Splain

Props for sticking with it for so long! Championship Pool is definitely the more detailed/fleshed-out pool game. It has lots of game modes and you can zoom into the pool table and move the aiming cursor anywhere on the board, meaning if you move it farther away, you can get more detailed with the exact angle you want, in contrast with Side Pocket. Then you get a ghost-ball preview shot to show what will happen with the angle, power, and english you've specified. No moving power meter, you just press A when everything looks the way you want it. But the preview shots keep playing over and over, with slight angle variations each time. Close, easy shots can be guaranteed to go in, but the longer/trickier the shot, the more chance there is that you'll get an outlier angle that doesn't go in. The best you can do is watch the previews, tweaking the angle as best you can, until most of the previews go in, and then cross your fingers for the real shot. It's a cool mechanic, I guess, but it makes shots take a long time, so games, matches, and tournaments take forever. You also have to call every shot. The game will automatically call the ball and pocket for you, based on the preview shots, which is nice 90% of the time. You have to adjust it if you want to hit a ball with another ball or something, and there's absolutely no "hit it really hard and see what goes in" which is a necessary strategy in Side Pocket. Lol. Complaints so far are that the preview shots don't always clearly indicate that a shot is going to land in the pocket, so I'll line up a shot that looks great, and the ball might bounce between the pads and not actually sink. Also, your opponents don't actually DO their shots, it's just kinda "ok, your opponent got some balls in and then missed, so it's your turn again" and some random balls are removed from the table. That means safeties basically don't exist, you can tuck the cue ball right behind the 8 ball to force a foul, but the game will just say "your opponent ran the table and won the game." So that sucks. I've played for a few hours now and the early opponents have never fouled. There's other tiny annoying things that make everything take longer, like counting the balls to see if it was a stripe or a solid that went in on the break. (I could do 9-ball instead to make the games shorter, but 8-ball is more fun) And it doesn't look like there are passwords or continues or anything. To win more games you have to... take longer on each shot to try and improve your odds. So I'll keep playing but I'm definitely gonna take breaks (heh) with other games in the meantime.

Finished Side Pocket. It was interesting enough that I kept coming back to it, but I definitely have complaints about this game. Sometimes the inertia and physics are out of whack, and it's common to be unable to fine-tune your shot enough to even sink certain shots. Like, if your target ball is too far away from the cue, then one click in either direction turns into a huge difference, and the exact angle you need simply isn't available. And I swear the power meter isn't consistent. You can become the World Champion but you don't see the ending unless you sink all the balls in the last trick shot. And you can only try it once each time you get enough points to become world champion. So it's a bit frustrating, but all the issues are mitigated by All The Continues You Can Eat. So even if you need a little luck to progress through the game, you'll eventually get it. The Game Gear version is a little easier because the pockets are bigger. I'm already checking out Championship Pool to see how it compares.

Lol whoops. Thanks for noticing that.

All Silver boxes I can find also have that same code. If it's the P you're concerned about, it seems to be the part number of the box itself. Lots (all?) of GB game boxes have a P in the code.

You'll be glad to have it out of the way!

@koifish Sorry I didn't respond. The Play It Loud badge is for a complete set of all PIL colors. I'd probably allow some leniency when it comes to clear/white/blue ones, since I believe those were all region-specific. And we're still making the 2023 badge.

I didn't have cable as a kid, but I was vaguely aware of Ren n Stimpy. My extremely uptight high school physics teacher brought in a TV for the last ~3 days of school and we just watched Ren and Stimpy while he giggled in the back of the room. It was so weird. But that was my first time really seeing the show. It's definitely unique and quirky, but the fun/random/shocking nature doesn't really hit after the first viewing of each episode.

I've been playing Side Pocket, I have some gripes about the weird physics and some seemingly-impossible shots because they can't be fine-tuned accurately enough using that interface. I can get to the highest tier but haven't nailed the last trick shot yet. Meanwhile I finished the Missions mode of Minesweeper.

Looks like an original GBA screen to me

Don't you already have those? I should pass, I don't display my games at all, and you can land a decent chunk of cash for those, more than I have in cash or trade

I'm guilty of keeping my mouth shut at questions like "I'm going for a full set! What games are you missing?"

Are they built for CIB, (for a store display) or do loose carts fit neatly in them?

I hope I've never come across as hostile to new collectors. A common thing, in lots of communities, is seeing a newcomer show up and ask some basic questions, and then kinda pick-n-choose what things to listen to, and not 100% heed the advice of the experienced old timers, and then disappear after a week or two. Then another noob appears. I don't really see that happening here, but that's what makes a lot of other places start to feel "toxic." The newcomers don't like that the veterans get huffy about their way/ideas being the only way/ideas, when really it's that they've answered the same questions a hundred times. Staying friendly and welcoming is the challenge all online communities face.

It really is fun to find variants that sellers don't know to be rare, it's the "New Game+" of fullset collecting. These trays are really cool. I'd love to store my collection in something like that, but it's just too many games and none of them are CIB lol.

Thanks @Red. I've got a few games on my to-buy list now, and this contest got me to finally fix up my TurboExpress.

The GB versions of Klax, Chase HQ, Wildsnake, and some others move slightly slower so they're more approachable for people like me who are kinda bad at video games lol.

Wrapped up Skyward Sword HD. I played this on the Wii, back in the day, with the motion controls, and I didn't get very far. I understand the idea that swinging the Wiimote to do your sword was supposed to be super awesome, but it never really clicked with me. Nowadays, playing on the Switch, it's REAL weird to use the right stick to swing the sword. A LOT of enemies and puzzles are build around swinging your sword in the right way (vertical, stab, diagonal, etc) and like, I get it, but I kept trying to use the right stick to move the camera. And there are other items that use the right stick, that were originally to be used with swinging the wiimote, and all of them are clunky and weird, with lots of problems being caused by the adaptation of motion controls to not-motion controls. I struggled with the controls for the entire game. I know it was an option to still use motion controls but I didn't try it. Gyro for aiming is great. I had a weird recurring problem of things being "closer than they appear." I'll swing my sword at a blob, but it's too late, it's already engulfed me. I'll dive onto a sky-island and try to save time by opening my parachute right before I hit, but it's too late, I've crashed and lost health. I just had to learn to generally act before I thought things were close enough. Weird. Anywayyyy, I really did enjoy the game, it's a good 3D Zelda. You can see some of the BOTW ideas starting out. Hot take, I prefer the "mini-dungeon" system of BOTW over the lengthy, tedious dungeons of SS. It's got one big city in the sky, then three main areas on the ground, each of which you return to many times to fulfill the objectives of the game, which is both sorta cool and sorta not. I like the sky islands, it felt a bit like being on the sea in Wind Waker. But yes, it does get a little boring when you have to fly huge distances over and over. My final playtime was just over 40 hours, I started to feel done around 30, partly because it seems like the game is about to end for a long time. It starts to feel like "Link! I calculate an 80% chance that on the other side of this door is the magical talisman that you have been searching for. This will allow you to finally complete the Mystical Forfex of Greatness, giving you access to begin searching for the first of eight Cromulent Bloopies, all of which will (at long last) allow you to begin searching for the Ancient Dragon-Bears, which will each teach you part of the Square-dance of Courage, which dance will open the Huge Door at the Real Actual End of the Game, where you will be able to begin your quest for the first of five Scrolls of Knowledge, which you'll need to unlock one of the Ancient Padlocks of Truth, which will open the way to Impa's Butterfly Santuary, where you'll need to..." and it's like "another thing??" again and again. I guess I underestimated how much I like knowing how far away I am to finishing Zelda games. But again, generally speaking, I'm glad I played it and I definitely recommend it (the Switch version) to Zelda fans. And of course it has this gem:

Posting a quick score just in case I don't have time to get a better one tomorrow. Hoping to be able to dive in and get a decent score. 13900

Excellent! Time for me to check out some of those chart toppers I haven't played yet!

Quick, grab TG16rankings.com

Overall best to worst. (Or if it's easier, Top 10, Next 10, Next 10.... Bottom 4.) If you met a clone of yourself who had never played TG16, and could only get a certain number of games, what would the games be? You've got 10 already in your list of favorites above, there's your Top 10.

Rank them all! Rank them all!

First alternate: Landstalker

Nice, between @Gloves, @Gaia Gensouki, and me, that's over 200 games beaten!

My best run so far, I almost took the 1st guy down. But then he got away, like alllll the way away, and I couldn't catch up a second time. I'd never make it as a real cop. Maybe I should stick to the easier Game Boy version (baby's first Chase HQ) 241820