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.

I love this title and it's officially canon in my head now. Unrelated, I actually already have this game plugged in to my system, I was going to give it a shot. Looking through gameplay videos, it's really weird because it seems like they're playing the same stages over and over again. Anyone know if this is required to progress, or if there's some weird strategy going on here? There's a map and you can clearly move along it. I know the two characters can move independently and then once they're together you can swap between them, but both before and after that happens in the longplays I'm looking at, they're repeating the same stage with the same character. It's really odd.

Jungle Book is done. Surprised it's still on here tbh, only took me an hour or two to beat. The controls are weak, which became incredibly apparent during the pure platforming level with king Louie. I was really frustrated with that one, and hoping to all that is holy that the game had infinite continues which, it turns out, it does. Some of the gems are hidden in kinda BS places and there's a decent amount of leaps of faith/ guesswork which can also be annoying.

They come in a later stage, the third or fourth one. First stage has acid pits that do the same thing. It's really awkward because it knocks you back in the opposite direction you're facing so you can bounce yourself to safety...but if you don't *quite* land on the safe platform, it knocks you right back in...and if you try to steer in midair, or move "after landing" it can mess you up, or if an enemy hits you midair and pushes you back the opposite way....eh... Yeah the combat is the weakest part of the game. It's still alright though.

I think the low points for me were: A lot of enemies feel like you can't avoid their attacks and you have to just spam them with bullets to kill them as fast as possible, while tanking damage, which is boring Some of the platforming sections are quite annoying, especially the laser gates/lava pits that bounce you all over Some enemies can absolutely DESTROY your health if you end up inside their hitbox The puzzle and discovery elements were the strongest parts TBH. It is a pretty fun little adventure game, but the combat mechanics are weak. It definitely doesn't feel like a game you can master to the point of dodging all enemy attacks while sniping them or anything like that. In a lot of situations the whole screen is full of bullets. The dogs, especially in certain areas, are incredibly annoying. With some grenades they're manageable, but more than a couple times I found myself without any, or them in a position I couldn't grenade, and they're just unstoppable whirlwinds of death you CANNOT shoot. All-in-all, it's a pretty fun game and worth playing through to be sure, but there are certain elements that definitely had me scratching my head. A lot of the robot/machine stage feels like you're supposed to use the jetpack, but it's unwieldy and has very limited fuel, so I'm not sure what you're expected to do. TBH I just jumped into the lasers and bounced to the end, since they were too large to jump without jetpack. You'll see; or maybe I'm just really bad.

James bond Jr is done. It's an alright game, but it has some frustrating aspects and it's another one of those "beat it twice" games, because they were too lazy to make more levels. Not one I'd look forward to playing again

I understand the concern about save states and slippery slopes, that's why I asked for clarification because I could see the same problems cropping up and the temptation being there for some folks to re-load after something went wrong right after starting up their play session or w/e. When I decide to tackle those games again, I'll try practicing them throughout the week and then maybe try to finish them on a weekend when I have a lot of time in a block to try to beat them.

What's the deal with save states for long games? Is it acceptable to save state at the end of a play session to alleviate the whole "leave your console on for days straight" issue? There are a couple games I'm looking at with infinite continues/ lives, but they're long and don't have passwords or save functionality.

Boulder dash is done, finally. I stand by all my previous posts, the controls are trash in this game which gets really frustrating at the end when extreme precision is required, and tbh some of the levels seemed like random chance carried me through, though I'm sure with a deeper understanding of the mechanics (what causes enemies to get stuck especially) it could be managed better. In the end I spent over 3 hours on 24-1 before getting a single win, then cleared 24-2, 3, & 4 in a total of maybe 3 lives. The difference on difficulty in the final world is crazy, at least for me. Fuck this game. I was raging so hard at my controller/TV while trying to beat that last level. If I never play this game again it will be all too soon. The earlier levels are pretty fun because there's some leniency but by the end you have to get every damn diamond, kill every bug in the exact right spot, and the timers are tight. One dpad press not recognized and you're dead or the board is unwinnable, and that happens constantly. I ended up finishing it on my AV famicom because I thought the controller on my twin famicom had a gummy dpad, but nope the exact same thing happened there too, constantly, maybe even worse.

I don't think the issue is any individual action, but the sum total of them. It's not illegal as a guy who grades video games to make public statements that games are worth 25 billion dollars. It's also not illegal to sell your friend a video game. It's not illegal to sell a graded video game, or to have delayed services when your company is backlogged. If you combine all this together though, it's really suspicious and (IANAL) could be illegal. Employees of grading company and auction house company colluding together to "sell" a game to generate hype. Not actually selling the game, but going all over the news to talk about how much you "sold" it for. Going on TV to talk about how it could be worth 10x as much, when your services are based on a % of the value of a game. Advertising to customers that they can get their products back in a week, while actually taking months/years. Meanwhile, your employees are mysteriously selling tons of games their own company graded. If you're seen as an authority (grading company, auction house) on a thing, your word carries a whole lot more weight. @Code Monkey in your example...if you were a realtor who was listing houses, and you went on the news to tell people that you've been a realtor for 30 years and have tons of experience and that houses are skyrocketing in price and going to be 10x their value next month, so that you could earn a higher commission on the sales of houses, and then you fabricated a fake "sale" of your house to your friend, while retaining control/ownership of it, and took interviews with reporters telling them about the record-breaking sale of your house, oh and your friend just so happens to be a real estate appraiser...it might be a little bit of a problem. I think this situation is really easy to boil down to a single issue and ignore all the context, but taken together I do not understand how anyone can see this as not problematic. Sure, people could've done better due diligence to not buy an item for $1m when it was $50k a month prior...even though the EXPERTS IN THE FIELD were saying it's going to the moon. Also consider the others harmed through this: People who paid exorbitant fees to WATA to "insure" their graded games based on the inflated estimates. People who paid for extra-fast service, cleaning, sticker removal, etc. so they could rush their SMB1/SM64 to market to cash in on the hype. They did these things based on the information being put out there by companies/employees/advisors who were deliberately taking actions to enrich themselves on the backs of these people. Again, I'm not a lawyer but..."wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain." looks an awful lot like exactly what has been described here.

I'm on world 5 of the third loop (17) of Boulder Dash now and taking a break for a bit. This game makes me feel like every controller I own is broken. It feels like the controller inputs are only checked once every 3 seconds. I'm sure my strategies are a bit crude, which is requiring more tight maneuvers than I really NEED to do, but I'm rather enjoying the puzzle aspect of the game and coming up with strats, I just DESPISE trying to actually execute them in real-time because of the endlessly frustrating controls. @T-Pac I recommend playing one loop of this and calling it a day. Playing all 4 loops will drive you insane, even with save states.