Gaia Gensouki

Outrun 2019 should be done. I played through every stage once on normal difficulty to get the ending. It plays quite well and is fun for a short while, but is overall really short for a 16-bit racing game. Even Rad Racer I and II one the NES were longer experiences. Still, it would have made for a good weekend rental.

I've only played the NES version a little for the NES completions thread and never got far into the game. The Genesis version however was the first time that I've managed to beat this game. It not only looks nicer but also plays much smoother and better. For comparison I quickly put on the NES version in MESEN and yeah, it's a difference like night and day. On top of that the Genesis version has a 2-player mode, which I didn't get to test, and difficulty settings. I just left everything at normal. I have also noticed that some of the obstacles are slightly different. Some parts are slightly more difficult in the Genesis version, whereas the NES version is overall more diffiuclt, but also clunkier, imho. Personally, I would say that the Genesis version is far superior, but maybe there are some hardcore fans of specifically the NES version.

Just beat Marble Madness.

Just beat Zombie Hunter, the highscore game from the famicom referendum. It's a side-scrolling action-RPG similar to Zelda II, but without any of the exploration, talking to people etc. It's just straight up action, though it's lacking the in-depth combat of Zelda II. Instead you grind for experience points and money, maybe pick up a treasure cheast here and there, upgrade your equipment and stockpile healing items like a squirrel prepping for the winter. Occasionally you will come across cave entrances or similar things where you can press Up + B to enter a shop an buy some stuff. However, it only works at some of those entrances. Sometimes you can even find shops when you jump up the screen. Anywasy, it's a simple and repetitive game, that's still fun enough to kill a few hours.

World Champ is done. It starts out decent, but gets extremely repetitive really fast.

Takahashi Meijin no Boukenjima IV aka Adventure Island IV is done and with this I should have over 700 points. It was an overall really fun game. They infused this platformer with some Metroidvania elements, although I'm not sure if it qualifies as a true Metroidvania. Nevertheless, you'll be doing quite a bit of exploring and backtracking. The difficulty is has also been decreased. It's now a much more manageable game than its predecessors, which were notoriously difficult. However, if you like the previous games as is, i.e. straigthforward platformer with a high difficulty, then you might be disappointed by the direction this game took. Some things that I wish I knew when I started playing this game: 1. There are several minigames scattered throughout the adventure. You have a better chance of winning them the higher your fruit count is, i.e. you can collect 8 fruits to regain one heart which then resets your fruit count to 0. So before you start a minigame collect 7 fruits to have a much better chance of winning. Some games even seemed impossible if you didn't bring some fruits with you. 2. Southwest from your starting point, i.e. your hut, there is a whack-a-mole minigame. If you win it, you earn a fairy that will revive you once. Beat this mingame or one of the similar ones that are unlocked later throughout the game. The fairy is a literal lifesaver similar to the fairies in Zelda: A Link to the Past. 3. After doing the whack-a-mole minigame climb the ladder up and go to the right on the next screen. There is another minigame where you have to climb a pole quickly. You do this once to get a necessary item, but after that you can redo this game to earn a few consumable items. First you just get a heart to refill one heart at any time, then a potion that will refill all of your hearts once and finally you can get an item that will immediately bring you back to your hut. There you can fully recover and get a password to save your game. After that you can use the egg in your inventory to get back to the last place where you put your egg. If I had known these things earlier I could have avoided a few deaths and didn't have to do some long passages of the game. Not sure if anybody cares about these points, but at the very least they're a reminder for myself if I should ever replay this game. But before that I would rather be interested in trying out Super Adventure Island II since that one is also supposed to be Metroidvania-like.

Just one little silly thing that came to mind while we're discussing SMB2 and SMB USA. Back in the day we didn't know about the history of these games. All we had was something like Super Mario Land, SMW and All-Stars. But because of the way that the games were organized, I thought that The Lost Levels was actually SMB4 basically thinking that this was a back to the roots kind of situation where they made the game closer to the original. I also remember that we used to refer to Zelda: A Link to the Past as Zelda III. Or Link's Awakening as Zelda IV and so on.

Abadox for the NES or Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts for the SNES?

Oh, I'm really sorry to hear that and I didn't want to dig up bad memories. I didn't think that it would be something serious like this. Sorry. If by any chance your negative associations are only limited to Heroes III, then other games in the franchise would also be great choices. Personally, I also really love Heroes II, almost as much as the third game. Heroes IV is decent, but the balancing is off. Starting with Heroes V, however, they started to move further and further away from the original Might and Magic franchise.

What is you hang up? And I will readily admit, that this game is not easy to get into. I tried to play this with friends in multiplayer, but it required so much knowledge, that playing it with newbies was impossible.

Heroes of Might and Magic III. Endless fun and replayability.

To me it first looked like Mega Man bending over and showing us his shiny metal ass.

I agree with the general tenet her, that's why I gave it a 4 out of 10. I gave this game two chances in the past few years, but I could never make it far. It plays weirdly, the camera janks around all the time and you walk a bit too fast. So if you don't know the game by heart then you'll constantly run into enemies or projectiles. The frequent flashing lights also add to this game becoming really nauseating after a while. I honestly feel like never wanting to play this game again. At least the sequel felt a bit better to play and I managed ot beat it, but even that felt like a very average-ish game in term of gameplay. So yeah, the presentation is nice and some of the music tracks are cool, specifically the title track. But other than that I actively dislike this game and don't understand why it's heralded as such an awesome game by some.

In action or arcade style games it makes sense that the last level would be the most difficult one. However, when it comes to RPGs I've come to despise overly long and difficult final dungeons. There are games that I've quit right at the end because I didn't feel like suffering through a stupidly difficult and long dungeon. Or sometimes I forced myself through these dungeons, but it totally killed the built-up tension. Because prior to these dungeons the tension in the story is at an all-time high and you're just desperately waiting for the final showdown and the resolution of the conflict. But before that you have to get through a several hour long dungeon or maybe spend hours grinding your characters just so that you have a fighting chance. But by then I feel so divorced from the story, that I don't really care anymore when I finally reach the final boss. Therefore I prefer it when a long RPG has the hardest and longest dungeons before the story ramps up in intensity, i.e. something like the penultimate dungeon or even before that.

Apparently there is a really heated discussion going on here. I just wanted to give my two cents in favor of SMW since it seems like the less popular choice. Of course, I loved SMB3 back in the day as part of my Super Mario All-Stars Collection on the SNES and it's justifiably regarded as one of the best NES or 8bit games in general. So no doubt about that. But back in the day I played it sooo much, that I don't really feel like revisiting it. SMW, however, is a game that I can play through and enjoy anytime and that I still go back to regularly. It's difficult to really explain why. I think the lower difficulty is definitely a contributing factor as I enjoy having a more chill and relaxed time when playing it. On top of that it's the music, the funny sounds when jumping on enemies or kicking shells and of course the nice colorful graphics. The character designs are also really nice and cute. Yoshi is absolutely adorable as are most of the other characters as well, e.g. I just love the smiling dolphins or the big moles with their sunglasses, the different types of fish, sometimes dozing off etc. It just has so many wonderful characters aside from just the usual suspects. Or the little animations you get everytime you beat a castle with some funny sketch. The game just oozes playfulness and charme and cuteness with its every pore. It's all these little touches that Nintendo adds to their games that separate them from most other games out there. I could go and on, like how about the levels in SMW are so intricately designed with different paths and secret exits and whatnot. But at the end of the day it just comes down to how often I play these games and how much fun I am having. And in this regard SMW comes out on top for me personally. It's obviously just my personal opinion. I'm also not a professional game critic, so don't take it too seriously.

My 2023 backlog challenge was unfortunately a failure. But I remain hopeful that next year I'll be able to knock out a good chunk of my actual gaming backlog. I'll update this list in the upcoming weeks, but here's my first attempt. I basically chose a bunch of NES games that I'd like to play for next year's NES challenge including a bunch of games that I've never played or finished. I then added most of the Famicom exclusive games in my collection. Rummaging through my box of cartridge-only games, I also found a bunch of games that I forgot I even had. Edit: I've been highlighting certain games that have a higher priority for me or that I've been wanting to beat or re-complete really badly. I think that this might make my choice a bit easier on what to play exactly when the new year rolls around. NES (4/30) Famicom (0/63) SNES/SFC (0/124) Nintendo 64 (0/4) Game Boy (Color) (0/20) Switch (0/24) PC Engine (0/38) Playstation 3 (0/8) Playstation 4 (0/67) Playstation 5 (0/7) Steam (0/73) Epic Games (0/30) GOG (0/38) Various PC games (0/27) Total: 4/553

Ah, so you're going to beat Armorines then? I was hoping to contribute at least one more game. So I think I'll give Rat Attack or NIghtmare Creatures a go in the next few days, if someone else hasn't beaten then until then. I'm back at work again and have so much stuff piled up that it's difficult to find the time for some more game completions.

@Tantalus Talk about great timing! Do you have any advice on how to tackle these F-1 racing games? Maybe as reference for the future?

I tried Armorines and oh boy is it difficult to get used to those old controls. Just moving around feels awkward and aiming is very difficult. On top of that the game is way too dark even if I turn my TV's brightness to maximum. Most of the time I can't even see where the path forward is, so I keep stumbling around and around. Then of course you also have to find switches, which are equally difficult to even see. It's such a miserable experience. The game also wants you to accomplish several objectives per mission, which is fine. However, when you get to the end of a level, but didn't fulfill all of the objectives, then you'll encounter a game over. But in many cases I couldn't even tell that this was the exit to the level! So imagine having to redo 20 or 30 minute long missions just because you didn't know that a certain way was the exit. The game doesn't even warn you. They could have at least put up a message like do you really want to finish the mission? Or maybe don't even let the players leave the level until all objectives are cleared. I also got to some sort of instant death trap in jungle 3, which made me quit the game out of frustration. I don't know if I want to continue this game as it feels like such a slog. No wonder that it has such a high point value. Next up I tried the remaining F-1 racing game. However, I found out that I'm terrible at realistic/F-1 racing games. No matter how much I try or how I change the setting of the car, I still always get last place in the practice and qualifying races and maybe 18th place in an actual race, if I'm lucky. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong and maybe I need to consult a guide or longplay. But I will probably have to call it quits on this game as well. So overall not a really satisfying evening of gaming.

Penny Racers is done!

Thanks for the suggestions, @Jeevan. Unfortunately, I'm no good when it comes to wrestling games. But I guess I'll give Penny Racers one final attempt and if I can't figure it out, then I'll try Armorines.

Hydro Thunder is done. The bonus tracks were actually among the easiest part of the game. I even managed to beat two of them on my first try. I was afraid that they would be on the same difficulty as hard or even worse, but luckily they turned out to be fun races. What a pleasant way to end a game. Which game should I try next? Or rather, what's a game, that nobody is currently playing? I'm on vacation until next thursday and can participate a bit more.

Yes, that's what I was referring to. Apparently, you get a message "All tracks unlocked" once you beat all of the bonus tracks and get a new racer on top of it. I will attempt it later today.

Small update. Penny Racers wasn't my cup of tea so I tried out Hydro Thunder instead. After much trial and error I have finished the hard tracks. Now I have the four bonus tracks left. I hope that I can do this.

Micro Machines 64 Turbo is done! Finally! This took me several days and I now understand why people aren't so gung-ho about beating this game. The cars drive way too fast for their own good and the camera extremely obnoxious. It's almost always too close to your car or even goes in front of it or uses other perspectives that don't give you a good view of the road. They also constantly use the camera perspective and obstacles to troll you! Over and over again! And then you only have 3 lives to make it through 4 or 5 races with extremely tight times to beat! This game is not without its merits, but the constant frustration keeps it from being something that I would like to revisit in the future. I think I might try Penny Racers next, unless someone is already working on it.