NES-a-day challenge

[fusoya]

I grew up playing the Nintendo Entertainment System. You could easily say I was obsessed with it between 1987 and 1992. I was a Nintendo Power subscriber from day 1, I even watched all the crummy 80s Nintendo TV shows (a couple episodes of the Video Power gameshow have recently been uploaded to youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uRQfGsybGQ)), and even my username comes from a SNES game (well, close enough...). I never really grew out of this age of gaming, but there are still A LOT of games I never completed for the NES. Two things about this system - there were A LOT of games, and many of them can be completed in under an hour. The majority of games on the NES were designed (and pretty much demanded, due to lack of storage batteries on most games, and about half of them lacking passwords too) to be completed in one sitting, even though usually not on the first try. This is why I came up with a challenge for myself - once a day, pick out a NES game which I never beat, and BEAT it.

Now, obviously, this is not going to happen with every single game. Some of them ARE actually pretty long (Dragon Warrior 4, for example, requires at least 20 hours of gameplay) and require too much exploring for somebody new to the game to fly right through it. This is why I am starting out easy - my first two selections were auto-scrolling shooters, which aside from the boss battles and having to backtrack from deaths, are beaten in the exact same amount of time every time. As far as rules I set out for myself - since I am going to be playing these through emulation, I will allow the use of realtime save states (my goal is to beat a bunch of games FAST, not to train on every individual game by playing stages over and over until I perfect them), but I will NOT use any secret passwords or codes (both built into the game and with game genie) to help me (so when it's Contra's day, I'm gonna beat it with 3 lives, not 30). I am also going to use FAQs and manuals as a last resort - I will go look up information only when I am too frustrated to continue on without help. I'm also not going to beat myself up to stay on a daily schedule. Often times I am too busy to find the time to play through an entire game every day, or I might do multiple games a day on a slow day, but the main goal is to finish a new game the same day I started it, and try to keep to a 1 game/day pace.

I could have gone ahead and kept a log at GameFAQs, but as many of you are aware, that's a message board with the average maturity level of a squirrel, and I know there are plenty of other dopers here who have the same level of NES nostalgia as I do, who may want to either participate in the challenge along side me, or at least follow along with it.

Once I finish a game, I will post a recap here, and will take suggestions for the next game to play. I'm not sure whether or not I should spoil box the recaps, since I don't want to ruin the games for those joining in the challenge, but it's going to involve a lot of highlighting.


5/23/07
Silkworm, developed by Tecmo, released 1988. Completion time: ~45 minutes

This was a port of an arcade game which I also have never played. Like most shooters, there's very little actual story to it. A bunch of military machines/robots have gone haywire and are rebeling against the US Military, and you need to stop them. The unique thing about this game is that you can choose between using a helicopter, which can move all over the screen but can only fire to the right (or 45° down if you press A to tilt it forward), or a jeep, which is limited to the ground but has an gun which is aimable in any direction. If playing two player, each player gets to use one of the vehicles, which I'm sure makes a very fun two player cooperative experience. I used the helicopter. The graphics are nothing special, and it's the same song for the first 6 stages (but still a catchy tune). At first, the challenge level is pretty low, but by about the halfway point, it gets HARD. I actually was amazed how many moveable objects, all of which were trying to kill me, were on the screen at once, without the typical NES slowdown! When you die, you pick up right where you leave off, so getting hit isn't a big deal as long as you don't run out of lives. The game ran longer than I expected it to, and started to get pretty repetitive (it's one of these games where bosses return, but with a different color, which means twice as many hits to destroy them), but there was still a nice challenge which kept me from getting bored. Someday, I would really like to try two player mode in this game...maybe down the road I will try beating it with the jeep too. The ending was actually pretty nice for an NES game, with full screen graphics of the characters (who you've yet to see until this point) celebrating.

5/24/07
Abadox, developed by Natsume, released 1990. Completion time: 30 minutes
First up, I HAVE played this game before. One of my friends had it back when I was around 10 years old, and I never got very far. I did watch him beat the game, but he was using codes up the wazoo, so I've yet to see a "clean" completion of it. This game reminds me of the game Life Force (the sequel to Gradius), both in the gameplay style, and the setting. Again, it's short on actual story, but you're this guy in a flying spacesuit, who adventures through an alien's body destroying smaller aliens within it. Like Life Force, the graphics of the stage are representative of being inside an alien's body, and like Life Force/Gradius, it auto scrolls (one very unique thing is that some stages are overhead and scroll down, which I've never seen in an NES game before - even though other games have stages that scroll up) and you can upgrade your weapon and shields by defeating certain enemies. Yet another similarity to Gradius is that once you're all powered up with great weapons and shields, and manage to die, you start your next life with the same puny cap gun as the beginning of the game, which makes it extremely hard to get your arsenal built back up, and if you die fighting a boss, you have to take it on without ANY power ups. This is one of the reasons why I am allowing myself to use save states. There are a couple different tunes in this game, none of which are very memorable, but neither were they annoying to listen to. Once you defeat the final boss, there is an escape stage which has no enemies, but it rapidly increases in speed and you need to maneuver around walls to avoid crashing and dying (yes, another similarity to the Gradius games). The ending consists only of a full credits role, along with a screenshot of a space station, whose link to the game confused me.


Alright. What game is up next, and who is with me? ;)

[percussion]

I grew up playing the Nintendo Entertainment System. You could easily say I was obsessed with it between 1987 and 1992. I was a Nintendo Power subscriber from day 1, I even watched all the crummy 80s Nintendo TV shows (a couple episodes of the Video Power gameshow have recently been uploaded to youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uRQfGsybGQ)), and even my username comes from a SNES game (well, close enough...). I never really grew out of this age of gaming, but there are still A LOT of games I never completed for the NES. Two things about this system - there were A LOT of games, and many of them can be completed in under an hour. The majority of games on the NES were designed (and pretty much demanded, due to lack of storage batteries on most games, and about half of them lacking passwords too) to be completed in one sitting, even though usually not on the first try. This is why I came up with a challenge for myself - once a day, pick out a NES game which I never beat, and BEAT it.

Now, obviously, this is not going to happen with every single game. Some of them ARE actually pretty long (Dragon Warrior 4, for example, requires at least 20 hours of gameplay) and require too much exploring for somebody new to the game to fly right through it. This is why I am starting out easy - my first two selections were auto-scrolling shooters, which aside from the boss battles and having to backtrack from deaths, are beaten in the exact same amount of time every time. As far as rules I set out for myself - since I am going to be playing these through emulation, I will allow the use of realtime save states (my goal is to beat a bunch of games FAST, not to train on every individual game by playing stages over and over until I perfect them), but I will NOT use any secret passwords or codes (both built into the game and with game genie) to help me (so when it's Contra's day, I'm gonna beat it with 3 lives, not 30). I am also going to use FAQs and manuals as a last resort - I will go look up information only when I am too frustrated to continue on without help. I'm also not going to beat myself up to stay on a daily schedule. Often times I am too busy to find the time to play through an entire game every day, or I might do multiple games a day on a slow day, but the main goal is to finish a new game the same day I started it, and try to keep to a 1 game/day pace.

I could have gone ahead and kept a log at GameFAQs, but as many of you are aware, that's a message board with the average maturity level of a squirrel, and I know there are plenty of other dopers here who have the same level of NES nostalgia as I do, who may want to either participate in the challenge along side me, or at least follow along with it.

Once I finish a game, I will post a recap here, and will take suggestions for the next game to play. I'm not sure whether or not I should spoil box the recaps, since I don't want to ruin the games for those joining in the challenge, but it's going to involve a lot of highlighting.


5/23/07
Silkworm, developed by Tecmo, released 1988. Completion time: ~45 minutes

This was a port of an arcade game which I also have never played. Like most shooters, there's very little actual story to it. A bunch of military machines/robots have gone haywire and are rebeling against the US Military, and you need to stop them. The unique thing about this game is that you can choose between using a helicopter, which can move all over the screen but can only fire to the right (or 45° down if you press A to tilt it forward), or a jeep, which is limited to the ground but has an gun which is aimable in any direction. If playing two player, each player gets to use one of the vehicles, which I'm sure makes a very fun two player cooperative experience. I used the helicopter. The graphics are nothing special, and it's the same song for the first 6 stages (but still a catchy tune). At first, the challenge level is pretty low, but by about the halfway point, it gets HARD. I actually was amazed how many moveable objects, all of which were trying to kill me, were on the screen at once, without the typical NES slowdown! When you die, you pick up right where you leave off, so getting hit isn't a big deal as long as you don't run out of lives. The game ran longer than I expected it to, and started to get pretty repetitive (it's one of these games where bosses return, but with a different color, which means twice as many hits to destroy them), but there was still a nice challenge which kept me from getting bored. Someday, I would really like to try two player mode in this game...maybe down the road I will try beating it with the jeep too. The ending was actually pretty nice for an NES game, with full screen graphics of the characters (who you've yet to see until this point) celebrating.

5/24/07
Abadox, developed by Natsume, released 1990. Completion time: 30 minutes
First up, I HAVE played this game before. One of my friends had it back when I was around 10 years old, and I never got very far. I did watch him beat the game, but he was using codes up the wazoo, so I've yet to see a "clean" completion of it. This game reminds me of the game Life Force (the sequel to Gradius), both in the gameplay style, and the setting. Again, it's short on actual story, but you're this guy in a flying spacesuit, who adventures through an alien's body destroying smaller aliens within it. Like Life Force, the graphics of the stage are representative of being inside an alien's body, and like Life Force/Gradius, it auto scrolls (one very unique thing is that some stages are overhead and scroll down, which I've never seen in an NES game before - even though other games have stages that scroll up) and you can upgrade your weapon and shields by defeating certain enemies. Yet another similarity to Gradius is that once you're all powered up with great weapons and shields, and manage to die, you start your next life with the same puny cap gun as the beginning of the game, which makes it extremely hard to get your arsenal built back up, and if you die fighting a boss, you have to take it on without ANY power ups. This is one of the reasons why I am allowing myself to use save states. There are a couple different tunes in this game, none of which are very memorable, but neither were they annoying to listen to. Once you defeat the final boss, there is an escape stage which has no enemies, but it rapidly increases in speed and you need to maneuver around walls to avoid crashing and dying (yes, another similarity to the Gradius games). The ending consists only of a full credits role, along with a screenshot of a space station, whose link to the game confused me.


Alright. What game is up next, and who is with me? ;)


ok..im in...theres no way ill be able to keep up but i will give it my best! let me know whats next

[bouv]

Blaster Master

Good. Fucking. Luck.

[fusoya]

ok, I'm game :P

I actually HAVE beaten Blaster Master before (I owned the actual cartridge since Christmas of 1989) but it's been a while, so the game deserves another play-through. Note to anybody joining this challenge that although Blaster Master is one of those games that has to be beaten in one sitting, it is a very long game, and is not completely linear. And the lobster boss is a bitch.

[Least Original User Name Ever]

That lobster boss is a motherfucker. Use grenades liberally.

I've got three of them for you. Code Name: Viper, Kabuki Quantum Fighter, and one of the best games to ever grace the NES, River City Ransom

[LilShieste]

That lobster boss is a motherfucker. Use grenades liberally.
I beat that game back in the day (only once), and would you believe that that is the only boss that sticks out in my head? What a PITA!


LilShieste

[fiddlesticks]

Guardian Legend was my Moby Dick. You have to spend lots of time walking around collecting power ups in that game, I'd be very curious to see if it could be done in 20 hours. At least you won't have to keep track of the ultra-annoying 32 character passwords...

[Gundam_Cricket]

My buddy owns a LAN center and I've been trying to convince him to scratch-build an arcade cabinet and load it up with old school NES games; he's not convinced the effort will be rewarded with people wanting to play past its initial novelty.

Some nominees from my childhood:
3-D Worldrunner
Bionic Commando
Wrecking Crew (incredibly fun puzzle game, try it if you never have before!)
Dragon Spirit
Mickey Mousecapades
CastleQuest

Man... makes me want to start a general NES nostalgia thread!

[storyteller0910]

Some nominees from my childhood:
3-D Worldrunner


True story. My dad bought me this game for my birthday when I was 11 or 12 or so. I opened it and put it in. He and I played, alternating stages, for about an hour. My stepmother hung out and watched. Suddenly, in the middle of a stage, all three of us developed massive motion sickness and threw up, more or less in rapid succession.

That game is evil.

[recessiveMeme]

If you ever get the best of The Adventures of Bayou Billy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayou_Billy) or Karnov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnov), please, return and say as much. I just want to bask in your reflected glory.

[Doctor Who]

That's hilarious, storyteller. As for me, I'll throw in Dusty Diamond All-Star Softball. Not a tough game for me, but I've logged somewhere around 4200 hours and I know all the players' relative strengths and weaknesses. I'm guessing it will be tough to beat in a day going in fresh.

[ultrafilter]

I never made it past that damn lobster boss until I got an emulator.

I'd been toying around with an idea for a thread for a while, and was finally motivated to post it after seeing this thread. Check it out (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=422286).

[Push You Down]

If you ever get the best of The Adventures of Bayou Billy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayou_Billy) or Karnov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnov), please, return and say as much. I just want to bask in your reflected glory.


Bask in my half-Glory. Karnov was one of my favorite games as a kid. Once I beat it the first time. Each successive time was a breeze.

[recessiveMeme]

Bask in my half-Glory. Karnov was one of my favorite games as a kid. Once I beat it the first time. Each successive time was a breeze.:: reverence ::

[Least Original User Name Ever]

I've beaten Bayou Billy, as well. Can I get a shot of reverence in this place or what?

[FlyingCowOfDoom]

How about A Boy and his Blob?

:D

--FCOD

[Hal Briston]

Just in case (http://nintendo8.com/toplist/more/) anyone wants to join fusoya in his attempt.

[recessiveMeme]

I've beaten Bayou Billy, as well. Can I get a shot of reverence in this place or what?Actually all the revering I directed at Push You Down has left me a bit tuckered. Would you settle for a vague expression of approval?

:: nods amiably ::

[Blaster Master]

Blaster Master

Good. Fucking. Luck.
Hey, why do I need good luck? :cool:

[fusoya]

5/25/07
Blaster Master, developed by Sunsoft, released November 1988, Completion time: 2 hours, 54 minutes

I'll say it again. If you are not familiar with this game, best to skip this one in the NES-a-day challenge for now. It's long, and it's evil. Why they didn't add a password option to this game is beyond me. Those who do, I highly suggest you use save states, even as just a backup, because there are a number of places in the game where you can get your tank stuck, and your only option if you aren't able to die is to reset....It IS one of the greatest NES games ever though. A kid named Jason follows his pet frog down a hole in his backyard (which for some reason just so happens to have nuclear waste laying around in it), sees it mutate into a giant, and then hop away. But there's also this tank, named Sophia, as well as a suit of futuristic armor, which Jason dons and drives away in. Yes, there was actually a novelization to this game, which I read back in the late 80s. Anyway, two modes to the game - driving around in the tank and shooting stuff (in a side scrolling mode in all 4 directions), and then getting out of the tank and going into buildings and shooting stuff, in a top down mode, a la Zelda and Startropics. Each time you defeat a boss, you get an upgrade to your tank, which just so happens to be just what you need to reach the next area. And somewhat similar to Metroid, you don't just move on to the next area, you have to FIND it (I lost about 20 minutes trying to remember where area 3 was...thank god I remembered where area 4 is)


you have to go back to the exact place where you start the game, and then use the hover ability to go up.

While I have the spoiler box open, let me also comment that the final boss (the guy with the whip) is one of the easiest bosses in this game - stand on the very lower right of the screen and shoot grenades up, and he'll be unable to hurt you at all! And also, the ending rips off Castlevania's completely. For all you Engrish fans, the final screen says "very thanks!"



Since none of the stages are linear, there is a lot of exploring and random killing you can do, which keeps the game from getting boring. There are also sub-weapons which you can find. This game has pretty bright graphics, and each area is a completely differently themed zone (castle, futuristic, ice, etc). It also has one of the best soundtracks ever to come out of an 8-Bit system. Aside from a couple of bosses (believe it or not, I actually had more trouble with the first frog boss than the lobster!), the game never gets TOO difficult, but you have to keep your eyes open to avoid getting trapped and stomped to death. My biggest complaint is that once you get some of the tank upgrades, the play control gets very difficult, because it'll want to use the upgrades when all I want to do is jump.

Blaster Master is a game that's been in my collection for nearly 20 years, and it should be in every casual or die-hard 8 Bit fan's too. Just make sure you set aside at least 3 hours if you want to beat it!

Okay, Code Name Viper up for Saturday, Kabuki Quantum Fighter for Sunday, and River City Ransom for Monday. I've never really played the first two, and RCR is definitely beatable in one sitting, despite having extremely long passwords and a role-playing-based experience system.

[fusoya]

okay, to respond to everyone at once and keep this plan going...


The Guardian Legend I always see on Top XX NES Game lists, and I've never played it beyond the first stage. I do want to get to it, but it doesn't sound like it fits the criteria of this challenge (often if a game has a password, they don't expect you to beat it in one sitting...then again, Mega Man 2 had passwords and I can beat it in a half hour). One thing I remember reading in Nintendo Power is that there's a special password TGL (the initials for the game).

3-D Worldrunner, Dragon Spirit, Mickey Mousecapades, CastleQuest will go on the list. Worldrunner was one of the first games made by a little company called Squaresoft, who went on to do the Final Fantasy series.

Can Wrecking Crew actually be beaten?

I've heard scary, scary things about Bayou Billy. That was the game that even Captain N couldn't beat...I've personally never gotten past the first level. Maybe that can be next Friday's challenge. Karnov one the first Third Party game I got for the NES, and I've beaten it multiple times. One of the least satisfying endings ever. Definitely beatable in one sitting, as long as you know your way around.

A Boy & His Blob is a GREAT game for screwing around in, but can actually be beaten in about 5 minutes, due to a glitch that kills all of the enemies on the Blob's planet at once. I'll explain further when its turn is up.

Bionic Commando I actually beat about a month ago, so I'm not gonna do that one again (like Blaster Master, the game is way too long for casual gamers to beat in one sitting, but that's what you have to do!)...and yes, everything you've heard about that game is true, down to Hitler being the final boss.


so.....anyone else beat Silkworm yet? :D

[Gundam_Cricket]

Can Wrecking Crew actually be beaten?
I think so... in a manner of speaking. I think that once you get through all 99 levels you restart at level 1. If that's the case I'd consider beating the 99th level akin to beating the game. To be fair, I have no idea how long that would take, though.

What about Ducktales? I loooooved both the game and that show as a kid.

Blathering blatherskite! :p

[Snarky_Kong]

Ninja Gaiden, or is that just evil?

[fusoya]

Yeah, games where the object of winning is getting a maximum score, or getting the levels to reset back to the beginning without a real accomplishment (Tiger-Heli is an example, except the game never TELLS you that it's back to the beginning, so until you start recognizing patterns in the enemies, you wouldn't even know you "Beat" it), are exempt from this challenge. There's no fun in beating a game that doesn't even have an ending!

also, I'd say that most NES sports games are exempt for this challenge. They either fall into the category of being unbeatable, as far as a clear cut ending is concerned, or requiring you to play a whole season or at least a playoff series, which would get old really fast. Games like Super Dodge Ball, which is really on the line between action and sports, which actually have a quest mode meant to be beaten in one sitting, are still in.

Ducktales is a great game, even if it can be beaten in under 15 minutes. Great show too. As mentioned in another thread on here last week, they just don't have shows like Ducktales anymore...

[Gundam_Cricket]

Yeah, games where the object of winning is getting a maximum score, or getting the levels to reset back to the beginning without a real accomplishment (Tiger-Heli is an example, except the game never TELLS you that it's back to the beginning, so until you start recognizing patterns in the enemies, you wouldn't even know you "Beat" it), are exempt from this challenge. There's no fun in beating a game that doesn't even have an ending!
Fair enough!

also, I'd say that most NES sports games are exempt for this challenge. They either fall into the category of being unbeatable, as far as a clear cut ending is concerned, or requiring you to play a whole season or at least a playoff series, which would get old really fast. Games like Super Dodge Ball, which is really on the line between action and sports, which actually have a quest mode meant to be beaten in one sitting, are still in.
man, I love Super Dodge Ball, but as a kid I could never find people to play my NES with me. I wanted nothing more than to play Bean Ball with a friend :(

[recessiveMeme]

Regarding Bayou Billy...I've personally never gotten past the first level.I know exactly what that's like... :D

Ninja Gaiden, or is that just evil?It isn't so bad really-- all a matter of memorizing the the precise location from which something will fly at you from off-screen at any given moment and noting the blindspots in the patterns of any number of obnoxious boss monsters. Plus, Irene is hot in a weird 80s kind of way.

This topic is kind of funny really in that a friend of mine has recently been battling the demons of his youth via the Wii's Virtual Console. He just did Ninja Gaiden last week and the original Castlevania the week before that. Too bad, too. I've enjoyed ribbing him about his defeat at the three obnoxiously** placed fireballs of Dracula for a while now.

**You have to jump at just the right time, dontchaknow?

[Shagnasty]

Tecmo Bowl is one of the finest games ever to grace us by its presence. I nominate it.

[iamthewalrus(:3=]

How about A Boy and his Blob?

:DThis SomethingAwful article is fantastic (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=421802), if for no other reason that this section, which so perfectly captures the absurdity of the game.
At some points you will have to turn your blob into a ladder. To do this, you first feed him every type of jellybean you have until you find the one that made him turn into a ladder.I remember renting this game when I was 10 or so, and being completely mystified. I managed to get exactly as far as the guy writing the review did: namely, I made a whole in the floor and fell to my death.

I have beaten Blaster Master exactly once, in college, and it was the cause of much celebration. I did it the old fashioned way. No screenshot saves for me.

[Chronos]

(believe it or not, I actually had more trouble with the first frog boss than the lobster!)I completely believe it... I had way more trouble with the two frog bosses than with the two lobster bosses. The dirty little secret of the lobster bosses is that even though they're vulnerable to the grenade-pause trick, you have to get up close to do that, and it's really, really hard to get the timing right. It's far easier, even for the second one that throws rocks at you, to stay way back at the bottom of the screen, and just use your gun and be patient. By contrast, the only way I've ever beaten the second frog boss is via grenade-pause (it's still just as hard as with the lobsters, but the conventional way is even harder).

And I absolutely do not believe a three-hour speed run for Blaster Master. The only times I've ever beaten it have been on an emulator, and even discarding all of the dead-end saves, it's still taken more like 20.

[Doctor Who]

This SomethingAwful article is fantastic (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=421802), if for no other reason that this section, which so perfectly captures the absurdity of the game.Your link is misdirected. Is it this one? (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/rom-pit/boy-his-blob.php)

[Jeep's Phoenix]

I think I really missed something about A Boy and His Blob.

The game made such a big deal about finding treasure so you could buy vitamins to beat the bad guy on Blob's planet...yet all you had to do was feed Blob the correct jellybean, and he would turn into a jack, knocking over a shelf full of vitamins in the bad guy's lair. WTF! Why was the bad guy keeping vitamins if they're bad for him?!

[ultrafilter]

I completely believe it... I had way more trouble with the two frog bosses than with the two lobster bosses. The dirty little secret of the lobster bosses is that even though they're vulnerable to the grenade-pause trick, you have to get up close to do that, and it's really, really hard to get the timing right. It's far easier, even for the second one that throws rocks at you, to stay way back at the bottom of the screen, and just use your gun and be patient. By contrast, the only way I've ever beaten the second frog boss is via grenade-pause (it's still just as hard as with the lobsters, but the conventional way is even harder).

No, no, no, you're thinking of the crab bosses. The lobster boss is the guy at the end of the underwater area who lobs bubble after bubble after fucking bubble at you.

And I absolutely do not believe a three-hour speed run for Blaster Master. The only times I've ever beaten it have been on an emulator, and even discarding all of the dead-end saves, it's still taken more like 20.

It's reasonable if you know where everything is.

[brendon_small]

Ducktales is a great game, even if it can be beaten in under 15 minutes. Great show too. As mentioned in another thread on here last week, they just don't have shows like Ducktales anymore...

I came in to suggest this game. I got an FC Twin from ebay. It's the new system that runs the 8 and 16 bit Nintendo games. I love it. For my birthday last night, after cooking out and such, a few friends of mine came over to play Nintendo. We played Ducktales for hours...

Also, Bubble Bobble was wonderful - but damn it gets old after 10 minutes now. My suggestions for the challenge, Jurassic Park. I played this once as a kid and never rented it again. Now that I'm older, I play it for hours and hours and still haven't beat it (basically lack of trying)...

Brendon Small

[Happy Scrappy Hero Pup]

Regarding the Bayou Billy Wikipedia entry:

Archie Comics published a comic book series called "The Adventures of Bayou Billy". It used some characters from the game and added some new characters. Billy was made a widower, and his girlfriend's name was changed from Annabelle Lane to Annabel Lee. The series does not fit into the game's continuity or backstory and is considered an alternate universe. It ran for 5 issues.


What the FUCK?

You find me ONE person who has ever debated or needed clarification on the continuity of BAYOU fucking BILLY and I will buy you a double lobster-boss dinner in honor of Blaster Master.


Oh, and i would like to nominate Chubby Cherub. Fantastic side-scroller that was much better while drunk.

Or, in the classic "Congratulation!" vein, I'd offer 1942.

[fusoya]

okay, about Blaster Master. First of all, the lobster is the boss of world 5 (the underwater world). There is only ONE lobster boss, and the grenade trick doesn't work on him (if it did, I would have beaten Blaster Master about 8 years sooner). I'm not sure exactly WHAT that thing is....it looks like a venus fly trap with two long arms....certainly doesn't look like a lobster....but the boss of worlds 2 and 6 is the one the grenade trick works on.

Chronos - do you mean 20 hours or minutes? The record for beating Blaster Master is 33 minutes, 17 seconds (http://tasvideos.org/724S.html) (and yes, like all videos on that site, it was accomplished by playing through the game one frame at a time, and rewinding if it doesn't go exactly as planned). I don't know why you'd think 3 hours would be unreasonable...I probably would have cracked 3 hours if I remembered my way through the game and didn't have so much trouble with the frog bosses....finding your way through the game doesn't take THAT much time. It's non-linear, but the dead ends are pretty short.

Shagnasty - how exactly am I supposed to beat Tecmo Bowl? I love the game too, but if it just involves football game after football game, I'm gonna pass.

alright, I'm heading out for the weekend (coincidentally, I'm going to a lobster feast tomorrow night, and I will eat in honor of Jason and Sophia), so I'm gonna load up my GBA's flashcart with all of the games mentioned, and be back with recaps on Monday night. Good luck to everyone else taking the challenge - we'd love to hear your thoughts, especially on new games you've played through!

[Chronos]

OK, I assumed that people meant the things with the long arms with the claws when they said "lobster". They were a fair challenge, but beatable (including by the grenade trick, if you pulled it off). The thing at the end of the water world, by contrast (which looked a lot more like a crab than a lobster, to me) was the easiest monster in the game, if you had the top gun when you got to him. Stand at the bottom middle of his area, face upward, and hold down the gun button (I think it was B). Close your eyes. Wait for the explosion sound effects. Done. Everything he shot at you came straight down at you, or very close to it, and all of his projectiles could be shot down. So if you just kept firing the super gun at him, nothing would hit you, and you would hit him whenever he was vulnerable.

[Least Original User Name Ever]

By the way, for Blaster Master, did you use the pause trick?

[Pushkin]

Man... makes me want to start a general NES nostalgia thread!

Me too :)

To the OP and others taking up the challenge, how's about renaming it the "thumb a day" challenge. Maybe I took to the games a little too furiously, but those old NES pads gave my fingers a beating, when I finally stopped playing there were little outlines of the d-pad on my thumbs :p Shame Nintendo's pads gradually came down in durability (not tried a Wii yet to see)

[mobo85]

Or, in the classic "Congratulation!" vein, I'd offer 1942.

Did they only have one congraturation left at the video game...make place?

[Just Some Guy]

I think I really missed something about A Boy and His Blob.

The game made such a big deal about finding treasure so you could buy vitamins to beat the bad guy on Blob's planet...yet all you had to do was feed Blob the correct jellybean, and he would turn into a jack, knocking over a shelf full of vitamins in the bad guy's lair. WTF! Why was the bad guy keeping vitamins if they're bad for him?!
For the exact same reason all video game bosses provide the tools of their destruction in their lair (or its immediate surroundings).

[Jeep's Phoenix]

For the exact same reason all video game bosses provide the tools of their destruction in their lair (or its immediate surroundings).
Kinda like quick-disconnect bridges, I guess...

[fusoya]

hope everyone had a good holiday. Mine consisted of lots of swimming, outdoor sporting, eating that damn boss from Blaster Master's level 5, spending time with family, and I managed to fit in some NESing between the activities.

1942 & 1943, developed by Capcom, released 1985/1988, completion time: about an hour and a half (plus about 30-40 minutes on 1942)
As was suggested earlier on this thread, I decided to give 1942 a try. Alphabetically, this game comes first on the list of NES games. I KNEW when I was getting into this game that I probably wasn't going to finish, because I suspected that this was one of those games that didn't have an ending, and after playing about 10 stages, it started repeating itself. 1942 & 1943 are vertical auto-scrolling shooter games made by Capcom and originally released in arcades. You fly a Lockheed P-38 and take on the entire Japanese air force single handedly. By shooting a series of pink planes, you can get weapon upgrades, and three times per stage, you can do a flip which will make you temporarily invinsible - great for when you are surrounded. Note that these are two games that absolutely require turbo controllers (and are perfect for auto-fire, since you almost NEVER want to stop shooting) if you still want to have feeling in your thumb when you finish it. 1942 has a number of flaws. As mentioned, it was a direct port of the arcade version - a game that's fun for about 5-10 minutes, but once you run out of lives, you probably aren't going to put another quarter in unless you're trying to get on the top 10 list for points. This is exactly that type of game - shoot shoot shoot until you get the high score, and they'll keep providing you with more enemy planes. There is no variety to the stages either. You're mostly flying over water, and occasionally you'll see an island, but there's no maneuvering like most air shooters have. Another huge complaint with 1942 that I absolutely have to mention here is that game has some of the most awful "music" I've ever heard on the NES. It isn't even music, it's just morse code beeping, with a drum track under it!! Anyway, once I realized that continuing to play 1942 was going to be a waste of time, I moved on to a more familiar game - 1943. This game was what 1942's NES port SHOULD have been. Capcom improved on everything wrong with that game. It kept the same platform, but now every stage has a boss (and some of them are HUGE, multipart bosses), there is some damn fine music which Capcom would later on get a reputation for, and there's an experience-building system - you can raise your offensive power, defensive shields, energy level (in 1943, unlike 42, you have an energy meter which counts done 1 point per second, as well as additional points for every time you are hit. You only die if you get hit when the meter is at 0), special weapon upgrades, and special weapon time, one at a time, every time you find a special hidden item...there's usually one per level. This game has 30 levels, each level taking 5 minutes at the most to complete - it DOES have a password system too. There are some pretty intense moments, but the whole game is pretty managable once you get the hang of it. Now, I know I never finished 1942, and am probably not going to (and I don't think there even IS an ending), but I would recommend everybody thinking of doing it to just go ahead and play 1943....it's more of a remake than a sequel, and 1942 has nothing to offer that 43 doesn't.

The Adventures of Bayou Billy, developed by Konami, released March 1989, competition time: about 2 hours (even though there's only maybe 20 minutes of actual gameplay from start to finish)

Jesus fuck. I know this game has a reputation for being hard, so much that there was a Captain N: The Game Master where Motherbrain discovers that the only game Kevin can't beat is THIS ONE, but this was just insane. I mean it when I said I never got by the first level before, and it took me probably an hour of dying and restoring just to make it through the first level this time around. The big thing that makes this game so hard is #1 every enemy has the same hit points as Billy and #2 they have a much easier time hitting you than you do hitting them back, and #3 for whatever stupid reason, you are forced to stop and fight a bunch of enemies, including alligators who are isolated to the water and have NOTHING to do with your quest, rather than having the option of avoiding them and running ahead. I suppose most beat-em-up games are like this though. I honestly don't know how ANYBODY who bought this game back in 1989 managed to beat it. Infact, I'd like to know just many times this game was returned, either out of frustration, or because the cartridge got smashed when it was thrown out the window, set on fire, and then smashed with a steel toed boot. Honestly though, after level 1 (and level 3 which is basically a mirror image of level 1), the game does calm down. The two shooting levels are a piece of cake (note that if you are playing this on a emulator, and I hope you are, cuz otherwise you are never going to SEE the second stage, choose GAME B or else it'll expect you to play with a zapper) and the two driving stages are manageable (btw, since when could Jeep Wrangler drive 180mph?). The key to getting through the rest of the game is getting the whip. Once you have the whip, you have the distance you need to attack without worrying about missing and getting hit back. Okay, for those of you who are wondering the deal with this game, besides its cruel level of difficulty, Bayou Billy, who is a severe ripoff of Crocodile Dundee, has this girl named Annabelle....Anabelle....Annabelly (see, there ARE continuity problems in this game!) who gets kidnapped by Big Daddy - the same big daddy from the Chief Wiggam PI episode of the Simpsons (infact, I think that whole episode was ripped off from this game) and you gotta go through the swamps and New Orleans to rescue her....it's a beat-em-up similar in style to Double Dragon, but there are also two shooting stages (like Duck Hunt) and two driving stages (like Rad Racer, but with guns). If you ever DO manage to beat the game (and I applaud anybody who even seriously tries to), you do get one of the longer endings for an NES game...and the big surprise is that Bayou Billy is played by none other than Billy West...the voice dialouge is so intelligible (just like Konami's Double Dribble and Blades of Steel) that I didn't think ANYBODY did his voice. This is one game that I absolutely never want to touch again. Beware.

A Boy and His Blob, developed by David Crane, released March 1990, completion time: 3 minutes (yes, MINUTES)

After Bayou Billy, I needed some reassurance by playing a game I KNOW I can beat blindfolded. A Boy & His Blob is a really obscure game that I bet nobody would have even played if it weren't for the 4 page review in Nintendo Power. My brother wanted it for his 8th birthday just because of that review....in the beginning, it actually took us a long time to finish. This is one of the first "sandbox" games, where it's actually more fun and rewarding to just screw around, rather than try to beat the game. The story is that this blob comes to planet earth, and meets this kid, and they become friends, and the blob wants him to save his planet, which was taken over by some marshmallow king who looks like Jabba the Hut. The catch is that when you feed the blob jelly beams, he turns into stuff. Feed him punch jellybean, and he turns into a hole....feed him cola and he turns into a bubble.....feed him apple and he turns into a jack. All of them are either puns, rhymes, or just plain confusing (strawberry bridge?)...and then there's the ketchup jellybean, which makes him CATCH UP to you, if he gets stuck somewhere. Having all of these tools at your disposal, plus a pretty non-linear world, (although it's a side scroller, so if you want to move vertically, you better make sure you don't fall to your death) there's a lot of random stuff you can do. However, if you know what you're doing, and actually want to finish the game ASAP, you can do it in about 5 minutes

]and if you want to do it in 3, immediately use a root beer rocket, fly to the blob's planet, and when you land, go to the very left of the screen. Prepare to throw a jelly bean, but rapidly press left and right while he is winding up for the throw, but stop when he releases, and it'll scroll the screen to the left for a split second - to the screen with the king - and when it returns, ALL of the enemies on the planet are gone. All you need to do is run all the way to the right, until you reach the door that you need the lime key for. Go one screen to the left, and use the punch hole directly underneath the hole in the ceiling, whistle for the blob, and let him make another hole. Run to the right (while still in the second hole), and you'll be running through the ground, and will fall off the right edge of the screen and end up in the king's room. You know what to do here. Enjoy the lame graphics for the ending.

Ducktales, developed by Capcom, released September 1988, completion time: 18 minutes

Ducktales is another quickie. Fun game though. It was totally made to cash in on the success of the cartoon series, but being a Capcom game that WASN'T a direct port from the arcade, you know you were getting a quality game. The story is that Scrooge Mcduck is a greedy, rich bastard, who is trying to find some rare treasures around the world so that he can get even richer. He drags his family and friends along and half of them get captured, and the other half find some out of the way place to sit around and help you, should you pass them by. One of the funnest aspects is that you use a walking cane for a weapon. You can pogo with it, attacking enemies from above, or use it as a golf club, smacking enemies with rocks. I used to own the Gameboy version, which was SLIGHTLY different, so I got lost a couple times in the NES one. Similar to Mega Man, you can choose to play the stages in any order, although aside from one level which has an item you need to finish another level, it doesn't really matter the order. I always thought it was strange how the game keeps making you go back to Transylvania, considering that was the only level in the game that WASN'T actually on the cartoon show.

How is everyone else's challenges going?

[Least Original User Name Ever]

Yeah, Bayou Billy was a motherfucker. I remember that my bane in that game were the driving parts. They had bad enough handling to just be borderline impossible if you couldn't get the knack for that fucking driving.

I think the dent is still here...ah yes, here it is. The dent in my basement wall from my head. Frustration!

[fusoya]

I'm gonna have a pretty busy week ahead, so I'll give everyone a couple days to catch up. I'll be back on Friday with Code Name Viper, and possibly Kabuki Quantum Fighter & River City Ransom too.

So far, since beginning this challenge, I've completed 7 games:
1943
Abadox
Adventures of Bayou Billy -- way fucking hardest so far
A Boy & His Blob -- shortest so far
Blaster Master -- longest so far
Duck Tales -- easiest so far
Silkworm

and banished 1942 to the unwinnable pit of doom

[I'm No Saint]

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

I'm so very sorry.

[Potato Pancakes]

Battletoads!

[c_goat]

Battletoads!

Speaking of Masochism... I had a game called Section Z that was pretty bad. At the end of each level, you would choose one of two exits, sometimes an exit would take you way back like 30 levels. Also, some exits you couldn't access until you found a boss somewhere on a different level (meaning you'd have to go back and try a different path to find it).

I did manage to beat it (thanks to a FAQ that gave the right paths).

[Chronos]

Having now re-tried Blaster Master, knowing where everything is, I take back my incredulity. Apparently, the 20-hour figure I was using included a lot of blind exploring and a lot of needless (though useful) power-upping.

For further nominations: I know that puzzle games like Tetris are generally "survive as long as you can", but there are exceptions. On the Nintendo version of Tetris, you could play type B, which started you off with some amount of junk already on the screen, and you had to complete some pre-set number of lines to win (whereupon you would get a congratulations screen). And in Dr Mario, each individual level was beatable (when you killed all the vira), and the level counter only went up to 24 (which was actually no different from 20). After you beat 24, it would loop to 24 again indefinitely, so it never completely ended, but I think it's fair to say that once you've beaten level 24, you've beaten the game. So I would recommend adding one or both of those to the list.

A question, by the way: Some games have multiple difficulty levels (some of the Mega Man games), or a "Second Quest" once you beat the first one (Zelda, most famously). For purposes of this challenge, is a game only "beaten" when the hardest difficulty is beaten, or is just the first/easiest allowed?

[Least Original User Name Ever]

I'd say that the purpose is to not only beat them, but to beat them quickly. It's up to the white mage's discretion, although I'd like to see how long it took to beat the regular mission, and then how long it took to beat the extended campaign, and then a total.



How about Genghis Khan next, or are historical simulations out?

[fluiddruid]

What about Ducktales? I loooooved both the game and that show as a kid.

Blathering blatherskite! :pDuckTales was incredibly easy to beat. I beat the game the first day I owned it as a kid, and that was when I was substantially less skilled at video games than I am today; it only took me a few hours. All you need to do is master bouncing on that cane all the time.

[Gundam_Cricket]

What about McKids? I know it wa sa McDonald's game, but I actually remembered being surprised at how much fun I had while playing it. The fact that you could run through levels upside-down was a very cool twist for me.

[Doctor Who]

I decided to give 1942 a try. Alphabetically, this game comes first on the list of NES games.
:eek:

10-yard fight (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-Yard_Fight) begs to differ, sir! Pistols at dawn!

[fusoya]

A question, by the way: Some games have multiple difficulty levels (some of the Mega Man games), or a "Second Quest" once you beat the first one (Zelda, most famously). For purposes of this challenge, is a game only "beaten" when the hardest difficulty is beaten, or is just the first/easiest allowed?

Oh, I forgot to mention in my Ducktales review - I played on Normal difficulty. This is going to be my default, and with games with two modes, I'll do the easier one. Difficult mode isn't intended to be used for first time players...it's something to try once you beat it the first time.

and Genghis Kahn is out, because I'm not doing RPGs in this challenge...that challenge comes later. So is 10 Yard Fight, which was too ashamed to even call itself a football game (when the original NES sports games came out, we had Baseball, Soccer, Volleyball, Kung-Fu, Ice Hockey, Mach Rider and.......10 Yard Fight).

[Autolycus]

I loved NES, and SNES. I think I beat every game for SNES and most for NES. I'll recommend some of my favorites:


Zelda 1. Easy but I'd be interested to see how fast you can do it.

Adventures of Lolo. Awesome puzzle game. It has an ending. It gets wicked near the end.

Battletoads. I dont think I ever beat this ><

Gauntlet. A classic!

River City Ransom. Already mentioned, but I <3 this game. Great beat-em-up.

Arkanoid. D'oh!


That's all I can think of right now that would be good for this. There was a D+D style dungeon crawler that I'm trying to remember, but alas.

[thirdname]

How about Low G Man? I always liked that game, but I could never get past the boss of the submarine stage.

[Chronos]

Gauntlet. A classic!Indisputably, but does it have an ending? I thought that you just had a never-ending stream of dungeon levels. Gauntlet Legends had a well-defined goal, but that was long after the NES era.

[iamthewalrus(:3=]

Your link is misdirected. Is it this one? (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/rom-pit/boy-his-blob.php)Yes, thank you.

I'm not quite sure how I made that mistake. I'm just glad that I didn't accidentally link to the "tell us about your masturbation fantasies" thread or something.

[fusoya]

I'm still working on Code Name Viper (I got stuck at the end of stage two and had to wait until I got home to consult Nintendo Power), and 3D Worldrunner gave me a headache so I had to stop playing it (this game really does cause motion sickness!), but I did complete two games this week, which were fond memories of my childhood which I had an urge to play again. I'll do a lot of catching up this weekend.

Batman, developed by Sunsoft, released 1989, completion time: about 45 minutes
Another good side-scrolling action game from Sunsoft. When the Batman movie came out in the summer of 1989, it was the craze of the year, and naturally somebody had to cash in on the video game port. Fortunately, Sunsoft actually did a good job with it, and Batman would stand well even if it wasn't based on a franchise, especially since the game hardly resembles the actual movie, aside from the cut scenes between stages. What makes Batman unique and fun is that you have three different weapons - a batarang, a rocket gun and a dirk (which look like three compact discs being thrown at three angles straight ahead), as well as punching, and you have the ability to jump off walls, a la Ninja Gaiden. There are also some crazy bosses, including one which is fighting an entire room. Fortunately, ALL of them have safety spots where you can just fire and fire and not take a hit. Two complaints I do have about this game - first, it's a very DARK game...I don't mean evil dark, I mean the level designs are so dark that it's sometimes hard to tell where you're able to jump or climb. Also, the opening music starts with a long low pitched note and a black screen, and it always used to make me think that my NES was frozen, since actual frozen games do this too! However, the music gets much better really fast...I'm willing to bet it was the same composer who did Blaster Master, but back then, nobody ever used their real name in the credits....

Commando, developed by Capcom, released 1986, completion time: 35 minutes
Ah, Commando. The overhead run-and-gun game that probably has a higher kill level than any other NES game of the genre. A turbo controller is VITAL. This game was originally known to me as the game where you die if you run out of grenades, but since grenades are so friggin hard to aim, that will never become an issue. Although the gameplay is nothing like it (aside from the truck attack sections), this game is actually a prequel to Bionic Commando - your character is Super Joe, the bad ass war hero who drinks, smokes and chews tobacco between stages (how in the hell did that make it past Nintendo's censors?), who is the guy who needs to be rescued in the second game. While this game is fun, it can be tedious to actually beat, since the game recycles entire stages, and there is very little variety to the grey soldiers you are blowing away. One of my friends used to own this game, and he knew it back and front, which is why I was confused that I couldn't keep finding snake pits when I played through it, since he spent half the game going in and out of them. It turns out that the snake pits, which appear when you throw a grenade in the right place, serve no real purpose other than raising your score, so I probably finished faster by NOT looking for them. The most annoying thing about this game is it is possible to get stuck in the corner of mountains and bunkers, leaving you a sitting duck until you can wiggle your way out. Also, the boss of each stage waves a white flag when you've killed enough of his cronies, but if you run right into him, he'll still kill you, so you have to line yourself directly up with him about 1/4 down the screen so that your character will automatically run through him to the next stage. Like most early NES action games, Commando is a port from the arcade version, which would probably provide a more enjoyable experience.


more great Engrish in the ending:
CONGRATULATIONS <3
YOUR ALL MISSION IS OVER
THANK YOU FOR PLAYING
YOUR GREAT PLAYER <3 <3
THIS GAME WAS ENDED

[fusoya]

Chubby Cherub, developed by Bandai, released 1986, completion time: 25 minutes (about half of which was spent trying to escape the dark pit of doom)

This was the first time I've played this game....it was suggested by somebody earlier in this thread....but I was familiar with it. I remember reading about this game in The Official Nintendo Player's Guide and thinking it was the stupidest looking thing ever. Bandai had a reputation back then for making really crappy games (just wait until I accept the Jeckyl & Hyde challenge!) and for having games where A attacks and B jumps, because they just HAVE to be different, and break a tried and true tradition. There's really not much of a story to it - you play as this extremely creepy looking cherub, who flies around on rooftops slaughtering puppies and owls and eating food to increase your killing power. You have to rescue really weird looking kids who were kidnapped to advance to the next stage, and occasionally you'll get a stop sign where the only way to advance is to sin (gluttony, of course, by eating every piece of food on the screen). Surprisingly, the gameplay isn't as bad as you'd expect, although it never gets very hard (with one exception, coming up) so anyone who's ever played any side scrolling action game should be able to handle it. However, there's one catch. Fall down a cliff and you'll receive a fate worse than death - you'll end up in a completely black pit, with one eyed monsters who can't be killed but won't hesitate to try to kill you ASAP. There are invisible blocks which you must jump around to find, since you also aren't allowed to fly in here, and you need to work your way up to the door in the upper right corner. This wouldn't be QUITE so bad except for the fact that even if you die, you won't lose a life, so you are TRAPPED in here until you get out, with no option of dying to continue from the beginning of the stage. About half of my entire gameplay experience was spent escaping this room, and I made absolutely sure to never fall down another cliff again. And I wasn't at all shocked to find that once I beat the game, I got nothing except for a CONGRATULATIONS screen and Japanese-style dance music.

[fusoya]

Code Name: Viper, developed by Capcom, released 1989, completion time: about an hour

This game fits the definition of "cheap". You can't really call it a run-and-gun cuz if you go through the game with guns blazing, you won't even make it halfway through the first stage. The enemies in this game are SMART, and they shoot first, and they don't miss, and they also know how to duck to avoid your shots. There are a number of doors which you must pop into to find ammo or to rescue hostages, and if there are any enemies on screen, they'll be waiting to shoot the moment you exit the door, before you have the chance to fire back. This is the biggest challenge in this game, at least until you learn how they act, and then the game becomes much more managable. This game is a side (and occasionally vertically) scrolling action game. You're some Army guy, running through South America trying to bust up a drug gang. Each time you complete a stage, you get a little more of a note translated, which eventually reveals a surprise about the leader of the gang that I'm sure everybody saw coming. The interesting thing about this game is that aside from the very end, there aren't any bosses. To beat a stage, you need to find the hostage which can give you a bomb to blow open the door, which is why I got stuck in level 2 the first time I played it earlier this week. There's very little replay value to this game, but it's worth a play if you want a action platformer where the enemies aren't idiots.

[Least Original User Name Ever]

Code Name: Viper, developed by Capcom, released 1989, completion time: about an hour

This game fits the definition of "cheap". You can't really call it a run-and-gun cuz if you go through the game with guns blazing, you won't even make it halfway through the first stage. The enemies in this game are SMART, and they shoot first, and they don't miss, and they also know how to duck to avoid your shots. There are a number of doors which you must pop into to find ammo or to rescue hostages, and if there are any enemies on screen, they'll be waiting to shoot the moment you exit the door, before you have the chance to fire back. This is the biggest challenge in this game, at least until you learn how they act, and then the game becomes much more managable. This game is a side (and occasionally vertically) scrolling action game. You're some Army guy, running through South America trying to bust up a drug gang. Each time you complete a stage, you get a little more of a note translated, which eventually reveals a surprise about the leader of the gang that I'm sure everybody saw coming. The interesting thing about this game is that aside from the very end, there aren't any bosses. To beat a stage, you need to find the hostage which can give you a bomb to blow open the door, which is why I got stuck in level 2 the first time I played it earlier this week. There's very little replay value to this game, but it's worth a play if you want a action platformer where the enemies aren't idiots.

That game was a bitch. It was work, for sure.

[fusoya]

one last game for this weekend...

Adventure Island, developed by Hudson, released September 1988, completion time: about 50 minutes

Originally known as Wonder Boy in the arcade and on the Sega Master System (where it had better graphics and sound), this was the first of a series of side scrolling action games staring Master Higgins, the tropical island version of Super Mario. His princess was kidnapped by the witch doctor (or was it The Others?), which just so happens to be on the opposite side of the island. He throws axes and can ride a skateboard (always wearing a helmet and kneepads - safety first!) and has this tendency to slide when landing from jumps, which makes the play control the biggest enemy until you get used to it. Similar to Chubby Cherub, you need to collect fruit to keep your energy meter up, even though you still die if you get hit (the skateboard will absorb a hit). Once you get used to the play control, the game never gets very hard. It's pretty long for a sidescroller, but it also moves fast, compared to most NES side scrollers. Also, the developers were pretty lazy as every single world boss is the same guy, just with a head of a different animal!

[gonzoron]

A hearty second for Adventures of Lolo (and it's 1 or 2 sequels, I forget how many they did.) (it does have passwords, though, so it may not fit your 1 day criteria)

The one that constantly frustrated me as a kid was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I could get all the way into the technodrome with relative ease in something like 30-60 minutes. But then there was this one corridor full of flying guys with ray guns that got me every single time.

[mobo85]

Also, the developers were pretty lazy as every single world boss is the same guy, just with a head of a different animal!

Adventure Island is a lot like Super Mario Bros.- don't forget that in Mario, Mario had to face Bowser at the end of every level. (Sort of- in the first seven stages, the Bowser is an impostor- Mario can hit him with fireballs for extra points and see the villain fall out of the "costume.")

[fusoya]

I've done the Lolo games before. You need to be in the right state of mind to play those games....

I've been pretty busy with work and other projects over the last week, so I haven't quite kept it a game a day, but I got a couple games in over the weekend:

Amagon, developed by Vic Tokai, released April 1989, completion time: 30 minutes
Cavemen with guns!! Yeah, there's very little plot to this game, and what it has doesn't make much sense, but it's a fun platform action game. You're Amagon, a caveman with a shotgun who can also (when you pick up the right items) turn into a giant strongman guy who punches instead of using the gun, but has actual hit points instead of dying in one hit. I honestly prefered the gun, except when fighting bosses. You're trying to get across your island, filled with dinosaurs and aliens to get to your viking ship. It's a pretty easy game, especially considering the maker, but fun the first time around.

Kabuki Quantum Fighter, developed by HAL America, released March 1990, competition time: 22 minutes
I remember reading about this game in Nintendo Power back in 1990, and thought it was insane that a game was made where you use your HAIR as a weapon. One of the rare NES games developed by an American company, which ironically has a very Japanese sounding name. Not that the story really matters to the gameplay, but you're part of some science experiment to transfer your brain into raw binary code, to go inside an enemy computer and fight. Didn't Keanu Reeves make a movie similar to this once? For some crazy reason, when you're fighting inside this computer, you use your long red hair to swish at enemies, and you can also pick up chips which are ammo for various weapons you can fire (you get a new kind of gun each time you beat a stage). Your character also has ninja traits, since he can climb up walls and swing from hooks attached to the background. Despite not having a very interesting storyline, there are cut scenes between each stage. Didn't somebody suggest this challenge earlier in the thread? Challenge is a laughable word. Let me put it this way - I finished the game in 22 minutes without dying once, and I didn't even realize until halfway into the game that you had the ability to fire ammo by pressing select! What makes the game so easy is you have WAY too much energy available to you, so it's hard to get it low enough to die. There also aren't any cliffs, so if you miss a fall, the worst that'll happen is you'll land in spikes or fire and lose the same amount of energy as if an enemy hit you. The interesting choices of attack and maneuverability make this a unique, and still somewhat fun game.

[fusoya]

I guess the interest in this thread is starting to die down, but nether less the challenge continues.

Dragon Spirit, developed by Namco, released 1990, completion time: 40 minutes (most of which was spent on the last stage)

I originally played this game in the arcade. As fun as it is to just pretend you're an ass kicking dragon, you're really a knight with the ability to change form, so you change into a dragon to rescue a bunch of princesses. In short, this game is basically 1943, if you change the graphics to a medieval setting. It's a vertical auto-scroller, where your best friend is a turbo controller. However, it has some unique features to it. Instead of getting gun upgrades, your upgrades turn you into a different type of dragon, with different types of firepower. I found that the three-headed green dragon was the best. Until you learn what the orb upgrades are by appearance, its easy to get downgraded to a worse dragon form. The B button fires ahead, and the A button fires at the ground, since there are both types of enemies, and it isn't always obvious which are which. Speaking of enemies, this game has a unique type of enemy - anybody who has a samsung cell phone or has ever played with QBasic for DOS has played the Snake game, which is represented in the form of an enemy in this game, which was fun to fight. Each world has a different theme, although the "graveyard" stage should have been called the desert stage, since that's what it was This game never gets TOO hard....that is, until you get to the castle stage, and then it gets insane....not so much for the enemies, but because it turns into a wall maze, and you can easily get autoscrolled into a wall, and your death.....not to mention all those damn spears coming out of the walls.

Double Dragon, developed by Technos, released 1987, completion time: 25 minutes

Ah, Double Dragon. Who hasn't played this revolutionary beat-em-up? It was one of the games reviewed in the very first issue of Nintendo Power, and was famous for the millions of bugs present in the game, which the magazine exploited on a monthly basis for about a year. I used to get such a thrill playing this game as a kid. In my twisted pre-pubesant years, the ability to beat up on women (including the opening scene where William punches Billy's girlfriend and then slings her over his shoulder and carries her away) made this one of the funnest games in my arsenal. Billy Lee is a martial arts master. His brother Jimmy is the leader of the Black Warriors gang, and being jealous of Billy and Marian's relationship, has her kidnapped. You go through 4 levels (the third of which seems to never end) beating up everybody you come across. to rescue her and her cat. You build experience with each punch and kick you throw, eventually learning new abilities, like jump kicking and elbow punching (which I found to be the strongest attack, although not very accurate). You also learn the crucial over-the-shoulder throw, which cuts the game play time in half if you can find a cliff to throw enemy after enemy over, which leads to the old inside joke among my friends "Next!.....Next!.....Next!". You can also find some extremely powerful weapons along the way, which are carried on screen by enemies, but can be knocked out of their hands with one kick. Another huge inside joke among my friends was "never play with knives!" as throwing (or getting hit) by a thrown knife is an instant, bloody kill. The throwable cardboard box also makes one appearance, at the beginning of stage two. This game carries two big distinctions in NES history - as a bonus game, it contains what might be the first "street fighting game", as you could do one on one street fighting with all of the characters in the game. It also contains what is probably the first guitar solo in video game music.

[cckerberos]

Okay, I think I'll give this a shot... now I just have to try to catch up :D

[fusoya]

I decided to finish off the trilogy...

Double Dragon 2 - The Revenge, developed by Technos, released 1989, competion time: 27 minutes

This game picks up shortly after the first. Billy and Jimmy have reconciled their differences and are now working as a team. However, The Shadow Warrior gang goes after Billy's girlfriend again and shoot her to death, so the Double Dragons are seeking their revenge. While gameplay, graphics and music are similar (although somewhat upgraded) to the original, there are some changes. The biggest is the two player team mode, which I didn't get to play (although I did when I first rented the game back in 1989). This is also the only Double Dragon game with awkward controls - rather than the B - kick, A - punch like the rest of the series, B attacks to the left and A to the right, and you can only kick behind you. Gone is the level gaining mode and the elbow punch, but the secret weapon in this one is the knee kick, which kills most enemies, including bosses, in one or two hits. I actually had to beat this game twice - since I am choosing normal difficulty for all games with different modes, I was only able to play to level 8 and not get to fight the last boss, since he can only be defeated in difficult mode (which honestly is NO different from normal mode in any way I noticed!)

Double Dragon 3: The Sacred Stones, developed by Technos, released 1991, competiton time: 40 minutes

This is one of the few NES games that I owned, fresh out of a new box, but never finished in the time I owned it. I got CLOSE, getting up to the last boss a couple of times, but never quite there. This was the only Double Dragon I really needed to rely on save stating to finish. It's quite different from the other two. Although the second game HAD a two player mode, the third was pretty much MADE for it, with lots of two player moves that Billy and Jimmy (and the other characters) could perform together. This is one of the reasons that one player mode is extra hard, not to mention that you face the exact same number of enemies in two player mode, making the game much shorter and easier if playing with a friend. In this game, a little old Japanese woman comes forward and says that Marian (sorry, if you didn't play DD2 then pardon the spoiler) has been kidnapped yet AGAIN by the Shadow Warrior gang, and this time they want Billy & Jimmy to collect the three sacred stones as ransom. Rather than kicking the woman's ass, they listen to her and follow her around the world, only to find out that SHE was their leader and wanted the stones herself. Surprise surprise. The most unique thing about this game is that you meet two new characters - Chin, a Chinese martial arts master whose secret weapon is the bellyflop jump, and Ranzou, a ninja, who become playable characters once you defeat them as bosses. They also serve as extra lives, as once a character dies, they're dead for good (I learned that the hard way when I let Chin die in level 3). This game really has the difficulty reved up from the first two. There are droppable weapons, but they are completely USELESS since they take too long to pick up, and do no extra noticeable damage compared to fists and kicks. There are also special weapons (nunchucks, iron claw, throwing stars) that DO extra damage but only get limited uses per stage. This game was tough, even for an experienced player, but if you can handle Bayou Billy, this game is nothing.

[mobo85]

Billy and Jimmy

Bimmy and Jimmy. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMg6_IXCjo4) (NSFW: language)

[Fuji]

Tecmo Bowl is one of the finest games ever to grace us by its presence. I nominate it.

I would have to second this nomination. I know you said that you didn't want to just play game after game, but in Tecmo Bowl (not to be confused with its later, brilliant progeny Super Tecmo Bowl), there are only 12 teams. You beat each team once, you win the "Championship" (certainly not the Superbowl ;) ). Considering the games only take about 15 minutes or so, you could easily bang it out in about 3 hours.

Now for the challenge part: take Indianapolis.

No LT, no Payton, no Montana. Good luck!

[mobo85]

(not to be confused with its later, brilliant progeny Super Tecmo Bowl)!

That's Tecmo Super Bowl, as in the name of the developer combined with the trademarked name of the NFL championship.

[Fuji]

That's Tecmo Super Bowl, as in the name of the developer combined with the trademarked name of the NFL championship.

You are correct, sir. I am suitably chastened.

(It really was an awesome game, though. One of the first where you could play a whole season and it kept the stats, and had injuries carry over from game to game. For the OP, I'd suggest taking the New England Patriots all the way. But if you can win with Indy in the original, you're already a Tecmo stud.)

[fusoya]

Guerrilla Wardeveloped by SNK, released 1989, completion time: 33 minutes

Another run-and-gun vertical birds eye scroller, with an emphasis on the run. This game is very similar to Commando, but is a better game. You're one soldier vs an enemy army, blowing away enemies and saving (or shooting) hostages along the way. You lose 500 points each time you shoot a hostage, but it's way easier than stopping your fire, and points don't even matter. You can get various weapon upgrades...the flame thrower is great since it kills most enemies in one hit, but is also very slow on the reload. This game also has a two player mode, and again, I never got a chance to try it out but I'm sure it'd be fun. This game also suffers heavily from too-many-enemies-on-the-screen slowdown. I've found that rather than stopping to fight, it's better to just keep moving, since once you run past an enemy, they often don't even try to keep up with you. The most evil enemy in the game are the landmines, since they often aren't detected until you are close to them, and you don't even have to step on them to get blown up. The final boss in this game is also a bastard, especially since most other bosses can easily be defeated with safety spots and a fire, dodge, repeat strategy. Another strange concept is that a couple bosses are muscle-men, who will pick you up, swing you around, and apparently throw you to the next stage.

[DKW]

Can't find a working NES emulator to save my life...for now, I'll just list some noteworthy games that I was able to beat clean (i.e. no Game Genie).

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out: Oh, man, this was a blast (especially at my tender, pre-Beatmania IIDX state). I once played this for, like, two hours straight, pretty remarkable considering only fourteen different fights. Pure vintage 8-bit videogaming, nothing but reflexes and patterns and nerves. BTW, the toughest opponent is Mr. Sandman. Once you've beaten him, taking out Super Macho Man and Mike Tyson is just a matter of time.

Master Blaster: Yeah, this was a real bear, but somehow, it held my attention just enough to keep soldiering on. Beat it a total of three times, IIRC (plus at least a couple of heartbreaking close calls).

Adventures of Bayou Billy: It took me a while, definitely hit or miss, but I got it. I dunno; I've dealt with so many ultra-painful insane psycho bonecrushing games, this never struck me as all that special. Some tips: Complete the practice stages, which give you much-needed benefits (when the game says "You're as powerful as Gordon!" or whatever, you're good to go). Learn the jumpkick; it's the key to beating the hand-to-hand scenes. In stages 1 and 3, get an Ugly Stick at the first chance and hold onto it; forget the ineffectual Footlong Blade. Against Luis Tor-Ture, do nothing but punch furiously, and he'll go down in short order. Memorize the locations of the rocks in stage 4, which are a far greater threat than traffic or bombs. Most importantly, DON'T DIE in stage 7. That way you can take a whip and bulletproof vest to stage 8, which, trust me, are an absolute must. As for the final bosses, go to the bottom right, jumpkick until one of them grabs you (he'll face the wrong way, so you're safe), run away and circle back to the corner, and repeat. You can also just use the whip if you have it, but that takes forever.

NARC: Like most of the later arcade ports, it lost a lot in the 8-bit conversion, but it was still a decent game. It's actually pretty easy since there can only be 3 enemies onscreen at a time. My only tips are: 1. Really rack up arrests for both big points and lives, and 2. against the final skull boss, move near the top of the screen to get the point you're supposed to be hitting in the proper position; you'll NEVER get it otherwise.

Castlevania 2, Simon's Quest: This was an adventure game, so victory was largely a matter of finding all the items and learning what was effective against which enemy. And you get some extremely powerful weaponry, including an upgrade which DOUBLES the strength of your strongest whip. The unfortunate result is that all the bosses are pathetically easy by the time you get to them, including Dracula himself, who I demolished in roughly 10 seconds.

Double Dragon 2, The Revenge: I struggled with this for a while mainly due to the speed of some of the enemies (don't waste a moment using those weapons!). It got a lot more managble once I learned the continue codes and a trick for gaining a few extra lives. The absolute, stone cold, lead pipe cinch 100% most important thing to remember is that the Hyper Uppercut ALWAYS connects. Big, small, ducking, leaning, cartwheeling, doesn't matter, there's no escape from that punch. So make good use of it (immediately after a whiffed Hurricane Kick is always a good time). The last boss really is no big deal, especially since you get two free lives before facing him. Just keep Hurricane Kick-ing or even plain 'ol back-kicking. He'll do some damage but give out far before you do.

Should I even get into the games I almost finished? Ah, perhaps another time. In the meantime, anyone know of a good, reliable NES emulator?

[fusoya]

The Karate Kid, developed by LJN, released 1987, competition time: 12 minutes

First of all, next to A Boy and His Blob (which is a much longer game until you know what you're doing), this is the quickest I have beaten an NES game, and this one has no excuse. The game has FOUR levels, and the first level is just a 1 on 1 karate tournament, which can be beaten in one minute by holding down turbo B. After that, there are 3 levels of side scrolling action (I can't really call it a beat-em-up since every enemy dies in one hit), where A punches, B kicks, and UP jumps -- which makes it extremely annoying to jump in this game. This game is very comparable to the game Kung Fu, except that Kung Fu never requires jumping to the left or right. Another odd thing about this game are the multiple height levels - at any given time there are up to 6 different platforms you can be standing on, and if you are higher than the enemy, you must duck to kill it. The third stage is pretty unique, since it is taking place during a rain storm and the wind is pushing you back, which also has one of the most fustrating parts of the game where you have to jump up about 5 platforms, and if you get hit at all, you have to start over. I probably would have beaten the game in 5 minutes if it weren't for this one place! I know I really shouldn't expect anything else from LJN, but this is simply a bad game in every form, and I feel really badly for anybody who paid $40 for a new copy back in 1987. The fact that it takes 12 minutes to beat made it more tolerable, but just shows how lazy LJN was when they made it!

[fusoya]

Gunsmoke, developed by Capcom, released 1988, competition time: 35 minutes

If Dragon Spirit was 1943 with Dragons, Gunsmoke is 1943 with Cowboys & Indians. This auto-scrolling shooter brings back memories, since one of my friends owned it and it was possibly the first NES game I ever played. I've never seen the show the game was based on, but I've seen plenty of cocksucking Deadwood episodes. Basically you're a bounty hunter cowboy, shooting up western gangs and taking down their leaders for reward money. Infact, you can't fight the boss until you buy or find their wanted poster (interesting side note - if you buy the wanted poster, which you should never do since they're easy enough to find since they're ALWAYS next to a barrel, you spend twice as much as the reward, meaning your character would have been better off just staying home!). B shoots 45° to the left, A 45° to the right, and both buttons fire forward. There are a couple of gun upgrades you can get, but they're actually pretty silly since the normal gun (another interesting sidenote - this game was where I first learned what the infinity symbol is, represented by the # of bullets left with the normal gun) does the same amount of damage as the special guns with limited ammo. You can also find or buy a horse, which will absorb 3 hits. After those 3 hits, the horse drops dead, leading to one of the oldest inside catch phrases among my friends: "but he was such a nice horsie!" Interestingly, this is an auto scroller that does NOT punish you for getting forced off the bottom of the screen. Instead it'll just move you to the first available unblocked spot, so that it can actually be to your advantage to hide behind buildings. It's a fun game, but at times it seems to drag on. The all Indian stage never seems to end....and why the hell is there a Ninja boss? I don't recall any cocksucking Ninjas in any fucking Deadwood episodes!

[fusoya]

Gyruss, developed by Konami, released 1988, completion time: 43 minutes

Yet another space shooter. The twist with this one is big - your ship (which closely resembles the Gradius Vic Viper) spins around the edges of the screen, and all enemies appear in the middle of the screen, in a fake 3D style. The funny thing about this game is that enemies can not hit you at all until they come to the same edge of the screen that you are. Some of them aim for where you are to purposely hit you, but this gameplay method makes the game laughably easy. Infact, if there weren't a quota kill rate to complete stages, you could probably beat the game just by dodging enemies (or shots) that come at you. Infact, the very last stage basically consists of rapidly dodging indestructible mini-suns, which is definitely the hardest (possibly only hard) part of the game. Like most shooters, there's very little story. Just save the universe - you start out on the outside of Neptune (since it came out in 1988, Neptune was the farthest planet) and have to fly to the Sun, by playing stages named after the 9 planets, but having absolutely nothing to do with them - for the Mercury level, chunks of ice get flung at you! The unique playing style is fun, but it gets very tedious to beat, since overall there isn't much variety to the game, and some stages go on way too long.

[Chronos]

Just save the universe - you start out on the outside of Neptune (since it came out in 1988, Neptune was the farthest planet)OK, that's probably the only thing they got right, but I have to respect that. It was common knowledge among nerds that Pluto was temporarily closer than Neptune at that time, but I don't think it ever really hit the mass awareness.

[Least Original User Name Ever]

Hey, fusoya, give POW a whirl.

[dotchan]

Here's a recommendation for TGL. It's a pretty fun combination scrolling stage/walkaround with a plot somewhat reminiscent of Metroid.

The "TGL" code features just the flying stages and requires some deft trickery and excellent ammunition management to survive. Not for the feint of heart.

(And, gods, I hated Dragon Warrior. I wanted to kill that supid useless princess. :D )

[The Why Bird]

(And, gods, I hated Dragon Warrior. I wanted to kill that supid useless princess. :D )Dost thou love me?
'no'
but thou must...Dost thou love me?
'no'
but thou must...Dost thou love me?
'no'
but thou must...Dost thou love me?
'no'
but thou must...Dost thou love me?
'no'
but thou must...Dost thou love me?
'no'
but thou must...Dost thou love me?
'no'
but thou must...Dost thou love me?
'no'
but thou must...Dost thou love me?
'NO GET THE HINT ALREADY!'
but thou *BANG*

If you want true pain try out Platoon one of the first times I bought a game and felt really really cheated. It's insanely hard well not to beat but to deal with rubbish controls and to even care what's going on.

[Darkhold]

whoops the above post was me not my wife. I'm on her laptop at the moment and forgot to change the log in

[fusoya]

S.C.A.T. - Special Cybernetic Attack Team, developed by Natsume, released April 1991, competition time: about an hour

An interesting story behind this game. There was an old NES site which I was looking at just before I started this challenge. There was a cool graphic on it of lightning flashing in a cave. I KNEW I recognized it, but I couldn't place which game it was from. I asked a friend, and he said he thought it was from Silkworm, which was the first game in this challenge. I played through Silkworm and didn't find that image....but I was curious how it could have been from it anyway, since I'd never even heard of the game. Anyway, this led to the idea of me trying to gradually beat every NES game, and I wanted to start with shooters because my friend (who has beaten the majority of NES games himself) remembers it was from a shooter. Anyway, even though I'm sure I didn't play this game, SCAT was the game that graphic came from. I'm now starting to think that what I was thinking of was the nighttime cave background from Castlevania 2, which was somewhat similar.

Okay, as for the game - SCAT is a BITCH. It's definitely the hardest shooter I've played on the NES so far (although I still need to get to Legendary Wings again). It's a basic story - takes place in the future, aliens are invading earth, and you're a bad ass marine with a flying suit of armor and you go around the city blowing shit up. You have two orbs which rotate around you and shoot missiles. By pressing the A button, you can make them stationary, so that they'll continue to fire at the same angle, and pressing A again will make them start rotating. The B button is for firing your gun, which only fires straight (and turbo is CRUCIAL for this game). You can upgrade from a regular gun to a laser, which fires a continuous stream, like the lasers from the Gradius games, as well as a wave gun (like Metroid's), or a Bomb gun, which sucks. Figures there are more Bomb gun upgrades than the others, and I spent most of the game trying to avoid them. This game scrolls in all four directions, sometimes changing direction in the middle of the stage. This is also a rare shooter where you can turn around and shoot behind you. Some stages scroll extremely fast, particularly for an NES game. There are a couple of things that make this game really hard. First of all, you only have ONE life - you get an energy meter, but if you crash into something or get forced off the screen, you die, and then it's back to the beginning of the stage. And some of these stages are LONG - if you die at the boss, it's up to 12 minutes of backtracking! Not only that, but once you restart the stage, you're back to your regular gun, giving you the same disadvantage that dying in most shooters have. Also, when you complete a stage, you do NOT get your energy meter refilled. I began to find that if I finished a stage with 1 health, I'd just crash and start over fresh. Another thing about this game is that some of the bosses absolutely refuse to die. I was fighting the second stage robot-snake boss for what felt like 15 minutes. This game only actually has 5 stages, but they really make you work to finish them. There's supposed to be a 2 player mode, which I'm sure makes the game much easier, particularly during boss fights.

[fusoya]

Breakthru, developed by Data East, released 1987, completion time: 9 minutes!

Breakthru is a game where you drive a dune buggy through enemy war territory, in order to recover a stolen plane. Unfortunately, once you recover the plane, the game doesn't let you fly it. Although this IS a very short game, it's also very difficult, and in the vein of Contra, it's probably very hard to beat unless you're either using save states or have memorized the entire game (or if there's a 30 life code). The B button shoots forward (strangely, this is the first game I've ever encountered where if you turn turbo on, you can't fire at all! I've heard of PSX games locking out turbo mode, but never NES games!) and the A button jumps. You should NEVER jump in this game unless it is over a cliff, because it's very difficult to control your dune buggy mid air and odds are you are going to land on either an enemy or a bullet. Left and right accelerate and deaccelerate you, so the game isn't entirely an autoscroller. One hit and you are dead, and you have 3 lives, but can collect more. A warning to anybody who attempts this game - I don't know if it was just my emulator being screwy (PocketNES) or if there's a huge bug in the game, but if I paused the game, as soon as I unpaused it, it would return to the title screen, forcing me to start over from level 1! So if you play this game, be absolutely sure to save state!

[Least Original User Name Ever]

I think I remember that game. If you hit "select", your dude gets out of the buggy, right?

[mobo85]

Like most shooters, there's very little story. Just save the universe - you start out on the outside of Neptune (since it came out in 1988, Neptune was the farthest planet) and have to fly to the Sun

This differs from the original arcade version- in the arcade game, you were trying to get home to Earth. The arcade version had no defined ending, much like most arcade games at the time- you just kept on playing until you died.

[fusoya]

I've been slacking, but I'm still going

Adventures in the Magic Kingdom, developed by Capcom, released 1992, completion time: 24 minutes

Despite that the main character who is a kid dressed as a cowboy, this is probably the most Disneyfied game ever made. It takes place in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, and you need to help Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy find 6 keys that open the gate for the Main St Parade. Each key is located in a different part of the park - Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tomorrowland Racetrack, Space Mountain, and Main St USA, and you must play through each ride as if it were a action ride - you kill ghosts in Haunted Mansion by throwing candles at them, Space Mountain actually has you flying through space (even though it's really just a simon says game), etc. The railroad is the hardest stage, because you actually have to memorize the track layout because if you make a wrong turn, you can't beat the stage. Having each stage be different gives a good variety to the game, and like most Capcom Disney games, they don't let gameplay suffer in order to appeal to younger kids. If it weren't for the Railroad stage, I probably would have finished in under 15 minutes.

Ninja Gaiden, developed by Tecmo, released 1989, completion time: 45 minutes

Here it is, the one everybody keeps daring me to play. The thing is, I *HAVE* beaten this game before, and I'm still familiar with most of the really evil spots, and know how to deal with them. One of my friends owned this game and we played it all the time. This game has a well-deserved reputation for being evil. You could easily write a top 10 list of "Ninja Gaiden is evil because _____". However, the #1 most evil thing about this game is once you get to the final boss, if you happen to die against him (which I did, and which you will), even though you have multiple lives, you do not get to fight him again. Instead you get brought back THREE stages where you have to play through the final stage AND fight another earlier boss before you can get another opportunity to fight the final boss again. Despite this extremely cheap and unforgivable gameplay mechanic, Ninja Gaiden is still a great game. It was the first NES (and probably first ever) game that really got the feel of being a Ninja - having a katana, throwing stars, doing flips, climbing up buildings, etc as well as having an actual story with turning points between stages. You are Ryu, son of the ninja master Ken (no, not THOSE Ryu and Ken), and after your father is killed in battle, you try to hunt down the person who killed him....you run into some of his old friends and find out that there's a lot more to him than you thought. There are animated sequences between stages, a rarity for NES games, which probably doubled my gameplay time since I stopped to watch them all. While really only the last boss is a tough battle, it's not endurance that makes the game hard. It's a lot of crazy jumping sequences, and the way that enemies love to team up on you and either knock you into a cliff, or bounce you between them until you run out of energy. One of the most annoying things about this game is that the faster enemies that coming running or flying at you will continue to appear over and over again until you've moved a certain distance across the screen. However, you can also use the ole' Mega Man trick of quickly moving back and forth to scroll the stationary enemies off the screen. Every serious gamer needs to play this game at some point in their life, and if it's been 15 years like it has for me, give it another shot. Just be prepared to be driven insane by those birds!

Least Original User Name Ever - you're thinking of Blaster Master. Go back to page 1 of this thread.

[Least Original User Name Ever]

Ah yes. Blaster Master. It's been a minute since I've played it.

[fusoya]

Fantasy Zone, developed by Sega (believe it or not!), released 1989, completion time: 23 minutes

Man was this a weird game. It's the type of video game I'd imagine if one of the characters on The Simpsons got high off of something and then sat down to play a game. You fly around in this little ship with flapping wings, and everything is pink and neon green. Each stage has 6 pods which must be destroyed to reach the boss, and shooting enemies gives you gold, which you can use to buy a faster ship, and better guns which run out of ammo in 10 seconds. Yeah, the stages are stupid, but the boss battles are each pretty unique, and sometimes it's not immediately obvious how to defeat each boss. Once you go through about 8 of these stages, there's a boss on parade mode where you must defeat all of them again, in a row, before facing a final boss which is a cross between a lobster and the snake game. After that there's an ending screen written in yellow text on a neon green background which is nearly impossible to read, but it said something about saving the Fantasy Zone from the invading force, and being sad that your father was the leader of the enemy.

[fusoya]

Bad Dudes, developed by Data East, released 1989, completion time: 27 minutes

Bad Dude...bad game? Not quite, but this game has a reputation for a reason. There is not even one line of dialouge in the entire game that is not fucking hilarious.

THE PRESIDENT HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED BY NINJAS.

ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO RESCUE THE PRESIDENT?

George Bush: HEY DUDES, THANKS FOR RESCUING ME! WANNA GO FOR A BURGER?

and of course "I'M BAD", proof again that digitized speech held no place on the NES. This is a sidescrolling beat-em-up which borrows from Double Dragon in almost every aspect. It also has Karnov as the first stage boss, complete with his theme song. The game never gets very hard, and there are safety spots for fighting some of the bosses. There is a boss on parade level at the very end of the game, before a final boss who doesn't put up a fight at all. The only hard part is keeping your composure as you try not to laugh as you see your character fighting on top of a semi truck that says DUDE on the side.

[Least Original User Name Ever]

Ah, I remember that truck that says "DUDE" on the side.

See how POW treats ya.

[fusoya]

One of my friends used to own POW....I remember it being a LONG game for a beat-em-up. We had an inside joke for that game which I can't repeat on this board....but notice WHO shows up every time you find a gun. I'll give it a go the next time I have an hour to kill.

Kid Niki: Radical Ninja, developed by Irem, released 1987, completion time: 33 minutes

Well, aside from swinging around a katana like it's a marching baton, there isn't anything very ninjalike with your character. This is a standard side scrolling action game with pretty good music. One hit and you're dead. OCCASIONALLY you'll be able to temporarily upgrade your twirly katana to a throwing sword. The one unique thing about this game is that with all of the bosses, if you don't hit them in the correct spot (and sometimes even if you DO) it'll knock the sword out of your hands and you'll have to go get it before you can keep fighting. Keep in mind that everything, no matter how cute or unmoving, is evil and will kill you. Yes, the cute little birdies sitting in the tree will kill you if you jump into them too. This game has more overuse of the word dude, coupled with the word rad and radical, and more bad speech (FOOL! GET HIM!), and one of the bosses literally throws words at you.

[Least Original User Name Ever]

Yeah, I've never beaten POW without cheating. Good luck, senor.

[fusoya]

Karate Champ, developed by Data East, released 1986, completion time: 15 minutes

This is the type of game that would have been exempt from my challenge, had I known it didn't have an ending. Infact, it doesn't really have a middle. This is just simply a BAD game, definitely the most boring of all the games I've played in this challenge so far. It's a one on one karate fighting game, possibly the first street fighting game. You can punch and kick, although it's seemingly random as even when I "finished" the game, I still hadn't figured out the controls. One you get a punch or kick in that isn't blocked (I also never figured out how blocking works, but it seems to be totally random), you win that round....win so many rounds (scoring is just like tennis) and you win the match, and then go on to a bonus round where bells get thrown at you, and you must dodge or jump over them - and their hit detection is so high that they can knock you down if you are nowhere NEAR them. It doesn't matter how many you dodge, since this bonus round NEVER ends, and there's apparently no reward for how many you get through. Anyway, the next match is against the same character, but in a different location. After about 10 of these, it goes back to the first location. I declared it beaten by that point. I imagine this game might have been more fun for 2 players back in 1986, but 1 player mode just simply sucks.

Karnov, developed by Data East, released 1987, completion time: 20 minutes

I needed Data East to redeem themselves after Karate Champ, so I pulled out this old favorite. Karnov holds a special place in my video gaming history, since it was the first game I bought after getting my NES. This game has achieved a real cult status, so either you've never played it, or you know all about it. Karnov is this fat, bald, circus strongman who can breathe and shoot fire from his mouth. He's on a quest for gold, and is travelling through the ruins of Babylon. Along the way you can find various items, such as a ladder and high jumping shoes, and there's a swimming stage and a flying stage. Every stage has the same song, but it's a very catchy tune and is on the short list of famous NES songs (both Karnov and the song make an appearance in Bad Dudes, as mentioned above), but each stage is a completely different environment (desert, icy mountain, pyramid, etc) which keeps things fresh. It is a sidescrolling action game, with the occasional vertical climbing section, but most stages have multiple paths, all of which lead to the end boss, but some paths are easier and have more items. Back on page 1, Karnov was offered as a challenge, comparing its difficulty to Bayou Billy, but i made it through the whole game without dying once. I guess after 20 years of playing this game (with a 10 year break), it's still like riding a bike to me.

[fusoya]

POW, developed by SNK, released 1989, completion time: 48 minutes

Okay, the challenge has been met. This game actually isn't THAT hard as long as you can avoid the grenades and use a turbo controller. This game is a beat-em-up in the tradition of Double Dragon (your character even somewhat resembles Billy Lee) but set in a Cuban military prison camp. Like Double Dragon, the enemies occasionally drop weapons, and this time it includes guns, although they are rare. There are also rooms you can go into to fight 3 enemies and then get a weapon or item (usually, if the item is a life refill, you'd have lost more life fighting for it than you get as a reward!). I used to own this game, although it was one of the last games I got, as part of a trade, before I gave up on trying to get my real NES working and moved on to PSX. I think I only ever beat it once before, since it is a long game, particularly for this genre. However, this game does have the most CHEAP boss in the history of cheap bosses. The second to last boss resembles The Terminator, and throws grenades. Not only will these kill you (you get three lives before you have to go back to the start of the stage) but this boss will actually time his grenade throws to land and explode RIGHT when your next life starts, so that you can lose all 3 lives in a 10 second window, without even a prayer!


Well, so far I've completed 32 games within a 55 day period, so I am falling behind on this A DAY challenge....but it is actually pretty remarkable to think that I've beaten an NES game on the average of every 2 days, some of which I've never touched before. It makes me wonder just how the attention span was kept when these games were new! Of course, games like Karnov, Double Dragon and Ninja Gaiden I played for many hours, days and weeks before I completed them the first time, and didn't have the option of loading a save state if I made a big mistake.

[Least Original User Name Ever]

On a scale of one to ten, how big is the "save state" feature for your quest?

[fusoya]

I only use them as needed, primarily so that I don't need to repeat entire stages. Like in POW, I'd restore a state if I got blown up by a grenade by accident, but not every time I got punched. I don't want to use them so much that I don't even feel like I'm playing a game, but I also don't want to spend too much time trying to get through a tough area. I consider it a substitute for training (which is the main reason that most of these games DID have a longer play value than an hour or so), since some of these games really do require practice and memorization if you only get 1 (or 3) chances to get through an area. I still consider it a step below using game genie or internal codes, since at least this way I'm still getting a straight-through play, the way it's meant to be beat (just repeating some sections over and over until I do it right, instead of entire stages).

I can tell you that I didn't use save states at all for Adventure Island, Double Dragon 1 (or the second time I played Double Dragon 2), Duck Tales, or Karnov.

[Push You Down]

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

I'm so very sorry.


I HATED it as a kid. HATED. I bought it for the cool cover.

[fusoya]

well, I've been busy reading the new Harry Potter book over the last couple days, but earlier this evening I ran a bubble bath and settled in with a little game of....

Jackal, developed by Konami, released 1988, completion time: 20 minutes

Out of all the jeep-based, overhead run-and-gun games made in the 80s, something about this game just made it the funnest. The object is to drive around enemy army bases, running over foot solders and blowing up everything else, including prison walls so that you can recuse your soldiers, and then drop them off at the helipad (while you park as a sitting duck while they slowly unload one at a time)...once you've rescued a certain number of soldiers, you can go fight the boss. Repeat 5 times. This game has the classic NES Konami style music that we remember from Contra, Gradius and Castlevania. I do have fond memories of the two player mode, especially speeding forward so that your partner gets stuck scrolled into a corner.

[Least Original User Name Ever]

Gonna tackle Adventures of Lolo?

[Autolycus]

Gonna tackle Adventures of Lolo?

OMG YES YES YES! If you beat this, I will be your number one fan. Me and my dad played this when I was but a wee bandit, and we could never get past a certain stage. The medusa-egg-block combination was just too brutal.

[Hostile Dialect]

Oh man! Jackal is one of my favorite games ever. I hadn't thought about that game in years.

[fusoya]

I think that the Lolo games are password games, which I'm saving for later. Actually this next game is a password game, but I didn't realize it until after I finished the first stage, but I decided to continue anyway

Power Blade, developed by Taito, released 1991, completion time: 1 hour, 10 minutes

I bet the first thing a player thinks when playing this game is RIPOFF, RIPOFF, RIPOFF. There should be a drinking game for how much this game rips off other epic action games. The ability to play stages in every order, disappearing blocks and mechanical frogs are straight out of Mega Man, the collapsing robots are exactly the same as the bloody bones from Castlevania, the indestructible rotating discs are not only from Super Mario 3, but use the EXACT same graphic, and getting sent back to the beginning of the stage after losing against the final boss is straight from Ninja Gaiden. But I really shouldn't complain, cuz Power Blade takes some of the best elements from the best NES action games and combines them together to create a fun game with a perfect challenge balance. You are Nova, this futuristic tough guy who uses mechanical boomerangs for weapons. You're fighting some alien robot gang who has taken over the planet. Throughout the stages, you can get better boomerangs, and even a cybersuit which'll let you take 3 extra hits and let you attack through walls. There's an interesting bug in this game, where if you set off a grenade (which are one time items you can find which will hit every enemy on the screen) as soon as the boss battle is loading, it will get killed instantly. This game appeared on the cover of Nintendo Power (during April which is always the slowest month for video game releases), and I referred to this issue a number of times for finishing the game, since most stages have multiple paths, and also like Castlevania 2 and Bionic Commando, you must find your partner in each stage to get a key card before you can open the door to the boss, and they're sometimes not in the direct path.

[fusoya]

Wrath of the Black Manta, developed by Taito, released 1989, completion time: 35 minutes

Yet another NES ninja game. This one TRIES to be Ninja Gaiden, complete with artistic cinema scenes between stages, but it just ain't the same. For one thing, it's really easy! Children are getting kidnapped in NYC by some ninja gang, and you have to rescue them. Not much else to it. The gang is called DRAT. Drat. You have an unlimited supply of throwing stars, and can also cast various ninja spells by holding down B and pressing one of the four control pad directions for a different spell. There's also a brief FPS sequence in the last stage when you get on an elevator, and have to throw shirukens at enemies in first person view. And in a hilarious Nancy Reagan inspired scene, when you rescue children, your ninja lectures them about the dangers of using drugs!

[fusoya]

Super Mario Bros., developed by Nintendo, released 1985, completion time: 48 minutes

do I even need to describe this one? This was the bundled-in game when the NES was first released in the United States, and also the very first video game I ever beat. While I hardly think it deserves the title of BEST GAME OF ALL TIME, it is actually somewhat underrated, even from me. For being one of the earliest NES games, it still hold up in 2007. Throughout the 32 stages, even though they follow a pattern, each stage is different and holds its own kinds of challenges. If you're playing the game to collect coins and get a high score, it's a much different game than if you're just trying to beat it, since there are a lot of roses to stop and smell. In keeping with the spirit of not using built-in cheats to complete the game, I played through the entire game without warping - all 32 stages. Nothing was really THAT difficult - the hardest part is keeping control of Mario, since he's a slippery character, especially when running and jumping through the tree stages. I didn't get bored at all - even without warping, it's not a very long game, and I recommend everybody (ESPECIALLY those of you who haven't played this game in 20 years, or not at all) give it another go. You won't be disappointed!

[Least Original User Name Ever]

Also, play with a controller. Keyboard isn't nearly as workable.

[Superfreaknduper]

Also, play with a controller. Keyboard isn't nearly as workable.

do they make NES/SNES usb controlers? or do you have to use one of those new fangled PC ones.

[fusoya]

I'm using THIS (http://www.saitekusa.com/usa/prod/p2600.htm) controller. A & B on the bottom row, turbo A & B on the top row.

Super Mario Bros 2, developed by Nintendo, released 1988, completion time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Keeping with the Mario theme, I moved on to the second United States game. For those of you not in the know, the Japanese version of this game was not a Mario game, but Nintendo changed the characters to Mario, Luigi, Toad and Peach for the American release, as well as adding things like 1-Up mushrooms and the like to make it a big more Marioish. However, due to it not being an actual Mario game, this game takes a lot of crap from old-school gamers, who seemed to forget when this was THE biggest game in the latter half of 1988, which was only topped by the release of Zelda 2 (ANOTHER game that seems to get constantly crapped on, despite being one of the most popular, and best, games ever back in the day), and really does stand on its own as a great platformer game. Anyway, the unique thing about SMB2 is that you can choose a new player for every stage, and Mario is actually DISCOURAGED from being used, since he has no great abilities, and Luigi has his high but clumsy jumping (use him for vertical stages), Peach has a floating in mid-air ability (use her for horizontal stages), and Toad sucks at jumping but is very fast, so he's great for the desert stages that require lots of digging (having a turbo controller also helps move things along). You're trying to save the weird looking creatures of yet another land, which has been taken over by Wart, a frog king. Your weapons are vegetables which you pull out of the ground, and bombs. Like SMB1, I tackled this game without warping, which is why it took a while. Infact, I think this is the FIRST time I've done that, since I can't remember EVER playing through World 3 before (which has a warp at the very beginning if you fall down the waterfall), so having 3 new levels was a brand new fun experience for me. My one big complaint about this game is Nintendo had way too much programming the "find the mushroom" game in the later stages, where the mushroom (which increase your energy meter) are almost NEVER on the screen where you find the potion that makes them appear. And honestly, do we really have to fight Birdo (or Ostro, as the credits call him) 20 times?

[Least Original User Name Ever]

Mario 2 was the Mario game I played the least, but I was late to the Mario 2 party. I played the shit out of Mario 3, though.

[bouv]

And honestly, do we really have to fight Birdo (or Ostro, as the credits call him) 20 times?

What? You got a problem with pink, transvestite, dinosaur birds?

[Least Original User Name Ever]

What, you don't?

[fusoya]

No, but I do have a problem with fighting the same boss over and over. There were some minor variations, like having Birdo shoot fire in later stages, and the one Birdo who you aren't supposed to kill, but instead ride on top of an egg to get across the ocean, and a different room layout almost every time, but it was basically the same thing over and over. At least with Boomer in SMB3, he used different attack strategies every single time. It reminds me of watching the Price Is Right and having to see the wheel over and over for 20 years.

BTW - I forgot to mention in my writeup, but Clawgrip is one of the coolest and funnest bosses to fight in NES history. You only get to fight him once though, and most people aiming on winning the game are going to use the world 7 warp at the beginning of his stage, so probably have never done the battle.

[fusoya]

Star Force, developed by Tecmo, released 1987, completion time: 1 hour

This game was recommended to me for my next challenge, so I took it up. Yet another vertically scrolling shooter, this time in space, or at least on the surface of a death-star like planet. Kids, it's time to learn the Greek alphabet, as there are 24 stages, from Alpha to Omega, and each stage has a boss which is simply a square with that letter on it. Infact, each stage is almost exactly the same, and each took about 2 minutes to finish, giving the total play time about 1 hour. To make matters worse, there aren't even any weapon upgrades. There are blocks that you can shoot, and letters to collect, but apparently the ONLY reason to do so is to gain more points, which eventually give you extra lives. The one plus to this game is it can be challenging at times, and there is a lot of bullet dodging (sometimes I wasn't so lucky). Like all games in this genre, a turbo controller is a must. Infact, I remember Star Force was one of the games advertised as being a reason to buy an NES Advantage controller, which was the at-home version of an arcade control stick, with turbo switches.

[fusoya]

Super Mario Bros 2 (J), developed by Nintendo, released 1986, completion time: 1 hour, 10 minutes

Normally I wouldn't be playing Japanese-only games in this challenge, but I thought I'd continue the Mario streak with the OTHER Super Mario Bros 2. This game reminds me of somebody taking the SMB1 rom and making a really good hack - fire in the regular stages, flying squids, springboards that shoot you off the top of the screen, flags hidden in beanstalks, underwater cloud-throwers, and poisonous mushrooms. It's obvious Nintendo had a lot of fun with this one, and didn't think the western culture could handle it. Well, it IS a lot harder than SMB1 or our SMB2, but nothing unmanagable. Again, I played through without warping, using Luigi - the high jumper, clumsy lander (which really comes back to bite you many times when Luigi has to make an exact landing). It really is just SMB1 on steroids, but it's a fun play. I mean, if you can beat Ninja Gaiden or Bayou Billy (or even Blaster Master), this is a piece of cake.

[bouv]

How about a try at Shadowgate? If you've beaten it before, then it's not that hard, since it is literally the exact same thing, just use the right item in the right place/hit the right thing/look under whatever, but you'd be surprised how much you might forget, so I'm interested in seeing how long it takes.

[Darkhold]

How about a try at Shadowgate? If you've beaten it before, then it's not that hard, since it is literally the exact same thing, just use the right item in the right place/hit the right thing/look under whatever, but you'd be surprised how much you might forget, so I'm interested in seeing how long it takes.I actually played through that not too long ago. If you know how to get through it it takes about 20 mins or so (I didn't time myself but it was really short). Pretty sad considering it took me days to figure it out when I was a kid.

[fusoya]

okay, challenge accepted

Shadowgate, developed by ICOM Simulations, released 1989, completion time: 15 minutes

For this stage of the challenge, I am avoiding games which use passwords, as they're typically proof that the developers don't expect you to finish the game in one day. Well, this game has a BATTERY backup, but I'm all too familiar with just how fast I can beat Shadowgate. Long before the days of Time Attacks (http://tasvideos.org/), I used to play Shadowgate about once a week, trying to get better and better at beating the game as fast as possible. My record is 12 minutes....I hit 15 today cuz it's been a few years, and I couldn't remember the order to throw the switches. Anyway, Shadowgate is a great game, but once you beat it the first time, there's really not else left to do with the game except figuring out how to beat it faster, and with as few items as possible (damn Sphinx!). And of course trying to find creative ways to die! It's a picture RPG, where you use a mouse cursor to enter commands and move through rooms. Despite only taking up 1/4 of the screen, the castle layout is very cool, and I still enjoy running through a wizard's castle, waiting to see what is behind the next door. I even drew architect-style floor plans for this game back when I was a kid. And this is an incredibly hard game for somebody who doesn't know what they're doing, since some of the puzzles take some serious thinking (that damn well comes to mind, and getting through the skull door). Infact, one of the best friendships of my childhood started by the mention that I was having trouble with Shadowgate, and Mike came forward and said he knew how to beat it, but wasn't going to hold my hand through it. I came back to him about 5 times until I beat it on my own, and then he mentioned he was working on Ultima Exodus now, and we steart teaming up after school to play through that one.

Now, dare I continue the streak and try to do a warpless game of SMB3?

[Least Original User Name Ever]

Try Deja Vu.

That game cursed me. I rented it, almost beat it, had dreams about the part that confused me, and then came up with the solution a week later when I woke up one morning.

[sinjin]

Yes, dare.

[fusoya]

hmm, I never did beat Deja Vu. Finished Uninvited though, which one of my friends (who went went on to become a monk) was convinced was programmed by Satan, in order to convert young gamers against God. I'm about to get fired up for a SMB3 marathon. Not gonna warp, but I am gonna bypass optional stages.

[Least Original User Name Ever]

I remember Uninvited. I beat that one before Deja Vu, but it's essentially the same game.

[fusoya]

Super Mario Bros 3, developed by Nintendo, released 1990, completion time: 1 hour, 59 minutes

First of all, I'd like to point out that SMB3 is the easiest of the Mario games. Infact, NOT warping made it even easier, because I amassed a collection of clouds and pwings, which basically let me skip any stage, so it was like Tank World didn't even happen. The hardest part of this game for me was always the Tank World, and warping there immediately is going to leave you with very few supplies. Anyway, SMB3 is also by far the longest of the Mario games. I clocked in at JUST under 2 hours! It's also the best, and that includes the latter generation games. There' just something about SMB3...it isn't considered the best NES game of all time for no reason! I remember when it first came out, and it INSTANTLY became the best selling video game of all time - it was like Harry Potter of the early 90s. The variety that the worlds have is a nice touch too - having an ENTIRE world dedicated to desert stages, water stages, giant stages, air stages (always my favorite world - the big green shoe!), ice stages and pipe stages was an interesting twist, as opposed to SMB1 and SMW that give you something different every stage, but 7 times over. And the LITTLE bit of non-linearity - actually letting you decide between stages and being able to skip them over also makes the game fun. I HAVE beaten this game without warping before, but only when playing with someone else, and one big difference is that the cloud (which lets you skip a stage but not mark it completed) actually helps - because in two player mode, the second player still gets blocked by the bypassed stage and still has to complete it. Anyway, this game tired me out. I'm going to sleep.

[fusoya]

Astyanax, developed by Jaleco, released 1989, competion time: 30 minutes

This is a hack and slash and slash and slash and slash and slash and slash sidescroller. Most enemies, even normal stage enemies, take forever to die, and take upwards of 10-15 hits. The impressive thing is the size of the characters, since your character (some Spartan knight guy) is about 5 times as tall as Mario, and his hit detection box is even twice as big, since you can get damaged by enemies nowhere near you. Often when you THINK you're fighting a boss, it turns out it was only the miniboss and the screen-sized boss is right behind it. The only way I was able to survive this lousy game (did I mention how bad the music was?) was with the turbo button so that my character could hack and hack and hack away with his axe.

[fusoya]

this challenge isn't dead.....it's just been sidetracked. I'm now working a 45+ hour week, and the commute is actually too short for me to play most games in transit. That coupled with other things going on in my life hasn't left me much time for gaming. I did devote 2+ hours of my morning to this weird game though:

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, developed by Virgin Games, released 1991, completion time: 2 hours, 15 minutes

Robin Hood was one of those games that I read about in Nintendo Power, but was never actually able to find to buy or rent. It was one of the first games that I was excited to see released to ROM back when NES emulation was first starting up.....I played it for a little while, and realized it wasn't nearly as good as was advertised. So now I come back to it, in an attempt to actually finish it.

Robin Hood is a pretty unique game, in that the scenery and method of play is constantly changing. First you're playing overhead (Zelda style), and then it'll go to a side view dual mode, and then you'll be riding horses in a chase (run and jump), and then you'll be in a multi-player real time strategy mode. This game also has a number of traditional RPG elements, such as experience points and levels, and finding and equiping new weapons and armor. The weird thing is this was all put together in a game that has no save mode, and also no password (there IS a password mode, but you have to enter a code to reach it, and the passwords are incredibly simple with words like DUNGEON and CASTLE, so either Virgin only included it for testing, or as a secret code for level skipping). Making a game like this makes it very demotivational to build experience, since your only goal is beating the game in one sitting. Fortunately, there are unlimited continues and they don't really penalize you for dying (at a couple places in the game, it was easier to just die so I could come back with full HP). As for the storyline, it follows the Kevin Costner Robin Hood movie pretty closely. My major gripe with the game (aside from the fact that this game is WAY too long for an average player to beat start to finish in one sitting) is that there are too many annoying maze stages in the game, where I spend time running around just trying to find something/somebody, or just trying to find the way out!

[fusoya]

this is starting to turn into NES-a-month challenge (stupid 50 hour work, which is why I haven't been posting OR reading SMDB very much period), but as long as I still intend to finish every single NES game, the challenge continues....

The Adventures of Dino Riki, developed by Hudson, released September 1989, completion time: 20 minutes

A vertical autoscrolling overhead run and gun set in the stone age, which has absolutely no story (nor an ending...not even a THE END or a misspelled congratulations!) but probably doesn't need one anyway - you're a caveman named Riki (or Dino Riki?) and you're out to kick some dinosaur ass. You can shoot fireballs, and can get weapon and speed upgrades by shooting special rocks which make items appear, and this is one of those annoying games where if you take a hit, you LOSE your best upgrade too, but you have a strangly high level of health so the only way you're EVER going to die is if you're ever forced to jump. And yes, you WILL die. Many NES games have poor hit detection, but this game has poor cliff detection. If the game even THINKs you're near the edge of the cliff, you will fall in. Now, combine the autoscrolling with the poor jumping controls, and the froggerish lilypad jumping (where they move AND disappear) and you have some of the craziest hard level sections I've ever seen. I don't know how ANYBODY could beat this game without save stating, just so they wouldn't constantly be brought back after completing a jump perfectly only to have Riki fall to his death anyway. Aside from the crazy challenge, there really isn't much else here to make it worthwhile.

[Tenebras]

Can I suggest Shinobi?

Also, there was this game that we got my friend for his birthday in 1986 or 87. It was a puzzle game. You were this wizard with a wand that could make a block appear or disappear in front of you. You could run back and forth or jump up, but you could only jump up one block. I have no idea what it was called, but I remember it as being totally awesome.

Oh, and what about Mario Brothers? Not Super Mario Brothers, just the regular Mario Brothers. I think it was a port of the arcade game. Turtles, crabs and bouncy flying bug things came out of green tubes at the top of the screen and then you had to knock them over and then kick them. There was a Bump square in the middle of the bottom level that you could use to flip or unflip all of the bad guys at once. Illicit use of the bump square lead to much crying and fighting, if I remember correctly...

[fusoya]

wasn't Shinobi a Genesis game? The game you're describing sounds like either Legacy of the Wizard or Solomon's Key. And can you even beat Mario Bros? Isn't it just one of those "rack up the highest score possible until you die" games?

alright, I got one more in this weekend

Athena, developed by SNK, released 1987, completion time: 1 hour

I don't remember WHERE the heck I heard this, but back when I was first getting into NES games, I heard that of every game released, Athena was the hardest game. It actually wasn't THAT bad, but it did get frustrating, particularly with the enemy archers who never stop shooting at you when you're trying to jump across a gap. You're the Goddess Athena, who is out to kick some mythological ass. You start by kicking, but can pick up enemy weapons...once YOU become the archer, it gets really easy. Also, similar to the Ghost & Goblin games, a major obstacle is an enemy dropping a worse weapon right in front of the path you need to cross. What makes the game somewhat harder is that despite being a side scrolling action game, there are often multiple paths (and additional screens if you fall down a pit) and only one path will advance you. So there was a bit of backtracking to finish the stages. Now, this game is nothing like Bayou Billy hard, but the platforming action did present more of a challenge than most games that came out in 1987. It actually somewhat reminded me of Battle of Olympus, and not just for the ancient Greece setting.

[Tenebras]

I just checked on Wikipedia. It came out on Sega Master system and then on NES in 89.

I don't know if you could beat Mario Brothers. I know there were different levels (ice level!) but we usually ended up self destructing before we got too far. It's dangerous to let 9 year olds play cooperative games.

I just checked. The game I was thinking of was Solomon's key. Now all I need is a NES emulator and a rom.

Have you played Vindicators? It's a tank game that I think is impossible. I could never get past the third level... :)

[Hung Mung]

I would just like to know if somebody, somewhere managed to actually complete the high jump on the original Track & Field using the normal controller. I tried for years and never could get over that damn bar. I could beat every other game but the high jump.

I remember Super Dodge Ball very fondly along with Rad Racer, Excitebike and Spy Hunter. Good times.

But my challenge is this: Faxanadu. Faxanadu can suck it long and suck it hard. I couldn't beat that game when I was cheating for Christ's sake. It's really not a one-sitting type of game; it's very in-depth, as I recall. Save early and often and take lots of notes. Good luck and I will revere you for all time should you beat it.

[Ottoerotic]

As far as Pain in the butt NES games I guess I'd have to recommend Super Glove ball or Rad Gravity(Password game) both of which frustrated me endlessly as a child.

[Autolycus]

But my challenge is this: Faxanadu. Faxanadu can suck it long and suck it hard. I couldn't beat that game when I was cheating for Christ's sake. It's really not a one-sitting type of game; it's very in-depth, as I recall. Save early and often and take lots of notes. Good luck and I will revere you for all time should you beat it.

I've beaten it :D ! I love that game. Really, the trick is to go slow and save up enough money to buy all the shield and spell upgrades.

[Pushkin]

I don't know if you could beat Mario Brothers. I know there were different levels (ice level!) but we usually ended up self destructing before we got too far. It's dangerous to let 9 year olds play cooperative games

That game got even more dangerous when it was bundled as part of Super Mario Bros III. When you met your "partner" on the map you could bounce the cards you got at the end of each level from them.

[fusoya]

Adventures of Tom Sawyer, developed by Seta, released 1989, competion time: 21 minutes

I used to own this game. It was a crazy little platformer, in which you control Tom Sawyer through his various adventures (since when did Mark Twain write about him going into a haunted house?) Playing it brought back memories, but it also seemed way easier than I remember it being. It has a great soundtrack, but also has the most inappropiate boss theme ever (to this day, I STILL think I'm about to play a bonus game, not fight a boss, when the music starts up).

Batman: Return of the Joker, developed by Sunsoft, released 1991, completion time: 27 minutes

This is a sequel to the original Batman game made by Sunsoft. The stages are pretty similar, with their dark settings and crazy conveyor belts (although there is a snow stage, and a stage aboard a train, not to mention a couple flying stages with a Bat-jet-pack). Batman now has unlimited ammo and multiple types of guns, but has lost the ability to bounce off walls (although he really doesn't need to with the stage layouts this time around). The boss fights in this game are LONG (especially the last battle, which never seems to end) but Batman gets extra energy for the battles. It's a strange system. Overall, I think I prefer the first game to this one.

[Danger Man]

http://aphasian.info/letsfail/

A bunch of guys trying out NES games they have never played before. It really shows how unforgiving games used to be if you didn't know how to play them.

[BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed]

I actually had a lot of fun playing Willow on emulator several years ago, but got stuck somewhere very close to the end of the game. I can't remember now if I couldn't find an item, or if I couldn't find where the last section of the game was, but after consulting walkthroughs and faqs at the time I became convinced that there was some sort of flaw with the game. Does anyone know anything about this, or has anyone beat it? I highly recommend it, actually. I remember having a lot of fun with it.

[fusoya]

I never did actually beat Willow....it'll be covered in phase 2.

Metal Gear, developed by Konami, released 1988, completion time: 1 hour, 35 minutes

This wasn't so much a part of the "beating a game I never played before challenge" as me just wanting to play an old favorite, but I figured I'd do a write up anyway. Back when SMB3 and TMNT were the two biggest games in the world, me and my friends were playing Metal Gear. For those of you who HAVEN't played it (I'm sure everybody's at least heard of it, since the series is still going, and will be getting a movie soon), this was the NES port of the original computer game, where you play as Solid Snake, a military soldier sent into an enemy camp in South Africa with nothing but a radio and a pack of smokes, on a mission to rescue other troops. What makes this game, and the rest of the series, so unique is that it isn't a run-and-gun, it's a stealth game. Rather than take on enemies with your gun blazing (once you finally steal a gun), you get a lot more accomplished by hiding behind the walls, running past enemies, and collecting more items. This game does have its flaws (having to switch between 8 different cards to get the doors open, the extreme difficulty level until you're used to the game, the infamously bad translation, and the fact that you can't actually DO certain things until one of the POW's TELLS you how to do it, forcing you to go on sidequests for information that the player already knows), but it really is one of the better NES games, and brings back memories.

[fusoya]

Gradius, developed by Konami, released 1986, completion time: 25 minutes

okay, I'll admit it. I'm a big fan of the Gradius series, owning and playing Life Force (the second NES game), Gradius 3 for the SNES, and even the PS2 game....but I've never completed the original. It's interesting looking at what was the same in the first (suprisingly, a lot), and also what hadn't yet been developed. Like the rest of the series, you're flying in the Vic Viper spacejet, on a mission to wipe out another planet. You start out with a basic ship, which flies left to right (and can go up and down, but not turn around) in autoscrolling stages, but can pick up weapon upgrades, except the game lets you choose which ones to activate - speed up, missile, laser, options (little balls that mimic your movements and can fire their own laser) and shields. There are 7 stages, each of which has the same boss at the end, except for the last boss, which begins the tradition of having insanely easy final bosses, and one of the stages incorporates the same twist that the second quest of Symphony of the Night had.....which was interesting for me because SOTN is my favorite video game ever and I thought the twist was something brand new. Also of note is that Gradius was the first game to use the Konami code: Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A which in this case would give you the full set of weapon upgrades. Of course, using cheat codes goes against the rules of this challenge.

[fusoya]

Kung Fu Heroes, developed by Culture Brain, released 1986, completion time: 36 minutes

This was a boring, stupid game. You're this Chinese bald guy, who can punch and do jump kicks, and each of the 32 stages (there's actually a map to tell you how close to the end you are) is a single overhead screen, where you must punch so many enemies before the door will open and you can move on. The problem is that some of the enemies can not be killed directly, and you must either knock a block into them, or get fireballs to shoot at them, and the blocks that give up items oftentimes don't want to give up anything useful, so you have to avoid the stronger enemies and wait until they reappear. I suppose this might be more fun in the two player mode, but this game is just pathetic.

[fusoya]

Adventures of Lolo, developed by HAL, released 1989, completion time: 2 hours, 18 minutes

I know somebody suggested this game a while back, and I was putting it off because it's both a long game (and uses passwords), and one that offers new challenges every 3 minutes. Well, I was ready for it this afternoon. The Lolo games are a combination of action and puzzles. Lolo is a blue ball who runs around an overhead room, and must collect hearts which will open a treasure chest (and wake up some of the enemies that sleep until that point), and then collect the gem in the chest to get to the next room. Each room is set up in such a way that you must use strategy - pushing blocks (and sometimes enemies) out of the way or in the way of other enemies, following directional arrows, using a hammer or ladder in the right place, etc - in order to complete each stage. It's a fun game, but also can be frustrating at times, especially when you FORGET that there's a clear path between you and one of the medusa heads. The problem with this game is that especially in the later levels, there's only ONE way to beat each stage, and there are upwards of 10 steps which must be done in the correct order otherwise the stage will be unbeatable (and if you get stuck, Select is the suicide button), so sometimes I wasn't so sure if I should pick up a heart or leave it there until later. There's also some pretty crafty strategy needed to beat some stages, like placing a block HALFWAY between two medusas, which actually blocks both of them. And once you remember that enemies can not walk on the grass, it makes some stages much easier, because there are some stages where strategy gets thrown out the window and it requires running reflexes to finish the stage. This game got two sequels, which are really more of the same.

[fusoya]

Gremlins 2: The New Batch, developed by Sunsoft, released 1990, completion time: 40 minutes.

Fucking conveyor belts! Anybody who has played this game knows what I'm talking about. Anyway, this is a sequel to an Atari 2600 game....and also based on the movie. You control Gizmo, the furby, who plays through overhead action stages with really easy enemies and really tough jumps. You get various projectile weapons that look so cute in his hands, and can stop by the Shops of Mysteries to buy frogurts to restore your health. I never understood how the health meter works since sometimes you won't lose health when you take damage. This was a fun game with good music, and actually reminded me a lot of the overhead sections of Blaster Master. Just be ready to get very fustrated with some of those jumps!

[Hostile Dialect]

I recently landed at Newport Pizza and Ale House in Ocean Beach, and was surprised to find a working (well, sort of*) NES. My buddy and I fired up Double Dragon 2 and were surprised at just how hard that damn game was! The bosses were a bitch and some of the jumps were pretty tricky too.

* The mechanism that kept the game cartridge in position was busted, so you had to shove another game in on top of it at exactly the correct angle to make it playable. Some games simply didn't work, and when we later tried to play TMNT 2 we couldn't get another game in at the proper angle at all. We were a little drunk and frustrated, and our friends had shown up anyway, so we stopped at that point.

[fusoya]

I'm getting back on a roll....

Castle of Dragon, developed by Seta, released 1989, completion time 1 hour, 10 minutes

This is one bizarre game. I actually tried this out earlier in the challenge, but quickly realized this game was too shitty to be worth my time. Well, it's more misunderstood than shitty. There's actually a lot more going on that meets the eye. It's a side-scrolling action game, where you're a knight with a sword going through a castle with dragons in it, in order to save a princess. The first meter is your life, but the second meter is your experience. Yes, you can actually gain levels, which make you stronger and give you more life. While it also appears that you only have one life, and if you make ONE little mistake like fall in a pit or lose a duel, you get game over and get brought back to the title screen and the first stage. However, you still retain your experience, so it's actually somewhat beneficial to replay the first couple of stages. It's sort of like the loop that Dead Rising for the X360 has. Once you get up to the actual castle, there are 5 different stages, which you choose with the control pad on the map (something I didn't realize until I noticed I kept replaying the same stage). Four of these stages have an item to help you destroy the red dragon, so they must be played before the red dragon stage otherwise it's impossible to win. This was the toughest game for me to complete since Bayou Billy, and besides the confusion in how the game works (I'm wonder if this was all spelled out in the manual?), the bosses actually REQUIRE you to learn their pattern in order to survive long enough to beat them....it brought back some old memories of playing NES games, studying bosses, and then looking for a safety spot...surprisingly this is the first new game in the challenge I've had to do this for. The reward for beating the game (I'm sure I could beat it in 20 minutes now that I know how to fight everyone) is the hottest NES princess I've ever seen!

[fusoya]

Sword Master, developed by Athena, released 1991, completion time: 52 minutes

This game was developed by the same people who did Castle of Dragon, my last game. I even recognized the names in the credits. I had no idea of this fact until I was discussing that game with a friend last night, and he said I was talking about Sword Master. It turns out that they have enough in common to be sequels, although both of them have the same "you're a yellow knight trying to save a princess from a castle" story, although this time it's from wizards instead of dragons. This game did fix most of the problems with Castle of Dragon, such as the ability to NOT lose health during duels (although it does require perfect timing). It's also a purely linear game, so no messing around with the map. I spent about 20 minutes fighting this one Wizard boss, who I at FIRST thought was using the cheapest move in the book, by firing lightning bolts that corner you in the screen and force you to get hit, but

if you duck, you won't take any damage

and the final two bosses were real pains in the asses too. Also, halfway through the game, a completely useless wizard joins as a second character, but there was no point in the game where he was any better than the knight. This is a HARD game, even harder than Castle of Dragon, and I'd be very surprised to hear of anybody who beat this game without some kind of cheating.

[fusoya]

Donkey Kong Classics, developed by Nintendo, released 1988, completion time: 4 and a half minutes

Pretty much my earliest memory of EVER playing a video game was when I played Donkey Kong in the arcades back in the mid 80s. My dad would have to hold me up so that I could reach the controls, and even though the first stage was easy, I was never able to beat the second. I don't think I ever actually played Donkey Kong Jr in the arcades, but I always found it to have more variety than the original. Still, each of these games can be beaten in about 2 minutes, but they're still a fun play. Has anybody NOT played these games? I just wonder how ripped off somebody would feel if they paid $40 for this game when it first came out (and bear in mind that when the NES was originally released, DK and DK Jr were released separately!) I hear that there's a movie that was released earlier this year about people obsessed with Donkey Kong.


Sky Kid, developed by Namco, released 1986, completion time: 37 minutes

Sky Kid is a flying shooter game, which in a weird attempt to be original, scrolls right to left. You're a cutesy version of the Red Baron, fighting a cutesy military. Despite the childish appearance of everything (including billboards for Pac-Man!), this is still a tough game. You can fire straight, or at an angle, and the B button does backflips, which often will backflip you right into an enemy approaching from behind. There are also torpedos you can find to drop on battleships, but the game doesn't seem to care if you're a pacifist. I noticed (and verified on gamefaqs) that after 11 stages, the game starts to loop, even though stage 1 will now be called stage 12, so this is when I declared the game finished.

[bouv]

How about giving Ghostbusters a try? That damn stairwell is a bitch.

[Hostile Dialect]

fusoya, the movie was King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, and it was about the world record high score. It was awesome. Go see it.

[fusoya]

I've heard scary stuff about Ghostbusters, and that isn't supposed to be a pun.

Fester's Quest, developed by Sunsoft, released 1989, completion time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

This is one bizarre game. The licensing of The Addams Family makes very little sense, since Uncle Fester is trying to stop an alien invasion.....I guess I missed the episode with the aliens? So Sunsoft recycled all of the sound effects from Blaster Master, and even included the frog as a regular enemy...the game basically plays like the overhead mode in Blaster Master as well. You can even get those gun upgrades....and the gun Fester uses is very bizarre - it shoots in a spiral pattern, but if the shot hits a wall, it disappears, which essentially makes attacking in a narrow corridor impossible. You can also get an upgradable whip which I didn't use AT ALL, as well as an assortment of other items and weapons (including lock-on-target missiles!) which are given to you by various members of the family. If you use a turbo controller, you will absolutely OWN this game, which is a nice compromise from not being able to attack at all in certain passageways. The most bizarre thing about this game is just how hard the programmers made it. The gameplay itself isn't all that hard (except when you're left defenseless due to that screwy weapon), but you only get two units of energy, and only ONE life - if you die, you have an option to continue with all of your acquired items, but at the VERY start of the game - and since the game is essentially one giant maze (they even do the ultima-style 3d maze crawls before every boss battle, which makes absolutely no sense since the only purpose it serves is to see how long it takes to find the boss room) there is A LOT of backtracking in order to get where you left off. And the boss battles ARE extremely hard - there's more of the finding the pattern and finding the safety spot, but I can't imagine how any player NOT using save restores would ever survive long enough to figure out how to beat any of the bosses.

[Charger]

How about giving Ghostbusters a try? That damn stairwell is a bitch.
I beat this in my younger days by using the NES Advantage. Since each tap of the button equals one step on those stairs, the rapid-fire technique made them run. I tried it again a couple months ago, again using the Advantage, and I kept dying on the stairs. "Let me know when we get to 20. I'm gonna throw up."

[fusoya]

TaleSpin, developed by Capcom, released 1991, completion time: 35 minutes

yet another Disney-Capcom game, and yet another flying shooter game. You play as Baloo the bear, who flies in a tiny airplane that half of his body sticks out of (which is a completely different plane than was on the tv show), which fires bubbles. If you press the A button, he flips upsidedown to shoot in the opposite direction, which I can only see as extreme laziness by the graphics crew, who flipped the sprites 180° rather than mirror imaging it. Your initial ship sucks, but as the subgoal (aside from flying through the levels and fighting bosses) is collecting money and packages in order to get paid, you can buy upgrades, which make the game much easier. Another uniquething about this game is that the stages are all completely different environments, and can scroll in all four directions. Not a bad game, but not one I'd see myself playing again.

[fusoya]

Spy Hunter, developed by Sunsoft (original arcade version by Bally Midway), released 1987, completion time: 14 minutes

This is another one of the first NES games I ever played. It brings back memories too....and the Peter Gunn theme song (I have no idea who Peter Gunn is, but I love the song) is great. Spy Hunter's remake for the PS2 was also the first game I ever played for that system. You're driving a James Bondish car in this overhead driver/shooter game, and you can take out enemy cars, try to drive into the back of semi trucks to get weapon upgrades, and shoot down helicopters with the missiles. Or try to be a pacifist and try to drive around everybody. This game has an interesting lives system ,in that there's a timer and until it gets to 0, every time you crash, one of those red semis will drop off a new car for you, an unlimited amount of times. After about 10 minutes, the scenery starts looping, meaning that there's no official end to the game.

[Hostile Dialect]

You have to love Peter Gunn. I'm pretty sure it's coded into the Y chromosome.

[fusoya]

Journey to Silius, developed by Sunsoft, released 1990, completion time: 30 minutes

This game is a pretty straightforward action game. It has a futuristic/space setting, and you're a Mark Hamill look alike going through stages (they scroll in all 4 directions, but only one at a time, and this is a rare later NES game that doesn't let you scroll backwards), shooting robots. Each time you defeat a mini-boss, you get a new gun, but a major flaw in this game is every gun upgrade uses the same set of ammo, and you run out very fast, so it's better just to use the regular gun (with unlimited ammo) and save them for bosses. None of the game is really that hard, although it isn't always obvious at first where to shoot to kill some of the bosses, since some of them have shields that sometimes block their weak spot. This game uses a number of old-school strategies, including scrolling enemies off the screen, staying far enough away that an enemy won't attack you, and finding safety spots. Also has a great soundtrack, like most Sunsoft games. I bet it would be really fun with an unlimited ammo game genie code.

I have two long train rides coming up over the holiday, so I'll probably be back this weekend with a handful of more completed games.

[fusoya]

I've been too busy playing Dawn of Sorrow and Contra 4 (a must-have game for anyone who loved the original) to stick to NES games, but I'm coming back around.

Super Spy Hunter, developed by Sunsoft, released 1991, completion time: 40 minutes

This is basically a remake of the original Spy Hunter, but with a lot more game. The graphics are improved (the animation on going around corners is actually pretty impressive for the NES), there's more variety to the enemies, and there are actual multiple stages, rather than just one road that loops every 8 minutes. This game also has 8 bosses THAT WON'T DIE...you think the tanker truck is blown up, but out of it pops a helicopter...blow up the helicopter and a tank comes in from the top of the screen. Some of the fights were pretty ridiculous after a while.

[fusoya]

Ghosts 'N Goblins developed by Capcom, released 1986, completion time: 50 minutes

There are 6 things I really hate about this game:

#1 the fact that some bosses can only be defeated by certain weapons
#2 speaking of that, the torch is fucking awful, but it's forced on you twice in the game. None of the other weapon upgrades, except for the dagger, are better than the spears that you start with.
#3 the gargoyles
#4 the rock monsters
#5 that you aren't given nearly enough time to complete the stages. This is the only game I know of where the timer really matters. I ran out of time on 3 occasions in this run through.
#6 once you finish it the first time and are back in the graveyard, I just don't feel like playing it all again

This is an overrated game with one of the biggest reputations in NES history. You're a knight Arthur who is having sex with the princess in a graveyard when Satan kidnaps her. You need to go through 7 stages fighting zombies, gargoyles (the infamous enemy who later got his own series), ghosts, goblins, etc in order to rescue her. Once you finally do (and yes, it's as tough as everyone says. Not Bayou Billy tough, but you won't beat it in your first 50 tries) there's a bullshit ending that tells you to do it again. Since the second quest is EXACTLY the same, I consider it beaten and consider that a second quest to get a better ending. I have a long love-hate history with this game. I first encountered it in the arcades when I was about 6, and I thought it was hilarious that when you get hit, your armor falls apart and you're left in your underwear....get hit a second time and your skin falls off. And some of my friends and I would go to the graveyard near my house and play live-action Ghosts N Goblins...

[fusoya]

Freedom Force, developed by Sunsoft, released 1988, completion time: 22 minutes

My first Light Gun game in this challenge....I almost feel like I'm cheating just by playing at all, since the light gun is emulated with a mouse crosshair, making aiming extremely easy. This is actually one of the better of the light gun games, which are all almost exactly the same. You're Rad Rex, a Jack Bauerish character who is a CTU agent taking out terrorists at an airport. Shoot all of the men with green shirts and bags on their head, and if they throw a hostage at you, don't shoot it. There are multiple stages, each which is a different part of the airport, but still almost exactly the same, gameplay wise. This is also one of the few games where they shoot back, and you have a health meter. You'll get shot if you don't shoot them first. It also has a surprisingly large amount of blood for an NES game. The weirdest part is between some of the stages, there is a game similar to hangman where you have to guess the secret code by shooting the letters. Even stranger, once I beat the game, it left a cryptic message "CONGRATULATIONS! SECRET CODE: SPYHUNTER" .... is there something I'm totally missing or was that some kind of subliminal advertising to buy more Sunsoft games?

Xenophobe is the last one left until I have this company completed!

[fusoya]

Time Lord, developed by Rare, released 1989, completion time: 35 minutes

This game has nothing to do with Dr. Who. It's a really bizarre action side-scroller, with a similar play format to the first Double Dragon. You need to save the world from aliens by travelling through time and collecting orbs. The time periods are Medieval England, The Old West, Pirates of the Caribbean, World War 2, and 3000AD, and each stage has weapons and enemies to fit the period. The thing is, many of the orbs are in out of reach places, and require really strange techniques to reach them...such as stabbing the sword to the left to make the orb scroll down, etc......this game seems really stupid until you get the hang of it, and then it just seems short.

[fusoya]

Xenophobe, developed by Sunsoft, released 1988, uncompletable

This is the last of the Sunsoft games for me to play. And I guess I saved the worst for last. Your character is Dr Kwack, a trekkie with a duck's head. The setting is a cross between the Star Trek Enterprise, and the Nostromo, complete with Xenomorphs (I guess that's where the name came from). Basically, you run around the top half of the screen (the bottom half just has the Xenophobe logo, since a second player can also play in the same game, but at his own pace, a la every FPS game ever) killing aliens until you start to notice the 8 rooms repeating, and you go to gamefaqs and find out that the game has no ending and is unbeatable. This game is good for about 15 minutes, and might be fun for 2 people, but I pity anybody who actually bought it. This game also has a very strange control scheme, since you have to hold A (jump button) in order to duck, and when you get hit, Dr Kwack actually gets knocked down and you have to press A for him to get up again.....I've never seen that before in an NES game. Also, this game has NO MUSIC, which I guess is part of the "In Space, nobody can hear you scream" thing.

[fusoya]

Trojan, developed by Capcom, released 1986, completion time: 30 minutes

One of Capcom's first games, this is a side-scrolling hack-and-slash which can't seem to decide if it's the Trojan War, or something in the future (with ninjas thrown in too). Regardless, you're a random Trojan knight, and you take on Achilles and his army. Lotsa pattern spotting required to beat the bosses....this game is simple once you figure those out. Not really a bad game, although it doesn't seem very Capcomy. The control scheme is kind of weird, since up jumps (and you have to press diagonally to jump forward) and A uses the shield, which protects you from almost any attack. Having a turbo on B to swing your sword rapidly makes the game much much easier too.

[thirdname]

How about Low G Man? That was a cool game. I could never get past the boss in the submarine stage.

[fusoya]

Mega Man, developed by Capcom, released 1987, completion time: 45 minutes

The one that started it all, and Capcom's fifth NES game - their first that wasn't an arcade port. Fireman, Bombman, Gutsman, Cutman, ElecMan, IceMan. And of course the most overrated boss battle in the series - the Cyclops, who really isn't that hard, and CAN be beaten without cheating (no game-modifying cheats allowed in this challenge!) as long as you make sure to jump out of the way of the shots and learn the moving rock pattern. However, the REAL hardest battle in the series is the clone battle, which I still had to try about 5 times before I could do it. Overall, this was the hardest of the Mega Man games, and was unique for having really long stages, although less of them. And it has points! And no password! And enemies/bosses who actually do serious damage! The Fire Shooter is definitely the weapon to pick, which is why Fireman should be tackled first.

[bouv]

Still aren't going to give Ghostbusters a try, eh? :p Can't say I blame you.

[fusoya]

if I follow through with this challenge, I'll get to it eventually. Activision, right?

Right now, I'm trying to do the chronological Capcom.

The question is, who ELSE is going to take the NES-a-day challenge?

[bouv]

The question is, who ELSE is going to take the NES-a-day challenge?

I consider myself a NES expert, yet even I must bow to your NES awesomeness. I really couldn't complete half the games you've done so far, and the ones I could couldn't be done in twice the time you took.

(Also, I have a life, :p )

[KMFDManic]

it is a bit ironic that you say you have a life, yet have 8500 posts, bouv:)

in any case, not trying to be an ass or anything, I talk to fusoya on a normal basis about nes, etc...and, have decided I will impart some of my wisdom and ability in the nes challenge...one game he considered impossible to beat, legendary wings, will mark my first game to be posted about...

[KMFDManic]

ksjkdf

[KMFDManic]

Sorry for the last blubbed post, unsure how to edit. Anyways, there are many points of interest to this game...

1.Firstoff, as with many shooters, overhead or side scrolling...moving in a figure 8 pattern generally detracts most fire from hitting you...

2.For the 5 stages, there is a big face a little bit into each of them, that blows out gusts of wind at you...avoid these at all cost, as they do nothing more than send you to an unnecessary "danger" stage...For the fifth stage in particular, its near impossible to avoid the whilrwind as they shoot at you like bullets...!

3.Soon after each big face, lie turrets that need bombed, one of these, always the same one in all 5 stages...leads you to a bonus stage, labeled, "lucky..." Do your best go find these, as hearts in them give you extra continues, and its very easy to be fully powered up by the time you leave the area...

4.your lifespan is directly attributed to how powerful your weapons are...so, immediately try to get all "p" powerups that come your way...being at any level other than standard p shooter, you would have an extra hit before you keeled over dead...at full powerup status, marked by a flaming phoenix styled character, it would take a good 7 hits before death...

5.all 5 stages contain the same overhead boss, and the same sidescrolling boss...albeit, with very minor alterations on the latter...the overhead boss looks just like something out of dragon spirit...the sidescrolling boss seems a lot like a cross between kid icarus and kid icarus...!

6.at the end of the 5th stage, you fight a small box, this makes no sense, as, this is whats supposed to make us believe this is what can bring the end of the world...also, for a game thats legendary and takes place in greek times, why are there so many elements of machinery!?

7.nothing hits the nostalgic funny bone more than hearing elecmans weapon sounds again and again!

of course, engrish is at work...as you have CLEARE. the area? takes the mark amongst other memories of bad translations that come to mind...

[Pithy Moniker]

The question is, who ELSE is going to take the NES-a-day challenge?

It sounds like fun but I'm nowhere near the player that you are. I downloaded the old Adventure Island game several weeks ago on my Wii and have beaten the first level once since then.

[fusoya]

Section Z, Capcom, 1987, 1 hour, 30 minutes

Section Z is a pretty interesting game. You're this guy in a flying suit (which was later ripped off by Abadox), flying through a space station and killing aliens and robots. B shoots left, A shoots right, and turbo is essential. There are 60 stages in this game, each of which only takes a minute or two to play through, but at the end of each stage, you can choose between 1 and 3 warps, each of which goes to a different stage, and some which backtrack you. I got frustrated with this pretty quickly, and went to gamefaqs to get a map. The other unique thing is the way that damage works. You have a numerical shield energy meter, and it decreases as you get hit with bullets. However, a direct hit with an enemy will kill you, regardless of your shield. HOWEVER, getting killed by a direct hit will only take away your upgrades and take you to the beginning of the stage, where as if you die from your shield running out of power, you will be taken back to the closest multiple of 20 (0, 20, 40) stage you've reached. So if your shield is running low, suicide is the answer! Nothing in this game was extremely hard, and since you get unlimited continues, persistence will eventually finish it. One odd thing is how in the stages in the 40s, it plays this jazzy music that is highly inappropriate for this type of game!

[thirdname]

Are NES games really so easy that you can beat them in an hour or two? They took a lot longer than that when I was a kid. Have you played all these games already?

[fusoya]

As I mentioned in the OP, although I am not using any in-game cheats (30 life code, stage select, game genie, etc) which would modify the gameplay, I AM using save states, and now that I am using NES-DS, rewinding. I consider this an alternative to "getting good" at the game through practice. Most NES games (or at least the ones that were designed and programmed well) weren't supposed to be beaten an hour after you buy it, but rather have patterns that are meant to be learned over time, giving the game a longer lifespan. Of course, there are some "gems" that are just that easy. I also don't consider using turbo to be a cheat, since turbo controllers were widely available, and I don't want to have the letter B imprinted on my thumb. I have come across some games (Metal Gear, TMNT) which can detect turbo and will reject it, but so far these were games that don't really need it anyway.

Donkey Kong 3, Nintendo, 1986, 7 minutes*

Considered the black sheep of the classic Donkey Kong arcade ports, and for good reason. This time around, Donkey Kong has invaded a greenhouse, and Mario is armed with a can of bug spray to both push DK through the ceiling (each blast pushes him a bit higher off the screen) and to attack any insects that come at you. If you get under DK and hold up and turbo A, it pretty much plays itself...just get out of the way if a bee comes at you from an angle. This game only has 3 stages, but each time it loops back to the first stage, it gets gradually harder. I played through about 5 times before I called it quits, so I'm not sure how much harder it gets.

[fusoya]

Popeye, Nintendo, 1986, roughy 5 minutes

Another of Nintendo's classic arcade games which was released when the NES first came out. Like the others, the game is simply designed, pretty easy, has 3 stages and can be beaten in under 5 minutes. This time, you're Popeye, who runs around one screen stages collecting hearts/music notes/letters that Olive throws at you. You need to survive long enough to fill up a meter with these items, and you'll advance to the next stage. Strangely, only the first stage lets you eat spinach, which gives your punches the ability to actually do damage to Bluto and the vulture.

Legendary Wings, Capcom, 1988, I was multitasking and pausing, so I wasn't keeping track of time, but 35 minutes sounds about right

By a crazy coincidence, this actually was the next game in the Capcom chronology (I already did 1943 and Bionic Commando), which KMFD just reported on. Yet another shooter, this one has you controlling an angel in an Egyptian setting. B shoots forward, A shoots at the ground...I've seen that before too. As a testament to how difficult this game is, one of my friends used to own it, and I had NO IDEA that the game had side scrolling stages, which take place in a pyramid - and the game's format is that first you play a vertical stage outdoors, and then go inside the pyramid! The game DOES start out extremely difficult, but the challenge continuously drops as you acquire better weapons. One lame thing about this game, and I'd expect more from Capcom at this point, is each of the 5 stages has the EXACT same boss, just with a different color!

[fusoya]

Bionic Commando, Capcom, 1988, 50 minutes

I assumed that I already did this game as part of the challenge, but I don't see the write up on here. I've beaten this game so many times that it wasn't a problem...I actually followed a FAQ to get through it as fast as possible, since about half of the stages don't even need to be played. Anyway, this is one of the funnest games on the NES. Some people say it's one of the hardest, but it just takes some getting used to. You're a futuristic soldier, sent on a mission to rescue another soldier from a Neo-Nazi base. This is one of the few action sidescrollers where your character CANNOT jump, but he has a bionic arm, which can be used to attach to walls and ceilings and lets you swing and climb (think Tarzan). The game is spread out over 18 levels, connected by a map. Some levels are action levels, others are camps where you can talk to people and find items. This game is probably most infamous for the ending, where


the enemy manage to revive Hitler, who proceeds to say "You Damn Fools!" (which blew my mind as an 8 year old first playing this game...I don't think I even knew who Hitler was at the time

everybody must play this game in order to be considered a veteran gamer. Just watch out for that fire stage, it's a total bitch.

[fusoya]

Technically Strider, Mega Man 2 and Destiny of an Emperor were next on Capcom's chronological list, but I'm skipping over them because they are password/battery games. I've personally beaten Mega Man 2 more than any other game in history, so I know you don't NEED a password to win it, but I wanted to play something unique this afternoon.

Yo Noid!, Capcom, 1990, 1 hour

For those who don't remember, the Noid was this horrible commercial campaign for Domino's Pizza, where he would try to ruin your pizza. He was revived for a Family Guy joke.....how he got his own game was beyond me, since I don't remember him being very popular. This game makes a lot more sense once you know that it was a Japanese game which was changed to The Noid for the American release. Basically, you play through a couple side-scrolling action stages, and then have to have a pizza eating contest, which consists of you picking a higher number than the opponent from a set of 16 cards. Rather than using a numbered card, there are hot sauce and pepper icons you find in the stages which you can use to ruin the opponent's pizza, so that he won't eat them. The easiest way to win these contests is to ignore the numbers, and just use those pepper/hot sauce icons up, which will cause the opponent to eventually run out of cards, and you will win by default. If you lose the contest, you have to replay the previous stage. The annoying thing about the stages is you die in one hit, and although you do get various different spells and items (pogo stick, helicopter, etc), there isn't anything very interesting to the stages, and they have nothing at all to do with Domino's Pizza, unlike TMNT2, where there were Pizza Hut logos EVERYWHERE.

[Pushkin]

My hat's off to you, I'm rubbish at this sort of gaming. Much like your friend, I was astounded that when you got to level 1-4 of the original Mario Bros. you could go onto level 2-1 :eek:

I have a NES too back home, but I can't remember if I have any games with a definite ending or indeed any games save Mario/Duck Hunt left. I remember swapping my golden Zelda II cart with some kid for a crappy ninja game, I regret that now. And I have Galaxy 5000, but I'm not ever going to be able to finish that in a day.

[fusoya]

Little Nemo The Dream Master, Capcom, 1990, 1 hour, 10 minutes

This may be the most controversial thing I've said on this board - Little Nemo SUCKS. By far the worst of the Capcom games I've played so far, and I have no idea just WHY this game gets so much damn praise. Even Nintendo Power talked about it like it was the best third party game of 1990. So you're this kid who is a furry (do I even need to continue?), and he has dreams about becoming animals by feeding them candy. Of course, these animals are good at one thing (the frog can jump high, the lizard can climb walls, the bee can fly for like 5 seconds) but suck at everything else. What's worse, the animals are enemies until you throw 3 pieces of candy at them, and then they DECIDE to let you crawl into their skin. The biggest problem with this game is the hit detection is AWFUL. Do not even try to jump over an enemy or duck out of its way, cuz it'll hurt you anyway. If you do not land EXACTLY on top of an enemy when in frog mode, you'll get hurt instead of it. And the candy stuns an enemy just long enough for you to run past it and still get hit after you're on the other side of it. If that's not bad enough, you have to find 6 keys to beat each level, so it's more than just a crappy side scroller....I actually had to watch the video on tasvideos.org to figure out where some of these keys were...one of them requires you to jump off a cliff, giving NO indication that this is a magical cliff where you won't die! And worst of all, there are a million stages, each as crappy as the last. What do you expect from a game designed to appeal to people whose fetish is having sex with animals. Capcom, I expected a lot more from you, especially from all the hype this game always gets. At least I know that Rescue Rangers, another game with furry appeal, was actually a really decent one....

[LawMonkey]

Bionic Commando, Capcom, 1988, 50 minutes

I assumed that I already did this game as part of the challenge, but I don't see the write up on here. I've beaten this game so many times that it wasn't a problem...I actually followed a FAQ to get through it as fast as possible, since about half of the stages don't even need to be played. Anyway, this is one of the funnest games on the NES. Some people say it's one of the hardest, but it just takes some getting used to. You're a futuristic soldier, sent on a mission to rescue another soldier from a Neo-Nazi base. This is one of the few action sidescrollers where your character CANNOT jump, but he has a bionic arm, which can be used to attach to walls and ceilings and lets you swing and climb (think Tarzan). The game is spread out over 18 levels, connected by a map. Some levels are action levels, others are camps where you can talk to people and find items. This game is probably most infamous for the ending, where


the enemy manage to revive Hitler, who proceeds to say "You Damn Fools!" (which blew my mind as an 8 year old first playing this game...I don't think I even knew who Hitler was at the time

everybody must play this game in order to be considered a veteran gamer. Just watch out for that fire stage, it's a total bitch.

You didn't even mention the best part of the ending! Not only did, um, Master D use a bit of spicy language, but...

...his head explodes! That was just the coolest thing ever, when I was a kid. :D

[KMFDManic]

Being a fan of Golgo 13, I checked into other games made by Vic Tokai and came across this one...Its pretty disturbing when you first start the game as you hear an almost perfect representation of Castlevania music going on...which proceeds to sound like Megaman music, then a mixture of various Sunsoft games' music...Not only that, as you progress through the game, you feel like you are playing Ninja Gaiden crossed over with Fist Of The North Star...cutscenes even try to blatantly rip off Ninja Gaiden, but they are generally more interesting than the average nes storyline...

This is also one of those games with respawning enemies...whats good about respawning enemies is that you can refill your energy, ammo, etc till you are satisfied, then move on...

Enemy wise, its pretty ridiculous, you fight moving balls, plants, crabs, dogs, robots, and the boy from blaster master!, or at least it sure looks like him...

Combat wise, I dont know about you guys...but in real life...when people fight, I would think its more effective when you are on the ground...but, the rules of logic do not apply here...as, if you try fighting one on one with any enemy, you get your ass handed to you...you HAVE to jump kick or use your gun...so be a spastic jackie chan or reserved james bond, or there is no way in hell you are getting anywhere in this game...

It was an interesting experience, for the sake of just seeing how badly it ripped off other nes games down to the music and graphics...this game just didnt know what it wanted to be...but, it never gets old hearing castlevania music when you first start playing the game...!

enjoy the sample of gameplay that follows:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Njzyjf0oFk

[neutron star]

Journey to Silius, developed by Sunsoft, released 1990, completion time: 30 minutes

I remember renting this one when it came out. At the time, I thought it had such incredible graphics. Now, though... :)

Thanks for this thread, fusoya. I have the weekend off, so maybe I'll dust off some old NES games (well, dust off a CD with ROMs on it) and participate in the challenge as well, assuming I can tear myself away from my 360 for long enough to do so.

[Justin Credible]

I would like to reccomend the Silver Surfer game for NES. I used to love that one. Also, there was a GI Joe game that was pretty good. One thing I liked about it was you could pick whatever Joe you wanted to use (out of a pool of 6) for each level.

Also, the X-Men game. It was okay.

[KMFDManic]

ha, x-men and silver surfer are considered 2 of the worst nes games in existence...I recently beat silver surfer, and I must say you have to be a complete sucker for punishment if you play that game, as deaths are more common than any other game in nes history I can think of...the fact that the game was completely developed by a us team and how poorly designed it are sad facts...the worst is that silver sufer in comic books is invulnerable to any attack, yet anything that comes within 20 feet of him in this game kills him...!

I may try x-men, just so I can be a glutton for punishment, as I have a feeling it will be a nightmare attempting to beat that pitiful game...

as far as gi joe games, there are 2 of them, one made by taxan, one made by capcom...I played through and enjoyed both...:)

feel free to recommend any other games, especially if there are games you guys have never been able to beat...im always up for a new challenge...just dont recommend star voyager, I dont even think the people who made that game can beat it...heh...

[Hostile Dialect]

FTR, X-Men for the NES may be bad, but X-Men for the Game Gear was one of my favorite games ever. I miss it badly.

[fusoya]

Silver Surfer and X-Men are two EVIL games. If I decide to continue with the developer chronology, I'm gonna put off LJN for as long as possible!

Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers, Capcom, 1990, 15 minutes

For furry fun, this is more like it. I used to own this game, and played it with my friends all the time (it's a great 2 player game, on the same level of Contra), and it all came back to me really well. You can rush through this game really fast as long as you jump over or immediately chuck a box at any enemy in the way, and don't stop to collect items, since you'll have more lives than you need anyway. This game is based on the Disney cartoon that was on in the late 80s, and reproduces the show really well, with most of the characters. You need to save Gadget and then take down Fatcat, and there's a map where you can sometimes choose between 2 stages (and some paths have extra stages, so I alway took the shorter path), and each stage is totally unique (a kitchen, a library, a casino) but shrunk down to chipmunk size.

[fusoya]

Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight, Capcom, 1990, 52 minutes

First of all, despite sharing the name of two other Capcom series, this game has absolutely NOTHING to do with either Street Fighter or Final Fight. It's a futuristic action side scroller, where you're hunting down some alien gang, and you warp from planet to planet. In order to warp, you need to collect a certain amount of energy - in some stages, you can collect enough from the regular enemies, while others require you to find and fight a boss first. Once the warp opens, you have 7 seconds to get into it before you die, which can be a problem is the warp is on the other side of the stage or in a hard to reach location. This game is a good case-study for how to make a really bad game. First of all, you choose a title that is extremely misleading. Secondly, you give it a lame story with engrish-filled dialog "HOW DO YOU PURSUE ME?". Next, you add really bad play control - one thing your character can do is grab onto walls and platforms, and climb them. However, whether or not he actually grabs them seems to be totally random - I died plenty of times from jumping at a wall, him not grabbing it, and falling to my death, meanwhile he would grab platforms at points when I was trying to jump through or around them. Another problem is that the character cannot duck, but if you hold down and fire, he will shoot UP at an angle. Your character can also NOT move at all when you are in the middle of firing a shot, which leaves you a sitting duck if there's an enemy coming at you while you're killing another one. Hey, at least you can change directions when jumping! While the difficulty is lower than Ghosts 'N Goblins (mainly cuz you have a 5 bar energy meter, even though it only gets refilled after every 5 stages or so), it just doesn't have the fun appeal of that game, and it makes it way more frustrating to complete.

[fusoya]

The Little Mermaid, Capcom, July 1991, 20 minutes

The next in the line of Capcom-made Disney games. This game was extremely easy (which wouldn't have been surprising, if it weren't for Capcom's reputation of making really decent Disney games) but was still fun to play. It's a swimming action game where you control Ariel and have her go through various ocean stages. Like Rescue Rangers, it's better to just ignore everything and just try to get through the stages as fast as possible. I don't know it the items make the game any different, but I didn't need any of them to finish it. Holding B will make you swim slightly faster, and A will make her whack her tail, which shoots bubbles which will turn fish into holdable weapons which you can throw at other enemies. Most bosses require you to throw fish at them. Strangely enough, this game only somewhat resembles the movie, since you remain in mermaid form the entire time. I probably could have finished this game in under 15 minutes, if it weren't for an extremely cheap thing in the last stage.

The last stage, in Ursula's palace, is a maze with doors connecting the rooms. However, the only way to get through the maze is to reenter one of the doors that you just passed through, as it goes to a new room, rather than to the previous one.

[fusoya]

one last Capcom-Disney game for today

Darkwing Duck, Capcom, June 1992, 42 minutes

This game reminds me a lot of Mega Man, just without passwords. The gameplay just seems really similar. It also lets you choose the order of the stages, although this time it doesn't seem to make any difference which stage you choose to do first or last. I never really watched the show, so I'm not sure how closely the game relates to the series, although it does baffle me that there was a major Disney character with a gun. Ok, speaking of the gun, for some odd reason the regular gun is actually WAY WAY more effective than any of the other weapon upgrades, with limited ammo, that you can get. The only upgrade that seems to serve any useful purpose is the Arrow gun, which was stolen from Mega Man 5. This game also features the ability to grab platforms, similar to SF2010, except this time the control scheme makes more sense - press up to grab it, press down to release from it. Like SF2010, this game suffers horrible hit detection, so you'll take damage from an enemy that doesn't even come close to hitting you. Fortunately, with the exception of the construction tower, none of the stages are that difficult. Although each boss is different, they all follow the "chase him around three heights" pattern which I was never a big fan of.

[fusoya]

Duck Tales 2: The Quest for More Money, Capcom, April 1993, 51 minutes

This is a direct sequel to the first Duck Tales, and is an almost exact clone of the first game, so everything I said on the first game applies here. Scrooge McDuck has 5 more stages to go through collecting treasure - a Bermuda Pirate Ship, Egyptian Pyramid, Scottish Haunted Castle, Niagara Falls, and a place called Mu which is familiar to the Amazon stage from the original. This time, the stages have more puzzles to them, which makes it a slightly more difficult game. There are also upgrades to your cane that you can get, and you can actually spend money to buy other upgrades too. I have a feeling that once I get more familiar with this game, it can be beaten in about half the time.

Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers 2, Capcom, January 1994, 32 minutes

Like Duck Tales, this is another sequel that is almost exactly like the original, except this time they removed the map, making the game linear, and added in A LOT of boring and useless dialog. They also took away the red ball that was used in the original to fight bosses, so now you have to find your own weapons to use, and some bosses are VERY stingy when it comes to giving up blocks to throw at them. Aside from some of the boss battles, this game is just as easy as the original, but still a fun play.

[fusoya]

it's been a crazy last couple of weeks, of course, but I've gradually been working my way through some games, but this is the first chance I've had to do writeups...sorry these are so short, but my memory is hazy on a couple of them:

Mighty Final Fight, Capcom, July 1993, 57 minutes

This is an NES version of the SNES/Arcade game, a beat-em-up very similar to Double Dragon. Capcom took all of the characters and made them cutesy looking. There are three characters you can choose to use, and I went with Guy, the martial arts guy (Cody is more of a street fighter and Haggar is a wrestler). Two things I remember about playing through this game - the stages are EXTREMELY easy, but some of the bosses are extremely hard and can only be even damaged by hitting them at the right time in their pattern, also it's pretty much impossible to NOT beat the game if using a turbo controller.

Final Fight was the last of the non-password Capcom games. I decided to do the chronological Konami next. Gradius was the first USA Konami NES game, which I already played and beat earlier in this challenge.

The Goonies, Konami, 1986, 35 minutes

This game was based on the movie, and has Mikey going through caves and underground forts trying to rescue his friends and collect 3 keys to get to the next stage. In the beginning you can only kick, but you can later find a slingshot, and you can also get bombs which are used to open the doors. This game later got a much better, and much longer (it uses passwords, so I'm skipping it for now) sequel a year later.

Stinger, Konami, 1987, 42 minutes

This is part of the Twinbee shooter series, which was mostly not released in the US. It's somewhat similar to Gradius, except it takes place over the surface of the earth and has cutesy enemies (watermelons, water faucets, etc), similar to the Paradious series. Unlike Gradius, there isn't much in terms of weapon upgrades, which gives the game little variety. This was one of the first NES games I ever played.

Rush 'N Attack, Konami, 1987, 20 minutes

Another one of the first NES games I ever played. This is a side scrolling run-n-gun....err....run-n-knife where you're a soldier running through a Russian military base, killing anything in your path. One of the big problems with this game is that you die if an enemy touches you AT ALL....which means if one is climbing down a ladder and you're under him, you'll die. As a bit of trivia, one of my friends uses the RushNAttack SN.

Castlevania, Konami, May 1987, 35 minutes

Ah, the game that starts off one of my favorite game series ever. You are Simon Belmont, headed out to Dracula's Castle in order to defeat him. This being the first, is one of the simpler games in the series, being mostly a side scroller, with a haunted castle setting. You use a whip, and can whip candles to collect throwable weapons, and hearts which serve as ammo for these. Each boss is one of the famed monsters (Frankenstein, Mummy, Grim Reaper, etc) and each stage is a different section of the castle (tower, dungeon, garden, etc). Great graphics and music, and the gameplay is great aside from the inability to control your jumps - once you start jumping, you must complete the entire jump, and can not change direction. In this play through, I used a couple of the tricks to bounce off flying enemies in order to skip small sections of some stages.


The next game up is Top Gun, the first and only video game I ever bought and then demanded a refund for an hour later.....wish me luck.....

[fusoya]

I know I know, I've been really bad. But between all the different dramas going on in my life this month (all of which probably have a separate thread on here), I haven't had much videogaming time.

Screw Top Gun, it's run-n-gun time!

Contra, Konami, 1988, 16 minutes

Everybody knows this game, so I don't really need to give a description, do I? And most everybody I know who knows this game claims they're good at it. And most of them who say that also cheat with the infamous UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A code. Some of them even claim that you're SUPPOSED to use it, and Konami doesn't expect you to beat it the honest way. I've even heard claims that Contra is the hardest game ever made without cheating. Contra isn't even the hardest KONAMI game ever made (that would go to either Top Gun or Bayou Billy). And since one of the rules of this challenge is NO using cheat codes, I beat it the old fashioned way. And to further prove that Contra is only a hard game until you learn to play it, I also didn't use any save states. Well, I made it through without continuing and I only died 3 times - at both trucks at stage 5, which always give me trouble, and by the fire field on one of the annoying jumps in stage 6. Once the game jumped back to stage 1, I had 7 lives left over, since if you shoot everything that moves (and isn't that the point of Contra?), you'll get a high enough score for 1 or 2 extra lives per stage. Honestly, this game is NOT that hard - you just have to learn the layout of the game, because it plays exactly the same way every time. It also helps to have a turbo controller....

Super C, Konami, 1990, 20 minutes

After my no cheat code adrenaline rush, I decided to tackle a game I've actually never beaten before, the Contra sequel. The game is very similar to the first one, except rather than a couple 3d stages, there are some over head stages, and there are stages that alternate between horizontal and vertical scrolling.....one stage even scrolls down. Otherwise, it's the same ole Contra. However, this one IS a lot easier than the first one, so much that they didn't even include the 30 live code. Yes, I died a couple times, and most of them were related to cheap hits that I would have missed had I been more familiar with the stages, but the combination of the Spread Gun and a turbo controller got me through this one almost as easily as the original. Super C is a very worthy sequel, but it just doesn't have the same nostalgia level as the original. And you can really tell that they toned down the action....I guess there really ARE that many people out there who found the original too hard?


I'll get back on Top Gun.....someday....that game scares me. It also has NOTHING to do with the movie, aside from military jets being present.

[Hostile Dialect]

FTR, I just scored a Super Nintendo (my first one was smashed to bits with a sledgehammer in front of me in 2003--and with Super Mario World in it too!) and dusted off my old games. I just beat Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (Konami 1992), in 25 minutes yesterday on Easy and in 32 minutes today on Normal. I jacked up the extra lives, though (which you can do in the options menu without cheat codes). The game is hard (for me, anyway--I played it for a looooooong time before beating it as a kid) and even though it plays the same way every time, it has a lot of replay value. For those who are curious, it's a side-scroller which plays out more like Turtles II than Turtles III (both for the Game Boy), but a lot harder.

[Critical1]

I just have to say Fusoya, you are the man.

[Pushkin]

FTR, I just scored a Super Nintendo (my first one was smashed to bits with a sledgehammer in front of me in 2003--and with Super Mario World in it too!)

A frustrated co-gamer?

[Hostile Dialect]

A frustrated co-gamer?

Nope, my dad.

[fusoya]

oh wow, nice to see this thread already made the move. Well, so far in 2008 I've had to conquer my girlfriend moving here, getting a new job, and a nasty bout with the flu, and I'm STILL trying to conquer Top Gun. This hasn't been much of a year for gaming for me, but on my way home from work today, I decided I was gonna play one of my favorite games ever.

Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse, Konami, 1990, 1 hour, 15 minutes

Even though the NES stuck around another 3 years after this release, I have always considered Castlevania 3 to be the high point in both graphics and sound for the system. This game had its own graphics & sound chip installed on the cartridge to provide extra performance power, and is a great benchmark ROM to see how advanced an NES emulator is (this was one of the last games that emulator programmers were able to get working, although Nestopia handles it perfectly....nesDS will play it, but the audio is awful and some of the enemies will not appear). It, simply put, looks and sounds beautiful. Oh yeah, the gameplay kicks ass too. Set a couple hundred years before the original Castlevania, Trevor Belmont sets out to destroy Dracula and bring down Castlevania. This time, getting there is half the fun, as the game starts out in the village and you must travel through multiple stages before getting into the castle. One of the charming things about this game is after certain stages, you can choose between two paths - do you want to invade the castle over the moat, or do you want to go up the mountain through the abandoned mines under the castle (that mine stage STILL gives me nightmares just from thinking about it, and I chose the ship/moat route this time)? Each playthrough, you'll only play maybe half the total stages in the game, which really adds to the replay value. Aside from that, you can get help from other characters who can be swapped in for Trevor (who plays exactly like Simon from CV1) but who are only found at certain points in the game - Grant, a pirate who can climb walls and ceilings, and actually has decent jumping skills (but doesn't have much in term of attack power).....Sypha, a wizard with weak defense but who gets incredibly strong attack spells...and Alcuard, Dracula's rebeling son who shoots fireballs (just as long as he isn't on the stairs) and can turn into a bat. I went with my buddy Grant, who makes the game really really fun to play, although all three bonus characters add a new perspective to the game, increasing the replay value even more. This game really is no picnic. At least until Circle of the Moon came along, it was definitely the hardest Castlevania game, and I have hundreds of hours of memories of playing this game with one of my friends (about half of which were spent on that damn mine stage, waiting for the screen to fill with falling blocks), and although much of the gameplay did come back to me, it was a real workout. The game does have a password system, since it's a particularly long game for those of you who don't know where you're going....and there's also the infamous HELP ME code, which I didn't use per the challenge rules. Excellent, excellent game, one of my favorites.

[fusoya]

I thought I needed to fill in this gap:

Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest, Konami, 1988, I played it over 3 sittings and didn't keep track...but I know it can be beaten in about an hour if you know exactly what you're doing.

This is probably one of the most controversial games ever released for the NES. Like Super Mario 2 and Zelda 2, it holds the reputation as being the sequel that was too different from the original. This time around, it isn't a stage-based action game, but a side-scrolling action RPG. You don't start at the courtyard of Castlevania, but in a town, with people (deranged liars, but still people) to talk to, and shops to go into. Some people hated it, others loved to hate it, but I loved the game. After Zelda 1, this was the first epic game I ever owned, and I was really on my own with it. There was a Nintendo Power review of the first half of the game (the infamous Dracula's head issue), but the second half of the game, which could only be reached by

equipping the red crystal, and ducking at the cliff for 8 seconds, which will activate a tornado which will carry you up the mountain

was not touched on at all, and my 9 year old self was stuck exploring the land of Transylvania on my own, and I definitely got my money's worth, as I remember playing the game for many months before finally finishing it. Simon's quest is to enter the five skeleton-guarded mansions which hold the various body parts of Dracula's body, collect them all and return them to Castlevania, which will put Dracula's soul to rest once and for all (at least until the next game). There is a big world to explore, and this was one of the first, if not THE first, games to introduce the element of day and night - at night, enemies get stronger and the towns are deserted, except for the zombies which roam it. This game also has an experience system, which raised a moral question for this play through - you gain experience by collecting hearts, which are dropped by enemies about 50% of the time....since I allow save states in my challenge, would it be cheating to restore/rewind the game so that EVERY enemy drops a heart? This was also an awkward play through, because once you KNOW everywhere to go and everything to do, the game can be beaten pretty fast, aside from when you need to stop and collect hearts to buy things, which slows the game to a halt. Infact, CV2 was the first game I ever time-attacked...about 10 years ago, the now-gone site zophar.net had contests to see who could beat a particular game the fastest - we would have to submit movies of us playing the game, no cheating allowed. I trained for a week on CV2 until I could beat it in about 50 minutes, which included spending the first 10-15 minutes fighting enemies in order to build up experience and hearts, and then timing everything so that I would arrive at the towns during the day. Some of the strategy has been forgotten over the years, but most of the time line plays itself so that

if you fight in the forest next to the first town all day, and then fight the zombies at night, you will have enough hearts to buy the white crystal & holy water in the first town first thing in the morning, and then have enough hearts for the chain whip by the time you get to the second town. Then hit all 5 mansions in order and the game pretty much plays itself

For those of you who haven't played this game before, I recommend that you consider whether you want to invest so much time in it. It is a password game, and you definitely will NOT beat it in one sitting unless you know exactly what to do. However, it really is required playing for NES and Castlevania fans, and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys action RPGs. Just remember that there is as much that was different from CV1 & 3 as there was the same....

[Mosier]

I remember castlevania 2. It was the first CV game I played, and I had a video tape with a mini-walkthrough on it.

I think that was the first epic game I ever finished. I remember standing really close to the wall spikes and jumping up. You would kind of glitch out and float in the air, because your feet were standing on a spike, but the hit detection didn't make you take damage if you stood in the right spot.

[fusoya]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Konami, 1989, 45 minutes

I consider TMNT1 to be the #1 most overrated game in the history of the NES. It's not a BAD game, but it didn't deserve any of the praise it received. It came out during the height of TMNT craziness (the 80s version of Pokemon), which was enough to sell titles, were it not for Nintendo Power giving it a 3 issue feature, and then naming it best game of 1989 (Mega Man 2 was 10x the game TMNT was....). I really don't know what Konami was thinking, making a game that was obviously going to be marketable to kids, and would be bought by casual gamers, and then making it damn near impossible. You essentially get 4 lives, one for each turtle, and you can switch turtles whenever you want (each has their own lifebar), except that Michaelangelo and Rafael totally suck (I use them on the swimming stage), so Leonardo and Donatello are the only characters worth protecting. This game is riddled with maze-like levels (I had to consult Nintendo Power to figure out the correct path through the air base stage) and crazy jumping, and buggy stages where enemies appear and disappear out of nowhere, and often turn into different types of enemies. Also, aside from some bosses, the enemies in this game are mostly weird aliens that had nothing to do with TMNT's comic or cartoon. Fortunately Konami will get things right with the sequels.

[Really Not All That Bright]

No Rare games yet?

You have to do Snake, Rattle n' Roll and the Battletoads series next!

[fusoya]

still working on the Konami chronology. Remember, this is the company that had so many games to release, they had to start up a second company (UltraGames) to get around Nintendo's 5 titles a year rule.

[Crocodiles And Boulevards]

Little Nemo The Dream Master, Capcom, 1990, 1 hour, 10 minutes

This may be the most controversial thing I've said on this board - Little Nemo SUCKS. By far the worst of the Capcom games I've played so far, and I have no idea just WHY this game gets so much damn praise. Even Nintendo Power talked about it like it was the best third party game of 1990. So you're this kid who is a furry (do I even need to continue?), and he has dreams about becoming animals by feeding them candy. Of course, these animals are good at one thing (the frog can jump high, the lizard can climb walls, the bee can fly for like 5 seconds) but suck at everything else. What's worse, the animals are enemies until you throw 3 pieces of candy at them, and then they DECIDE to let you crawl into their skin. The biggest problem with this game is the hit detection is AWFUL. Do not even try to jump over an enemy or duck out of its way, cuz it'll hurt you anyway. If you do not land EXACTLY on top of an enemy when in frog mode, you'll get hurt instead of it. And the candy stuns an enemy just long enough for you to run past it and still get hit after you're on the other side of it. If that's not bad enough, you have to find 6 keys to beat each level, so it's more than just a crappy side scroller....I actually had to watch the video on tasvideos.org to figure out where some of these keys were...one of them requires you to jump off a cliff, giving NO indication that this is a magical cliff where you won't die! And worst of all, there are a million stages, each as crappy as the last. What do you expect from a game designed to appeal to people whose fetish is having sex with animals. Capcom, I expected a lot more from you, especially from all the hype this game always gets. At least I know that Rescue Rangers, another game with furry appeal, was actually a really decent one....

Ah, Little Nemo. The movie was absolutely INCREDIBLE. I don't understand the furry references, though. I don't remember anything like that from the anime.

[Red1980]

Ninja Gaiden, or is that just evil?

I watched a guy play that through. It's doable.

Mike Tyson's Punch Out might be a bitch on an emulator. I beat it when I was a kid on an NES with regular nes controller, but with a keyboard, it might be too tough.

Battletoads was one game I always had trouble with as a kid. But I have seen people beat it on an emulator.

Legend of Zelda is a good one to try, as is Adventures of Link (I never did beat Legend of Zelda, but Adventures of Link is very doable in one day).

Contra with 3 guys is also possible. Hard as hell, but possible.

Bionic Commando is an easy one. Just make sure you take the rocket launcher into the stage with the big wall at the beginning. I don't remember with board that was, but use save states before entering any of the latter stages.

Mega man was tough, but doable as well.

Let's see here... Ghosts and Goblins was frigging HARD. Good luck with that one.

If you're up for a 12 hour adventure, you could do Final Fantasy 1 in one sitting. You'd have to rush a bit, but it should be possible.

Double dragon... Kid Icarus... Bubble Bobble (although I'm not sure how to even beat that)...

That's all I've got for now. It's 5am, and I'm only here because I couldn't sleep. I'm gonna go try and get another couple hours.

[fusoya]

Most of these games I am playing on my DS using nesDS and a memory card. When I started this challenge, I was using pocketNES with my GBA and flashcart. Occasionally i'll play a game (like Castlevania 3) on my PC, using Nestopia and a Saitek P2600 gamepad. I'd never dream of trying to play console games using a keyboard!

Some of the games you mentioned I've already completed, and posted on. Ghosts N Goblins is definitely the toughest of then.

I'm skipping Top Gun for now (having 3 lives and NO continues....and seemingly unavoidable death by missile at least once a stage makes this the most impossible game yet, even with save states. I wonder if Top Gun 2 was any easier?) and so my next game up is Life Force, the Gradius sequel.

[Ottoerotic]

I seem to remember Top Gun being laughably easy once you figured out how to land. All you have to do to breeze through it is keep pushing down on the controller to fly as high as you can. As long as you keep your nose up at the top of the screen no missiles can hit you.

I may be mistaken though, its been a loooong time.

[fusoya]

landing isn't my problem. My problem is avoiding the "DANGER!" display, which means in 20 seconds I'll get blown out of the sky by a missile. No matter what I do, I can't avoid some of these, which means I'll always run out of lives before I can complete the game.

[bouv]

landing isn't my problem. My problem is avoiding the "DANGER!" display, which means in 20 seconds I'll get blown out of the sky by a missile. No matter what I do, I can't avoid some of these, which means I'll always run out of lives before I can complete the game.

Just go all the way right, then all the way left, then all the way right again, and you should be fine.

ETA: Ok, maybe not just three times, but just keep going as far as you can to one side then the other until you shake the bogey.

[fusoya]

Life Force, Konami, 1989, 30 minutes

The sequel* to Gradius, in which the gameplay, graphics and sound have been pushed up a couple of notches. The Vic Viper ship is back, and this time it's out to start a ginormous space snake who has been gobbling up planets. You fly through the snake's body, intending to destroy it's heart (you kill its brain at the end of stage 1, but apparently that's not enough)....strangely, the game isn't very consistent with the "inside the giant alien" thing, unlike say...Abadox (and wasn't there another game I reviewed that had an "inside the giant alien" setting too?) since some stages have you fighting through volcanos and pyramids. Anyway, you know the drill.

* = some of the craziest fanboys I have ever talked to are the ones who insist on their mother's grave that Life Force is not only NOT the sequel to Gradius, but has absolutely nothing to do with Gradius. Technically, Konami considers it a "spin-off", since the real Gradius games are flying through OPEN space, but how anybody could not see how it's 90% the same as any other Gradius game is beyond help.

[fusoya]

This thread is back from the dead! Actually I was in the mood for some NES gaming a couple weeks ago, but at the time the search was disabled, and since I couldn't FIND this thread (and didn't have it bookmarked), I was unable to revive it sooner. Lately I've been playing more GBA and DS games, including playing through Metroid Zero, which brings me to this game:

Metroid, Nintendo, 1986, about 2 hours (all in one sitting, but I paused a couple times to take care of some things...thankfully this game does have passwords)

I was very surprised and saddened when I discovered that the only two Metroid games which have sold over 1 million copies were the Prime games. I guess it takes a pretty hard-core gamer to appreciate this series. This is the one that not only started off one of the best series in the history of video gaming, but also introduced some very innovative features which would influence some of my favorite games of all time. It was also one of (possibly the first?) to feature a female main character, Samus Aram. Of course, being covered in a space fighting suit, you'd never know.

It is the year 2003. Samus has been sent out to stop the Space Pirates (note that in this game, none of the pirates aside from Kraid, Ridley and Mother Brain appear.....all other enemies are weird but animal-like space creatures), who have been experimenting with a dangerous alien life form known as the Metroids, in order to use as weapons. Although this is a side/vertically scrolling game, it does not have linear stages, but rather 5 different worlds on the planet of Zebes. There is no set direction to go, and infact you are often presented with multiple choices. Some will advance you, or at least lead you to item upgrades, while others are either dead ends, or paths which can not be crossed until you get some better items (high jump boots, bombs, ice beam, etc). The most frustrating thing is how this game does not have a built in map...if I was less familiar with this game (I grew up playing it), I would have had to either draw my own, or refer to a strategy guide. This game rewards exploring too, as many areas, shortcuts and items are hidden, and require bombing or shooting walls and floors, or just assuming that some can be jumped/walked through. Two very fustrating things about the NES version, which were fixed in all later sequels, is that Samus can not duck (although she can turn into a ball to squeeze through tight sections, but can not fire her gun when in ball form), and when you die or input a password, you start off with almost NO energy, and after you've gotten a couple of energy upgrades, you'll almost certainly never get back to 100%. This game was later remade as Metroid Zero for the Gameboy Advance, which has the same storyline and worlds as the NES version, but has been expanded with even more weapon/armor upgrades and hidden areas. Also note that Super Metroid for the SNES contains some sections of the world from this game as well.

[fusoya]

Again, I've been too busy with newer-gen games to play much NES stuff lately (unless you want to count Mega Man 9), but I really need to get back to my roots again, starting with a game I played through in ONE SITTING on a train ride today.

Dragon Warrior, Enix, 1989, 2 hours 30 minutes*

Ah, the original, simple RPG. Save the princess (if you want, you don't HAVE to....) and then kill Dragonlord. Aside from that and building a bridge, there isn't that much to do in this game. About 90% of the game is raising levels and collecting gold by wandering around and killing enemies left and right. That makes this game lose A LOT of points, as it gets so dull that I had to play the game on fast forward just so I didn't feel like I wasted TOO much time on it. To its credit, it was a HARD game, especially with the limited light dungeon mazes. Damn those Axe Armors!!! This was the second NES menu&experience RPG ever released in the USA (after Ultima Exodus which faced the similar lack-of-plot-quest problem), but was a HUGE deal for its time - Nintendo Power even sent a free copy to anyone who renewed their subscription, in hopes of making RPGs more popular in the states. It really hasn't aged well (although its sequels ARE fabulous AND plot-driven) but it's worth a play through for old times sake, or just to see where the genre got its start.

[fusoya]

How appropiate for Veteran's Day. I FINALLY conquered the NES game that has been haunting me since I was 8 years old!

Top Gun, Konami, 1988, 1 hour, 20 minutes

Top Gun is the worst game ever made. It doesn't even have ANYTHING to do with the movie that the title comes from, aside from the air force setting. I got this game back when I was 8 years old, and returned it to the store an hour later and got Karnov instead. Yes, it was THAT bad. Earlier in this challenge, back when I was on a role and beating an average of 1 NES games a day, I decided to do the chronological Konami, which meant I knew this game was coming up. Try as I might, I was UNABLE to beat this game, even using save states, and it frustrated me so much that I lost the ambition to continue on. Well, I got some pointers from a friend about how to conquer this game, and gave it another try, and I finished it! This is a flying shooter/sim, taking place from behind the cockpit. A fires the regular gun (unlimited ammo), and B fires one of 3 missiles (which should be saved until the boss). The problem with this game is that even though it's fun to dogfight, and shoot down enemies, it is IMPOSSIBLE to win if that's how you play the game. The only way to win is to play totally defensively - you need to avoid having any enemies on the screen at all. If you see one, fly out of the way. You can't be hurt by what you can't see. Aside from the bosses at the end of each stage, there's no need to shoot down ANY enemies. Occasionally you will get locked on target, in which case you can escape by alternating between left and right a couple times. Once you get up to the boss, get the target to go red and fire missiles like crazy. After that comes the most famous part of the game, landing. Best way to land is to just IGNORE all of the instructions and just make sure the landing strip is in the target and that your ship looks level. Same thing when you have to refuel - it's easier to IGNORE the instructions and just look at the radar. After all the trouble this game gave me, it didn't even have a decent ending.


I actually beat Top Gun!!!!!

[fusoya]

Top Gun 2: The Second Mission, Konami, 1989, 32 minutes

Apparently enough copies of Top Gun were sold (possibly under the ET effect?) for Konami to want to make a sequel. Well, fortunately, the game is somewhat different than the original. Rather than flying around for 5-10 minutes until you reach a boss, the entire game is dogfights - sometimes with other planes, sometimes taking out a navy, and one weird sequence where it's you vs trees. They also made landing a lot easier. It's a much better game than the first one (hell, ET is a much better game than the first one), but still isn't too great.

[fusoya]

Monster In My Pocket, Konami, 1991, 52 minutes

One nice thing about the NES is that it left behind games that are the sole memory of fads from the 80s and 90s, such as the Monster In My Pocket action figures. This is a pretty basic platformer. It reminds me a lot of Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers due to the miniature house settings. You can choose between a Court Orlockish Vampire, or Frankenstein's Monster (or both, if you're playing 2 player), who both play exactly the same. The game starts out pretty simple, beating up other monsters around the house, but it gets more and more difficult as the game goes on, and the last level is totally evil:

It starts with enemies that take 3 hits to defeat, usually leaving them enough time to get a hit in too. Then there's a parade of bosses from the first 5 stages with NO life refills in between them, followed by a new boss. Then the game goes into the ending sequence, only to get interrupted by the final boss returning for revenge. If you run out of lives at any point in this sequence, you will get brought back to the beginning of this stage!

Be sure to use a turbo controller for this game, as your character's attack (fiery punches) can get tiring very fast. Killer soundtrack, btw.

[fusoya]

Dragon Warrior 2, Enix, 1990, est. 25 hours

This was the only DW game for the NES I never got around to completing before...the whole "where is the prince now?" quest at the beginning of the game scared me off back in the early 90s. I feel very accomplished, as this is an RPG that really requires a lot from you. Like the first DW, it was innovative and set the stage for future RPGs. Even more-so than the first game, it is very non-linear. Infact, once you get the pirate ship (which occurs about 1/5 into the game) you can go pretty much anywhere in the game, and complete it in any order you choose (including back to the world of DW1, complete with the same music). The goal is to round up your family to create a party, and then collect 5 seals which will allow you to enter Rhone, the icey world where the head badass lives. For the most part the game is pretty easy, with the only real challenge figuring out what to do next, but once you get to the final area, the difficulty level jumps up like CRAZY, and I spent the last 5 hours finally leveling up just so that there wasn't a good chance I would die in every random battle! Like the first DW, it is pretty lacking in actual story, and it isn't really that fun being told at the VERY beginning how the game is going to finish up, as it really takes away from the excitement level of an RPG's progressing story (The folks over at Squaresoft set the bar for THAT aspect).

[Indistinguishable]

An ancient post, but:
Nope, my dad.
Jesus, why?

(My own dad accidentally threw out my NES and SNES in 2004, but there wasn't any malice involved)

[tds1273]

If I could nominate a couple of favorites to add to the challenge: Conquest of the Crystal Palace and Captain Skyhawk.

[fusoya]

Dragon Warrior 3, Enix, 1991, est. 60 hours

Yes, it actually took me this long to beat this game! This game goes on, and on, and on....and on. It's one game that you definitely get your money's worth, and is a really decent RPG, especially for the NES era. I bought this game used back in the early 90s, and did manage to complete it back then, except not really since it came with a saved game near the end which I just picked up on and finished. DW3 completes the trilogy of 1-3, although it isn't exactly clear how when you start playing. There are actually some pretty good spoilers, which of course got ruined by the Nintendo Power review I read before ever owning the game


1. Right after you defeat the last boss (which is far enough into the game that an unknowing player really WOULD think he's just beat the game - it even starts the ending sequence), you get warped to Alefgard, the world of DW1 (and which also appears in DW2). At this point you essentially play through the entire storyline of DW1 again, except with an already leveled up party. The thing is, there are some hints dropped that this is a different time period than DW1-2, and there are some subtle differences that show this is in the past - like the town of Harkness not being destroyed yet.

2. Once you beat the game for real, it gets revealed that you are Erdrick/Loto, who is referenced over and over in DW1&2. Probably not that big of a surprise with all of the clues that were dropped.

This game was HUGE when it first came out (especially in Japan, where so many kids were skipping school to play this game that there were policies passed about when in the calendar future RPGs could be released). The unique thing is that this game, unlike the rest of the DW's, has one scripted character, and you can choose who to have as your 3 teammates (similar to Final Fantasy 1), all of which can be recruited at the beginning of the game. I went with a party of a Thief (has scouting skills, can steal items, and uses weapons like boomerangs which can hit the entire set of enemies), a Fighter (has limited armor choices, but gets critical hits more often, and gets his best weapon in the game really early if you can actually manage to make it in and out of the damned Pyramid alive) and a Wizard (uses black magic, and can later get a class change to a Sage who learns white magic and can use swords). One of the things that makes this game so long is that pretty much the entire game is open-ended in the plot, so you REALLY have to pay attention and do a lot of exploring to get everything accomplished that is needed to complete it. There are also a bunch of side quests which aren't needed to beat the game, but will help build your arsenal. There were a couple of times where I gave up and had to consult gameFAQs. Also, this was the first DW game where most dungeons have real actual boss fights at the end of them, and while the last castle really wasn't that difficult, the final boss (and there are 4 others guarding him) was really no picnic. I beat him on my 4th try.

Now I'm debating whether to get started on Dragon Warrior 4. I actually did beat that game back in the 90s, and it's even longer than DW3, believe it or not......I know there's a remake for it on the DS.

[fusoya]

So one of the gifts which I got for Christmas is a NES-USB Retrolink controller (http://www.retroconsolestore.com/nes-retrolink/). I plugged it into my computer and booted up Castlevania 3, and just played the most perfect game of it ever, despite having no turbo, save/load, ff/rewind and getting the same hand cramps that the original NES controllers gave me when I was a kid (very sharp edges). I think I'm gonna be using this controller to do some NES marathoning over the next couple of days. There's something about the feel of it that brought me back to 1990, with my 1990's skills.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the same story with Contra. Even though I can easily finish that game with the 3 lives I start with.....the lack of turbo shooting makes a whole new challenge.

[fusoya]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game, Konami, 1990, 40 minutes

This summary brought to you by Pizza Hut.

After the disaster that was the original TMNT NES game, this time things seem much more familiar. A pretty faithful port of the TMNT Arcade Game, which was based off of the television cartoon, TMNT2 is a totally different game than the original - a button-mashing beat-em-up. Again, you can choose any of the 4 turtles (I went with Leonardo) even though I think they all play the same this time. You mostly fight foot soldiers (about 10 different kinds, each with different weapons) along with other characters from the show. This game is much much better, easier and funner with 2 players. Unfortunately I didn't have that luxury tonight, although I have some nice hand cramps from my new NES-USB controller. One big complaint I have with this game - what's with all the Pizza Hut Ads everywhere? I mean, it's one thing to have Pizza Hut billboards when on the streets of NYC, but what are they doing in a Shogun Temple or inside the Technodrone?? I remember the back of the instruction manual even had a coupon for a free Pizza Hut.

[fusoya]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: The Manhattan Project, Konami, February 1992, 1 hour 10 minutes

More of the same of TMNT2, except this time each turtle has his own unique attack (Raphael's stolen from M.Bison), which costs 1 health point but will kill any enemy it hits, and you can change turtles each time you die. While I thought it was an improvement on TMNT2 (possibly because I played 2 to death, both in the arcade and on the NES, while I've never played 3 before), the game was way too long and tedious (I mean, 90% of the enemies are foot soldiers!). There's a particularly cheap part where you're on a conveyor belt, with friggin laser beams in your path AND you have to fight foot soldiers (who can't even be hurt by the lasers!) At least the bosses are a lot more interesting in this one - there's more to it than just running up to them and mashing the B button. I do love that they brought back Krane's theme song, since it's one of the catchiest NES songs ever. Interestingly, although Zanramon is featured on the box art, he does not appear in the game.

[Mahaloth]

Now I'm debating whether to get started on Dragon Warrior 4. I actually did beat that game back in the 90s, and it's even longer than DW3, believe it or not......I know there's a remake for it on the DS.

I've heard the 4th one is the best of the NES games, by the way. I have only played 6, which was a huge game as well. I think it took me over 70 hours to beat. It's on the SNES, though, which only got two main DW games.

Ever play 7 or 8?

[fusoya]

I played 8 a little bit, and plan on getting back to it after I play 5-7.....who knows when that'll be. I've been slowly playing DW4 on the DS.

Kid Icarus, Nintendo, 1986, 2 hours, 7 minutes

Ah Kid Icarus. Probably better known from the Captain N cartoon show than the gamicus. This was one of the first NES games I ever owned, and it was the first NES game that really pwned meicus. The thing about this game, it gets easier the farther you get into it - by far the hardest thing to do is beat the very first level (and levels 2 and 3 aren't much easier), but once you get up to world 2 (4 total worlds, the first 3 have 3 regular levels and then a castle, and the fourth is one short level before the final boss) the rest of the game is a breezeicus. This is because this was one of the first (maybe the FIRST?) games to have experience points, which will make your character have stronger bow&arrow attacks, and will give you more hit points when you collect enough experience (strangly, you only get HP upgrades after completing a level, and you get strength upgrades by entering certain rooms - which my friends & I used to call thinking rooms because we'd walk back and forth and wait for something to happen ,since the rooms would be empty if you didn't have enough experience for a weapon upgrade). Aside from that, you can also enter training rooms, which will give you additional weapons (choice of fire arrows, longer shooting arrows, or diamonds which act as a shield) if you can fight flying plates for 1 minuticus. Despite the initial challenge (as well as the maze element to the castles), this is a very fun game - you play the angel Pit who is out to destroy Medusa and her fiends, which include enemies which will pop up underneath you (incredibly cheap), and the eggplant wizard, who will turn you into a walking eggplant who cannot attack (and thus cannot defeat the castle's boss) until you find a nurse to heal youicus. Like the levels, the bosses get easier and easier from world to world, and you can beat Medusa without getting hit at all just by standing in the right place and shooting. Interestingly, one of the ways that you can heal is by drinking wine, which I would wonder how it made it by the Nintendo censors were it not for the fact that Nintendo MADE this gamicus.

Number 1 rule of playing Kid Icarus - NEVER press the down button, or you wil DIEICUS!!!!

[Mahaloth]

Forgive my laziness of not re-reading the thread(I've participated for awhile, even as a lurker), but have you played Fester's Quest.

Also, everyone who likes this kind of gaming should check out "Until We Win" by LordKat.

He plays NES and other games all the way through, using no cheats and explains how to do it. is Dragon's Lair playthrough is amazing.

Until We Win (http://www.lordkat.com/)

His Battletoads playthrough was great, too. :)

[fusoya]

Fester's Quest is in this thread somewhere. That game sucked - Sunsoft took their overhead mode from Blaster Master, gave your character a weapon which literally could only shoot the wall, and you get TWO hits before you have to go back to the beginning of the game. How anybody ever beat that game without some kind of assistance is beyond me. At least it had decent music.

I've now surpassed 100 games since starting this challenge. I still intend to continue it until I finish all of the finishable NES games (minus the sports games and games which got a better port for a different system)....so there's only 500 or so more to go.....I might just have to do Battletoads next. I never did beat that game in one sitting before.

[Munch]

Forgive my laziness of not re-reading the thread(I've participated for awhile, even as a lurker), but have you played Fester's Quest.

Typing "fester" into the "search this thread" tool at the top of the page will reveal fusoya's review of that game.

[Gulo gulo]

a Fighter (has limited armor choices, but gets critical hits more often, and gets his best weapon in the game really early if you can actually manage to make it in and out of the damned Pyramid alive)

That damned PYRAMID! I remember that part very vividly. HATED it!

(I still have my original NES with a bunch of the DW games. I hope to have it up and running one day in the near future to torture myself with these again.)

[YogSosoth]

How is it that I've only now found this thread? HOW?? ::goes to read through entire thread::

[YogSosoth]

Whew, finished the whole thread! I commend you FuSoYa, for doing all this. It brings back a lot of memories and makes me want to download a lot of games I haven't played before or for a while.

I'd like to nominate Rygar for you. It's an early NES game, the I bought it from some guy in science class in 8th grade. It's long for a game that has no saves and no passwords, and I remember I spent hours and hours trying to beat that final boss. From what I remember about this game, for being such an early predecessor of so many adventure/exploring action games, it had a good mix of exploration and unique and challenging bosses. Also, the music's catchy for the time, I can still hum it now 16 years later. There was some boss in a tree/water level that was giving me fits until I totally changed my strategy for him and whipped his ass.

I also like to re-nominate The Guardian Legend again. To me, one of the most underrated games on the NES. Huge, fun, unique, and great music. Even though you only really use the fireball and that lightsaber, the game made you want to explore every nook and cranny for all of the special items and their upgrades.

Another action game with a lot of exploring is Battle of Olympus. I was obsessed with this game to the point where I almost stole it from someone :D

8 Eyes is a Castlevania-type game that was known for its difficulty. When you play it, it's not hard to see why: your character can barely jump across 2 blocks, his main weapon's a tiny little sword, he's slow, the levels are long and filled with enemies, and you have to beat these 8 bosses in 8 areas then take on this game's version of Dr. Wily. However, you do have a bird with you that you can sorta control, and using him to hit switches from far away or dive bomb bosses is the key to winning. It also has pretty good music for the time.

[fusoya]

I've played all of the games you've suggested, although the only one I never beat was The Guardian Legend. I never really got ALL of the hype that game has, but then again I never got very far into it.

I'm gonna play Rygar tonight. One of my friends owned that game and I have good memories of it, including leaving turbo on for a couple of hours and maxing out my experience in the first level by fighting turtles.

I would also like to stop this 8 Eyes = Castlevania myth right here. 8 Eyes LOOKS like Castlevania from the screen shots, but Nintendo Power also convinced me to buy that game when their mini review said it WAS like CV. It isn't like CV at all, and it was one of my most disappointing purchases (I mean, it was only $5 from Funcoland, but still). It is significantly less fun, and mostly consists of trying to find your way through mansions (okay, it's a bit like the mansions from CV2) and using a falcon to hit switches to open doors. It's actually more similar to Mega Man in that you have access to every stage from the beginning, and each boss is weak to the sword you get from one other boss. But again, not nearly as fun as Mega Man.

[YogSosoth]

I've played all of the games you've suggested, although the only one I never beat was The Guardian Legend. I never really got ALL of the hype that game has, but then again I never got very far into it.


I would also like to stop this 8 Eyes = Castlevania myth right here. 8 Eyes LOOKS like Castlevania from the screen shots, but Nintendo Power also convinced me to buy that game when their mini review said it WAS like CV. It isn't like CV at all, and it was one of my most disappointing purchases (I mean, it was only $5 from Funcoland, but still). It is significantly less fun, and mostly consists of trying to find your way through mansions (okay, it's a bit like the mansions from CV2) and using a falcon to hit switches to open doors. It's actually more similar to Mega Man in that you have access to every stage from the beginning, and each boss is weak to the sword you get from one other boss. But again, not nearly as fun as Mega Man.

The Guardian Legend can be kind of tedious, but it passes quickly due to the differences in stages. Did you enjoy the music at least? I know some emulators don't replicate the NES sound chip exactly and you get missing background beats but I've always thought the greatest strength of that game was the music.

How about a hybrid between Castlevania and Mega Man? :D It certainly has stages similiar to Castlevania along with a character pretty much physically as weak as the Castlevania games. I'll grant that the boss weapons are like Mega Man, but I still see too much similiarities to totally dismiss the comparison. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it "feels" like Castlevania. The gothic setting, moody music, and vague creepiness all remind me of that game. All it needs it a vampire.

I've been playing some games too, spurred by this thread. So far, I've beaten Mega Man 1-3, The Guardian Legend, and Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2, along with some simplistic games like Donkey Kong Classics and Donkey Kong 3. I won't claim to be as good as you are though, but I did own most of these games and played the heck out of them years ago. Going back was like riding a bike, as soon as the music started I was instantly transported back. I'm even surprised how much muscle memory was left as I could remember myself repeating the same moves I did back then (NG2, using the Fire Wheel weapon in the exact place I did back then). Fun times. I'm going to start on Ninja Gaiden 3 and possibly the rest of the Mega Man series all the way to 6, then go for Bayou Billy again. I can't believe I beat that on the NES without throwing a controller, I seemed to remember a lot of jump kicks....

[YogSosoth]

On a lark, I beat Rygar last night. Man, how the hell did I beat this way back when there was no save states?

The shitty thing about this game is that you could die so easily and you only have one life (albeit unlimited continues). Things knock you off platforms, you die. Walk too close to the edge on the overworld map, you die. But the most annoying thing is getting that damn wind pulley to hook onto the zip lines. I swear you have about a 2 pixel margin of error before you plunge off a cliff.

I didn't have the instruction book when I bought the game from some guy in science class, so I had no idea about leveling up attack and defense to 4095. I think I would have been saved a ton of trouble, especially on that last boss, if I knew about it. No wonder I died to him so much. All in all, it took me a little less than 2 hours to beat it, but without save states, I could easily see me playing this for 3 or 4 hours.

I have an itchin' to play the Jackal, that jeep game. I had a lot of fun with it back in the day.

Also, do you know if there's an actual ending to Ikari Warriors? 2 players on that kicks ass but I don't think I've ever beaten it.

[fusoya]

Rygar, Tecmo, 1987, 2 hours, 15 minutes

Rygar & I go a long way back. One of my friends who lived down the street from me owned this game. We figured out pretty early on that if you get a turbo controller and put weight on the down and B buttons, you could leave your character standing with his back against a wall and fight enemies for a couple hours, gaining enough experience (which increases your energy meter, strength and defense) to start off the game fully powered. We also left this game on for DAYS at a time, because this is a long one, especially if you don't know where to go, and has NO saves and NO passwords. You are expected to beat it in one sitting. If you DO know what you're doing, it would still take at least an hour. Your character is this guy who has a weapon which could best be described as a shield on a rope, which he throws at enemies. About half of the game is side scrolling, similar to most NES platform games, and the other half is overhead, sort of like Zelda. This is also one of the first Metroidvania games. Your character gets various upgrades (mostly things to improve your climbing skills) which let you access new areas, some of which require quite a bit of backtracking (and you need to have a good memory for which areas you weren't able to access earlier). For some reason when you climb ladders, he looks like he is humping them. One VERY VERY VERY VERY annoying thing about this game, and something that almost broke my tv when I threw my controller at it in fustration, is that you have to be EXACT when using the grappling hook and pully, or else he will not activate them and you will fall to your death. Also, this game's soundtrack ranges from EXCELLENT to AWFUL, with no mediocre middle.

[Munch]

God I hated Rygar. I got it for Christmas one year, and played it for hours at a time. I could NEVER beat the final boss. And that music haunts me to this day - I just hated it.

[fusoya]

Strider, Capcom, 1989, 1 hour, 30 minutes

Argh. Way overrated game. You're this futuristic secret agent who uses a sword which was an obvious inspiration for Symphony of the Night's Crissigaen and you have to track down and kill some other spys, or something. I think. The translation was so horrible I never had any clue what was really going on. You hop from country to country (this is probably the only video game that has Kazakhstan for a level, and just like 8 Eyes, it thinks Africa is a country even though they both have Egypt levels too), although the game takes a weak Metroidvania approach since you need to get power ups (magnet shoes!) and keys in order to finish off most of the levels, which means a lot of backtracking - it works like Duck Tales or Mega Man where you have a home base and can pick a level to go to next. This is definitely a game where it paid to read the manual, because i was playing for about a half hour before I realized that your character (named Hiryu - Strider is is rank) can bounc off walls, a la Super Metroid, which is required to get through the Pyramid. You also get upgraded weapons (called Tricks) which are pretty much useless because you never get very much ammo for them, even after the level upgrades after each level (which also gives you more energy). This game has a couple of other big frustrations - the biggest being that the game gives you NO indication when you are taking damage - you don't get knocked back and don't even BLINK, so you can be standing with one foot too close to a spike and not even notice that you are about to die if you aren't looking at your energy counter. It also has some big problems with screen scrolling, which made me feel sea sick, and also has that Capcom style problem where you can scroll enemies off of the screen, but also stand in spots where they will immediately keep respawning if you kill them, forcing you to move through their path. Also, the boss battles are REALLY easy, and the bosses get recycled (I fought the extra same boss THREE times in a row, and all in different countries!). Mega Man, this game is not....but at least it's better than Street Fighter 2010.

[YogSosoth]

I decided to see if the Grim Reaper in Castlevania was still a bitch to defeat after all these years.

Yes, yes he was....

Luckily, knowing which weapons to use against which bosses was something I was used to back then. Only this time, I didn't have to accidentally pick up the stupid watch or dagger while breaking random candles. Hurrah for save states! :D

What took hours and hours of trial and error back then only took about 35 mins this time, thankfully

I'm in the mood for leveling up so I think I'm going to try the original Dragon Warrior. I can't remember if you can level past 20 but if not, I may just stop there and ignore killing the Dragonlord. I remember he was still really hard to beat even at that level.

[YogSosoth]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game, Konami, 1990, 40 minutes

This summary brought to you by Pizza Hut.

After the disaster that was the original TMNT NES game, this time things seem much more familiar. A pretty faithful port of the TMNT Arcade Game, which was based off of the television cartoon, TMNT2 is a totally different game than the original - a button-mashing beat-em-up. Again, you can choose any of the 4 turtles (I went with Leonardo) even though I think they all play the same this time. You mostly fight foot soldiers (about 10 different kinds, each with different weapons) along with other characters from the show. This game is much much better, easier and funner with 2 players. Unfortunately I didn't have that luxury tonight, although I have some nice hand cramps from my new NES-USB controller. One big complaint I have with this game - what's with all the Pizza Hut Ads everywhere? I mean, it's one thing to have Pizza Hut billboards when on the streets of NYC, but what are they doing in a Shogun Temple or inside the Technodrone?? I remember the back of the instruction manual even had a coupon for a free Pizza Hut.

I loved this game! I got so good at tapping the jump then hitting the attack button that I went through the entire game that way. In the arcade, if you mash the attack button, you could get several hits on the foot soldiers and kill them before they could attack back. However, the NES version gave enemies a small window of invincibility after you hit them so they would always hit you back. Annoyed the heck out of me. With the jump attack, you would knock out the regular foot soldiers with one hit.

There was a rumor that Donatello's staff had longer reach than the other turtles, I dunno if that was true or not. It certainly seemed that way in the arcade version.

[fusoya]

Battletoads, Rare, June 1991, 2 hours

Here's the one I know you've all been waiting for....man, I severely underestimated this game. I rented it back when it first came out, but I remember it was a weekend where I was very busy, and only gave the game an hour or so. It seemed like a typical beat-em-up, a la Double Dragon, but with ripoffs of TMNT. This game is a lot more than that - infact, the beat-em-up segments are REALLY easy, which is why I never understood how this game had such a reputation for being so hard. The reason is because this game is full of INSANE run/drive/jump stages which require you to MEMORIZE the entire game. And I mean MEMORIZE, because there are many places where you have to jump, and not even be able to see where you can land (and in some places, you have to jump AROUND spikes which are also out of view). There's a crazy stage with snakes which comes out the wall, and you have to tag along with them (some of them move incredibly fast) by staying on their backs and climbing them when they go vertical - Super Mario World did a similar segment, but that one was easy in comparison. And then there are the vehicle stages, where you have to jump/swerve out of the way of barricades - some of which you have to position yourself for BEFORE they even appear on the screen (once again, memorizing the whole game if you don't want to die). This is the exact reason why Mega Man 8 was my least favorite in the series, because of the snowboarding sequences, but the Battletoads version is much more evil. Before this game, I ranked Bayou Billy as being the toughest game I beat in this challenge....but Billy just requires you to be really tough and skilled and is beatable with practice - Battletoads is hard just for the sake of being hard, which really killed the enjoyment of getting through it. What makes matters even worse is that you have a health meter, but most things kill you in one hit, so it's pretty pointless. Also, you only get THREE continues, and then its back to stage 1. This is absolute bullshit - if the game was designed in the way that you HAVE to learn the game through trial and error in order to advance, why would they punish you like that? Thank god for save states, because I don't know how in the fuck anyone would have enough lives left to learn the layout of the last couple stages. And of course, no passwords either, so you have to endure the entire game in one sitting! As an interesting bit of trivia, Battletoads held the Nintendo Power record for longest review, with 35 pages, and covered the entire game. Strangely, whoever wrote it was neglecting to mention the fact that playing this game is masochistic, and gave it a 3.9 out of 5 for challenge (NES Open Tournament Golf, in the same issue, got a 4.0./5!).

[YogSosoth]

Level 18 on Dragon Warrior, almost there...

My desire to level up is waning.....but I'm so close!

[fusoya]

DW1 goes to level 30, but 18 is plenty for beating the game. Especially if you level grinded on Goldmen, so you can afford the Silver Shield which doubles your defence.

sigh, so I guess I'm gonna have to beat Ghostbusters next.

[YogSosoth]

I'm at 20 now, but I think I'm going until I can fight my way through Charlock instead of running from everything. That was my old plan, might as well try something new this time

[YogSosoth]

Beat it at level 22. Man this game makes you level up a lot! Those were the good (bad) old days....

Next I'm going to finally finish Jackal after leaving that thing off somewhere. I was playing and playing it, but then suddenly I didn't want to play it anymore. It was weird, like eating too much cheese and suddenly you get sick of it while it's in your mouth and you don't want to chew it anymore.

Fusoya, where's this game log you mentioned that you had on GameFAQs?

[fusoya]

Err? I don't post to GameFAQs at all. or any other video game site other than SDMB.

You gonna do the other 3 DWs? I beat DW4 when it first came out (it seriously takes like 80 hours!) and I've been slowly been playing through the DS Remake, although the way they put accents on all of the characters makes it really annoying to follow along.

Love Jackal. I beat that one a couple years ago (should be a couple pages back), but I had lots of 2 player good times when I was a kid.

[YogSosoth]

I could have sworn you said a few years back and a few pages back that you had some kind of game log that others could follow. I'll have to reread some pages.

The other 3 DW's will have to be left for another time. I've beaten #2 years ago, tried it again last year, but lost interest right before I got to Rhone. I have the other 2 on emulator but never got around to it.

What emulator do you use? I use the classic NESticle, but certain games have never functioned right on that thing. Maniac Mansion always messes up, the graphics glitch horribly. And I can't even run Dr. Mario! It's been years since that had an update so I doubt they're coming out with a newer version anytime soon. And the "Print Screen, take picture" trick doesn't work and I want to take pics of my better accomplishments!

[YogSosoth]

Just beat Jackal and Contra. Time....uh, under 30 mins each I guess.

The thing I'm rediscovering about these old games is how much of their replay was completely based on trial and error and making things impossible for the first time player. Both of these games has enemies sometimes coming out of nowhere with almost no warning: the tanks in Jackal and those guys mounted behind the machine guns in Contra.

I think Jackal deserves the designation of being the earliest game where camera problems pose an issue. If the screen centered around your little Jeep, then many things would be seen and can be avoided way before you become within their weapons range. However, when you move any direction, the screen only starts scrolling when you're about 1/3 of the size of the screen near that direction, so moving any direction means death when something pops up and instantly starts to shoot at you.

[YogSosoth]

Beat Super C (or Contra 2) last night. I like this game a lot. It may not be as iconic as the original Contra, but I think it's more fun.

There's a variety in stages and bosses that was not in the original. The top-down stages actually felt like full stages instead of Contra's weird 3Dish stages with a generic boss at the end. Those always felt more like distractions than stages to me. There's also a level where you go down instead of up, presenting it's own challenges, and one where you ride an elevator while things fly at you from all angles. It was a nice change of pace from Contra's levels.

I think I can really see the influence that Super C had on the SNES Contra 3, which was spectacular. Even the last boss here appears near the end of Contra 3! And one boss looked like the fire-breathing thingy from the waterfall stage in Contra.

Though I really like how they mixed up the bosses, the story kind of confused me. If we destroyed the alien heart in Contra, who the heck are we fighting here? No explanation, no nothing. Just more aliens. And why do most of the foot soldiers look like people? They explode when you shoot them, so maybe they're androids. But that doesn't explain why a human helicopter is the first level's boss. They must be collaborators! :mad:

What game are you working on now fusoya? I have an old game my parents bought for me off the Home Shopping Network that was kind of fun and frustrating. It's called Phantom Fighter, check it out. It's not too bad. The intro actually scared me back when I was a kid :eek:

[YogSosoth]

Bad Dudes on the NES just. does. not. work.

I remember playing this game in the arcades. It was fun, the graphics were good for their time, the stages had enough of a variety that you don't get tired of it.

On the NES, it was horrid. Terrible collision detection, repetative backgrounds, and this one infuriating loop that played throughout the whole damn game except for bosses. You think they could have sprung for a second synthesizer track? The game had Hail to the Chief at the end so they must have paid for that, unless the copyright expired already.

Also, can someone tell me why I should get hurt when an enemy ninja runs in to me? Are their clothes poisonous? The old arcade games had a lot of these kind of artificial things to make your game tougher and spend more quarters. It sucked then and it sucks now.

[fusoya]

Kid Dracula, Konami, 1993, 1 hour, 15 minutes

When I first saw this game in Nintendo Power, I shrugged it off as some cutesy kids game at the end of the NES's lifespan. And it is (and this game has witches even sexier than the one in Dragon Warrior 3!), but it's also a semi-spinoff of the Castlevania series. You play as Kid Dracula, who is exactly what he sounds like - he shoots fireballs, and after you beat each stage, you get a new attack or ability (turning into a bat, walking on the ceiling, ice beam, etc). The first stage is straight out of the Castlevania series, but after that, it branches out into a more typical platform game (a stage in the sky, one in a pyramid, etc). After playing Battletoads, this was a piece of cake (some of the levels seemed like watered down Battletoads stuff), but it did have a couple of difficult segments - there's one level where you're on the roof of the train, and you have to duck to avoid getting decapitated by tunnels, which is easier said than done as enemies will smack you around, preventing you from staying down. Also, the very last stage has 3 bosses, and if you lose against any of them, you have to repeat the ENTIRE stage. My biggest complaint with this one are the bonus games after each stage. They slow the game to a halt, and the only thing you can get out of them are a couple of 1 ups, so it doesn't really matter WHICH game you select. This game certainly doesn't live up to the CV franchise, but it's worth a play through.

I could have sworn you said a few years back and a few pages back that you had some kind of game log that others could follow. I'll have to reread some pages.

What emulator do you use? I use the classic NESticle, but certain games have never functioned right on that thing. Maniac Mansion always messes up, the graphics glitch horribly. And I can't even run Dr. Mario! It's been years since that had an update so I doubt they're coming out with a newer version anytime soon. And the "Print Screen, take picture" trick doesn't work and I want to take pics of my better accomplishments!

Uh yes. You're reading it right here.

NESticle? Seriously? Are you stuck in the mid 90s? For PC Emulation, NEStopia is pretty much perfect. And then there's NESds (creative name, eh?) which is great if you have a DS and a R4.

[Crowbar of Irony +3]

Gyruss, developed by Konami, released 1988, completion time: 43 minutes
...snipped...


Was it this Gyruss (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JevTEb_hMYY)? Because the one I played had boss fights, and no kill quota, and have a bomb attack mapped to the B button which I didn't see you mention, and which I think is way more fun than the arcade version. You should try it even though it was way back on your schedule (the boss fights are worth the price of admission)

[fusoya]

The one I played was definitely the one in the video. All I really remember about the NES one was that you'd spin around the edges of the screen, and the enemies would spawn in the middle.

[YogSosoth]

Uh yes. You're reading it right here.


I meant the GameFAQs one. I reread the first post and it cleared things up. I misunderstood


NESticle? Seriously? Are you stuck in the mid 90s? For PC Emulation, NEStopia is pretty much perfect. And then there's NESds (creative name, eh?) which is great if you have a DS and a R4.


Says the guy who's playing NES games! :D

I'll look into NEStopia, maybe I can finally beat Maniac Mansion (I love Adventure games!)

Just beat 8 Eyes last night. I still disagree and think it's more Castlevania than Mega Man, despite the superficial similarities. The gameplay just in no way matches that of a fast-paced MM game. I like the game, but it seems a lot dated now. I think this is in line for a remake! :D

Seriously though, what is up with the story?? I bought the original sans manual, so I had no idea why I was fighting these guys or why I'm having tea with them afterwards.


So apparently, following a freaking nuclear war, humanity's fucked and reduced to mutants and fighting with swords. Ok, I can understand that I suppose, but nowhere is there even a motif of this apocalypse apparent in the design. Where is the blasted ruins, the dystopian civilizations, the radioactive mutants and 3 eyed fish? This thing, with it's castle stages, looks more like it's set in medieval times than a post-apocolyptic future. Since the US isn't one of the 7 countries you can select (and WTF with Africa being a whole country??) I can only assume we were wiped out.

Then I read that 8 Dukes of some king stole some powerful jewels created at the center of the 8 nukes and you have to get them back to prevent, I don't know, another nuclear war? It seems we're pretty fucked already with Germany and Africa being turned into an endless maze and some girl named Ruth controlling an entire country.

Another thing, and the FAQ writer at GameFAQs wondered about too, is why the hell am I having tea with these morons after I beat them for their jewel? WTF?

And the ending is puzzling, to say the least. Ignoring all of the congratulatory messages in the endings of other games, and tutorials telling you how to push buttons, I think this is the only game in the history of gaming where the ending has a character break the fourth wall and tell you that you're playing a game and thanks you for being such a kick-ass gamer. But I'd like to think that maybe, this gargoyle used to be a man, and his mutation has warped his sense of reality so that he only THINKS this is a game and that he sent you on this pointless quest.

Hey gargoyle, how about next time you give me a longer sword? Or a machine gun?



Also, beat Life Force this morning. I really like this game, much better than Gradius. I'm disappointed in the 2 Option limit though, but I guess they make up for it by having the Options slowly scroll off screen when you die, giving you a chance to pick them up. That was always the problem with these shooting games. If you die in bad place, you'd respawn with no weapons, and then you'd die again.

I also wonder what the creators of the game were trying to imply. After all, you're a guy trying to prevent a monster who's eaten 400 planets already from eating you home world and 2 of your enemies are an Egyptian mask and Easter Island Moai heads. So they really were built by aliens after all!

[fusoya]

I always thought the "having tea with the boss" thing was just the game trying to not take itself too seriously. I thought the skeleton waiter was cute.

Alright, here's the OTHER one you've all been waiting for:

Ghostbusters, Activision, 1988, 30 minutes

I rented this game when I was a kid, and had no clue what to do. I later kept hearing its reputation of being ridiculously hard. Well, I returned to it 20 years later, and I was able to figure it out a bit better. The goal of the game is to earn enough money to buy the equipment needed to complete the game. You do this by moving around a map, and when a building begins to blink red, you can drive to it and capture ghosts. The driving sequences remind me of spy hunter, but you had to avoid drunk drivers from crashing into you, and have to collect gas canisters to keep your fuel level up (if you run out, you have to PUSH the car to a gas station). Once you get to the building, you have to capture the ghosts by using your beam (don't cross the streams!) to guide the ghosts into the trap, which earns you money. Eventually, you can enter the final building, which is where this game gets its reputation - you have to climb 30 flights of stairs, and are being chased by ghosts which will knock you back to the 1st floor. What's really weird about this stage (and makes it nearly impossible if you don't use turbo) is that you use the A & B buttons to climb stairs - you press them once to climb 1 stair! Once you get to the top, there's an overhead battle with the final boss, followed by a hilarious ending:

CONGRATULATION! YOU JUST COMPLETED A GREAT GAME!

So it turns out this was a port of an older Atari game, which explains its simplicity. Also, one weird thing is how the music for the entire game is the Ghostbusters theme song, but rather than looping forever, it fades out, and then starts over. Its as if they copied the soundtrack note by note.

I watched The Angry Video Game Nerd review after beating this game, and he summed it up PERFECTLY.

[Pushkin]

Life Force, Konami, 1989, 30 minutes

I tried a few Konami shoot 'em ups, thinking that with my DS Acekart and nesDS I can try the NES games I never had a chance to pick up.

And really, I'm glad I didn't. I can only imagine the hot salty tears of dispair I would have shed over that thing. Possibly the loss of the NES through a window.

I salute you sir for demolishing that thing, I have up in disgust having advanced little in the same time it took for you to finish it completely.

[YogSosoth]

Thanks for the tip about NEStopia, I finally got around to finishing Ninja Gaiden 3! :D

I don't know why, but I love this game, probably moreso than the other 2 Ninja Gaidens. I know I know, that's sort of blasphemy to say, but I can't help it. It doesn't have the punishing difficulty of the first game, and I think I like the sword upgrade much more than the 2 shadows you get in NG2. I don't think the difficulty is entirely it's fault though. I've noticed that games seem to get easier as sequels come out mainly because new play mechanics are added. For example, in NG1, you couldn't climb up any surface and couldn't jump up onto the same platform you're climbing. That seems more like an accidental omission, a lack of imagining that such a play mechanic would be a good thing, than a purposeful decision to make things tougher.

The story's kind of...hokey. Suddenly it's sci-fi instead of fantasy? Well, whatever, it's still good. I think they really did well in trying to vary up the bosses and stages. Hanging from vines, jumping on moving platforms, retracting spikes, they make me feel more like a ninja! :cool:

Next, I'm finally going to attempt to beat Mike Tyson's Punch Out. I'll admit it, my reflexes suck. I've never been able to beat the game without massively cheating (and that means saving after every couple of punches). I'm going to beat this game the honest way (only saving at the beginning of each fight ;)). So far so good, but I'm getting stuck on Mr. Sandman. God damn it, this game is hard, how the hell did people manage to beat it 20 years ago??