Games Beaten In 2017!

[Cybergoth]

Continuing my mission in the 7th year, I spent the last 3 weeks with Breath of Fire - Dragon Quarter (PS2). I played through it twice to see more of the story, but it's not 100%, as I don't see the the point of speed-running a 30 hour rpg for getting the best ranking

 

Capcom games beaten in 2017: Breath of Fire - Dragon Quarter

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Two more from me!

 

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

 

13. R-Type (Game Boy)

 

 

Both are longstanding favorite Game Boy games of mine, and now that I've gotten some of the more challenging/frustrating Game Boy games that I wanted to beat for NintendoAge this year out of the way I decided to relax with some games that I knew I wouldn't have a hard time with.

[Eltigro]

 

13. R-Type (Game Boy)

 

 

I downloaded this one for emulation but haven't tried it out much yet. You know... 'cause of Suikoden.

[SiLic0ne t0aD]

First game beaten in 2017:

Sydney Hunter and the Sacred Tribe - Intellivision

My next Inty goal? Finally beat Piggy Bank... I'm not far off, maybe 5 or 6 more levels to master.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I downloaded this one for emulation but haven't tried it out much yet. You know... 'cause of Suikoden.

R-Type on the Game Boy is one of those really odd games that most people end up hating at first due to it's frustratingly unforgiving level of difficulty, but those who stick with it and memorize all the level layouts and the strategies needed to beat the game usually end up loving it. I'm definitely one of those people who adore R-Type but I'll be the first to admit that until I finally managed to beat it the first time it made me want to throw my Game Boy at the wall every single time I played it. Now I can beat it on one or two credits with no problem at all, but it took a lot of patience and practice to get to that point. It's a great game but you should go into it expecting a whole lot of frustration if you've never played it before.

 

And now for tonight's game...

 

 

14. Xenon 2 (Game Boy)

 

Continuing through the Game Boy spaceship shooter lineup, this weekend I decided to do Xenon 2. This one is definitely a tough game, though not quite as challenging as R-Type. The music kicks 10 different kinds of ass and I really dig the unique ship upgrade system that lets you choose your own upgrade paths by buying parts for your ship at a shop that you get to visit after each level's sub-boss and end boss. It gives the game a lot of variety and replay value and the only complaint I could possibly make about the game is that there appears to be a bug in it that prevents you from entering vowels for your initials on the high score screen. Weird stuff there, but still an awesome game in every other respect.

[Silverfleet]

I've got two more, courtesy of MAME on my HTPC:

 

Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder

I love this one. Back when it was new, I used to play it all the time at the arcade in our local mall. I never finished it, though. I probably burned through $25 in imaginary quarters on this one.

 

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker

I was having a chat with the wife about the Alien Ant Farm cover of Smooth Criminal, as we had just heard it on the radio. So, I booted this one up. I had only played the Genesis version, which is vastly different. I liked this one!

[Skippy B. Coyote]

15. Battle Unit Zeoth (Game Boy)

 

Battle Unit Zeoth is one of those odd games that I'd only recommend to people who are big fans of the horizontal scrolling spaceship shooter genre. It's got fantastically detailed graphics and some pretty rockin' music, but the game itself is tough as nails and extremely unforgiving. You get 1 life and that's it, but you do have unlimited continues and if you die at any point during the game's 5 levels you can start back at the beginning of the level that you died on (without any of your much needed powerups of course). The controls are super floaty and the end of level bosses will all require a substantial amount of trial and error to learn their patterns and figure out how to beat them, but in spite of all my complaints about this game I still really like it for some reason. It's a nice quick half hour game for those into shmups who don't mind putting up with a little frustration along the way, and it's not too expensive to pick up a copy of either. Battle Unit Zeoth is a nice game for hardcore shmup fans, but anyone who isn't a big fan of the genre would probably find more enjoyment from other games.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Getting away from spaceship shooters for a bit, I decided to play through a couple platfomers.


16. Spot: The Cool Adventure (Game Boy)

This was one of those games that I had as a kid 20 some odd years ago and always loved, but I could never beat it back then. In fact, I had never managed to beat it in my entire life until tonight! In spite of being a licensed game I think the developers at Virgin did a really nice job with Spot: The Cool Adventure. It's got a fairly smooth difficulty curve, a substantial but not too long length (for a game that doesn't have any kind of save feature that is), and a bit of variety with some shoot 'em up levels ala Super Mario Land towards the end. The platforming was quite challenging but not unfairly so, and I'll definitely be looking forward to going back and playing this one again next year.


17. Titus the Fox (Game Boy)

This was my second time playing through Titus the Fox, and the first time on real hardware. I played it once last year for the NA Game Boy Color effort via emulation on the Wii and enjoyed it enough that I decided I needed to own a physical copy of the game. I patiently waited and watched eBay for the better part of a year, and it wasn't until last week that I finally found a copy with a good condition label; and it was worth the wait! After playing through Titus a second time I'm even happier to have it in my collection, since the physical copy doesn't suffer from any of the slowdown that I experienced when playing it via emulation. Titus is—in a nutshell—a lot like what Super Mario Bros. might have been if it had no time limit and you had to find the secret vine blocks to get to the end of the level. It's half platforming and half just searching around trying to find hidden ladders, and it can be pretty frustating sometimes if you don't know where the ladders are. Fortunately I still remembered where all of them were from my play through last year so I didn't have to experience any of that frustration this time around.

It's still not a short game though, since even knowing where all the secret stuff was it still took me about two hours to get to the end and rescue Titus's girlfriend; who as far as I can tell is actually his twin brother in drag. In any case, it's a cute game with some solid platforming and exploration elements. A must own if you're a furry fan, but there are many better platformer options out there for the non-anthropomorphically inclined.

 

 

[Eltigro]

Just completed Suikoden for the Playstation (played in emulation). The emulation wasn't perfect, but played fine. Mainly there were glitches in graphics, notably when changing party members, when the army battles were starting, or occasionally when spells were being cast. There were a few times when the sound had some glitches, too. Mainly in that sometimes the music wouldn't play until you left an area and came back. None of these affected gameplay, however.

 

Total time was 57 hours 14 minutes. Main character was lvl 62 at the end, I believe. All 108 Stars of Destiny recruited, Gremio resurrected, Emperor Barbarosa defeated, all is good in the land...

 

But of course... I'm about to start Suikoden II, so...

 

 

[mikey.shake]

Slow year, I suppose. Spending a lot of time with the 5200, so I haven't been playing a lot of games I can "beat". But one for kicks, and another big one I suppose I'd want to brag about a little.

 

NARC (NES)

My wife had never actually played through this with me. When I was a kid, my friend and I could get to... Level 3, maybe? Not too far. But my wife had never seen it, so we loaded up a Game Genie code to "tour" the game. And, yikes. I love it -- hyper-violent late-'80s trash at its finest. Funny how a whole bunch of my grade school friends had this. Must have been due to the "anti-drug" stance of the fictitious "Just Say No" commission emblazoned on the cart. But it's got junkies throwing needles at you, murderous clowns, XXX theaters and bookstores, topless bars, pot farms run by Rambo, and Mr. Big turning out to be... some kind of giant skullmonster? Not to mention the way you can blow drug fiends into wet, flaming (?) chunks of body parts. Even though this is TONED-DOWN from the arcade*, it's still easily my vote for "most shocking/inappropriate/adult game on the NES", and it seems like it's NEVER mentioned on any "Top 10" lists of that kind of thing -- probably 'cause it's so hard that nobody made it to Kinky Pinky's level in the first place. Worth a playthrough, though -- without any codes if you're feeling hardcore.

 

speaking of...

 

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (NES)

Holy hell, this was a great game. I'd played through the first two last year (the second with a walkthrough). My wife got me a copy of Super Castlevania IV for Christmas, and while I'd dabbled, I realized I'd never actually played through CV3 before. So I decided to finish the NES trilogy before moving on to the SNES. And it was worth it. I took the Grant route into the clocktower, then traded in for Alucard along the harder road without realizing what I was doing (no walkthrough, just charged in, not realizing the lower route is apparently usually the "harder" one). Level 7 was murder for me, with the falling blocks and no wall meat and... yikes. Level 8 was really cool with the echoes of the first game. And those damn crows forced me to use "Help Me" on the final level, just so I wouldn't have to play that dropping stairwell section every 3 lives. What a fantastic game. I loved it but it almost broke me a few times, it almost drove me mad... but I was determined. My wife was sound asleep when I finally defeated Dracula while laying next to her. She was momentarily confused as to why I jumped up and started dancing, lit only by the flashing on the TV. It was something sorta like the "Ickey Shuffle" by CRT moonlight.

 

But I friggin' did it. I was always lousy at video games when I was a kid. But between this, Ninja Gaiden 1 & 2, and Mega Man 1-6 last year, I'm feeling pretty slick. I'm still not touching Ghosts 'n Goblins with a 10-foot pole, though. I don't need the stress. And no, I'm not replaying this one on hard mode. Forget that noise.

 

(I knew CV3 was tricky when I found myself blowing off steam by switching to R-Type. Not exactly a pleasure cruise.)

 

And it really was worth my while to finish out CV3 before I got to SCIV -- even more than I expected it to be. It's made the upgraded audio and visuals in the sequel "pop" that much more. Some of the physics have been an adjustment, but it keeps a lot of what I liked most about CV3. It definitely feels like what would have been a "super" Castlevania game at the time, even more impressive considering how early it came out in the SNES lifespan and how I'm coming to it straight off the NES trilogy.

I think I may try Bloodlines next. Because I still can't afford a TurboDuo to play Rondo Of Blood.

 

Posterity:

 

(*As always, "all hail Eugene Jarvis".)

[Silverfleet]

Add another one to the list.

 

Final Fight (MAME)

Played through this one last night with my nephew. It was his first time playing an old-school beat-em-up like Final Fight, and he loved it. Such a great game.

 

[mikey.shake]

Super Castlevania IV (SNES)

 

A few days ago, I beat Castlevania III, since my wife had bought me Super Castlevania IV for Christmas and I wanted to work through CVIII for the first time before progressing. I'm glad I did, because it really enhanced (and got me excited for) my first-ever experience with this. Wow. Putting myself in the mindset of a young teen in the early '90s, this truly was a "super" Castlevania game. Frankly, with only the NES games to compare it to, I still feel that way. I loved it. It was what I loved about good SNES sequels to NES games back in the day -- like Contra III, Link To The Past, Super Metroid, et. al, this one was hopped up. Definitely easier than I and III, but the whole thing is so sumptuous that I'm just totally charmed by it. The flashy graphics, the way the music included updated versions of classic tracks and moody jazz fusion, the gameplay that was familiar but had a bunch of new tricks (whip versatility, flexible jumping)... it's pretty much everything I would have wanted from the experience. I was almost disappointed when I finished, but only because there wasn't more of it to play. Which led me to...

 

(So cinematic...)

 

 

Castlevania (NES)

 

I beat Simon's Quest Redacted last fall, Dracula's Curse this week, and now Super Castlevania IV, which made me want to go back and compare IV to the first one. It was only my second full play though of this game (I never owned it when I was a kid, despite playing the first few levels at friends' houses), and it was a lot easier than last time, having now worked my way through III & IV. I don't have anything to add about this game that hasn't already been said. It's great. It's been refined in future installments, but pretty much everything I'd want is here (preferring ClassicVania to MetroidVania), and it was hard. Really hard. But beatable with perseverance. And it felt GOOD to see that ending.

 

I'm still in "whippin' ghouls" mode, but the only Castlevania game I have left in my library to attack is Bloodlines. So I'll probably hit that this week and see what I think. I'm inclined to play as John Morris because I feel like whippin', but is that the wrong way to go? Is it like picking Alucard over Sypha or Grant and setting myself up for a less fun experience? Should I get my Eric LeCarde on?

 

That weird compulsive urge to play Simon's Quest again is flaring up, too. Just to beat the whole lot of the early games in one big glut. Something must be wrong with me, but I dig that game.

 

I might even turn into a nervous junkie needing a fix and track down the Gameboy installments I remember borrowing on the playground in the early '90s, just for kicks.

 

"Thank you, video game."

 

But maybe I'll take some time off from the Belmont saga. Mrs. Shake is taking on Zelda II right now. She liked it as a kid, but we're using a walkthrough to see if she can make it through. It's got me dreaming about running around Hyrule and finally defeating A Link To The Past...

[Cybergoth]

During the last 14 days I played Resident Evil Zero (PS4) a lot, besides beating it I also played the Leech Hunter Mini Game to an A rank

 

I was originally aiming at the platinum trophy for this one, but had to give up where it required beating the entire game without saving. Playing the game for over three hours straight drives my blood pressure to unhealthy levels, so I decided to give up at this point.

 

Capcom games beaten in 2017: Breath of Fire - Dragon Quarter & Resident Evil Zero

[zylon]

Original Xbox- Samurai Warriors using character Oichi

[Eltigro]

Well, Suikoden II is in the books. Total play time 61 hours and 37 minutes. All 108 "Stars of Destiny" recruited. "Good" ending achieved with the hero, Jowy, and Nanami all running off together after the war. I didn't get everything possible in the game as I was ready to just finish it. There are a lot of things I didn't get like rare drops from enemies or whatever. I didn't get all the recipes. I only played the fishing mini-game once. I didn't get all the plants and animals for the farm. I didn't get all the different window and sound options. I don't think I got all the different plans for the "guardian deity" that you can have the sculptor make. As you can see, there are a lot of extras you can do in this game. I could have spent way longer on this before finishing it.

 

There were a couple of optional side quests that I didn't do. One I didn't do because, after reading through it, it just seemed like too much trouble for too little reward. Another I didn't do because it required you to be at certain points in the story by a certain time and I spent too much time leveling characters and farming money to make it. But, the leveling made a difference as the last boss encounter wasn't as difficult as it could have been.

 

Played this in emulation as I lost the game itself long ago (through no fault of my own other than letting someone borrow it). The emulation was pretty good... a few strange graphical glitches during spells and then some issues with the ending credits, but other than that, it was good.

Edited February 12, 2017 by Eltigro

[zylon]

Just finished Timesplitters 2 for Gamecube. Was fun going through it again on a different platform, but I did get reminded of how much I hated the Aztec level.

[Silverfleet]

I was sick all last weekend, so I played some favorites while I was down for the count. I had beaten all of these before, but what the hell.

 

Super Street Fighter II - Genesis: Beating this game always makes me feel better. For some reason, the Genesis version of this game plays better to me than any other version. Yes the sound sucks, and the graphics could be better, but whatever. Love this game!

 

 

Golden Axe - Sega CD: I picked up the Sega Arcade Classics/Sherlock Holmes pack-in disc for my newly acquired Sega CD a few weeks ago, and I forgot that Golden Axe had a slightly different soundtrack and sound effects. I popped it in to check it out, and whoops... I beat the game. Word Baseball!!!!

 

 

Castlevania - DS (via emulation): I played this via my R4 card on my DS Lite. Yes, I cheated a bit. The DS emulator uses the shoulder buttons to slow down and speed up time, so I used that as a learning tool. I want to make a run at the game on my NES soon, and this helped.

 

[HoshiChiri]

Oooo, I was hoping for a thread like this!

 

1: The Last Guardian (PS4)

2: Magic Knight Rayearth (Saturn)

3: Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (PS3)

 

I know, an awfully modern start to things- but I had a nice of new stuff from Christmas to go through. Plus I got most of the way through Enslaved last spring, so it made sense to just wrap it up asap.

 

Also- damn, do you people play this stuff fast! I gotta step up my game!

[Cybergoth]

Just finished Uncharted 4 (PS4) last night.

 

Not sure what to make of it. With several hundreds of people working on it, how can it be that nobody notices how boring it is? If it were a movie it'd be the Direct2DVD Indiana Jones clone nobody would ever watch...

The totally surprise- and substanceless script aside, the gun & climb gameplay is a similar boring copy & paste job of every other Uncharted game so far. Basically I just sat through it because it was easy enough - the only really cool chapter was #15 or #16, were the one and only (but still foreseeable) story twist happens at the end...

[Cybergoth]

So, just finished Clock Tower 3 (PS2) this morning, which is essentially "short, but good"

 

Capcom games beaten in 2017: Breath of Fire - Dragon Quarter, Resident Evil Zero & Clock Tower 3

[HoshiChiri]

4: Streets of Rage 2 (Genesis)

 

I will freely admit, I did use the level select cheat to get back to level 8 after game over-ing on the final boss. I needed to get to bed, but wanted to roll those credits first!

 

I'm not going through games as fast as I'd like to be- part of the reason being I picked up my Link's Awakening cross-stitch map again.

 

 

 

This picture's terribly out of date- most of the top half is finshed now- but it gives a good idea of scale. It'll be about 2 feet square when I'm done. Not surprisingly, it takes a long time to sew all those lil' squares, so I keep using up all free time without actually playing any games.

 

I did finally get a Hori Mini controller for the N64, so I imagine I'll switch over to finishing Tactics Ogre when that gets here.

[toptenmaterial]

I was sick all last weekend, so I played some favorites while I was down for the count. I had beaten all of these before, but what the hell.

 

Super Street Fighter II - Genesis: Beating this game always makes me feel better. For some reason, the Genesis version of this game plays better to me than any other version. Yes the sound sucks, and the graphics could be better, but whatever. Love this game!

 

 

Golden Axe - Sega CD: I picked up the Sega Arcade Classics/Sherlock Holmes pack-in disc for my newly acquired Sega CD a few weeks ago, and I forgot that Golden Axe had a slightly different soundtrack and sound effects. I popped it in to check it out, and whoops... I beat the game. Word Baseball!!!!

 

 

Castlevania - DS (via emulation): I played this via my R4 card on my DS Lite. Yes, I cheated a bit. The DS emulator uses the shoulder buttons to slow down and speed up time, so I used that as a learning tool. I want to make a run at the game on my NES soon, and this helped.

 

I, also, beat Castlevania for the first time recently. I played on my 2DS, and while it doesn't have that neat rewind feature, I made liberal use of save states to learn the ins and outs of each room. You do what you gotta do. I can do a no BS run now and usually don't die until the 6th world.

 

Right now I'm working on Super Mario Bros 2, which I beat as a child, Super Mario Land 2 and Castlevania 3 which is very fun but tough.

[+thegoldenband]

11. Drakkhen (SNES)

 

Nice to play you again, old friend. B-.

 

12. Flappy (Famicom)

 

I got a little over halfway through this early Famicom puzzler back in 1999, but got stuck on one particular "side" (that's what the game calls levels) and bailed out. This time around I figured that side out, but had to consult a walkthrough twice -- once for a level that I could've easily solved on my own had I thought a bit longer, but another one had me genuinely stumped and turned out to be right tricky. Still, two ripcords out of 200 levels ain't bad.

 

As for the game itself it's nothing fancy, but is well-designed except for the irritating penchant -- common in Famicom puzzle games -- of only giving you a password every 5 levels (uh, I mean "sides"). Yes, it extends the shelf life, but once you know how to beat a level in a puzzle game, beating it again is busywork. B-.

 

13. Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (Famicom)

 

The SNES version was one of the very first Super Nintendo games I ever beat, 25 years ago. I didn't remember much about it except long hallways and standing around waiting to heal, but I assume this Famicom version is quite similar except for obvious platform necessities. It was a reasonably fun way to spend 4 hours on a day off, but then again, there's a reason I didn't remember much about this short, easy, and extremely linear game. C+.

[HoshiChiri]

5: Tearaway (PS Vita)

 

Moved to mobile due to being down with something or other that's not letting me keep food down today. Such a good game. The vita needs more love.

Edited March 16, 2017 by HoshiChiri

[Punisher5.0]

Inspired by Cinemassacre's latest video, I just beat Mighty Morphing Power Rangers for SNES. It was easy but I had a lot of fun. Good graphics, good controls, no slowdown......I'd play it again.