nerdynebraskan

Roger Clemens MVP Baseball is done for another year.

Captain America is done. 

I just thought I would put up this list to get a sense of how things are going. I'm about halfway through the regular season of Clemens baseball. I may have time to break the Power Pad out next week and try Dance Aerobics again, but it kicked my ass in a way that the other Power Pad games didn't. If someone else wants to go for it, just say so. The only other game left on this board that I've beaten before is Captain America, which I might also try again next week. I got my ass kicked on it when I tried again last year, but I'm a little bit motivated after watching a guy on YouTube crush it in 20 minutes a few days ago.

I think we've had four different games be the very last to fall in the years that we've succeeded. L'Empereur and Mutant Virus are already down, but I think someone will have to beat the Andretti racing game and To the Earth soon to keep that streak going.

In the meantime, I'm with Bonnie Tyler. We're holding out for heroes to tackle these unclaimed games.

36 minutes ago, Daniel_Doyce said:

Well, to be fair, I smoke cigars and watch retro softcore nudie vids all day anyway, especially now that I retired this year.

Anyway, Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2 is done. Since @Gaia Gensouki is doing Genghis Khan, that may be it for me for this year.

Any chance the tobacco and titties would keep you cool long enough to power through Championship Pool?

Super Spike V'Ball is done.

I've started Clemens Baseball. I'm 3-0, with 30 regular season games to go.

Little Ninja Brothers is done. I played through the action stages on "Normal" this time; I think I beat it the first two times on Easy.

@Daniel_Doyce

Like I said, if you're ready to start it this week, you can have Carmen Sandiego. You seem to prefer not playing the Koei games back-to-back.

10 hours ago, Daniel_Doyce said:

I am planning to wrap up RotTK1 by Tuesday and am willing to do Carmen Sandiego next, if that sways you towards Roger Clemens Baseball.

3 Bases Loaded games left, ugh. Where's the guy who said he beat all 4 Bases Loaded games and like 20 other 9/10s within the first week of the competition a few years ago?

I was leaning towards Carmen, but I suppose I could let you have it if you're interested in starting it next week. Have you done it before? Last warning to @Foochie776; if you started this game buddy, you'd better get in here and let us know.

And I've not been super worried about the Bases Loaded games. Last I heard, @Khromak was playing the first one and @McBryce had committed to 3 and 4 (and was making good progress on the latter).

On 3/20/2024 at 11:23 PM, Dr. Morbis said:

I'm curious what you think is so terrible about leaving a NES on for extended periods... the console overheating and burning down your house?... your power bill?... the game getting corrupted?... a power out losing your progress?...   Seriously, what is the issue?

I leave my NES on overnight all the time, even with games with battery saves if there's a difference from turning it off (ie: Final Fantasy to keep my place in the battle script instead of having to start over with the first battle out of 256).  I just pause the game, turn off the TV, then walk out of the room; I've literally never had a problem in my life...

My concerns are a mix of the console being damaged from overheating, the game corrupting, and the possibilities of a hiccup in the power coming from the wall. I'm happy that you've never had problems, but I haven't been so lucky. 

Also, in other news:

I reached the final boss of Little Ninja Brothers tonight. It should be done soon. I'll probably start Clemens Baseball or Carmen Sandiego next (unless @Foochie776 is playing it).

1 hour ago, Khromak said:

I love this title and it's officially canon in my head now.

Unrelated, I actually already have this game plugged in to my system, I was going to give it a shot. Looking through gameplay videos, it's really weird because it seems like they're playing the same stages over and over again. Anyone know if this is required to progress, or if there's some weird strategy going on here?

There's a map and you can clearly move along it. I know the two characters can move independently and then once they're together you can swap between them, but both before and after that happens in the longplays I'm looking at, they're repeating the same stage with the same character. It's really odd.

Captain America could have been a B+ title, but it suffers from a severe case of Copy/Paste Syndrome. You spend way too much time playing through nearly identical levels and fighting progressively harder versions of the same bosses and mini-bosses. And the developers artificially pad the length further by punishing you with much higher difficulty and backtracking penalties for every time you die as the game goes on. It's a decent concept that devolved into a slog in its execution. The Avengers' plane is nice for skipping levels, but you get it so late and that stage has the jerk-ass mini-bosses right at the top so be very careful not to be killed by them.

8 hours ago, scaryice said:

I'm against it. If you allow them for this kind of convenience, then it's a slippery slope to allowing them for other things too. I don't think there's many games which even necessitate you to leave your system on for that long. A better use of your time is probably just doing a run on emulator with save states to practice, and then doing a real run without them.

The game that would be the strongest counterpoint for me is Tetris 2. 50 stages in one session, and there's a fair bit of luck involved since the pieces you're given are random. It's unfortunately common in my experience to be stuck on any given stage for 30-45 minutes. It's inevitably a 10+ hour commitment that emulator practice wouldn't do much to shorten. It's furthermore the kind of game that save states wouldn't even help you cheat at.

Now for someone who seems to emulate extensively, that may be less of an issue. Are you fed up with Tetris 2 for the night, or need to get to bed for work in the morning? You may only be on level 43, but you can just minimize that window and put the computer to sleep for the night. But for those of us still using the 30 year old consoles, leaving that on for 24+ hours straight is a very different thing. 

On 3/18/2024 at 2:36 PM, Khromak said:

What's the deal with save states for long games? Is it acceptable to save state at the end of a play session to alleviate the whole "leave your console on for days straight" issue? There are a couple games I'm looking at with infinite continues/ lives, but they're long and don't have passwords or save functionality.

I'm also interested in a bit more discussion on this. I don't care for save states, but I think I could live with using them in lieu of leaving a 35 year old console for days at a time with the kind of long games that Khromak is talking about. 

I've restarted Little Ninja Brothers. It's stable on my other Everdrive, and I'm having a ball.

32 minutes ago, BriGuy82 said:

Pulled a few "star games" out. Gonna work on them for a while.

Are you wanting to play Star Voyager for your own personal satisfaction? Because it's already been beaten for this thread for the year. Now, Star Soldier still needs to be done, and its reputation isn't quite as savage as Star Force or Starship Hector. I suck at all three, but I'm not a shooter ace.

On 3/2/2024 at 12:51 PM, Foochie776 said:

Is Carmen San Diego tough or tedious?

Did you start Carmen Sandiego? If so, how's it going?

I could use another long, mellow game. I could start Carmen, if it didn't grab @Foochie776's interest. Or I could do Roger Clemens MVP Baseball again, assuming that @TheGameDisplay isn't working on it. I may also try Little Ninja Brothers again; I remembered that this game has a history of acting up on this Everdrive, so I may have to go to my backup or... maybe even pull my original cart for it! Shocking!

All-Pro Basketball is done for another year.

I finished with an official record of 28-7 and won the championship. I actually won seven games in a row today to go to 28-0, and then just decided to leave the Nintendo on and let the computer beat me 120-0 in the next six games while I went about my daily chores. When I started the 35th and final game, I picked up the controller mid-game while I was trailing by about 30 points. I came back and won that game, so my real record should have been 29-6.

All of my previous wins at this game were perfect 35-0 seasons that the end screen called 34-1 every damn time. So apparently, you just lose the last game no matter what. I hope no one has ever played this game to the end while tied with their last opponent (usually San Francisco) 2-2.

On 3/14/2024 at 6:16 PM, Daniel_Doyce said:

Ok I really hate this game now. 10 hours in and I got softlocked somehow.

I don't know much about Warriors of Destiny. Does this mean that your whole playthrough was screwed? What happened? Did you miss a critical item that you can't go back for? 

In unrelated news, it looks like I've clinched the completions crown for the 11th straight year.

I'm now 21-0 in All-Pro Basketball. I don't think I even need to win another game, but I still have to play 14 more for the ending.

Oh, and it looks like there are exactly 677 points left on the board. That's neat.

You're a beast, @BriGuy82! What's next? 

I'm now 14-0 in All-Pro Basketball. 

1 hour ago, mbd39 said:

The Mexican Runner had to use save state practice for the last boss. That looks like where most of the game's high difficulty comes from.

It's the fast, invincible missiles that are bullshit. They start from the first level, but they multiply like rabbits by the last stage. And in the last stage, they also spam bullets all over the screen, too. That last boss is kind of a classic distraction boss. You need to concentrate your fire there, of course, but the real danger is from the missiles. And reaching that boss is a chore because those missiles are all over the last stage.

1 minute ago, BriGuy82 said:

Started on bo Jackson baseball. It's actually not a bad game, so that's a pleasant surprise. I thought about starting a bases loaded season but I just can't do it. The playing the whole game from the pitchers perspective hurts my brain.

Bo Jackson Baseball and Tecmo Baseball remind me of Bases Loaded, but are both mercifully much shorter. I hope you played around with the options menu in BJB; you can reduce the number of games in each series and even the length of games to six innings (I believe). Just watch out for the goofy team select menu options between games. It's easy to select the wrong team. I'm partial to playing that game with the Chicago-A (not-White Sox); BJB is one of several NES baseball games that had no license with MLB and/or the MLBPA, but very clearly modeled its clubs and rosters on the contemporary MLB. Bo Jackson is hidden on a few teams, but since he actually played for the White Sox at that point he's right there in the starting line-up of the totally-not-White Sox of Chicago-A.

10 hours ago, guitarzombie said:

Good job guys.  I think for me my time is pretty close to the end here, as I don't have much to offer left.  The only games listed I own are:

Alpha Mission

Captain America

Championship Pool

Formula 1 (I think?)

James Bond Jr.

Jungle Book

Kings of the Beach

Silkworm

Star Force

and out of all of those, the only one I've beaten previously is James Bond Jr.  I may give that one a crack at some point.  If I get my hands on a Gold Medal Challenge I could do that, as I enjoy the game.

I don't know... it looks like you have plenty you could keep busy with to the end of this challenge, if you want to. As someone who has beaten The Mutant Virus, you're probably capable of beating any of these except for maybe Championship Pool. It's a toss-up between CP, Arkanoid, and Ikari Warriors for the hardest game left on the board.

The only ones on this list that I've beaten are Captain America and Kings of the Beach. Captain America is not horrible, but it gets repetitive and the difficulty can be aggravating once you get west of the Misssissippi River. But as long as you know where you can farm extra continues, you can generally play the game for as long as you like. Kings of the Beach is pretty brutal, but it has a password system so you don't have to do it all in one sitting.

I've also reached the final boss of Silk Worm. That game is pretty manageable until the last stage; its difficulty is average at worst in the first 75% of the game. But that last level... yikes. I can't tell you how much I hate how the invincible missiles suddenly spray bullets in multiple directions as well in the last stage.

I'm now 7-0 in All-Pro Basketball. I was curious, so I ran a stopwatch on one of my games. It seems like I'm at a point where I not only win every game comfortably, but I can burn through games between 17-18 minutes apiece. So the full 35 game season will take me about 10.5 hours.

I have started All-Pro Basketball.