bronzeshield

My point was simply that the NES has a unusual situation, both in terms of the huge proportion of unlicensed releases that made it to North American retail and, more generally, the uncountable amount of unauthorized software that's been put out for the Famicom. No other console comes close, except maybe the Game Boy family -- but most of those GB/GBC/GBA games didn't make it to US retail. (The Atari 2600 is sort of a different situation; I'm not sure if anyone has spelled out, publisher by publisher, exactly what agreements Atari had with each of them if any.) By the way, there are some pretty sweet Taiwanese games for the Mega Drive -- I wouldn't dismiss them all as "garbage". Beggar Prince, Water Margin, Brave Battle Saga, Super Bubble Bobble MD, all offer a good time in varying degrees. Anyway, great that you and @the_wizard_666 are willing to step up to the plate if and when unlicensed games come back!

I started in 1999 too -- or arguably in the late 1980s, since I still have my collection from that period and never got rid of it (I still play on my childhood NES, though now with a Blinking Light Win). 1999 was my first self-consciously "retro" purchase, a copy of Captain Comic I bought on Ebay. At that point I wasn't thinking about "complete sets", just buying games I wanted -- and especially games that hadn't been dumped properly (there wasn't a good dump of Captain Comic at the time) or didn't work on emulators. But I was definitely aware of the difference between licensed and unlicensed games. It was pretty obvious in a variety of ways, starting with the carts themselves. The cart list printout that Nintendo put out didn't have Tengen, Camerica, or Color Dreams games on it, and I think some of the magazines I read talked about the issue (not Nintendo Power obviously). The brief appearance of Tengen Tetris on the marketplace caught my attention -- did I actually play that version first, on a rental? Can't remember. Getting Color Dreams carts to work on my system was frustrating as hell, and ultimately led me to do the 10NES mod in 1999 (if you can call it a mod, since I just cut a leg on the chip). So again, it never seemed like a subtle distinction -- it was pretty obvious that there were two categories of NES games, and one of them made you run into a lot more jank, as was obvious when I rented games like Silent Assault, Master Chu and Drunkard Hu, etc. (Actually I kinda liked Chu/Hu.)

I think it's a bit more nuanced than that, beginning with the Atari vs. Activision lawsuit that was ultimately settled. Different companies had different relationships to Atari and not all were adversarial, and trying to compare it to the NES era is a bit apples vs. oranges, which was my point. Meanwhile, both Atari and Mattel took countermeasures against third-party developers that predated the NES -- Atari, by including a checksum system in their 7800 console; Mattel, by modifying their EXEC in a way designed to screw over Coleco. Yes, I'm well aware of the shortcomings of the TCRF list! It wasn't posted as a definitive tally of the number of unlicensed releases (that's not what TCRF is trying to do anyway), but as evidence of the vast difference in scale between Famicom/NES unlicensed releases and other consoles. As for homebrew vs. unlicensed vs. bootleg vs. pirate, I agree with you in principle, but in practice the distinction isn't always clear-cut. Some unlicensed Taiwanese releases for Mega Drive use stolen sound engines or other assets, for example, and yet the rest of the game is wholly original. Meanwhile plenty of references count homebrews as unlicensed games. On the other hand, some deem any contemporary release that wasn't sold at retail as a "homebrew", even if a few copies were sold door-to-door. We see several cases of that with the Atari 2600 library, and other consoles like the Bally Astrocade and ColecoVision are affected too. In any event, no one is trying to "intentionally muddy the waters", so let's not take that tack. But I'm honestly curious: are you and @Dr. Morbis willing to commit to beating a large number of unlicensed games if we were to resume doing them in 2022?

I had something almost exactly like this in my post but deleted it because it was getting too long. The part about ROM variants isn't just a hypothetical issue, either; I don't know offhand of examples on the NES, but several games on the Master System and Intellivision were reissued with a ROM update that totally changed the difficulty level. The NES is in a unique position. The Genesis had only a handful of unlicensed games that made it to shelves in the US (one of which, Whac-A-Critter, is borderline impossible for a human to beat). Some publishers did a reverse Tengen, going from unlicensed to licensed, like Accolade. Meanwhile the Atari 2600 had a ton of sketchy jank but defining licensed vs. unlicensed on that platform is an exercise in futility. Most of the weirdest ones only came out in PAL regions anyway, sometimes as pirated prototypes lifted from established developers. There were a few teeny-tiny small-print releases like Red Sea Crossing. But the NES has this huge glut of unlicensed games, and behind that is a mind-bendingly massive glut of bootleg, pirate, and otherwise sketchy Famicom games. Check out the difference in system totals at TCRF: https://tcrf.net/Category:Unlicensed_games I don't claim those numbers are scientific -- there are tons of bootleg/pirate/unlicensed GB, GBC, and GBA games -- but it gives some idea of the difference in scale between the NES/Famicom and other systems. Not even the Atari archivists are 100% sure what came out for the 2600 back in the day, but for the Famicom, even if you restrict it to the original retail era (and don't factor in any NES-on-a-chip stuff), it's just impossible. There's too much!

I'm not sure what you mean by "people like you", but I don't divide up my ROMs on that basis. I don't split up my cart collection that way either. Well, sticking to the licensed library is really a pretty mainstream approach. Chrontendo only covers licensed games (from all regions), TheMexicanRunner only beat licensed NA & PAL games, and of course Nintendo themselves only acknowledge the licensed games, or at least that's how it was in the past. I personally like playing unlicensed games -- and not just the good stuff like Skull & Crossbones, Captain Comic, Firehawk, etc. -- but I don't think it's hard to understand why people wouldn't bother with them. There's a lot of crap made with no love whatsoever, and while that's true of the licensed library too, the unlicensed is far worse. I actually think Action 52 is one of the better efforts in that regard! Whatever their shortcomings, the designers somehow made it so almost every game on there can be looped in some sort of reasonable way (even if the gameplay itself is unreasonable). We proved in 2016 that Action 52 can be done, and it was fun finding out how to beat games like Haunted Hill, Billy Bob, Silver Sword, and the Ooze. Every time I thought the challenge and arbitrariness were so bonkers that it couldn't be done, there was always some way to make the win happen.

Well, you did contribute in 2016, and I do appreciate those contributions, as well as those you've made at Sega-16 and elsewhere! Still, I think it's important to establish that, in that year, most of the heavy lifting on the unlicensed front was done by Bea_Iank, nerdynebraskan, me, MaarioS, and scaryice, with you and Dr. Morbis among those rounding up the Top 10. It'd be great if you're offering to make the kind of contribution we saw from the folks at the top of the 2016 unlicensed list, who accounted for about 85-90% of the victories. Do you see that as being in the cards for you in 2022? That'd be fantastic if so! ****** As a side note: I run a similar effort at Sega-16, as you know, and we had several people who were super-vocal about what games we should include: "Why aren't we doing Japanese games?" "Why aren't we doing Sega Channel games?" "Why aren't we doing PAL/32X/Sega CD games?" We added some of those things, and guess how many games most of those people ultimately contributed? Zero, sadly. ****** All this assumes the goal of the project is actually to try to beat the library, rather than to "play at" beating the library. I respect that you see it differently, and I agree that discovering new games is great -- but I don't see this project as an especially efficient way to do it, considering that so much of the Famicom's best stuff is in the Japanese-exclusive library. Personally I haven't discovered many new favorites through this project at all; mainly it's given me an excuse to go back to games I played through with savestates in the early 2000s, and do it properly this time. I also knocked out some old enemies, like Ring King and Bases Loaded. Only a few games have been 100% new to me and at all memorable, and mostly because they were ball-bustingly tough, like Gumshoe and Star Voyager. I busted my ass beating games in Action 52 in 2016, and a lot of my gaming energy that year went into that. I'm glad I did -- it was fun, and I like jank. But ultimately a lot of people are motivated by beating the library (me included), and it takes one hell of a lot of energy to make that happen if unlicensed games are in the mix. (I'm still not sure how the hell Bea_Iank beat Micro Mike from Action 52!)

Since the discussion about unlicensed games is heating up, let me post this again as a reminder of how things went down the last time we did the whole licensed + unlicensed + PAL library (over at NA) :

One thing that can provide motivation when beating games at the end of the year: if you're the kind of person who likes to beat higher difficulty levels, you can do a runthrough on Easy or Medium at year's end, and use that to be ready for a playthrough of a harder difficulty come the new year. I've done that before for the N64 thread and might do it with MK Mythologies, Super Bowling, Knife Edge Nose Gunner, etc. next year since there are 5-6 N64 games I need to replay on Hard.

It was really interesting to find out that the first game was considered an absolutely infamous piece of kusoge in Japan. Apparently they bugfixed the hell out of it before releasing the US version.

I don't mind the mindlessness of Double Dungeons -- it's almost more of a cartography simulator than an RPG -- but the size of the late-game maps gets pretty ridiculous. I made it through the first 8 levels a while back, so since the game lets you choose them in any order (except the last one which requires a password), I might play the rest of the levels first, then replay the early levels with my existing maps to meet the VGS clear condition, and only then tackle the gargantuan final level. Moto Roader is weak but I was able to clear a cup in 1st place for PC Engine FX when they did their own library completion effort a few years back. As I recall any given set of tracks is self-contained, and you get the same ending whichever one you beat.

Glad to be reminded of this thread. Davis Cup Tennis, Double Dungeons, Hit the Ice, Moto Roader, and Yo Bro are all on my list to do something about "at some point", as I've worked on all of them at various times. I could also be persuaded to do World Court Tennis if no one else takes care of it, as it's got that excellent Namco tennis engine and is a pretty easy win.

Beat Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero on Medium difficulty, which is the minimum required to beat the game (though I cranked the number of starting lives and continues): I actually like a lot of things about the game, but a few stupid design decisions really dampen the fun.

Level 11 is where I bailed out too, earlier this year. The first 10 puzzles felt reasonable if difficult, but with 11, it was starting to get into "OK, this isn't about playing the game, but exploiting obscure mechanics in a semi-glitchy way" territory. That annoys the hell out of me in puzzle games: I don't want to have to rely routinely on weird anomalies, I want to play the game's ruleset in a clear-cut way and have interesting gameplay emerge from that ruleset, not in spite of it.

Just for the record, I also beat Knockout Kings 2000 on Medium and Hard difficulties, using boxers named Arschrad ("ass wheel") and Arschfad ("boring ass"), and saw no difference in the ending. You don't get the chance to save before the Ali fight, but if you lose that fight, you go back to the main career mode screen and can do more training, save, and then fight Ali again as world #1. In fact, in all three playthroughs, the only match I lost was my first attempt against Ali on Hard; I won the rematch, however. That said, I still don't know what happens if your boxer isn't a heavyweight. Probably the same thing, I'm guessing? And yeah, this game is pretty comically easy once you know what to do: basically, spam the combo attacks, stamina be damned, and (on higher difficulties) land a super punch when you can. Knockout Kings 2000 should be an easy clear for someone next year, especially on lower difficulties.

If we're accepting clears on Easy difficulty -- and I believe we are? -- then Knockout Kings 2000 is done: I beat Career mode as Arschbad (loose German for "ass bath"), the balding heavyweight with the pink hair and green mustache. Once you win the heavyweight title, you get an unexpected fight against Ali. It seems like beating Ali should be the win condition -- you get credits afterward -- but maybe there are other conditions for other weight classes. Dunno what happens if you lose to Ali, as I beat him on my first try.

Well, the thing about beating Rat Attack on Expert is that it makes Normal pretty easy: Beaten with one of the default characters, so this should count. I 1CC'd the game, which isn't hard once you've...well, you know that part already.

What's the trick to landing successfully? I played Last Starfighter a bit but couldn't get the hang of that part.

I actually put something about pressing Select to get to the difficulty in my original draft of my post, but deleted it since I wasn't sure. Glad to see memory serves! I have some scattered notes about Chessmaster vs. New Chessmaster, e.g.: "FWIW the original release of Chessmaster on the Game Boy was super-glitchy -- a recurring problem with the portable editions of the franchise, I guess. The New Chessmaster was better, but neither version had a victory splash screen. " "Chessmaster: The engine is fairly strong, but too deterministic, which means it can easily be led into the same lines (and traps) over and over again. Also, maybe it's just my copy, but the game seems buggy as hell -- I saw multiple crashes, and at least two illegal moves (!) from the CPU." "New Chessmaster: Very similar to the "old" Chessmaster, but without the crash problems, and the algorithm has clearly been tweaked a little. Always playing the Black pieces, I beat every fourth difficulty level, i.e. Levels 1, 5, 9, and 13 (the game's highest). But I wouldn't have pulled off the last victory if the CPU hadn't mysteriously committed suicide, breaking a deadlocked drawn position wide open to my advantage. [...] An actual congratulatory ending screen would be nice; even the NES version has that." I can't imagine you need to beat it on a higher level -- we don't generally require that with Chessmaster games. There's a hint of an issue there since some ports tell you "Congratulations - now try a higher difficulty level!" or the equivalent, but the NES port keeps giving you the same screen even if you beat Infinite difficulty!

There are definitely higher difficulty settings -- 13 of them, according to my notes -- but they're based on thinking time so their nature might not be obvious. I don't remember how to access them, but IIRC the menu is split between two screens, so that might be the issue. Chessmaster puts up a pretty tough fight on anything but the defaults. It's a good thing most "library challenge" players play on defaults, as it'd take quite a lot of practice to beat the highest difficulty. I've done it, but I'm a former tournament chess player (and constant blitz player online), so... Oh, and also, the game likes to crash on higher difficulty levels. When I beat Level 13, it crashed twice (and made an illegal move once!) and I had to reload from a save, or set the position up again, or something like that. I have an animated GIF of the game, actually:

@Gaia GensoukiDoes anything in this thread help? Seems like it's a known issue, or complex of issues: http://www.wipeoutzone.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-1261.html

It's more of a global thing, where even if you start a new game/new playthrough, the Controller Pak save is apparently used to determine what characters have been unlocked on previous playthroughs. In other words, you'd have to delete all your old save files to avoid it -- or use a different Controller Pak, I suppose -- or simply not use those unlockable characters: I didn't realize, sadly, until it was too late! No worries, though, as I need to beat it for my own list. There aren't multiple saveslots, just the one, so I guess the game must track your playthrough by difficulty, as no level beyond the first was available when I started my game on Expert. By the way, I loathe the game. Having a hard time getting the motivation to keep hurling myself at Level 7; I made it to the boss twice but the janky framerate and camera screwed me even though I knew exactly what to do.

I've been working on Rat Attack, but it's very frustrating as I'm playing on Expert mode. I'm up to Level 7 of 8. Also, I'm not sure that my clear should count, as I've been using characters that I unlocked on my earlier playthrough of the game -- the unlockables persist from playthrough from playthrough even if you start a new game. I started doing so without realizing it, and by the time I did (realize) I'd already made it through several levels. Again, not a big deal if it doesn't count -- I need to clear the game for my list anyway -- but the unlockable characters don't confer a huge advantage, though I can't claim it doesn't make a difference.

Took care of Centre Court Tennis on Normal difficulty: The game doesn't seem to have a proper ending, so I always just win every Cup once and become world #1. (If there is an actual ending, with credits 'n such, I'd love to know about it.)

Blaster Master and Destination Earthstar are two big ones for me.

Well, after all there are very few of those around, and the number of Atari collectors is still pretty sizable, including a few with very deep pockets. I wouldn't say "no one" cares about it, simply because it's the pre-eminent system of its generation and many people really do like that era. Plenty of people between 30-40 have some affection for Atari, and younger folks who like video games tend to know what it is (but not any of its competitors). Few in the US care about the Master System, but that hasn't stopped James "Buster" Douglas Knockout Boxing from reaching four figures. The rarest Intellivision and Vectrex items hit similar numbers, though Bounty Bob 5200 and Tank Command 7800 don't seem to reap as much as I'd expect, given their extreme rarity. Anyway I think Air Raid is an outlier because of the hype and its unique appearance. Most second-tier systems (in terms of collectors' interest) seem to congregate between $1-3k for their rarest items.