Floating Platforms

Just finished Virtue's Last Reward. I got all endings, and did the 2 epilogue sections. You can add 3 hours to that playtime total as I ran into the save corruption issue early on and had to restart. If you're playing on 3DS, only save in the warehouses, otherwise if the game crashes (which can happen in a couple places), you will boot up to a black screen and none of the buttons will respond. I finished this a lot earlier than I imagined. About half of this time was from Memorial Day Weekend where we went away to a place with no internet and not much to do at night. I enjoyed the game a lot, but did find the final ending to be a bit of a letdown, although I will say that I certainly didn't guess some of the later twists. I do think it at least did a good job of tying this to the events of 999. The puzzle rooms were fun and manageable without a guide (but I did look up a couple alternate safe password solutions) and I enjoyed the variety in characters. I also greatly appreciated the flowchart aspect that allows you to jump around to different paths. That was much preferable to how 999 presented different endings and made you skip through all the dialogue until one of the few new choices came up. This flowchart will tell you when you're blocked from going further and when you discover the key to move forward, the flowchart will indicate that as well. I'm looking forward to playing Zero Time Dilemma sometime down the line to see how the series continues from here. I've also been making progress on some other games. I'm nearly half way through Great Ace Attorney (on case 5 of game 1), about 25% done with Voxelgram (60/250 puzzles), maybe 1/3rd done? with Golf Story (won the first tournament and have opened all but 2 visible locations), about half way done with Murder by Numbers (started case 3 of 4), put a couple hours into StarTropics and am on Chapter 3. Not bad, but still feel like I'm behind overall since the year is almost half done.

Well, I remember playing a ton of Catrap as a kid and loving it but not being able to figure out most of the levels. It's been decades since I've tried, though (and will be a few years before it comes up in my personal challenge most likely). And Godzilla has taught me that I tend to really overthink sequence of events puzzles. Speaking of which, Godzilla is done! Who's signing the petition to have every game end with "Thank you, Daddy?" I know that the Japanese version of the game is superior in every way, but I had a lot of fun with this puzzle "platformer." The maze mechanic was certainly unique, and surprising to find in a Godzilla game, but I loved that it added a bit of strategy and luck to the playthrough. Unless you're looking it up, you don't know which direction gets you closer to victory. Keep a healthy supply of past passwords ready to go at key branching points. That way, if you encounter a dead end, you can just start over from that point instead of solving the same rooms over again to back track. It's really strange that Godzilla has a giant human fist for his attack (it could easily have been a sprite of fire breath) and I really wish he moved faster, but those are minor grievances in a pretty solid effort. Next up for me is PGA European Tour, which I'll start up on Monday. If it's as easy as PGA Tour 96 was, it might only take a day.

Very cool. Sounds like a nice variety coming up. I've only played two of those so far: Toxic Crusaders and Tail Gator, but enjoyed them both. Tail Gator was a huge surprise to me as to how fun it was. Toxic is one that I expected to be bad, but was competent enough. I think both took me around 3 hours each.

Just do yourself a favor and don't start up Hyper Lode Runner after finally beating this. That one starts at impossible and ends with "who thought this would be fun?"

Sounds like you're really close overall if the last level is 4-10! I'm usually prefer the method of slamming my head against the wall non-stop until the light bulb in my brain finally goes off, but I hear taking breaks can work too. Haven't played any of the 3 in that series but they seem intimidating.

I'm probably about half way done with Godzilla. I'm at a room that should lead to a perfect crossroad point. In one direction is 10 rooms covering the rest of the left hand side. The other direction has more rooms circling the center. No idea where that kid is hiding (and don't want to know in advance), but if I get stuck in the corner, I can avoid some backtracking work with the password I took down. My big fear is that I left a 4 square thing in the bottom right and maybe I'm spinning my wheels chasing both of these directions and I'll have to backtrack a ton. I honestly love the uncertainty of this maze mechanic so far.

Pocahontas is done This was surprisingly fun. Like Hercules and Mulan before it, the emphasis is on adding as many frames to the movements as possible, which sacrifices fluidity. Thankfully that didn't hurt the game that much as this is a puzzle platformer. There are only really 2 enemies in the game and you have to find ways to avoid or distract them. 15 levels, some of them honestly last 10 seconds. A few are escort missions where you have to work with your raccoon friend to reach the end of the level (swapping between you and him). Helping various animals gives you different abilities, but some are not noticeable or maybe only used once. I didn't have the manual (and did not look it up on gamefaqs) so I might have had a bit more trouble than others would, but I really enjoyed discovering the different control schemes or button combinations needed to get through everything. The music was enhanced for the Super Game Boy so it sounded great. The story was very lackluster. A couple quick moving sections of dialogue, but it certainly didn't fill me in on the movie I've never seen. The ending was just "game completed" and no written happily ever after summary. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the short time spent with this. So far, only Aladdin is better of the GB Disney movie games I've played in my life. Next up for me is Godzilla. Hoping to rescue the King's son this week.

I think hitting 200 may be tough this year, but you never know what might happen! Definitely could never have gotten this far without all your help!

Yoshi's Cookie is done. Well, it's certainly not my favorite puzzle game, but it's not bad. The early levels are way too easy and I found that there's a little bit too much reliance on RNG to work in your favor on the later levels when you're down to 2-4 pieces before new rows & columns crash down and overload the board again. If the game doesn't give you the right combo within that short window of time, you're back to massive damage control and that doesn't make for a fun "puzzle" to me. I think I would prefer a mode where you can clear all the cookies in a certain number of moves. Still, it's fun - even if Mario and Yoshi don't understand the concept of supply and demand. I ended up beating it on Medium, and I'll keep it on my revisit list to go through level 10 on High and "earn" the code for levels 11-99 and possibly do that last difficulty as well. For now, I'm moving on to the next game: Pocahontas. I'll be starting that up on Monday and hopefully finishing it.

Okay, nobody took down game #100 over the holiday weekend, so I guess I'll claim it tonight. NBA Live '96 is done What an absolutely horrible mess of a game this is on Game Boy. I have never seen so much tearing in the sprites as you see here. Nearly half of the horizontal lines are missing most of the time. The frame rate is constantly chugging and it has what feels like a significant input delay. Your characters will move around like they're on a hockey rink. Even though there's a circle underneath, you will never know what specific player it is that you're controlling. There's no number or position indicator. That makes it impossible to understand if it's a good idea to shoot the 3 or pass to someone better. Almost always shoot 3's. I found layups and close shots miss 80% of the time, but 3 pointers will hit 35-50%. There's even some bad programming that I discovered from watching all the buzzer beating full/half court shots go in. In some games, and in some cases, this is surprisingly your most effective shot. It doesn't always work, but when it does, it's a godsend in this hellish experience and you connect 60-80% when the game lets you take advantage of the exploit. There are no passwords possible in playoff-only mode. I tried playing Arcade mode several times and made it to the conference finals, but switched to "simulation" mode which plays by actual basketball rules. Both are BS in their own ways. You will pass to no one very, very often. You will never rebound effectively. There is no steal button, so forget about that. To top it off, the game froze right after it started flashing the NBA Champs graphic. Terrible. Bottom 10 game so far. Next up, I'll be playing Yoshi's Cookie, which will be a first time experience (on any platform). I'm hoping it will be a palate cleanser.

Wizards & Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear is done It took longer than I wanted it to but this was still an enjoyable experience. Sure, it might be better if there were limited continues, or if you could stack more than 9 lives, or if the keys & power-ups stayed in place after you died or were more prevalent or if there was an offensive upgrade. I believe the NES game is a bit more Metroid-like in that you get items in one area and then explore a different area. This one is extremely linear. Still, considering an understanding the limitations of the game it was fun exploring the levels and looking for hidden areas or different exits and learning boss patterns. I wouldn't have minded a sequel on Game Boy. I also started my next game NBA Live 96 tonight, but after three tries, I have not managed a single win. There is A LOT wrong with this gross looking game. Due to other life stuff, I don't think I'll be able to try this more until next week, so maybe someone can swoop in and win game #100 for this year in the meantime?

Well, didn't crack the code on Fortress of Fear tonight after all. I can get to level 5.0 and I'm pretty sure it's a maze of some type. I haven't found the boss, but have encountered the same rooms through different doors. There's also a single chest that I know of in that level that I haven't been able to open yet, but I would be surprised if it was necessary to move on. I'm hopeful I can figure out the path on Monday when I play again. If I can find a good pattern to the level 4 bird boss, then even better. Everything else is relatively simple at this point and I've located enough secrets to keep lives full up until that bird. It's been pretty fun exploring everything and steadily making more progress with each run.

Alright, Gremlins 2: The New Batch is done. Well, aside from the graphics, cutscenes and music, this game largely sucks. The first level is a good difficulty, but then it ramps up 10 fold for each level thereafter with compound interest. Level 4 is essentially a beginner's Kaizo experience with really stupid frame perfect jumps everywhere and virtually unavoidable death traps in many places. Then there's that terrible blind zig zag section which is extremely hard on its own even if you could see what you're doing. I wish there were some more powerups, like additional hearts to pick up, or a jumping power. I also wish the levels were easier with slightly more difficult bosses. I beat the final boss my first try (so thankful for that), so the amount of swearing I ended up doing tonight was lower than expected. If this didn't have unlimited continues, it may be near impossible. Even with them, it felt impossible at times. Not fun. I'm not currently playing Wizards & Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear. I got an hour of practice and exploration in tonight and made it to level 3.1. It's a pretty fascinating little platformer so far, but I do worry that having to restart from scratch each time will get old. Might have this one done on Wednesday?

I'm really looking forward to playing DuckTales again, but I have it locked in at game #250 of my challenge so it will be a few more years. Considering going for the best ending just to spend a little more time with it when it comes up. Never played DuckTales 2, so that should be interesting to finally experience afterwards. Welcome! We can certainly use an infusion (caffeine or otherwise) of Game Boy players. Catrap was one of those games that I thought only me and my brother knew about. It was our secret hidden gem, but I never beat all 100 levels. Some day! Oh, and this year we did decide to give credit to everyone that clears the game (1 point if you're not the first to beat it), but it hasn't been done on this thread before, so it's not really reflected in the leaderboards yet.

I keep saying I'm going to play through some of those classic games and never do, so this thread is my motivation. With the weather finally heating up, I can stay in the basement longer and dedicate some late nights to chipping away at them. Plus I have a decent amount of PTO built up at work so at some point I will take days off to just play stuff. Otherwise, while not playing Game Boy, I'm currently working on Golf Story (almost done with the second area), Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (case 3 of 1st game), and Virtue's Last Reward (ran into a save corrupting glitch and had to restart after 3 hours of play. Working on the second pathway after achieving a "to be continued" ending on the first one).

Alright, two more games down. Battle Unit Zeoth Level 3 gave me a bit of trouble, but this is a pretty simple, fun shooter with an interesting navigation gimmick with the floaty jumping. Two of the levels are vertical and the rest are your typical horizontal fare. All are quite short. You get to carry over your powerups from the previous level, but your health also carries over and health powerups are not really effective. So, I relied on the unlimited continues quite a bit. The bosses are huge, but really not much of a problem. For most I was able to find a good spot to sit and shoot, meaning this was done in less than an hour. Chase H.Q. Another short game, but I absolutely hated this one. The later levels are jammed full of completely unfair car placements, surprise turns and tons of crashes upon crashes that simply waste your time and force you to use those limited continues. It's extremely annoying that you can catch up to the target car and then all of a sudden some car gets in your way at the last second and they zoom off. Or, you hit him once and then he zooms away for 5-10 seconds (even though you're at max speed). Just so much cheap BS to contend with here that it was a chore to play. The one song and the grating siren sound effect made things worse. Not looking forward to the sequel, but I can only hope it's better. Next up for me is Gremlins 2: The New batch. This is one of those games I've owned since I was a kid but never was able to beat. With unlimited continues and a good chunk of time to devote to it, I might finally conquer it this week.

Hi @Splain, I just noticed that my Bomberman GB completion isn't noted. Next time you update the charts, can you make that edit? In other news, Lazlos' Leap is done. I don't know why my total says 447 when par is 664. I definitely did not get par on all of them, or even most. Maybe that score is actually 1447? Or maybe it doesn't count non-par levels in your total. Either way, I finished all the levels. #75 gave me the most hassle and that took about 2 hours to figure out overall. The last level was pretty tough as well. For most of them, however, I was able to get by through identifying which marble needed to make the last move and making sure it stayed on the board while moving the furthest pieces closer to the center. After a while, some of the patterns or common moves started to come together and I beat a lot of the later levels on my first or second try due to a basic familiarity of how things should be cleared. I never got a good sense of actual strategies or how to set up multi-marble jumps that would be needed for par, but it didn't matter much. It would have been great to see some sort of final congratulations screen, but it's still satisfying to make it to the center each time. I won't be streaming again until Monday, but I fully expect to beat my next two games: Battle Unit Zeoth and Chase H.Q. then. Hope I'm right!

No worries on the delay on my end, but I'll hopefully be able to keep you busy with new updates this month. I'm 16 levels shy of finishing Lazlos' Leap (might get that done tonight) and my next two games are super short (Battle Unit Zeoth & Chase HQ -- not calling dibs on either, just saying what was picked for me). I may have 3-4 more clears in short order!

Finished Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon yesterday. I typically plan to 100% my games, but I'm not really interested in doing that here. The Scarescraper is multiplayer and I rarely do that for any game (I'm a solo or couch co-op only kind of guy), so that means I can't catch all the ghost types. Plus, getting 3 star rankings on every level sounds like an unbelievably obnoxious time-sink of a chore as you could play nearly flawlessly and still get 2 stars if you missed a single treasure or took one hit or maybe spent a bit more time looking for said treasure. Since the game doesn't tell you what the requirements are, I'd be playing some 20 minute levels multiple times until the 3-star hit. No thanks. I did get all the boos and all the gems and did play all the story levels, at least. Overall, I wasn't into this game for a long time. I started this file years ago and it didn't "suck me in." I would put it down for months and then come back to try another level and felt the same way so it sat for several more months while I played something else. I put it on my backlog list to force myself to finally get through the thing. The levels are a bit too long for a portable experience in my opinion and the first couple locations aren't that interesting to look around. The last levels were a lot better and had unique rooms and a better vibe. I also don't like the slow reaction times while fighting multiple ghosts. While trying to pull one in, I can see the other ghost getting ready to attack, but there's not a ton of reaction time to actually avoid it due to Luigi's scooby-doo run in place momentum and the long animation times of stopping the vacuum. It also didn't seem like my flashlight was connecting properly with ghosts all the time. My angle looked good but the light whiffed and I get hit. So yeah, exploring was fun later on. I never played the GameCube one (don't own it), and haven't played 3 (do own that), so I can't compare this to either. Based on what I know of 3's setting, I might like that better due to the different themes of the hotel. I might give it a shot next year.

Made a good dent in Lazlos' Leap tonight and got through 44 puzzles in about 3 hours. Definitely not going for par on all of them. I actually got kinda stuck on level 4, but at this point I believe I have some of the core concepts down (certainly not the advanced ones). If I'm able to keep this pace, I will likely finish it sometime next week. Then my next two games are supposedly quick and I might finish both in one night to bring my average closer to the 1 GB game per week I'm looking to hit this year.

Pac-Attack is done as of late last night. What really holds this game back is the complete randomness of the pieces. You will always start out with the same opening move, but from there it's all up to chance. Some of the later levels appear to require very specific moves to be made or else you will ruin any chance of a clear because there's an extra block or ghost. I spent a few hours on one specific level (Level 97 - and maybe I was approaching it incorrectly, but it didn't seem like I was) and found myself restarting countless times to get a workable opening set of moves that wouldn't get me stuck later. If this worked like Tetris 2 and gave you specific pieces up to a point, it would also make it an actual puzzle where you could learn how to approach the level. The randomness made me question my approach far too often as I wasn't getting reliable consistent feedback from the game. I really like the concept of the game and many of the levels are very forgiving, but the last set of 10 have a couple that verge on unfair. Next I have Lazlo's Leap waiting for me and I'll start that up tomorrow night. At least we know that getting par on every level doesn't change anything.

Picross S1 is done For whatever reason, I don't play my Switch all that much. It's been good to boot up casual games where I don't have to worry about running into a cutscene or quest that takes 30-60 minutes. Picross is my favorite type of puzzle, so that accounts for about 50% of what I play on there. It's perfect to knock out however much time I have left in my night. I'm not sure if other titles in this "S" series will change this, but my biggest complaint here is that there aren't enough larger puzzles. The vast majority don't go beyond 15x15 and those aren't all that challenging. Maybe I'll find out next year with S2. I also started up Golf Story from scratch again today. I had played for less than an hour a few years back, and it's the first Switch game I bought for myself through Limited Run (before I had the system), so it's about time I actually play the thing for real. Won my first 3-hole challenge ("Mega Eagle" on the first hole) and did a bunch of side quests to level up. It'll be good to split time between this and Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

Interesting to hear your thoughts about Ghosts. This is on my list to tackle later in the year. I actually really enjoy open world games because of the repetition and the map clearing. I find that methodical approach relaxing. Horizon did a pretty good job of keeping the variety in the tasks and not loading too many of the same type. Spider-Man; same thing (plus the map was small). I've heard nothing but good things about Ghosts of Tsushima so far, and honestly if the combat is a bit more involved than the newer Assassin's Creed games (which I also enjoy for the ability to mindlessly clear objectives), then it might be alright.

Finished up the last mission of the Frozen Wilds DLC tonight so Horizon Zero Dawn is finished. The only thing I didn't do is New Game+, so while I have platinum #36 overall, the trophy percentage for this game will sit at 96%. New Game+ rarely appeals to me as I'd rather spend those extra hours beating something new. I have the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles on deck for PS4, but I am one puzzle away from Picross S1 and just a couple levels and gems away from Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon. Will likely have both of those done this month.

Finally started Pac-Attack tonight and got through level 54 of 100. This back half may take a couple more play sessions because I'm already encountering levels where the random pieces are a problem. The first piece dropped is always the same, but everything after is totally random, and it can make for difficult or unwinnable rounds. I have a feeling this will also make learning the tricks to later levels a bit harder as experimentation will be inconsistent. Still, I think I'm making decent progress and maybe it will be done this week if I get lucky and get enough time.