bronzeshield

Wow, that ending screen is butchered! Is the whole fan translation that way, or just at the end? I assume you're using the Gideon Zhi translation from 2002, 1.01 version?

Played through the painfully slow Jeopardy! Sports Edition, and got this picture of the ending a fraction of a second before it faded: Lots of guesswork, a bit of luck, and a full category of repeated questions helped. I guess there's no Daily Double in the first round? Final Jeopardy was Tennis, which was irritating since I wagered only $100, but I had a runaway by that point anyway.

I figured it out all by my lonesome! Honestly, all you really need is this: Once you get that clue, which you'll eventually do if you play that level enough times and kill enough of the "special" enemies, you take a look at the label and see this: The "plus" at the beginning gives it away: there's a missing button, and based on the ordering, chances are it's either Select + B + Up, or A + B + Up. BTW it's interesting that breaking the fourth wall seems to be a "thing" with X-Men games. The Genesis game also requires you to press an unexpected button to reach the final part of the game!

BTW I'm working on Ultimate Stuntman, though very sporadically. It's on my list of "games I need to beat again", so I mean to see it through, and it has infinite continues so it should be doable with persistence. Unfortunately it doesn't play nicely with my EverDrive so I have to emulate.

Totally agreed. There are some real mistakes in the level design -- there's one spot in Magneto's level where it's possible to fall victim to a near-instant kill -- and there are other obvious flaws like the forced AI companion (why?!), the wonky hit detection (though I'm used to it), the fact that you have to spend so much time farming for invincibility items, and the fact that you can just walk away from boss battles. That said, there is an actual, playable game here -- one that I've beaten a bunch of times without too much difficulty, and almost beat BITD with no help. It's frustrating, I'd probably give it 4/10, but there are a ton of NES games I'd be much more hesitant to revisit than this one. If it didn't have the X-Men license attached it wouldn't get half the criticism it does. And the complaints about the "label puzzle" are overblown -- it's very easy to solve if you pay attention to the red text (you don't even need all of it), and I figured it out for myself back in the 1990s. The problem is that the conditions for triggering the red text are pretty obscure, though if this had been a Japanese-exclusive game with anime characters (which it probably was going to be until it got repurposed into an X-Men game), those conditions would be part of the game's well-established lore. As it stands, we didn't know the trigger until a few years ago.

Thanks! When you clear Level 20, you get a different cutscene on each difficulty level (I did Lo and Med earlier this week). Hi doesn't give you credits or anything, but the animated sequence is more elaborate. Technically you get a cutscene after every 5 levels anyway, but the one at Level 20 definitely has an air of finality despite the fact that you can keep playing afterward. (I think the game crashes at Level 27.) And yeah, it's for a personal challenge. I prefer to beat my games on Hard difficulty or the equivalent before I call them 100% done. (That's one place where I'm at odds with a lot of people -- many folks use 1cc on defaults as the standard, but I don't aim for 1cc as a goal. That said I've done it plenty, e.g. Eliminate Down on Genesis last year, beaten 1cc on Hard mode with minimum starting lives, which I did partly because I don't like the game very much and wanted to obviate any "git gud" replies. ) Thanks! And yes, that's the one big fault -- you're so dependent on good RNG to get anywhere, that many games are practically a reset from the start. At least it only takes a couple seconds to start a fresh game. BTW I beat the NES version too, a couple years ago, but it was less harrowing somehow or maybe I've just forgotten. Still intense, but tonight was just exhausting even though I only played for about 40 minutes.

It's already been beaten, but checking in to note that I just beat Dr. Mario on Hi speed (with a starting virus level of 20). It's brutal! I don't think I blinked for 20 minutes, I was so terrified of choking away my winning run.

Yeah, my mistake on that -- I don't remember how I got that wrong, but I did. Thanks so much for checking on that! So it looks like any season is eligible, and the only question is whether Intermediate difficulty is required or the default Novice is OK. Like @Floating Platforms, for this challenge, I'd say 1st place on any season mode -- and, especially since Novice is the default and the ending doesn't change, any difficulty.

Well, the difficulty offers NOVICE, INTERMEDIATE and PRO options (capitalization as in the manual), while the season types are SHORT, INTERMEDIATE, and CHAMPIONSHIP. Since the game defaults to NOVICE and SHORT, I tend to think that's enough as long as you get an ending? (I usually aim for a minimum of Normal in my own playthroughs, and usually don't call a game done until I've beaten Hard. But that's my own quirk -- for efforts like VGS's, I think defaults are enough, barring a bad or non- ending.) But yes, the key question is which modes do or don't give endings. My suspicion is that either all settings will give the same ending (with the text changed to reflect difficulty and season), or it'll gatekeep itself at INTERMEDIATE difficulty but allow for an ending on the SHORT season. Thanks to Splain -- you're answering the unanswered questions! Maybe try NOVICE/SHORT next and see what you get? If you get essentially the same ending I think we have our answer and no others would need to be tried...

Yeah, I watched Moelleuh's video and maybe Atroz's too, and saw that they got no ending to speak of. It'd be a downer to work to get 1st place only to get the same "nothing" finish! I think this one is calling out for a savestate playthrough -- or a few of them -- to establish what's what. Not sure I'm the one to do it, as I've got an infant in the house, but I'll see what I can make happen. Maybe there's a way to turn off collision detection with a cheat? That'd make it much easier to blast through to the finish line (literally) and see what happens.

I liked True Lies GB too. It's very methodical and very fair. The one major annoyance is that they implemented passwords for every level, but chose only to give them to you on alternate levels. Kind of a dick move on a portable platform; it's not like there was a massive Game Boy rental market that had to be hedged against! Meanwhile I tried Jeep Jamboree, but man, that game is a painful slideshow. I was able to do OK in earlier races but as soon as the track gets cluttered it's an exercise in misery. The win condition is "Win the Championship race season on at least intermediate difficulty" -- is that because there's a known ending on that mode? The manual (which is garbage) doesn't mention anything about it and the available playthroughs on YouTube don't reach 1st place at the end. The Short or Intermediate seasons might be more achievable.

OK, Jack Nicklaus' Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf is done -- -- if you want to call a score like that "done". I didn't read the manual so I had no idea how to keep every shot from hooking severely, but I just played around that and had 3-4 passable holes and a whole bunch of absurdity. Dull, slow game, but I played during a long phone call so it all worked out.

Beat Hook: It's not as bad as I initially thought it was, but it's still a pretty dumpy game.

Thought I'd take care of Skull & Crossbones, since it's always fun:

For Greg Norman's Golf Power, we just have to play 18 holes of golf, regardless of the outcome, difficulty, or presence/absence of a CPU opponent -- correct? If so, that one's done, as I played a solo round on the US course on Amateur difficulty, and scored an impressively bad +24. I did get a few birdies along the way and almost got an eagle on my first hole, but there were a bunch of "disasters" along the way too (to use the game's term). It's a painfully slow and ridiculously "British programming of the 8-bit era" game, but at least it's playable. Hard to get much satisfaction from a playthrough without facing a CPU opponent, though I think they're apt to be tough.

Heh, even I've beaten Pro Quarterback (on Genesis), and I know about as much about football games as I do about...um...football. Not much, that is.

My wife and I beat it five times (N64 x 2 on Normal/Expert, PlayStation, Dreamcast x 2 on Medium/Very Hard) and had a blast! Four players might be even better. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy was also fun; we beat that one twice, on Easy and Hard.

With the power of coagulated dairy, Dragon Warrior III is done: Disappointing that they didn't have a screen with a full rollout of all four character names: AssCheez, Chedarse, ButtBrie, and Camembut. (Spent the whole game regretting that I didn't name him Camembum. Or, wait, no, I should have named my female priestess BumBrie. Either way.) It's a trip to realize I last played through this game almost 20 years ago, in October 2002. I don't remember much about it for some reason, probably because I savestated the hell out of it back then. It's a pretty well-designed game, with not too much excess grinding required after the start, though occasionally the "Where the hell am I and what do I do next?" syndrome crops up.

Don't worry, I can verify that it's crap.

Hey, I didn't see that you finished your project. Congrats! Since the TurboGrafx-16 is really like a "Super NES" (but not SNES) in a lot of ways, moving on to that makes a ton of sense to me.

Just for the record, I think all completions of Ghostbusters are legit, whether or not they trigger the 255 health glitch. A glitch that can be triggered through 100% routine gameplay never delegitimizes any attempt (not that I'm saying @nerdynebraskan is making any such claim). The case of Ghostbusters is especially extreme as you'd need to avoid using a needed gameplay resource in order to be sure of avoiding the glitch -- in other words, you'd have to avoid playing the game as intended. You don't even get an onscreen health bar display to tell you when you're on the edge of it! Not the player's fault the designers screwed up (in about five different ways -- for the most part, the SMS port wipes the floor with the NES version). Meanwhile, progress continues in Dragon Warrior III. I'm at the Cave of Necrogond and have been grinding there, finding my way around while trying not to use a map. Up to Level 32 or so, but those Marauders and Hologhosts are still a nightmare to deal with!

Oh, nice, I figured you'd be near the endgame by now! I've only beaten it once before, and that was with savestates in the early 2000s, so this is my first legit playthrough. I just got the Book of Satori, have 2 of 6 orbs, probably need to go to that tower near Soo next. Very standard party, no urge to turn anyone into a Sage. I'd forgotten how much the manual gives away -- I'm trying to look at it only when strictly necessary.

I'm 40-50% of the way through Dragon Warrior III, but I don't mind if anyone else takes the win, especially since Khromak started it first (I think). Just playing it for my own personal list!

*chef's kiss*, as the kids say these days.

I checked my notes and it took me 127 minutes over 3 sessions in a single day, so I guess I'm extremely average! I don't remember how I dealt with the Venom fight except a vague recollection that I brute-forced it using extra lives. I want to tackle the sequels but both of them seem like more of a hassle than the first, especially #2. I don't mind janky games, but janky games with puzzle elements are harder to swallow.