Games Beaten In 2020.

[+thegoldenband]

40. Street Fighter: 2010 (NES)

 

I know this game has its defenders, but I found playing it to be a largely miserable experience. Inconsistent controls, tons of slowdown, claustrophobic stage design, infinitely respawning heat-seeking enemies, and an approach to power-ups which offers you precious little chance to enjoy them...what's to like, really? Is it just the graphics and the license that convince people that this has anything to offer? D.

 

41. DuckTales (NES)

 

Not quite as fun as it should be, and one of those games where learning the location of a few cheap deaths is the only thing standing between you and a cakewalk. I also don't like mandatory secrets, and never have. That said, there's enough TLC here to make it a good game on the whole, and of course there's the Moon theme. B.

 

42. Spelunker (NES)

 

It's such a tragedy that they mangled the controls on this port, because I really like cave exploration games in this vein, and I don't even care that much about the Action 52-esque "fall 3 feet and you're dead" mechanic. But when a task as routine as jumping from a rope leads to numerous unintentional deaths, something's gone badly wrong, and no amount of stage design can fully compensate for that. D+.

 

43. Puss ’n Boots: Pero’s Great Adventure (NES)

 

Undercooked shovelware with an unexpectedly cheap final boss. D.

 

44. Gumshoe (NES)

 

Gumshoe deserves a lot of credit for pulling off the world's unlikeliest gameplay mechanic and having it basically work. But you can't substitute timed enemy spawns for actual stage design with thoughtful enemy placement, and that leads to a lot of unfair deaths. Plus Zapper games constantly overestimate the responsiveness of the screen's edges: couldn't one QA tester have spoken up about that, somewhere along the way?

 

Still, I won't deny that the overall experience is essentially fair, and that beating Gumshoe was one of the more challenging and satisfying wins I've pulled off in recent memory. But it'd be nice to enjoy it a bit more, and have some feeling of progress and being rewarded for skillful play -- by which I suppose I mean the ability to earn extra lives, and persistent power-ups that show up more than once in a blue moon. C.

 

45. Marble Madness (NES)

 

Did a quick playthrough just for fun. Great port, though it's amazing how easy it seems now, after dealing with the punishing difficulty of the Mega Drive version. A.

 

46. Downland (CoCo 1/2)

 

Speaking of cave-exploration platformers, I think I've had this one in my life for at least 35 years, but only today did I finally beat it on real hardware. Unfortunately they ran out of room for an ending and just looped the game, which robs the win of some satisfaction, but so it goes.

 

Anyway, for a 1983 effort on a sprite-less machine, this has some uncommonly skillful stage design, and tries to be scrupulously fair, though cheap deaths do crop up here and there when an acid drop decides to spawn in your head. (Groovy, man -- like the rainbow patterns of the RF interference on my CoCo 2.) B+.

[Gibstov]

2. Half-Life 2 Episode 1

3. Half-Life 2 Episode 2

 

Beat Half-Life 2 a couple of years ago finally got around to playing episode 1 and 2.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 18, 2020 by Gibstov
formatting

[Nintendo64]

Rygar (NES) great game I think Ive beat this game like 3/4 times lately. The key is killing as many enemies/characters as possible and collecting power ups to get through this game.

 

Fire N Ice (NES) another great game that I just completed for the 2nd time this year.

 

Both of these titles are really good retro games to getting lost in.

[mbd30]

5 hours ago, Nintendo64 said:

Rygar (NES) great game I think Ive beat this game like 3/4 times lately. The key is killing as many enemies/characters as possible and collecting power ups to get through this game.

 

 

The robots are worth a lot of experience points. I like to max out my experience killing them and the rest of the game is a breeze.

Edited June 19, 2020 by mbd30

[+thegoldenband]

47. Cybermorph (Atari Jaguar)

 

Whether Cybermorph was an appropriate pack-in -- or a 64-bit showcase, or a Star Fox killer -- has no bearing on whether its methodical, slow-paced gameplay struck a chord with me. And, despite a host of minor flaws and a couple of major ones, it did. C+.

 

48. Kasumi Ninja (Atari Jaguar)

 

This, on the other hand, is utter trash whose only saving grace is its camp value and/or cheese factor. The controls lag or fail to respond, while the gameplay offers no challenge once you figure out how to jump kick (and occasionally crouch-kick) your way to success. D-.

 

49. Jaws (NES)

 

Surprised to realize I'd never actually beaten this, but dealing with the final battle against Jaws made it clear why, since the timing required is neither intuitive nor logical. Too bad it squanders so much goodwill, as the first half of the game is kind of fun, but the second half gets jellyfish-stung into joylessness. D+.

 

50. Amagon (NES)

 

I'd always been intrigued by this action-platformer ever since it got a mixed review in Nintendo Power. When I discovered emulation in the late 1990s one of the first things I did was to download a ROM of Amagon and, later, savestate my way through the game. Then in the late 2000s, when I started collecting real cartridges again, it was one of the very first NES carts I bought, for all of 50 cents at a yard sale outside a firehouse. However, I didn't sit down with Amagon for a proper playthrough until now, with a Blinking Light Win to keep the gremlins away.

 

And I find it as interesting as I could have hoped back in 1989, because Amagon is a very flawed but somehow charming game that's not quite like anything else I've played. It goes from punishingly hard to comically easy at the drop of a hat, and to some degree that depends on how well you play or how much you grind. It's full of cheap shots and unfair enemy spawns, yet as Megagon you can blow through the entire game (including the bosses), held back only by your luck in finding the transformation items. Or you can wind up totally destitute, without bullets and on your last life, with your ability to continue the game hanging by a thread -- and have that become your winning run, as I did.

 

Anyway, Amagon is one of those games whose existence enriches the NES library, even if it's hardly a masterpiece. It only took me a couple of hours to beat, and I'm not sure when I'll want to do so again. But the bright, colorful graphics and odd-duck vibe make it clear that, had I bought Amagon back in the day, I wouldn't have regretted the purchase. B-.

 

51. Renegade (NES)

 

A quirk of mine: when evaluating a game, I think we should factor in all difficulties it offers, not just the defaults. If a game has a hard mode, it should be designed to offer a tough but fair challenge that requires mastery of the game's mechanics without wasting the player's time. If a hard mode doesn't do that, it should count against the game, because no game should include challenges -- even implicit ones -- that make poor use of the player's time. It's better, in other words, to have one perfectly-tuned difficulty than to include three and have the hardest one be a cheap, time-wasting, RNG-dependent bastard. 

 

Renegade fails this test. Difficulty 1 is a fairly easy but vaguely amusing romp with a few interesting quirks, while Difficulty 2 is a challenging but manageable task that turns things up a notch.

 

Difficulty 3, though, is an offensively stupid waste of time. 80% of it is easy, repetitive crap that serves no purpose except to tire out the player's hands -- it's not harder, it just takes longer. The next 10% is a series of cheap shots that require exploits more than gameplay, though once you've got those exploits down, no challenge remains.

 

However, the remaining 10% is a right bastard. The game requires you, on two separate occasions, to beat six copies of a previous boss while dealing with a tight time limit, controls that mysteriously become non-responsive (probably thanks to slowdown), and an AI that actively seeks to avoid engaging your player except on its own terms. The only way to clear these rooms is to get lucky and have two of the enemies group together so that you can hit them both at once; otherwise you're certain to run out of time. And the only move that does enough damage also guarantees a lot of hit-trading with the AI, with skill becoming essentially irrelevant: you're at the mercy of the game's RNG.

 

Worst of all, this comes as part of a massive, confusing maze -- something present on earlier difficulties, but not nearly on the same scale. I worked out the mazes for Difficulties 1 & 2 myself, but for 3 I simply used a walkthrough, because I no longer trusted Renegade to offer a rewarding use of my time. A maze like that, in a game like this, is nothing short of video game busywork.

 

I want to like Renegade: I like beat-'em-ups, after all. It's got secrets, and a helpful manual that even gives out stage select codes and tells you how the item drops work (sort of). But by deliberately wasting the player's time, and pairing that with some of the ugliest spritework I've ever seen in any NES offering, it becomes a game you're glad to see in the rear-view mirror. D.

[8th lutz]

4.) Final Fantasy 2 - SNES

I only beaten the Playstation version before.

[8th lutz]

1 hour ago, 8th lutz said:

4.) Final Fantasy 2 - SNES

I only beaten the Playstation version before.

I know Final Fantasy is actually Final Fantasy 4, but that is how it was labeled for the North America SNES release at the time.

 

I known the game as Final Fantasy 4 for Playstation due to it being on one of the Final Fantasy Games on Final Fantasy Anthology. I beaten all the Final Fantasy games on Final Fantasy Origins, Final Fantasy Anthology, and  Final Fantasy Chronicles back in the 2000s.

 

 

[Nintendo64]

On 6/18/2020 at 10:27 PM, mbd30 said:

 

The robots are worth a lot of experience points. I like to max out my experience killing them and the rest of the game is a breeze.

That's good to know. Yeah I really enjoyed playing this game. Its funny I have the PS2 version of Rygar, but i just couldn't play it for more than 10 minutes, maybe I need to give it another try.

[mbd30]

10 hours ago, Nintendo64 said:

That's good to know. Yeah I really enjoyed playing this game. Its funny I have the PS2 version of Rygar, but i just couldn't play it for more than 10 minutes, maybe I need to give it another try.

 

I couldn't get into the PS2 Rygar either. But then I played the God of War games first, and they're so much better.

 

 

[+thegoldenband]

52. Bionic Commando (NES)

 

Bionic Commando does have a few minor flaws -- the experience system is crude, the level design has one or two stumbles, and the boss fights don't amount to much. But after playing through a streak of middling-to-poor games, it's nice to switch over to a very good, even excellent one. B+.

 

53. U-four-ia: The Saga (NES)

 

Appealing platformer, in the style the kids are calling "Metroidvania" these days. Other than being a bit short and easy, I really can't find anything to fault about U-four-ia. It plays and controls more or less perfectly, the stage design is refreshingly un-opaque, the music is an earworm, and I love the "switch characters to solve problems" mechanic. A.

 

54. Cybernoid (NES)

 

Beaten on all three difficulties -- Easy, Hard, and Lethal. It's got some good bones, but this is like a compendium of European game design sins, the most archetypical being the trade-off of tons of extra lives for tons of cheap deaths. Buggy as hell, too. D.

 

55. Castle of Dragon (NES)

 

Like Amagon, I was curious about this one back in the day and sought it out to emulate, but Castle of Dragon is a jankier affair with too many rough edges to click. However I really like the mechanic used by this game and its sequel: you don't get any continues, but when you start a fresh game, you keep your weapons and health bar upgrades from your previous playthrough. Clever! C-.

 

56. Rescue: The Embassy Mission (NES)

 

I completed the Jupiter mission on Commander difficulty but got a bad "hostage was wounded" ending, so I'll probably redo this one to at least get the "dead team member" ending.

 

As for the game, hard to grade since it's very low on content, but most of what's there is tight, appealing, and highly replayable. Still, it could have been a bit more than it is. B-.

 

EDIT: Several days later I went back and got that "dead team member" ending, and then -- to my pleasant surprise -- I was able to get the best ending shortly thereafter.

 

I think I slightly overrated this, as the opening level has some irritating flaws: the collision detection on the searchlights is really questionable (though maybe that's a product of being unable to do gradients on the NES); your character has to be far to the right to trigger the screen scrolling, which is obnoxious (though there's a kludgy workaround, at least when you're hiding, as going to the stage map will re-center the camera); and the searchlights start in the exact same place for every character, which is irritating as you can't make up time with your first sniper and your second sniper always has to wait 10 seconds just to get anywhere. So, let's call it a C+.

[+wongojack]

22 minutes ago, thegoldenband said:

53. U-four-ia: The Saga (NES)

 

Appealing platformer, in the style the kids are calling "Metroidvania" these days. Other than being a bit short and easy, I really can't find anything to fault about U-four-ia. It plays and controls more or less perfectly, the stage design is refreshingly un-opaque, the music is an earworm, and I love the "switch characters to solve problems" mechanic. A.

 

 

You tipped me off to this game once upon a time.  I think it was a PAL exclusive, but it worked fine on my NTSC NES with the PowerPak.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and agree with your assessment 100%.  Metroid fans owe it to themselves to play this.  Even the password system on this game is refreshingly nice.

 

 

I actually also have my own contribution to the thread and that is the ZX Spectrum classic Knight Lore.  I played this through the Rare Replay on Xbox One and really enjoyed it.  Although, the rewind feature built into the emulator used in RR really helped as some of the jumps seemed very unfair.  Anyway, if you can find a trained version of this game, I'd recommend it as something that kinda fits between Atari's Adventure and Nintendo's Zelda both chronologically and gameplay wise.

 

 

[+atari2600land]

2. Wario Land (Game Boy)

The final level fight with that dumb Genie is really stupid hard and so I had to use a Game Genie, but I beat it. Battle of the Genies. I won with mine.

[Nintendo64]

Strider 2 (PS1) I really enjoyed playing this game. I must say though, this might be one of the easiest games I have ever played. I couldn't find how many lives I had at any point in the game, and when I died it seemed I always had the ability to continue. I think much easier than Strider for the Sega genesis, but overall this is a fun relaxing game to play on the original Playstation

[mbd30]

23 hours ago, Nintendo64 said:

Strider 2 (PS1) I really enjoyed playing this game. I must say though, this might be one of the easiest games I have ever played. I couldn't find how many lives I had at any point in the game, and when I died it seemed I always had the ability to continue. I think much easier than Strider for the Sega genesis, but overall this is a fun relaxing game to play on the original Playstation

For more challenge you can try beating it without dying or using continues.

[Nintendo64]

2 hours ago, mbd30 said:

For more challenge you can try beating it without dying or using continues.

That's a good suggestion, but does this game really have unlimited continues though? It seemed like you got unlimited lives and continues when i played Strider 2.

[+atari2600land]

3. (!) Super Mario Bros. Deluxe (Game Boy Color)

I beat the adventure mode. level 8 star 4. Got the Bowser Medal. Fittingly, I did it on my NES-themed Game Boy Advance SP. I was worried I wouldn't be able to because the power light was red as I kept dying over and over again (used two continues), but I somehow managed to eke it out. I think I like the actual SMB better, as there's this dumb thing where pressing up makes the camera go up and I apparently like to press up a lot even though I don't press it, so the ground becomes invisible and I have to press down to make the camera go back down to the ground where it should be.

[+thegoldenband]

57. Bucky O'Hare (NES)

 

Bucky O'Hare is basically Konami's version of Mega Man -- I'm not sure why this reviewer insists it isn't, as the resemblances border on plagiarism at times.

 

Someone wisely noted that most "hidden gem" games usually have major flaws that kept them from peak status. Bucky's biggest issue is that it's an easy game with a few hair-pullingly frustrating spots. At least one of those requires prior memorization (i.e. it can't be beaten even with perfect reflexes), something I've come to really dislike.

 

So they give you unlimited continues and a very generous checkpoint and password system -- but that can't really replace good stage design. Then again, I suppose you can regard those stretches as a precursor of modern indie games that throw out "lives" in favor of unlimited attempts and brutal difficulty.

 

It's also got one of the most tedious boss fights I've experienced in recent memory (and no, it's not the giant ship fight, how could anyone spend a week on that?!).

 

That said, the game is quite good, even excellent, in almost every other way. (And that's a very deliberate "almost", as it commits at least one other serious sin: the number of typos in the game's script is atrocious!) B.

[+thegoldenband]

58. Journey to Silius (NES)

 

This game's reputation is something like "hidden gem, really difficult, great soundtrack". Right?

 

Except I don't agree with any of these, as Journey to Silius is no hidden gem, but a short and deeply flawed game whose difficulty is strictly a question of memorizing the locations (and consequences) of cheap enemy placement, leaps of faith, and unforeseeable death traps.

 

The gameplay itself is strictly meat-and-potatoes: if you approach it methodically, it can be beaten in under three hours of practice, as the levels are 100% linear and offer nothing particularly challenging or clever. The boss fights are simplistic, and often easier than the minibosses that come right before them: at least 2-3 bosses can be defeated without taking a hit by using extremely obvious patterns, while a couple of the preceding minibosses are a "cross your fingers and hope for the best" affair with forced hits and questionable hit detection.

 

The challenge in Journey to Silius, such as it is, comes instead from the cheap shots mentioned earlier. For example, you can ride an elevator into a new screen, only to get shot by the occupants while you're still trapped in the elevator animation, unable to move. Worse, you can get shot and killed by a boss after you've killed it off: fair enough, except that as soon as the boss goes into its death animation, the game paralyzes you. It's one thing to get sloppy after you've fired the killing shot and then get stung by a dead bee, but another thing to be forced into the role of a sitting duck.

 

Worst of all, there's a serious bug in the controls, one that I'm not sure anyone has described before and is 100% reproducible. If you turn around quickly and simultaneously try to jump, your character won't respond to the jump input if it happens during the turning animation. This has frequently led me, and countless others no doubt, straight off a cliff or into a charging enemy. In a game with this much platforming, that's basically unforgivable.

 

I could go on with the flaws in Journey to Silius, e.g. how having one energy meter for all your guns robs the game of the strategic weapon usage that makes the Mega Man series so rewarding, or how the final level is essentially cheap-shot garbage ne plus ultra, designed to prolong a game with little content. Or I could note that the pumpin' soundtrack may be impressive on a technical level, but not one tune from it has stuck with me or caught my attention.

 

People who rave about Journey to Silius may be responding to its technical prowess, but have they really tried to play the damn thing, start to finish? It's just not much fun, and yet doesn't have much meat on the bone either. Who cares if it looks and sounds sexy, if it can't perform? D+.

[+thegoldenband]

59. Earnest Evans (Genesis)

 

This game is a giant pile of jank, but I have a certain amount of affection for it. Earnest is an awkward marionette, the stage design is all over the place, and the controls are out of their mind (why does jumping while lying down make you go into an unstoppable full-screen roll?!).

 

Yet it's got the same kind of sprawling, loopy ambition and flashes of inspiration that typify Wolf Team games at their best. And that's why I'm going to give it a slightly higher grade than Journey to Silius (blasphemy!), because Earnest Evans is trying to be something special, while Journey to Silius didn't make that effort on any level except presentation. C-.

[Steven Pendleton]

So I think it's been a while since I was in here and I don't remember all of the games that I've played since then, but I do remember beating Earthworm Jim Special Edition twice, Sonic 3 Complete, the second loop of Akumajou Dracula (SFC), and last night the cart version of Earthworm Jim, which I think is considerably more difficult than the CD version for some reason.

[HoshiChiri]

Pretty sure I've forgotten to enter one or two, so I'll just pick up from here!

 

2) Animal Crossing: New Horizons

 

A great time killer during lockdown, but honestly? If it weren't for that I might not have picked it up. I usually avoid these kind of daily check-in games. It's not bad! Just not a staple of my gaming diet.

 

3) Yakuza Kiwami

 

How did I not play this until now?! This is amazing! I have never played a game so familiar and so surprising all at once! You can go from cradling a bloody, dying loved one to racing toy cars to help a man get married within 30 minutes! It's ridiculous! It's fantastic! I already bought a copy of part 2! ?

[8th lutz]

5.) Ys Book 1 & 2 - Turbografx 16 Mini

I've beaten this version of Ys 1 & 2 before on the Wii Virtual game console. There is no difference. I've always been a fan of the sound track of the tg-16 version and always enjoy the old bump system Ys used to have.

 

 

Edited July 26, 2020 by 8th lutz

[HoshiChiri]

4) AVICII Invector

 

One of the ones I forgot- I picked this up when it was on sale for $5 from Gamestop... I paid $4 since I had my pro member coupon so I only needed to cover shipping. And it was SO worth it! The story is kind of pointless, but the gameplay is solid. Plus, I love the music- makes me a little sad that I never heard of this guy until this posthumous game. If you like rhythm games, this is a solid buy (especially given it's often on sale!)

[Steven Pendleton]

Sonic 3 Complete

 

Done as Knuckles in one sitting on the Nomad in 2 hours and 19 minutes. Not a world record time, but I got everything and ended with 96 lives, which took some time. I wasn't trying to torture myself, so I took the battery pack off, essentially halving the Nomad's weight, but the Nomad still gets heavy quickly. Maybe next time I'll leave it on just to see how uncomfortable it gets. I also had some fun and took Knuckles through Sonic's Marble Garden Act 2 and fought Sonic's boss. Ever seen Tails carrying Knuckles?

 

 

You have now...

 

In case you don't know, this can be done in regular Sonic 3 & Knuckles, as well. I also took Knuckles into Sonic's Lava Reef Act 1, Mushroom Hill Act 1, and Carnival Night Act 2 and fought Sonic's Carnival Night Act 2 boss. I tried to go through Sonic's Carnival Night Act 1 and Sonic's Lava Reef Act 2, but getting into Carnival Night Act 1 is annoying and potentially time consuming and I failed both of the only 2 chances you have to get into Lava Reef Act 2, so I skipped those. In normal Sonic 3 & Knuckles, you can get Knuckles into both Acts of Sonic's Ice Cap and even do a cool and fun glitch to skip the Act 1 boss entirely and finish Act 2 in under 1 second, but this was unfortunately fixed in Sonic 3 Complete, so I wasn't able to take those routes, although I would have if it was possible.

Edited July 27, 2020 by Steven Pendleton

[digdugnate]

Thanks to the re-release on Switch Online, I finished out Donkey Kong Country in the past couple of weeks, woo.

 

I remember before the game's release we were mailed a VHS tape(!) of trailers/interviews/gameplay of the game.  The tape did its job because shortly after release I bought a copy with money earned from yardwork/working at Hastings Video.  It seems like I remember that particular cartridge being nearly $70 but my memory is fuzzy.