Gaia Gensouki

Just beat Super Mario World. All 96 exits aren't necessary, right? Although I will eventually do them just for fun at a later time. Anyway, a 10/10 game for me and the kind of game where I wish I could go back to experiencing it for the first time. Ninja Edit: I did Star Fox as well and didn't want to do a new post.

Nice. I wasn't expecting this so soon though. Do Pal and Japanese games still count?

Mickey Mousecapade and Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight are done. Mickey was more of a little snack in-between, i.e. decent taste, but too small and insubstantial to satiate my appetite. Controlling Mickey and Minnie at the same time though was a bit strange and resulted in some very weird platforming moments. Going into SF 2010 I was actually expecting it to suck since that's what I've gathered from the AVGN episode, but it was actually quite good. Yes, this game is extremely strange and has nothing to do with any of the namesake franchises, afaik, but it is not bad at all. And yes, it does pose a really tough challenge, but thanks to unlimited continues it is still doable and enjoyable without too much frustration.

Wow, some really impressive achievements here. I personally hardly ever stuck around long enough with a game to really achieve something, especially when I was younger. My somewhat proudest gaming moment as a child though was probably finding out that you could actually defeat Gades during the first fight in Lufia II. I didn't even know back then that this was possible. I was on my second playthrough with that option that you got four times the experience and gold. I got curious, leveled to over level 30 and eventually beat him. After that I tried it over and over again to see how low my level could be to still beat him and I eventually managed to do so with my characters being between levels 22 an 24 and with everyone staying alive (including Tia). I remember a gaming magazine back in the day revealed a strategy to beat Gades with an average level of 36 or something. So I sent them a letter detailing my party setup and precise strategy to beat him even at such a low level. Unfortunately the magazine was discontinued and my letter never published. With the advent of Youtube however, I saw people beating Gades at an even lower average level, though they usually just let Tia die, which ironically made the fight a bit easier, I guess. Anyway, in recent years I played Gain Ground quite a bit on the PS4 and got a nice highscore, which is still in the top 10 of that game's leaderboard. And last month I managed to score first in the Starship Hector contest on NA.

I finally beat Air Fortress! I did the two playthroughs of the game and reached the credits. What a long and tough game, but also unique game! I also appreciate it very much, that HAL gave you passwords after every level and basically unlimited continues. This is the right way to do it imho! You can provide a nice challenge, while still giving the players some quality of life features. Also, this game would be way too huge to attempt in a single sitting, or at least for a first-timer like me. With its one-of-a-kind combination of shooting gameplay and dungeon exploration this game reminds me of something like Blaster Master/Zelda II and of course your regular space shooters. First you blast a bunch of enemies and collect power-ups in such a shooting sequence, which in turn helps you to conquer the following dungeon more easily. You make your way trough increasingly complex mazes, fight enemies and destroy a core before finally leaving through an escape vehicle. The flight sequence gave me some serious Metroid vibes! The rooms darken, the music becomes very creepy just like in Metroid and eventually the fortress shakes and explodes, if you do not excape quickly enough. These sequences broke my neck frequently from level 5 onwards, and especially in level 6 and 8. My strategy then was to fight my through to the core, then go all the way to the escape ship, go back to the core and destroy it before making my escape. This was very time-consuming and risky, since I encountered more enemies this way and ran the danger of dying. After all, your health points are limited and health regeneration rarely drops. So it was a constant balance act, but a very thrilling and entertaining one. Though I would have wished that the humanoid enemies would not respawn and/or that they were a bit slower than you. It happened frequently to me that they sort of trapped me and hit me constantly. Due to them being as fast as I am, I could not outrun them and eventually lost too many hit points to make it or just outright died. Some kind of post-hit invincibility would have been nice as well, tbh. But overall I liked this game. Also, I noticed that Satoru Iwata was the producer of this game! May he rest in peace.

I beat the Krion Conquest! Phew, was this a hard game. Maybe every stage individually may not have been harder than a regular Mega Man game, but playing all of these in succession without any health regeneration during the sub stages and no continues is quite brutal. I thought it was over and that I couldn't beat it, but somehow I managed to beat the level 4 boss with zero extra lives and only two health pieces. And I beat the final boss again, only with two health pieces. My hands were sweaty and shaking. It was so intense!

To add to Rothchild's post, I have played and can recommend Ever Oasis and at least Bravely Default (I only played the demo of Bravely Second, but liked it). Ever Oasis is done by Grezzo, who were responsible for many of the handheld Zelda titles and ports, like Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask and the recent Link' Awakening. Ever Oasis is part dungeon crawler and part town builder, but relatively casual. The main campaign is pretty good and fun, but skip the post game content as there's way too much grinding. Bravely Default is in the same vein as classical JRPGs and features an extensive job system similar to FF V. It also has an interesting twek to the battle system, which allows you to conserve actions, so that you can rain down destruction upon your enemies or heal up your party in a single turn. It's a bit similar to what Octopath Traveler uses. The story is also very good, even though it starts out a bit slow. I'd also like to second the Etrian Odyssey games as they're great and polished modern takes on the dungeon crawling subgenre of RPGs. Then there's also Culdcept Revolt, a unique game, that almost everyone seems to miss out on. It's sort of a combination of a Monopoly-style board game combined with Magic the Gathering card play and collecting. You basically go around a board and inhabit empty fields with your monster cards. If you land on a field that has an enemy monster on it, you either have to pay up or fight it with your own monster cards on your hand. You also have cards to buff your own monsters/debuff enemy monsters, to damage and destroy them or you can upgrade your own monster fields, similar to buying houses and hotels in Monopoly. There are also elemental affinities and just so much more in terms of nuances. It's such a complex and huge game that alone can keep you busy more months. There's also online or local multiplayer, but I haven't tried it yet. Unfortunately you need at least two 3DS systems and at least two cartridges to play local MP. Stella Glow and The Alliance Alive both had great demos, but I haven't played the main games yet. I've also heard good things about Code Name: S.T.E.A.M., which is a little-known game by Intelligent Systems and combines turn-based strategy with first-person shooting mechanics. A friend of mine once recommended the 7th Dragon series to me as well. It was supposedly co-created by the director of the first few Etrian Odyssey games.

I beat The Smurfs. One would expect that a game based on a children's cartoon would be an easy and chill playthrough, right? No! This game is pretty tough. Maybe not Castlevania III tough, but at least more difficult than Super Mario World. Luckily there were passwords once every four levels, so that I could continue on another day. But what made the game somewhat frustrating, was, that on the one hand you couldn't tell, what hurts you or on which enemies you could jump or not, e.g. a puddle of water will hurt you, if you walk over it. If you take several small jumps however, it is no problem. Then there were several plants that looked like they were part of the background, but all of a sudden they inflict damage upon touching. Or you could jump on a vulture to take care of it, but jumping on a butterfly will only get you hurt. What?! Then there are also a few black bees or black smurfs that instantly kill you. On the other hand there were many, many blind jumps, trial and error levels and hazards that come at you from outside the visible area leaving you no time to evade. It doesn't help either that your character is somewhat big and the screen zoomed in a bit too much. Some levels also feature tight corridors where you have to time your jumps perfectly or you immediately fall into a pit and die. The final boss was also quite challenging and a bit cheap as well. Gargamel walks constantly at you and touching him will immediately kill you. The only way to inflict damage upon him is by letting his vulture drop an acorn on a log and jumping on the other end of it to throw it into Gargamel's mouth. The problem is, that you have to be very quick and can't afford to miss too often (missing twice at the beginning of the battle means inevitable failure). There also seems to be some kind of randomness involved, since the vulture sometimes flew over me and didn't drop an acorn, but instead he flew away laughing, while Gargamel killed me. This sucked. This fight alone caused me four or five game overs. And after each one I had to repeat the previous three stages as well. But eventually I got into a rhythm and probably also had a bit of luck. That being said, there are definitely a bunch of good things about this game too. The graphics are nice and true to the source material. And while the OST may not be very extensive, what is there, is pretty decent as well. The developer, Infogrames, also put a decent amount of levels into this game, 15 to be precise. But some of these feature several areas, i.e. they can easily count for two or up to three levels. So overall you could say, that this game has about 20+ levels. There is also a decent amount of variety, from a mine cart level to a sledge ride, exploratory cave/mountain levels, a frantic chase etc. So it's not an overly shallow experience and you definitely get some bang for your bucks. However, I imagine that probably not many children may have ever beaten this game due to a relatively tough challenge and some unintuitive/bad design.

I beat Widget. This guy has to be one of the ugliest video game characters I have yet seen. Apart from that, this game plays like a mediocre Mega Man rip-off. It's not bad, but some unfortunate design decisions keep it from being good. For example, you can shoot only one bullet and always have to wait for it to leave the screen or to hit something, bevofe you can shoot another one. This means that destroying one of those enemies can take really really long, especially since some of them can take a lot of hits. It becomes more manageable once you've picked up a few power-ups along the way, but unfortunately you do not keep them after a game over. This is a major flaw. So to regain your lost power-ups, you will have to go through several levels and pick them up again. One cool feature however is that, similar to Mega Man, you gain weapons/abilities from bosses that let you transform into other creatures. Unfortunately this requires magic points or whatever and there were a few situation where I arrived at a dead end, because I had run out of magic and could not advance/go back. I then had to kill myself to restart at an earlier part of the level. Really stupid. Also, most of the levels are way too narrow. Oftentimes you can barely jump or have to jump with the perfect timing to get over a passage. So yeah, this isn't a bad game and some ideas are pretty decent, but the overall experience is marred by a few flaws and the short length with only 5 levels.

+1 for Advance Wars. I love that series and would have liked to see a sequel. Intelligent Systems wouldn't even need to produce a sequel regularly, like they do with Fire Emblem nowadays, but maybe 1 game for every console/handheld generation would have been nice. Also Mega Man Legends 3 would have been nice. I think it was even planned, but ultimately cancelled. And not sure if that counts, but I wished Breath of Fire and Lufia would have gotten good sequels or if Quintett had been around for longer. I always loved their games and still do. They brought something very unique to games that hasn't really been captured since, afaik.

Rad Racer II done as well. I think it controls not quite as well as the first game and the time limits are pretty tough from the beginning onwards. I'm also not quite fond of how you sometimes have to race for more than a minute, before reaching a checkpoint or before a timer runs out, i.e. if you've failed an attempt due to a single mistake, you may have to wait for mroe than a minute to start over again. But overall it just feels like more Rad Racer. No real improvement over the first game honestly.

I just beat Rad Racer, but I used continues. I hope that's okay. I looked it up in the manual and there it says how you can continue the game. In enjoyed this game at first, but after a while the difficulty increased so dramatically and the CPU enemies are practically broken. They just drive into you to mess you up or in the last level they constantly try to block. They can somehow drive super fast to get ahead of you and block your path again, over and over again. Seriously, some of the later parts of the game were really annoying and frustrating.

I've heard somewhere that Super Mario Bros. was originally intended to be the perfect cartridge game you could make on stock Famicom/NES hardware. Because after that Nintendo released the Famicom Disk System which introduced additional hardware performance. And not to mention the many MMCs that would alter be used. So from a modern perspective you could probably just list most MMC games, but back then SMB was state-of-the-art. Btw. @SoleGoose How did you come across Chaos World? It's such a rare and elusive game.

I'd be curious as to how exactly you rate these games' difficulty down to several decimal places. When ranking them on Gamefaqs there is usually only an integer between 1 and 5, at least for the individual score that you can attribute to a game. And I personally would attribute these mentioned games to be at least "tough", i.e. somewhere around a 4. Another issue would be, do you use a universal approach when measuring the difficulty of a game, i.e. would you compare a NES game to an SNES or even a Wii or Switch game? Because compared to some of those old games many new ones can seem really easy. Or would you rather look at them just as isolated games on a specific system and say, only compare NES games to NES games? And the more modern you get, the wider the difficulty gap can become. Just finishing "modern" games is often not particularly difficult and can be done by most people. But somewhere around the Playstation/N64 era developers started to include more and more bonus content, some of which can be downright brutal and maybe even put various older games to shame. Just think back to Ruby or Emerald Weapon in FF VII. Or I recently watched the Completionist's take on Hollow Night. Completing that game sounded a lot more difficult than for example completing/speedrunning Super Metroid etc. But would you factor such bonus/completion content in your difficulty scale as well? And what about AI exploits? Looking at your Zelda II score I would have to wonder: does this score stem from beating Dark Link legitimately or using the cheap strategy of hiding in the corner and just swinging your sword? Also, some game can be many times easier by having a guide, while other games may remain difficult no matter how many guides you read or how many longplays you watch. Also, do you factor in beating a game without using a continue? A game like Castlevania III or the Ghosts 'n Goblins series have unlimited continues so you could theoretically grind your way through them, while other games have limited or no continues, but may be a bit easier if it wasn't for the lack of continues.

I frequently listen to video game OSTs on their own and even have a few soundtracks lying around as well. If I had to name a single composer whose works I like the most, it would easily be Nobuo Uematsu. My favorite works of his would probably be FF VI, VII and VIII. Terra's Theme gives me goosebumps every time I hear it and Dancing Mad has to be one of the best and most epic tracks of the whole generation. Donkey Kong Coutnry 1 and 2 both had great soundtracks, but if I had to name only one I would probably go with the first game and its Aquatic Ambience, although Fear Factory is amazing as well or Stickerbrush Symphony from the second game. Terranigma is overall a highly underrated game and absolutely amazing, not jsut in terms of gameplay, but also regarding its music. I had a hard time choosing between Hometown and Elle, but I here I decided for the latter: Jeremy Soule did amazing work even before working on Elder Scrolls games and the like, as seen by Ebon Keep - Town from the Secret of Evermore OST. Other amazing Western composers are the Follin brothers. They did amazing work on Silver Surfer, Pictionary and some other games, but I really dig what they did with Plok! You'll be amazed to hear that the Boss Theme is coming from SNES hardware. But be sure to give Akrillic or Beach a listen as well. Going back to Japanese composers don't forget about Hiroki Kikuta, who worked on Secret of Mana 1 and 2, among others. But the SoM OST stands out as being really unique since he took elements from Gamelan and Kecak and put a modern spin on them. Here is Oracle, which is inspired by Kecak dance/chanting: I could anme so many more SNES soundtracks, but let's switch gear and head on over to the Genesis/Mega Drive. I really enjoyed the Heavy Metal inspired OST from M.U.S.H.A. Here's Fullmetal Fighter: Midnight Resistance has a short, but very sweet OST and is rarely mentioned, e.g. Flood of Power: Tougiou: King Colossus is not just my favorite Mega Drive game, but also has one of the best soundtracks on the system, imho. An Old Sad Dance: Thunder Force IV has been mentioned already, but what about Undead Line? I really love this game's OST and without it I probably would have never made it through this brutally difficult game. My favorite moment of the game is when you beat all six levels and they reveal another level on the stage select screen. You can totally feel the rising dread as you face the terrors of the final level when the final stage intro theme kicks in and transitions into the Final Stage Theme itself. I could go on and on, if anybody wants ot hear more.

Judging from the comments, most unfinished good games are either very difficult or extremely long. Well, the latter applies to some of my favorite games as too, namely Breath of Fire I to III. I liked all of them and gave them several attempts over the last one or two decades, but never finished any of them, even though I really enjoyed most of the gameplay experience. And when I stop playing them it's usually near the end or right before the final dungeon. I remember the final dungeon in BoF II being very long and difficult, so I grinded quite a bit until I lost interest. Also, an honorable mention to Dragon Quest VIII and XI. Both pretty much perfected the classic JRPG formula, but somehow they ended up being boring after a while. I think that in order to keep me engaged for 40, 60, 80 hours or more, an RPG really needs a strong hook. I can forgive a game, if it is maybe lacking in some areas, but there has to be something that stands out, imho.

Nice that it's still going. I'm curious to see what will happen to this challenge in the future.

Oh sorry for that. If I beat another game in the future I will only post it here.

RPGs are easily my favorite genre of games. I mostly prefer Japanese-style turn-based RPGs, but I also dig strategy RPGs or Action RPGs every now and then. WRPGs are good too, but I rarely fall in love with them. This is partially due to most of them nowadays being Open World RPGs, which I don't like that much. Once every few years I play the heck out of one of these, but then I get fed up with them for the next few years, e.g. Morrowind, Fallout 3/NV. My favorite system is also the SNES, which I consider to be part of the Golden Age of the JRPGs. The PS1 was to some extent part of that as well, but extensive loading times and an overabundance of side content, like mini games, usually keep me from revisiting those games. My top 10 would probably look something like this: Lufia 2 Terranigma Secret of Mana Final Fantasy X Shin Megami Tensei III Tales of the Abyss Star Ocean 2 Breath of Fire II Grandia Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade There are of course many, many more great games, both new and old. But the more games I play, the less of an impression they leave. Or sometimes I may really like a game while playing, but somehow can't see myself going back to it in the future. As for games that I hate, and this is probably going to get me some flag, but I hate Phantasy Star II with a burning passion. It's not even that this game is an atrocious mess. No, if it were just bad I would probably laugh it off and put it away forever. This game actually gets some of the basics right: decent turn-based combat with a varied party, pretty good music (if only short, i.e. very few tracks. Compare that to an FF game) and an intriguing plot in a sci-fi setting, that wasn't seen too often in RPGs at that time. BUT my initial good impression was soured quickly once I realized a) how grindy this game is. It has one of, if not THE worst grind in any retro console RPG I have played so far. Leveling takes forever and every new character starts out with level 1! Also, farming money takes forever as well. Alternatively you can swap items around whenever you mix up your group. But with the cumbersome menu system this takes forever. So pick your poison! b) that the game may be huge, but even one or two hours in you're already bombarded with color-swapped enemies. Rarely have I seen a game with this many color swaps. And not just the enemies, but the dungeons, too. It also doesn't help that they seemingly tried to pad out the game by having you go through countless pointless dungeons that all look and play the same. Sometimes less is more. c) how unforgivingly difficult and brutal this game is. Of course the enemies are tough, but on top of that they sometimes have random difficulty spikes even within a specific dungeon. I hope you enjoy losing 30 minutes or more of your progress, just because extremely difficult enemies start appearing out of nowhere. The dungeons can also get very long with confusing and awful mazes. Games like FF reward you for exploring by at least giving you some treasure, but Phantasy Star II is full of dead ends. Ikuto tops all of this with its countless holes, pointless dead ends and endless backtracking. This dungeon was designed to grind away your sanity and to punish everyone who doesn't use a guide. I could go on about the flat and empty shells of characters, the egregious cliffhanger at the end, the non-descriptive spell names as well as the cumbersome menus and party management etc. Maybe I am a bit overly critical of this game, but after sooo many people had touted this game as such a classic masterpiece even rivaling the best of best on the SNES, my expectations may have been skewed.

The new format looks great! Looking forward to when the next round comes out.

Just migrated here. I am looking forward to what this site will become and the upcoming tournament. Also, I think next year I will be participating at the weekly challenges from the get-go. Here's to a good time!