Floating Platforms

Well, I've come down with some sort of minor respiratory illness, so I holed myself upstairs to not infect my wife and decided to open up steam. I ended up starting and beating Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill Remastered I've played a couple of the Nancy Drew games and those have been entertaining point & click puzzlers that definitely require note taking and typically have a good variety of puzzle types. I learned about them from watching a couple streamers/youtubers and I was surprised at the polish and level of difficulty for what I assumed would be a little kids game. Anyway, I wanted to go back and play the series in order, so this is the first one and it shows. Only 3 small locations to visit, 5 different people to talk to and the puzzles are virtually all cyphers or reading things backwards. Obviously, it was also incredibly short. It's an interesting starting point for the franchise, but not a particularly good one. The Remastered version brings it in line with the rest of the series with uncanny valley 3D models of the characters as I've looked into the original PC version which has simple 2D animated people. The original also has a different location that doesn't exist in the remake, a totally different ending, and one less character. It's pretty fascinating to see how different it actually was. For my next Nancy Drew game I have to jump to the 3rd (Message in a Haunted Mansion) as the 2nd one (Stay Tuned for Danger) was never put on steam.

Two more finished tonight - one counts for the thread. TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan is finished and I've now crossed over 150 games completed in my personal challenge. It took 2 tries as I died on Shredder with my 3 remaining turtles the first time. Cheesed the hell out of Krang on accident, though. Then I decided to start 4-in-1 Fun Pak: Volume 1 and actually managed to beat all 4 games in about 2.5 hours. Chess was done on difficulty level 3 (of 6). I played aggressively to start, then had to retreat but then when the CPU had me on the ropes, they straight up gave me their queen and then a couple more high value pieces. Anyway, I ended up with 2 queens and cornered their king. The game would have been much faster, but their thinking time between moves was amazingly long for the middle difficulty. The rest of the three were played on level 2 (of 3) difficulty. Checkers was tough for me and took a few games. I don't know strategies at all and sort of threw things against the wall until I was able to grab several kings and luck it out. You can see I also changed colors for each game to better match the board. Reversi was my most feared and again I tried just plugging pieces down a few times with no luck. Then I actually tried to look for decent moves and managed a solid victory with 3 of 4 corners. Backgammon threw me for a loop as I am used to moving my pieces counter clockwise towards the bottom right. Nope, this had me moving clockwise to the bottom left. So I lost the first game as I fumbled through the confusing orientation and didn't get to set up proper blocks. The second game was pretty simple with very few captures and no doubles rolled, but I still got it done. My next game is supposed to be Dragon's Lair: The Legend, but instead I'm going to spend the rest of this week revisiting some of my older games that either have some unfinished business or modes I've been meaning to explore.

A couple days ago I finished Spider-Man: Miles Morales I'm glad this one was on sale. I loved the PS4 Spider-Man game and this is still a great extension of that, but it definitely feels like a large DLC that was released separately instead. The story is incredibly short. Very few side missions and all of it was much more repetitive than the first. The collectible stuff basically involves going somewhere, maybe moving one thing and picking up the thing. I miss the variety of the puzzle types. The beat making thing wasn't fun because you simply had to find the right place to perch rather than actually construct something yourself. I also could not get into The Tinkerer's storyline. Solid performance, but I hated the character's arc and frustrating rationale. Too many story beats felt recycled or elementary level for me to get fully invested in. It also would have been great to see more villains. There's Rhino, Tinkerer and Prowler (sort of). I was hoping the side stuff would lead to more bad guys, but instead you get more suits. If this were part of the main first game, I would be thrilled with the depth of content for the DLC. As it's own package, it's still a lot of fun but sadly underwhelming. I'm hoping that Spider-Man 2 doesn't skimp out when it releases. On the handheld side, I started playing Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin and thought I was going to start over, but my save file showed I was 3 hours in and and had done a couple of areas already. It's been so long that I completely forgot. So, I'm going to power through and see if I can find my bearings. I imagine I might need to backtrack through various areas and re-enter a painting or two at some point anyway. I'm not sure what to play next for PS4/5. I might knock out another short one like Abzu or Untitled Goose Game. For my big title, I'm trying to decide between God of War and Watch Dogs: Legion. I also played an hour of Lego City Undercover on Wii U for the first time since 2018 (!?). Too much to choose from!

Nemesis is done. I didn't realize going in that to see the ending, you had to beat all the stages in one go. So, I played the game twice. Once with the default 2 lives and stage selecting from where I left off. When that led to no ending, I figured I had to do it again and took with me all 99 lives the game allows. The game isn't too difficult, but I am not great at shooters. Even though this is a slower one, there are some enemies that basically appear out of nowhere (especially in stage 5). Dying in certain places means you're at a disadvantage with all your power-ups gone and less chance to get equipped before reaching the mini-boss and then final boss of each stage. The bosses are all a breeze. I had some trouble with the mini-boss area in level 2 on my second run since it's a bunch of stuff that appears randomly and will occasionally spawn too close, making it really hard to dodge. I love the Gradius family of shooters with the power-up bar that allows you the choice of upgrading certain things or holding out for more, but I'm glad this wasn't more difficult. I still think SolarStriker is better (even if it's more simplistic). Because I played through it twice, I didn't have time to go into TMNT for game #150, so I'll tackle that Monday followed by 4-in-1 Fun Pak. I also ran another poll tonight. Game #153) Star Trek: The Next Generation & Game #154) Final Fantasy Legend II

Alleyway is finally done. I think I may be bad at games, guys. Took me 18 hours and far too many tries. I've always enjoyed Breakout style games and this one is also a lot of fun. I found it generally to be a very relaxing experience, even with all the failures. I knew that they were virtually all my fault anyway. I do wish there was some background music during the levels. They put it in the bonus stages, but not the main levels, which made them feel a bit too empty. The bonus stages are a nice incentive since they each feature a different Mario enemy. Plus if you do well, you can get some much needed extra lives (until you pass 9000 points that is). I'm looking forward to seeing how Super Breakout and Kirby's Block Ball compare to this eventually. Next up I'll be playing Nemesis. I'm hoping to get through that pretty quickly and then also tackle game #150 TMNT (which won't count for this thread)

New Super Mario Bros. 2 is done I got the 5-star profile after a few days of coin grinding to reach that triple crown. I unlocked the other 4 stars with a little less than 600 lives built up, but triple crown requires something like 1110? So, I explored levels and found that 1-A was the best option for me where I could get 12-15 lives per run consistently. I know there's some better end screen if you max out the coins, but no thank you. That's months of grinding coins as you can see. The game was surprisingly fun. I played New SMB 1 a long time ago and wasn't all that impressed. This game had that 2D Mario vibe and solid level design. The only new item, I think, is the golden flower that explodes bricks to turn them into coins and gives you coin multipliers for killing multiple enemies with a single fireball. Those are quite rare overall so most of the time, it's the flower, leaf or small mushroom (again, rarely needed). Even with that straightforward approach, it was fun to explore the levels and some provided a tiny bit of challenge. A few of the gold star coins were very well hidden, too. I've only played a little bit of SMB Wii U and it didn't grab me either. I'm now a bit more optimistic to go back to that one later this year. On my DS, I'll probably get Portrait of Ruin started next. Two games down this week and I'll likely have Miles Morales done soon too. Just need to get a 100x combo, get one more skill and finish NG+.

Syberia is done I didn't beat it under 6 hours going in blind, so I did a quick second run with a guide and skipping dialogue/cutscenes just to get that last trophy for 100%. There are some good elements to this. Since it's originally from the early 2000s PC, it has a very comforting graphical look that isn't too blocky but not too crisp. The same goes for the audio quality. The voice acting may not be amazing, but it feels warm thanks to the audio equipment of the day along with the amount of file compression or whatever is going on. The puzzles are relatively simplistic and thankfully are mostly self-contained to their respective areas. The game does feel like it wanted to do more, since there are several side paths and a couple characters that were completely useless. The locations were interesting and varied as well, so I wouldn't have minded having to look through more of it. But the game also has early 2000s jank. Kate gets inexplicably stuck on objects all the time, to the point where some paths or objects may be hidden if you assume you can't wiggle your way through. To exit the static image background to go to the next screen, you need to be in specific spots (even if the next screen shows that the whole left side should be open, you better exit at the top or else you're running in place). Perspective switches break the 180 rule so you can run down and the screen switches to where you need to walk up immediately after and that causes that frustrating backtrack. Speaking of frustrating, the characters Kate deals with are all obnoxiously selfish petulant children. I get that this is intentional, but it was really pathetic over-the-top stuff like "why does my fiancé need to be a lawyer and do her job? Just come home!" or "you haven't found this guy we didn't know existed yesterday yet? What's wrong with you?" With all said and done, I'm not completely sure why this one has stayed around in the public eye the way it has. It was fine. I have the sequel through PS+ on PS3 as well but I don't know if I'm all that excited to continue the journey.

Woo! Are you asking if Pokemon Picross can be finished/has credits? I think someone in my twitch chat has gone through the whole thing. I'll ask them next time I stream. I almost beat Alleyway yesterday. I keep mucking up my runs by losing 3-4 lives on a single level like a fool. My PB is 21 out of 24.

Got the platinum trophy in Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. I started this about a decade ago and it stayed abandoned for about a decade. It's really not hard to get the platinum overall as most of the trophies and unlocks require you to perform specific tasks in the Genesis games rather than beat them. Some are as simple as talk to another dolphin in Ecco, which means starting the game, pressing a button, and exiting. For many you have to beat a level or two or get a relatively easy score goal. The only one that requires you to beat the game is Mean Bean Machine and that took most of my time since it is very luck based. I actually beat Robotnik on my first try, but lost many many times on levels 9-12. It was a really fun sampler platter and it's neat that it unlocks other games like Congo Bongo and some other Sega arcade cabinets. It's also the only collection I have that includes the first Phantasy Star since the mini and mini 2 don't have it. Doubt I'll ever play the series, but it's good to know I have the option now. I then started Syberia on PS3 right after and am an hour into that. Hoping I'll be fast enough on a blind playthrough to get it done in under 6 hours for the timed trophy. I'm making progress on other things and should have a couple more games down soon. I think I'm between 60-75% done with my first run of Miles Morales and for New Super Mario Bros 2, I only need one more star coin and to max out lives to get my 5-star profile. I wish I would have put Fire Emblem Three Houses on the list, because my wife has had a renewed interest and is having me play the 3rd house that she didn't do herself. Tough to anticipate her whims. Last year, we went through Fortune Street non-stop.

Mortal Kombat II is done. I decided to try playing as Shang Tsung as I hadn't actually done that yet. It still took a couple tries, but the re-learning I did on Monday paid off as did all of the leg sweeps I used to cheese victories when things looked dire. I also quickly beat WWF King of the Ring two different ways. First, I played King of the Ring mode with Macho Man. That involved only winning 3 matches. I love the stupid crown they plopped on the sprite. Then I played the tournament mode as Mr. Perfect which made me beat all 7 wrestlers to earn the belt. I couldn't find a manual for the GB version and tried playing totally blind, but that didn't work. I found the NES manual to learn the basic controls and as soon as I knew what the buttons did, it was a total cake walk. I breezed through everyone (playing on normal difficulty). The depth of what you can do is not really there. Maybe you can pull of special moves for each wrestler, but the manual didn't say how. It's honestly not very easy to tell what is happening in close combat anyway. There's no music during the match, but when you win, you do get to hear their themes. The sprites looked okay. At least you could tell who was who even if everyone's face is busted. It was a nice diversion and welcome change from the cheating MK 2. Since it only took an hour to do both modes in WWF, I played a couple hours of Alleyway, but need more practice. I got to level 17 on my best run. Lastly, two new games for the soft dibs: 151) 4-in-1 Fun Pak Volume 1 152) Dragon's Lair: The Legend - Ugh...it had a 1/9 chance of winning the poll and it did. Oh well, I guess it'll be nice to not having it hanging over my head anymore soon.

Mortal Kombat is done I magically got it done on my first attempt. I remember on the dual matches needing to sweep the leg non-stop, but I couldn't get that to work properly. I couldn't get any special moves to work reliably, and honestly even basic attacks didn't seem to register all the time. I'm not sure if this dual cart is an even worse port than the standalone GB, or if the timing is wonky, or if the game simply eats a lot of inputs. Anyway, I ended up switching tactics to nothing but jump kicks and Liu Kang was able to beat the last 4 matches while hardly getting touched. Mortal Kombat II is a cheating SOB of an experience that will read your inputs an react unnaturally by dodging and blocking everything, countering moves and pre-loading their specials to unleash moves that require 2-3 second wait times for me instantly after blocking/kicking/throwing. Garbage. And this is on Normal. Granted I suck at fighting games, but I can still smell BS when I see it. Special moves are a lot easier to do reliably and punches and kicks work as expected (even if the CPU always gets priority if you attack at the same time), so that leads me to believe the programming is simply abysmal in MK1. Anyway, I was trying that for a few hours last night but couldn't get past Shang Tsung - tried several different characters. Will try again tomorrow and hopefully knock that out to start King of the Ring.

I only used it against the bosses because that made them a lot quicker, but when all the normal guys die in one hit, and with little reaction time before they show up, it's not worth it to try. Looking back at my video, it seems the low life bar was there from level 1. The manual says the bonus game will give you life upgrades if you get a good score and penalize you if you fail. I wonder if the password simply assumes passing all of the bonus stages and that's why the health bar grew so much. Whatever the reason, it's a function of the game so I'm counting it. Updating my soft dibs as I ran the raffle last night to lock in games 146-150. Game # Genre Type Game 146 Fighting Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 147 Sports WWF King of the Ring 148 Arcade Alleyway 149 Platform/Action Nemesis 150 Milestone Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan I know TMNT has been done on here already, but all of my milestone games are set in stone so that won't be changing. I've never played TMNT 2 or 3, so this will finally open Part 2 to be selected sometime in the future (after game #175, per my complex rules)

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is done This took far too long, almost 5 hours. I think that a big reason for that is if you fail the bonus games after you beat the boss, you lose some of your health bar. Well, I lost them all and I kept hitting continue (because they are unlimited). It wasn't until I was getting really sick of slogging through that 5th level with only 4-5 hits before dying that I tried hitting "No" on the continue and inputting the password. Magically, my health was back up to more than double what it was for most of the game. If I would have understood this for levels 3 and 4, my playtime would have been far less. An example of best endings making things harder for me in stupid ways. Anyway, the game is not good. It's not terrible, but it lacks some polish. The graphics are good, but the enemies are lacking (putty and bats only basically). On SGB, the character you choose affects the color of the level, but otherwise there is no gameplay differences and each character feels almost neutered with tiny punches and a jump kick that's not all that effective. The boss fights as the robot had much of the same limitations. You can use a special weapon, but it drained your health. The first level was alright, but the farther I got, the more it felt like the designers of the game lacked any faith in themselves and created levels and unpredictable or nearly unavoidable damage spots to elongate the stupid thing. Not looking forward to playing the game based on the movie in the future. Next week I'm tackling Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 through the combo cart.

I took a 1.5 weeks off from streaming but started up James Bond 007 yesterday and finished it tonight @SplainLet me know if you have other knowledge, but it seems I got the good ending just from finding the marble early on which extended the cutscene at the end. If there's a different ending besides that, I'd love to know and would be happy to replay it to add that to my challenge archive. This was pretty great. It's like if Link's Awakening was segmented into smaller unconnected maps, but also most of the items are a little worthless or only used once. The combat was weirdly simple and it was easy to punch most dudes at an angle to avoid their bullets. Still, the locations were diverse and surprisingly sprawling. I got a little lost in the Tibetan mountains... Plenty of characters and NPCs to talk to with decent dialogue for the most part. It was strange to see the game take dark turns like the guy in the desert who dies and gets buried by the sand if you keep revisiting his location, or the town you come back to and see buzzards picking at bodies. Aside from more in depth or varied combat, the only other thing I would have wanted is some better character sprites. All of the people look rough. Overall this is the game that I think Who Framed Roger Rabbit was trying to be and it really hit most of the marks. I also ended up beating The Adventures of Star Saver, although it took longer than I wanted. There's a fun game hiding in here, but for me the flaws took over too often for me to truly enjoy myself. There are a couple of places where the enemies will literally spawn right on top of you. The checkpoints are nice, but sometimes you get instantly hit on those too. The hit boxes in general are quite annoying. Several times the enemy clearly hit white space in front of or behind me and it still counted as damage. The boss hit boxes are the opposite - teeny tiny slivers on a massive sprite. If you lose your mech and are wandering as the human with one shot on screen allowed, those bosses become extremely tedious. They can be tedious with the fully powered mech. I had a ton of trouble figuring out the level 8 bosses pattern but finally got the rhythm down and the last level (#9) was an absolute cake walk - or frog bounce. Weird of them to introduce a new mechanic for that stage but then basically make it enemy free. The graphics look great but the controls were not crisp. A&B together will release a grappling hook. I never intentionally did it, but the game sure did interpret my jump and shooting as pressing them together. That sucks because jumping and shooting is how you progress in some areas or find secrets (jump in place and shoot 3 times to reveal something). Tighter controls and better hit detection would have made this game great. Instead it is mediocre. Tomorrow I'll start up Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and if that is as quick as it seems, I'll be starting the Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 combo cartridge.

This is fantastic! Thank you. I've seen a couple sites in passing a while back when trying to figure out my timekeeper problem (which I discovered when Earth Command didn't work). My system still isn't fixed, but I'm still building the collection for when its ready to go. Thankfully I'm not going after the general software, pre-school geared edutainment type games, or movie titles, so I don't have to worry about the Lamb Chop disc, but that's fascinating in its own right. Without having to buy the catalog from ebay I think the world of CDI list should help a lot for now since I see they include catalog numbers and regions when possible. That seems to be confirming that some things that were on RF Generation's list as US released were likely not (Accelerator, Arcade Classics, Asterix - just to site the first page). I'm looking forward in doing a deeper dive on all of this now!

Thanks for putting this list together. I'm very slowly trying to collect all the games (not general software) for the system and this helps a lot. I recently was able to pick up Girls Club. Glad that most of the other longbox rare titles are not actual games. Is there a good resource, or does someone have a list, of the non-longbox/jewel case software that was confirmed to have been released in the US? I know that there will probably never be a perfect list but the RF Generation starting point is not something I wholly trust.

Alright, so I haven't started Bond yet (hopefully tomorrow). It's been too cold to be in that basement. I've been making some progress in emulating Turn & Burn though and I'm now past where I stopped last year on my real run. I beat level 16 back then. Levels 17, 18, 19, & 20 all have the same conditions as 16. I haven't played 20 yet, but I'll be surprised if there's an ending afterwards (or ever). Nothing special after level 20. 21 will be the same.

This weekend, I also beat TMNT: Shredder's Revenge. But since I have no kids, my 40-something year old friend came over. We beat Story Mode on normal with April and Splinter, then did Arcade mode on easy with Casey & Raph (to get the trophy for beating arcade mode without using a credit). I'll wait to upload a pic for if/when I platinum the game. I would have liked a slightly longer campaign or to have some differences between story & arcade modes aside from an overworld map and collectibles. However, we had a ton of fun and it was perfect for a lot of that first cartoon era nostalgia. Last night I also beat Piczle Cross Adventure This is essentially what I was looking for when I talked about Murder By Numbers last year. An adventure game where you go around solving picross puzzles and sometimes those become items you use in other parts of the game. It's still a very simplified version of that (because basically you get the item and run back to another location and hit A to unlock whatever it is), but the whole package was done well. There was a good assortment of puzzles, with a chunk of larger 20x15's, which is great. The lead character had a fun personality and there was a nice sense of humor across the board. I really wasn't expecting much from this, and it pulled me in. I'll keep my fingers crossed for a more in-depth follow-up from them.

Here's an update on my upcoming games for any soft dibs list 143) James Bond 007 144) Adventures of Star Saver, The 145) Mighty Morphin Power Rangers 146) Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 (Playing the combo cart, or should that be "kombo kart") 147) WWF King of the Ring After that, just one more viewer poll to round out the titles leading up to milestone game 150: TMNT (which has already been done here)

I agree. The pacing was great and neither side felt like it was overbearing or overstaying its welcome. It was a nice surprise that they could meld the two but still keep their identities intact.

Prophecy: The Viking Child is done. Don't let that To Be Continued screen fool you like it fooled me. From all research and information I have, this is the actual ending. The nerve of this game. No passwords or saves: fine, whatever. Combat that makes you feel like you're clapping off rhythm so that you can hit the enemy with the very tip of your sword: annoying, but adjustable. Hit boxes that involve empty space causing damage: Ummm. Health that is slowly, but constantly ticking down no matter what: what? Enemies that re-spawn with no warning and can damage you instantly upon arrival: No thank you, please send it back. Crazy, super-involved music that's unique to each level: Okay, this I can get behind and I'm into. Having to choose between music or sound effects because the cartridge can't handle both: Oh... Virtually all bosses have the exact same attack pattern: honestly, thank you because otherwise this would take too much more of my time than it already has. Bosses that go invisible in certain circumstances and then make it impossible to move onto the next stage: Did anyone play test this? This is why it took so much time. I figured out how to keep it from happening after a while for the most part, but having to start from scratch because the boss blips away on level 5 is frustrating. With all said and done, the game is not the worst I've played, but it's far from good and well below average. Only the graphics and music are worth anything. Next up tomorrow is James Bond 007

Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright is all done, which also means that I've now completed all games from both series This was a solid mash-up of the two styles. I was interested to see how they would combine everything, and it's hard to ask for a better format. In terms of execution, the Layton stuff is easier to get right - explore a little bit and throw in puzzles. The Phoenix parts could have used some more exploration of the crime scenes or a bit more complexity to the trials. They all seemed far too straight-forward and easy going. Honestly, the puzzles were all very easy as well. I guess that's the price to pay when you're trying to appease fans of both but not alienate anyone who may not like one style of game. The story itself kept me interested and intrigued but it did suffer from the same fate that Layton games do in that they explain broad strokes of why things happen, but some of the specifics either aren't explained or there's a really cheap, lazy reason tacked on. None of that really hampers my enjoyment of the series and like I said, I think the overall package was solid and a lot of fun. I'm sad to see my time with both characters come to a close (I guess there is some hope Capcom will do more Ace Attorney things), but I'm glad this was my last adventure with them.

Okay, I think I figured out how to prevent the boss disappearing glitch/soft lock. I'm 90% sure it's happening when I hit them on their way off the screen, so they flicker and finish going off screen and come back invisible, causing the problem. But, I also learned that after you hit them, you can jump towards them, cross paths and not get damaged, so that makes it a lot easier to keep them away from the edges. Now I just have to navigate the terrible combat and bad hit boxes, beat boss 6 (which is the first one that has a different thing going on) and learn levels 7 & 8. Hoping to get it done this week.

It's been a really long time since I've played either, but I don't recall a big difficulty spike in SML2. I remember having a tougher time with Wario Land in general, but I've never collected all the treasures. I'm 75% sure it may be possible to go back into levels and get missed treasures after the fact, if you get done with it and don't want the fun to end.

In Your Face is done Using the strategies I learned from playing last night, I got this sorry excuse for a basketball game done on my first try of the day. I have no idea why this game is called In Your Face when I don't think I blocked a single shot. Stealing was the name of the game. You touch a guy, you steal the ball. You get touched, it's stolen from you. I've never experienced such a stupidly easy stealing mechanic in a basketball game. It's also not uncommon for the CPU to steal the ball from you mid-shot, so all of that got pretty frustrating. It also didn't help that the game didn't seem to follow conventional rules for half-court play. I would shoot and miss, get my own rebound, but the game refused to let me shoot again unless I went all the way back to the clear line first. Maybe the ball was stolen and stolen back 3, 4, 12 times at some point and that's why but it didn't make sense. In terms of shooting, a super fast double tap seemed to work best for me. Wait much more than a fraction of a second and it's a travel. The CPU took some getting used to, but eventually I was able to steal their inbounds frequently and get in good position to score. Losers out helped me go on runs. When they scored, it was easy for them to steal all my inbounds passes as well, and trying to run up just meant they took it away physically. It also seemed like there were times when I simply wasn't allowed to make a shot and I'm thinking the game was rubber banding. Anyway, the game is trash. Playable, but trash. Alright, so that meant I started playing Prophecy: The Viking Child. It's also pretty terrible. The biggest obstacle I'm facing is that the game soft locks a bunch at the bosses. There have been several instances where the boss will disappear during the fight. Their health bar is still there. They can still damage you and be damaged, but their sprite is invisible. If that happens, you cannot progress to the next stage after beating them. Since there are no saves, passwords, continues, you simply have to start from scratch. It happened to me 3-4 times on the first boss, once on the 2nd and once on the 5th (in 3 hours of playing). I've only made it as far as stage 5 so far (of 8), and I think most of my time will be spent retrying the levels not because I'm losing, but because I'm forced to by bad coding. The levels are pretty quick once you get the hang of them, at least. And all the bosses so far have had exactly the same attack pattern. Fingers crossed it's done on Monday when I try it next.