Games Beaten In 2016!

[empsolo]

Sonic the Hedgehog 1 on 3DS

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on 3DS

Sonic 1 for gamegear

Space Harrier for 3DS.

[mbd30]

I single credit cleared "Vice Project Doom." It's not the hardest NES game, but it is a bit of a challenge to beat without game overs. Some stages are quite Ninja Gaiden-esque in terms of how they combine narrow platforms with lots of annoying enemies and knockback.

[mikey.shake]

Never considered myself much of a gamer, really. "Casual" and all. Activision patches are achievements for me, and I don't belong anywhere near a high score club.

 

My wife gave me a copy of Mega Man for Valentine's Day. I'd never had it as a kid, and only played the first one a little bit as an adult. The second and third were "more polished", "less difficult", etc. -- the usual reasons. I'd only ever beat the second game on "Normal". In the original, I usually stalled out at Gutsman's flipping platforms (and the first few attempts on a cheap flatscreen didn't help). She bought it anyway because I'd always wanted it, and got a good deal on what she knew was a pricey cart.

 

I didn't expect to beat the robot bosses and get to Dr. Wily's fortress, but I had a good run earlier in the afternoon. I didn't expect to be able to beat the Yellow Devil. (Though I exploited the hell out of the "select" bug to do it. Tips and tricks got around the playground back in the late '80s, and stuck with some of us.) And once I hit Dr. Wily Pt. 4, I resolved to see things through. I worked at it... and I beat it. I beat Mega Man. On a real cart. No save states, no cheat codes, no emulation funny business -- straight legit. Retro-style, too. Original cart into original hardware & controller, into a big ol' CRT television. I took a photo to commemorate the occasion. My wife was snapping them as I defeated Wily, just to make sure I didn't miss my chance. I certainly didn't expect to beat it the day I got it. It was a nice victory.

 

So, while I can't say I'm a good gamer, I suppose I can upgrade my status from "casual" now, right?

 

 

(And in true nostalgic fashion, I even left it paused for about an hour while we went out to get some dinner.)

 

Happy Valentine's Day, AtariAge.

[mikey.shake]

I can now add Mega Man 3 to my victory list for the first time, too. There's something extra satisfying to me to beating a game on an original cart. Now I can't decide whether to tackle further Mega Man sequels, or to move on to something else for a while...

 

[+thegoldenband]

16. Marble Madness (Game Boy)

17. Tennis (Game Boy)

I've beaten both of these before in recent years, and my previous comments still stand (that MM port is a real stinker).

18. Elevator Action (NES)

"Beat" this game by getting past the loop point, which is no small feat unless you know a trick to reset the enemy aggression levels. I don't like this port very much -- it ramps up the difficulty too fast and the music stinks. The SG-1000 version is better. D+.

19. Jordan vs. Bird: One on One (NES)

I beat this ages ago as a kid, allegedly by the ridiculous score of 587-58 or something like that. This time I played on the highest difficulty and my margins were more modest at 81-56, but Bird still kills Jordan from the 3-point line all day long. I also took care of the slam dunk & 3-point contests. As for the game itself, could be worse. C.

20. Nobunaga's Ambition (Game Boy)

I'm still surprised by how lame this adaptation is -- not that I'm familiar with the original, as I've never really played it. But from all appearances a lot of stuff was cut out, and what's left is pretty bare-bones and sometimes hard to comprehend (why is my opponent allowed to counterattack after I've won the battle and conquered his entire territory?).

Much too easy on the easier difficulties, and irritatingly unforgiving on the highest, it ends up being a lot less fun than I'd hoped. That said, like many Koei games, you can eventually find little holes in the AI to facilitate victory, and sometimes just waiting for your foe to starve is the best option. C.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

6. Mario Kart DS (Nintendo DS)

 

This one was an early birthday present from the misses that I've been (obsessively) playing over the last few days. After beating all of the tracks on the 50cc mode with gold star ratings the credits started rolling, so I'm going to call this one "beaten"; even though I'm still going to keep playing it until I've taken 1st place in every circuit on 100cc and 150cc modes and unlocked all the extra characters too. You can never go wrong with a Mario Kart game, and this is definitely one of my favorites in the series.

 

 

7. Kirby's Dream Land (Game Boy)

 

I had half an hour or so to kill before breakfast this morning so I whipped out my old Game Boy Color (and the almost mandatory Worm Light accessory) and spent about 25 minutes playing through and beating this classic gem. It's a fairly easy game, which is good when you're all groggy and haven't had your morning coffee yet, but I was still happy to have beaten it on 1 life without ever dying. Great success!

 

 

8. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Nintendo DS)

 

I just beat Call of Duty: Black Ops for the DS a few minutes ago and I honestly have no idea what the last half of the story was about. I think I'm going to have to play through it again to understand the story, since a lot of it didn't really make sense to me the first time around. I was actually surprised when I saw the credits start rolling! It's entirely possible that it was a perfectly sensible story and I was just distracted and talking to my wife or our roommate too much during the cut scenes in the later parts of the game. I had a pretty good idea of what was going on in Cuba, but once the game took me to Russia I had no idea who the characters were or what my mission was from there on out. And the ending was like "Oh hey, I blew up a *REDACTED*. Wait? Why are the credits rolling!? Was that the goal all along and I didn't know it?"

 

Yeah... I'm gonna have to play through this one again and pay more attention to the story the next time around. The action and gameplay were really good though, so I won't mind giving it another go.

Edited February 18, 2016 by Jin

[Lendorien]

I have really been enjoying my 1541 Ultimate for the Commodore 64. Gamebase v14 also recently came out with some incredibly easy to use single disk versions of some great games like Pirates! and Ultima 4. There are instant load EasyFlash versions too if you have an EF cart or use VICE. I took advantage and managed to get the highest ranking in Pirates! (no trainers or savestates). I'd never done that on the C64 version of what is my absolute favorite game of all time.

 

WP_20160103_002.jpgWP_20160103_004.jpg

 

Man. I was going through a box today and found my original IBM PC copy of Pirates that I pulled out of a bargain bin in 1994. It's the original one. Not sure why it was in a bargain bin 7 years after it came out. I played that game like crazy. Then later Pirates! Gold. And then the more recent remake. High five for doing so well!

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

I can't believe I have overlooked this thread and an awesome one! I did some gameplay videos of some games beaten this year so far. Here they are.

 

Vs. Super Mario Bros. (Mame)

 

Super Mario Bros. (NES)

 

Kung Fu (NES)

 

Paperboy (NES)

 

Vs. Castlevania (Mame)

 

Contra (NES) Flawless no death run

 

Sonic the Hedgehog (Genesis)

 

Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)

 

Pitfall 2 Lost Caverns (Atari 2600)

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game

[mikey.shake]

My first time beating the following...

 

Mega Man 4 (NES)

Mega Man 5 (NES)

Mega Man 6 (NES)

After defeating the first and third games in the series, I decided to finish the rest off. (I'm going to re-tackle #2 once I get it on a real cart). I get the criticism of these later games -- the charge shot is often too powerful, and I rarely use a special weapon unless it's time to boss battle. I was on board with the "slide" mechanic, but I feel like these 3 games just kept throwing in other elements to try to crank things up, but few of them really felt deserved, and some definitely got in the way. It was just "more of the same", really. That said, "more of the same" in the classic Mega Man series is still leaps and bounds ahead of most other 8-bit platformers. I'm glad I played them, and while the enemies and melodies aren't quite as magical as Mega Man 2, the sound and graphics in the games just keep getting more colorful and vibrant. A shame they're all getting so expensive, because once you get past the feeling of slight redundancy, they're a lot of fun.

 

 

Metroid (NES)

I used the '87 Nintendo Player's Guide map to get through this -- so, in my mind it's a legitimate win, but not without assistance. Though the assistance would have been available the first time I played it back in the day. I've never been too good at "exploration" games and wanted to get my feet wet. My wife acted as the guide, and we collected every item and worked our way through every stage. Yeah, the game has some technical drawbacks (floaty controls, repeating geography, the damn password issues), but it was well worth playing, I'm glad I did. I'm now about halfway through Metroid II (also for the first time), and plan to finish Super Metroid before taking on Metroid Prime. I'm glad I started at the beginning of the franchise -- it's already making me appreciate the second installment more.

 

[EDIT: ...oh yeah!]

 

Spartan X (Famicom)

It's Kung Fu (Master) under its original title, when it was a Jackie Chan movie tie-in. I love the weird caricature art of pseudo-Jackie on the Japanese cart. Other than that, it plays just like Kung Fu, and that one always bested me as a kid. Glad I can finally say I've won.

 

Next up (hopefully), ​Metroid II: The Return Of Samus, Clash At Demonhead, Metal Gear, Castlevania III, and Shinobi.

Edited March 8, 2016 by mikey.shake

[mbd30]

I can't believe I have overlooked this thread and an awesome one! I did some gameplay videos of some games beaten this year so far. Here they are.

 

Kung Fu (NES)

 

 

 

I recently started playing "Kung Fu" for a contest on NintendoAge. I got 376,140 points after a few days of practice which was only good enough for 14th place! Other players were getting over a million.

 

http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=31&threadid=158953

 

It's a fun and addictive little game. I enjoyed playing it.

[Lendorien]

Well, what have I completed so far this year? Not much.

 

1) Akiba's Trip for PS3 - I was a little surprised at how short it was. I am not really versed in otaku culture and know nothing about Akibara, so I found it only mildly interesting.

 

2) Chibi Robo for Gamecube. - Such a quirky game. You spend half of it using a toothbrush to clean up stains on the floor.

 

 

I'm debating taking my collection of 90 NES games and trying to beat them one by one. I'm not sure how capable I would be at that. Alphabetically, 1943 is on the list. Time to break out the NES Advantage. Haha.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

9. Dementium II (Nintendo DS)

 

I loved the original Dementium when I first played it a few years back, so as soon as I got my hands on a copy of the sequal last week I just had to drop everything else I was playing and play through this one immediately. Dementium II picks up exactly where the first game left off story wise, in a new and much more visually diverse (yet no less unsettling) locale. I don't want to give away too much of the story though, so I will just say that it takes everything that I liked about the first game in the series and improves on it greatly; while also fixing just about every minor complaint I could have made about the original game in the process. If you're a fan of survival horror and first person shooters who happens to own a Nintendo DS then Dementium and Dementium II should be considered absolute "must own" games for your collection! Now that I've finished the sequal I think I'll be going back and playing through the original again in the very near future.

[Cybergoth]

I forgot posting about this, but probably because it didn't feel like a big achievement: My wife and me beat Diablo 3 (PS4). Quite an odd game. There's almost zero challenge in it no matter how often you bump up the difficulty level, so it's basically a neverending grind-machine that get's tiresome pretty fast. The Farmville of RPGs if you ask me

[+thegoldenband]

21. Marvel's X-Men (NES)

 

AKA Uncanny X-Men. One I've beaten before, and my opinion hasn't changed much.

 

22. Kung Fu Master (Game Boy)

 

Beaten on Easy last year, Hard this year. An entertaining trifle, but it's too easy and not as fluid as the NES game. C.

 

23. Chuck Rock (SNES)

 

I didn't like this game on the Genesis, and I don't like it on the SNES either. For some reason, you can't earn extra lives in the SNES version. D.

 

24. Robowarrior (NES)

 

My writeup from 2012 still applies: a game with real appeal, but real flaws too.

 

25. Disney's TaleSpin (Genesis)

 

Beaten on Easy last year, and Normal and Hard today, with a 1CC on Hard.

 

It may not be quite as disastrous as I want to think it is, but the development team behind TaleSpin should still be embarrassed for putting out a game that's broken in so many ways, most of them relating to forced hits: bosses that can't be beaten without deliberately taking damage, unavoidable attacks from offscreen foes, enemy respawn patterns that always favor the CPU, etc.

 

Sure, the game throws enough power-ups at you to counterbalance it, but it's a textbook case of bad design and poor workmanship, with mediocre graphics and poor music to boot. D-.

[+wongojack]

/\/\/\ You really play some terrible games TGB

[+thegoldenband]

/\/\/\ You really play some terrible games TGB

Heh, sometimes. But 4/5 of those are in service of a long-term project:

• Robowarrior and X-Men, for the NintendoAge effort to beat every NES game in a single year;
• Chuck Rock, for the SNES effort along the same lines;
• and TaleSpin, for the Sega-16 effort to beat every Genesis, Sega CD, and 32X game, though not (anymore) in a single year.

(AtariAge should do something similar for the 7800, Lynx, and/or Jaguar sometime!)

[+wongojack]

That kind of long running event is appealing in a way, but then again, I won't have enough time before I die to even play all the GOOD games for those systems.

[+thegoldenband]

^Fair enough!

 

To be totally candid, I often find I'm disappointed (or otherwise not engaged) by a lot of the supposedly "great" games -- especially on Genesis where I'm not a fan of Sonic, Strider, Castle of Illusion, the Shinobi series, etc. And I've played most of the top-shelf SNES and NES games, since I grew up with those systems.

 

So sometimes I find myself having more fun playing a bad game than a good one. Best of all is a good game that's a sleeper, like Gain Ground or Jewel Master, and these projects have helped me to find a few of those (e.g. Warrior of Rome II).

 

That said, completing those projects means getting through a lot of really dire games, especially bad sports games...and there are some really bad ones out there -- games that seem like they came from a parallel universe where everything is wrong.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

10. Classic NES Series: Castlevania (Game Boy Advance)

 

Every year I do a full play through of the original Castlevania in some form, and 2016 is no exception! While I usually do the NES version, this time I decided to play the GBA port since a friend recently gifted me his old DS Lite for my birthday and I wanted to put it to good use. I gotta say, Castlevania is quite a bit more difficult on the smaller screen! I usually breeze right through the final boss (Dracula) but I had a heck of a time beating him this time around. I think it took me a good 14 or 15 tries. Nevertheless, victory was mine in the end!

 

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Super Mario Bros. 2 (The Lost Levels) for the Famicom Disk System. I did a playthrough video of the first quest and died a total of 3 times, all dumb mistakes that I made. I find it to be not as hard as most people claim it to be. Mainly cause I have played it for the past 22 years and have got accustomed to the gameplay and level designs.

 

http://youtu.be/uKnd5dNPXSA

http://youtu.be/BH0T-xrmAWQ

[Christophero Sly]

Dust: An Elysian Tale (Mac)

 

Solid gameplay, just not very deep. I was't wild about the anthropomorphic character designs, but, overall, the art direction was superb. The music was excellent as well. I didn't care for the story or voice acting, however. Just too much angsty-pathos for my tastes. There's a great deal of backtracking in the game, but little incentive to undertake much of it. A few tweaks to the game's layout would remedy that and greatly improve the flow of the game. (7/10)

Edited March 29, 2016 by Christophero Sly

[Skippy B. Coyote]

11. Super Mario Land (Game Boy)

 

I had about 45 minutes to kill before breakfast this morning, and with a new backlit and biverted original Game Boy on the way from GameBoyMods.co.uk I decided to get myself hyped to get back into playing original Game Boy games again by doing a run through an old favorite. I wasn't able to clear it on one life like I did last year, but I was pleased to have been able to actually kill the World 3 boss with the fire flower this time instead of just taking a hit then running past it like I usually end up doing. After this morning's play through of Super Mario Land I can safely say that I am thoroughly stoked to get back into playing original Game Boy games again!

 

 

12. Resident Evil: Director's Cut (PlayStation)

 

I've played through and beaten this game so many times over the years I couldn't even begin to count them all, but up until this past week I don't think I had ever played through it on Advanced/Arranged mode with Chris. So, since last week was the 20th anniversary of the original Resident Evil, I decided to give it a go!

 

I was honestly surprised by how brutally difficult it was, and by the time I got to the end of the game and had done everything necessary to rescue my two companions I actually didn't think I had enough health items left to beat the final boss. With just one green herb and one health spray left I thought I was totally screwed and had wasted a good half a dozen hours of time playing the game up to that point, but somehow (on my third try) I was almost miraculously able to dodge most of the boss's attacks and finish him off in spite of my lack of healing items! I still don't know how I managed to pull that one off, but I'll take the win! The new game file starting with a Colt Python with unlimited ammo was a very nice reward, so now I might just have to try speed running the game in 3 hours or less to unlock the Rocket Launcher with unlimited ammo using that save file at some point in the not too distant future.

Edited March 31, 2016 by Jin

[madhatter667]

So far, I've beaten:

Double Dragon 2 (NES)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (arcade)

Golden Axe (arcade)

 

I've been lazy. Lol.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Time for more new additions!

 

13. Mortal Kombat II (Game Boy)

 

My all time favorite Game Boy fighting game was a quick and easy addition to the list, since it only took me 15 minutes or so to 1CC it on Normal difficulty with Sub Zero. After that I beat it once more on Normal, but playing as Scorpion and using a couple continues the second time around.

 

 

14. Solar Striker (Game Boy)

 

Continuing the tour of Game Boy favorites, Solar Striker is definitely my favorite shoot 'em up on the Game Boy and I always play through it at least a few times a year. There wasn't anything particularly noteworthy about this play through, but I did enjoy playing it just as much as ever.

 

 

15. R-Type (Game Boy)

16. R-Type II (Game Boy)

 

These last two were totally new to me, since while I had played the colorized enhanced versions of R-Type and R-Type II that come on R-Type DX several times before, I had never played through the original black and white ones. I think what surprised me most about them was that there were actually quite a few differences level design and the effectiveness of power-ups throughout both games compared to the later colorized versions, and your ship's hitbox seemed a little inconsistent in original black and white version of R-Type; which made Stage 4 way more challenging (and at times downright infuriating) than it is on the later colorized versions. But, in spite of the hitbox inconsistencies and some changes to the gameplay here and there, I still managed to beat both R-Type and R-Type II after about an hour. I wasn't able to capture a picture of the ending of the original R-Type since the credits rolled by way too fast, but I did get a quick snap of the ending for R-Type II!

 

[madhatter667]

Add Galaga '88 to the list.