Khromak

This interests me...I'm not normally one to pre-order games, but I put in a preorder as well

33 minutes ago, Crabmaster2000 said:

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. 

 

 

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.

17 hours ago, BriGuy82 said:

I give it a 10/10 on my anger scale for cursing to myself and wanting to snap the brittle 30 year old plastic controller in my hands.

This happened for me several times during this year's NES completions. I actually chipped off a little bit of the plastic of one of my controllers by banging it on something (my desk or my hand, I'm not sure). I also squeezed it pretty darn hard while raging at some games. I might've also snapped off the arm of my desk chair, banging it while angry at some game or another.

Either I've got anger problems or some of these games are really frustrating. Probably both.

Interestingly enough, I've had a copy of Nuts 'n Milk in my collection for a few years now since I bought a lot of some guy on Reddit; it was one of the included games but I've never actually played it. Maybe one of these days I'll dust it off and give it a try, looks like a fun game.

Not sure how far I'll get with the 3 lives though,

I watch every single video the moment YouTube reminds me they exist. S-tier content, I look forward to each video. Love the personality, the script, jokes, and of course the drawings to go along with the games.

Keep it up, I love the videos.

If I understand it, it sounds like the goal of this project is to recognize and encourage the people who are making NES games after nintendo stopped supporting it, basically anything post-Wario's woods (roughly). Essentially, the system should've been dead in the water after the last official release, but even now, 30+ years after that, games are still being made which is what this project is about. 

That's why the games made by someone on their basement in 1987 or unlicensed games made by a company and sold in massage parlors in 91 aren't relevant, not because of their quality or who made them, but because it's out of scope for what he's interested in highlighting, those who carried the torch forward and continue to make stuff. I'm not sure the details of all the games fcgamer wanted included in this list, maybe some of them fit that criteria, but it seemed like some of them, like master chu, were released contemporaneously, which makes them ineligible for consideration in this guy's project. 

Anyway, really interesting project and I especially love the idea of getting/ giving recommendations for homebrew since there's so much and not many great ways to find recommendations. I've watched gameplay of some that look really awesome, but I'm only going to include games in my list if I've personally played them. As others, these are listed in no particular order:

Project blue

NEScape

Battle kid

Roniu's tale 

Nebs n Debs

Deadpool

Starkeeper

Twin dragons

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.

2 hours ago, avatar! said:

HOWEVER, most people don't devote that much time to any one game. For most people, whether you complete the game will come down to LUCK. I loved Slay the Spire at the start, but after spending what I would say is "a lot of time" in the game and completing it finally, I absolutely vouch that it comes down to RNG at the very end. A normal player will be able to use their skill to get to the boss of Act 3. That boss, and the final Act 4, absolutely come down to RNG.

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.

27 minutes ago, nerdynebraskan said:

Captain America could have been a B+ title, but it suffers from a severe case of Copy/Paste Syndrome. You spend way too much time playing through nearly identical levels and fighting progressively harder versions of the same bosses and mini-bosses. And the developers artificially pad the length further by punishing you with much higher difficulty and backtracking penalties for every time you die as the game goes on. It's a decent concept that devolved into a slog in its execution. The Avengers' plane is nice for skipping levels, but you get it so late and that stage has the jerk-ass mini-bosses right at the top so be very careful not to be killed by them.

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.

2 hours ago, mbd39 said:

Captain Marvel seems like the most normal and beatable of the remaining games.

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. 

4 hours ago, PII said:

I highly doubt that you qualify as "really bad", lol.  It's just an awkward sort of game.  I don't remember the lasers for whatever reason....

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.

30 minutes ago, PII said:

I've played about 20 or 30 minutes into this one a time or two and you are correct, in that some parts can get pretty awkward and frustrating, but I also found it to be rather dynamic with varied action and the puzzle codes to decipher and I found myself always looking forward to what was around the next corner as well.  It's def. a game I want to play all the way through at some point...

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.