bronzeshield

I scanned the Genesis manual for No Escape ages ago and it ought to be somewhere out there... Or, heck, here it is -- I think I got Preview to export it under the forum size limit. I actually like No Escape! The beginning is terrible but once you get the hang of it, it's surprisingly deep, with trading and item creation mechanics. The combat is weak but the stage design is kind of interesting. And it's got two different and totally distinct ways to beat the game, with separate endings. Also it's noticeably better on the Genesis, IMHO. The way the SNES version starts out is ridiculous, and the Genesis is much more manageable. No Escape manual [reduced size PDF].pdf

Sampras Extreme Tennis is done: I played Tournament mode, which consists of eight rounds at different venues, ending in a match with Sampras. That's clearly the game's main mode (or equivalent of Career mode, etc.). You have to beat it twice, as the first time unlocks the Super tournament. This one wasn't released in the US, only Japan and Europe. I played the PAL version on real hardware as, apparently, my Sanyo CRT will accept a 50Hz signal. Who knew? At least on this PAL version, it definitely plays a lot better at 50Hz vs. the forced 60Hz mode you can enable with certain boot discs.

Well done, it is indeed Warrior of Rome II. A fun game!

No progress to report but I have been thinking about it lately, especially Double Dungeons and Moto Roader. It shouldn't be hard to clear the second circuit in Moto Roader and get the ending credits, though it's demotivating that I'll have to play so many more races to call the game beaten for my own list (if that makes sense).

The Famicom version has unlimited continues, right? Blaster Master is on my list of games to beat legitimately (though the pause trick is arguably fair game) and the Famicom version would be a good way to practice. The pattern on the final boss looks really nasty to me. It's a beautiful game but desperately needs a password system.

Not Civ II or Tyrants, but those are good guesses!

...well, I'm quite sure that I'm right, so I'll go ahead with mine:

That's Whomp 'Em, isn't it?

I beat Aces of the Air last night. It's total Simple 1500 Series shovelware, but there's something charming about it and there are certainly worse ways to spend a couple hours. Still, it's not very good. By the way, the win screen is just ""Congratulations - ALL MISSION COMPLETED" as you see in this YouTube video below (not mine). The original Simple 1500 release in Japan had a credits crawl, so naturally they just hacked it out for the North American localization.

(The Adventures of) Captain Comic! One of my favorite unlicensed NES games. (Maybe my favorite.)

Pilotwings for SNES, I think?

Dammit, I knew I knew that one! Got stuck thinking it was a Tengen or Atari (arcade) game of some kind. I've played way too much Tapper to forgive myself for that.

Fortunately, Bart vs. the Juggernauts isn't that bad. Once you figure out how the game works, it's not difficult to beat --I think both times I cleared it, it took one day of practice and then I beat it the next time I picked it up. (Don't get me wrong, it's not a great game, but it's not unplayable jank either.)

I've got Nobunaga -- I think it's the only monochrome GB game I own CIB, actually! -- but I see that Floating Platforms's archive also has it. That comes as a relief, since I keep forgetting that my scanner doesn't work with my new OS!

What Game Boy manuals haven't been scanned? I have about 100, could see if I have any of the ones needed. They can indeed be quite tough to find, especially sports games.

Just to keep things on track (and in case it helps @Splain), here are the 16 games beaten since the first post was last updated: Baseball (cj_robot) Donkey Kong Land 2 (Tantalus) Double Dragon (MegaMan52) Dragon's Lair: The Legend (Floating Platforms) Extra Bases (cj_robot) Final Fantasy Legend II (Floating Platforms) Ken Griffey Jr. Presents MLB (Floating Platforms) Kirby's Dream Land (MegaMan52) Kirby's Dream Land 2 (MegaMan52) Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge (MegaMan52) Mega Man II (MegaMan52) Mega Man V (twiztor) Oddworld Adventures (Floating Platforms) Pyramids of Ra (Floating Platforms) Star Trek: The Next Generation (Floating Platforms) Super Mario Land (MegaMan52)

I think Ultimate Stuntman has infinite continues. Need to get back to that one!

Reminds me intensely of Caliber .50 on the Genesis but I don't think it's that.

Ah, hell, that crossed my mind! Had a feeling it was a beat-'em-up. I didn't know the game well enough to place it, but now that I do a search it comes right up.

Makes me think of Phantom Fighter for some reason.

Milon's Secret Castle is done: I can appreciate what they were trying to do, but the game just never becomes fun for me. Milon's slow horizontal momentum is the main culprit, I think.

Yeah, I can make it to 4-2 or 4-3 with no problem. 4-3 is the real bottleneck in the game, though I played it a lot when I beat the game with the continue code so I know it fairly well by now. The biggest problem is that the platforming is so janky (mainly since you can't ever actually stand still), and if you miss or lose the wings...

AD&D: Dragonstrike is done: Beaten on Hard mode with the gold dragon. I also beat Dino Riki the other day, but used the continue code. I learned the other day that that code is given freely in the Japanese manual (not to mention that it's the simplest code in the world -- just hold any direction and press start). Funny to think that the only thing standing between us and an easy clear is some random worker bee in the US office who chose not to put the code in, just overlooked it, or whatever. Anyway, I'll probably keep working on Dino Riki...

I think the key point for me is that it's not just that Level 49 is glitched, but that -- according to tobiasvl's analysis of the game's code -- it wasn't even meant to exist at all. Since Flipull's manual promises 50 levels, it suggests they might have made that promise in bad faith -- for example, if they knew they didn't have time to program a proper ending (unlike the Famicom version which has one), and used the glitch to hide the fact. It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened, and the unused animations suggest something wasn't right with the development. (Reminds me of Shadow: War of Succession on the 3DO somehow, a fighting game where the fatalities kept crashing the game. So they commented them out at the last minute -- IMDb and TV Tropes are wrong, they did program them -- but despite the game's prompt to "FINISH HIM/HER!", you literally can't!) As for me and Flipull, heh, not now, I don't think. I'm barely playing video games right now -- most of my free time goes to our baby.

Really interesting data point about Flipull, from tobiasvl over at ROMHacking.net: "The Game Boy version of Flipull simply contains 48 levels. The manual claims there are 50 levels, as the Japanese article alludes to, but the ROM only has 48 (and not all of those are unique, as the article also says). So when the game tries to load level 49, it loads some unrelated data and interprets it as level data, causing the bugged "remaining blocks" count which is displayed as a non-number tile, which internally has a higher ID number than the actual remaning blocks on the board, making it impossible to beat." And: "The game doesn't contain an ending animation like the Famicom version does. However, it does contain other animations that were supposed to appear after every 10th level, but they're skipped over in the final product and seem a bit unfinished. I'll also upload a patch that reinstates them." So the game has no ending animation, but seems to have intended a defined ending point -- and yet, also claims to have 50 levels in the manual. Hmmm. Is this a case for one of Guru Larry's "developers that deliberately made the game impossible to beat" videos?