the_wizard_666

Bedtime progress report: No new advances on Ultimate Air Combat. I use action games to break up the monotony of an RPG grind...however I didn't feel the need to stop conquering Europe today, so I simply didn't play it. I did, however, make MASSIVE progress toward that goal. I have now eliminated Austria, leaving only Turkey, Russia and England on the map. The Russians tried to take one of the cities I took from Austria, albeit not with the massive numbers advantage they attempted in Scandinavia. You'd think those Scandinavian incursions would've caused them to rethink an invasion, but they came at me anyway. This time they only had a 2:1 numbers advantage though, rather than a 4:1 advantage, so I actually had an easier time defensively than those attacks. Anyway, after my successful defence, they sued for peace with a hefty donation to my war chest, and then asked to buy food on top of it! I opted to placate them for the time being though, as it'll give me a chance to shore up my northern forces. And since it coincides with the conclusion of my Turkish alliance, I'll be able to take the south before working my way through Russia. And once they go down, it's just a matter of slapping the Brits while they starve. Needless to say, I'll probably have it done in the next day or two, which will remove one of the tougher Koei games from the list. Not sure where I'll go from there either...I'll have to look through the list to see what piques my interest.

Well, after taking Sweden out, I focused my efforts on retaking Germany. Early on I lost Berlin to Prussia, but took Amsterdam and retook Frankfurt and Munich. Along the way though, Prussia decided to invade Lyon and overran my defenders...but not for long. I managed to retake Lyon on the following turn, and have evicted Prussia from Germany. My next goals will be to wipe out Denmark (a low priority, gonna just let my underlings handle that when the treaty expires), and to take Iberia. Although hostilities with Spain and Portugal don't exist yet, I still have sea control in the Mediterranean, allowing me to raid Gibraltar and take it from the English before declaring war on the other two nations...ideally I'll take them out one at a time and keep my forces up, but there's never any guarantees with this game in my experience. But after my Germanic conquests, I got recalled back to Paris to be crowned Emperor of France. So now I'm officially in the final scenario. May not be long now, just gotta put the time in. EDIT: Further update - Lost Berlin to Austria after they declared war on me, but they sacrificed troops in a couple failed incursions as well as losing Vienna, so they sued for peace in the next diplomacy phase, which allowed me to focus on Iberia. While I can't do anything to Portugal just yet (alliance), I have managed to wipe Spain off the map, and I took Gibraltar from the English, eliminating their continental presence. Additionally, I took Denmark's last city up north. I now have enough ports to give me enough ships to take worldwide naval dominance, it's just a matter of building ships. So now I'll focus on taking out Portugal as soon as the alliance expires, leaving Austria, Turkey, Russia and England. At the moment, my biggest threat after that is Austria, however I have a friendship pact with them, so I may maintain that as long as I can and take out the Turks and Russians. England is my last target though, as once they have no continental allies, it's easy to starve them out. None of my remaining opponents can do much to me individually, but I'll have to strategically maintain alliances in order to keep from getting slammed on all fronts. Shouldn't be too long though.

Progress Report: L'Empereur - Kind of a stand-still. I took Copenhagen from Denmark, then Russia took it from me, and then tried to invade Lubeck right after...luckily I had more than enough to withstand the assault, and have chased the Russians away from Scandinavia once again, despite their overwhelming numbers, and they once again sued for peace. However, I'm thinking that maybe my northern position is untenable, so while I've got reasonably secure borders up there, I may abandon it to Sweden and focus on taking Germany from Prussia, as my road to Paris is currently cut off. The alliance with Spain and Portugal is holding firm however, so my southern flank should be secure for a bit. But yeah, I have to figure out exactly how to get back to France at this point, since I've got limited resources where I'm at and my troop count simply won't stand for a long war effort without reinforcements from France. Ultimate Air Combat - I've now knocked off stage 4 in it's entirety, making 16/36 levels complete. Man the dogfights are a pain in the arse, and a few of the bombing runs are starting to get hard, but so far only one really gave me issues (the one where you have to knock out like 20 radio towers). Still, definitely another that I'd list as a hidden gem, alongside Air Fortress. While it's not exactly a great game, it's pretty good, and not exactly one people talk about often, so it qualifies IMO. I may do some more gaming tonight, but it's been a long day and there's other things in my queue right now, so I'm not gonna guarantee that. Still, I'm making solid progress in UAC, and should be able to do the same in L'Empereur shortly.

Maybe in terms of overall completions, but what about point-percentage? I feel like more 8+ games are getting beaten this month than there usually would be...

Nightly progress report: L'Empereur: Achieved my promotion to First Consul in 1599, and the first thing I did was strike alliances all around so I can build my forces. Took Lubeck from Denmark, but lost Frankfurt to Prussia. Both nations sued for peace shortly after. A couple months after taking Lubeck however, I faced a MASSIVE Russian incursion when they sent nearly 1400 troops against my 400. Based on the map though, I decided to gut it out. What I lacked in numbers I made up for in training, as they could barely hurt my infantry, and I kept my guns reasonably protected to tear them apart. I also got some reinforcements from Denmark...while not enough to really help much (they sent around 150 troops spread across three generals), they did manage to eliminate the Russian artillery before they could get close to my fortifications. After that battle, Russia quickly sued for peace, and will likely take some time to recover. In the meantime, I think I'll build my forces and try and inflict some damage to Prussia. Ultimate Air Combat: I've managed to take down the first three levels (12 stages total), so I'm 1/3 of the way through. The difficulty is definitely getting higher, but I'm confident. I'm even starting to get the hang of flying in the dogfights, which has been my bane since the get-go. Most of the action portions I'm getting after one or two attempts though...it would seem I just have to get to them to progress

Gotta love uncorrected Engrish Progress on Ultimate Air Combat is slugging along extremely slowly, as I suck ass at the dogfights, but once they're done I seem to do decently enough. But since that's my "action" game for the time being, I needed another grind fest, and what better than one of the last Koei games I need, and one of my "so close yet so far" albatrosses. As such, I've started working on L'Empereur. I've managed to get promoted to First Consul already, and have control of Italy and parts of Austria. I'm strategically going to take out Bavaria (they only have one weak province left...might as well get it before someone else does) while maintaining alliances with Prussia and Austria if possible. Once Bavaria is out, I think I may gun for either Turkey or Iberia. It's a tougher map than most Koei games due to the possible naval assaults...it's a LOT harder to protect your rear when an otherwise protected city happens to be on the coast. Anyway, last time I played a full game, I was about to invade Moscow with only England left afterward, and them my save corrupted and forced a restart. Needless to say, I shelved it after that...along with my ambition to finish off the Koei library (after that, all that's left is Nobunaga II). So yeah, progress has been relatively quick, and I'm hoping to have it done soonish, but I also know it may take a bit of time to get through it, what with only being able to recruit troops once a year. Kinda puts a damper on my ability to get things moving along

What I would say is that by the criteria at the time, it was done, so we should leave it as such this year, but I'd change the Pastebin file so that next year the game is done properly. It's not like it's one of the games that would be sitting on the list in December or anything, so I wouldn't stress too much now. I just thought I'd mention it so it could be fixed in the future.

The Bard's Tale is done. Honestly, while I like the game, I don't really like this version of it. It's just way oversimplified from the PC version. But I'm glad to have it done. And now my month is up to 21 first time completions...I've had years that didn't have close to that many, so I gotta admit I'm happy about this development

Wow, the difficulty spike on Ultimate Air Combat just got insane...stage 1 was cake, stage 2 is bloody hard as balls!

Just dabbled on F-117A Stealth Fighter, but even though it's similar in design to F-15 Strike Eagle, I just can't seem to find the fun. The guns are more effective in it, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to drop a bloody bomb. Plus having to switch between the radar and the map (as opposed to both being visible in F-15 Strike Eagle) is a needless pain in the arse. So instead of bothering, I ditched it in favour of trying out Ultimate Air Combat...and damn, I'm glad I did! The dogfighting is a bit of a pain, but the bombing runs more than make up for it! Only knocked off 1-1 so far (so one stage out of 36), but I'm probably gonna dabble on that in between Bard's Tale runs. Speaking of which, I've gained a few more levels and got some better armour, but I'm still not confident enough to beat it just yet. I haven't even got the top level spells yet, so I'm likely nowhere near strong enough anyway. EDIT: Just did the other three missions of level of Ultimate Air Combat. After a few more levels, I have to say it seems like another pleasant surprise. Funny how I'm enjoying games I never thought I'd even attempt, but here we are.

AD&D Dragonstrike is done. First time completion #20 of the year, and by far the hardest of the D&D games. Level 13 was a beast, and took the bulk of my attempts, but once it was done the final level was a joke. And if you can get to Tiamat with full health, your shots cause so many projectiles to be on the screen that Tiamat doesn't shoot...so keep firing constantly and stick and move and she'll go down eventually. Honestly, the fight seemed a bit anti-climactic in that regard, but after the beast that was level 13, and the boss fight against the Doom Dragon, I think that easing of the final battle was earned. Anyway, that marks the final AD&D game I needed for my personal list, and US completion #230 overall.

Also, with @Gaia Gensouki adding two 10 point games as well, that's three 10ers off the list today. Not sure if there's a precedent for that or not, but that's a pretty good day in my books!

Baghdad has been bombed to hell, and F-15 Strike Eagle is done. Kinda wish there was some sort of ending, but I was pleasantly surprised by the game in all honesty. I was expecting a slog, and it actually wasn't terrible. I may even revisit it in the future to knock off the remaining medals that I hadn't achieved. But for now, that's #19 for my personal list this year, and one I never thought I'd even play, nevermind finish.

Well that was weird...I just got the Distinguished Flying Cross on F-15 Strike Eagle, which comes from scoring 5 million on the Basra mission. Except that I wasn't playing the Basra mission, I was playing the Kuwait one...maybe if I play the Basra one I'll get the Silver Cross that I'm missing? I still have around 7 million or so to unlock Baghdad anyway, which is about 2-3 sorties, so I suppose I'll have to try it out... Anyway, Bard's Tale is coming along swimmingly. I think I got through to Magnar's Castle a bit early though...I'm getting enough XP to level up in 1-2 battles...which is good because holy hell do they take a LOT of punishment at that point. I'm probably gonna grind a bit on level 1, although I apparently can't get the gear I want until I get to level 2, so maybe I'll have to do a bit of exploring as well in order to get myself geared up. As a tertiary note, I fired up AD&D Dragonstrike on a lark to see whether I could get through it, as it's the last AD&D game I need to beat on the NES. Turns out that with the passwords it's entirely doable, although it's still pretty tough. I've managed to get myself to level 9 out of 14 over the last couple days. There's definitely more to it than the standard shooter, which I really dig. Anyway, I'm hoping to have one of those three done tonight. Probably F-15 because I'm closest to closing that one out

So doing the math on F-15 Strike Eagle, the Silver Star is technically achievable on Pilot, but you have to hit EVERY target for 2.5 million points, plus an additional 75 planes. Having only managed to kill at most 30 planes during the regular course of a mission, I simply don't think getting all the medals is feasible without going to a higher difficulty (targets are worth more points on higher difficulties) Thankfully it's also not necessary to beat the game, so I won't worry too much about it. But for the day I go back and attempt to get the rest of the medals, or for anyone in the future who wants to try for it, it'd be good to know exactly what is needed to acquire them.

It's all good man, I have a soft queue of around 30 games right now, just picking and choosing from what's left on the list when I finish one of my games. I may not have actually hit that one for months anyway

Damn, that was gonna be on my queue. Ah well, maybe next year

So my quest to get the medals in F-15 Strike Eagle is derailed. I have already knocked off the first three, however the Silver Star is pretty much not possible on Pilot difficulty, as it requires 4 million points on the Karbala mission, and even blowing up every target I have a hard time hitting the 3 million mark. It may simply not be possible to score enough unless you're on a higher difficulty level, which I don't have the inclination to get good enough to perform well on. After trying it and proceeding to crash into the ground while trying to turn my plane, I decided I may forgo the medals and just knock off Baghdad. I'll still try to hit the required scores, but I'm not gonna feel bad if I can't quite do it.

So I was just looking on the requirements list, and saw Super Off Road has a lesser requirement than it should... IVAN IRONMAN STEWART'S SUPER OFF-ROAD (Tradewest) -For years this was one of those games that I thought went on forever. I don't even remember how many races I went through to mark this game as "beaten" back when I beat it around 1990. It always bugged me that I wasn't sure exactly, so for some reason I decided to get back into it, figuring it would eventually end around the magic number of 255 races. However, I was surprised when I finished Race 99 and instead of going to the next race after showing my racer on the stand with the trophy as usual, it went to a high scorer's screen called "The Ironman Club." Leave it at this screen for a bit and it returns you to the number of players selection screen. So after all these years, it turns out we have a definitive answer to a game that I always thought repeated infinitely. 99 races in all! There's actually a definitive ending, so using a "loop point" rule doesn't work for it.

I know right! It's because there's a number of people here that can beat it relatively easily. I know Bea is one of them, and Dr. Morbis can 1cc it (I've seen him do it). There's a number of people that both love the game and have mastered it, which is why it's usually beaten pretty early. It just seems none of those players are active this year.

I'm honestly surprised that @nerdynebraskan hasn't knocked the Sesame Street games off yet Overlord is incredibly easy too...it might take a few attempts to figure out the patterns, but you really just gotta go straight to the enemy base and take it out right at the start...forget about playing the game properly and just go for broke. Rampage is also super easy since it has unlimited continues and starts right when you die, but it's definitely a slog to get through 128 stages. And Alfred Chicken has to be one of my personal hidden gems - while not a great game, it's definitely in the "very good" category.

I do too actually. Conan, X-Men, pretty much every Color Dreams game... Anyway, pre-bedtime progress report. I have now done four of the five dungeons in Bard's Tale, with only the final one left, however I still need to do some level grinding to really stand a chance there. Or at least get some better gear...still running with some gear I purchased at the start, so yeah, still need to get some stuff to have a chance. But I should have it done by the end of January. As for my side game of F-15 Strike Eagle, I gotta say I'm enjoying it. I've now got two medals and am just shy of unlocking the fifth stage. And now that I've discovered how to refuel/resupply during a mission, the potential is nigh on endless for actually completing it with all the medals. Now, I'm not sure if I can do the bonus stages, as I haven't played on the highest difficulty, but I've got conflicting ideas of whether or not they'll unlock. According to the FAQ, they unlock once you get the seven medals on Ace difficulty, but the maps on GameFAQs show score requirements to unlock them. I know they're not necessary for the purpose of our list, but I'm curious, as I'll run through each of them as well if they unlock at the lower difficulty levels. If not, I'm not gonna sweat it since I doubt I'll wanna get good enough to be an Ace rank player. But I do feel that the game will probably be crossed off by the end of January as well.

Progressing nicely in The Bard's Tale, and since Lunar Pool is likely not gonna be beaten any time soon, I decided to try something a little different and fired up F-15 Strike Eagle. Kinda glad I did too, as it's way better than I was expecting. I'm not a big flight simulator guy, but this one isn't terrible. I've flown three missions in total, and have received one medal so far. Only just unlocked the third mission though, so it's not like it's going down any time soon, and I do wanna get the Medal of Honor for my personal list, but getting to (and finishing) the final level is probably gonna take a lot less effort on my part

I never really understood that rule TBH. It certainly wasn't a factor in the early days. I could see if this was a competitive scenario, but it's very much not.

If I wasn't playing via emulator I would totally do a bunch myself. Alas, my collection is in another province