bronzeshield

I wouldn't say Elevator Action is in that league, if only because it's so short. Stage 4 is really brutal, in terms of overwhelming/unfair AI behavior, but it's been completed before. I made it through Stage 3 on multiple occasions before I learned about the aggression trick; not sure how far I made it into Stage 4.

I'm not claiming these are "essential" or "must-haves", but out of the 60-odd Game Boy games I've beaten, I've had the most fun with: Catrap Cave Noire* Navy SEALs Noobow* Operation C Pipe Dream Shisenshou: Match Mania* True Lies Games with asterisks are Japanese-exclusive. Shisenshou has no English text, Noobow and Cave Noire have translation patches available.

Computer games: plenty of super-obscure stuff on the TRS-80 Color Computer and Model III, including BASIC type-in games from magazines and such. I used to play a Pengo clone written in BASIC all the time. Also some Mac shareware. Console games: Cosmic Swarm on the Atari 2600, maybe? That was the most obscure Atari game we owned, and I now know it to be the rarest too. On the NES, a few unlicensed games like Captain Comic and Master Chu & Drunkard Hu -- or, on the licensed tip, a handful of offbeat titles like Arkista's Ring, Rad Gravity, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Also a few less-common black box games, like Clu Clu Land (hated it) and Slalom. I didn't own any of these -- all were rentals or borrowed games. On the SNES I didn't play much in the way of obscure stuff until I wasn't a kid anymore. I guess Drakkhen and Lord of the Rings Vol. 1 were the main ones, along with Sküljagger and Harley's Humongous Adventure.

Fair enough! Here you go: In Levels 3 & 4 of Elevator Action, WashYourFace figured out that if you sit in a safe spot (far side of a wall) and wait out the enemies as they go more and more nuts trying to shoot you, the aggression counter will eventually roll over and they'll be as meek as kittens for a few minutes. Without that, Level 4 is a brutal, cheap nightmare. TheMexicanRunner credits arnpoly with passing him this information and thereby saving NESMania: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KDNGI76HoMNyYLL6RqWu4PqUbw-lI920tf7QTclnLLE/edit#gid=0 Search on "Elevator Action" and you'll see his note in the rightmost column. Oh, and also, he learned how to resurrect his loved ones, and then he made out with Natalie Portman but it actually turned out to be Keira Knightley's milkman, and then Drape killed Snumblepants the Grey, and him too. Or something like that, anyway. (BTW when I looked at that spreadsheet earlier there were 5 other viewers! What are five people doing on the NESMania spreadsheet, this long after the fact? It's like when you have to take a car trip at 3am, and look askance at everyone else on the road at that hour...)

Did you ever hear the Strategy of Darth WashYourFace the Wise? I thought not.

Working on Ring King. Question for anyone who's completed it: once I start Ranking mode, can I go back to Training if I need to upgrade my stats, or am I stuck with whatever stats my boxer already has? In other words, can I grind on an as-needed basis, or do I need to get all my grinding done before I go for the title?

I really like Skull & Crossbones from Tengen. It can be infuriating, but the stage design is quite smart.

Thanks, y'all. I maintain a list of library completion projects like this, both active and abandoned, over at AtariAge: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/265955-list-of-chronogaminglibrary-completion-projects-reviews-longplays-etc/ I hadn't heard of this one before, and am shocked that he's so close to finishing it with so little fanfare. By "vetting" I just meant that I haven't watched more than a couple of his videos -- though I did watch the Destination Earthstar one and, man, he cuts it close! -- and so I couldn't vouch for his methodology. I do know of a couple of "beat the library" streamers who do things that might be questioned, especially with sports games, i.e. not playing the full game even if it has a definitive ending. (I haven't run into any that use cheat codes or savestates yet, though it wouldn't surprise me if they're out there.) So I just wanted to anticipate any objections of that kind. I haven't made up my mind about pause strats, though I tried it on one of my Back to the Future runs the other day (the accursed DeLorean sequence) and, to be honest, it felt kinda icky. As it turned out, on the winning run, I didn't end up using it. Actually the only game I can remember beating with pause strats is Sol-Feace for Sega CD when I beat it on Mania, in the last stage. Now I wish I hadn't used them, so I guess it's not for me (no judgment on anyone else, though). At least my wife didn't have to listen to me swearing at the game anymore, though. BTW if anyone knows of any other projects not listed at the link above, don't hesitate to let me know. Beat-'em-all, review-'em-all, whatever the case may be, as long as the objective is clearly library completion of some sort.

Probably either Tomba for PS1, or De Zaak van Sam (a very obscure Dutch FMV game) for CD-i. I suppose Blackthorne and Kolibri for 32X are somewhere in there too, as is the Tengen version of Marble Madness for Genesis/Mega Drive. I don't know how much the Super Fighter Team releases like Beggar Prince and Star Odyssey are going for these days, but I did those too.

I'd never heard of this streamer before, but it appears he's close to beating the entire licensed library à la TheMexicanRunner: https://www.twitch.tv/newgongue https://www.youtube.com/user/Jigwally/videos https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zKWPHCCFuS4JOR3kWdyWqReVSpv7WxL14mOJGuFKdVY/edit#gid=0 Is anyone else familiar with him? Is he a member of the community here, even? I haven't vetted his videos to confirm that he's not using cheats, etc.; I watched his Dragon's Lair video and he did use some pause abuse on the final boss. (So did TMR on Star Force, IIRC.)

My favorite non-Tengen unlicensed games on the NES are probably Firehawk and Captain Comic. I seem to remember that Ultimate Stuntman was pretty slick too. Some of the Camerica/Codemasters games are very nice-looking but not terribly fun to play.

Covered in the first post, I'm happy to report: I take them routinely -- just because it's nice to document my wins, and some of these ending screens are rarely seen if at all.

No more projectile-throwing hula dancers, no more murderous bees, because Back to the Future is done: There are the seeds of a halfway-decent game in here, if only the programmers hadn't delegated all of their stage design to the RNG. The DeLorean sequence is just inexcusable.

Call it Smurfs 2, call it The Smurfs Travel the World, call it Les Schtroumpfs Vont Se Faire Cuire Un Oeuf, or whatever you like -- but it's done: Beaten on Hard difficulty, since I had previous familiarity with the Sega Master System version. This Game Boy version is OK but the smaller screen size is sometimes a problem, and I miss the SMS soundtrack which is one of the best on the system (shame that the game itself is so ridiculously rare).

Hey, a question: since Paperboy has an ending, shouldn't that be the standard for beating it?

I made Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan eat feet, eat feet, eat feet: Weird game -- pretty repetitive, not terribly fun or well-designed.

My hands can stop hurting, for Quarth is done: I played as the "Fickle Savior" -- how could I not, since it looks rather like a winged, uh, appendage. Level 4-9 was definitely the hardest by far for me, or maybe I just got better at the game, because Levels 5-8 and 5-9 fell quickly by comparison. At one point I made a short video to strategize about one bottleneck in 5-8, which was actually a huge help -- the next time I got there, I'd planned out what to do and beat the level immediately. Re: Dragon Slayer I, it's mainly that I'm interested in playing through the Game Boy's first 100 releases or so, as a kind of informal project, so it'd come up in that context. And the game's reputation sort of intrigues me, since I've often enjoyed games that others deemed unplayable...

You ain't kiddin'! I'm now up to Level 5-8 and struggling to get past it. Level 4-9 was a nightmare but I came up with a strategy eventually, and Levels 5-1 through 5-7 were a breeze in comparison. Ouch re: Dragon Slayer 1. I was interested in playing that at some point but if I do, perhaps I'll stick to emulation.

I'm working on Quarth. This game is brutal -- I'm currently stuck on Stage 4-9. Why on earth did they force players to unlock the game's later levels on a battery-operated system, given that there's no battery on the cart to save your progress? They could have at least given you a code or password to come back to it. As it stands, I'm just leaving my Super Game Boy 2 on overnight.

Chessmaster is done: Beaten on Level 1, 60/5, with the White pieces. Kind of a fun game -- I may post an animated GIF of it shortly... EDIT: OK, here's that GIF:

You know that game I always beat? Well, I beat it again: Art of Fighting is done on Level 8 difficulty. Still want to do a 1CC at some point, which shouldn't be hard since I didn't lose a match in my last 6 fights! The game's a piece of cake if you know the trick, though I always screw up the first couple fights as I shake the rust off.

Palamedes is done: Never really played this one before. Quite a bit more fun than I expected, and challenging too.

Overlord is done: Has any game in the NES library fallen more precipitously, in terms of its perceived difficulty? What used to be seen as one of the toughest games on the NES is now a 5-minute clear. I wonder if the designers foresaw any of this.

Took down Operation C: Old news to most Game Boy veterans, but I'd never actually played it before (or not for more than a couple minutes). It's generally very good, but the few flaws are fairly irritating.

Thanks! I'd beaten it before back in 2012, I guess just before the NA Game Boy efforts started. I picked it back up in November for last year's effort but got frustrated, and then tried again today and pulled out the win. I think I liked it more back in 2012, but -- though the Moe's Tavern stages are pretty miserable -- as a game it's a bit better, i.e. more playable, than one might expect.