Khromak

Lifecoach, a serious STS player, got a 42-game streak beating the entire game on the highest Ascension setting. Did he get really lucky 42 times in a row? I think the problem with a lot of people is they build 50+ card decks and don't remove enough cards from their deck, so you don't end up getting the cards you need. With proper decision-making skills and a lot of planning, I really don't think it's luck, it's highly skill-based.

The problem I have with these and the other statements about luck and RNG are just that...if an expert player can win 50 times in a row, it's not a matter of luck. He's not getting luckier, he's just more skilled. You can argue all day that WITHOUT PROPER PLAY, you need to get lucky to win, but that's just saying "this game is hard and most people don't have the patience to play it ideally" which is different from "Beating this game is luck" IMO. Kinda splitting hairs, but I don't think it's fair to say luck is required.

Ehhh.. I'd argue against the slay the spire/luck angle. I think people who claim that STS is luck-based are just rushing too much and/or too inexperienced to play properly. If you've watched a video of high level STS players, they win like 99% of their games because they have insane levels of knowledge and go DEEP into the strategy. I say this as someone who tends to just blitz my STS runs and who dies...a lot...but that's just my play style, that's not a flaw in the game. If I slowed down and thought about every turn, every decision on the map, every relic, card decision, and shop decision, I'd be much better. I'm just impatient, and oftentimes I try to force deck ideas that I'm not getting the cards/relics for. You really need to be flexible with your deck idea and adjust as you go. I agree though, it's definitely a game where a lot is expected of you if you're going to win, especially if you're on higher Ascension levels.

For the pause buffering in Arkanoid, if you're doing it, you can pause the game and move the vaus controller and the vaus will INSTANTLY teleport to wherever you moved the position on the controller when you unpause. This takes some getting used to because you have to get the feel for where you are with various positions of the potentiometer, but you can theoretically just place yourself wherever you want at any given time, then unpause to catch the ball. It's pretty busted IMO, but still not enough for me to beat that game I don't think, lol. Still have to time your pause/unpause right to even attempt it, and surely you don't want to do that for every shot so there's going to be mistakes where you don't think you need it and BAM the ball slips right by.

Side note @scaryice I think you counted Racket Attack for 12 instead of 13 and I should be at 372 I'm listed at 371.

7 days to get 7 games if we want to break the record for fastest to 650. Who's working on something that could be done in that time? Do we think we have any chance? My list is looking pretty slim, I'm open to hearing about any game on the list that's not too tough or crazy long but I think that pretty much eliminates everything still left haha. I'm considering trying Athena (long and difficult) or Gauntlet (difficult as hell) again, or possibly seeing if I can get the pitching trick to work in Bases Loaded, though I could also barely score a hit in the batting of that game, so I'm not likely to be winning any games there any time soon. Wouldn't count on much in the way of completions from me, but I'll give those a shot throughout this week and see what I can come up with. I'll be out of town this upcoming weekend to see the solar eclipse, but will probably bring some kind of NES with me to attempt some games in my down time.

Racket attack is done. Not gonna lie, this game got TOUGH for me at the end and I was raging at it...a lot... It's fun enough though and I enjoyed the mechanics generally, but sometimes it felt like I would be standing right next to the ball and hit the button and either my character would swing at air, swing in the wrong direction, or walk right through the ball. Definitely glad to have it done

Never mind what I said earlier. I got stuck HARDCORE on one of the matches so I will absolutely not be finishing the game today lol. Will be back at it this weekend, hopefully it doesn't continue to get harder and this is just a player who has a style that counters mine...

Well, we came ripping out the gates with a few games in a single day, but we're falling behind a little bit. 9 more to go guys! I'm about halfway through Racket Attack, and really enjoying it. I might beat it tonight, might be tomorrow, depending how/if it gets more difficult as it goes on.

Oh, are we all mass-voting for nothing but baseball games? I'm down!

Back to the future 2&3 is done. God damn do I have some opinions about this game... the action is pretty good, controls are a bit slippery but you get used to it. I LOVED the arcade style mini games, just the right combination of puzzle and platforming for me. Until the end... when they got diabolical. I had to look up solutions for a couple of them and even then, they took dozens and dozens of tries to execute. Overall though, I really enjoyed this game. I absolutely love the strategy and planning involved in the first game (BTTF2). I was using a map from gamefaqs and a spreadsheet of my own creation and having a blast planning out my route. As a blind play, I imagine it would be really rough though. You'd spend so much time going the wrong way, and finding where the secret entrances are would take AGES.

I kinda gave up on BL1 since I couldn't figure out the pitching trick, it wasn't working for me consistently. I can give it another try once BTTF is done, but I'll probably lean into something else for now. I don't want to "claim" anything since the list is pretty small at this point, but I'm thinking I'll either try Gauntlet again, try to work through Athena, or try Captain Marvel again, in my order of preference.

2 weeks to get 13 games, one/day essentially. That's gonna be rough! I'll be beating BTTF 2&3 today or tomorrow, I'm about 1/3 of the way through, ish, and I have a good rhythm going.

Similar concerns to Nerdy's. Games I play for a long period of time in a single session, like 6-8 hours or w/e, tend to feel warm by the pins, so my concerns are mostly related to that heat building up over the course of 72 hours or w/e it takes to finish a game. I haven't had any games or consoles damaged by leaving them on and I have, but I prefer not to do it. That said, I currently have my BTTF2&3 game left on with my NT mini, because I wanted to abide by the rules and I made more progress tonight than I thought I would.

Thanks for the advice! I played it for an hour or so earlier and noticed that, while EXTREMELY similar, there were some minor differences in the stages. When watching the videos I probably just assumed it was the same level, not realizing it was an almost-identical-but-slightly-modified "new" stage. I found the combat to be really clunky. It's not so bad when you're fighting 1 enemy, but when they're coming from both sides it feels really cheap, especially when enemies take a bunch of hits to kill. I ended up using all 3 continues before even making it to the second city (New York). It's funny because I killed a couple (mini?) bosses and they were quite a bit easier than the regular enemies. There were some "zerg" type battles where enemies swarm you from both sides of the screen. These were quite difficult as Captain America but I could manage to squeeze by only taking a few hits. Then Cap died and I was trying one with Hawkeye and holy crap, it's basically impossible. I have no idea what you're expected to do, as the enemies charge at you and take like...6 arrows to kill, which are slow as hell to fire. Maybe you're supposed to just avoid them until the time of the event runs out? IDK anyway I decided it wasn't worth my time, at least for now. I'm sure someone else will take care of it. I'm sure I could figure out some tricks or work around the jank at some point, but for now it just feels like a frustrating mess. I like the boomerang-style attack with Cap's shield, but it's also really slow and enemies will body you quite a bit in the mean time. I can't imagine trying to deal with those controls at the later levels where enemy patterns, HP, frequency, etc. presumably get worse. I'm taking a stab at BTTF 2&3 right now and actually enjoying it (thus far). I will probably shut it off at the end of the night tonight and come back for a full attempt some other day(s) when I have more time, but I'm getting a feel for it. I wrote up a little spreadsheet with all the item locations and other details on it, will use that as my checklist for when I go to beat it too.