BriGuy82

32 minutes ago, Khromak said:

I've never taken any serious attempts at it with a controller, but my understanding is it's basically impossible with one. Even with the vaus controller I still find it obscenely hard, but I've not really put in enough time to really practice. Side note I looked at TMR's video for inspiration and saw him pause buffering and moving the paddle while paused (you can do this with the vaus, though you can't see where it is).

I feel you though, it's one of the white whales of the system and definitely one I'm dreading trying to actually beat. One day I'll have to actually buckle down and beat some of these really hard games...

Pause buffering, interesting. I've never heard of that before. I'll have to check out the video.

I'd REALLY like to make this the year I complete arkanoid...before I get too fucking old... But I'm not committing to it just yet. Maybe if I see a good deal on a vaus controller because the one I have is broke.

FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER

37 minutes ago, guitarzombie said:

YES!  I did it!  On my second 'real' attempt I beat "The Last Starfighter", wooo!!

My strats worked!  I was doing good then I bobbled in the middle but said I should just continue with it.  I ended up getting to the 2nd to last level with 3 lives, I died twice but I got another life when I beat it.  On the last level I had 2 lives, I died from a random shot from a spawn but with my last life I did it!  AND on my birthday!  What an exhilarating feeling you can only get from beating a tough NES game.  Is it hard?  Not really, I'd say its more random but my strats work!  I dont think you can use them cold but if you play the game a little and get a feel for it, I think anyone can really do it.  I tried to get a picture of the ending but it scrolled by too fast and I could only get the "Good" out of "Good Shooting Turkey" haha.  

Congrats and happy birthday!

21 hours ago, skinnygrinny said:

I’ve never put much time into recca or kabuki I would like to change that during this years contest.

I think you've put a lot of time into bukaki... On the receiving end. Oh, I'm sorry you said kabuki. Yeah give that a try.

28 minutes ago, skinnygrinny said:

Just here to look at @BriGuy82 avatar

Lol

Working on flight of the intruder. Haven't played it in a while. Almost beat it on my first try. I just wasted a bunch of lives remembering how to land the jet. 

That last level of Destination Earthstar you just need to stick to the bottom path over and over. Just keep going down at every fork. I avoided more than half of the flying atom enemies I saw in other people's play throughs on YouTube. If you still have the guns that can clear the ground just keep digging into the ground to clear those cannons that shoot up in the air.

Destination Earthstar

1 hour ago, Khromak said:

Funny you say that @BriGuy82 because I found the open space sections to be the more enjoyable part and found the side-scrolling shooter sections too difficult, which is why I gave up on trying to beat it. I am extremely bad at shooters though, so that might've played a role. Even with a save state at the beginning of each shooter stage, it still took me several attempts per level and I figured there was no chance I was going to string together all 8 of them in a row, since I could barely do 1 in a row on a good day lol.

The hardest part for me was that sometimes enemies come from the front, sometimes the back. Sometimes you can hide in the floor and avoid all the enemies, sometimes that's a death sentence. Random parts of the ceiling drop on you and you have to remember where, and sometimes you have to pick a path (up or down) and I would often slam into the ground because I'm going too fast/too slow. To me it felt like 8 highly choreographed dances in a row where if you mess up you die. The free-roaming space sections were all quite easy and I think I 1-shot all of them first try after getting the mechanics down, they were a nice relaxing change of pace between each of the highly stressful side-scrolling sections where I was sweating bullets.

This is all from memory, I haven't touched the game in a year or two.

Yeah, you gotta hope to stay powered up at the end or all your lives will just drop off. Also I made a map/key and noted which sections from each level had the enemies that would sneak from the back because those were the toughest parts. There were a lot less of those sections than I thought there was gonna be though. I think the route I took there was maybe around 10 sections throughout the entire game where they would come from behind. Which wasn't that bad.

37 minutes ago, mbd39 said:

Hey, is DE worth trying? It looks intriguing to me, but I've seen a lot of negative opinions on it.

 

Lol, I don't know. I think the game is just "ok". The side scrolling shooter levels are the funnest part of the game and they seem under-developed. The weapons and power ups are boring. Same with the enemies and bosses... boring. The real killer is when the outer space levels get longer and longer and kills the momentum of the game. I'm glad I tried it though. But it's no gradius or life force etc... the monotony is what kills it. Not the difficulty IMO.

Made pretty good progress in Destination Earthstar. Practiced by separating the side scrolling planet stages to play them all consecutively without the interruption of the space levels. Once I can consistently beat them all I'll go for the completion with the space levels. The game is generous with the extra lives, but the difficulty like gradius and most other shooters etc., is loosing your upgraded guns and being fucked on that last level.  Especially trying to shoot a path through all the falling obstacles blocking your way.

Got a nice sealed copy of Destination Earthstar. Gonna start playing it tonight.

That was my childhood copy of of Iron Sword finally being vanquished after 30+ years. And as an added bonus this was folded up with the game in the dust sleeve.

IRON SWORD

8 hours ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

I beat it when I was 8. For what it's worth I didn't have many other games to play so I didn't have much choice other than to stick with it.

Lol, you were just hoping for Fabio to pop up so you could polish his sword.

I'm at the end of Iron Sword. A game that I never made it past the first level when I was kid. I can't imagine any kid under the age of 10 ever beating this game. 

CLU CLU LAND

58 minutes ago, Khromak said:

Excited? How much have you played it before?

I watched 5 minutes of gameplay so I'm practically an expert.

Just bought a sealed copy of Destination Earth Star that I'm gonna open and complete for this thread. I'm excited.

POWER PUNCH 2

I'm on the final boss of power punch 2. I'm sorry I ever complained about the final boss of RoboCop 2. God bless whoever had the patience to figure this game out and write the gamefaq for this piece of shit. Reading it was more helpful than watching any video on YouTube. 

SPIDERMAN 

1 hour ago, Khromak said:

You mean once I told you that it was much, much easier.  Just kidding, glad you finally got him, fuck that guy!

I'm also glad to hear my memory was correct on that guy. I definitely fought him many, many times before figuring out WTF was going on. The first 2 are easy enough with the strat I was using that I didn't have to understand his mechanics, but the third one threw me for a loop for a while until I figured that out because I was throwing tons of bullets right at his invincible section and getting murdered.

Lol yes you were correct and thank you for the tip.

So for the final boss in RoboCop 2, each time you face them it's not only a different pattern, more importantly they have a different area of vulnerability and invincibility. If you shoot the wrong spot the bullets deflect right back at you. The final iteration you can't shoot the legs. You have to hit it in the upper torso or head. Once I figured that out it was much, much, easier.