Floating Platforms

I came very close to adding one more. I beat Gabriel Knight 1 at 2:00 am January 1st. I don't want to count it for 2024 either. Trying for 30 total next year and I think that's certainly possible

I should be able to get started pretty soon. Hopefully will be streaming tomorrow and while I originally planned to get some more CDi stuff done before going back to Game Boy, I want to help hit the ground running the best I can with the games chosen for me.

Here's what's on my docket to start the year:

Golf
Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow
Popeye 2
Paperboy
Simpsons: Itchy & Scratchy in Miniature Golf Madness, The
Amazing Spider-Man 2, The

I'm going to try to do Golf legit, instead of doing the reset thing, so it may take a little bit of time if I stink at it. The rest I'm not too concerned about.

Hey all. Sorry I've been silent. I feel like I kind of lit a match in this thread and then walked away due to holidays/life stuff.  It's great to see that others share the enthusiasm for the yearly threads generally.  I agree that the amount of puzzle games can drag, and there are a couple that are rumored to be completely unbeatable (for example: World Bowling - although maybe that will help collectively understand what a win condition is if the coding is that broken), but I also agree that with some additional participation, we may have a real shot because the library size is in that sweet spot of not too long and most of the games are generally achievable and short on average.  I'm looking forward to seeing what 2024 will bring overall!

Yeah, there are pros and cons to doing yearly as well as leaving it timeless. I don't think there's any "right" answer. Again, I'm honestly speaking from a relatively selfish perspective where I'd love to see more attention to the Game Boy and learn more about the games that are still largely undocumented. Either way, I'll still be contributing as much as I can since the vast majority of my retro gaming time is trying to personally beat all of them. I'm just really slow.

From a site-wide perspective, I definitely like the idea of trying to rally everyone around a specific new console each year. I know I'd certainly try to help out if I can with my limited physical collection.

15 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

I think that's because the yearly threads, especially the NES completions thread, are sort of the main attraction and just have the most people really invested in it. The people in the N64 thread were very dedicated this year and are very close to beating the library, but even that is most likely not going to happen every year from now on. That's usually the problem with spreading your ressources too thin.

Or maybe beating an entire library is a miracle to begin with and there's no way, that it's going to happen regularly.

Yes, very true on all fronts. I've seen how no one really even touches the SNES, Genesis, Playstation threads because there's no timed aspect.  I honestly would never expect the entire GB library to be finished in a year, but having the thread reset each year does seem to incentivize people to try out new games in a way that doesn't happen in the "beat it whenever" threads.  There's still a lot about the system that's undocumented, so I'm selfishly hoping that more people would be enticed to help explore some of the lesser knowns.

3 hours ago, Splain said:

If nobody's opposed, I'm going to turn this thread into a forever Beat Every Game Boy Game and stop resetting it. I'll keep everything that has been done this year, so it'll be Every Game, retroactively starting January 2023. Thoughts?

It's a sad thought, but it does seem to make sense. If we broke the 200 game mark again, then it might be worth keeping as a yearly reset as it seems like some people still go after the high points or never finished titles.  The non-yearly threads tend to usually be very, very slow burns or afterthoughts.  But, I think this year was the lowest turnout in several years and I even got sidetracked at the end by my secondary challenge and then a dog surgery. I'll still plan to be good for 30-40 games each year, hopefully.

It took a bit longer than I expected but Super Mario Galaxy 2 is 100% done.  I beat the main game's 120 stars years and years ago, and always meant to go back to do the back half.

For some reason, I thought that the only extra challenge in this was to collect the Green Stars. Feel free to correct me I'm wrong, but in Galaxy 1, the post-game was only to get 120 with Luigi and then a freebie extra at the end.  Well, here you can be either Mario or Luigi (I stayed as Mario) but after getting all 120 green stars, the final level appears.

It's tough, but was manageable after quite a lot of attempts and learning.  241. All good, right?  Nope. Do it again without getting hit a single time and no more checkpoints.  This took hours across multiple nights, but I finally did it to earn that image above.  My dog will be happy that there will be a little less swearing at the TV for a bit.

13 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Sounds like you guys should go revisit it 

You mean go back to hang out and reminisce with my boys Goro and Tom while spending all my money at Tomato, or on Sonic gashapon? Doesn't sound half bad to me.

26 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I'm literally sitting here staring at my watch (in-game), waiting for the day to end so I can wait around tomorrow for another event.

edit:  Wait, that was lunch.  Now I get to do the forklift.  And then sit around (again) waiting for the day to end.

It's been a couple of years, so I had to look up if time skip is possible in part 1 before responding.  I don't remember a lot of downtime in my playthrough, but maybe that was helped by chasing the platinum trophy and doing the random stuff, or maybe I'm simple minded enough to be entertained by talking to all the random NPCs to see what they had to say that day.

22 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I'm just gonna say right now that if I wasn't so close to finishing my list, and I didn't want to see it through for reference, and some masochistic side of me wasn't so interested in eventually getting to parts 2 and 3... I would drop Shenmue so hard right now.  Jesus, this game...

I'm in the camp of people that loves this series, mostly because it's...camp and probably unintentionally (at least the first one). It was great to wander around the town talking to people, laughing at all of their voice acting, and playing what is basically a 3D point and click with some distractions.  It will be interesting to hear your thoughts if/when you're done. I will say that if you don't like 1 at all, I do not think you'll like the other two.

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is done

Imgur is fixed for now? This is a game I played with my brother on C64 a bunch as a kid but we never were able to beat it. In the days before online guides, all you had were paid hint lines or books and we weren't going to use those.  This is also the time where soft locks were still pretty common and they do exist here. We probably hit a couple of them back then. I know we got pretty far, when comparing my winning run here. Anyway, even with that experience under my belt, and remembering quite a few things (but forgetting others), this was quite difficult and I got stuck several times.  The very beginning is quite linear, but once you get past Seattle, there is basically no guidance as to what to do next or in what order. That would be fine except that you can run out of money to fly places. I save scummed some location exploration. I did end up looking up a couple things near the end as I hit a wall and learned from the walkthrough that I missed a key item that I really don't think I would have found. The game has that Lucasarts, Maniac Mansion charm. I do wish there was a bit more character interaction (a talk to/look at function would have been great for flavor text). I also wish there were fewer mazes. But the theme song is underrated and the whole experience was very nostalgic. I may try the enhanced edition some other time.

I'm also currently working on the green stars in Mario Galaxy 2 and just have one more world to go, but I know I'm not hitting my overall goal of 50 this year. I'll be damn close, though.

Nancy Drew: Treasure in the Royal Tower is done

No screenshot as they would all be spoilers.  It's not the best one I've played. The characters are fun (possibly the best in that regard) but there are only 4 people to talk to and for a couple, the interactions are extremely limited. Navigation was quite clunky and the map got me turned around far too easily.  Long, long stretches of clicking through to the next screen as there's nothing of note along the way, and also I experienced a lot of backtracking through long stretches and re-doing a couple minor puzzles each time. Most of the progression was dialog based. Talk to the right person at the right time then bounce between things, don't forget the phone, etc. In terms of actual puzzles, it was backloaded, but still very light on the whole thing. Most were extremely simple and didn't require the research and note taking that many of the entries ask of the player.  I still had fun with it, but I know there are better ones still to come as I continue to go through the series chronologically next year.

I'm going to tackle Zac McKracken next and then figure out what my last steam game of the year should be.

Been a little bit since I've added one, but I'm not through with the year yet.  I'll be going through steam stuff for about a week and have the last 2 weeks of the year off from work to make a last minute push.

Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum is done

https://imgur.com/2XnQpkk

Cool...imgur changed their interface again and I don't know how to make the link show up as an actual image on here anymore.

The style of the game is the same as Mean Streets but with several quality of life improvements.  You don't have to take notes or worry about properly spelling people's names when asking about stuff. It's in a convenient list. You automatically remember codes, etc and addresses and don't have to type those in as there's a fast travel system. I also don't remember voice acting in the first one, but it's here now at times.  The scenes where you wander around are nice enough to make it so you don't have to physically walk around many times to grab key items or open doors, but conversely some of the interface choices are odd. For instance, sometimes you can click "goto" and then the door and it will automatically work. Other times, it will force you to move Tex through and it's hard to know why.  There are some timed events and plenty of potential softlocks if you don't create multiple saves, but it's usually really easy to know when you've hit a blocker. The game also has an in-game hint system in the "help" tab. It lists all the objects in the room as a starting point. Then you can click those and get a hint. I did use this feature sometimes, but mostly to know I didn't miss anything before moving on because sometimes the rooms do scroll if you walk to the right and it's not always clear when that's a thing.  Story wise, it's interesting enough, but doesn't have the same sense of humor - this one plays mostly seriously. There are other things I could complain about, but it was generally an interesting game with a few different gameplay quirks (tunnels, hover board, trap avoidance), and it was fun to finish up these pre-FMV Tex games. I started the series with Under a Killing Moon, so I'm curious to see how much farther Pandora Directive goes (next year?)

I'm going to work on the next Nancy Drew game since there are so many to get through and then probably Zak McCracken this week if things go well.

On 11/29/2023 at 10:58 PM, NostalgicMachine said:

We also just did a video for Penguin Wars on the GameBoy:

Very fun video! I'm looking forward to checking out more.  Penguin Wars is kind of a curse word in my world. The game is great overall, but there is actually an ending and I haven't been able to reach it without hidden stage select codes.  If you win 40 matches in row, you will see the ending cutscene and get credits.  After stage 20, it becomes ridiculously hard and I haven't been able to figure out a solid technique yet. Personal Best is Stage 26.

My short list is extremely long this year because I still didn't like some of the limitations I had in 2023 even though I expanded things.

Big changes for 2024: smaller goal. 50 games was close to attainable, but it ate all my free time. I really want to have the freedom to go after several really long games this year, rather than bounce between shorter ones in order to stay on track. So, I'm reducing the goal to 30 total with no console specific goals this time.

Also, There are still 3 games that were holdovers from 2022 that I didn't finish in 2023. Some I still didn't start. Those are MUST BEAT titles in order to consider the year a success.  The other stuff carried over from 2023 are still just general population for now.

Aside from longer games, my main focuses will be: Beat the Wii U & DS/3DS - Those console lists contain just about every single unbeaten game I own for those platforms. Maybe next year I can finish a console or two completely.  The steam list is massive. I put a ton of point & click stuff, several Nancy Drews (there's over 30 to get through so gotta knock out a chunk), and a bunch of more recent FMV stuff I'm curious about.

Of course aside from these, I'll still be working through my Game Boy and CDi challenges but there's no set list as those are selected through polls.

Beat 30 Games Total from the long list below - Current Progress 7/30
Challenge is not complete until the MUST BEAT games are done - 3 Remaining

NES
MUST BEAT IN 2024: Metroid
Alien Syndrome (Tengen)
Bad Dudes
Cabal (as solo player)
Crystalis
F1: Built to Win
Goonies II
Iron Tank
Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu
Journey to Silius
Kid Niki
Little Nemo Dream Master
River City Ransom
Shinobi (Tengen)
StarTropics 2: Zoda's Revenge

SNES
Donkey Kong Country
Earthbound
Illusion of  GAIA
Star Fox
Super Metroid
Yoshi's Island: Super Mario World 2

N64 
MUST BEAT IN 2024: Perfect Dark
Banjo-Kazooie
Donkey Kong 64
Goldeneye 007
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Star Wars Episode I Racer

GameCube
Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex
Metroid Prime
Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door
Scooby Doo Night of 100 Fright
Spider-Man

Wii
MUST BEAT IN 2024: No More Heroes - Started (beat first boss)
Cursed Mountain
de Blob
ExciteBots: Trick Racing
Mad World
NBA Jam
No More Heroes 2
Red Steel
Super Paper Mario
Trauma Center: Second Opinion (story is done - finish 100%)
Trauma Center: New Blood
Trauma Team
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam (nearly all done)
Zack & Wiki

Wii U
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
Kirby and the Rainbow Curse
Mario Kart 8
Metroid Fusion
New Super Mario Bros U & Super Luigi U
Nintendo Land
Star Fox Zero
Super Mario Advance 4
Yoshi's Wooly World

DS/3DS
Animal Crossing: New Leaf
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
Chibi Robo: Zip Lash
Fire Emblem: Awakening
Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance
Kirby: Triple Deluxe -    DONE 5/3
Legend of Zelda - Phantom Hourglass
Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins -   DONE 2/19
Mahjong Quest Expeditions - Playing (2/3rds story done)
Mario & Luigi: Dream Team
Mario Kart 7 - DONE 3/25
Metroid Prime: Hunters
Metroid Prime Pinball
Metroid: Samus Returns
Scribblenauts
Super Monkey Ball: Touch & Roll
Super Scribblenauts
Yoshi's New Island

Switch 
Axiom Verge
Baobags Mausoleum: Grindhouse Edition
Crime O'Clock
Depixition - Playing (20 puzzles)
Deponia
Eastward
Figment
Fire Emblem: Three Houses (More than halfway through story)
Labyrinth City: Pierre the Maze Detective - Started (did first level)
Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Story done 2023: Finish Remaining Quests/Shrines)
Live-A-Live
Luigi's Mansion 3
Mad Age & This Guy - Started (did 5 levels)
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games: Tokyo 2020
Metroid Dread
No More Heroes 3
Paper Mario: The Origami King
Picross S3 - Started (did 35 puzzles)
Picross S4
Super Mario Odyssey (Already Beat Game - Get Remaining Moons)
Super Mario Wonder
Tardy
Yooka Laylee

Sega Genesis/Sega CD
Adventures of Willy Beamish
Beyond Oasis
Bugs Bunny in Double Trouble
Cadillacs & Dinosaurs
Chuck Rock
Chuck Rock II: Son of Chuck
Contra: Hard Corps
Crusader of Centy
Dracula Unleashed
Garfield: Caught in the Act
Michael Jackson's Moonwalker
Mickey Mania
Monkey Island
Quackshot
Rocket Knight Adventures
Sonic CD
Truxton
Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?

PS3
Broken Age
Castle of Illusion Original & Remastered
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Deadly Premonition: Director's Cut
Dishonored
Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara - Playing (beat both games, trophy cleanup)
Fallout New Vegas
Ghostbusters: The Video Game
Grand Theft Auto IV
Infamous
Infamous 2
Jet Set Radio
Journey
Limbo
Lollipop Chainsaw
Mirror's Edge
Puppeteer
Red Dead Redemption
Sam & Max: Beyond Time & Space
Tomb Raider

PS4
2064: Read Only Memories
Abzu
American Hero
Bioshock 2
Bioshock Infinite
Blade Runner
Book of Unwritten Tales 2
Corpse Killer
Danganronpa 3 - Playing (story done. doing bonus modes/trophy clean-up)
Dead Rising
Double Switch
God of War
Ground Zero Texas
Guacamelee
Hollow Knight
Hypnospace Outlaw
Immortals Fenyx Rising
Kingdom Hearts Final Mix
Lego DC Super-Villains
Life is Strange
Mafia Definitive Edition
NEO: The World Ends With You
Psychonauts 2
Return of the Obra Dinn
Roundabout
Shadow of the Colossus
Sonic Mania
Superliminal
Watch Dogs Legion
Witcher III
Witness
Yazuka 0  -       DONE 4/28
Yakuza Kiwami 2

PS5
Assassin's Creed Mirage
Assassin's Creed Valhalla - Playing (60 hrs, 210 power, map ~30%, story ~60%)
Baldur's Gate 3
Bugsnax
Horizon Forbidden West
Inscryption - Started (beat 2 bosses)
Night Trap
Plague Tale: Innocence
Powerwash Simulator - DONE 1/31 (platinum TBD)
Returnal -  Started (haven't beaten first boss)
Sackboy: A Big Adventure
Saints Row (2022)
Spider-Man 2
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
Tunic -   DONE 5/5

Steam 
The 11th Hour
Bloodshore
The Complex
The Darkside Detective
Detective Case and Clown Bot in Murder in the Hotel Lisbon
Dropsy
Five Dates
Fran Bow
Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within
Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum
Her Story
Hidden Folks
I Saw Black Clouds
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Jenny LeClue: Detectivu
Kathy Rain
Late Shift
The Looker
Nancy Drew: The Final Scene -   DONE 5/8
Nancy Drew: Secret of the Scarlet Hand - Started
Nancy Drew: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake
Nancy Drew: The Secret of Shadow Ranch
Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoore Manor
Nancy Drew: Secret of the Old Clock
Night Book
Night in the Woods
Ori and the Blind Forest
Papers Please
Phantasmagoria
Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh
The Shapeshifting Detective
The Stanley Parable
Stardew Valley
Starship Titanic
Sunset Overdrive
Tangle Tower
Tex Murphy - The Pandora Directive
Toonstruck
The USB Stick in the Grass
West of Loathing
Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus?
Yoku's Island Express

Zero Time Dilemma and my last PS4 game (most actually played through PS5) is done.

What a mixed experience this was.  Of the 3 Nonary titles, this was the easiest. The puzzle rooms were still fun, but I pretty much never got stumped. I looked up 2 things. 1 ended up being an object I didn't know I could interact with and the other was something I legitimately wasn't understanding. The rest, including the secret info needed across timelines, was incredibly obvious. Even though the game opens with a bunch of different segments you can play in any order you possibly want, this is a very linear experience at the end of the day. Basically it frontloads the escape rooms and then the second half is busy work to enter the code to continue the long-winded unsatisfying story.  I remember being intrigued by the story in the second title but it seemed like most of the "twists" in this game were things that we basically knew from the other ones.  The big exception is a major spoiler that I suggest avoiding if you plan to play it, but also a major disappointment: 

Ah well, I still had fun with the series overall, but this was clearly the weakest of the 3 in my mind.

If my skills are up to the challenge, then yes, I do intend to beat the games I play most of the time.  There are some random exceptions, though.  I used to have a big problem with starting games and then stopping before they were done. It wasn't because I didn't like them or didn't want to beat them, but I would start thinking about what I was going to play next, decide to try it out and then get hyper focused on that "next" game while never finishing the other one.

Then I started a rule to only buy 1 new game if I beat 2 games I already owned. I don't tie myself to that anymore, but still prefer to look at my backlog before buying anything.  Also, starting the Game Boy challenge for myself was a huge help in learning how to persevere and stay focused until the game is actually done.  Now, I may have multiple games that I'm actively working on, but I keep it to one per console and don't move to the next until the current game is done.

Guardians of the Galaxy is done

I had a ton of fun with this game but it's not without its problems. Beware that the characters will not stop talking. I had no issue with that, but others certainly will. I appreciated that when you went into little side areas, there were unique conversations just about that. The contextual flow of the dialogue was quite impressive.  The combat was engaging but not too difficult. Controlling your main character and then giving orders to the 4 companions was fluid, but you never needed to get too specialized with things. There were some enemies that had environmental weaknesses, but even that wasn't a huge factor. Technically, this game felt unpolished. Plenty of cases where the models were jerking around or their lips got out of sync. I also had a couple crashes and other instances where I needed to reload the checkpoint because it didn't recognize that I beat everyone on the battlefield or that I crossed a certain point on the map. Anyway, I enjoyed the story well enough, but the big standout was the voice acting.  The actors aren't really trying to emulate the movie cast (especially Star Lord who sounds like Jason Bateman with a Canadian accent), but their cadence is still quite close and they're all great with the more emotional moments.

To save time on trophy hunting, I did use a collectible guide, but it wasn't nearly as spoiler-y as I was led to believe. I got everything except a single combat trophy done last night and then cleaned that one up at lunch today. Now I have to figure out what my last PS4 game of the year is going to be.

On 11/6/2023 at 12:05 PM, Reed Rothchild said:

and @Floating Platforms is about to as well.

If I were adding my Game Boy challenge to the backlog totals, I'd be way ahead.  Including those, I've finished 76 games this year so far.  I might just barely eek past you as I think I'll still cross 40 games from the backlog list. I'm halfway through Guardians of the Galaxy and just got 3 weeks off from work approved before year's end! That mean's I'm going to finally take care of Metroid

Earthworms is done as is the Nintendo Switch for this year

I think this is one of those games that perpetually went on sale for less than $1 before Nintendo stopped people from doing that to such an extreme.  Anyway, it's a point and click adventure game that has an intriguing, unique art style.

I had an alright time playing it, but I'm sure glad I didn't pay anywhere close to full price. Visually, it does look great. The environments are intriguing, but not enough is done with them. The story and puzzles are very linear and once you leave a section, you will never be back. There will be things that are completely unexplained. I'm sure part of that is by design, but this is also written by someone that does not speak English as their first language and it shows in the translation. Not grammatically, necessarily, but in the simplicity of the presentation. There's a noticeable lack of flavor text, speech options, and context. The sentences technically make sense in the splash screen entering a new area, or when talking to the NPCs, but it's really missing a lot of surrounding information. It's almost like we should know the full story ahead of time to actually comprehend things. The puzzles aren't too bad. Many of the doors don't require you to find things, but rather figure out a logic puzzle through shapes or other means, and not just inventory and that was nice. However, there were a few instances where the progression was gated by needing to do a very specific order of events and even though you knew where it was leading, you can't pick up that item until you talk to that person, do the thing, talk again and now you can interact with it. The art style did unfortunately also make a couple things very hidden and your cursor likes to snap onto items, but if there are multiple things (or if you haven't done the right steps, or if it's literally hidden by the foreground), it's not going to snap and you could miss a key area for a while.  Long story short, good atmosphere and art but an average P&C adventure experience.

For Game Boy:
Batman (has a shooter level)
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (top down exploration and side-view space shooter)
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (top down exploration and side-view combat)
Taz-Mania (side scroller and front-view "racing" like)
Star Wars (side action, top down speeder, and space combat)
T2: Judgment Day (has a tile switching puzzle section)
 

Don't think these count as their stages are various mini-games, but just in case:

Casper
Bart vs the Juggernauts
Incredible Crash Dummies
Tamagotchi (raising & training, then tournaments and mini-games)
Radar Mission - two main game modes (one is battleship, the other is an arcade shooter)

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is done and so is my goal for the PS3

This is the second Sly Cooper game I've played (Thievius Raccoonus was the other) and I quickly remembered why I abandoned it years ago.  The game is fine, but it all centers around navigating hub worlds that are completely pointless, unless you're going for 100% completion. Watch the cut scene to introduce the next mission, then go to the hub world where you have to then get to the starting point of the mission, load, likely watch another cut scene and then play inside a specific disconnected building for a couple minutes.  It really throws the rhythm of the experience off.  The best parts are the final missions that are longer and usually involve using multiple characters.  The gameplay is varied, but still a bit repetitive, but maybe that's from slogging through the overworld in a way that doesn't involve any of the abilities you acquire.  Those are only for specific missions and for collectibles. You don't use level one's costume in level five, for instance.  The boss encounters are different enough and the checkpoints are incredibly generous, auto-saving after every phase of a fight. I like the characters and the 2D animated cutscenes but this one needed a bit more polish and structure to be better.  I would love to see what a PS5 Sly Cooper would look like.

This is pretty cool, and seems pretty accurate to what I've been seeing too so far, but I think there are potentially a couple cartridges to consider on the Game Boy/Game Boy Color side.  There are a few titles that were released both as gray GB carts and black GBC carts.  Frogger, Super Breakout, and Wario Land II immediately come to mind.  The gray cart GB versions of each are significantly tougher to find in the wild and most of the ebay listings will be the black ones - Wario Land II has more gray available than those other 2 I mentioned, but it's still a sub-segment.

Last night I finally finished the last bit of Picross S2

I have been chipping away at this all year. Anytime I have just a little bit of time to play at night and don't feel like going through a story focused thing, I pop this on.  Really not much to say about it, other than the Jupiter Picross games have consistently been solid with a great difficulty progression.  This one introduces clips, which are mini puzzles that combine to make a larger picture. If S3 doesn't add any new features, that'll be just fine as I'm cool with zoning out and playing more of the same.

I'm almost done with Sly Cooper Thieves in Time and might get that done by the end of the month.

Road Rash is done

I don't have much experience with Road Rash, but I have played a tiny bit of the Sega CD version. This is lacking the licensed rock music, but that's alright because the songs in this are pretty dang good.  The backdrops of each track looked nice, as did the end screens.  Gameplay wise, it's quite simplistic and the hardest thing to get used to was how to handle those sharp turns. I don't think there's a break button since B punches. Letting go of A allows you to slow down, but sometimes it wasn't enough to avoid the obstacles on the sides, even with the best bike.  Getting tossed in the air didn't help either. I don't think the obstacle challenges ramped up as the 5 levels went on, but the opponent's speed did.  There were definitely some dumb RNG moments that ruined a few races, but only level 4 gave me any real trouble. 

This may end up being my last contribution for the year.  Next up I have game #175 - Donkey Kong Land, which has already been done for this year. After that, I'm going to finally be starting my CDi challenge and have 8 games lined up for that. Then I'll come back to Game Boy for another 25 games, etc. If I do get back to GB this year, I'll be starting Golf, but we'll see how long some of these disc based games are first.