bronzeshield

Not sure exactly how old I was when I first beat Air Fortress, but based on my list of beaten games (which I've been keeping since 1990 or so), I guess I was about 15. I don't remember making maps at the time but I definitely needed to make them the next time I beat it.

What you describe is exactly what I love about Air Fortress. The later levels are so punishing, but they reward methodical planning, and if you do what you need to do, you'll make it out just in time. And I think Air Fortress plays 95% fair...though that last 5% is frustrating. You're exactly right about pre-clearing certain areas in your escape route, too. Definitely a must. If it weren't so brutal, it wouldn't be nearly as satisfying to win!

Man, that screenshot screams "Astrocade" with its color palette and resolution, but I can't find a match. I'm guessing that it's a radar display or automap in a game I don't know.

Apparently that is indeed what's required for the ending: https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Alien_Crush I've linked the video below. 10 hours of gameplay!! Yikes.

Damn, I thought it was RCR but couldn't place the exact screenshot. I even looked at every Technos game on NES but I guess I just went too fast. The laurels go to @Splain!

I've beaten it once, and I'm pretty sure I didn't continue from Level 7 on. My winning run relied on favorable RNG, including a couple of very helpful health drops in the last level, without which I would have failed. Dragon Power will absolutely screw you over if it doesn't feel like giving you health items, and I have a hard time imagining a winning run that doesn't take advantage of the max health increase -- you're already on enough of a knife-edge as it is.

This looks so familiar. Mighty Final Fight?

I think I see what I may have misunderstood. Here's arnpoly's exact text: "I saw the Mission 26 spaceship for the first time on my last life of a run. I picked up the bomb I needed, but I got shot soon after which causes you to drop the bomb. I watched the spaceship go by hoping the stage would repeat somehow. It turns out the final mission has no runway, just the final expanse of water. Watching my plane crash into the sea was devastating." Since Mission 26 has no runway, it can't be completed normally -- but are you saying that if you get to the UFO in Mission 26 with multiple lives, fail to destroy it (on either opportunity) and crash into the sea, you're then sent to Mission 27 but with no ending sequence?

I thought that if you don't destroy the UFO in Mission 26, the game just autocrashes your plane in an open area at the end of the level? I haven't done it myself (came so close to beating Sky Kid a year or two ago...) but that's what arnpoly says: https://takeontheneslibrary.com/finished/99-sky-kid/

Also, since we're using AdamL's list as one of our references, I think this is a complete list of the (licensed) games he hasn't gotten to yet: DESTINY OF AN EMPEROR (Capcom) DR. MARIO (Nintendo) DRAGON WARRIOR II (Enix) DUCK TALES 2 (Capcom) FINAL FANTASY (Nintendo) FLINTSTONES, THE (Taito) FLYING DRAGON (Culture Brain) GARGOYLE'S QUEST II (Capcom) GOAL! (Jaleco) GYROMITE (Nintendo) ICE HOCKEY (Nintendo) JETSONS (Taito) KICKLE CUBICLE (Irem) KING'S QUEST V (Konami) KINGS OF THE BEACH (Nintendo) KIRBY'S ADVENTURE (Nintendo) KIWI KRAZE (Taito) LAST NINJA, THE (Jaleco) LEGENDS OF THE DIAMOND (Bandai) LITTLE NINJA BROTHERS (Culture Brain) LITTLE SAMSON (Taito) LOOPZ (Mindscape) LUNAR POOL (FCI) MAGIC DARTS (Romstar) MAGIC OF SCHEHERAZADE (Culture Brain) MARIO'S TIME MACHINE (Mindscape) METROID (Nintendo) MONOPOLY (Parker Brothers) MONSTER IN MY POCKET (Konami) NES PLAY ACTION FOOTBALL (Nintendo) NOBUNAGA'S AMBITION (Koei) PINBALL QUEST (Jaleco) POWER BLADE (Taito) POWER BLADE 2 (Taito) REMOTE CONTROL (Hi-Tech Expressions) SILENT SERVICE (Ultra) SKATE OR DIE (Ultra) SMASH TV (Acclaim) SNAKES'S REVENGE (Ultra) SNOW BROTHERS (Capcom) SOLOMON'S KEY (Tecmo) SPOT (Arcadia) SPY VS SPY (Kemco) STAR TROPICS (Nintendo) STAR TROPICS 2: ZODA'S REVENGE (Nintendo) STRIDER (Capcom) SUPER DODGE BALL (Sony Imagesoft) SWORDS & SERPENTS (Acclaim) T&C SURF DESIGN (LJN) T&C SURF DESIGN 2 - THRILLA'S SURFARI (LJN) TECMO BOWL (Tecmo) TECMO SUPER BOWL (Tecmo) TECMO WORLD WRESTLING (Tecmo) TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 3 (Konami) TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: TOURNAMENT FIGHTERS (Konami) TETRIS 2 (Nintendo) TIMES OF LORE (Toho) TINY TOON ADVENTURES (Konami) TINY TOON ADVENTURES 2 (Konami) TOP PLAYERS' TENNIS - FEATURING CHRIS EVERT & IVAN LENDL (Asmik) TOTALLY RAD (Jaleco) TRACK & FIELD 2 (Konami) ULTIMA: EXODUS (FCI) UNCHARTED WATERS (Koei) WALL STREET KID (Sofel) WHOMP 'EM (Jaleco) WIDGET (Atlus) WIZARDS & WARRIORS 2: IRONSWORD (Acclaim) WIZARDS & WARRIORS 3 (Acclaim) WORLD CHAMP (Romstar) WRATH OF THE BLACK MANTA (Taito) A lot of these have very straightforward endings as far as I know, like Strider, Whomp 'em, Destiny of an Emperor, Ultima: Exodus -- I don't remember any curveballs in those. Others are trickier, though.

I had no idea that AdamL had put out a new version of his document! Great to see it's still being updated. There are some errors -- Action 52, for instance, has games like The Ooze that behave differently depending on the ROM variant you use -- but it's still a very handy reference. Quick summary of the tennis games on the system (North American licensed library), since that's an area of expertise for me: Tennis - win two matches on any difficulty to trigger the ending. Whatever starting difficulty you choose, as AdamL notes, the only thing that really changes in the ending is the dollar amount you win. Racket Attack - pretty straightforward, just win 7 matches and you're declared champion. There's no real reason to bother with different court surfaces or players. Playing in women's mode means you have to win just 2 sets instead of 3, but it's not as if it's easier or anything, just shorter. Jimmy Connors Tennis - AdamL sums this up well: difficulty doesn't affect the pathetic ending you get after 16 tournaments won. Each tournament is only 1 round against the exact same opponent who uses the exact same tactics. I didn't find this game especially difficult, BTW -- there's an initial learning curve, but once you learn the basic pattern it's trivial -- and I don't even remember noticing much any effect on the gameplay from the difficulty setting. Evert & Lendl in Top Players' Tennis - the stupidest and weirdest one. You have to win all 4 Grand Slams to beat the game -- Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, US Open -- but in your first year, you can't earn enough ranking points in time to qualify for the Australian Open, so you can only win in your second year. Consequently the entire first year of gameplay is pointless, as its only purpose is to get your ranking up enough to qualify for the Australian Open. If there's a way to win the game in the first year, I don't know about it; otherwise, you can speed up the process a bit by skipping tournaments and only reaching the bare minimum ranking to qualify for the Australian. ------ Some outliers that come to mind: 3-D World Runner - offers a hard mode accessible by code after beating the main game. I don't see any reason to require it, though; you've already gotten the credits and full ending sequence. Mendel Palace - has a second quest but as far as I know it's only accessible with a secret code that's not revealed in the game, so obviously that can't be required. Ring King - I'll have to check this out based on AdamL's recent update. Seems counterintuitive that a short tournament is considered "done" based on the garbled CONGRATULATIONS message -- but becoming world #1 doesn't trigger any ending, so maybe that one should indeed change to Tournament mode. Urban Champion - what on earth to do with this one? It seems to be an infinite looper but you actually build toward being certified as a "CHAMPION" in Round 139, after which that status indicator stops updating. Also, I'm not so sure about Gun.Smoke needing multiple loops. It gives you a pretty definitive good ending after the first one, and doesn't say anything about "not the real ending", "try the next loop", etc. While I can see wanting to get all three loops for someone's personal list, I don't see the need for the yearly completions thread. ------ Two other quick notes: in case of any arguments, I generally beat games on Hard or Very Hard before counting them as beaten on my own personal list, so no one @ me, please. (Yes, that includes Chessmaster, which I beat on Infinite [sic]!) And second, I've always thought -- and this is totally independent of any consideration of the work this would put on @scaryice's shoulders! -- that the defaults should be pretty basic, but that after a game is beaten on those basic settings, someone else can come along and claim more points by beating it on the hardest settings or getting the definitive ending. In other words, if someone beats Chessmaster on Newcomer/1, I could then beat it on Infinite and get extra points; if someone beats Simon's Quest with the bad ending, or even only does one loop on Gun.Smoke, someone else can claim extra points if they get the good ending or "THE END" (respectively). Just food for thought, I guess.

One thing to add is that, unfortunately, sometimes it was the US staff tasked with localizing a game that made these decisions -- and I'm not just talking about making games harder to combat the rental market. For example, the continue code is present in the manual for the Japanese/Famicom version of Dino Riki (Shin Jinrui: The New Type), but not the North American manual. Our sense of what's "official" for a game may well hinge on some decision made by an intern with a hangover! And if it weren't for that poster included with Solomon's Key... I'd be really curious if the Famicom manuals for Arkanoid or Bump 'n Jump (aka Buggy Popper or バギー・ポッパー) have the codes in them, actually, as they seem like two likely candidates. Can't find scans for those, unfortunately.

Star Voyager is done: Picked it back up today after giving up my attempts earlier this year in frustration. This time I reset once about 4 minutes into the session, then made a second attempt and won with relatively little difficulty, despite having to search all 8 planets for the super items. I think the key to victory was a structural bottleneck that slowed down enemy progress -- I suspect that's the biggest factor in winning runs, more than anything else.

A couple weeks ago I began nosing around in PD Ultraman using the translate app on my Android phone. It's sort of an RPG, but I get the impression (based on Thabeast721's review) that it's pretty doable once you can get used to the basic menu structure, since the game is highly repetitive and the dialogue is mostly boilerplate stuff. Honestly, I think we're at the point where just about anything in Japanese is playable with enough determination, except for some games where either the text isn't legible to our phones or there's a lot of audio-only stuff. But I beat The Sniper on PlayStation with my phone, for example, and was able to translate even audio-only things well enough to understand the mission objectives (which are sometimes very specific!) and execute them (...literally). All that said, I have a toddler in the house, so I can promise nothing! But I should get Mia Hamm done soon, at least.

Aha, perfect. Thank you so much -- exactly what I'd hoped for. That means I'm halfway! And, @Splain, I think this is definitely one to add to the guidelines with a more formal definition. "Beat World Cup mode (8 games) or U.S. League Season mode (34 games)". Based on IceCreamMikey's playthrough, which has him at 6 games played after the quarterfinals, I think I'm correct about the 8 games for World Cup mode?

I'm tempted to keep going just to find out one way or another! The season is definitely still underway, at least. Since Mia Hamm is just a reskinned Michael Owen's WLS 2000, PAL people might know whether League mode in that game has a fixed length? I can't find a manual scan for that game, though I do have one for Mia Hamm and it says nothing about it.

Does anyone know if Mia Hamm Soccer 64 has an ending in U.S. League Season mode? I don't know how many games are in a season in this hypothetical league, but I've beaten every team once and now it's started a second cycle (maybe I have to play every team at home and away?). I can't imagine it doesn't end, but only World Cup mode is documented on the web.

Holy schnikes, I think you're right! I was doing family things and didn't pursue the lead as you did. In less than a decade he went from testing Wheel of Fortune to, uh, something rather different. That Wikipedia article certainly doesn't bury the lede. I totally thought he was the final puzzle, and actually asked my wife "Who's Neil Plakcy?", expecting her to say he's a famous author I should know.

Took me a looooong moment before I realized (a) this is the credits, not the final puzzle, and (b) they probably don't mean this Neil S. Plakcy, because...

I'm almost relieved to be wrong!

I see that and instantly think Dr. Chaos. No idea if I'm right.

One note about that list -- the games "New Japan Pro Wrestling" and "New Japan Pro Wrestling 2" don't have asterisks to mark them as exclusives, but I believe they should, yes? Another list I have gives them as "Shin Nippon Pro Wrestling: Toukon Road - Brave Spirits" and "Shin Nippon Pro Wrestling: Toukon Road 2 - The Next Generation"

Same here -- sometime in the last 5-7 years I beat Chessmaster NES on Infinite and still got that damned "Now try a harder difficulty!" Incredibly lazy of the programmers to leave it that way, but it's not the only game I've played that does that (looking at you, Jimmy Connors SNES). And yeah, the default difficulty of Newcomer/1 is just stupid. It basically plays whatever move happens to come into its virtual head first. The first level, 60 moves in 5 minutes (IIRC), is where the "real" game begins. But no shame in playing defaults for our purposes, of course, especially since the ending is the same load of garbage. BTW I spent some time playing Star Voyager last night but didn't have much luck. When I'm away from that game for a while, I forget the nuances of combat, especially which speeds are optimal for targeting purposes.

I'd love to be a part of a 2-year effort with all regions or a 1-year effort with Japanese games only. Wasn't able to contribute this year (relatively little gameplay at all in my house in 2023 TBH), but an effort like those would definitely be motivating!

Rat Attack, Rat Attack...