interesting for other people seeking to do this challenge to reference.

I agree with what seems to be the overarching theme of your video, "what counts as a win depends on the person playing and their goals" because it really is incredibly unclear what the "win condition" or "beating" a game means in a large percentage of the games on the system. Some people will nitpick the tiniest difference in the gameplay loop, demand the highest difficulty, include playing every stage, every character, getting the "best" ending, etc. but others are satisfied with lower requirements.

Ultimately, anyone who "beats" a game, or all the games, will have some caveats to it. I doubt anyone is crazy enough (including the guy attempting it on this site and recording it) to actually 100% complete every game, to the satisfaction of every possible nitpick anyone could make, like beating all the baseball games with each team, so there will always be some asterisks involved in saying you "beat" every game or even experienced all the content in every game. It just comes down to the individual (or group in the case of a challenge like we do every year) to draw those lines where they see fit.

Thanks so much for watching and the feedback!

I do have a spreadsheet actually of all the win conditions I ended up using. I'll see about digging it up to share.

There been some really cool discussions on here over the years about win conditions and when I check others players like TMRs win conditions I always find it fascinating when we both have different goals for the same game. Really makes me think hard about why we differ on the few games we do. 

Since what constitutes beating NES games is of great interest to me I finally got around to making a youtube video about how messy it is. If you aren't deep into the "Beat every NES game" threads on here I'd bet you may not know how much grey area there is when trying to beat DOZENS of games on the system. Hoping this video can shed some light on the many circumstance in which it isn't very straightforward to "beat" a game. This is my first attempt at a video like this so I'd appreciate any and all feedback on it too. 

Took the week, but I just finished Cosmic Fantasy 2. I don't know if I've ever played a more uneven RPG in my life. It would go from you having a single party member with no healing spells traversing a tough dungeon all by yourself to having 4 party members with enemies doing 1-6 damage at most to you. One dungeon would be awarding you 1000+ experience points and then the next area AFTER that would only offer 500-600 exp for battles. It was very weirdly paced. Otherwise not overly memorable and not one I'll likely return to. 

Finished up Dungeon Explorer II today. It was a big improvement from the first game. Really liked it. The soundtrack was AMAZING. If you're in the mood for a Gauntlet/Zelda style game, but just a light version of those that can be beaten in about 4-5 hours this'll scratch that itch. There is also a fair amount of optional dungeons and tons of characters to experiment with and a few secret things too. Good way to spend a Sunday. 

Prince of Persia is done. A bit better than the NES version overall. Such an important game and it's cool to see the design and movements, but it's not much fun to play due to the controls and combat. 

Been working on SimEarth A LOT over the past few days. I knew there were credits thanks to @Rishary's channel, but it took me a long time to figure out how to trigger them. It's actually not that hard now that I know what to do, but it took a lot of experimentation to figure it out. At first I was playing through each scenario and I almost finished that, but nothing was triggering credits. Turns out you just have to reach the Migration event off planet, but must be on at least Average difficulty for the credits to trigger. 

This is the most hours I've put into a Sim game in my entire life. Only really dabbled briefly with SimCity as a kid. 

Worked my way through Beyond Shadowgate today. It was actually decent for a console point & click adventure game from the early 90s. Voice acting was alright too. Started and ended pretty strong, but most of the game in the middle was pretty dull, boring or nonsensical. Lots of silly ways to die like in the first Shadowgate, but definitely lacked the cool atmosphere of the original. 

Just beat Lords of Thunder. This is one of my favorite games of all time. Havn't played it in quite a while, but it is EXACTLY as good as I remember it being...amazing. No notes. Probably has my favorite OST ever as well. If you're into shmups and haven't played Lords of Thunder you should check it out.