John198X

How does infinite continues negate all difficulty? I can see that for games where it makes for no death penalty (respawn immediately, lose no progress), obviously. But for most games with a lives / continue system, it's not like using continues suddenly means that if you keep tapping buttons, you'll eventually get to the end - like infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters will eventually write the works of Shakespeare, or whatever. If I could theoretically just tap random buttons and eventually I'd clear level 4 only, then it follows that I could tap random buttons for a longer period of time and eventually clear levels 1-4 in one go. Of course 1CC is more challenging, but the idea that infinitely trying from level 4, as opposed to infinitely trying from level 1, negates all difficulty doesn't make sense to me. --- This line of conversation started with someone pointing out that most of the "consensus best" SNES games aren't that difficult. I'd agree, and go as far as to say that's definitely an aspect of why some of those are so popular. You don't have to use continues in Turtles in Time or Super Castlevania, but you don't have to use the save function in DK Country, Super Metroid, or Chrono Trigger either. But I think it's fair to judge a game by the options it makes available to you. Taking that into account, I'd say a playthrough of any of those is a fairly mild challenge relative to the majority of games from the first half of the 90s.

Three first-time completions for me over the weekend. After multiple abortive attempts over the decades, I finally forced my way through to the end of Yoshi's Island. I think it's well made, with a lot of creative and interesting ideas and mechanics... that add up to a game that I don't find particularly fun to play. There are lots of what would be considered B-tier SNES games that I get a lot more enjoyment out of. Then there was Mega Man X3, which is fine. There's nothing else interesting to say about it because it is lacking in interesting things. Finally, Star Wars: Rebel Assault. I had rented the Sega CD version of this when it was new, but I was playing the 3DO port here. I mean, I wouldn't recommend it to anybody, and a couple of the levels are bullshit, but I often find early 'multimedia experience' games very charming. That's right. I had more fun with Star Wars: Rebel Assault than Yoshi's Island, and there's nothing anybody can do about it.

Oops. Wrong thread. I guess I could add: The difficulty of reaching the ending of a game with infinite continues vs the difficulty of a self-imposed challenge of 1CC aren't really the same thing, yeah? Anyway.

I've only made one real attempt at this game... I was so upset when I reached the second half of the last stage and got completely murdered, losing everything I had built up over the course of the game, and then proceeded to try for around 3 hours starting fresh from that last level... as it slowly sunk it that there was no way I was going to do this without resetting and playing from the very beginning. I haven't gone back to it yet...

I'm very appreciative of everything Frank Cifaldi has done and continues to do, but his comments on this controversy on the most recent Insert Credit podcast were extremely disappointing. What I got from it: People who are mad about Heritage/WATA are either laughably naïve, because sketchy business is endemic to capitalism, or they are gatekeeper types only concerned about who should be allowed to buy old games. Calling out shitty business practices, regardless of how common, is somehow comparable to gamergate nonsense? What the fuck is that?

Checked out a video of someone finishing the final mission of the advanced campaign (same maps but changing the number and placement of units to increase the difficulty), and the ending sequence looks identical to the one for the normal campaign. Kinda lame.

I just banged my head against it during a long, uneventful shift at work, figuring out and memorizing a path across many, many attempts to make it to the end of the stage before getting worn down by the ridiculous amount of gun turrets. It doesn't help that I'd be doing really well only to miss a simple jump and fall to my death... like alot. Batman's jump is weird, like it's almost always shorter or longer than you expect.

I finished like 10 GB games in July. Fridays at work have been really slow, okay? Nothing too difficult. Here's the ones that have yet to be accounted for: 7/5 Nettou Garou Densetsu 2 (Japan only) - Based on Fatal Fury 2, not to be confused with the one Tanooki beat based on Real Bout Special. I've you've played any other SNK fighting conversions for Game Boy, you know what to expect. 7/16 Batman: The Video Game - I like tiny, gun-toting Batman, but the last stage sure is a pain... 7/23 Ghostbusters II - It's amazing that a game where the primary difficulty is corralling your tag-along partner can still be so fun. It's also impressive that they managed to capture Bill Murray's hairline in such a small sprite. 7/28 Avenging Spirit - I know people are supposed to like this one. The body hopping gimmick is cool, but I didn't appreciate the cheap hits. Got the good ending. 7/28 The Smurfs - I don't love this game... but having already learned it on NES and Master System made it fairly painless to complete.

I don't exactly know why I like Splatterhouse so much. Yeah, it's pretty simplistic, plays kinda stiff, and the fire guys in the last stage have no animation and look weird. But the aesthetics and presentation are just perfect, and the difficulty is relatively mild - just enough to keep you fully engaged. Once you learn it, it's an easy 20ish minute playthrough, but it's on a very short list of games that I can always revisit and enjoy every single moment.

The defense has degenerated from “Heritage / WATA did nothing wrong” into “well you don’t have to use them.”

Some people really just need to stop squabbling over minutiae and just admit that they think being a successful swindler makes you smart and admirable and have the biggest brain.

With outside confirmation of attempted contact (that was in no way owed in the first place), are there any further defenses other than “the people that created this ‘market’ through unethical means brazenly and publicly totally didn’t do other unethical things that a YouTube video supposes they may possibly have also done.”

What went down makes it especially disheartening to see sycophants and advocates for this cabal of scumbags.

Finally getting a chance to watch Jobst's video. I've casually followed there Heritage / WATA saga. The market manipulation and some degree of collusion was obvious from the beginning. I mean, it was completely shameless. I pretty much wrote it all off as an artificial bubble to make rich people richer, which is still correct, but the details are even scummier than I imagined. NA shutting down was a bummer for me. I didn't find this forum until a bit after it had started and haven't lurked too often. Even when I do, it's The Gauntlet and other play areas I keep to, just as I did on NA. I'm reading some older threads here on this topic, and it's quite a trip... A whole lot of info in Jobst's video that's been around here for years for those willing to look. This one is fun... I'm just finding out today about the direct connection between GoCollect and WATA, among other things. That's really depressing.

Yoshi's Island! I didn't get into it when I played a friend's copy when it was contemporary. I've bounced off of it maybe a couple more times over the decades. I always seem to play it for about an hour then never return. Like, I think it's fine? It's just never hooked me at all, unlike the SMW and the NES Mario games. But, I've finished lots of stuff that is a far worse than fine, so I'm going to finish this one this week. Maybe I'll turn around on it. Persona 3! Finished it when it was a new release. Replaying for the first time since then - a little over halfway through. It's a good time, and it's helping me clarify my thoughts on what I didn't like about Persona 5 in comparison.

Really glad the Jobst video is making waves. And shame on anyone, especially here of all places, pretending not to understand what has been going on the last couple years.

08/24 DOOM - Finished all episodes on 'Hurt Me Plenty' difficulty, the equivalent of normal. I thought it was a pretty fun port. Annoyingly, this is the first SNES game I've encountered that did not perform accurately on a MiSTer (at least with the month-old build I was using), so I had to use other methods. update: I’m determined to get the MiSTer issue solved, as the SNES core seemed otherwise pretty perfect outside of a crazy SFC shogi game that has a freaking ARM processor in the cart. Thankfully, I got a discussion going over on those forums. The crazy work that went into creating SNES Doom isn’t uncommon knowledge, and, while Yoshi’s Island seems just peachy, it seems Doom may use the Super FX2 in some weird way that hasn’t been accounted for. It’s kinda interesting. update: Dunno if anyone else has gotten into the whole MiSTer thing, as a user or contributor... but Jeez Louise, I guess you can't go anywhere without running into some severe boneheadedness (https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3154). I'm not giving up though.

Yeah, on the right side of the screen there's a stage counter. Green circles? Eggs? Lilypads? I can't tell what they are supposed to be. Anyway, after clearing the 11th stage, the counter resets to one and the marks become blue. The game slows back down and reduces the number of cars, but now has snakes from the beginning.

Tank controls and bump combat are great things. Perhaps they require a refined gaming palette to fully appreciate. Also, from a few posts up: Yeah, Tomb Raider is exactly an adaptation of 'cinematic platformers' (Prince of Persia, Out of this World, ... Lester the Unlikely?) into 3D. There's nothing opinion about it. And then Prince of Persia tried to copy Tomb Raider with that PoP 3D / Arabian Nights game that nobody liked.

I've made a few completions that no one has claimed in the year since my last post in this thread... 10/18/20 Frogger - I reached the loop point. Part of the great Frogger revival of the late 90s that nobody asked for. Unlike the SNES version's new (ugly) visual style and new (worse) stage layouts, this attempts to be representative of the original arcade game. There's a distinct loop point, stages repeat after level 11 (to the best of my memory). Further loops can be characterized as "faster with more snakes." 10/25/20 Phantasy Star II - A good one, even if the story is overpraised (there's hardly any story scenes in the game...), and the dungeon layouts are obnoxious. Give me the first-person dungeons of the original any day. Also, like the first Final Fantasy on NES, the infinitely-reusable spellcasting equipment pieces should be abused as much as possible. I was able to finish the game with my party's levels at 25-26 by relying on those for healing. 10/25/20 Barbie Super Model - No comment. 03/28/21 Art of Fighting - Plays pretty different from the Neo Geo game. Obviously you wouldn't be able to do the crazy scaling on a vanilla Genesis cart, but the gameplay has been rebalanced to weaken special attacks, lessening the focus on your energy meter, powering up, and taunting. A weird port. 05/09/21 Ariel: The Little Mermaid - What a sloppy, janky game. 05/16/21 Splatterhouse 3 - Got the best ending. Abandoning the Kung Fu-ish single plane action of the first two, part 3 redefines itself as a brawler (as was the style at the time). By brawler I mean two planes of movement and enemies that usually require engaging more than once to put away for good, so that managing your position relative to your enemies is a major aspect of moment-to-moment play. So, a beat-em-up. You know what I mean. I thought it was pretty good. My major issue seems to come down to changes made in localization. Supposedly your regular attacks were nerfed, and your oh-shit-get-off-me spin kick move was seriously boosted. Meaning, if you want to complete each stage within the time limit (which is required for better endings), you pretty much have to spam your spin kick for 90% of the game, which is pretty dull. I'd like to try the Japanese release some time.

Oh, if we're tracking Super Famicom, I've got a few of those too. Sorry if someone has already posted any of these. All were played with a fan translation. 11/30/20 Clock Tower - Really neat, if not exactly thrilling. Nothing else like it on the platform. Well, maybe SOS is? I should play it sometime. Managed to get one of the bad endings, one of the good endings, and (with a little faq help) the bonus S-rank ending (which is pictured). 12/17/20 Ys IV: Mask of the Sun - So, I guess the leads on the first few Ys games had left to go be Quintet, so instead of making a fourth game themselves, Falcom came up with a design document, storyline, and some musical compositions to provide to the license holders that had ported the console versions of the previous games. So, we ended up with two Ys IV's that have very little resemblance to each other outside of the loose plot and return to bump combat. Hudson and Alfa System, who had been doing an awesome job with the PC Engine CD / Turbo CD ports of 1-3, did an awesome job with their version, Ys IV: Dawn of Ys. Tonkin House, who had done a really not awesome job with the SFC/SNES port of Ys III, also did a less than awesome job with Ys IV: Mask of the Sun. I thought it was pretty mediocre. At best, inoffensive. 07/19/21 Dragon Quest V - I know this is the one everyone loves so much. I thought it was okay. Gameplay-wise, I don't think there was anything as interesting as the class system in III or the chapter structure in IV. I admit the story has some affecting, memorable moments. 08/09/21 Sengoku Denshou - Supposedly a port of the Neo Geo beat-em-up, Sengoku, which is really visually interesting and creative, but has real cheap and trashy gameplay, IMO. While this version has stages and enemies based on the Neo game, gameplay has been completely revamped to resemble more of what you'd expect from a decently made 16-bit brawler. Pretty good. A bit easy. P.S. - SNESrankings.com is awesome, and it's really exciting to be down to the final 100.

I guess I haven't checked this thread all year. Here are some completions: 5/18 Fatal Fury 2 7/5 Samurai Shodown - This plays okay, but everyone is so tiny... 7/26 Fatal Fury Special 8/3 King of Dragons 8/16 Wolfenstein 3D - Yeah, it's censored (not that you will always notice because everything is so pixelated), but I like the cut-down campaign more than the original PC version maps. 60 levels that are way too big and aimless boiled down to 30 levels that are much more dense and focused (plus a couple new weapons).

I think it'd be an awesome personal accomplishment to reach one one of the Crush endings, and it'd be really cool to have someone here do that. I personally don't have the will to do so , which is probably a factor in why I'm equivocating it more to reaching a kill screen than completing a loop (if comparing it to a stage based score-chase game, like Donkey Kong or Pac-Man). Either way, more power to you! Of American card releases, I can personally confirm Bomberman, Bonk's Adventure, Bonk's Revenge, Bonk 3, Cadash, China Warrior, Dragon's Curse, Dungeon Explorer, Magical Chase, Neutopia, Splatterhouse, Tiger Road, and Vigilante all have endings that can be reached even with my limited skills. I'd give at least a weak recommendations to all of those, even China Warrior, but not Tiger Road... I would never want to attempt Tiger Road without the save feature enabled by having a CD unit or TurboBooster (or playing in an emulator that provides the functionality) that basically makes for infinite continues. I'm not sure I can think of any other action games on TGX let you save like this. With just a base system, you can continue a few times before being sent back to the title screen... which is not unordinary, but this game is brutal. It barely resembles the arcade game (though I kind of like the cute style), and I found it to be super cheap and obnoxiously difficult.

I'm kinda Turbografx'd out at the moment, but I looked back at every game I've marked myself as 'beaten' over the past few years to see if I could find anything that could have a questionable victory condition. Thankfully, it wasn't much: Alien Crush - Technically has an ending that triggers when you would roll the score over at 1 billion points. It consists of two lines of text on a black screen. Supposedly it would require keeping a game of pinball going for about 40 hours to see legitimately. I'd personally consider this ending an easter egg rather than a realistic goal meant for the player. The default high score is only 1 million points, which is pretty puny. If one would like to set their aim higher, Speedrun.com uses categories for reaching 5 mil, 10 mil, and 25 million points that could serve as goals, though those seem to be chosen simply because they're big round numbers... /shrug Devil's Crush - Once again has an ending that triggers when the score would roll over at 1 billion points. It's slightly more elaborate this time. I think it's significantly less hours of pinball than Alien Crush, but I still wouldn't consider it a goal for the purposes of this thread. Default high score is once again only 1 million points, but Speedrun.com has categories for 5, 10, and 25 mil. Bloody Wolf - This game also contains 'Bloody Wolf 2' and 'Bloody Wolf 3.' Okay, not really. Upon finishing the game, you are given a code to use for your next playthrough. Entering it adds a '2' to the title screen, but it's really just another loop but everything is faster. Finishing that will provide a code for '3,' which another speed-boosted loop with the ability to hover (hold a jump as long as you'd like). In short, the first loop is the whole game. Ninja Spirit - The Arcade mode and PC-Engine mode the player has to choose at the title screen have a big gap in difficulty (basically one-hit deaths vs a few-hit deaths), but I'd call them equally valid routes to complete the game.

Blackthorne (Prince of Persia except you're Glenn Danzig with a shotgun) beaten back on 9/12. Gemfire (The only Koei strategy game I can win, because the cpu is bad at battles) beaten on 10/5.