Gaia Gensouki

Total Recall is done.

Othello is done.

Wayne's World is done. What a terrible game.

Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle and Friends is done. I was already wondering, why I was having so much trouble with this game despite finally playing it on original hardware and not emulation. Turns out, that one of my famicom controllers is kinda crappy. I would just randomly stop in my tracks or button presses wouldn't register which lead to several needless game overs. PS: I hope you like my new setup.

I did one loop of Danny Sullivan's Indie Heat.

Adventures in the Magic Kingdom is done.

Town & Country Surf Designs is done. Edit: Unfortunately the picture didn't turn out well, but you can barely see round 11 down there.

Wow! This almost feels like the end of an era. After six years of being pretty much the uncontested champion you're going to take it a little bit slower. But I can imagine that this challenge took up a good chunk of your time. So I wish you the best for whatever comes next for you! It was fun taking on the challenge with you and having a bit of a friendly competition. I'm also thinking of doing more new completions and working on my backlog of games, but I will probably still try to go for some of the less popular or "bad" games.

I can help with some of the text-heavy Japanese games. Unfortunately I don't know how to play Shogi or Mahjong. So unless there's a tutorial or something like that it's going to be very difficult. Alternatively you can just use Google Lens or whatever it's called with your phone to get rough translations of texts.

R-Type II is done. At times the game was running at a snail's pace, which made it easier, but it's still too ambitious for a GB game, imho. R-Type I and Gradius were running a bit more smoothly. Still an admirable effort on part of the developers to see such a complex game on the GB at all.

Gradius: The Interstellar Assault is done. I played R-Type a bit, but I'm not sure if it counts as beaten. First of all, there are only 6 levels. Second, the game only has an easy and a hard mode. If you beat it on easy it says that you've only gained a temporary peace and that you should prepare for the "ultimate challenge". It then starts a second loop on hard mode, I think. But I got a game over there, got back to the title screen and just started the game over from scratch, but on hard mode. Then you finally get the good ending. However, I'm not sure if you have to do both loops of the game or if just this one counts? On a side note, I tried beating R-Type on the TurboGrafx-16 and it was way too difficult. That game has all 8 stages and is ridiculously difficult since it only gives you three credits total. And I don't know how you're supposed to beat that game on just so few lives and continues. Especially the final boss is so crazy hard to beat unless you have both of those Bits, i.e. those little helper ships above and below you. Then he's a total pushover, but without them it's just ridiculous. Those Bits are also extremely rare and you only get a few of them. So you pretty much have to no death this game. I couldn't do it, but it was good practice for the easier Game Boy version. However, some strategies didn't work on the Game Boy version. The best stretegy here was to just throw your detachable weapon at a boss and let it do the whole job while you're just trying to survive.

I think that the Game Boy library has some problems that keep it from getting completed. First of all, there are plenty of games that are on a difficulty level similar to NES games, but at the same time somewhat downgraded, i.e. all in black and white with smaller screens etc. Second, there are lots and lots of puzzle games on the Game Boy that can get really long and tedious on top of being challenging. It's one thing to beat a relatively short action game, but it's an entirely different beast to clear 100 puzzles or 99 waves etc. On a personal level I'm also a bit disappointed by the lack of RPGs on the system.

Is it okay to already start our backlogs, even if it isn't 2024 yet? Right now it feels like the calm before the storm since the challenges are all about to start in just a few days, especially the NES challenge.

Chessmaster New Chessmaster

Space Invaders Battlezone/Super Breakout Centipede. This one took the longest. My thumb started getting numb, too. I once got to over level 50 and had this 91k store, but unfortunately died repeatedly in short succession. The next run however was successful. Dropzone

Speaking of which, I've finished Castlevania Adventure and Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge.

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.

Heroes of Might and Magic?

Alisia Dragoon?

Math Blaster Episode 1 and Crystal's Pony Tale. Both are really bad, but at least very short completions.

Turbo Outrun is done. By far the weakest Outrun game on the Genesis/Mega Drive. You just have four courses or levels that are divided into four smaller sections each. So you've not only beaten the game in like 8 or 9 minutes, but you've also seen everything. On top of that it didn't play all that great either. So a very middle of the road kind of game.

Just beat OutRunners. I played both arcade mode and original mode. Playing through original mode is what triggered the credits. The game itself isn't really anything to write home about and less fun than the other Outrun games. That's because you only have half of the screen available for yourself and the tracks are really barebones and rather dull. However, the music is actually really good! I've got to put those tracks in one of my playlists.

As others have pointed out, doing such an in-depth role-playing experience on 8bit hardware is extremely tough and FF was a relatively early games. It tried to approximate DnD just like how many CRPGs of the late 70s and early 80s did, but at the beginning they could hardly do more than just lifting the mechanics from DnD. It took years and several installments until games like maybe Ultima IV offered actual moral choices to be made. So why would you hold the first entry in a series and an early console RPG from '87 to the same standards? Also, there are some of us who enjoy this style of game even without the actual role-playing elements. Simply rolling dice, however, is awfully boring. I could also say the same for other kinds of games. Why do you enjoy fighting games? You just press a few buttons. Why don't you take actual martial arts lessons and fight against real people? Why do people enjoy Tecmo Super Bowl, where you only press one button to set a strategy, then watch the computer players do their thing and if you're lucky you might run after the ball with your avatar. You could just go into a park, throw balls around and run after them. Duh! I could go on and on with similar examples for different kinds of games. But it always comes down to different people enjoying different kinds of things. I'm just sick of people talking smack about people who enjoy the more "gamey" side of RPGs. Dungeon crawlers like Etrian Odyssey etc. are super enjoyable to me and just saying that it's like rolling dice doesn't do it justice. Besides, if you wanted to be nitpicky, you could argue that even modern CRPGs don't allow for the same amount of freedom as real DnD with a skilled dungeon master. Because ultimately you're always just playing a blank slate main character who can interact with pre-designed characters. Maybe a game is fancy and you can chose some minor background elements, like with Master Shepherd in Mass Effect 1. However, with a human dungeon master and some other imaginative players you could do all sorts of whacky shit as long as you can imagine it. So far no computer program can fully emulate that. They're just trying to get closer and closer to it. Maybe with AI this will eventually be achieved. But who knows?

Elf Bowling for the DS?

I'm going back and forth between an 8 or a 9 on this one. It's obviously a really good RPG for the NES, that is only really marred by the crazy amount of bugs. So meany weapons and spells aren't working properly. I wish that there would be a big-fixed version of this game, but without any of the modern additions or lower difficulty of the later ports, remasters etc. I also think that the magic system is interesting and replacing it with an MP-based system is boring as it robs this game of some of its flavor. I'm even okay with this game nullifying your attacks if your characters are attacking an enemy that has already been killed. Later RPGs introduced the convenient feature that your attack will just hit another enemy, but this leads to players just mindlessly mashing buttons and then whining about how this game is too easy and simple. The system in FF I however forces you to think about what you want to do in any given turn. Apart from that the music is obviously top-tier and the graphics at least decent. The story is indeed kinda bogus and overly convoluted for such an early and simple game, but it seta tradition for later FF games. But at least you can't say that this game doesn't have some interesting twists and surprises! That the game characters have no personality is due to you being able to create your own party similar to Dungeons and Dragons. So I find it weird to criticise this game for lacking memorable main characters. Many western RPGs also have protagonists that are pretty much blank slates as they are the player's avatar, but somehow that's not a fatal flaw of the game, but when FF does it it is? Furthermore, this is a really old RPG and by this time console RPGs barely had recognizable characters. Dragon Quest 2 at least made an attempt, but apart from a few sentences here and there they are also pretty barebones. For game characters with actual personality and story arcs you had to wait roughly until the early 90s, when FF IV and DQ IV hit the scene.