Jaden

April 12th, 2024 - Half-Life (Windows) (Any%) (Hard Difficulty) I've gotten a little Doom-ed out and wanted to try another FPS game. Thankfully, Half-Life scratched that itch for more first person action. Not only that, but this game is one of the few that has really gripped me from beginning to end. I was constantly wondering where the story would go, what strange aliens I'd be fighting next, and what puzzles I'd be solving. It's a really great game all the way through... well, except for Xen. Maybe it's because my first playthrough of this game was on hard mode, but Xen kicked my ass quite a few times. It was mainly those stupid flying things that shoot fireballs that drove me up the wall. The final boss also took me a while to figure out. Even after I realized I was supposed to destroy the crystals, I couldn't even tell if I was doing damage to it or not. That final batter was definitely my least favorite part of the game. Other than that, I think this made for an incredible experience. The atmosphere this game provides is unreal, especially for 1998. It genuinely creeped me out and startled me in a few places. And the level design and puzzles are all top notch stuff. My favorite puzzle might actually be the air strike one where you have to blow up these stone walls to get to the next area. Really clever stuff. Anyway, I'm not really sure what to play next. To be honest, my interest in gaming has been kinda fading away for the past few years. I've even contemplated giving up video games for good and selling my entire collection. Half-Life really helped get me back into games again and I'm thankful for it. However, I still feel a bit directionless. I could do Half-Life 2 next, but there's so much other stuff I want to play and I kinda want to take a break from FPS games in general. I don't know. I'm sure I'll think of something.

We have a winner! Love this game. For those who haven't played Jumping Flash and love quirky games like I do, I can't recommend it enough.

Well, the timing on this was pretty bad since the NES weekly contests JUST started. So, I don't expect there to be many guesses. The only guess so far is incorrect. I'll share another picture, but this might be giving it away.

Seems like a pretty neat game! I guess it's my turn now (although it admittedly doesn't feel fair since I had to look up all the Intellivision games to find it). I tried to pick a good one. So, here it goes!

Tower of Doom! I could tell that it was an Intellivision game by the font, but actually figuring out which one was rather tough. It's admittedly not a library I'm familiar with.

Almost looks like something from Darkseed.

Talk about a coincidence. I had actually just finished Metroid as well. This was my first time beating the game. And while it is pretty janky in some spots, I still had a blast playing the game, looking for secrets, and defeating Mother Brain. I think Zelda 1 has aged much better than Metroid, but it's still a great time all around. For the record, I was working on a map for this game but never finished it. In the end, I mainly got around by memory and was still able to finish the game without much trouble. The hardest part for me was those stupid infinitely spawning bugs, but the ice beam thankfully makes them pretty much harmless. So, Guardian Legend next? February 12th, 2024 - Metroid (NES) (Any%)

I was going to make a dedicated thread for all my completed games, but it probably makes more sense to post them all here and not clutter the forum with useless threads nobody will see. January 12th, 2024 - Splatterhouse (TG16) (Normal difficulty) The original Splatterhouse is one of my favorite games of all time, but I've never actually beaten the TurboGrafx-16 version. I'm kinda bummed this never got ported to other consoles like NES and Genesis, but this is still a lovely version of the game. It's easier than the arcade game (though there is a secret hard mode) and there is far less gore on display here. I feel like the controls aren't nearly as tight or responsive as the arcade version either, but that's probably just me being weird. It was still a ton of fun blasting through this game. I cite this as one of the few examples where story and gameplay are perfectly intertwined. This is how you communicate your plot through the action. Great stuff! January 18th, 2024 - A Bug's Life (PS1) (100%) I don't think I could have picked two more different games to group together even if I tried! A Bug's Life was one of my favorite games growing up, but I never got to see the end of it. Now that I have, I can say that it's a pretty solid puzzle platformer all around. The controls are very slippery and it can be hard making some jumps and walking along thin platforms in the later levels. The second to last level is pretty stupid, as the game still expects you to collect all the grain pieces and kill all the enemies while flying through a tunnel at a set speed. You can go back, but only at parts of the level where there are two paths. There is no button to turn around, which makes that level more difficult than it needs to be. But still, there were some pretty decent puzzles here that got me scratching my head. I also finished all three bonus levels, which I literally just learned about today. I saw I still had three locked movie clips and didn't know how to get them. I would have never figured out how to get to these bonus levels as a kid. They're nothing special, but it's nice to get to experience them. As for the next game I'm going to complete, maybe an NES game? I was thinking the original Metroid would be a fun one to tackle. Or possibly The Guardian Legend. I'm not sure. I'll have to think about it. Overall, I'm hoping to finish a lot more games in 2024 than I did in previous years!

I didn't grow up listening to the radio. So, I can happily say that Stairway to Heaven wasn't ruined for me by being overplayed. Really great song, although I slightly prefer When the Levee Breaks and In My Time of Dying when it comes to Zeppelin epics.

Because people care about collecting them, for whatever reason.

Hey man, great work on putting this together! I always knew that a lot of the rarities in the old guides were inaccurate. And seeing some of the differences here really opened my eyes. While there are the obvious outliers like Stadium Events and the Panesian titles, I never really noticed much difference between rarity for those games on the back half of the scale. Like what really is the difference in rarity between something like a Dinosaur Peak and a Pro Sport Hockey? Is some maniac gonna try hunting down every single copy of these games and compare them to try and prove the difference? And even then, what we do with those results would be entirely subjective to the person compiling them and what they classify as the different levels of rarity. So, I agree that we'll never end up with a 100% accurate guide for rarity. Despite this, I still think this could be a great reference to flip through and potentially see how likely you are to come across a certain game. Overall, fantastic job!

Haven't been on the forum for a while, but I did finish another game while I was gone. On August 25th, 2023, I completed the original Dragon Warrior for the NES! While this game certainly has that early RPG jank to it, I still had a lot of fun. When I was actually making progress and not just grinding, it honestly had some really cool moments. And the final battle with the Dragonlord is just epic. I can't wait to try out the rest of the series at some point!

Change that to "all Nintendo consoles suck" and it would be more accurate.

The NES is a good console.

I've legit thought about starting a little Frogger museum. It's a really overlooked franchise, and I don't think many people realize how far the rabbit hole goes and how much merch there is of it. Again, if you want an updated take on the original, definitely try Swampy's Revenge. One of my all time favorite games.