NES Completions thread 2021 - 665/677

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

Tag Team Wrestling is done.

[NESfiend | 1,514]

Went to the gameshop yesterday after work and picked up a few games that are still unbeaten. Got an ok start on side pocket. It seems less ridiculous than other NES pool games (like breaktime, which i also picked up and would like to take a hammer to). Kitchen remodel is really messing with my game time, but I think I can get this one done in due time. 

Kitchen remodel is also screwing with my collection. Water leaked down to the basement and hit my shelves yesterday. Spent most of the night cleaning up and moving stuff. Only victims were game genie box, rocketeer cib, and tecmo cup soccer (rare euro version) manual. Trying to keep perspective and not let it drive me crazy, but failing. 

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

I also had pretty bad luck. My PC broke down about two weeks ago and I gave it to the computer expert, who took his sweet time. But not only that, he even formatted my harddrive and thereby deleted most of my data. Luckily I have my personal stuff backed up on external storage, but it's still annoying as heck that I now have to reinstall all of my programs and get back all of those passwords, bookmarks and whatnot. And the harddrive wasn't even defective or particularly old!

And just now I realized that he didn't give me the computer parts back, that he had replaced. They may be old, but for some of them I could probably still get a bit of money. Just the old processor alone apparently goes for 80 to 100 bucks online! I'm furious right now.

Also, looking at various listings online I could have gotten all the new computer parts for roughly 20% less on average, if I had ordered them online instead of buying them at the computer store. I feel ripped totally off. Yes, it's buying online is obviously cheaper, but I'm shocked at how much more I had to pay now, not to mention that I got ripped off on multiple ends. I don't think I will ever buy computer stuff at such a store and I won't ever have a bad conscience anymore about buying my stuff online, if that's how local retailers treat you.

Sorry for the rant. But at least I can play NES and other stuff like usual again.

[NESfiend | 1,514]

1 hour ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

 

And just now I realized that he didn't give me the computer parts back, that he had replaced. 

I won't ever have a bad conscience anymore about buying my stuff online, if that's how local retailers 

But at least I can play NES and other stuff like usual again.

Are you going to go back and ask for the old parts? I sure would. Id tell him/her I assumed they were in the bag or box with the computer. If they say they sold them, Id say fine, Ill take whatever you got for them because they are mine. Thats bs. 

I dont have any guilt about buying online unless there is a good, only local, option that it would be taking away from. Your computer store clearly isnt a good option. 

Glad to hear you have access to the full library again. Im sure youll be scooting up the leaderboard fast. Seems like that list will be really thin by the time weekly contests start. Works out good

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

19 hours ago, WashYourFace said:

I think it would take a million years trying to do without any reference/help (although you can legally use the map that comes with the game, and that's really helpful). The thing that sucks (besides no save/password) is I think you can get the game into an unbeatable state (and maybe not know it) and have to start all over. Which reminds me, this is another time a playthrough from @rdrunner helped. I had to use it on one or two spots.

Yeah, there are certain times on certain routes that you have to unlock a particular door in a room and then proceed to take a different exit out of the room, with the intention of returning to the room later in the route via the door you unlocked earlier; but if you didn't know or forgot to unlock the other door on your way through that room, your run is FINISHED!  You can auto-kill yourself and even go back one room, but that doesn't help much when you're fifty-eight rooms into your run...

Fortunately, there are many different routes you can take, with or without rescuing the two fairies, and large sections of the castle can actually be skipped...

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

4 hours ago, Dr. Morbis said:

Yeah, there are certain times on certain routes that you have to unlock a particular door in a room and then proceed to take a different exit out of the room, with the intention of returning to the room later in the route via the door you unlocked earlier; but if you didn't know or forgot to unlock the other door on your way through that room, your run is FINISHED!  You can auto-kill yourself and even go back one room, but that doesn't help much when you're fifty-eight rooms into your run...

Fortunately, there are many different routes you can take, with or without rescuing the two fairies, and large sections of the castle can actually be skipped...

Oh wow. I just looked at the map and it's huge. The speedrun route skips most of it. I'm guessing in large part due to an unintended shortcut. It's possible to safely stand on and jump off an enemy if you jump on it's head as it's spawning. See the video below at 3:13.

 

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular is done.

[Khromak | 768]

Wow, Castlequest was quite the elaborate game, I never knew. I thought it might be an interesting one to play some day but then I watched a few minutes of the speedrun and immediately thought the opposite. It seems like a gigantic maze with very few clear goals or checkpoints, just aimless wandering simulator unless you're following a guide.

Those who have played it: are there a lot of upgrades/interesting things to collect, or is it literally just pick up colored keys, use them on colored doors?

[Khromak | 768]

Just finished gravnic, so that's done now. I was going to take a picture of both disappointing end screens, but it turns out they're the same. For half a second it flashes all stages complete, then says game over. Pretty disappointing ending lol.

Fun game, though I have to say some of the later stages, especially the puzznic ones, can be frustratingly difficult. 

[nerdynebraskan | 345]

Wrecking Crew is done.

I'm about 40% of the way through Magic of Scheherazade. I'm also probably going to start NES Play Action Football soon.

EDIT: I went ahead and started Play Action Football. I've already played the first three of the seven games. I was on the phone, and then listening to a podcast and wanted something easy to veg out on.

Edited February 5, 2021 by nerdynebraskan

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

15 hours ago, Khromak said:

Those who have played it: are there a lot of upgrades/interesting things to collect, or is it literally just pick up colored keys, use them on colored doors?

The only upgrades are temporary ones.  For example there is an item that's like an oxygen tank so you can breath underwater, but it's on a timer and runs out shortly after you've moved through the rooms you need it for...

[scaryice | 581]

Nintendo World Cup completed. 2/3rds of the game is just sitting around after knocking out players on the weaker teams. Last 1/3rd is the final few, actually difficult teams. Picture was fading out as I hit print screen:

[NESfiend | 1,514]

After a long couple days, I got back to Side Pocket. Apparently Im nowhere near as close as I thought. There is a video on YouTube of someone winning the final challenge and getting end screen after Stage 4. I thoughr I was close because I had been getting to stage 4. But then, I went on a crazy run (that Im not sure I can even repeat) and got to stage 7 and lost. Anyone know what the deal is there? Paging @Daniel_Doycewho beat it last year. Sorry to continue the 2021 trend of hounding you for advice!

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

On 2/4/2021 at 1:31 AM, NESfiend said:

Are you going to go back and ask for the old parts? I sure would. Id tell him/her I assumed they were in the bag or box with the computer. If they say they sold them, Id say fine, Ill take whatever you got for them because they are mine. Thats bs. 

I went back to them and received the old parts that they forgot to give me, of course! So at least that's been taken care of.

Meanwhile I've been trying to finish up Dungeon Magic, but I still have a bit more to go. I got all the elemental swords and most of the ultimate equipment. Now I'm just missing the best sword in the game, which is really hard to get, because this dungeon is full of enemies that are either immune against physical attacks or have such a high defense that I can't get through. So I have to use magic, but the magic system is extremely complex and quirky.

There are five schools of magic in the game and you can choose one at the beginning and you later learn the other ones when you find the earn the elemental swords. But unlike other RPGs you don't have a list of spells that you can just select. Instead you have to create the magic yourself by mixing two or three magic runes and with every school of magic having 4 different runes this makes for an awful lot of possible combinations!

There are some fixed combinations of runes that maybe let you heal poison or take a look at the map and all of the enemies and treasures etc. Then there are others that you can combine to unleash an attack spell of varying strength. But here's the problem: Casting offensive magic drains your HP! And it's not just a little bit. A strong spell can drain up to 40, 50 or almost 60 HP while I currently only have 160 HP at most. Some of those later enemies, like the dragons or beholder type things can require up to three or four spells to even kill a single enemy! So the battles end up looking like this: I get my spell ready, move up to the enemy, cast the spell, take a step back so that they hopefully don't hit me, then I cast another spell and run away in relative safety to heal up. After that I run towards the enemy again and try to finish them up. And this is not turn-based, so the enemies can move up to you and attack you while you're trying to select a healing potion or selecting the runes for a spell.

Anyway, I've been dying over and over again on some of those later levels where I can only make it through with magic which is a slow and boring grind. At least the enemies remain dead until I rest at an inn. But that also means that I have to constantly heal myself with expensive potions or else those enemies will reappear. For the most part this game was actually interesting and fun, but some of the dungeons are a bit unfair and suck some of the joy out of the game. Maybe I can finish it tomorrow.

[Khromak | 768]

I made it through to the final stage of Captain Planet today, which means that I should be finished with it by the end of February. The controls are godawful but with the difficulty of stages 1-4 it's somewhat manageable with some practice. The final level is just obnoxious though, I'm sure it's going to take me forever and there will be lots of times (like right now) where I will just give up in frustration and need to take a break from it before I rip my hair out.

[Daniel_Doyce | 470]

3 hours ago, NESfiend said:

After a long couple days, I got back to Side Pocket. Apparently Im nowhere near as close as I thought. There is a video on YouTube of someone winning the final challenge and getting end screen after Stage 4. I thoughr I was close because I had been getting to stage 4. But then, I went on a crazy run (that Im not sure I can even repeat) and got to stage 7 and lost. Anyone know what the deal is there? Paging @Daniel_Doycewho beat it last year. Sorry to continue the 2021 trend of hounding you for advice!

I am pretty bad at this game. Here are my notes from when I beat it back in 2017. This assumes you qualify for the next stage each time (i.e. beat in 4 rounds). If I screw it up at some point, it's reset time.

Break Time is actually easier to beat with no skills, IMO. Only the last two opponents are hard and if you try enough times the opponent will leave you a way to combo the 9 ball in on two games out of 3 (or win through skill in one game and get a lucky combo in the other)

Anyway, here's my Side Pocket notes:

______

In case anyone cares, here's the basic outline of how to win for lazy people (max speed unless otherwise noted):

City:  max follow, straight to break.. Green should go in and then get the other 5 colors in order
State: max follow, 1 tick down from straight to break. Slight right and two follow, medium-low speed to get the 1 in and well placed for the 2. Then scramble to get the rest in.
Challenge shot: Straight, no follow.
USA: No follow, straight to break. Then hit the 1 ball low-medium power so that it banks and moves the 3 ball over towards the right of the table (but not so hard that it goes in). If all goes well, you can get the 1 in on a bank shot and then 1-6 in succession. Use a few shots to "nudge" the desired ball closer to a pocket if need be. Getting 1-6 in a row gets you to > 5100
Challenge shot: The trickiest one. Max draw, aim for the 2, one tick above where it goes into the pocket without the aiming line showing a bank. So find where the line goes straight into the bottom left pocket and then tick up until it shows a slight bank. Hit at max speed or you're fscked.
World: Aim right for the middle diamond on the rail between the bottom center and bottom left pocket. Max speed, center. The 1 should go in in an impressive manner. Then do a bank shot with no follow aiming for the middle of the 5 ball, with power right below the M in the max. If you give 'er the old reach-around just right, you'll hit the 2 ball in and sometimes the 3 ball also. Do another multiple bank shot to get the 3 in the bottom center pocket. If you get those 3 consecutively, you only need to pair 2 of the 3 remaining balls to break 7100 (obviously you need to get 1-6 in order).
Final trick shot: Two ways to do it. Either no follow and a tick down from the bottom of the 1 ball or (cooler way)  max follow, aim straight, then 1 tick up, and blast away.

Non-level trick shots:
First one with the glasses when you're shooting to the right: Just aim straight, no follow, max speed.
Second one: Again, need a reacharound aiming towards the center of the right rail, no follow, max speed.
Third: 1 tick of follow, aim straight.
Fourth: ? If there is one, I never encountered it.
 

[nerdynebraskan | 345]

NES Play Action Football is done. I have now won the Power Bowl with all eight teams in the game.

[NESfiend | 1,514]

42 minutes ago, Daniel_Doyce said:

I am pretty bad at this game. Here are my notes from when I beat it back in 2017. This assumes you qualify for the next stage each time (i.e. beat in 4 rounds). If I screw it up at some point, it's reset time.

Break Time is actually easier to beat with no skills, IMO. Only the last two opponents are hard and if you try enough times the opponent will leave you a way to combo the 9 ball in on two games out of 3 (or win through skill in one game and get a lucky combo in the other)

Anyway, here's my Side Pocket notes:

______

In case anyone cares, here's the basic outline of how to win for lazy people (max speed unless otherwise noted):

City:  max follow, straight to break.. Green should go in and then get the other 5 colors in order
State: max follow, 1 tick down from straight to break. Slight right and two follow, medium-low speed to get the 1 in and well placed for the 2. Then scramble to get the rest in.
Challenge shot: Straight, no follow.
USA: No follow, straight to break. Then hit the 1 ball low-medium power so that it banks and moves the 3 ball over towards the right of the table (but not so hard that it goes in). If all goes well, you can get the 1 in on a bank shot and then 1-6 in succession. Use a few shots to "nudge" the desired ball closer to a pocket if need be. Getting 1-6 in a row gets you to > 5100
Challenge shot: The trickiest one. Max draw, aim for the 2, one tick above where it goes into the pocket without the aiming line showing a bank. So find where the line goes straight into the bottom left pocket and then tick up until it shows a slight bank. Hit at max speed or you're fscked.
World: Aim right for the middle diamond on the rail between the bottom center and bottom left pocket. Max speed, center. The 1 should go in in an impressive manner. Then do a bank shot with no follow aiming for the middle of the 5 ball, with power right below the M in the max. If you give 'er the old reach-around just right, you'll hit the 2 ball in and sometimes the 3 ball also. Do another multiple bank shot to get the 3 in the bottom center pocket. If you get those 3 consecutively, you only need to pair 2 of the 3 remaining balls to break 7100 (obviously you need to get 1-6 in order).
Final trick shot: Two ways to do it. Either no follow and a tick down from the bottom of the 1 ball or (cooler way)  max follow, aim straight, then 1 tick up, and blast away.

Non-level trick shots:
First one with the glasses when you're shooting to the right: Just aim straight, no follow, max speed.
Second one: Again, need a reacharound aiming towards the center of the right rail, no follow, max speed.
Third: 1 tick of follow, aim straight.
Fourth: ? If there is one, I never encountered it.
 

Damn, dan. Couldn't have asked for more on this. I had planned to drink beer and watch basketball tonight, but now I have to work some nes in to try it out. Thanks for digging that up for me

[NESfiend | 1,514]

1 hour ago, Khromak said:

I made it through to the final stage of Captain Planet today, which means that I should be finished with it by the end of February. The controls are godawful but with the difficulty of stages 1-4 it's somewhat manageable with some practice. The final level is just obnoxious though, I'm sure it's going to take me forever and there will be lots of times (like right now) where I will just give up in frustration and need to take a break from it before I rip my hair out.

Glad this years thread has someone else willing to rant on hitting walls with crazy hard games. Nice to know its not just me

[nerdynebraskan | 345]

Tecmo NBA Basketball is done.

[Khromak | 768]

Finished captain planet. Honestly 5-1 was significantly harder than 5-2. The only saving grace that helped me beat it was about halfway through there's a penguin who gives you a 1-up right after a checkpoint. 

It wasn't as bad as certain reviews have said, it isn't totally unplayable or impossible, but it's definitely maddening. 

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

2 hours ago, nerdynebraskan said:

NES Play Action Football is done. I have now won the Power Bowl with all eight teams in the game.

Ummm.... you posted this (above) a couple of hours ago, beating it with all eight teams no less, and then an hour and a half later you completed an entire 82 game NBA season, plus playoffs:

29 minutes ago, nerdynebraskan said:

Tecmo NBA Basketball is done.

Am I missing something?  Have you been working on these two titles concurrently while beating other games in between?  Either you're an absolute machine, or...........

[Khromak | 768]

1 hour ago, Dr. Morbis said:

Ummm.... you posted this (above) a couple of hours ago, beating it with all eight teams no less, and then an hour and a half later you completed an entire 82 game NBA season, plus playoffs:

I'm guessing he means that in his entire lifetime he's beaten the game with each team, not that he did it with each team this time around.

I'm not knowledgeable enough about this or Tecmo NBA Basketball to know how long they take to complete, but maybe that helps?

Edited February 6, 2021 by Khromak

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

I've just beaten Dungeon Magic!

This took me around 16 hours for a first-time playthrough. I think it could have been a little bit easier had I started out with wind or especially water magic. Water magic can create barriers that significantly reduce physical and/or magical damage. The later dungeons weren't possible without that. In hindsight it would have been nice to have water magic from the beginning of the game, but fairy magic was also nice and convenient as it allowed me to see the map with all enemy and treasure locations! But you can learn fairy magic rather early on and if you were to use maps then maybe you wouldn't even need this type of magic.

Anyway, it's pretty decent dungeon crawler that is unfortunately very difficult to get into and at times a bit grindy, but if you're willing to put some time into it it's quite fun.

And as a final note, I had level 18 when I successfully beat the second to last dungeon and level 19 for the final dungeon. This made things much easier, but I still had to be on my toes all the time and fight the enemies one after another. I also recommend to always have at least one large blue potion in your inventory. If you happen to die, then you can quickly go to your inventory, equip and drink the large blue potion which will revive you! The large red potions also help dealing more physical damage, so they're useful as well in the later dungeons. And keep your HP high! Your damage reduces significantly the lower your HP get.

Edited February 6, 2021 by Gaia Gensouki

[nerdynebraskan | 345]

12 hours ago, Dr. Morbis said:

Ummm.... you posted this (above) a couple of hours ago, beating it with all eight teams no less, and then an hour and a half later you completed an entire 82 game NBA season, plus playoffs:

Am I missing something?  Have you been working on these two titles concurrently while beating other games in between?  Either you're an absolute machine, or...........

RE: NES Play Action Football

The Playoffs mode requires you to choose one team and beat the other seven in 60 minute games (since there are no options to shorten the games). Because of my years of playing through it, I can move the ball at will using only two very safe running plays. The game clock actually runs fast while the teams line up and while the ball is currently in play, so given the way I play I can finish one game in about 45 minutes of real time. I call my plays very quickly, never go out of bounds or throw the ball to risk stopping the clock, wait until the computer automatically snaps the ball for me to milk the clock as much as possible during the pre-snap lining up, and look for ways to milk more time while the ball is in play. There are even some situations where I just stand by the goal line if I've left defenders in the dust and just roll off another minute of game time before scoring.

I won the "Power Bowl" (since Nintendo had a license with the NFL Players Union but not the NFL itself to use the team names or the Super Bowl) against a computer at the highest-level AI with a final score of 42 or 49 to 0, and some of the earlier games against lower-level AIs (since the game automatically ramps up as you close in on the Power Bowl) were more lopsided than that. Dominating on defense is pretty easy because the computer's O-line plays very poorly. I have about 15 sacks a game, and I finished several games where the opponent had negative total offensive yards.

And as @Khromakcorrectly guessed, I only beat the game with Washington this year. What I mentioned before is that I've now gone through the playoffs and won the Power Bowl with all eight teams and their unique rosters in my lifetime.

One trip through the playoffs runs about six hours the way I play the game, and it was my primary game on Thursday and Friday evening.

RE: Tecmo NBA Basketball

The season mode there gives you several options to extend or shorten single games or even the entire season. I chose the Short season. I then skipped all the regular season games, as that has always been permitted on these challenge threads for any sports games that give you that option. In Short seasons, each of the playoff rounds through the semi-finals is only one game long, while the NBA Finals is reduced to a best-of-three. So that means, what, five or six games between a player and the ending? I played the first round on 4-minute quarters so I could get used to the game again then went back into the game settings and reduced the rest of the games to 2-minute quarters. I hit the ol' Reset button once, to erase my first attempt at Game 1 of the Finals as I was about to lose.

The total endeavor was probably about an hour and a half for me.