NES Completions thread 2020 - 677/677 (All Clear!)

[BriGuy82 | 765]

1 minute ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

It's basically an expanded version of the one we played. I like it, I'm just not that good at it. I swear, you must be able to press buttons faster than a turbo controller, so you could probably knock it out easy.

Lol, maybe that will be my warm up before I play shump speed. It's been a few years man,  I might be over the hill!

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

1 minute ago, BriGuy82 said:

Lol, maybe that will be my warm up before I play shump speed. It's been a few years man,  I might be over the hill!

I know I'm over the hill compared to 5 years ago. We both probably could have broken 200 on shmup speed back then. 

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

On 6/10/2020 at 11:33 AM, NESfiend said:

I had started on it, but take it if you think its fun. Between that and mario bros, I have been bored too death playing NES last 2 nights. Id be thrilled to have one of them off my plate

It seems like I can win a few matches one time, then do awful the next. I'm going to have to try and look up some strategies and see what I can do better.

[PII | 1,884]

Whew!  Loopz Is Done.  Game C Cleared.  I'm not planning to bother posting pics of "high" scores for games A and B as that can easily be achieved by a monkey and I've done as much this year on probably hundreds of occasions.  I barely managed to snap this congratulatory pic. in time.  It was present for only a few seconds - really thought I'd get a better ending, but oh wells.  The journey is its own reward...

 

Edited July 25, 2022 by PII

[NESfiend | 1,515]

33 minutes ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

It seems like I can win a few matches one time, then do awful the next. I'm going to have to try and look up some strategies and see what I can do better.

I was winning the first two and losing the third. I thought it had a lot to do with my having completely lost interest by that point, but im sure it does get tougher as you go

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

Just now, NESfiend said:

I was winning the first two and losing the third. I thought it had a lot to do with my having completely lost interest by that point, but im sure it does get tougher as you go

Same thing here. I won the first two fairly easily and got destroyed in the third. I probably just need practice.

[PII | 1,884]

I actually beat C last night as well, but didn't realize it as crazy as that sounds.  The final piece completed the loop on level 50, however I had to 2 long bars that were not attached to anything at all.  I was wondering why that message had flashed on the screen.  At the time I thought maybe it had something to do with points, but I guess as long as your last piece makes the loop and you did not complete any loopz beforehand it still counts.  Anyway, today I got the full loop on 50 which was actually a little easier than the one on level 49.

[PII | 1,884]

Not sure if there is a more suitable spot to post something like this or not.  I was playing Dino Riki tonight and discovered something I'd never seen before and never read about in any of the online literature either.  By the skin of my teeth I managed to beat the game twice in a row without using a continue.  That's the super-secret up+start to continue at the game over screen for anyone not familiar.  First time two-in-a-row, and when I got back to the title screen after finally running out of lives a few levels into the 3rd play-through I noticed that the icon of Riki had changed into an old man with glasses and facial hair.  This was another game for which I had kind of been looking forward to a cool victory screen at the end only to get the instant repeat, but it seems there is a good ending after all - Riki gets to live long enough to experience old age, which I'm guessing is pretty rare for a cave man in a world of man-eating beasts..

 

Edited July 25, 2022 by PII

[scaryice | 585]

Cool stuff! From what I can tell, it seems to be based on score. Congrats on beating Loopz btw, that's a nice one to have off the board.

[NESfiend | 1,515]

7 hours ago, PII said:

Not sure if there is a more suitable spot to post something like this or not.  I was playing Dino Riki tonight and discovered something I'd never seen before and never read about in any of the online literature either.  By the skin of my teeth I managed to beat the game twice in a row without using a continue.  That's the super-secret up+start to continue at the game over screen for anyone not familiar.  First time two-in-a-row, and when I got back to the title screen after finally running out of lives a few levels into the 3rd play-through I noticed that the icon of Riki had changed into an old man with glasses and facial hair.  This was another game for which I had kind of been looking forward to a cool victory screen at the end only to get the instant repeat, but it seems there is a good ending after all - Riki gets to live long enough to experience old age, which I'm guessing is pretty rare for a cave man in a world of man-eating beasts..

This will probably get overlooked here because there are only a handful of people still checking this thread. I would cut and paste it and start your own thread in gamers gauntlet titled "Looping DinoRiki for first time" and how you did it. That way anyone on the site who likes this game can see the topic and read about it. It also makes it a lot more searchable if someone is playing the game 6 months from now and is looking for strategies. I dont know the game, but looping anything that isn't smb1 is a huge feat. And generally 1 million plus on an NES game is monstrous. Well done. Show it off in your own thread!

[PII | 1,884]

@scaryice @NESfiend

Much Thanks!  I reposted it in the Gauntlet.  Can't imagine why I didn't find that at 4 a.m.    ;9   

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,073]

I've been trying to get into Pirates! but can't seem to make any significant progress due to my crew continually being unhappy and starting a mutiny or deserting me and stealing all of my hard-earned money. Is there any way to prevent this? Other than that I still feel quite aimless and don't really know what I'm even supposed to do. And due to my crew deserting all the time any kind of money that I make is instantly wasted. Due to this trading isn't even worth the effort. I don't get this game yet.

[NESfiend | 1,515]

5 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

I've been trying to get into Pirates! but can't seem to make any significant progress due to my crew continually being unhappy and starting a mutiny or deserting me and stealing all of my hard-earned money. Is there any way to prevent this? Other than that I still feel quite aimless and don't really know what I'm even supposed to do. And due to my crew deserting all the time any kind of money that I make is instantly wasted. Due to this trading isn't even worth the effort. I don't get this game yet.

It's been so many years since I played it. @Daniel_Doyce probably has these answers though...

[Daniel_Doyce | 470]

3 hours ago, NESfiend said:

It's been so many years since I played it. @Daniel_Doyce probably has these answers though...

I only played it once, for an NA contest 2 or 3 years ago.

Did you read a walkthrough? It's possible you're trying to do something early on that you're not ready for, or they're deserting because you're just wandering around the ocean like a nudnik.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,073]

I've tried looking up in the manual and two walkthroughs, but I couldn't fin any mention of how morale is affected. However, with a bit of messing around I found out that morale drops significantly whenever you have very little money or maybe also if your crew is too huge. So I ended up sailing around with medium sized or maybe even just smaller crews. Sailing around aimlessly doesn't help either, so I tried to keep my ways as short as possible.

As of right now I've managed to get a little bit done and even share almost 500k gold among my crew, which still isn't enough to make me rich. I've also had some bad luck with land and titles. Usually I was waging war against Spain, but for some reason more and more other nations started to ally with them, so they're hostile against me now. This means that I have trouble getting titles now as only the English and Dutch still tolerate me. I'll see where this goes, but it could eventually be that I might have ruined getting a perfect score. But it seems that I have at least found the right wife and if I were to retire now I would be at 50/100. Hopefully I can still gain the other 50 points. If not I will probably have to follow a guide.

But I have to say that this game is quite tedious. The ideas and general concepts may be really cool and advanced for such an old game, but sailing around for hours just because the winds are always against you, or slowly crawling along the battlefield during a siege, is anything but fun. It drags quite a bit.

[BriGuy82 | 765]

I'm still working on flight of the intruder. Made it to mission 11 of 12. I should have it beat any day now. I like this game but those last couple missions really drag on and on... The key to this game is on the MIG battles to reduce your thrust to the lowest possible (65%). This way you don't run out of fuel and you also have a better chance to hit the other jets with either your missiles or machine guns without just going to fast and blowing right by them. 

[NESfiend | 1,515]

23 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

But I have to say that this game is quite tedious. The ideas and general concepts may be really cool and advanced for such an old game, but sailing around for hours just because the winds are always against you, or slowly crawling along the battlefield during a siege, is anything but fun. It drags quite a bit.

At least you have those one on one sword fights! I remember loving those even though it's such a simple thing as far as gameplay goes. 

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,073]

Yeah, at least the sword fights are decent, @NESfiend. They're also much better than the jousting in Defenders of the Crown where I had no idea what to do.

But I have now spent many hours across several days to accumulate titles, fame, money and to rescue 4 family members, but I only got 71 points. Maybe I took too long because I was already 34 years old and in poor health by the time I retired. Or maybe I did something else wrong, I don't know. It's quite frustrating and I can see why the requirement for King's Advisor is so harsh, that one wouldn't want to do this again.

[BriGuy82 | 765]

Here's my 1cc of Flight of the Intruder. I'm proud of that score. 

 

[scaryice | 585]

That's a great one to have off the list! I can tell you that Flight of the Intruder is the only game that has always been beaten in the final 100 every single year (or gone unbeaten). Before 2020, Dungeon Magic & Flying Warriors were also in that category, but they were beaten earlier this time around.

Meanwhile, there are 9 games which have always been beaten in the first 100: Amagon, Contra, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, Galaga, Ice Hockey, Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros, and Super Mario Bros 3.

[Daniel_Doyce | 470]

@BriGuy82, was Flight of the Intruder hard or just tedious? Good job either way!

[BriGuy82 | 765]

15 minutes ago, Daniel_Doyce said:

@BriGuy82, was Flight of the Intruder hard or just tedious? Good job either way!

I would say 50/50.

[BriGuy82 | 765]

2 hours ago, Daniel_Doyce said:

@BriGuy82, was Flight of the Intruder hard or just tedious? Good job either way!

I feel like any game that takes a few hours to complete and doesn't have a password system is tedious. Even the really good games. One of my favorite games is Little Nemo and that game takes forever. 

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

11 hours ago, BriGuy82 said:

Here's my 1cc of Flight of the Intruder. I'm proud of that score. 

Great job! Are you going to give Track & Field II a shot? I tried and failed miserably, but I'm guessing you could probably knock it out.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Bearcat-Doug

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,073]

I'm finally done with Pirates! And I even got perfect 100/100!

This was a really rough challenge. Some little things that seemingly helped me this time around: I only recruited in the tavern after embarking on a new adventure. During normal gameplay I would only recruit new member by fighting against other ships and taking the enemy survivors in. It may just be my imagination, but I had the feeling that the happiness of my crew barely ever dropped doing it this way. Also, you constantly have to attack other cities or ships to gather loot. This time around I got really lucky, because the English were constantly waging war against Spain, so that I could gain titles relatively easy. One suggestion in walkthroughs was to either choose the medicine or wit and charme skill. I found the effect of the wit and charme skill to be neglectable, whereas medicine helped reduce the negative effect of ageing, i.e. the older you get the worse your physical condition will be thus potentially decreasing your points by a good deal. Another big help was finding out that you can excavate the Incan treasure up to four times within a single game. Whenever you find a family member you're given a single piece of a treasure map. Previously I din't know the layout of this map so well, so I relied on getting several pieces before finally geting the Incan gold. However, it's absolutely worth it to try and find it every time after finding another member of your family. Anyway, apart from these I just constantly waged war against the Spanish, sold my loot and tried to capture the silver fleet or train whenever possible.

So happy to be done with this one. Also, by now I should have beaten exactly 80 NES games this year.