LHCGreg

NFL Blitz 2003 is done. I took the Giants to the Super Bowl and beat the Patriots.

Several people in other video game communities I'm in made a tier list for the games they played in 2022. Here's mine, made with the offline tierlist maker from https://github.com/silverweed/tiers. I'd love to see what games other people played in 2022 and what you thought of them.

I beat Donkey Konga's marathon mode on Gorilla difficulty.

Lost Kingdoms is done. I wasn't a fan of being able to run out of cards in a level, making running away the best strategy. It costs a card, but that's less than you'd use fighting. I also didn't like having to chase the gems after getting a hit.

Pirates! Gold is done now if we're going by the 100 points condition. I played in 1640 as a French privateer this time. This run went much better now that I know what I'm doing. I got letters of marque from France, England, and Holland, and for most of the game I balanced my time between raiding Spanish towns, rescuing family members, and returning to French/English/Dutch towns to rank up, digging up buried treasure if it was along the way, and attacking any Spanish ships I came across. About 80% through the game when I was still a few ranks away from Duke, everyone made peace with Spain, leaving me without an easy way to rank up. After a bit, war broke out between Holland and England and one of the Dutch towns had a highest-tier governor's daughter so I turned on England and did a few last raids as age started to catch up to me, reached Duke, got married, divvied up the booty and increased the difficulty to increase my share of the Incan treasure, dug it up, and retired. I ended as English Marquis, French Marquis, and Dutch Duke with 117,340 gold pieces and 6550 acres of land, and all 10 quests complete.

Looks like I have some work to do then. I finished my first game with a score of 17/100. I picked my nationality and time period randomly and I think I got what might be the worst combination: being Spanish in the earliest period when Spain is dominant. It's hard to be a pirate when nearly all the ships and towns are allied. I relied on treasure maps for income but that couldn't keep crews happy for too long. I rescued one family member, found the Incan treasure, reached the rank of Colonel, and married a "shrewish thing".

What's the win condition for "Pirates! Gold"? I just started and it seems like an open-ended game with no ending except when your pirate gets old and you retire?

Did Madden 95 get a new game mode?

Another SFC game: Live A Live (with translation patch). Not a bad RPG but I wasn't a fan of "do exactly this thing to advance the story" or of being able to miss important upgrades hidden behind unclear mechanics. I recommend playing with a guide.

Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge is done.

The Darkstar Dragons are Mutant League Football champions. I turned off player deaths because some teams have a "nasty audible" that lets them kill your QB once per half at the cost of a mere 5 yard penalty, taking you down to your third-stringer in the second half.

There's a ton of Japanese in it, that's why I needed the translation patch.

It doesn't count for this thread because it was Japan-only, but I completed Shiren the Wanderer 2 with the translation patch that was released about a year ago. It's a gentle introduction to roguelikes with dungeons slowly increasing in difficulty. There are some grindy parts where you have to run the same dungeon but the core mechanics are solid and the final dungeon is a challenge.

Are you ok @Daniel_Doyce? Did the knights of justice defeat you?

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I have the same Katana strat. I usually lose 1 life in that fight as specials drain my life too much. I have to get lucky with relatively few wakeup charges to no-death that fight. I haven't tried repeatedly throwing Abigail. I'm always too scared of his wonky hitboxes to get in close beyond grabbing him after his initial entry. I'll give it a shot next time I play.

I haven't played Mighty Final Fight but it looks pretty limited with only 2 enemies on screen at once. SNES Final Fight (and FF Guy) on the other hand is one of my favorite games ever, so it got my vote. I have SNES Final Fight, SFC Final Fight Guy, Final Fight CD, Final Fight One on GBA, and Final Fight Arcade via Capcom Beat Em Up Bundle. They all bring something unique to the table. The SNES port tones down the difficulty to a level suitable for a home console (even if largely due to technical limitations of 3 enemies at once) and limits continues to force you to learn how to play the game instead of just credit feeding your way through. @Bearcat-Doug Did you (ab)use the infinite combo technique for your no-death clears? I don't use it and I don't have a consistent no-death strategy for Katana and I don't know if I've ever no-deathed Abigail. Final Fight 2 is too easy even on the hardest difficulty and is a slog to play through with enemies with huge healthbars. Final Fight 3 is pretty good but doesn't match the fun of the first game imo.

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@Jeevan Have you started Ogre Battle 64 yet? I know someone playing through it on his twitch channel who has pledged to make a VGS account and contribute the beat if he finishes it.

Here is my DS game shelf before going through people's game lists in this thread... ...and after. I still have a few left on my shopping list: Rocket Slime, The Dark Spire, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked, and Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX.

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I played Zero 2 recently and wasn't a fan. The low GBA screen resolution and large sprites mean the playfield is zoomed in way too much. The level design is also not great. I don't need this much story in my Mega Man games. Penalizing the player's rank for using upgrade elves and having elves that are only single use for the entire game isn't fun. I think the comparison to Sonic games is apt. The game wants you to replay over and over to perfect your runs of each level to get a high rank. But...I don't want to do that.

And Rival Turf is done. Hitboxes are wonky and Jack can't safely combo enemies except when in Angry Mode so you rely a lot on grabs, turning this beat em up into a throw em up.

Mr. Nutz is done. It was harder than I expected for a mascot platformer. The final boss is ridiculous.

I do not have 2nd Offense. I just play random games from my collection and I'll submit it if it helps a thread here. I don't actively seek out games to play for these threads.