NES Completions thread 2021 - 665/677

[Khromak | 768]

7 minutes ago, nerdynebraskan said:

@Khromak

I don't blame ya. I've played a lot of NES baseball, but I've never enjoyed the Bases Loaded series. Will you be picking up anything else anytime soon?

I'll be going to my parents' house to help them for the next week or so, but when I get back I think I will try a game or two. There are a couple still on the list that I'd like to beat.

[tigerwolf | 79]

Destiny of an Emperor Completed!

My very first 100% playthrough of this game! I used this forum thread as my motivation to finally complete this classic Capcom RPG. It is a marriage of two games I adore: Dragon Quest and Three Kingdoms.

Man alive, it took me way too long to realize how to play this thing. There are some seriously UNFAIR tactics (spells) like instant death, instant 100% healing, and the ability to block ALL physical attacks from your ENTIRE party. 

I don't often want to throw a controller in disgust, but several of the later boss-like generals were just too much. Sima Yi was the most frustrating, which is probably fair as he ends up being the end boss of the game. 

The ending is very anticlimactic. But hey, at least they include the entire dev team in the end credits! How awesome is that? 

[scaryice | 578]

8 hours ago, tigerwolf said:

Destiny of an Emperor Completed!

My very first 100% playthrough of this game! I used this forum thread as my motivation to finally complete this classic Capcom RPG.

Awesome, I love hearing things like that. Did you know there's a Japan only sequel on the Famicom? Anyway, congrats!

[scaryice | 578]

I played through the first loop of James Bond Jr. last night. Haven't played it since the first year I ran this thread (2012). Still an annoying yet fun game, with some crazy music that I enjoy quite a bit. It's like Ghosts 'n Goblins, so you have to do two loops to officially beat it. At least it has passwords, so you can resume easily. I should be able to finish it off before too long.

Edited March 19, 2021 by scaryice

[nerdynebraskan | 345]

11 hours ago, tigerwolf said:

Destiny of an Emperor Completed!

My very first 100% playthrough of this game! I used this forum thread as my motivation to finally complete this classic Capcom RPG. It is a marriage of two games I adore: Dragon Quest and Three Kingdoms.

Welcome to the NES Challenge! It's always exciting to see some new blood, especially late in the competition.

Were you interested in playing anything else this year? By "Three Kingdoms", are you referring to Romance of the Three Kingdoms? If you're a Koei fan, we still have two of their games on the board in Genghis Khan and L'Empereur.

[WashYourFace | 80]

On 3/17/2021 at 6:01 PM, Khromak said:

It's been a while since I posted about BL2, mostly because I got sucked up into playing a few Switch games and haven't been playing much NES. Just went back and took another crack at it...not gonna happen.

After a few attempts I was able to win my first game (2-0) and I think I more-or-less have the pitching and fielding down. That said, I just cannot understand how to bat. I swing at all kinds of crappy pitches, can't figure out the batting high, low, or center, etc. It just seems like way too many things to figure out in too short of a window. There are pitches which seem, to me, to be between the middle and high swings, and even when I do manage to hit the ball, there's a very very real chance that it will be a pop fly and they'll catch it no problem, or it will have no momentum and be fielded easily by the pitcher, shortstop, etc.

I think I could win a game here or there, but I'm not enjoying it at all and not going to put myself through 81 more games of that.

OK, I fired this up again to refresh my memory. For batting, just push A when the ball is over the base (or close to it). You can push the control pad to reach for the ball, if you want (if the pitcher is tired, you can see it's going inside/outside and still get a good hit on it). A lot of times, you're just going to miss anyhow. In my opinion, it doesn't matter, because you don't want to be spending lots of time playing. Ideally, you'll get a home run at some point and win the game 1-0 or 2-0 or something. The great thing is, if you play defense ideally, they can almost never score (only way they ever score on me is with a lucky home run on a tired pitcher). If they make it to base, you can draw them off base by just throwing the ball around. You can even do this when the next batter has come up to the plate (press B and a direction). When they run to steal the next base, wait until the proper moment (your guy with the ball can still move) and then cut them off and get them out. It's pretty easy once you get used to it. You can even maximize the cheapness by walking guys intentionally. All that said, it is a slog after awhile.

[tigerwolf | 79]

11 hours ago, scaryice said:

Awesome, I love hearing things like that. Did you know there's a Japan only sequel on the Famicom? Anyway, congrats!

Thanks! Yep, I want to play through the fan translation at some point, too. There's also the other Capcom titles based on this manga license, like the Super Famicom one (where they attempted a Koei-style strategy game) and the two awesome beat 'em ups Dynasty Wars and Warriors of Fate. 

After beating this one I need a change of pace, I think

[tigerwolf | 79]

8 hours ago, nerdynebraskan said:

Welcome to the NES Challenge! It's always exciting to see some new blood, especially late in the competition.

Were you interested in playing anything else this year? By "Three Kingdoms", are you referring to Romance of the Three Kingdoms? If you're a Koei fan, we still have two of their games on the board in Genghis Khan and L'Empereur.

Thanks, glad to participate! Yep, I'm a diehard Koei collector, so either of those two have potential for me. But they would take a long time to slog through, so I may need a shorter palette cleanser first

[scaryice | 578]

James Bond Jr. completed! Second loop went smoothly, actually. Although I did just finish it off on my last life. Could've been disastrous since I only had 5 nukes instead of the 6 you need to instant-kill the last boss. Luckily, I was able to finish him off anyway.

[scaryice | 578]

One more tonight: Conan is done, a first time clear. I actually made it to the final level without looking anything up. After game overing, I made it back and just decided to consult a video at that point. I vaguely remembered something about placing things in the right order, so I knew that would be a nightmare blind. This is one of those games that looks easy to beat again now that I've done it once - I now see why it was worth 3 points for a few years straight (although it's up to 6 now).

[Daniel_Doyce | 470]

Hook is done. It's not a terrible game; just aggressively mediocre.

 

[Daniel_Doyce | 470]

I'll try Tom & Jerry next. Wonder what sucks about it so that it's in the final 75 games

[Strikezone1 | 154]

11 hours ago, Daniel_Doyce said:

I'll try Tom & Jerry next. Wonder what sucks about it so that it's in the final 75 games

It’s a pretty good challenge, but not too excruciating IMO. Played and beat it a couple years ago. It’s another one of those very mediocre platformers with a lot of trial & error. It has limited continues, so players can’t just credit-feed their way to victory. That I’m sure has something to do with why it’s still in the board.

Of the 75 left on the board, I’m going to assume T&J one of the better and more beatable ones left.

Edited March 21, 2021 by Strikezone1

[nerdynebraskan | 345]

Roger Clemens MVP Baseball is now done.

This year, I played with the Pittsburgh Not-Pirates, which were strangely enough called the Panthers. This game doesn't have an MLB license, so they had to make up team names. But strangely enough, the University of Pittsburgh calls its sports teams the Panthers also. If anyone in the NCAA had paid attention to this game, they might've been able to sue!

[scaryice | 578]

I've been meaning to make a list of all the fake team names in NES games, I should get on that soon...

[scaryice | 578]

Also, since Nerdy mentioned getting close to 5,000 lifetime points, here's a look at the all-time point standings. This is everyone who's at 500+ (rounded to the nearest whole number):

1	nerdynebraskan	4,961
2	tablew/chairs	1,892
3	Bea Iank	1,819
4	scaryice	1,624
5	DoctorNick	1,123
6	Crabmaster2000	1,101
7	Daniel Doyce	956
8	Gaia Gensouki	942
9	guitarzombie	905
10	bronzeshield	741
11	Kid Dracula	730
12	VegaVegas	698
13	WashYourFace	617
14	bimmy lee	587
15	Bearcat-Doug	537
16	John198X	517
17	NESfiend	500

[nerdynebraskan | 345]

I didn't know I was THAT far ahead of the pack. I thought a couple of the other long-time heavyweights might be in the 2,000-3,000 range. Y'all need to step up!

[bronzeshield | 293]

I'm surprised I'm in the Top Ten! Consistency has its perks, I guess.

[scaryice | 578]

11 hours ago, nerdynebraskan said:

I didn't know I was THAT far ahead of the pack. I thought a couple of the other long-time heavyweights might be in the 2,000-3,000 range. Y'all need to step up!

I should point out that it doesn't include the first two years (2012-13), since the point system wasn't in place yet. Crabmaster and myself would probably be at or over 2,000 if those years were included.

[bronzeshield | 293]

It probably won't affect our win condition for future threads, but it was intriguing to find out today that Pipe Dream has a kill screen -- or, more accurately, a kill score:

At 32:16. If you slow it down, the crash happens when the score hits about 8.38 million, and since 2^23 is 8388608, it's clearly related to that.

[nerdynebraskan | 345]

That is insane, @bronzeshield. I don't think I'll ever be scoring over 8 million points on Pipe Dream, but it did inspire me to play it again tonight. In fact, I only scored about 230,000 on Type A. It was good enough to best the built-in high score, at least. But yeah, we don't tend to require kill screens for games like Donkey Kong or Pac-Man either.

You've been a bit quiet on the thread this year. Have you been alright? Or are you just running out of games you want to play?

[bronzeshield | 293]

1 hour ago, nerdynebraskan said:

You've been a bit quiet on the thread this year. Have you been alright? Or are you just running out of games you want to play?

Doing just fine, and it's kind of you to ask! Partly I'm a bit burned out on NES, especially since my EverDrive N8 crashes at random times, which really takes the wind out of my sails for games with no save function.

I've been playing other consoles this year -- PlayStation, 3DO, Atari 7800, Saturn -- because it gets me down to own these things and never seem to touch them.

Also my laptop's screen is dead, so I can't play RPGs while sitting on the couch watching TV with my wife (as I like to do). Otherwise I'd probably have gone after Dragon Warrior III this year.

That said, I have about 23 games left on my "must replay" list for NES -- a list that was once about 100 games long! The 16 in-region games left are mostly beaten already, except for Sky Kid, Solomon's Key, and Star Soldier. I might go after one of those this year, though the crashing issue is a deterrent. But Sky Kid bested me last year, and that makes me maaaaad.

I recently picked up a Destination Earthstar cart, so you might see me pop up with that, as I've long wanted to conquer it. I also have real carts for Laser Invasion and Days of Thunder (gulp), neither of which I've ever beaten. So I won't rule anything out!

[scaryice | 578]

Ninja Kid beaten. The key to this game is getting the hidden extra lives in each stage. These maps were very helpful:

https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Ninja_Kid/Stages

[nerdynebraskan | 345]

I'm going to have to remember those maps for next year, @scaryice. That game was too brutal for me without knowing those secrets, and had just about given up on it.

I'll probably start All-Pro Basketball in the next few days, if no one else needs to clear that for personal reasons.

And what is the standard for Freedom Force? One loop or four? I think I got credit for it some years back on completing one loop. I've been playing it the last few days, but haven't quite beaten the first loop yet.

Edited March 25, 2021 by nerdynebraskan

[scaryice | 578]

1 hour ago, nerdynebraskan said:

And what is the standard for Freedom Force? One loop or four? I think I got credit for it some years back on completing one loop. I've been playing it the last few days, but haven't quite beaten the first loop yet.

1 loop