Single player achievements just aren’t the same since cheat codes and save games became the norm. I remember finishing a game for the NES called Rygar which had no extra lives and no resume codes and no cheat codes. You had to play for about 4 hours straight without dying to finish the game (which I did after a ludicrous number of hours trying).
That’s not my #1 though, that would have to be beating Mike Tyson in the original Punchout for NES. I must have tried a hundred times before lasting even 30 seconds with him. When I finally knocked him out (a few more hundred tries after that), my heart was racing like I had just run a marathon. Nothing since has even come close to that, and I’ve played a shit-ton of video games since then.
On a more modern note, I got a 278 in Wii Bowling, 1 strike from perfect, while playing with 3 other players!
I played the first couple levels of WIng COmmander a few times, but never got into it. Then, one night a friend’s birthday party, we just sat down and started playing. I played and played and played straight through to dawn. I beat it with no deaths or restarts and no lost missions.
Speaking of Punch-Out, I loved the arcade versions. I could get up to the third Bald Bull on the original, beating big bad Mr. Sandman twice (rumor has it there was a local guy who could get to the fifth Bald Bull, but I never saw it). And I never saw anyone locally other than myself beat the Super Macho Man in Super Punch-Out. That was always a fun fight, ducking under those haymakers he’d throw.
Hm. I’m really just not that good at most video games, though, so there’s not a lot I can add here. I have finished Psychonauts multiple times, though some people here seem to think the last level is impossible; done it at least twice with 100%, too, for the bonus movie.
Someone mentioned Hitman earlier; I do remember finishing the Kirov Park mission in Hitman 2: Silent Assassin with what I consider absolute perfection: one bullet fired, two targets killed. Found the perfect spot, waited for them to stand next to each other, and headshot the both of 'em.
Oh, and I beat NES Punch-Out by beating Mike Tyson (with no codes to get there) in the second round (I think it was in 2:18). IIRC, I could also knock him down in the first round in between his flash uppercuts.
If it was with Klackons, that would be an achievement. Hobbits are probably the best race in the game, though, and the AI is so broken that playing on Impossible is about the only way to have a challenge.
I suck. I played multiplayer games on the PC for years: Quake, BF1942 and its mods, Counter-Strike, DoD, Unreal Tournament—and despite endless hours of play, I’m lucky not to come in dead last in any match. My kill ratio is pathetic. I get stealth-killed by a dozen trash-talking 10-year-olds before I even figure out where the hell I am on a map. Every game is an exercise in humiliation. It’s even worse on console games—my thumbs are congenitally incapable of maneuvering the Xbox controls with any dexterity. At least I can aim using a mouse; on the Xbox I’m just pirouetting around and firing wildly until some preteen girl (already a dead-shot marksman at age 11) performs a coup de grace with a single merciful bullet fired from clear across the map into my bony forehead.
I still enjoy playing, though. (And if we ever have a thread devoted to musical-talent braggadocio, I’ll offer a similar confession about my guitar playing…)
Well, it’s probably been done by many others (and eclipsed in skill, technique, and bravado by many more), but I’ve managed to destroy a few enemy tanks with the dynamite/demolition charges in bf1942.
Specifically, by running up behind the tank (or to the side—some of them could be kind of hard to catch up to, when they were moving), throwing the charge(s) on the rear deck—or occasionally, merely climbing up and dropping them—and then running off, hitting the dirt (optional), and hitting the detonator before the charges fell off, or I was noticed and killed.
Oddly enough, I don’t think I was ever actually playing a Russian whenever I tried this.
Pithy Moniker just reminded me, I beat Bionic Commando, multiple times, without dying. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I found out people regard BC as being hard. Full disclosure, I played that game A LOT, and I can recall being frustrated when I first started playing it.
I did that as well on the Atari 5200 edition of it.
I also found it fun to cordon off a large portion of the screen as free space (say 80% or so) by building boxes almost, but not quite to the edge so that you don’t fill in the part you cordoned off. I would then draw single line pictures in the area. The space between the boxes I completed and the edge of the screen was two small for the QIX to get into, so they could zap my really long line. When I got board, I’d finally finish them off.
Well, I like video games a lot, but I have to admit that I’m just not very good at them. One game in which I’m close to unbeatable, though, is super puzzle fighter turbo II. It’s a silly little puzzle game, kinda like competitive tetris, that you can download for ps3 or xbox360.
I can also run through half life 2 and the episodes on hard no sweat, but can’t play counter strike or team fortress at all.
Years ago, before P2P, someone here had set up a Counterstrike server for SDMB people to play on (SenorBeef, Jayrot, ?). It was great fun and had good participation for a while. Don’t remember what happened to it. Maybe a reunion is in order…
Robotron: 2084. Scored 25,000,000 points in one six-hour session (factory settings). Finally lost the game when I “rolled over” my extra men and died before I could gain another one.
Also once beat Civ 2 on Prince in a OCC (One City Challenge) game. There are people who can beat it on Diety (or whatever the top level is), but I’m not one of them.
(For those of you who don’t know, a “One City Challenge” game is just that - you can only have 1 city, your first, and the only way to win the game is by being the first to Alpha Centauri).
Ugh. After reading this thread, my brags sound like small beer indeed, especially as many of them were from obscure sports sims:
–On one of the Championship Manager (soccer management) games, I won the Champions League in my second season with Aberdeen FC. (That was the fastest possible CL win, because you had to win your league in season one to qualify in season two.)
–Had a 5-0 Ashes series win in International Cricket Manager 2000. As England. I also once batted through an entire Test match in IC3, playing as Sri Lanka (scored something like 1150/7).
–I’ve managed 100% on a song in Expert on Rock Band, which is something for a rhythm-challenged middle-aged white guy such as myself.
I can’t remember a lot of the games I’ve played–the result of playing mostly as an insomnia cure. No wonder I seem to do better on sleep-inducing sports sims.
