Floating Platforms

I think we can still hit 150 this year! I'll definitely keep you posted on the Turn & Burn thing. I may not get through things before the end of December, but at some point we will hopefully know. It will take a while to slog through those levels. 25 enemies take a long time to kill. The other interesting thing is that level select code is likely BS. One of my regulars on stream does deep dives into games finding unused SGB palettes and other quirks. They said there is nothing in the game's code that would accept a sequence of button inputs on the title screen. You can hit start of course, but it won't recognize or temporarily store anything prior to that, so it seems totally made up (or for a different Turn & Burn game?) I felt the same way about Gauntlet II. I killed the dragon a few times but it still felt empty. I have it on my revisit list to get through level 99 someday. But for the sake of the challenge, I still think the dragon goal is good since there is no ending and we don't require 100%

Mickey's Dangerous Chase is done It's a pretty fun platformer that I actually beat as a kid (one of the few I owned that I could beat). I didn't game over until level 5, but thankfully there are unlimited continues. There are a couple of annoying platforming parts, but nothing that's too overwhelming. It's just a nice, relatively easy playthrough where Mickey goes around murdering creatures in order to get back a present instead of just buying another one. You can play as Mickey or Minnie, but I wasn't going to let Minnie be implicated. It has good sprites, decent level design that let's set up to offer an easier path or a trickier path that offers rewards if you chose. The only boss you face is Pete at the end, so adding some others would have been nice. Still there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes. Tonight I also started F-1 Race and got through 6 of the 9 courses in Grand Prix. The 4th one gave me a ton of trouble, but the next two were much more manageable. We'll see if I can finish that off tomorrow.

Level 15 = 25, 12, 8 Level 16 = 25, 12, 10 Level 17 = 25, 12, 10 - the first repeating loadout. I beat level 16 (took 4.5 hours to get through it all tonight - even though I didn't lose any lives until level 16), so I'm considering this game done as I reached the first repeating conditions. It may not count for this challenge, and that's okay. I'm going to take this experience and slowly go through this on emulator using save states to see if there is a legitimate ending. maybe there's something at 20 or 25. It's such a long playthrough as it is that adding that many more 25 target levels would demand a literal all day effort. Most likely the levels just do not end, but I'll work on exploring that over time. The game is actually pretty fun once you get used to how it works. It's also quite easy once you really get the hang of things so after several missions it gets tedious. Half the battle is matching the numbers to get on the same elevation and bearing as your target. It might have been nice to see one more enemy type. The MIG-27 & 29s are basically identical and the transports don't shoot back, they exist solely to waste time & fuel. Fuel is the biggest concern once you get the hang of landing since the refueling mechanic is very finicky and you have 60 "seconds" total to use it. The game is all about tiny adjustments. If you see the enemy banking right, do not hold right. Tap it and then tap back to the left to re-center. Same thing goes for just about everything. back and forth. tap, tap tap. Again, once you get it, you get it and then it's just a matter of going through the motions for as long as you can handle it. Next up for me (likely Monday) is Mickey's Dangerous Chase. Yay! A game that isn't completely unknown or has some obnoxious win condition. Then I get to tackle F-1 Race.

According to a gamefaqs comment, Turn & Burn for GB has 99 levels and someone claims they used a level select code to test beating level 99 and doing so led them to level 99 again. I can't find any proof of a level select code to try this out myself but most likely they do eventually repeat goals and that would be the end for me. Last night, I figured out the landing, but had to stop before finishing my last run. I made it to level 14, which still had unique circumstances. Mission 9 = 9 targets, 10 missiles, 4 heat seeking Mission 10 = 10 targets, 10M, 4H 11 = 12, 10, 5 12 = 15, 10, 5 13 = 20, 10, 6 14 = 25, 10, 6 Lives were plentiful but I had to go to bed. Dying/running out of fuel means restarting the level from scratch, so getting 20/25 planes shot down and losing a couple times was a time sink. I have a feeling that 25 targets is the upper limit, but maybe the ammo will change for the better, or maybe worse.

Sure, but not a picross puzzle specifically. If most of the puzzles you went around solving were picross, I'd have beaten it years ago, but none of the trailers or pictures I've seen show that type of puzzle. I realize the type of game I'm talking about is one that would probably only appeal to me and maybe 5 other people

I haven't played it, but that's not picross-centric, is it? All the trailers made it look like a really good first-person adventure/puzzle game. My dream would be something like that where picross is still the star of the show. I do want to eventually play Obra Dinn at some point, though

Been a while since I've added a new completion, but I have two to add. Ghost of Tsushima is done. No picture, but I got the platinum and did 100% of the Iki Island trophies. I thought about going through Legends mode, but I usually don't like online multiplayer stuff. I tried the first mission solo and it was annoying because it strips all your abilities and tutorial-izes the game to a degree where my muscle memory of combat wasn't working anymore. I honestly didn't find the combat all that engaging in this game and that's what most of the activities are. It's cool at first. You have 4 different stances that can be used against the 4 enemy types, but once you realize that's all there is.... Where I really enjoyed my time was simply going through the environments. I feel like this was a mix between Assassin's Creed's better elements (in the action and missions) and Breath of the Wild. You're free to explore the world and use visual clues in the distance to go where you want and discover new things. The terrain is varied enough that it's interesting to keep walking or riding to see what's over the hill or down the cliff even if there aren't a lot of things to do in that space. The story wasn't all that amazing, but the world told the story of a war-torn country well. Some of your exploratory discoveries will be a burned body or someone mourning or other various wreckage. Some of the brutality is front and center, but most is scattered throughout, looming in the background (literally). I thought the story of the DLC was much better as it dealt with the themes of reconciling the love of your father against being confronted with the atrocities that he committed (and your repression of those events). Using the hallucinogenic poison to further the main target's objectives while also forcing surprise flashbacks and introspection was fascinating to experience. Overall, I liked the game, but in the main story it felt way too same-y too quickly. If there is a sequel somehow, I hope that there is more variety. Murder by Numbers is also done I'm a sucker for picross games and I kept hoping someone would take that into a narrative direction. This comes close to what I would want, but I'm still hoping for something that goes a bit further. This is essentially a visual novel with a good amount of puzzles (although none go beyond the 15x15 size unfortunately). There's a lot of unnecessary back and forth menu navigation that gets in the way. The characters and situations are charming enough and the story length across the 4 missions was meaty (I also did all of the bonus puzzles you get for ranking up to S in all 4 chapters). I think what I'm really looking for is something that's more interactive. I want to use picross puzzles to find objects that can then be used more interactively and with a more open-ended structure. It's hard to complain about what this is, since I don't know of another game that has come close to this style, but it didn't fully scratch the itch. I'm also working on a few other things here and there: Link to the Past (3 or 4 dungeons in on the dark world) Metroid (I was going to do it fully blind, but it's getting a bit frustrating since everything in the biomes look exactly the same, making it tough to know where I've been, so I'm going to break down and use a map) Layton Vs Phoenix Wright (probably 25-30% done based on the other save files on the cart) Bioshock (just booted it up today - trying for all trophies in one playthrough and I suck at this so far. Got the first level done) Voxelgram (I think 30 more puzzles remain)

Heiankyo Alien is done Well, new mode is done. It was surprisingly tough for me to wrap my head around the controls of new mode after trying old mode for a few hours. Mechanically they are very different. New mode is overall a much better experience. Far more interesting, far more forgiving and it actually has a discernible ending. Old mode isn't bad, but it controls are stiffer and has brutally slow speed in the early rounds. As I said before, I don't think that looping 20 stages is possible naturally, so after beating this tonight, I did one run of old mode for the recording and got to level 5 where I was greeted with unavoidable death (thus proving my point that you need a ton of pure luck to get anywhere). I've made it to level 8 and will put it on the revisit list to see if anyone suggests I try to hit a specific level or point goal. For now, I'm calling the game done. Next up for me is another one that's undocumented as far as I can tell. Turn & Burn: The F-14 Dogfighting Simulator. I can't find any records to show how many missions are in the game, or if it is something that is endless and would go to mission 99. There are no saves or passwords, so likely what will happen is I will spend some time learning how to play the game and then spend a good 6-8 hour session playing missions (and hopefully not dying) to see if there is any sort of ending.

I did some emulator save stating and can confirm that the level count does not loop, but the difficulty does. Level 21 has the same speed and enemies as level 1. Level 20 has 8 enemies that you have to defeat within 60 seconds or else the massive spawn of hyper speed enemies will come. It took tons of save stating to get that done. The enemies definitely seem to be in a fixed path but there are many times where you are guaranteed to die unless you guess correctly. This is another case (like getting 750,000 in Missile Command or beating 40 stages of Penguin Wars) where I'm not currently convinced that this can be done naturally. So for my challenge, I will likely do the new mode and then put the old mode into a revisit list.

Damn hackers, ignoring the real issues like Yoshi codes... I know there's a longplay of the NES version that goes past level 28, but couldn't find a GB one. I have a question about Heiankyo Alien as well. The win condition is Finish all 12 New Game levels, OR Old Game loops at level 20. Since I like to do everything, I was starting with old and boy is it rough. I made it to level 8 so far. Does anyone know what happens after level 20 to complete the "loop" since the layouts when you start each run are random. Does this mean you've seen all the floorplans? Does it put you back at level 1? I found a gamefaqs guide that says level 20 is the highest difficulty, but wasn't sure if anyone's confirmed it. If it has level 1 behavior but says 21 on the screen, I might not try for it

I guess the game has put it in all of our faces...

Alright, I finally finished the other ending of Qix by beating level 16 and seeing the 4th and final unique fireworks sequence This goal was much less stressful, but still not incredibly easy. I actually ended up winning this run with the help of a strange glitch. Level 16 has two Qix chasing you. At one point, I was making a square and one of the Qix happened to dart inside. That's happened a couple of times before to me in single Qix levels and it gave me a 99%. This time, the Qix just stayed frozen in place. It didn't trigger a split Qix (as it likely should have - if it wasn't a death). So, I had one left swooping around erratically and I was able to clear the level with the lives I had left. Strange way to end what is now my third longest game in the challenge. Anyway, now I'm free to start Heiankyo Alien tomorrow and fingers crossed that only takes the one day.

In terms of this challenge, Qix is done I'm really bad at this game. It took me over 30 hours of trying to finally get over 500K. I will also contend the game is very unfair. The percentages don't seem to be very good or consistent at times, the cursor gets stuck on corners or goes weird directions at times, it's really easy to over/undershoot your intended target to close up a box. The Qix themselves are sometimes far, far too fast and can cover the entire length of the screen in tenths of a second, meaning you have absolutely no time to react before they kill you (looking at you, level 10). The randomness of the qix behavior is simply annoying and I feel like I'm missing something in how to exploit or manipulate their movements, but probably not. At times, even on a bigger screen TV, the lines of the qix are too small to actually see what killed you - especially if you're trying to chisel away to get a high percentage. It all feels like pure luck, really. I won by getting 99% on level 1 and then getting 99% on level 9 with a 3x multiplier (which I only tried because I had lives to burn and didn't want to face the nasty swooping in level 10. I'm also going for a secondary goal now in my attempt to beat games comprehensively. There are fireworks after every 4 levels, and apparently the fireworks after level 16 are the last unique ones seen, so I'm going to work on that before moving on to my next game: Heiankyo Alien

Oh @Splain, I learned of another game that supposedly has an ending/credits: In Your Face. I don't have a video of this, but I was talking to a former GB challenger on stream and he said that you can reach it if you keep winning games. He didn't recall how many games it took, but said he set up a bot to keep playing and eventually the ending came up. I guess you "continue" after winning by simply selecting the same mode again? The only thing I found was a 3 year old reddit post (with no comments) stating the manual mentions a tournament mode on 2-on-2 and winning 5 games gets you the end. I can't find a digital manual online either. I might try to explore this through emulation soon since I'm curious, but if anyone that has more time for such things wants to do that first, feel free. Edit: Okay, I do see a JohnCarls video where he does the 5 2-on-2 games and gets a congratulations message.

Awesome! We might get to 150 games done pretty soon at this rate. So far I've only played 2 wrestling games, WCW (which was okay) and WWF War Zone which was absolute, near broken trash. Now I'm a little curious about how King of the Ring compares. I remember Amazing Penguin being a good time, but maybe too easy until the last few levels where the difficulty spikes out of nowhere. Bugs Bunny should be equally short if you decide to go back and try that one later

Awesome! I sadly hear that Superstars 1 is possibly the best wrestling game on Game Boy. It's a shame that the sequel doesn't hold up to that. I have a scan of the manual and it says you can recover health once per match by hitting Select, so perhaps you brushed against that here and there to get that energy boost. It's also the same button to switch in your tag team partner, so that probably caused some mistakes for people. Interesting that the CPU gets to do it too (hopefully still just once per match)

Two games to report from this weekend. Control - Very early on the game won me over with its presentation. I know that this mix of 60s/70s décor and aesthetics placed in a modern world is becoming a bit overdone, but it was still slick at the start. And the first time you see the old director talking with the projection effect as you walk down the hallway is quite something. Then as time goes on, its evident the game is something of a one-trick pony in that regard (although the fake TV show was interesting). The acting from the lead is extremely stiff with dry delivery. But, the main story beats were good enough to keep me going (even if the resolution fell very, very, very flat). The combat and exploration of the world was also a blast for this guy that doesn't play a ton of modern stuff and probably doesn't know if there are other games that might do this style better. The enemy variety was a worthwhile challenge for most of the game until the skill tree and weapon upgrades made it so I could use the exact same tactic on everybody. Overall, it was a good time that deserved to have better treatment of the world they were creating because the story feels incredibly unfinished. Maybe they're saving stuff for a potential sequel. If so, I'd be up for playing that. Great Ace Attorney Chronicles - This was one of the more disappointing Ace Attorney games I've played. The second half picked up, but all of the increased capabilities a non-DS/3DS console provides is generally wasted. The first 5 cases felt extremely lazy to me. In most "Ace" games you have a nice cast of quirky characters and you're bouncing from location to location to talk to people and discover clues. Usually after the tutorial case, you will have the investigation & courtroom & 2nd investigation & 2nd courtroom. These 5 cases have little to none of that. Very limited locations across the board (even in the 2nd half when it opens to a degree). Many repeated characters (that I largely did not enjoy, except for the brothers at the end), including in the jury. The jury is a new mechanic - basically this game's gimmick - but it falls flat and it's very strange to see the same people show up multiple times with no real reason for it. The second half expands the story to a large degree, but the damage was done to my perception. Still no great, interesting characters. A second "tutorial" case because they are considering this as 2 games in 1. More locations, but still fewer overall than what you might find in a DS title. It was interesting to play a game on a more modern console where they could do more with character animations and add a little bit more flair to the presentation, but I don't think they went far enough with either. I understand these weren't originally built for the PS4 generation, so if Capcom ever decides to make another game in the Ace Attorney series, I hope they can bring more of that charm into the system. This one was good, but not great.

Skate or Die: Bad 'N Rad is done. It's 90% Bad, 10% Rad. This is one of those games where you learn through consistent death, because the levels are all designed in such a way that you will encounter many, many death traps that are unavoidable unless you know they are coming. Most of the levels are short, so that's not the worst thing in the world. But, the lost inputs on jumps during the horizontal levels was. Level 6 is stupid, full of stupid jumps that don't always work and a boss that I found out how to beat after hours of trial and error (thanks to having to restart the level after each game over. The vertical/top down levels are garbage in their own right, often times putting you into damage loops because when you get hit, you are tossed back, but never far enough to correct yourself properly, so its common to get hit a bunch until you die. You can start on level 1-4, but thankfully you can keep continuing on your current level if you keep the system on. That's the main positive in the game. I guess the music is good and honestly the graphics are also decent. The gameplay, however, can die. On Monday, I'll be starting Qix. I have very limited experience with that game but I'm looking forward to learning how to get better at that.

WildSnake is done. This was a fun one, but surprisingly short. Only 8 challenges in King Cobra mode (with a qualifier before each). If you lose on the level, you have to re-qualify. If you lose the qualifier, then it's game over and you start from the beginning. I had to restart fully twice and it still only took about an hour. You are at the mercy of RNG in a couple stages where you need to eat eggs and only certain snakes can do that. I went an entire round without seeing the necessary snake before time ran out (and that was before the number of snake patterns doubled). There are too many patterns at the end and seeing the slight differences can be tricky, but thankfully the challenge mode has special snakes that remove everything in their path or will delete all snakes of the pattern you touch. Hold out long enough for those to come through and it makes your job easier. I also played the Hard Difficulty afterwards and didn't do too great, but there's no high score table that I noticed so I'm moving on. Next up for me is Skate or Die: Bad 'N' Rad. Time estimates I have are all over the place (1-6 hours), so I'll be happy if I can get it done in the next couple of days.

Bo Jackson Hit & Run Football & Baseball is done I played the full 1 hour game of football and easily won 69-17. Baseball was tougher to get a handle on and I lost the first game 9-1. Once I got a grasp on pitching and how to position myself for tons of strikeouts, I won the next game 2-0. Batting I never really got a strong hold on. Fielding and baserunning is quite different than other baseball games and I don't know why they messed with the standard solid formula. The duo-pack game felt like a lesser version of Sports Illustrated Championship FB & BB with less impressive cut scene animations, but similar gameplay styles. There's no tournament mode though, so that's an improvement. The experience was okay, as neither sport was the worst version I've played so far, but there are so many better options. Bo needs to know how to fine tune his videogame. If you're wondering what the losing screens look like, I saved those too. After winning both, I threw a game of FB to see what this looked like. You slam your head into your knee and the stadium goes dark Losing this made me want to see the FB loss screen. Your player breaks his bat over his knee (Bo style - that's what's on the ground) and then the stadium lights go dark instead of watching the crowd do the wave. Next up for me is WildSnake which I'll start up on Monday.

I'm not really sure what the "item" thing is about with the fruit. I've actually never played any version of Yoshi, so it's all gibberish to me. I was talking to Retku who was doing an NES challenge and he said that there was the final item at level 28 on the NES version as well that not too many knew about it. Someone in his chat told him as he was playing and he was able to confirm (after about 30 hours of trying....) I tried looking it up and I think it's a Pow Block, which isn't a fruit so maybe I was looking at the wrong thing. All I know is that I now have Turn & Burn: F-14 Flight Simulator officially on my queue and I am dreading that one. No idea how many missions there are and I can't find any proof that anyone has found an ending.

Alright, Judge Dredd is done It was alright. Certainly not the worst game, but it was below average. Better than Superman and Iron Man. Probably around the same level as Bram Stoker's Dracula or Star Wars (but not as difficult as those). Too many levels and they became a bit of a slog with repetitive spongy enemies and backtracking sequences. The hit points and lives were pretty generous. I did game over once without finding any of the password disc items, but I had no problem getting through it on my second run (where I did find 3 of the discs). The final boss fight was a total pushover. The graphics were lackluster, especially in the cutscene stuff (although it did a decent job of filling me in on the movie I haven't seen). Just a bland, sometimes ugly, experience that reminded me of a bunch of other mediocre games. Tomorrow I'll play and likely beat Bo Jackson's Hit & Run Football & Baseball.

Klax is done. I don't have much to say about this other than I found it to be incredibly boring and lifeless. It's not my kind of "puzzle" game. There's no music, but at least there are a couple of wacky sound effects (like the scream when you let a piece fall). The game has a generous warp system and unlimited continues if you're fast enough on the start button, likely because it knows that 99 stages of the same 5 things is too much to ask. I didn't find the repeating objectives to be challenging or all that fun, so I went through the motions until it was done. Oh, and I'm sure you're not supposed to do this but on the "survive X tiles" levels, you can just keep pressing up to recycle the same tiles and the counter goes down. That feels like an exploit that should have been coded out. Oh well. I have a conference coming up, so I won't be playing anything until either Mon or Tuesday next week. I'll be starting Judge Dredd which shouldn't be too bad since it has a password system.

And Ren & Stimpy Show: Space Cadet Adventures is done. I'm on the board for September! I had heard this going in, but this game really is just a remixed version of Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle. The order of the levels are different, and it's generally easier with simplified "boss" stages, but the layouts are nearly identical. Knowing that game and remembering the locations of 1-ups and some of the power-ups and health really helped me out a lot. I do like this one better because of the subject matter and cutscenes between levels (plus I do think that it's more forgiving in general). I beat the game through what might be a small glitch. I was near the top of the last timed level and the clock struck zero mid-jump and it still gave me credit and played the ending scene (with voice samples as part of the audio!). I'm not sure if it should have counted, but I'll take it and cross off another game that I could never beat as a kid. Tomorrow I'll start working on Klax. No idea if I'll be able to beat that in a single session, but I'll assume not.

Alright, well I know it doesn't count for this, but I figured I'd put my thoughts on here anyway in case others might want to give it a shot or know what they're up against. I have finally finished Exodus: Journey to the Promised Land This became the longest game in my challenge so far by quite a large margin. Previously it was Penguin Wars (which may re-take the lead as I go for a full 1-40 match run at some point) which was 43:30. This ended at 56 hours and 26 minutes. The game has 100 levels consisting of 50 stages that repeat in a mirrored mode, usually with tougher requirements and stricter time limits and possibly different enemies, and different exits. There's a level select that lets you skip 5 levels at a time, but it only goes up to level 81, so you have to finish the last 20 levels (the hardest ones) all in a single play session. That took me 4 long nights of trying because even though I knew the general idea of how to do things from playing the same stage 50 levels ago, executing it in the time limit given and then also learning where the new exit was meant spending 2-3 hours learning and exploring and re-trying certain levels. Finding the exits was honestly the toughest part many times and there are some troll-y placements. If the level is complex and long, then it takes 5-10 minutes to get another shot. You can see how the time would add up quick. Tonight, level 99 (which took 2-3 hours of trying last time), went down relatively easy when I tried a slightly different tactic and 100 was so close to 50 that I beat it on my first real try, thankfully. The game itself is actually pretty good. The difficulty spike is unwarranted, though. The physics are also inconsistent. It's a boulderdash rules set-up where you can move around but there's gravity to certain objects. You can take the same path multiple times, but the items will cascade down in a different sequence sometimes for no discernable reason, and that can ruin some runs. The levels have unique gimmicks to them and it's a surprising amount of variety. The 50 levels have questions that tell the story of Moses and picture book like images for each one (both questions and images repeat in the back half), and that creates an amazingly impressive package in that awkward little cartridge. I'm honestly intrigued as to what the other Wisdom Tree titles will be like, but I'm quite happy to wait a while before I try the next one. Tomorrow I should be playing Ren & Stimpy: Space Cadet Adventures and hopefully beating that to contribute to this challenge again.