nerdynebraskan

Metal Gear is done.

And congratulations to @Gaia Gensoukifor besting your single-year points record. It's yet another milestone on your tremendous year.

And hey, @scaryice, Gaia doesn't need your help kicking my ass.

RBI Baseball 3 is done.

The Mafat Conspiracy is done.

Star Trek: The Next Generation is done.

Klax is done.

Arkista's Ring is done.

2 hours ago, PII said:

I certainly don't mean to laugh at the adversity you're experiencing but I just love this sentence.  

Yeah, ya gotta hand it to NES game developers and whatever drugs they were on when they were brainstorming the concepts and mechanics of some of these games.

So, for anyone who hasn't played Arkista's Ring:

The most difficult and dangerous enemies in the game are the ninjas. Yes, this is a fantasy game where you play as a female elf archer killing fantasy enemies with a bow and arrows. But there are also ninjas in the last castle, and they are MEAN. They all fly across the screen, jump over walls, and generally just bear down on you and fuck you up in a hurry. And some of them, often but not always, are a different color and require an absurd number of hits to kill (even with the superior fireball wand weapon).

The last level of a loop before the final boss round immediately puts you up against maybe 8 green ninjas and 1 super-tough brown ninja. The brown ninja is by far more dangerous than any of the bosses because of his speed and erratic movement, and also has a similarly buff number of hit points. You can't even really maneuver around him because of his speed and the fact that walls impede you but not him. And even if you have some opening to get around him, he has all of the equally quick and relentless green ninjas. And the game has a way of always putting the brown one in front of his minions. It's almost impossible to isolate him from the green ones, which will die in a couple of hits.

The only way I can beat that stage on the first loop, let alone the last, is to have several of the powerup that is maybe some kind of magical music box. It doesn't make any kind of sound in-game, but if you use it it puts all ninjas on the screen to sleep for about 10-15 seconds. That's long enough to kill all the green ninjas, but I often need a second one to keep the brown bastard down long enough to shoot him too.

I had a frustrating day yesterday.

I burned all the way through Arkista's Ring to the level before the final boss on the fourth and final loop, and then lost all ten continues there because I had no... music boxes?... to slow down the ninjas. The brown ninjas on the final loop are insanely tough. If you don't have any music boxes, they just kill you in less than 5 seconds.

Then I spent hours on Klax, and stalled on Level 100. It's the third time that I have tried and failed at it this year. Getting 250000 points in one level is a serious achievement, but I haven't struggled with it to this degree in previous years. 

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of the Lance is done.

Fester's Quest is done.

Circus Caper is done.

Jurassic Park is done.

The Terminator is done.

Dick Tracy is done.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is now done as well. I played the first 75% of the game earlier today, but couldn't beat Judge Doom. I took my password and tried again after MULE. I got the bastard on my first try of the second go-round!

M.U.L.E. is done.

And with this completion, I have gone over 400 points for the year for the 10th consecutive year. I'm still the only one to hit the 400 milestone in every year of the points era.

Silent Service is done.

Mechanized Attack is done.

Freedom Force is done.

@Khromak

Your opinion is definitely more popular than mine. And yeah, I get that the original game is simpler and grindier. But JRPGs are very story-driven, and I thought the original game had a stronger story than the sequel. I really appreciated that the specific way that the melody you spend the whole game reconstructing related to defeating the final boss. The musical stuff was re-inserted into Mother 2/Earthbound, but it pissed me off the way it was used as a throwaway. I legitimately tear up most of the time when I think about the way you have to beat Gygas in the original Mother (or the fate of Magicant), and I just didn't find Earthbound to be emotionally moving in the same way.

9 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

What classes do we have?

I'm sorry to hear that. Hopefully it gets a bit better in the upcoming weeks. Is there maybe a game left, that works as some sort of comfort game for you? Or maybe try out some of the Famicom/Pal games for a change of pace? Or maybe it just takes a bit of time to normalize.

I was in a hurry to get to bed last night, but I actually no-deathed Astyanax. I think that was a personal first. So I've had a few triumphs as well as my frustrations.  There are definitely many games left that I enjoy, and I will continue to play through them as my time permits. 

You were talking RPGs recently. Have you played Mother? I'm in the minority, but I think I liked it better than its more famous SNES sequel. 

Astyanax is done.

Muppet Adventure is done.

2 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

Prince of Persia is done. This time around the game annoyed me quite a bit at times, though I can't tell if it was the game itself or if I'm starting to get burned out on NES games after playing so many of them in such a short amount of time. Or maybe I need some gaming comfort food, like a grindy RPG.

I've not been my sharpest the last couple of weeks, either. I've crashed and burned on several games that I can pretty reliably beat. I think there is a fatigue factor (for me, at least) that comes with binging on games for weeks on end. My personal life has also not been the most cooperative...

Regardless of how this ends, you've had a great run. It's very rare for anyone besides me to complete 100 NES games in a year here, but you're a shoe-in for that milestone. And no one in the history of this thread has ever scored over 400 points and finished worse than 3rd. You're also about 100 points short of your single-year best, so that's very attainable too.

The rest of the gang aren't even close to us. It seems to be a slow year for overall participation.

Code Name: Viper is done.

20 minutes ago, mbd39 said:

I had trouble with that plant boss and the T Rex/pterodactyl combo in level 4. And getting knocked into pits or missing jumps in level 2. You're right about the controls. At least the levels are really short.

I recommend trying the SNES version. It still isn't the best game in the world but night and day compared to the NES version. Data East, man.

 

 

I think I had to replay the game 3-4 times in a row last night before I cleared it.

I did actually game-over once on the T-Rex/Pterodactyl last night, but I don't remember having problems with it in previous years. It's still doable with the base stone axe weapons, whereas it feels like I need at least the wheels to kill the plant.