Floating Platforms

I've heard that Hyper Lode Runner is possibly one of the most annoying games on the system. My guess is a big part of the issue is that you can't see the full screen to know where the enemies are until it's too late? I don't envy you and don't look forward to getting to it on my challenge. The people I've tracked ended up spending 30-35 hours. Thankfully it has passwords at least? Crazy what we're learning about Game Boy games this year! It's exciting that there's still new things to discover, even if it is a disappointing "ending" to a puzzle game. I had the day off from work today, so I managed to beat "The Hunt for Red October" and got either Sean Connery or Alec Baldwin waving to me as a reward. 8 stages that are pretty dang difficult and in some moments unfair with the airplanes/helicopters constantly coming around. There are no continues, but each level does have several extra lives to collect, which are pretty much vital to success. It's an interesting game, and kind of good. Think of it like a slow moving shoot-em-up where you're better off baiting your enemies than running and gunning. Each stage has a boss fight and some of those get to be quite difficult or confusing. If the game had continues, or more varied weapons, or a more effective cloaking power-up, I think it would be a lot better. Next up is Killer Instinct. I'm going for every ending with this one, so it might take a couple of sessions depending on my skill level. After that I'll be on my 50th game milestone and will be playing Castlevania Adventure, which has already been done here, but I'm excited to finally get a chance to beat that one.

The key with Tasmania Story was to get out of my own head and realize that there's no time limit in the levels and that you don't have to keep moving. Once you understand how the enemies follow you and how you can start to bait them, it gets easier. On the later levels, I would spend a little bit of time circling around them to set bombs and fall on their heads to get them clumped together or in a line, because the biggest danger is when they can come from both sides and trap you. It took a bit to get the hang of it, but wasn't too bad after that. Lock N Chase is done. Yeah, that was certainly better than Tasmania Story. I am not really good at this game, but it didn't matter because there were unlimited continues and you could keep going from the same level, so all I had to do was keep trying and I got through it. I really liked all the gimmicks this game added to the Pac-Man formula, but I never got the hang of how to use the blockades effectively (which is the main gimmick). My favorite levels were the last ones from each half in the pyramid where you need to push the key around. Overall, each level felt unique and fun for a different reason and the game didn't drag anything out too long. Good stuff. My next game is Hunt for Red October, which I have no experience with, so we'll see!

Tasmania Story is done! It took some practice, but I eventually got there. Collect 5 special animals across the 10 stages to see the Tasmanian Tiger and get the ending screen trivia tidbit above. It's a Pac-Man/Mappy mix and the controls are a tiny bit wonky so you'll use the trampoline to reach a certain platform but the game will send you to the one above or below your target. The hit boxes are very strange and while you have a bomb attack, the enemies can kill you from the other side of the bomb before they are hurt. It's very easy to get trapped or misjudge when you'll be safe to sneak past. Honestly, those shortcomings are what make the game worthwhile. If things worked as expected, then it would be a 10 minute pointless game. As is, it created enough motivation for me to feel like I could do it if I just gave it one more try. The graphics were terrible and overall the game is really not good, but it was tolerable. Next up is another Pac-Man inspired game, Lock N Chase. I'm expecting this to be a bit more polished.

NHL '96 is already done. I went with the "New Playoffs" mode which was single elimination for each round, so I only needed to win 4 games (with 5 minute periods) to get this absolutely amazing ending screen within about 90 minutes of playing. At some point, I'll try to explore whether the "Sevens" mode gives a different screen, but based on how quick and dirty this game was plopped out, I seriously doubt it. The game was extremely easy. Hold A for a power shot (slap shot?) and you'll get a goal most of the time. The siren for scoring a goal is both annoying as all hell and weirdly mesmerizing. There's a little jingle that plays underneath it as well. Very strange but I grew to love it. Control wise, it's not really easy to know where you are if you don't have the puck, but it didn't turn out to be much of an issue at all. What was an issue was the graphical chug. The game runs terribly and you'll get a lot of tearing, disappearing players and never good frame rate. There's also a delay between getting the puck and seeing your star highlight to show you have it, so I would pass or shoot on accident a lot. Again, it wasn't a problem and I won each game handily, but worth mentioning. Also worth mentioning that this game does let you change the in-game colors so I picked a cleansing blue after the eye melting reds, greens and purples that Pagemaster forced on me. Next I'm taking on Tasmania Story. I played for a little while today and it is not good. Made it to stage 6 of 10 (I think). I just need to learn better routes to take in this weird Pac-Man style thing. Will probably have it done on Monday.

The Pagemaster is done. It's not the worst thing I've ever played, but it takes a lot of getting used to. The jumping is super floaty and the walking is super slippery. The levels are confusing with cheap enemy placement. Still, as I said before, if you're not trying for the best ending of collecting all 8 library cards, it wouldn't take too incredibly long to get through. Most of my time was scouring levels to find out which ones had the cards and where. I learned a lot about how to skip a ton of unnecessary levels and sections of levels, but also learned I don't need to ever play it again. The custom Super Game Boy border is probably the best part of the whole thing, but the color palates used for the actual levels (that you can't change on the SGB from what I could tell) were absolutely horrendous monstrosities that will sear into your eyeballs. I'm going back to sports next with NHL '96.

Expert is a strong word since I beat normal mode on low speed and still took forever, but I'll take it! Good question on the completion. I would say beat level 80 would likely be enough (starting on level 30 is okay - even though you'd miss the first two cutscenes). I thought the puzzle mode was more fun, but aside from seeing that full card with the minimum move icons, there's no reward or congratulations for doing it. No rockets. No musicians and dancers. It's all about personal satisfaction. So you could probably leave puzzle mode off? Pagemaster stinks by the way. If I wasn't going for best ending, I might be done with it but I'm still in exploratory mode for those stinking library cards (not ready to give in to a walkthrough either).

Ouch...sorry you had that happen to you @Gaia Gensouki. I just had something similar happen with Tetris 2 when I lost about 7-8 hours of progress after accidentally exiting on level 78 (of 80). The game will let you start on level 30, so thankfully I had time again today to give it another shot. Tetris 2 does indeed have an ending in normal mode on Game Boy and it is now done! You follow the "adventures" of this plant boy thing, which basically turned out to be watching him walk across the screen most of the time. You get a new cut scene every 10 levels until you reach the end and see this: I had a lot of fun with the game, but it's far too much of a time commitment. Starting from level 30 today, it still took me another 6 hours to get through the 50 stages (of course I'm not good at the game, so someone who has better reflexes, etc will get it done quicker). I'm glad it's over and I apologize in advance that I might have added more criteria to future years once again... Tomorrow I'm going to start The Pagemaster. Thankfully that one has passwords!

Tetris 2 puzzle mode is done! For Puzzle Mode, it does indeed tell you that you have the minimum number of moves by giving you a "perfect" message after beating it and this diamond icon to the right of the number. You can also figure out how many moves are needed because the starting blocks for the level will be the same each time until you go over par. If you're retrying and you see something different on that level, you're no longer eligible for that perfect. I can also, hopefully, confirm that there are only 30 puzzles in the GB version. I didn't get perfect scores in order. The menu system is a little weird, but you can back out, it will show you the menu of your current progress, then it takes you to the original stage select screen with music choices. My last 2 were #20 and #28. After that, I did level 30 again just to make sure that getting all perfects on the last level didn't unlock anything secret. Pretty sure this is it for puzzle mode! Having never touched this game, and only reading the manual (glad I did to learn about the 6-in-a-row clear), I had a great time with the puzzles. They were a nice mix of difficulty and I only got really hung up on about 3 or 4. I pulled through without looking up any solutions at all, which was a nice feeling of accomplishment. Since there don't seem to be passwords and I don't think the game has battery save, it may be worth noting it took slightly more than 4 hours to get through this tonight. If you're smarter than me (very likely), or find a guide then it would be a lot faster. I'll try Normal Mode on Saturday to see what I can find out. What's weird is that in all my searching, I pretty much found the expected NES and SNES stuff, but for Game Boy, I found a lot more videos for "Not Tetris 2" than I did GB videos on the actual Tetris 2. I see there's a level select on GB for Normal mode that goes up to 30. I can at least try to get through those levels and play it by ear.

Question on Tetris 2 for anyone that's done it. So, it looks like the Game Boy version has 30 puzzles instead of 100 for the SNES but no save/passwords. I was trying to look at normal mode before I start as well, since "Tetris 1" had best endings for Game A & B. I can only find SNES runs of normal mode, showing 80 levels (again with passwords) and cut scenes/ending. Does anyone have experience with the GB version to know if an ending is possible on normal here too? I'd want to do both for my own challenge even if not required for this.

If it's any consolation, at least that means they made it to this game's version of the Super Bowl!

Very happy to say that Sports Illustrated Championship Football & Baseball is finished. Just like the FB tourney, the baseball one was 9 games. I was 7-1 in the listed games (losing on the last one), but that was enough to get me to the final game against Montreal (I played as NY American after trying several different). It went down to the wire, but I tied the game in the 8th and got the walk-off win in the bottom of the 9th. Here's my review for those interested: Football: I'll never understand why someone would decide to force player into 1 hour games for the tournament, because that is real time. Add the time for stopped clocks, menus, etc and each match takes 90-120 minutes to get through. I eventually got to a point where I would sit for 30 seconds if the clock was running because that was faster than running an actual play. You have very little control over the outcome. Most passes will be complete no matter what, but you're tackled instantly 99% of the time. Runs have a greater chance of breakaway touchdowns. Defensively you can't choose your defender after they pass or hand-off and there's no tackle/dive button which means you can't actively sack the QB or get in position for an interception. So basically the game largely plays itself. Penalties are very much randomized too. The voice clips and animations are fantastic, but there's no music except for during the cover shots and TDs, etc. So it looks nice, but it's a boring experience at the tournament level. Stick to a single, shorter, game. Baseball: This was a much tougher game to play. Thankfully the games were shorter, but it took a lot of experimentation to figure out what might sort of work when batting and pitching. I never fully understood how to field properly. The fielding was the worst aspect since it was highly unpredictable. The ball would go to what seems like the same location, but one of multiple players could be going for the ball. Sometimes the computer would control it fully, sometimes it would control it for part of the time and then you were expected to take over, and sometimes you had to do it all. But not knowing which player you were expected to control, paired with the pixel perfect placement to pick up or catch the ball meant a lot went past you. Thankfully I finally figured out the trick to striking a lot of players out so I had to deal with that less. Once again, this looks sort of nice, but it's a frustrating experience and I wouldn't even recommend playing a single game on the baseball side. And the championship cover shots Next up for me will be Tetris 2. I have no experience with this game at all, but I plan to get it done this weekend and maybe another game if I'm fast enough (currently slated to be The Pagemaster). After that, it's more sports for me.

Okay, my guess was wrong. The Football tourney is 9 games long. The list of 8 they show you and then the championship match. What's weird is that yesterday I wrote down the password and then the game was sending me to a match with Pittsburgh. Today that same password sent me to a game with Cleveland, so I guess the finals are against a random team you haven't faced yet. Anyway, I beat Cleveland easily and got the normal victory cover and then a second cover to say Football's Best and then it kicked me to the title screen without giving any more passwords. I'll post a screenshot when I'm done with baseball, which I'll start this week.

Still making progress on SI FB & BB. I've now completed 8 games in the FB tournament which is all the game shows initially, but it gave me another password and dumped me into another game against a new city (but no new list of opponents), so my current guess is it will be a 16-17 game season and I'm halfway through? Fingers crossed that the baseball games go faster when I get there.

So far I'm not worried about the CPU winning as I've been doubling their score, but if the AI gets a lot tougher it will be hard pill to swallow. The game gives you very little control over the outcome since there's no tackle button and you almost always tackle/get tackled after a pass (no Tecmo juke or breaking tackles), so it's mostly boring because I feel like I'm mostly watching a sim game. But there's a password to save progress after each game, so at least I won't have to start from scratch if something goes horribly wrong.

Great to see some sports games cleared! I've started the Sports Illustrated FB & BB after returning from being out of town but it will take some time. Unless I'm missing something, the tournament for FB forces 1 hour games and it turns out that's real world time, so adding in all the clock stoppages, etc, it actually takes about 2 hours per game. It's showing 8 games in the tournament, but it's a list and not a bracket, so I don't know if there's going to be more rounds after this. So far it's not too hard, just boring. The plan is to get through most of these this week.

Uh oh...what did I unravel? In all seriousness, it would be great to have a resource that shows or lists all the different possible endings for a game (and their requirements, of course). Even YouTube is insufficient at times as we're finding, so no matter the source it probably won't ever be accurate.

Congratulations! This is one of those games I've owned since a kid that I couldn't ever finish. Got stuck in that same maze part. I started my challenge with a game that I could never beat as a kid (Escape from Camp Deadly), and besides Gremlins 2 there are a few others from my youth that I'm looking forward to eventually conquering for the first time like Ren & Stimpy: Space Cadet Adventures, Wayne's World, Itchy & Scratchy Mini Golf, Mega Man 1, and Kid Icarus

I appreciate the thought, but it's not a big deal. I'll gladly sacrifice any points in exchange for the "new" knowledge about the game in general. I wonder how that YouTube commenter I found learned about it. At least I can move on to newer pastures. Yesterday I completed Turok: Battle of the Bionosaurs This is a pretty decent game that had the potential to be much better. The overall objective is scour the semi-maze like levels for 3 specific objects that will allow you to unlock the next level. Along the way, you can eventually also pick up pieces of the "chronospecter" which is a weapon you can only use against the final boss. Each level also introduces a new weapon, but most of them are very similar to each other and half require you to sit still and charge it, which is a virtually useless tactic. The game allows you to backtrack to previous levels if you want to farm ammo or the triangles that act like coins in Mario to boost lives, so that was appreciated and the password even saves how many lives you have when you exit the level. For the most part, the levels are fun and varied enough to keep things interesting. Where it really falls flat is in the demanding jumps in the later levels. Honestly in level 7, I had no clue how to get the items and then make it back to a safe area because the jumps needed pixel perfect placement (if you fall too far you die). So I just died and warped to another part of the level since you keep key items until game over or you exit the level. The music is enjoyable throughout and there are plenty of different enemy types. Overall, it was a good time that would have been better if the jumps were more forgiving. Also, disappointing that such a late release didn't have any custom SGB borders or default color palettes. I beat it on Medium with the full chronoscepter, so I don't know for sure if that gives the best ending, or if there are multiple endings. If anyone has any info on that, let me know. Next is going to be Sports Illustrated Championship Football & Baseball. I've played it quite a bit as a kid and thought it was alright at the time, but I don't remember if I ever bothered getting through a tournament.

Finally got Penguin Wars out of the way. Again, I don't expect it to count for this challenge because I did use that level select code but that's going to be good enough for me. I got through Stages 1-20 on my own and then dealt with 21-40 in the groupings of 4 that the code allows. Even with that, the back half took me over 9 hours (played for 43.5 total including emulation practice). Someday when people smarter than me get wind of this ending and can properly develop strategies that I can steal from, I'll possibly try the full 1-40 run. In the meantime, I'll move on. Short review is that stages 1-20 are fun, exciting and challenging. Stages 21-40 are garbage torture that find every excuse to punish the player and give unreasonable advantages to the computer. Now that I've got that monkey off my back, this weekend I'm going to tackle Turok. Looks like it's a 4-5 hour game, so I should be able to finish it, and then my plan is to start on the Sports Illustrated Football/Baseball next week. It'll take a bit of time to get through those two championship seasons but at least it will be steady progress.

I'm looking to join the party again here as well. I have a few longer games on the docket, though so updates may not be too frequent with new clears. I still need to conquer Penguin Wars one way or another too. I have a thought about a strategy, but haven't tried it yet. Today I was able to complete Dragonheart. This was my first time playing it and I thought it was a lot of fun. I really appreciated that the 8 levels were all their own little mini areas instead of part of one large map you have to traverse because the first person perspective wreaks havoc on my navigation ability. Even in these relatively tiny maps, I got lost a couple times. Once you find the map in each section (there are even maps to find in straight corridors for some reason, which I found funny), you can move around in map view, which is so much easier, but you can't see NPCs that might stop you to talk or fight. The fighting of people was a breeze. I started trying to play with strategy and using my shield for a bit, but quickly learned I can just mash "A" with a down thrust and I can't get touched. The dragons gave me a bit of trouble. Brute force worked most of the time, but I didn't ever get a real handle on how to mix defense and offense effectively. You get one life to get through the level and if you die in battle, then you have to do it all over again using your password. Overall it was a pretty basic and linear adventure but having the short episodic approach was great and I loved the dialogue that was a lot funnier than I would have expected. The game was also generous with digitized pictures and cut scenes, so overall the game looks great, too.

I spent the last couple nights working on Penguin Wars through an emulator using save states after each and every win, and it still took me around 4 hours to get through the last 20 matches. I wanted to do this to see what kind of progression I was looking at and confirm the NA version has the end screen, since the video Splain found was PAL region. I couldn't really tell a difference in those last 20 matches. The obstacles show up 10 seconds in and the balls will fall down from half way at varying speeds each of those rounds. The opponents are always aggressive and didn't notice any difference in their strategy. I did notice that I'm not good at combating their strategy. As for the ending screen, unfortunately it does indeed exist. I was kinda hoping it was PAL only. I don't think I have the ability to do all 40 in one full run. For my personal challenge, I've decided I'm going to use the stage select code (which is really a cycle select as it will put you at the start of whichever of the 10 cycles of 4 matches chosen) and beat each cycle in one run. My current PB on 1 "credit" was stage 23, so I would do 21-24 with one life as many times as needed and if I pass, allow myself to use the code for 25-28, etc. So while it won't count for this challenge, it will be enough for me to be satisfied to claim some sort of victory and put it aside for now with the asterisk attached. Then I'll move on to Dragonheart, because I haven't started that one yet.

Sure. The one I was referencing was Playcated. Currently for Original GB, I track times for these console challengers besides him and myself. John Carls (largely inactive), Belthic Gaming (formerly eBloodyCandy - also on a hiatus, but understand he will return at some point), Moelleuh (currently active), Atroz (nothing in 2020), Zenic Reverie (nothing in 2020), Sprinting Legs (largely inactive), Grannen Hiro (done with his SCN coded challenge). If there are any other Original GB runners that you have that I'm missing, I'd be happy to learn about them.

@Splain Unfortunately no. The guy only posted the end screens/final minutes and not the full playthroughs. And looking today, it seems like he deleted his entire YouTube channel now, which is too bad. He was doing the GB library in chronological release order and almost got through 1992 before apparently stopping for good. Oh, another random question on a game I won't play for years. Any reason why Arcade Classics 4 hasn't been conquered yet that you know of? Of the 5-pointers, that one seems like it would be finished nearly every year like the other 3.

Interesting. As far as I know the 20 hours was for the beatable mode. I keep a spreadsheet to try to track completion times for streamers/YouTubers that are doing or tried doing the GB console challenge. I only have two times to reference - one was 4 hours, and the other was 20. Maybe he explored other modes first and that was most of the time spent. Doubt I'll get to it myself for a long time either way, but good to know that I may not have to keep the system on for days straight!

How is Word Zap time-wise? I saw one streamer put in 20 hours into that. With no passwords or saves, seems intimidating, but maybe it's all about being good at that type of puzzle?