the_wizard_666

Like, -CAN Blades of Steel? I was unaware any -CAN copies existed outside of first party releases... Or does it have a Canadian rental sticker on it somewhere?

I'll be honest, I took a huge gamble on the repro...I found that old blog that mentioned it being one of your favourite arcade games, but it was an ancient post, so I honestly wasn't sure if you already had a repro of it or not. So glad I could help you rebuild your collection too!

On default settings I managed to beat the AI with a scholar's mate. It's definitely a crap chess engine. At least later iterations the AI defends against such an obvious ploy, even with the absolute easiest opponents. The NES version is pretty crap by comparison. https://nextchessmove.com/ I'm sure you'd call that cheating, but it works.

I'll post pictures when I have a bit more time...my SS kept him/herself anonymous, but they sent me their childhood Atari collection. I've gotta run so I can't exactly get it laid out right now, but suffice to say, the hand written note made me smile, and who can complain about 30 games? Such a great gift!

I'm not that good, most of those games are super easy completions that anyone can do. Star Trek was an old favourite so there wasn't any learning curve, and Flintstones was just long, and at times cheap, but definitely doable. And the NHL games, at least the ones with season modes, technically only require one game to be played, as you can sim the entire season and then only play in the finals (although for '98 I beat the entire playoffs on principle). And if you set the playoffs to single elimination at the start, you only have to win one game to win the Stanley Cup. I'm looking at the list to see what I feel like playing...there's a few intriguing games, especially the Koei games, but I have zero experience on them at this point, as the ones I've beaten previously have also been beaten already, and the rest are new to me. A lot of the games I'm looking at are either outside my skill set, or are going to require a bit of learning...or are games I've beaten in the past and don't really wanna play again I've run a few games since beating Flintstones, but nothing has really piqued my interest, so I'm not sure what I want to play at this point Yeah, I thought as much. Does that only cover the trick or does going to bed 300ish times without doing anything and getting the ending the "natural" way fall under that provision?

Yeah, the extra hardware is prohibitive for it, but that's also what should be listed, not "unbeatable," which would make it seem like it doesn't have an ending. Not advocating for it to be added, just to be "edited for accuracy"

I guess we don't get a say whether we want the charms to display then? I don't mind them being in my profile, but I don't particularly care about having them display every time I post something. EDIT: Nevermind, I just found the "hide" functionality

Just discovered something after watching a speedrun...on Harvest Moon, if you hold L, R, and select when going to sleep, instead of waking up the next day it automatically ends the game with the worst ending possible. I don't know if you'd want to count this, but theoretically just sleeping 300ish times should get the same result, so if someone just wants to cross it off that's all that would need doing anyway. Figured I'd mention it because a) I just executed it, so if you'd want to count it this way then we can cross the game off, and b) if you don't want to count it, then it's something that you need to be aware of so you can mark it in the notes. I'm not feeling the game right now, but after seeing the game knocked off in 2:27, I had to try it out to see if it was possible. EDIT: On a completely unrelated note, I just noticed that MVP Football is listed twice on the master list.

Just a thought...why is Miracle Piano listed as "unbeatable" when it very clearly has an ending... It's balls fucking hard to ever reach, but it exists.

The Flintstones: The Treasure of Sierra Madrock has been beaten. Not a bad game actually, but far from anything I'd rush to play through again.

You mean Arc Hound? Yeah, that never actually got released...

That...damn dude, I think you're onto something! You could even extend further to some objectively "good" games...would Snake's Revenge get the hate it does if it were developed in Japan? How about Contra Force? In fairness, developers outside Japan would have had a harder time with the Famicom/NES in general due to the head-start the Japanese had with it. Many of them compared to early Japanese games aren't really that bad, but pale in comparison to their contemporary Eastern counterparts. If you compare something like The Last Starfighter to Raid on Bungeling Bay, I mean, it's still bad, but it's closer comparatively than something like Final Mission (S.C.A.T.), which released in Japan around the same time as Last Starfighter in America. Raid on Bungeling Bay was released in Japan in '85, a full five years prior to Last Starfighter. There's obviously other factors too, but the divide between western and eastern developers is something that really hasn't been explored much (to my knowledge anyway), and definitely has merit when brought up in this context...

So Super Mario Bros is a shooter because fireballs? I quoted a post from five years ago that stated exactly what I was trying to state, in words that weren't forming in my head. I also didn't post the quote as a fact or anything, hence no reference to it. It was merely words already existing somewhere that said exactly what I have been saying the entire goddamn time. Also, yes, Tetris would by definition fall in as an arcade-puzzler, and Arkanoid (aka Breakout) would also be an arcade game. Anything else?

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https://www.ebay.ca/help/policies/selling-policies/tax-policy?id=4348&mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=706-53473-19255-0&campid=5338683477&customid=&toolid=10001 I can't say what the Canadian legalese on the matter is, you may be fine as an individual and not a business, but if you're unsure, talk to someone familiar with the tax system, like H&R Block or something. There's gotta be somewhere that gives free consults. As far as I'm aware, they're not gonna come after you for small shit, but it may also work to your benefit...if your sales are a net loss, it could be used to offset some of your gains elsewhere.

Honestly, I always counted the two as the same company, so you're not the only one.

You clearly missed the irony in that post...I was pretty obviously calling myself a grumpy old man in what I thought was an obvious self-depreciating way. But I guess that's the way you youngins think these days. Being that I originated the thread, I would say his "assumptions" of the intent of the thread are entirely accurate. I started it with the thinking that there were so many games I had played that take time to get into and get the full spectrum of enjoyment out of - the stated intent in my initial post was to get people to play those games that might otherwise collect dust, and see them through to the end - the good, the bad, and the horrid. I used the "challenge" aspect to keep the thread from stagnating when it got to the nitty-gritty (hence the 1 year instead of a never-ending timeline) and to encourage participation to get people playing those games. You may find a new favourite, or never touch the game again, but you'd be richer for experiencing it. The goal was never to actually succeed at the challenge, but to play the games as a community and have a bit of fun. Also, the exclusion of Famicom was done a) because of the language barrier, and b) because it was specifically NES. Literally every NES game was represented on my original list, insofar as was known to exist at the time (I believe it started in '09 or '10, but it may have been earlier/later...I'm getting old and the years all seem the same). Hell, I'd be open to adding the entire Famicom library, all the Sachens, homebrews, etc, because that was the original intention - to play the games. The posts you reference are from 2014, the first time you dropped the unlicensed games. That time it was fine, majority rules and all that. The fact is, they were added back in 2016, and the goal was reached. Then instead of extending the goalposts a bit further, you shrank the goal. So basically, those posts are meaningless to the context being discussed. Also, of those people quoted, how many are still here? I see two names - Bronze and Nerdy. And both their posts were in favour of adding them back in if the goal was met. If anything, in 2017 we should've added MORE games, not fewer (iirc, you dropped ~85ish unlicensed games and added like 20 arbitrary Famicom games). Let me be clear, I love the way you run things. You're on the ball, the stat management I know from experience is a LOT of work, and you also participate as much as you feasibly can. I'm also gonna post this publicly for all to see: If you run a poll about adding the unlicensed games back in, and the majority are against it, I'll start participating again. But the fact that they seem to have been arbitrarily excluded after success was achieved is infuriating to me. It should be a community decision either way, because at the end of the day, this is a community challenge. Separate the lists if you must...that seemed silly to me too, but segregation is better than outright exclusion in my books. Oh, and if the big stumbling block is Action 52, I'm okay with removing that one...frankly, it seems more like an unfinished proto than an actual release anyway...and if one game's exclusion is what it takes to include the other 80ish games, then that's what it takes.

Knocked off an old favourite today...Star Trek: The Next Generation is done.

Likely the unlicensed were sold off because that's where all the money was...aside from SE, which was still pretty affordable, all the expensive games were unlicensed.

I'd actually be curious to see that...but my guess is that because the games back then were dirt cheap anyway, nobody gave a shit about it. Literally, the "licensed only" thing seems to have come up with rising prices in the market, and the fact that most unlicensed games are at least moderately rare. Hell, of the "Big 7" top rares, six of them were unlicensed. That coupled with a massive increase in interest (and prices) in and around 2009, and you clearly have the reason most n00bs coming in decided to forego ~ 1/8 of the library.

IIRC, Tengen actually won that lawsuit as well. Reverse engineering a console falls within fair use of your own property. Although I may be mistaken on that, but for some reason that's what sticks in my brain.

I'd really have to go back to check, but I believe the HES games were included in the PAL list when I made the initial thread. And a quick check on my go-to ROM site (aka the first one on Google that popped up when I first started emulating) shows that the ROMs are definitely available.

"Unreleased games weren't included because they weren't released (duh)." The "duh" is because unreleased games were not included due to being unreleased. As for the homebrews...I would say that an unfinished game I have never heard of until you posted this probably wouldn't make the cut But when I started the thread, the actual list of completed homebrew games was incredibly small...like I said, there was Garage Cart, Sudoku, and maybe a couple others. It'd be a few years before homebrew NES games really became a thing. But yeah, the idea was for every released game to be represented. I likely would've added homebrew to the list if the interest was there, and protos weren't released, so wouldn't be on the list unless popular demand dictated that they be added. And again, at the time, there was no distinction in the community between licensed and unlicensed games, so there wouldn't have even been the thought of excluding them. I also included PAL exclusives (as well as allowing PAL versions to be used in lieu of US ones) to encourage overseas participation - this isn't a system exclusive to North America, so why cut the games? I would be okay with that, yes. Like I said before, the only reason they weren't included in the original list is because I had no idea they existed at the time. Otherwise, they'd have been there from the start as well. While the debate continues regarding what region they were released in, the fact that they were released makes them valid for the list in my view. The original list included PAL exclusives, remember, so it was never a US-centric thread.

When I started the thread, homebrews weren't exactly a thing yet. I think we maybe had Sudoku and Garage Cart at the time. Sachens weren't included cuz I didn't know they existed (though I may have included them at some point). Unreleased games weren't included because they weren't released (duh). PAL games WERE included. There was no distinction between licensed and unlicensed because at the time, the community didn't distinguish them either. And frankly, I'd be all for including homebrew titles, Sachens, etc...more games = more fun. But as it sits, we don't even have every game that was counted from the thread's debut. And had I not handed it off to Scary, we never would've dropped the unlicensed games in the first place...of course, the thread also wouldn't be as popular because I never stuck around the site long enough to actively keep up the list...and as we all know, if the list isn't updated frequently, participation drops significantly.

I have literally never heard of this. Sounds...well, pretty crap tbh.