scaryice

I beat Countdown Vampires last weekend. It's another flawed survival horror game in the books for me. Although, I'd say that Martian Gothic was more interesting, because CV was more of a straight forward RE clone. By the way, it feels wrong to type "CV" because my brain reads that as Castlevania. Or if not that, then Code Veronica. Anyway, I might try Galerians next.

I don't really think of YI as a collectathon either. But, I do think of it as a better and more unique game than Super Mario World, which to me didn't have the same impact as SMB3 (and which also made it even easier to fly over levels with the cape).

I don't think there's much of a reason to play an inferior port like the SNES Final Fight these days, so it was an easy vote for Mighty Final Fight.

There's something like 1400 total SFC games, so that would be even more ridiculous. To me, one interesting thing is how a game's placement might change based on the region. FF4 is such a great, classic rpg, but I would definitely rate the western version lower because of the changes they made.

That's a bit lower than I'd put X2. After playing it, X1 feels a bit basic in comparison. I think it'd be a top ten title for me. But, I totally expect X1 to do better in any ranking, since it was so much more popular back in the day. X2/X3/7 didn't get nearly as much attention back in the day, as people were kind of sick of Mega Man games by that point.

I'd go with Rollerball.

Lots of great games announced! I was planning on waiting for a Switch Pro/Switch 2, but I guess I should finally just buy one soon.

bumping again

TMNT IV is a fun game, although I feel like it gets a bit overrated because of the license/nostalgia.

Been playing a lot of PSX stuff recently, starting with a longer rpg and then blasting through some shorter stuff. Here's a recap of what I've beaten: 8/26 - Beyond the Beyond. This was the 16th turn-based PS1 rpg I've beaten. Yeah, it's kind of unremarkable - I don't think you need to play this unless you've exhausted all the best known titles on the system. And, the encounter rate is ridiculous. That certainly will turn off many people from giving it a chance. But, I enjoyed it regardless - the difficulty makes it interesting. It's nice when jrpgs have dungeons that aren't just straight lines and require some actual thought. Preliminary ranking is 11/16 on my PS1 rpg list. 8/27 - Jumping Flash 2. I only did the normal mode and not the extra, but that still counts. I'd played the original a few times, the first time probably twenty years ago now, so it was fun to finally try the second one. As you might guess, it was more of the same. Fun for sure, but I can see why it didn't have the same impact. They needed more of a leap forward to make the series popular, I guess. With my experience, this was very easy to finish, like 60-90 minutes. 8/28 - Resident Evil: Survivor. It was only after beating the game that I realized one death would've sent me back to the beginning, so I'm glad I didn't die! I probably would've been more cautious had I known that. I cut it very close on the final battle, maybe a hit or two left at the end. The story and voice acting was maybe the most ridiculous of any PS1 RE game, in that familiar enjoyable way. Overall, it was a nice way to reuse some assets and make a different experience. I can see why people buying it at full price might've been upset, though. 8/30 - Nightmare Creatures. Cool game, shame about the controls. Despite that, I had a lot of fun with this one. I picked the girl, but started over with the guy after a few levels. He can take more hits, which made it easier to survive. This is one of those games where it's very important to not waste items/lives since they carry over from stage to stage. Your game also saves over your previous save, so I couldn't go back and replay anything earlier. Of course, this lead to me having almost nothing left for the final stage, which made it super hard. 9/9 - Martian Gothic: Unification. This was quite the memorable experience. It's typical PS1 survival horror gameplay, but with three characters that you can switch to at any moment. This means three times the item management, although at least you can send items from character to character. And you will need almost every single item to use in some obscure way. The puzzles were certainly trickier than your typical RE "spade key in spade door" stuff. Now, I personally absolutely hate looking up answers in games. I beat freaking Phantasy Star 1-4 without looking anything up. But, after several hours of useless wandering, I had to break down and admit defeat to Martian Gothic. I only looked up one thing (which had a truly dumb solution), and I think that's quite impressive. So be prepared for a challenge if you try this one. What was not a challenge was the combat, which features unkillable zombies, although they don't pose too much of a threat. I had way too much ammo at the end that I didn't use. The story was actually quite interesting, too and I got real System Shock 1 vibes from the space setting and audio logs. The voice acting was mostly downright goofy. Entertaining to be sure, though. Overall, much of the game lacked polish and was hard to deal with. But, it was such a fascinating game in many respects. I'm glad I played it, even if it wasn't good. 9/9 - Floating Runner. 99% of this game's difficulty is in the final boss, who seems impossible at first. Plus, continuing at that point reduces your max health, which makes him get even harder. Even watching videos of what to do, I had to go through the game three times to finally beat it. Luckily, the levels leading up to him are a breeze, maybe 30 minutes once you know what you're doing. Finally, I somehow finished him, one hit away from death at the end of a desperate struggle. I don't think this game's controls are bad like some people say, but the camera is awful, and the shooting and level design could use a lot of work. There's no drama until the end, since you can continue infinitely. So unless you care about points, much of it is just boring. The enemies themselves are weirdly chaotic and not fun to deal with. The best comparison that comes to mind is Mighty Bomb Jack on the NES, oddly. 9/10 - Loaded. I had unfinished business with this one after owning it back in the day. Unfortunately, it wasn't worth the few hours it took to beat. I used Cap'n Hands, who might be the best character. It was just a matter of slowly clearing out the many rooms to get the many key cards, in what usually is far too dark lighting. Later on, there are a few brighter levels and a few better enemies (robots). Still not worth it, though. There are the elements here for a great game - cool soundtrack, interesting characters, nice controls. But it needs better enemies, better level design, and more variety in gameplay.

I'll say it again, you should post the last 25 one at a time, day by day in a big countdown for maximum hype.

Still gotta finish this one. I got stuck at some point and I didn't want to use a guide, so I'll get back to it eventually. Also, am I stupid, or can we no longer center text on this site?

There's a lot of bad Sunsoft games, they just kept them in Japan.

I count 1,538 total games for NES/FC/FDS. That's a more inclusive number separately counting all the debatable cases with a slightly different release (like the two versions of Clu Clu Land, Power Blazer vs Power Blade, and so on). It could easily be 20 games less if you went the other way.

Definitely one of the most overrated NES games at this point!

Nice! I still need to beat Ironsword without using the magic glitch.

Try searching for パピヨンギャルズ on Mercari or Yahoo.

You're having quite a productive NES week, huh? Keep up the good work! I haven't beaten any of the games you've posted over the past few days, so I don't have much to say about them. I played a bit of G.I. Joe 2 this year and it seemed decent (I did beat the first one years ago). I remember trying Ren & Stimpy before, and yeah, it seemed awful.

When I beat Plok in 2015, I figured out a nice way to farm lives/continues. Here's what I wrote at the time: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/588578-plok/72347627

Even though I'm a huge fan of the system, I don't think most of the NES expensive list is very good. Little Samson sure, and maybe Dragon Fighter & Bubble Bobble 2 are worth playing, but there's a lot of generic stuff there. I'd say it's mostly meh, myself.

I could possibly put it over FF2-3, but I don't think it would be in the top 6. I'm still a big fan of Metal Max, though! I did play Metal Saga first (which is very similar but more advanced and open world) and I prefer that one. As for Madara, I thought the auto-playing battle system was just too boring, with little strategy involved.

Little Big Planet 3 (PS3) from a Redbox on November 25, 2014.

#1012 - RoboCop One of the cheapest and most common games I had left is now mine, and more importantly it's also the last Data East game. This is publisher set 19/33 (see the first post for links to previous photos): Data East games 1986-06-03 B-Wings 1986-10-08 Buggy Popper 1987-06-12 Herakles no Eikou: Toujin Makyouden 1987-12-09 Golf Club Birdie Rush 1988-01-29 Donald Land 1988-02-26 Tantei Jinguuji Saburou: Yokohamakou Renzoku Satsujin Jiken 1988-03-30 Be-Bop High School: Koukousei Gokuraku Densetsu 1988-08-12 Soccer League: Winner's Cup 1988-10-21 Cobra Command 1989-01-31 World Grand-Prix: Pole to Finish 1989-03-31 Home Run Nighter: Pennant League 1989-08-25 RoboCop 1989-12-23 Herakles no Eikou II: Titan no Metsubou 1990-03-02 Heavy Barrel 1990-03-23 Boulder Dash 1990-07-24 Home Run Nighter '90: The Pennant League 1990-09-14 Little Magic 1990-09-28 Tantei Jinguuji Saburou: Toki no Sugiyuku Mama ni 1990-12-21 Dai Kaijuu: Deburas 1991-02-08 Dark Lord 1991-04-02 RoboCop 2 1991-05-24 Metal Max Only 7/22 of these made it to North America. I've always thought of Data East, a.k.a. the cooler-sounding DECO, as a company that made of a lot of weirder but still decent games. Metal Max is a good example of that - it's much different than your normal turn-based rpgs of that era, and I enjoyed it more than better known Famicom-only titles like Lagrange Point and Sweet Home. Bump 'n Jump (Buggy Popper), Donald Land, and Heavy Barrel are all fun to me as well. Still, they seemed to lack the ability to make something great. Heracles, Metal Max, and Jinguuji Saburou (Jake Hunter) all went on to be long-running series, although barely any of those games have gotten a western release. It looks like they were going for a red color theme with their carts for a while (5 in a row), then they just dropped it - I wonder why. Most of the cart art seems to be a little boring and uninspired. As far as rarity/value, I'd say that Dark Lord is tops, although nothing here is too bad. Robocop 2 and the second Jinguuji Saburou game are harder to find as well.

Finally, I beat Juvei Quest yesterday. So much of the game was similar to Dragon Quest, from the logo to the battle system to the menus and even some of the monster designs. Still, if you're going to copy, do it from the best. Despite some lackluster graphics and sound, the battles and gameplay were fun, and I think this game had enough unique elements to stand out compared to some of the other 8-bit rpgs I've played. There were a few tricky 'puzzle' elements to it, which will probably be the most memorable part of it for me (I mentioned the song before, but I got stuck a few more times until I eventually worked it out). There's also two sections in the game where you switch over to a completely separate party that you build from scratch - these parts aren't too long, but they're a nice change of pace from your main party. I think Kaijuu Monogatari (an earlier Namco Famicom rpg) had something similar, where you could switch between party members and eventually join them. That's another one on my list to play eventually. Juvei Quest also has helper characters you can summon (to fast travel or talk to animals, for example), and your party members have out of battle abilities as well, like the dog who can sniff for hidden items. I feel like I say this for every Famicom rpg I beat, but the game was quite long. I definitely had to grind a bunch at the end. The game does allow you to save at any point, which I'm not a fan of, since it trivializes any kind of risk-taking or danger. But in this case, it seems like it was balanced around this save system, since it does unfair stuff like warp you out of a dungeon for failing to disarm a chest. Reminds me of Tomb Raider 2, how the game allowed you to save anywhere on PS1 but massively increased the difficulty as well. I still don't like it, though. This was the 16th turn-based 8-bit rpg I've beaten. Here's my rough ranking: Dragon Quest 3 Dragon Quest 2 Final Fantasy Mother Phantasy Star Dragon Quest 4 Final Fantasy 2 Final Fantasy 3 Metal Max Sweet Home Ultima 4 Lagrange Point Mouryou Senki Madara Dragon Quest Legend of the Ghost Lion Juvei Quest wouldn't go in the top half... I'd say around 10th, slightly better than Sweet Home & Ultima 4? I'm starting to wonder if I was too hard on Lagrange Point. I think maybe, I just expected a lot out of Konami, whereas a more unknown Namco game can leave me with a better impression. Hmm...

Some great turn-based rpgs that haven't been mentioned yet are Legend of Legaia for PS1, plus Metal Saga and Wizardry on PS2. Skip Chrono Cross, Xenogears and Xenosaga, they're overrated.