Beat Every Game Boy Game - 2024 - 123/566

[koifish | 601]

On 5/14/2024 at 3:40 PM, Floating Platforms said:

At this point, I'm wondering if it'll break 100 hrs. I need to do some emulation practice to see if I can learn something.

For Hunchback, do we know if there's any ending at all for the fun fair? I can't find a manual scan, and it looks like most people just get to the funfair with the 5 tickets and then play for a few rounds until they decide to quit and assume it's endless.

Ninja Boy will be interesting. I know that Kung Fu Heroes has a terrible reputation, but maybe the GB version will be a lot more forgiving as a 1P experience?

Triple Dare scares me a bit, but can it really be that much worse than Bart vs the Juggernauts?  Spy vs Spy will be fun, I hope. My only experience is playing the C64 game against my brother.

Ninja Boy is fun, sort of. It's not very forgiving but it will reward practice. You just really need to get all of the powerups, especially extra lives, and try really hard not to die until at least the last world.

I still want to play through all of Ninja Boy 2, I think it is a much more interesting game. Haven't had time though, not to mention other games.

[Floating Platforms | 824]

9 hours ago, koifish said:

Ninja Boy is fun, sort of. It's not very forgiving but it will reward practice. You just really need to get all of the powerups, especially extra lives, and try really hard not to die until at least the last world.

I still want to play through all of Ninja Boy 2, I think it is a much more interesting game. Haven't had time though, not to mention other games.

Oh this is so good to hear, actually, since I know the reputation of Kung Fu Heroes.  I can handle a game that takes some practice and learning. Maybe I can keep the mindset to treat it like a puzzle to find the items, it'll be better.

I'm definitely interested in Ninja Boy 2 as well. Sadly, it will likely be a long time before that comes up.

[Floating Platforms | 824]

Spent some time tonight practicing World Bowling on stream. I think I found a reliable cheese for level 5 France that involved purposefully "missing" the control shot.  For the last level, England I'm not finding the same situation, although I found many combinations that get me very close. None have been consistent enough, so I may still have to rely heavily on luck on that last round. But, having a path through France will be huge.  I might still explore and practice on England some more, but maybe I'll just go for it next time I play.

I also haven't yet tackled Hunchback of Notre Dame. We'll see where the week takes me.

[MegaMan52 | 2,590]

Mega Man IV completed. It is the only original Game Boy Mega Man game I don't have in my collection, so I played it on Switch. No passwords or save states used. Played in one sitting.

Edited June 8 by MegaMan52

[Floating Platforms | 824]

Well, I put in a couple more nights of attempts into World Bowling. Still running into terrible luck most of the time, but I did have two good runs where I nearly got a perfect game. My new high score is 288 as I lost the perfect game on the second ball in the 10th frame (my mistake). I know from emulation that there's nothing special that happens if you do bowl 300, but it would be cool to have that recorded.

In two nights, I made it to France (level 5 of 6) only once and the technique was working just fine. I simply missed my timing too many times to get the 240 needed to move to England. I think I got 225 or something like that - basically one well-placed strike away from my first shot at the final stage.  I'm going to work through Hunchback on Monday and then spend the rest of the month bowling and hoping I get good luck before I hit 100 hours (sitting at 81.5 now)

[Tantalus | 500]

Mole Mania is done. I enjoyed my time with this one, for the most part - I didn't care for the boss rush at the end.

[Floating Platforms | 824]

Quick update on my end.  I did complete the Hunchback of Notre Dame fun fair aspect by getting all 5 tickets in one sitting and then I won 7 of the 19 attempted challenges with the rest of my time.

I've since also decided I should try to beat level 100 of Chiseler and that has turned into a horrible, horrible mistake. There are passwords every 5 levels, but they are insanely hard and incredibly frustrating. Did you know the balls are not actually circular? They have little grooves so the balls will bounce wherever the hell and sometimes go backwards or at wacky angles. It's so fun to watch the ball go down the unbreakable brick hallway just to watch it stop on a dime and reverse course before hitting those last blocks you need.  So, considering your paddle is also an imprecise piece of crap and all the levels require you to squeeze this rando-ball into very tight quarters multiple times, it's a hellish landscape where you try to stay alive for a couple minutes before the bounce and angle lets you get into that small space again.

I've spent like 6 hours just on levels 65-69 trying to get through them to reach the next password. Not sure if anyone here has tried to reach the end before. I think I have to see this to the end eventually, but it's going to be a lot of anger along the way.  I also heard that there might be a limited number of levels for Catch the Fool (possibly 100 there?), but there are no passwords, so I'm less inclined to try that unless I know there's some sort of ending in that mode.

I've decided to take a break from this game (which was a break from World Bowling) and go back to World Bowling. I didn't have any luck tonight getting past Canada, but I'll try a couple more days next week before the holiday.

[MegaMan52 | 2,590]

Mega Man V completed.

[Floating Platforms | 824]

I've not been able to play GB as much as I would have liked lately, but tonight I crossed the 100 hour mark on World Bowling. Normally that might be reason to celebrate (?) enough, however on my final try of the night, I was actually able to make it to England (final stage) for the first time.  I think I made a mistake on my approach and I might have been able to win if I would have tried a different strategy from the start. I ended with a 215 score on that level.  Still, this was incredibly encouraging and I think this is certainly possible

[Floating Platforms | 824]

Okay, I've now surpassed 125 hours. I reached England for only the second time tonight and I came soooo close to beating the game.  The best path to victory in the final level is to get 7 strikes in a row. That's the fewest strikes needed to get 250 points (assuming the rest are spares). I got strikes in the first 5 frames and then the strike zone I was using disappeared and stopped working. At that point, I would have needed 3 strikes in a row to reach the goal but I couldn't find a new spot at all and ended in the 230 range.

I want to put a little more practice into England through 2P mode to see if 5 in one spot is the limit and, if so, how I can locate the next area. Does the strike typically shift left or right? It can be done. I will do it. I have no clue how long it will ultimately take.

[koifish | 601]

Race Days/Dirty Racing is done.

I have confirmed my suspicions from before: the true ending is on Totally Dirty difficulty. If you beat the game on that difficulty, then you get treated to a small ending cutscene (which regrettably I could not record) and then this ending screen.

 

The last line says "STAY DIRTY!" in case that scratch obscures it.

It was a hard road, with a decent amount of luck involved, but I really enjoyed this game. It's exciting and tense racing action through almost the entire game. There are some frustrating points, but overall I enjoyed it a lot, and I think I'll play it more in the future.

Also, be sure to play it on a real game boy. Otherwise you won't correctly see the cool graphics trick in the title sequence. Also, I can't say why, but I think it plays better than on an emulator. At least, my skills were improved using a real system over the computer.

I don't know if there are any guides for this game out there, but I might endeavor to write one, as there is a lot of info to unpack and I'd rather not forget it or let it die with me. I can also give some tips and tricks if desired, but either way I expect those will end up in a guide if I do end up writing it.

Until next game, stay dirty!

Edited August 10 by koifish

[Brickman | 4,216]

Bart & the beanstalk down.

This game doesn’t appear to have the best rating online but I really liked it. It has a good challenge (you only have 4 lives) so you have to learn all the levels but once you do it’s a pretty easy game that can be beat in about 25mins.

It has a catchy song but if you don’t like it you might have to play with no volume because there is only the one song in the whole game 

There’s a few faults and it isn’t perfect but I think it just scrapes to a 7.

[Brickman | 4,216]

@Splain ALERT!!! (Channeling @OptOut )

Castlevania Legends down.

Really enjoyed this game and it had a great soundtrack.

It is a pretty easy Castlevania game because of the god mode you can activate, I don’t think this mode was necessary and probably should have been dropped. 

The levels were pretty fun and I enjoyed the different paths and trick rooms. 

Probably sits at around a 7.5/10 for me.

[sp1nz | 699]

Tetris Attack - VS. Com beaten on Super Hard:

[sp1nz | 699]

Kirby's Star Stacker - Round Clear Mode complete:

[sp1nz | 699]

Tetris Blast - Contest Mode Full Clear & Fight 2 Mode Easy Clear:

[sp1nz | 699]

Toy Story:

What a bad game 

[Splain | 2,725]

22 minutes ago, sp1nz said:

What a bad game 

I thought it was bad too, but @Floating Platforms thought it was middling.

 

[Floating Platforms | 824]

10 hours ago, Splain said:

I thought it was bad too, but @Floating Platforms thought it was middling.

Yeah, it was pretty inoffensive to me. Once I got used to the floaty jumps it was fine. The game was pretty short and offered a variety in game play and some decent graphics.

But, I've never played any other version, so if either of you started off with the SNES or Genesis version and then go to this, then I can understand the disappointment.  I'm also not sure how often you're seeking out the worse games in the library. After getting through over 1/3rd of the library and seeing some absolute trash, I'm more confident in my 5/10 rating for this.

If you want a truly bad game....I'm still stuck on World Bowling. About to hit 200 hours soon and I'm going to take a break again when that happens. That's a game that would have had a higher rating if it was fair, but the longer the RNG keeps me from beating it, the lower the score gets and will probably settle at a 2.

[sp1nz | 699]

All games on all platforms go head to head in my mind. Toy Story GB has:

• brain melting chiptunes, only title screen, story bit and level songs
• slow jumps
• bad visibility
• bad hit detection
• very slow animations, akin to input lag, if it wasn't input lag
• repetitive levels even if they're not same with each other, like the burger joint; trudge forward and stop for falling food or dodge soda cans and in the end crouch for paper planes, absolutely meh level design
• inside the claw machine machinations you have slowly ascending platforms that go back into walls and hard to see traps
• you often have grappling hook bits where you just hit a few grappling hook nodes in a straight line with nothing else happening, not that the ascending hook parts in second last level were much good either
• the t-rex run level is super formulaic and mostly repeats between same dodges and nothing happening for a long time
• annoying font in the story text bits

I could come up with more issues but naturally there are bad games that are even worse than a very bad game, but they can all be 1/10 for all I care, worst GB game I've played thus far and one of the worst I've played in my life for my enjoyment.

[Splain | 2,725]

2 hours ago, Floating Platforms said:

About to hit 200 hours soon

Dude you are a hero. I haven't even put that much time into Tears of the Kingdom.

[sp1nz | 699]

Aladdin - Difficult 1CC:

[sp1nz | 699]

DuckTales - Beaten on Normal:

[Floating Platforms | 824]

On 10/1/2024 at 12:55 PM, Splain said:

Dude you are a hero. I haven't even put that much time into Tears of the Kingdom.

Thanks, but not sure I agree with that since I still haven't beaten it. More like stubborn.  I am going to take a break and work on my CDi challenge for a week or two now.

This week I almost beat the game twice. Basically one strike away. Getting to the last level is difficult, but I was also in a massive string of bad luck and it was about 50-60 hours since I had even seen the final level. I got to France (stage 5 of 6) about 15 times or more but the tactic that works in practice half the time just wouldn't ever work. I had a couple of close runs, but the strike zone would always slip away.

Wednesday, I hit 200 hours and then in my very next run, I was able to manage a good run, made it through France again and back to England. There I started with 4 strikes. The easiest path to 250 points is 7 strikes in a row with the rest being spares, and if the chain gets broken, you need to add another strike to make up the difference.

So, for example 7 in a row = 8 divided in two clumps = 9 divided in three clumps. Non-consecutive strikes are worthless and the final ball of the 10th is too.

Anyway. Started with 4, missed on frame 5. That means I need another 4 in a row.  I hit on 6 and then 7 the CPU pulled some BS, because there's also this wonderful function in the game where even if you hit the proper spot for the strike, there is a chance that the game will simply not give you the strike. I know this happens from emulation experience in trying the same spot repeatedly. Also the spare that's left over will look different.  Strike on 8, 9, and I miss on 10. If frame 7 would have been the strike it was meant to be, I would have won.

Yesterday I got incredibly lucky in my road to France. I left an open frame in Canada and was able to get enough strikes to make up the difference. France saw all spares until frame 6 where I needed to get all strikes to pass and I magically did. Then in England, I got the first 2, missed on 3 due to the same CPU BS because 4 worked in the same spot. 5 missed. That meant I needed all strikes from frame 6 to the end while following the moving strike zone. I was able to do that until missing barely on the second ball of frame 10 that would have secured the victory. If I would have been better positioned there or if I would not have seen the BS frame 3, this would be done.

I'll come back to it later this month and try again. It can be done, but RNG needs to work in my favor a bit more. On the bright side, of the 5 times I've seen the final level - 3 of those have been really close.

Edited October 4 by Floating Platforms

[bronzeshield | 306]

22 hours ago, Floating Platforms said:

This week I almost beat the game twice. Basically one strike away. [...] I'll come back to it later this month and try again. It can be done, but RNG needs to work in my favor a bit more. On the bright side, of the 5 times I've seen the final level - 3 of those have been really close.

This is incredible --and I think it's getting to the point where someone needs to inspect the code and see what's happening! You've paid your dues so thoroughly that some heroic programmer will surely be moved by this injustice and remedy it.

The world needs to know if the game is intentionally denying you victory -- changing the rules when you get close to a win, or simply blocking you outright and making victory conditional solely on the outcome of an RNG. (If so, the developers deserve to eat spoiled sashimi for a month.)