Strikezone1

Gave it a 2. I've beaten it many times and achieved both endings.

The gameplay & concept are bizarre. Control scheme/mechanics can be excessively frustrating. It is hard to figure out the strategies on what to do/how to progress w/o outside help. 

Like a lot of below-average games, there can be some enjoyment and satisfaction to be had in learning the ins & outs of the game and achieving victory. But at the end of the day, it just isn't a very well-made game.

4 hours ago, guitarzombie said:

Yes, WOW was I surprised!  I had a tough time with the Volcano level.  At the last one now and jeez its long and annoying.  I dunno how I did it before and I remember NOTHING about it.  It also has one of those "Where the hell do I go now?!" teleport mazes.  May take me another day depending how frustrated I get, but thank god for passwords.

Yeah the final level in Adventures of Rad Gravity is a pain. The final boss battles (there are 2 of them) are a pain too. They are a grind for sure. 

Kid Icarus is beaten.

I got the second best ending. Only ended up with 2 outta 3 special weapons so I missed out on the best ending. I’ll replay it and get it though. Although I will say, attempting to get the worst ending sounds like the toughest achievement, but probably wouldn’t be much fun to go for.

Decent game, although it is rough at the beginning being under-powered and with all the grinding required to level up.

I have been working on Kid Icarus and am close to beating it. Just gotta map out and get through the final labyrinth and beat the final level. Will hopefully find the time to do that in the next couple days. 

Jurassic Park is beaten.

Buried under a ton of flaws is what could’ve been a pretty decent game.
 

Way too many cheap hits due to obstructed view, way too much backtracking, and last but not least the battles with the T-Rex are beyond frustrating. You gotta try to dodge him, get hits in, AND avoid him eating the kids (which is instant death), which they seem to wander randomly and sometimes stand there like a deer in headlights.

This was the last Ocean game in my collection to beat. Sigh of relief.

2 hours ago, guitarzombie said:

Was your last hand a royal flush?

I want to say the last hand was 2 pair.

Casino Kid II is beaten.

A pretty simple and relaxing playthrough (the polar opposite of the last game I beat, Street Cop, lol).

Ok Shooting Range is beaten legit. I was a good 3ft away from the screen with the zapper .

I ended up hitting all bottles on the bonus stage w/o missing to get the 10K. Ended up with 46,850 points.

1 hour ago, guitarzombie said:

Also I wanted to ask, how many people other than me are using real carts?  Not emulating them, or using an everdrive.

Me. I'm an OG cart only guy.

Street Cop is beaten.

These NES accessory games are stressful, lol.

This game is decent for being a power pad game.

Most annoying part is the final stage where there’s shitty RNG of where/when enemies and the final boss are going to spawn. If you get bad luck on when they spawn, and/or killed enemies don’t drop enough timer refills, you’re screwed and run out of time and have to redo the stage. 

It's not that I don't believe your theory on this @nerdynebraskan, it just that it simply does not align with my first hand experience thus far in the game (at least 20 attempts), nor any walkthrough I can find on YT.

Again, I achieved an 89% accuracy, missed only once on the bottle in the bonus, and did not get the 10K bonus.

In Arnpoly's run, he killed it with a great score of 51,550 to achieve gold, but the accuracy showed only 84%. He got the 10K bonus despite be 5% lower in accuracy (again, I cheesed the zapper on my run, I'm assuming he did not on his).

arnpoly's run on YT, accuracy shown at 8:54:

Unless there is some variable that we are missing here (which is very possible), the only logical conclusion at this point is the 10K is only awarded with a no miss run on the bottle bonus, and not overall accuracy %.

13 minutes ago, the_wizard_666 said:

Are you using the controller to scroll the screens at all?  Because I am pretty sure that's what I needed to do in order to get the gold on hard.  Finding that out was a game changer.

Yep, I've been doing that the whole time. I read it in the manual before first playing the game.

15 hours ago, WashYourFace said:

It's been 12 years since I beat it, but I looked at my old notes (which I surprisingly still had), and it's definitely not a 10 difficulty game. I noted that getting Gold is somewhat challenging, but I rated it 6/10 difficulty. You are probably right about having to get perfect to get Gold. But I don't remember anything about the difficulty setting.

I agree on difficulty. If it weren't for the gold metal ending requirement, this game would be a short & simple 1-pointer.

(FTR I'm not knocking the gold metal ending requirement; I actually like it)

Question for @scaryice -  For zapper games does cheesing the zapper by putting it right up to the screen count? If so, I did manage to clear Shooting Range by getting the gold metal ending. Either way, I'll probably make more attempts to beat it normal by sitting down, a few feet away from screen.

15 hours ago, nerdynebraskan said:

@Strikezone1

Shooting Range is fun, but getting that gold medal is moderately hard. The 10,000 point bonus isn't strictly necessary to get the gold medal, because I did it somehow last year. And the 10k bonus is related to overall shot accuracy across the whole game, not just the bottle stage.

Thanks, but I'm not sure that's accurate. In both walkthroughs I've watched where the 10K bonus was achieved (NintendoComplete and also @arnpoly's), it was awarded right after the bonus bottle stage, which is prior to the 3rd and final stage, and in both runs they did not miss a single shot on the bottle bonus. Additionally, in both runs they ended up with 84 - 87.5% overall accuracy.

I just completed a run that ended up at 89% accuracy (cheesed the zapper by holding it right up to the screen) and did not get the 10K bonus - I missed one measly shot on the bonus level.

This leads me to believe that the 10K award is driven by 100% accuracy specifically on the bottle bonus level, not overall accuracy.

On 1/2/2024 at 2:01 AM, scaryice said:

Amagon is just a game that I had as a kid, and I never could get anywhere with it back then. As an adult, I went back and beat it and started to appreciate it more. It's not the greatest game, but it's not just nostalgia neither, because I didn't suddenly like Rampage or Xenophobe more. I do unironically enjoy Amagon quite a bit now. I actually had the record speedrun for years, and I've also beaten it without even transforming into Megagon. Maybe one day, I'll try to beat it just using the gun as a club (which would be nuts). Anyway, it's now a tradition for me to beat it at the start of every year. It's also the only game that has beaten by the same person in every year of this competition.

And I just beat Amagon for 2024!

A run w/o using the Megagon transformation is impressive. I've managed to no-death run Amagon, but I surely utilized the Megagon powerup in each level to do so.

I've been working on Shooting Range. Being it's a 10-pointer + 1 pain point I figured it'd be a b!tch. Trying to get the Gold Metal ending requirement surely is.

So I am assuming that the only way to get the 10,000 bonus points (which is necessary for the 40,000 point total in order for the gold metal ending) is you need to hit every single bottle in the bonus stage w/o missing a single shot? Can anyone confirm this?

It also seems that to get this ending you have to play it on Level 1 difficulty, which is basically just gives you more time (which equats to higher points)? Any insight appreciated.

Platoon is beaten.

Decent game, not great, but not bad. Quick and easy to run through it once figured out.

Ok I’m at least on the board for 2024 .

Street Cop is beaten.

I’ve been putting off beating this game for years because, let’s be honest, who wants to play a power pad game this day & age?!

The difficulty wasn’t too bad, all of the challenge lies in the physical labor required to play it. Lol.

I’ll beat it again in a week and check it off the list for the 2024 thread.

Conan is beaten.

What an abysmal game. The controls are atrocious, graphics are bad, and hit detection is wack…. But above all that, the worst part of the game is all the cryptic nonsense you gotta figure out to progress.

One of the worst games in the NES library IMO.

I'll fourth that Kiwi Kraze is quite a tough game to beat. I recall 4-4 was a total mf'er to get through at the ship part with all the intricate jumps required.

On 7/22/2023 at 7:15 PM, Khromak said:

Mystery quest is done. Beaten it before, but still looked at a guide for some of the hidden stuff. It's not a terrible game, the controls are a bit janky but you get used to them. Beating it 4 times to get the ending is the miserable part. As a single playthrough, it could be decent

Agree. The game making you clear 4 loops just to get the single screen ending is totally obnoxious. IIRC nothing changes from loop to loop. Not a very fun game.

M.C. Kids is beaten.

This game has been left on the board late into the year the last few years. That’s usually an indicator that it’s a real dandy to get through.

All in all it wasn’t too bad though. Some of the platforming and puzzle elements in the later levels did get a bit frustrating for sure.

I did also clear the 3 “special” levels. I figured they’d be required in order to get the best ending. Come to find out they’re not, they have no impact on the ending I don’t think; they only give you a measly 10 extra lives. So they’re a waste of time.

Would it be possible to get a stage select code for genie code for P.O.W. - Prisoners of War on the NES? The one on the gamehacking site “AAGAYA” by AetherKnight doesn’t seem to work. Unless I’m doing something wrong… ?

@Hybrid 

Simpson’s: Bart vs the World is beaten.

I’d probably consider this one a tad bit better than BvtSM. 

Simpson’s: Bart vs the Space Mutants is beaten.

Between the frustrating control scheme, cheap hits from enemies, lack of continues given, and oddball stuff you gotta figure out in order to progress, this game is a pain in the ass to beat.

There’s some ambitious ideas here, just lackluster execution in gameplay development. Par for the course for NES games done by Imagineering I suppose.