Elkovsky

Thanks! I'm totally putting this in a text file for posterity so I can give this a shot the next time I give it a try.

Good night, this one gave me a ton of grief the last time I played it. Any pointers you might be able to offer?

I wouldn't mind seeing the unlicensed stuff myself... perhaps added in as sort of a "bonus round" if we make good time on the 677. But that's just me.

Karnov is done. I think if I had grown up with this or were to spend a little longer with it, I would like it a little more, but the game started wearing out its goodwill over time. Still, it's a game where you play a fire-breathing circus strongman, so I can't be *too* mad at it.

You have my respect; BeaIank; that's probably one of the hardest NES games I've ever attempted. I imagine it's fairly low on randomness, though, so probably easier to learn than some of the toughies out there. Oh, and The Legend of Kage is done. A little annoying—I feel like sometimes it's a bit of a crapshoot whether you're going to get hit suddenly by an unexpected projectile, even when you're swinging the kodachi regularly—but at least it was short, even with three loops as a requirement. Oh, another thing: I might take another shot at Evert & Lendl Top Player's Tennis at some point if it doesn't get cleared early on, as the last time I beat it years ago, I don't think I *actually* beat it. The pastebin file for completion requirements says "Must win all tournaments to get the ending (add more details) rank 12 after asmik, rank 8 wimbledon"; would someone who's cleared this in a previous year be able to clarify?

Kabuki: Quantum Fighter is done. Aside from a few moments of fussy platforming, a pretty good game.

Legendary Wings is done. Didn't get the ending pic in time—haven't beaten this one before, so I incorrectly assumed it would freeze on the final screen rather than starting another loop. I have a screenshot of me at the beginning of my second loop with close to a million points, so hopefully that's okay. Just to make sure, one loop *is* enough for completion, right? If not, I can always take a second go at this tomorrow if someone doesn't beat me to it. Also, is anything different on subsequent loops? Increased difficulty? Multiple endings?

Little Nemo: The Dream Master is done!

Looking forward to getting back into NES completion again; I haven't knocked off that many titles in the past several years, but I've been in the mood for shorter, one-sitting games for some reason as of late. I'm planning on knocking out one of my old favorites to kick things off, and I'll see what I have time for from there. I'm in my last semester of doctoral coursework and I might get swamped once things get rolling, but if there's still some stuff on my list by mid-April, I'll see what I can knock off during the summer. See you all in 2021!

After doing Mode 1 in June, I had tried 9-Ball a handful of times but never really got anywhere, and I beat one of the sports modes. As for everything else, all of my completions (including a replay of soccer to get a proper screenshot) were in the span of about four hours yesterday, and before that, I spent maybe an hour or two (might have been more) on 9-Ball in the late evening on December 10. So six months with a long gap in there, but everything other than Mode 1 was more or less in a 24-hour period with some sleep in the middle.

Okay, so I started Michael Andretti's World GP, and, um... whoa man. I was *not* expecting an NES racing game with a learning curve. I'm honestly not sure if I have the time for this right now; even if I kept at it over most of the break, I'm not sure if I'd be able to finish this before the end of the year. Not to let everyone down or anything...

Alright, I have something to show for my efforts. Here we go... For 9-Ball, I figured out that it's possible to game the RNG as far as the initial board setup. If one cues through the title screen and moves through the options pretty quickly, the fifth pattern of bonus multipliers yields four bonus multiplier spots in a decent configuration. Between that and good fortune, I was able to get 42,000 "dollars" after three rounds, and then I wagered away the money I didn't need during rounds 4 and 5. It turns out that a fully powered shot with no nudges afterwards will always drain down the left side, so I was able to avoid accidentally winning money at that point. [] Battle Flipper was novel, but kind of annoying. I couldn't reliably get the flipper to behave correctly on Soccer (it would sometimes flip the balls back at me, even when I thought I was swinging it the right way... not sure how much of that is my stupidity and how much was just janky physics), but I didn't actually need to for Ice Hockey, since winning was mostly a matter of keeping the goalie in the middle and waiting for the AI to make stupid mistakes. Assuming that 3 sets counts as completion for each mode, then, Rock 'n' Ball is done! Even if it isn't, I think I'm going to move on to Michael Andretti's World GP for now, since no one else seems to be claiming it and it's still on my personal list. Anything I should know before starting in?

Alright, I'm back at it again. My own coursework is done and I just have a few little loose ends with grading and such, so I should have a lot more time to help get us through these last few games. Took a few shots at 9-ball in Rock 'n' Ball a little while ago, but no dice. I'm getting a little better with the nudging, but I'm probably going to need good luck on my first two sets to make this happen. Just to clarify, for each of the battle and sports modes, do I need to do a 3-set, 5-set, and 7-set for each mode for those modes to count as finished?

Thank goodness someone is taking this one. Also, it turns out that I haven't beaten Michael Andretti's World Grand Prix; for some reason I thought I had, but it was Al Unser Jr. Turbo Racing that I finished back in... ::consults spreadsheet:: ... 2013. If no one else has claimed it, I am considering doing it after finishing Rock 'n Ball... although I'm looking TMR's completion time and I'm wincing a bit. Does it get particularly difficult towards the end of the Grand Prix mode? I won't be able to resume until December 2 or 3 at the earliest, though; I've still got a couple of final papers to finish and I'll be meeting one-on-one virtually with my own students about their own final projects on Wednesday through Friday. Things will slow way the heck down after that, though.

I'll be finishing up classes this week, so my schedule will be freeing up considerably very soon. I'm planning on coming back to Rock 'n Ball to finish it off, so unless someone is actually eager to play it, I'd be glad to "take one for the team" (and I haven't marked it off of my master list of NES completions yet as it is). Just out of curiosity, what's the word on Bases Loaded? Is anyone working on it right now? I seem to remember that that one takes forever to complete.

Yeah, I'm in my last year of coursework for a PhD and I basically won't have a break until, like, the beginning of December. If Rock 'n' Ball is still unfinished at that point, I'll take a shot at it then. I also happen to have a Power Pad... I don't have Street Cop, but I have the other games, listed just as an FYI. Again, though, it'll be December until I have time to jump back in; it's been 60-70 hour weeks for me.

Hats off to you! Did you manage to get to 9-4, perchance?

I did indeed—hard to believe it's been nearly 8 years ago. I decided to give it a shot for the heck of it and managed to get to 4-3 on my first try. After taking my picture at life 0, I kept going on that continue and got destroyed in 5-1, which is where things really start heating up. With a little practice I could probably get back in shape, but I think I'll just leave my score as-is and see how other people do.

Good gravy, I'm out of practice; I think dying once on the first level was a good reminder of that. Then again, it's been nearly eight years since I wrote the guide, so... yeah. Anyway, this is where I stood on life 0 of my first continue on my lone attempt; I managed to make it to 5-1 before getting utterly destroyed. According to my old notes, though, I used my first continue on 8-2 (and another on 8-3) on my winning run back in 2012, so I'm sure someone could handily trounce this score. Incidentally, it's been awhile since I've done one of these contests, so I'm trying to remember—is a person only allowed to submit one score from their first run, or can one submit a better score later on? At the risk of shameless self-promotion, I'd recommend looking at my guide on GameFAQs if you're wanting to up your Q*Bert game. My big revelation for finally beating the darn thing several years back was figuring out that the enemy spawn patterns are fixed for each level (with the exception of Coily spawns being skipped if he's already on the board), and I've transcribed all of those out for anyone who wants them. Anyway, good luck to all, and I'm interested to see how people do on this one.

Welp, that's a bit of a relief—Mode 1 is done. I was having trouble getting the code to activate at first, and I was actually wondering if I was going to be able to get in a groove and get a glitchless high score by spending by focusing on the left hole and the 10,000-point ramp once the stopper in the middle was activated, but I did finally get the glitch to work. I can always try a glitchless run another time (once I've finished the rest of the NES library or something). I'm probably going to turn in for the night and see how I fair on mode 2 in the afternoon....

It probably took me closer to eight hours of actual play time across all of my attempts, but I'm not entirely sure. In the notebook I use to record all my completions, I started on 6/16/2020 at 12:04 AM, and I finished on 6/17/2020 at 10:01 PM, but I definitely took some breaks in there. Definitely not four hours for me... @scaryice Whoa! This is what I get for not logging in for a week. I found a longplay with someone using Paul, whose stats seem to make it a lot easier to reliably get to the bonus level over and over again. If triggering that glitch counts as a win for that mode, I'm definitely going that route; better than spending forever on this one. BTW, if the remaining games list starts getting low and someone's itching to do Rock 'n Ball (Rock 'n' Ball?), feel free to take it; I haven't been religiously (so to speak) working on this one, as I've been spending more time on the Phantasy Star II series (finishing a run of II and doing the first generation of III). @Tablew/chairs Hats off for knocking out Q*Bert! Probably one of the toughest completions I've done myself (probably harder than The Mutant Virus unless one literally memorizes the enemy spawn patterns—writing them down was enough for me).

Gotcha—yeah, I'm not entirely sure if my in-the-moment judgment was accurate, but I can't help but wonder if there's something influencing the timing behind the scenes. By the way, those maps were immensely helpful—mainly for knowing where the proxy SSVs work, and knowing how they worked in the first place, so thank you for all of that. I'll consider putting together a guide sometime this summer, then, with credit given where credit is due. I think I'll give Rock N Ball a shot. It'll be a new completion for my master list, and after doing Gauntlet and Mutant Virus recently I could go for something a little less daunting (although much of the difficulty in Gauntlet is "knowledge-based" rather than "reflex-based" and it's a pretty well-documented game).

Finished! Boy, that was a doozy. Sorry the image is a little washed out. I had a single unit of health left on my last life, but fortunately, I managed to pull level 5 off on either my second or third "full" attempt (I'm not counting the first trip to the level, where I was low on lives and just kind of futzed around a bit). Like everyone else who's beaten this game, I still don't entirely understand the mechanics, but for anyone who decides to take this game on in future years, here are a few thoughts from my time with it: *At the risk of being Captain Obvious: as mentioned before, the virus movement rules are based on John Conway's Game of Life, although there are a few additional mechanics at play. First, there has to be some additional rule about how walls are handled, as "cells" (virus/vaccine spots —apologies to any biologists reading this) would appear in squares near walls even if there weren't the requisite three neighboring cells to that spot. Second, color changes to virus or vaccine seem to happen during the same frame as an update to the cell layout. I'm assuming that the number and quality of cells (virus vs. vaccine) around a new cell determines whether or not a new cell is virus or vaccine... although I couldn't figure out the logic behind this right away. Even watching a simple spinner in a frame-by-frame of some random gameplay footage I made in emulation (separate from my main run on original hardware) wasn't making sense, but I didn't spend a lot of time trying to figure it out. *The suggestion in the old Mutant Virus thread to shoot at diagonals is a really good idea, especially in narrow corridors where you can basically saturate most of the squares the virus could possibly tread on. I ended up using a mix of automatic and short-range shot for everything else (the short-range is especially good at dealing with predictable, regular patterns like the "gliders" in a few of the rooms). I didn't find much use for the long-range shot myself, although maybe others have. *The rooms numbers that guitarzombie has listed on his maps are different from the sector numbers the game gives you; probably not a big deal, but something to keep in mind for anyone who uses the level 4 route Svankmajer came up with. *For some rooms, it can be beneficial to enter, shoot a few viruses to make the room "neutral," and immediately leave and re-enter. It seems like the game randomly rearranges the vaccinated squares upon leaving and re-entering—and in fact, "rearrange" might not even be the right word; the game might just be randomly assigning a certain number of viruses to be vaccine squares. There was at least one time when I converted, like two or three virus squares to vaccine and left, and when I came back, there was a healthy chunk of vaccine towards the center of the room that quickly spread out and secured a decently-sized area, saving me a bit of time ("time" in this case reckoned relative to the internal timer that determines virus outbreaks and core breaches). *To add a bit to the previous statements from guitarzombie about the nature of the virus outbreaks in stages 4 and 5: it seems like the game recognizes five conditions for a room: unmarked (i.e., not visited), cleared, virus-owned (marked with the color of the virus for that level), "neutral" (mix of virus and vaccine), and "core breach imminent." As guitarzombie said, there's a good chunk of time at the beginning of the level where the game doesn't harass you; he said about eight minutes, which is probably about right, but I'm wondering if that number is a little different between stages 4 and 5. (I say this because outbreaks can happen in stage 3, and I've had one towards the end of my runs there, and I think it took longer than 8 minutes for it to trigger.) Anyway, once outbreaks start becoming possible, unmarked rooms are chosen at random and converted to virus-owned rooms; I'm pretty sure that other "transformations" of rooms will not occur until all of the unmarked rooms are converted to virus-owned. Once that's happened, a room that is not clear is chosen at random, and its status is "degraded" to the next level on a three-tier scale: neutral, virus-owned, and core breach imminent. If a core-breached room is chosen, it's game over (although I somehow managed to never have that happen to me). Some of this has been explicitly brought up before (and again, my sincerest thanks to guitarzombie and company for laying the foundation, without which I wouldn't have been able to beat the game nearly this quickly), but I decided break this down more specifically here so I could note that converting rooms to neutral status is a good way of buying time; the game won't alert you when a room goes from neutral to virus-owned, but this seems to count as a room change the same way as outbreaks and breaches. *One other thing related to the timer: there were times where the interval between room changes seemed to be a little faster or slower than the minute or so that guitarzombie mentioned. Towards the end of my run of stage 5—I think it was on my next-to-last room—the other room I hadn't cleared had been converted from neutral to virus-owned, but it took longer than I was expecting for the breaching warning to show up. I'm not sure how much of this was related to my subjective perception of time during a stressful final stage and how much was the game actually slowing down to be fair. As for faster room changes, I think a couple of the conversions to neutral status might have been a little faster, but I'm not 100% sure. In any case, this might be something to look into, and I imagine this could be figured out from analyzing gameplay footage of TMR or Dugongue (the only two complete playthroughs I saw on YouTube). Also, this was my strategy for my final run—the first part was based on Dugongue's successful run, using guitarzombie's numbering system from the map preserved at the following link: https://hoz14nes.wordpress.com/2018/12/28/the-mutant-virus-crisis-in-a-computer-world/ *Start in room 1, go immediately to room 8 *Get the super gun in room 8 and go immediately to room 1 *clear room 1 (the redistribution trick can be helpful here) *put blue 0 in the middle of room 3 and then go room 4 *clear room 4 (using the SF gun is the way to go, in my opinion—I just left the SG in room 1), get green 1 and go to room 1, then room 8 *put green 1 in room 8 and go to room 6 *make a beeline for the "permanent" super gun (doesn't disappear when you die) and go to room 5 *clear room 5 ...and after this I was improvising a bit more (and it's possible that one might have to improvise before this). I did room 6 next (which doesn't require a CM item despite having a spot that spews viruses consistently); then I took out room 2, but left the green 0 item there temporarily so I could keep the super gun. It's probably best to end a run with two rooms next to each other—one easy-ish and one hard—but the last two rooms I did were 3 and 8, both of which are pretty tough and fairly far apart. I ended up with blue 0 and green 0 in room 3, and blue 1 and green 1 in room 8; I had to do some weird juggling to get this all to work. After converting rooms 3 and 8 to neutral, I waited in the hall just outside of room 3, hoping that it would get chosen for a downgrade, as that would allow me maximum time to finish; I don't remember whether or not that played out, but I ended up going back and forth between 3 and 8 to keep them both neutral as long as possible before finishing 3. Then I got the breach warning and went to 8, taking the fast route and approaching from the right; however, I was so low on health that I figured it would be safer to beat the level approaching from the left, and thankfully, that paid off. If you've got blue 1 as one of your two items in room 8, it makes it a *lot* easier to secure the room from the left, and it's actually possible to clear the right side of the screen without triggering the proxy SSVs by carefully positioning yourself at different angles and getting super gun shots ricochet off of walls; my final few shots of the level were taken like so: Anyway, sorry about the gigantic word vomit, but I wanted to record some of this for posterity in case I don't end up doing a complete FAQ on this. Do guitarzombie and Svankmajer still frequent these forums? I wanted to get their consent before using any of their strategies in a walkthrough (for which they would of course be credited). @Daniel_Doyce Good luck with F-15 Strike Eagle! I played through F-117A Stealth Fighter years ago, and it was kind of a slog. I've seen gameplay footage of Microprose's PC stuff (like F-117A Stealth Fighter 2.0), and I'm inclined to believe that those games were fine on PC and simply ill-suited for NES. By the way, what else hasn't been "claimed" for upcoming NES completion?

Progress! First time clearing level 4 today. Thank you, scaryice, for the link; the strats for level 4 were quite helpful (although I had to improvise a bit because of the outbreaks, which is to be expected). Off to start my maiden voyage into the hellscape that is level 5; hopefully I'll have a report of completion later tonight. I just made some adjustments to my pin connector recently and haven't had as many random resets, and I'm planning on pressing on until I finish this thing, so... here's to hoping it doesn't take forever. (...although it probably will.) Which reminds me... I probably need to start a thread elsewhere on this board about N64 troubleshooting, since mine has been randomly resetting as of late...

Elkovsky here from the old NintendoAge Forums. I've been going back to the NES again recently and I decided that a playthrough of The Mutant Virus would be fitting given the current state of affairs. I made it to level 4 a little while ago but left my NES idling while I waited for my character to die after losing the super gun... but I didn't realize that waiting to long on the "Game Over" screen would boot you back the title. Welp, live and learn. So I was trying to find some decent information on this game, and there doesn't seem to be much. Vegita's guide on GameFAQs is mostly worthless, and the information about the game that used to be on the NintendoAge Forums is, I imagine, forever gone (although there's a blog by someone who goes by the handle of Hoz who saved some strategies from the forum, including a suggested path by GuitarZombie). It's obvious enough that the growth of the virus is based on the John Conway "Life" algorithm, as several sources have mentioned... so it's not totally random, but it's too chaotic for a human being to track in most cases (except for a couple of rooms that consistently spew stuff from a central point, in which case using an item is the best way to handily beat the room). There are several mechanics, though, that I haven't quite figured out; any information any of you have on any of the following would be appreciated. *Is there a set of recommended places to use the different powerup things in stages 4? I've found a list for stage 5, but not 4. *When entering and leaving a room, I'm not sure how the game is reckoning the state of unsecured rooms you've visited but haven't completed. I don't think it's updating them in real time, but I also don't know if the game is randomizing the state on subsequent visits, or altering the board state based on some internal timer, or what. Since Hoz posted some Game Genie codes from Arnpoly (https://hoz14nes.wordpress.com/2018/12/28/the-mutant-virus-crisis-in-a-computer-world/), I figure it might not hurt to test some of this out (if someone hasn't already done this already). *Related to this, does anyone know how the mechanics of outbreaks and core breaches work? Are the locations completely randomized, or is there some deeper logic to it? It seems like the intervals between warning messages aren't spaced at regular intervals, so I was wondering if an outbreak in one area has the potential to cause an outbreak in another (but I have my doubts about this). More importantly, though, how long does one have before an outbreak has to be addressed, and how does one "solve" the short-term breach problem? Is it just a matter of visiting the room? It looks like outbreaks convert to breaches if left unaddressed, which in turn convert to instant game overs. Any thoughts from anyone who's done this before would be appreciated. Q*Bert was hard, but at least the enemy spawn pattern was fixed, not to mention comprehensible... Glad I found you all again, by the way.