the_wizard_666

Progress report: Bard's Tale is coming along nicely. I've now finished the Catacombs, and have entered the Castle area. The enemies are a LOT stronger though, so I may run back to the Catacombs to level grind. Apparently the item you need to enter the Castle is worth over 17K gold, and the boss you fight can be farmed if you sell it, so I may do that...got me a whopping 10K XP for killing him (used a Gold Ring on him during the fight to double it). Between that and the 27-Zombie fights, there's a good amount of XP to be had there. But that's all there is, as I've more or less got either the best stuff from there, or a bit better out of the Castle, so it'd be strictly XP grinding. For my secondary game, I did some save-state practice on Lunar Pool. There's a few tricky tables, but there's enough easy ones to make a few extra lives on the way, so hopefully a 1 credit run to get the ending is feasible with some practice. Not gonna hold my breath though. It's a fun game, but definitely one of the harder ones of it's kind.

Yeah, that was the reference used when I started the thread, and where a bunch of the Pastebin info came from. While a lot of his requirements are well beyond the scope of the average gamer, it also generally tells where the game loops, which makes finding the best info for our purposes a lot easier. If you're interested in checking the entire guide out, it's over on GameFAQs: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/nes/916386-nes/faqs/26831

Per AdamL's endings guide: However, if you managed to score over 1,000,000 points in your previous game, instead of going back to the title screen again it will show game credits in the score boxes! It shows the following: DIRECTOR, EXEC PRODUCER, PRODUCER, GAME DESIGNERS, GRAPHICS, MUSIC COMPOSERS, PROGRAM- MERS, TOOLS (not sure if I'd want this credit), DEBUGGERS and a few SPECIAL THANKS credits. It will then say THANK YOU in the top score box and finally return to the title screen. I guess it's cool that they put this in there for scoring over a million points, but wouldn't you rather see this at the end of your high point scoring game instead of hidden in the opening screens of the game? Basically, to see the credits you have to wait until after the high score screen on the title page. So you got the requirement but didn't notice/know about the way to view the credits.

Also, @scaryice seems to have updated the thread while I was posting my last clear, as it's above the line for when he updated the thread but is not represented in the update. Just mentioning it so it doesn't get overlooked entirely.

I don't mean "crazy difficult" as in insanely hard. I mean it like I didn't beat the game the first time I ever played it. The other four were Urban Champion, Maxi 15 (the only unique game is "Stakk'M, which is what I counted), Robodemons and Silent Assault. Urban Champion I had played back in the day, but the rest were completely blind when I fired them up.

Dragon Power is completed. Surprisingly not as tough as I remembered it being, but it IS pretty damn frustrating nonetheless due to the wonky ass hit detection. Another childhood albatross is in the bag.

Today's progress: Obviously I finished my "mental break" game, so I started up the next one - Dragon Power. I'm on Chapter 3, although I know the game gets a LOT harder the further in you go. As for Bard's Tale, I've completed the sewers, and made it up to level 8, and have done a couple dives into the Catacombs. I haven't got much in the way of new gear though...aside from finding a Mithril Shield and a Thieves' Dagger (which I can't use due to not having a rogue in my party), I haven't really got much. I did get a bunch of Gold Rings though, so I was able to level up a bit by doing the 27-zombie fights in the Catacombs and getting double XP from the fights. Fun side note, it turns out this month has been my most prolific single month for first time completions, currently at 17. My previous record was 13 and was set all the way back in January of 2013...oddly enough, that spurt happened in the first 11 days of the month, after which there was a two month gap until my next new completion. That month also happened to have my best single day, which happened to be New Year's Day, when I got a whopping five new completions. I doubt I'll be able to replicate that anytime soon, as none of the games were crazy difficult aside from Mighty Final Fight, which I had been working on for a couple weeks up until that point and was already on the cusp of beating it when I fired it up that day. I'm also on pace to obliterate my best year ever, which was 2012 with 50 new additions. This thread has literally reinvigorated me with regard to new completions!

I am now apparently America's No. 1 Hustler. Break Time is now in the bag. Kinda weird how the ending tells you that the world championship still awaits, but isn't in the game (to my knowledge anyway). All told, it's a decent pool game, but given the choice, Championship Pool is still the way to go IMO.

Progress report: Bard's Tale is coming along. Got a few more levels, and am almost fully equipped with the best gear available at the start. I've also made a couple excursions into the sewer. I forgot how slow the menu speed is though...and there's seemingly no way to speed it up. It makes an otherwise awesome game a bit of a drag. But I'll manage. So far so good. And since I've been keeping with a theme of working on two games at a time (so as to take a mental break from the level grinding), I went through the list to see what else there was...and since I am feeling a bit of a pool kick after Championship Pool, I decided to try out Break Time. It's...okay. I mean, it's visually better than CP, but it plays slower. Although you have a bit more ball control (you can use English on the cue ball, and even do jump shots), the overall physics feel weird. On the plus side, there's a lot less games to play through, as each opponent is a best of three and there's only five opponents in total, and there's passwords in between opponents to make it a bit less of a slog if you lose a round. So it's an interesting game, but it looks better than it plays.

Well, it took me all bloody day, but I won the 9-ball tournament in Championship Pool. Maybe I'll do the 8-ball tournament at some point in the future...surprisingly it's a very well done game. Wasn't expecting much from Mindscape, but here we are It definitely could've used a password system or something though...losing at any point causes a restart (although the game has a way to skip the qualifiers that it tells you about once you get through that half of the tournament). Still, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Yeah, that's kinda been my goal as well. I wasn't even gonna play a game under 5 points aside from the bonus list, but Championship Bowling had me intrigued as to why it was one of the last single point games left. I'm still wondering too, since I thought it was pretty damn fun.

On a side note, I did my best @scaryice impression and crunched some numbers, just for the shits and giggles of it. If anyone's curious, I calculated the points per game average for everyone with five or more completions. Here's the results (rounded to the nearest hundredth): Strikezone1 - 8.5 NESfiend - 6.86 the_wizard_666 - 6.19 Gaia Gensouki - 5.34 PII - 4.89 guitarzombie - 4.65 Khromak - 4.40 Red - 4.32 mbd39 - 4.00 Bearcat-Doug - 3.59 Philosoraptor - 3.47 scaryice - 3.23 nerdynebraskan - 2.29 Foochie776 - 1.67 DefaultGen - 1.60 Jaden - 1.60 Gotta say, Strikezone1 impressed, despite only having 6 completions...an 8.5 average is goddamn impressive!

So another game I've gone far in and never finished is next in my queue. After fencing in Pirates gave my thumbs hell, I decided to work on another RPG. This time around, I'm gonna knock off The Bard's Tale. Logged a wee bit of time so far, levelling up to level three and trying to grind out some gold reserves to properly equip my party...or at the very least the front line. It's actually pretty forgiving as far as this style of game goes, at least so far, as levelling up automatically refills your health and magic. In the early phases of the game, that's a HUGE boon. I'm guessing later on it don't matter much anymore, but for now it's a big deal. Especially since you can get attacked at any point while walking around town. Even the three steps between the place you level up at and the Adventurer's Guild (where you go to save the game). I'm gonna have to read the manual a bit though...been a while since I last played it, and I've forgotten where to go to heal up and recover magic points, and I'm sure that's gonna come up at some point

Okay, so I wasn't planning to end my game just yet, so I figured I'd see how I was progressing. After only two expeditions on Journeyman, I have made the top rank, 100/100 and King's Advisor. Pirates is now officially D-O-N-E DONE! Funny thing is, although I have the best bride, I don't think she was really necessary. I also only rescued two family members, so that isn't really an issue either. I think the real difference maker is ranking up in multiple nations. I finished as an English Duke, a French Count, and a Dutch Captain. The first scenario makes this easy to do as the nations more or less are always at war with Spain, making it easy to rank up with all of them at once. This would also make it more difficult later on, but still somewhat possible. It's funny though, on my first run I saved all my family members but only made it to the rank of Sugar Planter. I exceeded that on my first voyage of the second run just by ranking up, so yeah, that's the key.

16 floors. The 10th floor is the last one with a temple though. That's a solid party. You absolutely need at least one mage to beat the game (the 16th floor requires the Passwall spell multiple times). I'd also suggest if possible to leave your NES on instead of using the password system. Obviously take down the password from time to time, but with five passwords and having to keep the character's names with them, there's a LOT of room for errors. I had many games end because I jotted down the password incorrectly and couldn't figure out where the error was. When I finally did beat it, it was because I left the system on for a couple days while I played so I wouldn't have to fart around with the passwords. Also, you can't rely on the levels to chart your progress. At one point you need to backtrack to floor 1 to get an item (I believe that point is on floor 12, but I could be mistaken). And your automap disappears once you've progressed two floors away, so make sure you're either making maps or have them handy online. Best of luck to you man...honestly, the game itself is pretty cliche, but getting through it was one of my most rewarding completions - not because of the story, or even the difficulty, but because I never have to fuck around with the damn passwords again

I was just thinking of a few things. #1 - I think we have too many genres. Only having four games in a genre just doesn't feel like enough. I know one person may have an issue with this, but I think Racing should be reincorporated into Sports. I feel like racing as a genre sees probably the least interest of all of them, so it's hard to justify the separation. Additionally, Platformer could be phased into Action, and Arcade could also be split between Action and Shooter, depending which is more accurate to the gameplay. Hell, even Beat-Em-Up could be phased into Action when it comes down to it. That would leave us with four genres - Action, Puzzle, Shooter, and Sports. That would allow for more games in each genre to be played in the year overall, and also allow for a lot more variation between games within the genres. While I like the inclusion of Famicom games, I would like to see a bit less of the obscure stuff in that library. The idea is to facilitate competition, and familiar games would probably be better to have than a ton of obscure games. When given the choice between, say, Dig Dug or Challenger, Dig Dug would win on familiarity. Mappy or Circus Charlie would be far more likely to be played than some random Japanese title that nobody can properly say, nevermind understand blindly. By all means, include a couple of those obscurities, but if you want to encourage participation in the Famicom titles, familiarity will definitely help bring people in. Another thing I've mentioned before as well is to keep the rules simple. One life runs are okay if there's a fair way to take a photo...Holy Diver kinda failed because of that - using the magic as a tie breaker only worked if you were fast enough to snap a picture before you died. Hardcore rulesets can be fun, but they're also harder to get people interested. Again, don't get rid of them per se, but maybe save them for the playoffs. Speaking of playoffs, I really enjoyed the Sports competition we had this year, and I think perhaps a similar idea may work for the first round. A benefit to only having four genres as I outlined above would mean you could pick four games - one from each genre - that could be used to determine the rankings of the top 16 players. That ensures the top performers across all genres advance. Using the scores from that round, the players are reseeded according to the results, with the top 8 going to the head-to-head round, with the top four getting to select their games as per previous years. This could also allow for the possibility of ties for 16th overall - you simply add the extra players if necessary, and whittle it down to 8. One more thing that ties into the reduced number of genres - with only four genres, we can have 8 games per genre instead of four, which would allow for more variation between picks, and more variety within genres. The Action champion won't just have to do well at Contra, he'd also have to be a Mario whiz and a Double Dragon pro, for example. The Sports champ would have to be able to play Bases Loaded as well as he can play Tecmo Bowl and Rad Racer. Also, let's make the genre leaderboards matter a bit more. Maybe give bonus leaderboard points to the top three genre performers? Enough to matter, but not enough to completely break it - maybe 10 points to the winner, 7 to second and 5 to third, for each genre. Potentially that's an extra 40 points if someone wins all four, but if they do that well, they deserve the points IMO. Finally, while everyone likes to see their favourites, let's see one or two obscurities in each genre...US games that not many people play regularly. Nothing terrible, just not an ordinary pick. Hoops, Harlem Globetrotters, Bandai Golf, or Play Action Football all come to mind in sports. The redefined Action genre would have literally hundreds of games to choose from. While I don't particularly care for it, I saw Loopz mentioned for puzzle. And for shooters...well, maybe we could throw a flight simulator like Top Gun or After Burner in there instead of a standard shoot-em-up? As we find games that are untenable for various reasons, like Contra or World Games, we're gonna have to find games to replace their spots. Speaking of those untenable games...some of those could possibly be used in the aforementioned Round of 16 I described. Contra on it's own can easily be maxed out by many people here...but Contra as one of four games in a week could stand a chance. For some it's still a gimme, but for others it would take some practice, and with three other games to put up respectable scores in, I think there may be a bit more spread than if it was the only game in the week. I dunno, it's just a thought. Anyway, that's a lot to read...I'm not sure if any of these suggestions would be taken, but it's some things I got to thinking about that I figured I should write down.

Well, I started a new career, on the first scenario, as a Brit. Although there's fewer ports, the Englishman starts as a Captain. I then got a few small cities for each of the non-Spanish countries and have ranks with all three. Upon completing my first expedition, I managed to rescue my sister, gain a shitton of ranks and land, and a nice little bankroll (three Silver Trains and a Treasure Fleet!). I retired and got 79/100, which is higher than the rank I got on my original save despite having more money, my entire family, and a wife. I think the fact was that the French and Dutch seemed to ally with Spain in the later scenarios, preventing me from gaining rank with them, but the earlier scenarios they don't do it as much, meaning I can rank up with impunity. I have a good feeling about this run...but my thumbs are aching from all the damn fencing I've been doing the last two days, so I'm taking a break

Anyone who's previously knocked off Pirates have any tips on getting the top rank? I've rescued my family, married the best woman I could find (not the best overall, but I figured it was better to have one than not, since none of the friendly governors had the best daughter), and am on my fifth expedition with not a whole hell of a lot to do, yet my rank is still pretty low all things considered. Might take a few more attempts to nail it down...

Started work on Pirates this morning. Having a good first voyage. Rescued my sister, found the Incan treasure she pointed me to (some lucky sailing spotted the location), got two buried pirate treasures, and robbed both the Silver Train and the Treasure Fleet. Hoping to be able to at least find my father before divvying up the plunder for the first time.

Huh? That's not a shooter...

@Dr. Morbis I told you to do it. Now you lost your chance

I just whooped Satan's ass and knocked out Spiritual Warfare. That's a three-game day, for the first time since... *checks records* ...October 16, 2016, when I knocked off Darkman, Pictionary, and Rollerblade Racer in one day. Damn, it's been ages! I believe that's the last of the Wisdom Tree games on our list...although I still need to do the Crystal Mines knockoffs for my personal list...

So I haven't mentioned it yet, but I've been working on Spiritual Warfare for the last few days. Progress is being made, I have acquired the Boots, so I'm pretty sure that's about the half-way point, give or take. Should have it done this weekend sometime. Aside from that, I'm not sure what I feel like firing up next. I have a few bugbears to slay this year - games I came ever so close to beating but for one reason or another I hadn't finished. Such games include: Nightshade - An old rental store pickup I got in either grade 8 or 9. Got as far as the end boss, and couldn't figure out how to use the staff. The game then taunted me on the game over screen by telling me I had completed 99% of the game. Pissed me off so bad I haven't played it since. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? - A few years back I made a concerted effort to beat this, only to be stymied by the Judge Doom fight. Gave up after around a week of attempting to beat him. Really should get back to it. L'Empereur - Got down to myself, Russia (in one city), and England (isolated on the island). Then my save corrupted, causing me to lose the file. One of only two Koei games I haven't yet knocked off, and the only one I'm actually interested in playing The Mafat Conspiracy - Another late '90s rental store purchase. I actually got pretty far into it...I wanna say it was the final level, but I can't recall offhand. Suffice to say, I would like to knock it off at some point to kill off another childhood game. Metal Mech - Fired it up on a lark maybe 15 years ago. Got to level 4 without knowing what the hell I was doing. Like the game, but I haven't really revisited it since then. But then, I've also slain a few bugbears already just in the last couple weeks. Captain America, Platoon, and Ghost Lion are all games I had played at various points in the last 30 years and finally got around to beating them. And Pool of Radiance was another that I had put some time into but never enough to progress far. So 2022 is off to a roaring start...just not sure where to go next...after all, even if I don't beat any of the listed games, there's still a ton of great games up on the board...

Well, another childhood rental favourite has bitten the dust. Captain America and the Avengers is now in the books. And goddamn, while it's a great game, the final boss fight is a doozie. Glad it's done!

Well that makes me feel a bit better All good man