bronzeshield

I practiced in an emulator too, and the thought of pausing again to practice did cross my mind! It's such a bizarre game -- you can tell they wanted to do something good, but they didn't put in any of the infrastructure to support it. Maybe they realized at the last minute that they didn't really have enough of a game, so they decided to make the last boss fight such a hassle to stretch things out -- or to discourage renting the game, who knows. Did you use a pattern where you hit him 10-11 times, then go to the bottom right corner until he backs off? I came up with that one on my own., but I'm sure others have found the same thing.

Ikari Warriors II is done. Pretty easy game except for the final boss, and once you know a pattern that works (which is no easy feat to find!) he's not too bad.

Despite feeling like a slow car on a fast road for most of the past few days, I managed to take down Krion Conquest tonight:

PM sent! And indeed, in the continuing saga of bronzeshield and the ice, I'm still sore and felt like an old man for most of the day. Thankfully I think I'm starting to turn it around.

Thankfully, yes, though I'm sore all over! The weird thing is, I took a much harder fall a few years ago directly onto ice, and didn't notice any aftereffects at all. This time it was a relatively slow fall with snow cover cushioning my landing, but I guess I still wrenched my back and bruised a few other spots, and today I feel like an old man. Nothing too terrible and it doesn't appear that anything's broken, but it's annoying to hurt in a bunch of different places at once. Careful on that ice, everyone!

Dropping you a PM! I took a fall on the ice that's slowed me down, but got a chance today to take those pics for you. PM incoming in mere moments.

Marvel's X-Men, aka the game where you don't actually need to fight the bosses, is done:

It's got this really stupid structure where your first year on tour doesn't even really count, as you can't amass enough points to play all the Grand Slams and/or it starts midyear (I don't remember the details but it's something like that). The game is quite clear about when it ends, as it has a sequence that tells you to check out some other Asmik game (don't recall which) and has the immortal typo "THANK YOU. THIS IS A GREART MOMENT FOR ME."

Yep, no "calling" games has been the policy for ages, and rightly so. The only scenario in which that could be a bad scene, I suppose, is if someone replays a long game specifically for the thread and no other reason, and someone else ninjas it at the last minute -- but I don't think that's happened. I had visions of that possibility with Bases Loaded but fortunately at least I'd never beaten it before so it would've been fine either way! So, WashYourFace, please do wash the countryside free of the influence of Cao Cao, or Takeda Shingen, or the British, or the Duke of Wellington, or etc. BTW I had some vague ambitions of taking on a Koei game this year but I brilliantly managed to break my laptop screen the other day, making it hard to play games and watch TV with my wife at the same time. That said I'm toying with the idea of taking on Dragon Warrior III in 2021, as it's on my "must replay" list.

I don't think his pace is the problem, but the fact that he's started about nine billion different library projects! The cynical part of me wonders if he put the Game Boy stuff on the back burner because he committed to doing the Japanese library (which is a big part of what makes that project interesting), but then discovered how many more views he got by covering North American NES/SNES/N64 releases, thereby discussing everyone's favorite greatest hits. I don't begrudge him that -- whereas most projects go "initial mission > branch out > get overwhelmed > stop posting", he's avoided parts 3 & 4 of that equation and kept going, so kudos to him. But it's a little as if someone started a channel dedicated to obscure Italian science fiction movies, and then started talking about Star Wars, Star Trek, and the Matrix a lot. At one point he put the Game Boy project on hiatus for well over a year, and that was a real downer. (He does cover Japanese N64 games, which I appreciate, and his Virtual Boy series was very good.) SNES Drunk is always fun, and Game Boyle is especially good and criminally underwatched. I love his enthusiasm and eclectic tastes, and he's an open-minded guy who doesn't fall into the easy trap of being needlessly snarky -- which JP sometimes does because he's trying to cover so many games and lacks the patience for anything with a learning curve, unless it's too popular to dismiss. (I remember he branded Amazing Spider-Man an unplayable, impossibly difficult mess, so I pulled out the cart I'd bought a while back, played it for the first time, and beat it easily in under 2 hours.)

@MatthewnimmoSure, I'd be glad to! It's only gathering metaphorical dust here, after all. Give me a day or two to get some pics together for you and make sure everything still fires up OK (no reason it shouldn't though). I'll drop you a PM by the weekend.

That ending screen is pretty terrific.

I'd describe it as an above-average Dragon Quest clone. It's got a nice sense of humor, but obviously the grind sets in at a certain point. Still, I had a decent enough time with it to play it twice and basically enjoy it both times. The more recent fan translation is the better one, though the older one wasn't bad at all for its time.

I love the way Overlord has fallen from its high perch. It's such a delicious thing when a game that seems so forbidding is actually totally broken. Have you ever tried Star Voyager? It's aggravating but any given run is relatively short. Most people hate it but I kind of like it, at least whenever I'm not playing it. With you on Orb-3D. That's one of a very few games that's made me say "Never again!" It's not even that long or that difficult, it's just so...uncooperative and tedious.

Following scaryice’s post, I beat 22 games for the thread this year — but to my surprise I beat an overall total of 55 NES games this year (!), plus four Famicom games. A lot of that was replaying games I'd previously "beaten" with savestates, cheat codes, or slowdown in the past (sometimes decades ago), and now wanted to beat legitimately. I'm now up to around 200 licensed wins, depending on how you count it (198 by one reckoning, 202 by another). For the thread, these were my first-time-ever clears (chronological order): Spot: The Video Game! Palamedes Super Jeopardy! Ring King Karate Champ Castelian* Barker Bill’s Trick Shooting Shooting Range* Gumshoe Bases Loaded (*I plan to go back and beat Castelian and Shooting Range on higher difficulty levels, though. Maybe in 2021?) These were my "first-time-legit" clears for the thread: Back to the Future Super Pitfall Fist of the North Star Freedom Force And these were games I’ve cleared before, sometimes many times: Overlord Chessmaster Battle Chess Star Voyager Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonstrike (on Medium, but I want to beat this on Hard in 2021) Racket Attack Jimmy Connors Pro Tennis Tour Marvel's X-Men Toughest first-time clear? Probably Gumshoe, that game is brutal. Easiest? Super Jeopardy or Spot. Most satisfying? Maybe Back to the Future, to slay some old demons. Least satisfying? Bases Loaded is just a slog. Least fun? Ring King -- but at least I had to work out some fresh tactics for the last opponents. Game that required me to up my skills the most? Barker Bill’s Trick Shooting — I went from being crap at the game to being rather good at it. Best new discovery? Palamedes is a blast! The one(s) that got away? Tried a bunch to beat Sky Kid this year, didn't manage it. Maybe in 2021? I also bailed on Solomon's Key and want to get that one under my belt... ---- Outside of the thread, these were my first-time-ever NES clears: Puss ’n Boots Jaws Wheel of Fortune Wheel of Fortune featuring Vanna White Wheel of Fortune: Family Edition Wheel of Fortune: Junior Edition Cabal Millipede Jeopardy! Junior Edition And these NES games I’d beaten before, but needed to replay legit (or on the highest difficulty): Gradius Ikari III: The Rescue Escape from Atlantis (proto) Double Dribble Life Force Super C P.O.W. Captain Skyhawk Street Fighter: 2010 DuckTales Spelunker Amagon Renegade Bionic Commando U-four-ia Cybernoid Castle of Dragon Rescue: The Embassy Mission Bucky O’Hare Journey to Silius Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu Gyruss Finally, my new Famicom clears, mostly replays of games I’d beaten with savestates in the 2000s: Musashi no Bouken Devilman Takeshi no Chousenjou (yes, I beat this one legit!) Wagyan Land And two NES games I cleared just for fun: The Karate Kid Marble Madness

@Matthewnimmo, that is incredibly kind of you re: BC Racers! I will absolutely take you up on that if @Supergunis willing. (Supergun, you and I have done business before, long ago at AtariAge with happy results, so I'd gladly do so again. I might like to buy your Doom box too since mine is missing a piece. You don't have an extra Kolibri manual, by any chance? -- I ask, knowing the answer is "no"!) I will definitely take a look at the WSB situation this week. My extra copy is just gathering dust (or it would be if I didn't have it in an envelope), so I really ought to sell it to someone who'd enjoy it, and I would gladly put you first in line for that. Would you be more interested in a cheaper sunfaded copy, or would you prefer to stick to non-sunfaded copies?

Oh, man, Supergun, had I known that you had a B.C. Racers box I would've totally hit you up for it -- it's one of only two I need (the other is Spider-Man, but I need the whole game anyway). Enjoy, Matthewnimmo! P.S. I do have an extra World Series Baseball 32X I keep meaning to sell -- have to figure out whether I want to keep the nice, pristine one or the more sunfaded one. Crazy how high the prices have gotten on that game, and Web of Fire too.

It's hard for me to say since I started playing this game when I was a wee kid, so it feels intuitive to me in a way that it probably shouldn't (if that makes sense). One thing, though, is that the batting is more nuanced than it appears -- you can get a lot of different subtle shifts in the swing by holding the D-pad for varying amounts of time. I'd say wait for something low and down the middle of the plate, and swing low at it. Those seem to be the easiest to connect with. High balls are the hardest to hit, and often require a quicker tap of the D-pad rather than a longer press. But in general a lot of balls are only struck from a position slightly lower or higher than you might expect. The duration you hold A also seems to matter in some degree, if only because you can check-swing into a bunt.

Ooh, that's a good question. Let me see... ...OK, so that's my total...carry the two... ...what's the square root of that?...OK, now take the derivative of both sides, and factor out the variables...now use the quadratic formula... Aha, I've got the answer: zero! And that's because Bases Loaded is done, you see: Just before the last pitch of the last out of the last inning of the last game. And here's the scoreline. Usually I tried to get a couple runs and then end my at-bats as quickly as possible, which would make the games average around 25-27 minutes, but this time I decided to let my sluggers do their worst. Ironically, I screwed up in the 8th and chose the wrong unhittable pitch, which the opposing team immediately belted for a home run -- resulting in one of only two games in which I gave up any runs at all. Finally, the rather pathetic ending: No "congratulations" or anything? Oh, well, at least it's something. So here's how to beat Bases Loaded with zero challenge: Choose Jersey, and choose Hall as your pitcher. (He's the last one listed, so select him faster by hitting down, left, down.) For his first 40 pitches, tap A and hold the D-pad up+right. When he goes into the third frame of his windup, switch to down+left. This pitch is unhittable by the CPU. If you don't screw up earlier, this will work until you're 0-1 in the 5th inning with 1 out. For the rest of the game, simply tap A to pitch, and do nothing else. Like Bugs Bunny's slow pitch, all batters will swing and miss, or simply do nothing for a called strike. On the batting side, get a run or two early if you can. Two is good in case you screw up like I did (twice). Once you've got the minimum runs with which you feel comfortable, bunt or check-swing everything. If you get two strikes, swing early to miss deliberately. End those at-bats quick and you can keep it to about 26 minutes per game. After every game, reset so that you can just use Hall again, and put in your password. Now repeat this whole process 79 more times. Enjoy! Paste gets the rep in this game, but it's Bay that's the home run king -- he kills every ball he touches. I've hit home runs by accident with Bay when attempting to check my swing. One of them is usually good for one or two HRs per game. BTW I played the first 79 games in an emulator and only switched to real hardware + real cart for the last game.I can't imagine sitting in a little game room with nothing else to do for this one, so I highly recommend watching trash TV, talking on the phone, listening to books on tape, or otherwise multitasking to pass the time faster. I marathoned the last 16 games today so that we could get it done for Christmas, and watched TV and movies with my wife for all but the last game.

Nice one, Bea! And don't worry, I'm on it...

Backup plan my butt -- I'm over 50 wins! It'll get done. It's now at the point where I could marathon the remaining games in a single day if I had to, but I'm trying to stick to getting a couple games in at a time during long phone calls and bad TV shows. It really is that mindless and devoid of challenge -- with the right pitcher, you absolutely can't lose.

You rang? Was planning to check in at the halfway point of 40 wins, but I guess now's the time. Still a long way to go yet, but I plan to get there!

The Sega-16 effort is one continuous thing that's been extended since its first year, so it's only gone unbeaten there "once", so to speak (though similar efforts at SegaAge and the German website CiBo have also seen CFU '96 go unbeaten). As to why, I don't think it's anything about the game, but just the random vagaries of what people happen to have and/or are willing to play. At Sega-16 we've had people who are willing to take on most tennis games (me) or golf games (Night Driver), but other genres are spottier. Both at Sega-16 and here at VGS (and back at NA), I've finished off a few games that turned out to be pretty easy, but lingered for a while because no one wanted to deal with them or knew how they worked. I'm sure you've done the same. If you're up to beat CFU '96 and post your win to Sega-16, that'd be great! We've got two other completions that are just awaiting a post, so that'd actually put us at 25 unbeaten Genesis games left.

Slowly, but it is going. I made decent progress last week but this week hasn't seen much. I've at least gotten it down to 25-30 minutes per game, so the hope is to average just over 1 win/day for the rest of the year. Of course, if all else fails I'll marathon the rest of my team's remaining games toward the end of the year!

Heh, even the CRPG Addict cheated to beat Wizardry V, though not on a console: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2012/06/wizardry-v-won.html He was underleveled too, but says he reloaded until the supporting mob was made up of weaker monsters. Maybe that's an option here?