Games Beaten In 2016!

[madhatter667]

Button mashed my way through the Simpson's arcade title today.

[+wongojack]

I managed to finish Golden Sun on the GBA, but I'm not really sure it was worth it. I've been playing it off and on throughout the spring after starting my game quite some time ago. I suppose the story is a cut above most other JRPGs, but the dialog is mostly tedious and tends to get in the way more than enhance enjoyment. The Djini system was a creative battle mechanic, but it didn't really deliver on its promise to make things interesting. Instead, the Djinis were more like stat buffs that I was afraid to experiment with for fear of losing my stats. I also still can't remember the adept nomenclature. The elements are the familiar Earth, Wind, Fire, & Water, but they rename them for planets (skipping Earth in the process), and I could never keep it straight.

 

I did like the puzzle element of searching the world for Djinis. That was pretty fun and added that "collect em all" appeal to the game. I also found the boss fights enjoyable because they actually forced me to experiment with the various elemental attacks. However, that means that almost every other fight in the game was a simple matter of repeating the same basic strategy with no real need to dig into the game's variations.

 

One big negative is the "to be continued" ending. I wasn't expecting that from a game that is so highly rated for its platform. How does one continue a GBA game anyway?

 

I think this is a quality title, but I have no real interest in playing it again. If I were to rate it based just on the enjoyment I had with the game, I'd give it a 2 out of 5.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

One big negative is the "to be continued" ending. I wasn't expecting that from a game that is so highly rated for its platform. How does one continue a GBA game anyway?

 

Golden Sun is actually only half the game, with the other half and the remainder of the story continued in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Continuing in the second game is done by way of a very, very long password that you're given at the end of the first Golden Sun IIRC. Sorry to hear you didn't enjoy it much, since Golden Sun / The Lost Age is definitely my personal favorite RPG ever made, but to each their own.

 

Anyway, I've gotten a little behind on my posts for this thread and have beaten a whole bunch of Game Boy and Game Boy Color games this week! Since I started participating in the Nintendo Age forum's effort to beat as many North American GB/GBC games as possible in 2016 I've been playing through a ton of GB/GBC games to help out. Here's what was beaten by me this week:

 

17. Battle Unit Zeoth (Game Boy)

 

I picked this game up on eBay a couple weeks ago but hadn't sat down to play it until this week. The reviews I had read of Battle Unit Zeoth made it sound pretty difficult, and they weren't kidding! While it is a pretty short game (it only took 35 minutes to beat on my first try) it was definitely a challenging one, and I think I used somewhere around 8 to 10 continues total. I'll definitely be going back and playing through it again at some point in the not too distant future though, since the music was just awesome, the gameplay was really enjoyable, and the graphics were pretty darn impressive for a title made for the old gray brick.

 

 

 

 

18. Alien vs Predator: The Last of His Clan (Game Boy)

 

I've loved this game ever since I was a little kid. Back then it was one of the first games I got for the very first game system I ever had that I could really call my own: An original gray brick Game Boy that I got for Christmas in 1990. At the time I was only five years old and was never able to get through more than the first few levels of the game, but now as an adult I've been having a lot of fun revisiting this hidden gem and can beat it with relative ease. This was one of the first handful of games that I re-acquired when I started collecting for the Game Boy a few years back, and it's still one of my favorites.

 

 

 

 

 

19. Ms. Pac-Man: Special Color Edition (Game Boy Color)

 

I had a bit of a tough time figuring out what exactly constituted "beating" Ms. Pac-Man, since there was no high score board built into the game so I couldn't exactly go by highest score. What I finally decided on was that I would feel like I had beaten the game when I had played it to the point that the levels started looping, which was actually a heck of a lot harder than it sounds. It took me a good 4 hours of trying, but with enough time and effort I was able to get the point that I had beaten every level the game threw at me until the levels started looping; which happens to be on the 8th banana level. Here's a pic of that level and my final high score to go with it:

 

 

 

 

 

20. 1942 (Game Boy Color)

 

I ended up playing three different versions of 1942 this week: The arcade original on my 60-in-1 Centipede multicade, the NES port, and the Game Boy Color port. Of the three the Game Boy Color version is definitely my favorite, since not only does it give you a password save every 4 levels (that can be printed off with the Game Boy Printer no less!) but it also lets you shut off that godforsaken noise that is supposed to be "music". As much as I love the gameplay in 1942, I have to admit that it does have without a doubt the worst music of any video game I have ever heard. The "music" in this game is literally listening to the same 10 second loop that sounds like someone on a heart rate monitor flatlining over and over, and over again. I'm not kidding either, that's exactly what it sounds like! In any case, I ended up playing through this one in little 10 to 15 minute chunks on smoke breaks and making frequent use of the password saves. My final score ended up being pretty low because when I finished the game up I was loading from a save on Stage 8, but I still had a lot of fun playing through it. Especially once I shut the music off!

 

 

 

 

21. Resident Evil: Gaiden (Game Boy Color)

 

Wrapping up this post is one of my all time favorite Game Boy Color games that I try to play through at least once a year, and since no one on Nintendo Age had beat it yet this year I decided to sit down and spend a good 5 hours or so playing through it. It never ceases to amaze me what a good game this is, and how well it does of providing an experience that genuinely feels like a Resident Evil game on an 8 bit handheld. This is one that I'm sure I'll go back and play through many more times for years to come!

 

 

Edited April 10, 2016 by Jin

[madhatter667]

Beat Superman (arcade) the other day. A little lack luster. I remember that one being much more fun.

[+wongojack]

Golden Sun is actually only half the game, with the other half and the remainder of the story continued in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Continuing in the second game is done by way of a very, very long password that you're given at the end of the first Golden Sun IIRC. Sorry to hear you didn't enjoy it much, since Golden Sun / The Lost Age is definitely my personal favorite RPG ever made, but to each their own.

 

 

 

Favorite RPG ever made? I'm intrigued. What did you like about it exactly?

[Skippy B. Coyote]

 

Favorite RPG ever made? I'm intrigued. What did you like about it exactly?

 

 

It's been a long time since I played it, the better part of a decade I'd imagine, but I remember always liking the Zelda-esque dungeon puzzles. I'm a big fan of action/adventure games but I've always had a pretty strong dislike for most JRPGs, simply because I find their style of gameplay boring and monotonous. The puzzles in Golden Sun / The Lost Age did a great job of breaking up the tedium of typical JRPG gameplay though, and I really liked the Djinn collecting aspect of the game for the same reason too. The other thing that really set these two games apart from other JRPGs for me was the cool battle animations. In most pre-polygonal era RPGs the battle animations are simple and dull affairs, the kinda stuff you just mash the A button to get through as fast as possible so you can get it over with and get onto the next equally boring random encounter. For me though, Golden Sun's pseudo 3D battle animations were actually fun and interesting to watch; and the bigger and more powerful your attack the cooler the animations got. That made Golden Sun the only JRPG I've ever played that I actually enjoyed grinding in, because the animation quality and variety made the battles something that I really enjoyed watching and rarely ever mashed buttons to get through. All of those neat visual and gameplay aspects drew me into the game enough that I started truly caring about the story and it's outcome, to the point that I ended up running out to a local game store Golden Sun: The Lost Age immediately (as in, within 10 minutes or so) after finishing the first game.

 

Again though, that was just my experience with the game and your results may vary.

 

 

Getting back to the subject of this thread...

 

 

22. Centipede (Game Boy Color)

 

I thought I was done for today, but then I noticed that Centipede for the GBC hadn't been beaten in the Nintendo Age forum's effort to beat every Game Boy / Color game in 2016 yet. Being a huge Centipede fan (and I mean huge. I actually own a bartop Centipede multicade arcade machine) I just had to give this one a try, and I learned something pretty interesting in the process. What I learned is that in the GBC version of Centipede there is actually a fixed number of progressively more difficult levels, and the game loops back to level 01 if you can make it to and beat level 500! It took about an hour and a half, but eventually I got past level 500 and at that point—when I noticed on level 04 that the levels had looped back to the start and the game had reset the difficulty back to the starting difficulty—I decided to take some pics then call it quits. I had a good 6 or 7 lives in reserve (even though the screen only displays up to 3 lives at a time) and I knew I could probably keep going until I maxed out the score counter at 999,999, but my hands were starting to get a bit tired. So, after suiciding myself into the spider to burn my remaining lives I finished with a final score of 454,187. That'll do Centiepde, that'll do.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 11, 2016 by Jin

[madhatter667]

Super Mario Brothers 3 (NES/Famicom). I cheat though.

[empsolo]

Beat Kirby's Dreamland 2 on the Gameboy. I have to say that King Dedede is hard at first but gets easier once you nail down his pattern.

Edited April 13, 2016 by empsolo

[Sharkham]

Sweet Home for NES, and evidently, I'm not the first one in the thread! I caught wind of it through a discussion of retro horror games on another forum website, actually.

 

I'm really proud that I managed to keep everyone alive. The game definitely did get a lot creepier than I imagined it would; I mean, those 8-bit sprites are doing the best that they can to be scary so you really have to use your imagination, but still. The most significant spooks, though, came from letting myself get immersed in the atmosphere and lore. The only downside is that while the game succeeds at being a pretty good action RPG, the horror aspect can falter when the random enemy encounters go from threatening to annoying. That's the worst thing that can happen to a horror game - getting bored of the scary thing.

 

The game also started to get a bit frustrating towards the end - lots of slow backtracking, lots of really tricky puzzles and B.S. deathtraps - but until it gets stale, that sense of lost helplessness is what makes the game so spooky (and so satisfying when you do get ahead).

 

I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the early days of video game horror. Play it...if you dare!

[madhatter667]

Played through Knights of the Round just now. It's been a while since I played it last (but got through it all this time)... it's a sidescrolling beat 'em up. Basically Final Fight with a pseudo level system and swords. Lol.

[+thegoldenband]

26. The Amazing Spider-Man (Game Boy)

 

The guy behind Game Boy World gave this game an extraordinarily negative review, and that made me curious to try it. Truth is, it's not remotely as bad as he claims, and is actually a perfectly reasonable action-platformer with a few annoyances and a complete failure of documentation (the manual gets the controls wrong, and the controls aren't exactly intuitive). He also claimed it was ridiculously hard, but given that I beat the game in just over 2 hours, I'd say I disagree. C+.

 

27. Top Players' Tennis (NES)

 

Played as Evert this time, and luck of the draw meant I never had to face Lendl, so it was easier this year -- plus I figured out how to skip a bunch of matches to shorten the first, "lame duck" year. Still, my opinion is unchanged since last year. D.

 

28. Ghosts 'n Goblins (NES)

 

Beat both loops, albeit with a lot of continues used. I suppose I could put together a 1CC since outside a few key bottlenecks, 80-90% of Ghosts 'n Goblins isn't very hard at all -- but it's so glitchy and plagued by randomness, I don't see that as a good use of my time. I think Stockholm Syndrome plays a big part in people's fond memories of this one; sure, it's satisfying to beat a game with such clunky controls and a blatant "Screw you" attitude toward the player, but so what? That doesn't make those flaws magically disappear. C-.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

23. Street Fighter Alpha 3 (PlayStation)

 

After playing this game with the misses for a few hours the other night (and getting my arse thoroughly handed to me, as per usual when it comes to playing Street Fighter with m'lady) I decided to take on the story mode and see if I could beat it with Akuma. It took me a few credits, but eventually I was able to get through it and lay the hurt down on M. Bison. Strangely I always seem to have a much harder time with Sagat than M. Bison in pretty much any Street Fighter game, but Akuma's 15 hit super combo made short work of both of them this time around.

 

 

24. Titus the Fox (Game Boy Color)

 

In spite of the horrible reviews this game got it actually wasn't nearly as bad as I expected, and I had a lot of fun playing through it. I will admit that there was some pretty questionable level design choices here and there, with invisible ladders and tunnels necessary to find the exit that don't appear until you walk over them, but I never had to use a guide to find any of them and overall I thought it was a pretty enjoyable game. If I'm being completely honest a lot of that enjoyment was from the character aethetics and cute 8-bit pixel art peices between levels, but all furriness aside it was still a fairly decent platfomer and I might give the original Game Boy version a go at some point too. My only big complaint is that the instruction booklet said that the goal of the game was to rescue Titus's girlfriend, but based on the ending screen I'm pretty sure that Titus's girlfriend is actually his twin brother in drag. Whatever floats his boat I guess.

 

Edited April 17, 2016 by Jin

[+wongojack]

Quantum Break - really liked it

 

Think of this game like buying a season of a TV show that you really like and you will come into it with a "better" expectation. The story is excellent and the game play does an outstanding job of augmenting the story (or is it the other way around). They also do more than most TV shows by really developing more than one main character. While the obvious main character of the gameplay is Jack, he doesn't even appear in the actual show. I found this to be an excellent choice, and I think QB may serve as an idea factory for other interactive shows and games in the future. I wrote a longer opinion in a different thread.

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Did a playthrough of Mega Man for the NES. Almost a no death run as I made a dumb mistake by not jumping off the older magnet beam to the newer one in time and fell in the abyss in Ice Man's stage. That was the only life that I lost.

 

http://youtu.be/xM1YkH5aB3o

http://youtu.be/nwIMLVgEjVM

[Cybergoth]

During the last few weeks I played twice through Genma Onimusha (XBOX) and also beat the Oni Spirits mini game

Capcom games beaten in 2016: Mega Man Battle Network, One Piece Mansion & Genma Onimusha

[madhatter667]

Star Fox 2 Beta (SNES).

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I haven't updated my list in a while, so I've got quite a few games to add!

 

25. Dance Dance Revolution GB (Game Boy Color)

 

Towards the end of last month I was on a bit of rhythm game kick and this was my favorite of the ones I played. While playing DDR on a handheld may sound counterintuitive, just think of it like Beatmania or any other rhythm game meant to be played with a control and buttons instead of a dance pad. The game played really well and I loved the 8-Bit chiptune renditions of all the classic DDR songs in it. I ended up beating every song in this one on "Another" difficulty but haven't been able to do a couple of them on "Maniac" yet. Frankly, I'm not sure any human was meant to be able to.

 

 

26. Mortal Kombat (Game Boy)

 

An admittedly terrible game due to massive slowdown and input lag, but it's one I played a lot as a kid so I still enjoy it for nostalgia reasons mainly. I also dig that you can play as Goro if you enter the correct code after beating the game, which I don't believe is something that can be done in any other port.

 

 

27. Oha Star Dance Dance Revolution GB (Game Boy)

 

Another DDR game that played just as well as the last, but I didn't enjoy the music selection nearly as much in this one. Still, I did beat every song on "Another" difficulty so it was worth mentioning.

 

 

28. Red Steel (Wii)

 

A very underrated game that I really love. It got a bad rap when it came out for it's motion controls not offering the same precision as traditional dual analog stick first-person shooters on the Xbox 360 and PS3, but the controls still work quite well IMHO and the game's story is great if you're into Asian martial arts dramas. I ended up playing through this one twice and may do a third run through it later this year.

 

 

29. Mortal Kombat (Sega Master System)

 

By far the standout title for me out of all the games I've played lately! I am absolutely astounded by how good this game looks on an 8-Bit system and how well it plays. The gameplay is a little slow compared to the 16-Bit versions, but once I got the hang of it I found it to be an immensely enjoyable game and definitely the most challenging version of Mortal Kombat that I've ever played. I especially appreciated that the developers included a blood code and all the original character fatalities and special moves! I've been playing the Master System version of Mortal Kombat emulated on my Wii, but if I ever pick up a real Master System console then this (along with Sonic the Hedgehog) will be the first game I buy for it!

 

Edited May 16, 2016 by Jin

[madhatter667]

Beat Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers the other night. Still a fun little game. Ought to work on the second one.

[Cybergoth]

A couple of PS4 games I beat in 2016 already:

Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Rayman Legends
The Last of Us Remastered

Of these I liked Dragon Age best. It's incredible how overhyped TLOU is - it's basically just Uncharted with Zombies, minus the climbing...

[doomwaves]

Been absent once again from this fine establishment.. Year is nearly half gone and I haven't made a single post.. So here it is, my first post of 2016: (and they're all modern games.. )

 

1. Pokemon: Omega Ruby - 3DS

 

An excellent love letter to fans of Gen III Pokemon, and a great starting point if you never played that generation (I fall into this category). Lots of post game this and thats. Tons of Legendary Pokemon, and still a pretty active game with lots of events and things.

2. Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition - Xbox One

I guess you'd call this a replay, I've beaten Diablo 3 numerous times, this was just the first time on the Xbox One.

 

3. Wolfenstein: The Old Blood - Xbox One

Nice little addition to the ID catalog.. Feels pretty much the same as The New Order, but with a slightly more old school feel. I like the undead/supernatural twist.

4. Deadpool - Xbox One

This one came in at the right moment for me. I saw the movie, played the game directly thereafter and had a blast. The game itself is sort of glitchy, and a bit repetitive, but was fun, and funny.

5. (Replay) Cate West: The Vanishing Files - DS

I spy, hidden object game. Guilty pleasure. Nuff said

6. Bulletstorm - PS3

 

I needed this one. A fun, mindless fps with some gimmicks, stupid humor and lots & lots of dead things.

7. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary - Xbox One

Classic game with a new coat of paint. Was a pleasure to revisit the OG game.

8. Halo 5: Guardians - Xbox One

I feel like I have a skewed sense of what is going on with this game because I read the Forunner trilogy novels. I understand what has happened to Cortana and the Domain a bit better than someone who hasn't read them, so this story was amazing to me, although it fell a bit flat to some.

9. Doom (2016)

 

EVERYTHING I HAD HOPED FOR!!

[+thegoldenband]

29. Adventures of Mighty Max (SNES)

 

What I said about the Genesis version in 2013 applies to this port as well, though for some reason I think I enjoyed it a tiny bit more this time around (maybe there are differences between the ports?). D.

 

30. Air Cavalry (SNES)

 

I'm not sure if there's any element of this first-person, mission-based helicopter combat sim that didn't get completely screwed up -- it's pretty much the epitome of how to butcher a game in this genre. I literally lost count of the number of serious flaws and inexcusable errors: UI, physics, level design, manual, all of these and more are a total hash.

 

It's a miracle the game is still playable and beatable -- but only barely. D-.

[mbd30]

26. The Amazing Spider-Man (Game Boy)

 

The guy behind Game Boy World gave this game an extraordinarily negative review, and that made me curious to try it. Truth is, it's not remotely as bad as he claims, and is actually a perfectly reasonable action-platformer with a few annoyances and a complete failure of documentation (the manual gets the controls wrong, and the controls aren't exactly intuitive). He also claimed it was ridiculously hard, but given that I beat the game in just over 2 hours, I'd say I disagree. C+.

 

27. Top Players' Tennis (NES)

 

Played as Evert this time, and luck of the draw meant I never had to face Lendl, so it was easier this year -- plus I figured out how to skip a bunch of matches to shorten the first, "lame duck" year. Still, my opinion is unchanged since last year. D.

 

28. Ghosts 'n Goblins (NES)

 

Beat both loops, albeit with a lot of continues used. I suppose I could put together a 1CC since outside a few key bottlenecks, 80-90% of Ghosts 'n Goblins isn't very hard at all -- but it's so glitchy and plagued by randomness, I don't see that as a good use of my time. I think Stockholm Syndrome plays a big part in people's fond memories of this one; sure, it's satisfying to beat a game with such clunky controls and a blatant "Screw you" attitude toward the player, but so what? That doesn't make those flaws magically disappear. C-.

 

You know what? I ordinarily enjoy tough NES action platformers... Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, Batman, etc. But Ghosts n Goblins is an annoying piece of crap. I couldn't beat the third stage.

[bugcatcher88]

I finished the new Doom on Xbox One a few weeks ago. Wow, what a ride that was.

[+thegoldenband]

31. The Incredible Crash Dummies (SNES)

 

Another one that I beat in 2013 on the Genesis. This time I found the boss fights a bit easier to manage, but several of the levels are really too long. C+.

 

32. Out of This World (SNES)

 

One of my favorite games on the SNES, or on any system -- a true work of art. If the slowdown in the SNES version is a bit excessive at times, the quality music makes up for it. A.

 

33. Pac-Attack (SNES)

 

And yet another 2013 Genesis victory becomes a 2016 win on the SNES. Does it really make sense to have semi-random block drops in a solution-based puzzle game? C+.

[+wongojack]

I finished Jumpman Jr in emulation for the Colecovision. It took some practice but I finally got through all levels without cheating on speed 4.