Khromak

StarTropics is done, I stand by my earlier statements, the controls are too stiff considering how difficult the game gets towards the end (alien levels). I was able to cobble together a win, but it didn't feel like I earned it through mastery of the game, like other action games. I'd say it's like a 6-7/10 for me. Not much desire to go back

I'm about halfway through Startropics now, though obviously the second half will be much tougher than the first half. Thus far: very meh. Graphics, sound, atmosphere, etc are all great, but the gameplay is trolly and annoying at best. Trying to play an action combat game with what feel like RPG controls is really awkward and leads to a lot of cheap hits IMO. Dreading the end game when it truly gets tough

Battletoads & double dragon is complete, for the first time by me. It took some practice on the last couple stages but honestly I think I lost most of my lives on the rope stage. This game is quite a bit easier and more forgiving than battletoads, in my opinion. Still tough and certain sections feel like total BS until you figure them out, but once you know a few tricks, it's not bad at all

Edit: oh also this game is WAY more focused on combat and has very little twitch reaction/memorization. If you're into the beat-em-up parts of Battletoads but didn't care for Volkmire/Turbo Tunnel, or the precision platforming & timing of a lot of those stages, this one will be much more your style. It's VERY different from the original, definitely more of a mashup of DD & Battletoads than a straight sequel.

42 minutes ago, nerdynebraskan said:

Have you done LIttle Ninja Brothers before? I've done it a couple of times, but I've definitely been feeling like it's time to do it again. I'll leave it to you if it's your first time, but I was probably going to start it in the next week.

I was mildly interested in doing Faria for the second time again this year. StarTropics I've done once, and still don't have much desire to revisit it. Battle of Olympus I tried for a couple of hours either last year or the year before, and it didn't have much appeal for me.

If you or @Gaia Gensouki have yet to do Dragon Warrior IV, I strongly recommend it. I did it two years ago, and I had a ball. It's long as hell, but it's so much fun. Every 8-bit RPG enthusiast needs to play it through at least once.

I've beaten all of these before, except StarTropics. A lot of people rave about it so it's been on my radar for a while but I've never gotten around to it. I've done Little Ninja Bros once a few years ago, but it was all 2-player. I'm not sure how much that affects the balance of the game, but I remember some of the bosses being brutal with 2 players, hopefully they give them half the health/damage when you're single player, oof.

Let me know whatever you pick and I'll take it/them off my list so we don't duplicate efforts on some of these longer games.

Edit: I've also never beaten BT&DD.

23 minutes ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

Is anybody playing Dragon Warrior IV or wants to play it soon? If not, I would like to chose this as my next side project game.

It's on my list of potential games to play this year, but I haven't wanted to commit to 30+ hours for 7 points so I say go for it lol.

Speaking of side projects, I've been thinking of taking on Athena, but it seems like you need to do it all in one play session, right? It seems like "Continue" only works if the system remained powered on.

That in mind, I've been thinking of leaving that for a weekend day where I have a really long time to play at once, so I can get through the whole thing without interruption. In the mean time I'll probably start practicing Battletoads & DD, or start a game of Faria, Battle of Olympus, Startropics, or Little Ninja Bros. Any opinions?

M.C. Kids is done, not 100% with all the secrets etc but pretty close to all the cards. I like this game, lots of secrets and they're reasonably easy to find, with generous extra lives (I 1cc with lots of mistakes) and the controls are pretty tight

Well, turns out I have no life and gravnic is much, much easier than puzznic. Been a while since I played this. 

All of puzznic (game) is now complete. Didn't get a picture of the puzznic part because it disappears super fast but it turns out not to matter much since the ending is the same, lame! 

I must say, the difficulty curve on this game is silly. Some levels in the mid ranges would take me 20 minutes, then the very best level I'd solve in 30 seconds with no planning while just trying things out. This is all referring to puzznic. The gravnic part I found much easier because there are only 4 options and you can easily see if it's gonna put you into a fail state, and there's rarely much planning ahead. 

All in all, not my favorite puzzle game but it's alright. I think this is my second ish time beating it

Just finished puzznic (game mode) and my brain is fried. Going to take a break before I take on gravnic, maybe tomorrow or some time early next week. Some of these are just so complex it's absurd

It might be best to create another thread with all the specific examples and we can try to come to a consensus on things that might need to be changed? 

TBH I think the distinction between "good ending" and "get the crystal then beat the game" is very small (having an extra life when you beat the final boss) that I don't think it's too much to ask. With almost 700 games it's hard to say there are hard and fast rules. It's more like a hierarchy of completion steps from most clear to least clear, depending how confusing the game's "ending" or lack thereof is and how it asks you (or doesn't) to engage with its content

6 minutes ago, Dr. Morbis said:

If you finish the game with only one player alive in any of those situations, I believe you get the bad ending; you must have both players alive to trigger the two good endings above.

EDIT: So, to put it simply, collect the crystal in 99 and beat either mode with two players alive at the end to avoid a bad ending.

Right, and the crystal involves extra levels. Maybe that's why the distinction exists, IDK.

From strategy wiki:

Worst ending: Fail to collect the crystal in Round 99, and defeat the final boss.

Bad ending: Collect the crystal in Round 99, and defeat the final boss in a single player game.

Good ending: Collect the crystal in Round 99, and defeat the final boss in a two player game.

Best ending: Collect the crystal in Round 99, and defeat the final boss in Super Bubble Bobble mode in a two player game. You will also unlock a Sound Test mode.

After 99 if you get the crystal, there are extra levels before the boss.

Bubble Bobble bad ending is just 1-100, not including the letter levels, right?

Legacy of the wizard is done. This time I made the target unfortunate decision to do Lyll's crown last and lemme tell ya, she sucks against the final guardian. Really badly. After finally managing to take him down, the rest was a cake walk. Couldn't imagine trying to beat this blind though, damn

Started Legacy of the Wizard today, probably gonna take a couple days to finish, I'm only like 1/4-1/3 of the way through, but I'll have it by this weekend unless someone else does it before then.

Incredible crash dummies is done, a first time clear for me. The controls can be awkward but otherwise it's a decent game. That bird level can go to hell, and the final boss you basically have to cheese. Took me like 4 run throughs of the game to get him, fuck that guy

12 hours ago, Dr. Morbis said:

-Gyromite- select final phase on the menu screen and complete it and you've "beat the game."
-Wrecking Crew- select final stage on the menu screen and complete it and you've "beat the game."
-Ice Climber- select final mountain on the menu screen and complete it and you've "beat the game."
-Guerilla War- select second last stage on the menu screen and complete the final two levels and you've "beat the game."

To be clear: I think you bring up some good points and it's a worthy discussion to have. I see your perspective and I think you have some valid ideas, but I'm not sure I agree with these specific scenarios.

I think the difference between a level select code in a manual and a continue code in a manual is you're still experiencing the levels if you use a continue code (Adventure Island, 3d Worldrunner, etc.), you're just given more lives/attempts to do it.

To me, the difference between a continue code in a manual and one that isn't (Ikari Warriors) is that one is a cheat code and the other is a mechanic. The Konami code isn't explicitly told to you and must be discovered, therefore it's a cheat code. If the game tells you to press A to continue, that just means they didn't choose to have a "continue" "restart" menu option and opted for a button combination instead, IMO. The same cannot be said for a code that was not available to a kid who bought the game (Konami code, ABBA).

The difference between a level select code in a manual and a warp zone in a game, is the latter is a programming/design decision. They decided you get to skip from world 1 to 1-2-3 in SMB3, they decided you can skip from world 1 to the turbo tunnel in Battletoads, and that you could skip from world 4 to 6 in SMB2. They obviously put these in here with the intent that players would use them for a specific skip, for being creative enough to find them.

It's all arbitrary, of course, but where do you draw the line? If you say you have to beat every level of every game to experience the whole thing, what about the next guy who says you haven't truly beaten a game unless you've maxed out the score? Gotten every collectible? Collected every coin? Gone down every pipe? Played it single-player and multi-player? Played through it with every character? Completed in 1CC, or even 1 life?

It's truly endless, and I think for this contest the goal is basically "get the credits" or "get to the end". Where there aren't credits, we have to make something up and the rules are pretty consistent across those games, I think. I haven't beaten even close to a majority of the games for this contest so others will have to fill in the gaps, but these are the distinctions/logic I see behind the way these decisions were made and I think I agree with all the decisions I've encountered thus far.

1 hour ago, nerdynebraskan said:

I was trying to work on it right as I got busy. I was last trying stage 4-1. I grew up with the game, and found nothing easy about it beyond the Stage 1 levels and the first boss. Am I missing something? 

IDK, there are some frustrating points like some of the places where you have to jump over a pit and fire at an enemy, or make some awkward shots, but it's very deterministic so you can practice a technique for each enemy. It also helps that you can restart from the same level every time. The bosses can all be beaten by just keeping away from them and plugging damage when possible. I think I killed them all on the first try except the last one. One other thing is a lot of times it's easiest to skip as many enemies as you can, especially those bastards who spin in whirlwind and throw garbage at you; I think I only killed like 1 or 2 of them in the whole game. Since this has no timer, you can take it really slow and be very careful/thoughtful about each jump, each enemy, and your overall strategy. Buying health or an extra life can make up for any mistakes you made, and once you make it to the boss you should be pretty much home free, just keep away from them and get a hit in when you can. The electric guy would stay in place and I could hit him a whole bunch of times from a great distance, then when he gets close I run away and try to get some distance, then spam again.

Gremlins 2 is done, quite easy, I'm surprised nobody went after it thus far

Just beat bubble bobble (good ending). The boys treated me pretty well this time, and I even had to beat him twice because I couldn't figure out the stealing lives thing

IDK about any regenerating mechanic, but he definitely has a metric ton of health. Maybe you're spending too much time dodging? I was just standing still shooting at him the whole time since if enemies are being hit they can't damage you. The timing for this can be tough though and sometimes they will hit you when it seems unfair that they should hit you.

That's only the start of the torture with that game though, the WW1/WW2 level was brutal for me and what made me quit the game last year. I spent many, many lives trying to do a couple of those objectives and eventually decided it wasn't worth my stress for the points lol.

GL with it, I probably won't attempt it again any time soon, though I'd eventually like to tackle it, maybe with some save state practicing...

Ultimately all these rules are just arbitrary "what counts as beating a game". If a game has warps (Battletoads, SMB, SMB3, Kung-Fu Heroes, etc.) built into the game, I wouldn't say you didn't beat the game just because you didn't beat all the levels, because the devs put those warps in there and clearly intended for you to use them (for something). You could argue maybe it's a way to make it easier for you to "get back to where you were" after running out of continues or to make the game easier for people who aren't as skilled, or whatever you want, but you still got the credits.

I feel similarly about simulating games: the devs put it in there, it's fair game to use it. The goal isn't to 100% beat every piece of content in the game, just to get to the end/credits.

There are exceptions to this like Puzznic, Sesame street games, etc. where there are multiple game modes and you do have to experience 100% of the content, because there are fundamental differences between the content types, a finish line for each of them, and no way to skip any of it.

I think if a game gives you continues where you can just press start and continue, fair game. If there's a code you would have no way of knowing about, it's a cheat code, developer introduced or not. I think this distinction makes sense, even though it makes a few games hard as nails, it is what it is.

Side note: I have a notepad list of the games I'd like to beat this year, including a bunch I've beaten before and a handful I haven't beaten and as of today that notepad no longer scrolls (at the resolution it starts at). How's that for progress? Looks like 26 games left...13 of which I have never beaten before. That's some nice synergy too.

Kiwi Krazy is done again. I'm sure I said it last time but the hardest part of this game imo is level 4-4. I barely died on the final world at all. This one was a nail biter though, I beat the final boss on my last life and I think my last continue. First time reaching him though, so my blood was pumping for sure.

56 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

Sorry for hijacking but I feel like we answered the thread. Did you re-shingle your roof prior to the install? If not, how will you manage that with solar panels on them now?

Part of their process is to inspect the roof and make sure it's in good shape. In my case yes, I had already installed a new roof last year so I was all set. If your roof is getting older, I wouldn't recommend getting rooftop solar until it's been replaced.

Edit: I sent you a PM with the details of my installation. It has a bunch of other details like pricing, expected generation and savings, etc.

10 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

Can you please explain how you did it, how much it cost, how you paid and how long it took?

Yup, here's how it went for me (I used a professional installer).

1. I got a quote from them in early June. Went back/forth on options, agreed on layout/# of panels, etc. They basically did all the work, I just decided how much I wanted to install/pay and if I wanted extras. This is generally dependent on how much electricity you use and how big your roof is. In my case my home is skinny so I don't have enough roof space to cover all my usage, I opted for "as much as I can get" 
2. They have to get a bunch of approvals/permits from town etc, had to sign up for some thing with my electrical provider
3. Installation scheduled for and completed late August. Installation took less than a day
4. Inspections are required and completed in the following month or so
5. Got permission from the town & power company to turn on October 2nd

I could've opted for a loan to pay for it and paid slightly more than the electricity savings every month for ~7 years or so, but I opted for cash payments. In my case it was $1,000 up front, then some % after I signed the agreement, another % payment on install day, and the final payment on "turn it on" day.

All-in-all, it cost me ~$26k for an ~8kwh system. I was supposed to get $1k back from the state (MD) but the company bungled the paperwork so I missed out on that. Federal gives 30% of the cost of the project which was about $7800.

If you have other questions, let me know! Overall I'm happy with the system. Since it's winter it's not exactly producing thrilling numbers, but over the course of the year it will definitely be awesome. I did have one month in the fall/winter with a ~$30 bill which was pretty awesome. Summer should be excellent.