the_wizard_666

I can't wait...for the inevitable cease and desist order.  Pretty sure it's all fine except "Simon Quest," but given that it was part of the Castlevania Collection a couple years back, Konami may well want to protect that name.

58 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

I started Pool of Radiance FYI. 

Great game IMO, though the final fight is brutal.  The level cap feels far too low.

51 minutes ago, WashYourFace said:

It's been a long time since I played it, but as I recall you can just walk away from the bosses (except maybe the last guy?) and not fight them. That's how I beat it. I don't know if that's a "glitch" but the whole game is a glitchy mess.

That's really only if you play as Nightcrawler.  Normally you have to kill the boss to get the key to continue, but Nightcrawler can just walk through the gate and continue on.

30 minutes ago, Khromak said:

No kids, 3 nieces. Two of them live 12 hours away, but one is reasonably close! I don't spend enough time with her to indoctrinate her into the NES lifestyle though

My nieces play periodically, but usually if they're bored.  They don't particularly like it.  Though they've only really tried SMB, and since I hate that one they probably picked up on that  

1 hour ago, Khromak said:

I just finished Kirby's adventure, a game I'd never played for more than a half hour previously. Gotta say, I was pretty disappointed. It looks great, sounds great, love the animations and I love the IDEA of the game, but the controls were frustrating throughout, vanilla Kirby sucks, and a lot of the powers felt sluggish or downright useless. 

It's not an awful game, especially not by nes standards, but I was expecting much better

I remember when I played it.  While I liked it, I definitely felt like it overstayed it's welcome.  If it was half as long I would probably have liked it a lot more.

59 minutes ago, Khromak said:

Hmmm IDK what glitches you're referring to but I don't *think* I used any, at least not that I'm aware of.

It's definitely not unplayable solo. Outside of the fact that you lose 1 character per level to the shitty AI, it's perfectly functional after that. The lack of i-frames, knockback, and enemy respawns can get annoying, but they're all pretty manageable with some experience and careful play. I can typically knock out a win in 2-3 hours or < 10 tries. It's not too bad, just gotta use the right characters for each stage, be careful and take it slow.

Fun fact - if you play and subsequently leave the practice level, you get all your dead characters back.  Not sure if it's intentional or not, but it can definitely help.

While I'm happy to see it get documented, that box makes me so fucking sad! Hope you can find a replacement for it.  On the plus side, at least it's not on the display side, so it'll still look alright on the shelf.

15 minutes ago, Khromak said:

I've been meaning to have a friend play it with me, but I don't have a lot of local friends who are into retro games. Maybe none.

Well that sucks You got kids you can train, or nephews/nieces?

3 hours ago, Khromak said:

X-Men is beaten for another year. Always frustrating, but still has its fun parts. It's mostly enjoyable for me at this point, except when I get stuck in a corner or trapped by a magnet and die before I can control my character...

I've always liked X-Men.  Rented it a bunch when I was a kid.  It's not great solo, but it's pretty fun when played with a friend.

Digger T. Rock is done.  Took like 3 hours of practice to knock it off, but by the time I did I got a no-death run.  Maybe one day I'll do a no-warp run, but probably not.  Even though you can only skip the first three levels, none of them should be particularly difficult.  The only real bitch was the final level, but that was more a matter of execution with the shittacular jumping mechanics.  Still, I would recommend it overall, it's definitely fun, if a bit frustrating at times.

55 minutes ago, Mega Tank said:

People posting and bragging about their collection size like they are compensating for something.

Right?  Like, when I saw that comment where 2500 seemed small, it kinda confused me.  I have more than double that, but 2500 games is still a massive collection.  Even Gloves at 550 has a hell of a collection.  Saying it's small is some weird passive aggressive overcompensation imo.

The general rule has typically been that in the case of multiple endings, any would suffice, though in a case like that, omitting the ending you get for not playing the game makes sense, and is totally in the spirit of the game. 

With regard to difficulty settings, I go with "what is the intent?" Something that locks out levels on lower difficulties would require the highest setting to complete.  Otherwise, it'd be whatever settings let you see the true ending.  

Mappyland is done.  Some frustrating bits, but unlimited continues makes it just a matter of attrition. I kinda dig how it plays mostly like the classic game, but with platforming elements.  No clue why i never tried it earlier, but yeah, its done now.

Winter Games is done.  With how challenging the other "Games" games were, I was kinda surprised how simple this one was.  No default scores to beat, so literally just "get a score" is enough.  Surprised it wasn't done already to be honest.

4 hours ago, Daniel_Doyce said:

Since I see there has been some "competition" in the Koei block, I'm going to start on L'Empereur. I want to beat every Koei game on highest difficulty, so I'll start with Scenario 1.

If anyone really was feeming to beat this one, let me know, and I'll pick another one and still beat it for fun later in the year

With L'Empereur, starting on scenario 1 is the only real way to do it.  Later scenarios are just making the game shorter.

44 minutes ago, scaryice said:

Eh, I'm not sure that I want to have a bonus list this year. I'd like to actually finish the licensed list this time, plus there's a ton of bonus points already from the pain points.

Not gonna stop me from posting every time I beat an unlicensed game, just in case.  And because I enjoy them.  And because they shouldn't be separate anyway.  But I digress

Still not sure what's going to be on the bonus list, but I'll mention that I knocked off Puzzle in case it happens to be on there.

Oops...double post

3 hours ago, Gloves said:

As an Oblivion fan I'm sure this goes without saying, but really go and explore, talk to NPCs etc.. There's so much goodness out there. 

Oh absolutely! I've logged hundreds of hours in the past already, but I've never finished the main quest, and being an achievement whore I want to truly finish it off.  But honestly, I'm just using it as a warmup for when I do Morrowind.  Now THAT'S a game!

3 hours ago, Gloves said:

Of the content for the game, it's probably my favourite. 

Considering how awesome the game is, that's high praise.  Now I'm looking forward to it!

12 hours ago, Gloves said:

Have you done Shivering Isles before? I fuckin' loved that content.

Nope, not at all.  I've had it for a long ass fucking time, just never started it.

Update:

Wizardry V - No progress.  On hold for now, will pick up again shortly.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - New save because it's been over a decade.  Due to prior achievement progress, I only need to progress the Mages Guild and Dark Brotherhood questlines, plus the main quest and Shivering Isles quests...but I'm playing it for fun more than progress at the moment so I've done a few other things as well.

Other - While I've only done 1 game from my list so far, I'm currently on an 11 day new completion streak for the NES (12 games total), and have also removed a Game Boy game from my backlog.  Not sure if I want to track that, but I figured despite the lack of updates to the games I chose for this thread, I've still done well at chipping away at the overall backlog.

Well, I had decided on a lark to play some Bandit Kings of Ancient China, and made okay progress early on.  Unfortunately, it also turns out the battery is dead, so I'll have to change that before I can continue.

26 minutes ago, DarkTone said:

So 3 people in less than a month. Theres something odd about this...

How so?  Once it was discovered, several top players immediately started gunning for it.  I'm not surprised that several did it in relatively quick succession.  It would be different if nobody was playing for it and suddenly three people did it, but they were all gunning for it.

Blades of Steel is done.

I honestly don't see what the issue is with people messaging about specific things.  I can see given the context of this thread in particular how it might be viewed weird, but I feel like a random PM asking for things that wasn't mentioned in the thread would be far scuzzier.  But even then, I would never fault someone for shooting their shot.  That said, I had a feeling @Code Monkey wasn't planning to scoop rares off me during a depression.  It simply wouldn't make sense based on what I know about him.  Sure, I could see him asking about specific items, but only if I had actually MENTIONED them.  He knows a few of them, and I've stated I wasn't looking to sell them.  I also gave him free reign to make offers if he chose to do so, but also warned him that my price might be beyond sanity because I wasn't looking to move on from them.  So had it actually been offers, it wouldn't have been shocking.

Anyway, I also know this thread may have got some people worried about me.  Honestly, I'll be okay.  I've struggled longer than I can remember with bipolar disorder and general depression, coupled with what is likely ADHD and possibly other underlying issues.  The worst part is that I haven't been properly treated for it, and am working on that process.  I have life issues on top that have caused my mind to spiral.  But with that said, despite having suicidal thoughts, I'm not at a point where that's a thing I am actually considering.  And I have resources available if that changes.  I'm struggling, sure, but I'm not in danger at this point.  The thoughts did lead me to this topic, but it wasn't a cry for help so much as just a place my mind went while thinking about what I'd be leaving behind.  Believe me, I do appreciate the concerns and all, but hopefully this corner will be turned in due time. 

Anyway, I'm not worried about logging the games, though I have yet to find an app that has everything I have.  Even Pricecharting is missing a bunch of stuff.  And then it gets complicated considering the piles of peripherals, consoles, books, pamphlets, merch, etc.  Short of putting together my own spreadsheets I don't know a good way to document it all.  And adding values, keeping it all updated, etc...that to me is just a bit outside of my skillset.  Trawling through the boxes isn't as daunting as some would think, despite the quantity.  It's the documentation that gets me.

2 hours ago, NESfiend said:

I thought captain skyhawk was done, but the last boss turned blue instead of blowing up. I am still alive amd can fly around, but shooting isnt doing anything. Weird. 

It looks to me like the game crashed.  Talk about shitty timing.  I would probably count that myself, at least for the purpose of this list, but regardless, I know how much work that game takes, and as fun as it is, that's a shite way to end off.

38 minutes ago, McBryce said:

I feel the same. It took me a while, but I never really got bored or frustrated at all. My only complaint is that the target scores at the end are way too high. They don’t really give you enough targets to even come close, so you are stuck flying around and chasing planes whenever you happen upon them. I didn’t notice until the last mission that you get about 150,000 for returning to base, so I just kept looping around and landing until I got to the point threshold. All in all, very enjoyable, and I will probably knock out F117-A soon because it looks like basically the same game.

I actually tried to get into F-117A right after, but for whatever reason it didn't hit the same.  They added a few things to the formula, so that could've had something to do with it.  But yeah, I thought it was weird because I really dug F-15, but F-117A was meh.  Can't figure that one out for the life of me

13 minutes ago, Brickman said:

Ice Climber done. What a POS game.

Not gonna lie, i kinda dig the game...but 32 levels? Fuck that noise