Games Beaten In 2020.

[4300]

Just beat Streets of Rage 4 on the switch

[8th lutz]

I beaten a bunch of games since I last posted on this thread.

 

6.) Striker Gunner S.T.G - SNES

It was a fun shooter.

 

7.) Darius Twin - SNES

It was a decent shooter to me although I played better.

 

8.) Castlevania: Dracula X - SNES

The First time I beaten the game. It is not as good as the Turbo version.

 

9.) Castlevania - NES

First time I beaten the game. It was not a bad game in its era.

 

10.) Guerrilla War - NES

It is was the first time I beaten the game. It was good game and it was beaten in 2 player mode.

 

Edited September 12, 2020 by 8th lutz

[ColecoKing]

Just beat a ton of PS1 platformer, Mega Man x4-x6, Rayman 2, Toomba, Crash Bandicoot 1, Symphony of Night, Bubsy 3D.

Tried to beat Rayman 1 but I don't think that's possible. Wonderful graphics, best music on the console which may be why the tracks are so short, beautiful colors and animation, game design is garbage. Lightning bolt eye guys hit me when they clearly miss, spikes kill me when I am clearly not on them. Bah.

[+atari2600land]

Geez, how much did you pay for Toomba? A couple hundred dollars?

4. I beat Mario Kart 64. I beat mirror mode special cup with Peach and saw the end credits. Too bad I've done it many times before, but hey. It's my favorite video game.

[+thegoldenband]

67. Mahjong Solitaire (Sega SG-1000)

 

Really nice homebrew from Under4MHz that offers "Shanghai"-style tile matching, and does so impeccably. Try it yourself! If it doesn't already have a version of Shanghai, a ColecoVision port of this seems like a natural idea. A.

[+thegoldenband]

68. Chack'n Pop (Sega SG-1000)

 

Very demanding single-screen platformer with significant puzzle elements. The SG-1000 port of this Bubble Bobble predecessor is much better than the Famicom version in just about every way, but I do wish they'd dialed back a couple of the player-unfriendly elements. In particular, the abundance of "walking dead" scenarios in later levels gets old fast. B.

 

69. Wheel of Fortune: Junior Edition (NES)

70. Wheel of Fortune: Family Edition (NES)

71. Wheel of Fortune: Featuring Vanna White (NES)

72. Wheel of Fortune (NES)

 

After I tried running Gyruss on my EverDrive and got a near-instant crash, I figured I'd run through a Wheel of Fortune game to see if the issue was with my NES. I ended up doing all four, with the same settings across the board: hardest difficulty, 2 CPU opponents, final puzzle solved correctly.

 

It's bizarre that the NES has four distinct WOF games. Three of them are quite similar, though, with the original game and Family Edition getting a C+ for their superior presentation, while Junior Edition gets a C- for its sparser, cheaper feeling. Family Edition took me about 25 minutes to beat, the others under 10 minutes each.

 

However, the Vanna White game is a stinker by comparison, with much slower gameplay (it took an hour to beat) and a revised interface that conceals the operation of the wheel from the players. Perhaps not coincidentally, it seems as though the CPU cheats: compared to my 9-10 Bankrupts and Lose a Turns, the CPU only got one.

 

It also doesn't warn you when you've reached the final round, and...I dunno, it just kinda sucks. D-.

 

73. Cabal (NES)

 

Good, clean, mindless fun, this cover-based shooter is an easy game masquerading as a hard one. It'd be nice if there were more to it, but then again sometimes it's nice to have a game that doesn't offer "more". Gotta love the bowlegged victory dance too. C+.

[HoshiChiri]

9. Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch)

 

Despite the shiny new look, this was just a big old blast of nostalgia. I played the crap out of this as a kid, it was fun to revisit it! Now... to go back and steal from the shopkeep, just to see what it looks like now! ?

[+thegoldenband]

74. Millipede (NES)

 

Going by the standards used by beat-every-game projects, I "beat" this by clearing Round 16 on both A and B difficulties, after which the content apparently loops (more or less). Not going to rate it, but it's a moderately entertaining port that's on the easy side -- in both cases, I made Round 25 or so on my first try. n/a

 

75. Gyruss (NES)

 

One of the first games I ever "beat", but that was back around 1989 with the 30-life code. This time I did it legit, and boy, did I need every extra life I earned along the way, as I was down to my last ship when I finally beat the end boss.

 

Up to that point, however, the game really isn't that tough -- I went into that boss battle with 5-6 lives in reserve -- and doesn't deserve its reputation for punishing difficulty: I beat it on only my second attempt. It certainly plays well, but occasionally enemy projectiles were almost impossible to see, and I don't know that I enjoy edge-crowding mechanics or mostly-invulnerable enemy types in a game like this. But that's getting very picky. B+.

 

76. Jeopardy! Junior Edition (NES)

 

Happened to have a cart for this, so I thought I should play it. Most of the challenge was in figuring out that you use the D-pad to ring in (so annoying to miss out on answering that first clue!), or in understanding the format the computer expected (if the clue was something like "THIS IS EIGHT OUNCES", the required response was "1 CUP", not just "CUP").

 

Otherwise I just started hitting the buzzer before I even saw the question...uh, answer...and won by, I don't know, $12k to $900 or something like that (the other CPU player ran out of money before Final Jeopardy). It's competent, but not really meant for me, so how can I grade it? n/a

[4300]

Titanfall 2.

[8th lutz]

11.) Cabal - Nes 

I've played a plenty of Nes games that are better, but this is a good game.

 

12.) A Nightmare on Elm Street - Nes

This is the best Ljn Nes game ever. The controls are not bad for this game.

Edited October 5, 2020 by 8th lutz

[HoshiChiri]

10. Yakuza Kiwami 2 (PS4)

 

At this point, y'all know I've fallen hard for this series, so I'll just say- I've NEVER been so annoyed/tense during the credits, waiting for the post-scroll cutscene! 

 

I've already started Yakuza 3... and Good Lordy, is it obvious that this one's a remaster instead of a remake! I mean, it's not gonna stop me from playing (not by a LONG shot), but it's jarring to play a sequel that looks older than its predecessor, y'know?

[4300]

Halo 5

Gears Ultimate Edition

[8th lutz]

13.) Kid Klown in Night Mayor World - Nes

 

 

[+thegoldenband]

77. Space Griffon VF-9 (PlayStation)

 

Giant mech games are a good fit for me, and for early 3D: their slow-moving nature means frame rate issues and motion sickness aren't usually a factor. And as someone who struggles with fast-paced first-person shooters with large multi-level maps, I don't mind -- in fact, I actively enjoy -- a game that enforces the kind of measured, methodical style of play that would certainly bore a FPS veteran.

 

But after a reasonable start, Space Griffon VF-9 flushes any goodwill I might have down the toilet. The combat is dull and one-dimensional, and its few attempts at strategy or depth only serve to annoy the player. The design seems to present you with huge, sprawling levels but keeps you completely on rails 95% of the time, with unskippable animated cutscenes and multiple forced sequences in which you lose control of your character but still take damage (!).

 

And worst of all, what gameplay is present is interrupted constantly -- and I do mean constantly -- by some of the most asinine, haltingly-delivered, poorly-localized, poorly-edited dialogue I've ever heard. In the first half of the game it's tolerable, but by the second half, you're literally getting interrupted every five steps by incessant, juvenile whining from one of several characters, including your own.

 

Every line is cringeworthy, and every one is followed by a lengthy silence. And no, you can't skip any of it, save for the occasional cutscene that consists of "five minutes of still images with non-synchronized mouth movements", but one of those drops a mission-critical passcode so you really can't skip any of it. By the end of the game I was literally saving after every bit of dialogue, just to ensure I wouldn't have to hear it again in case I had to reload for some reason (like the game's charming weapon-breaking mechanic).

 

So, congrats, Space Griffon VF-9: you've combined the worst aspects of an early FPS, a cookie-cutter RPG, and a bad visual novel, and you've managed to rip off Alien and Star Wars in so doing.

 

It appalls me that this game gets better reviews than something like Kileak: The DNA Imperative, which may not be terribly inspired but at least doesn't go out of its way to waste the player's time. But I guess anything with young Japanese girls will always get a massive bonus from a certain kind of reviewer (one whose browser history I'm better off not knowing). F.

[+thegoldenband]

78. Evil Zone (PlayStation)

 

Story Mode beaten on all three difficulties, with Kakurine.

 

This is another game likely to appeal far more to Japanophiles and anime fans, but at least Evil Zone is trying to do something different. It's literally a two-button fighting game -- with one of those buttons only used to block! -- and all its special moves involve simple directional presses, timed with a bit of care, rather than complex inputs involving quarter-circles and whatnot.

 

It also uses an interesting mechanic, somewhat akin to the "desperation moves" in Art of Fighting: you can unleash a particularly deadly attack if you've charged up enough energy, and the lower your health gets, the faster you can charge up. It's a very "German board game" thing to do, in that it keeps matches competitive until the end.

 

Still, the fighting is OK enough, but the simplicity has its downsides -- I didn't feel the level of control that I do with Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat II, Virtua Fighter, et al. I'm also not the biggest fan of fighting games where you can block special moves without taking damage, since that tends to favor the CPU and lead to endless projectile spamming. And I got tired of the 5- to 10-second animations for my opponent's special attacks: if my character is already near-zero on health and their fate is a foregone conclusion, I don't want to waste my time watching the details.

 

Finally, the terrible, overmodulated audio on the dubbing, the lousy manual, and the bizarre, cheesy-looking story segments take their toll: I'm guessing Evil Zone was a labor of love, but those shortcomings give it a "rushed, Japanese-exclusive 3DO game" quality, if you know what I mean. Sometimes you really need to hire a good graphic designer and audio engineer. C-.

[+thegoldenband]

79. Simple 1500 Series Vol. 56: The Sniper (PlayStation)

 

What an odd duck of a game. It's got tons of dialogue sequences (in Japanese), a jazzy soundtrack, unique voiceovers each time you save between levels, and opening and closing credits that play before and after every level. Especially for a Simple 1500 game, it's got buckets of style.

 

All these lavish trappings, however, are only to obscure the fact that -- when you come down to it -- this game consists of eight QTEs and basically nothing else. Yes, you can customize your position and the time of day, but you're ultimately just lining up a target in your sights, shooting them, and that's the level. Only in the last two levels do things get trickier, with small additional twists required, but it's very basic stuff.

 

However the game had one last surprise, as after the final credit roll, it revealed that the game's practice mode can, with the push of the SELECT button, be transformed into a totally psychopathic mass murder mode. Instead of the assassin's clean task of sniping one enemy target with a single bullet, you're expected to shoot as many as 12 mafiosi, or yakuza, or whatever they are, who are ambling about the streets minding their own business.

 

Wearing a suit? It's bullets for you! Plus in every stage there are two men who, on hearing the gunshots, crouch and freeze in terror. Are you expected to shoot them too? You sure are, you heartless bastard! And in the last few of these stages, the game actually becomes a bit clever -- far more clever than the main story mode -- as you have to strategize carefully and move accurately to hit all your targets...or indeed, to find them at all.

 

This sort of thing probably hasn't aged well, given the events of the last 25 years, but it elevates The Sniper from something too flimsy for words, to something with at least a bit of rewarding gameplay to offer. It's a bad game, or at least a bad value-for-dollar, but I kind of like it anyway.

 

By the way, the game is largely in Japanese, but I used my phone to translate onscreen text and spoken dialogue. While I missed 25% of the text and 90% of the dialogue (no, phone, the female antagonist probably didn't shout "Chinese cabbage!"), I was able to get just enough to make it work. D+.

[HoshiChiri]

11. Yakuza 3 Remastered (PS4)

12. Vitamin Connection (Switch)

 

Moving right along with my Yakuza binge. This one was jarring to start, given it's a remaster instead of a remake like the first two- it was VERY noticeable. Still a great game!

 

Vitamin Connection is cute, with some nice music (if techno pop is your thing). Heck of a difficulty spike at the final boss- not too crazy, but since the rest of the game is so forgivingly easy it made it seem worse than it was. It's also designed for 2 player, so it might be good for co-op play with older kids (I think younger ones would struggle a bit with the asymmetrical gameplay).

[+thegoldenband]

80. Simple 1500 Series Vol. 79: The Shisenshou (PlayStation)

 

Shisenshou is a mahjong tile-matching game, and I rather like it. Back in 2016 I played through a Game Boy implementation, Shisenshou: Match-Mania, with 60 carefully curated levels that make it into a kind of puzzle game (the last levels were quite tricky!).

 

This PlayStation version, by contrast, has very little content: just time attack and score attack modes, plus an easy mode for learning the game. By way of bells and whistles there's a hint button, which you can use four times -- but otherwise you're just completing a randomly generated board, and that's that.

 

However, if you complete the board 6 times in score attack mode, you unlock a version of the game where the tiles fall after each match, either downward or in different directions (I never nailed down what triggered gravity to change directlon).

 

These modes are so rife with combos that it almost plays out like a parody of an action-puzzle game: at one point I made one move, and then got to wait over 60 seconds while a 30+ step combo played itself out automatically, complete with fireworks and lightning storms.

 

Completing those two extra modes gives you nothing but a "you won" message -- you can't even save your scores in these modes -- so there's not much meat on the bone here. The basic gameplay is fine, but doesn't really go anywhere, and games like solitaire and Shanghai offer a deeper experience, as does the Game Boy title I mentioned above. D.

[+thegoldenband]

81. Double Dragon (PlayStation)

 

Beat this Japanese-exclusive Neo Geo port on all four difficulties, as Jimmy Lee.

 

Very Easy and Easy were pretty much a cakewalk, while Normal put up stiff resistance. But by the time I completed my playthrough on Difficult, I'd figured out a pattern that devastated most opponents: double-jump backwards and forwards, come in with a jump kick until you back them into a corner, then follow your jump kick with a couple of jabs and a low sweep to knock them down.

 

For variety you can throw in a "set yourself on fire" charge move if you want, but otherwise special moves aren't necessary. With that in hand I beat the game's two boss characters on my first try. Does the same pattern work in the Neo Geo original? Maybe I'll try it.

 

On Normal (didn't try it on Difficult) I was also able to eke out some wins on time by trapping opponents in a corner and spamming low kicks, causing them to hold a defensive crouch indefinitely, even if I had more health than them. Cheesy, but all's fair.

 

Anyway, this port seems fine and plays well, but the loading times are annoying, especially the inability to retry a match immediately without waiting 30-45 seconds to change my character (don't want to) and reload the stage I was just in (why is that necessary?). And there's the perennial paradox of fighting games: the moment when it "clicks" and you find a pattern that works is also the moment when the game no longer has much to offer.

 

C-, would be C+ without the loading times.

 

[Silverfleet]

 Despite there being a pandemic and working from home since March, I haven't had much time for gaming. With winter coming and my home office outfitted with lots of gaming goodness, I've been playing more. Last night, I decided to tackle a game I've never finished. 

Mega Man 4 (NES):


It's not my favorite of the original 6 NES Mega Man games, but it was solid nonetheless. Definitely provided a decent challenge. This one's been sitting on the shelf for a long time, so it was nice to finally play through it. 

And while I was at it...

Mega Man 2 (NES):


This one IS my favorite of the NES Mega Man games. It might even be my favorite NES game of all, and absolutely in my top 10 of all time. I finished it on Normal, mainly because I just wanted to blow through it. I usually run through this one once a year. Such an incredible game. 
 

[Silverfleet]

Another one down!

Mega Man 6 (NES):





Another one I've had on the shelf forever but never played through. I really liked this one. The boss robots were cool looking and the level design was really great with the branching paths in most stages. The changes they made to how Rush works were interesting as well.

I've now finished all 6 NES Mega Man titles. Cross that off the bucket list.

[+thegoldenband]

82. Mega-Bug (Tandy CoCo)

 

I don't usually think of arcade-style games as something to "beat". But the win condition on this one is so clear-cut (empty the maze of pellets), and the reward for doing so is such an unambiguous victory cutscene ("We'll get you next time!" say the ants), that it's hard not to feel as though one beat the game even though it loops afterward (without any increase in difficulty, I don't think?).

 

As for the game itself, it's a nice technical achievement and plays well, though the combination of having only one life + a randomly (procedurally?) generated maze with dead ends = a recipe for unavoidable GAME OVERs, which is a minor downer. Great speech sample and music, though, and a classy presentation overall. B.

 

EDIT: Oops, there's a higher difficulty level I need to beat, per the manual. Well, I'll still count the win for now, but I plan to return to this game!

[+wongojack]

Hey, I have a contribution to the thread!

 

Star Trek 25th Anniversary Edition for the original Gameboy.  This is a nice little multi-stage game that combines a sort-of shmump style sequence with and overhead explore sequence.  It was a notable game for me because my brother and I bought it almost 30 years ago, and I finally got back to seriously playing it over the Thanksgiving week.

[player1"NOT"ready]

This took a few attempts but I did win against my Atari 2600 In chess.

This was at the beginning of the covid outbreak.

Than the movie The Queen's Gambit came out.

Now chess is all the rage now.

(A great show B.T.W. Anya Taylor-Joy did just an outstanding job.)

After that I've tried to play. Get a few moves into the game and loose interest. Have to turn it off.

In middle school I was obsessed with this game. Now I couldn't tell you haw to castle. 

But I digress.. I beat my Atari.. Yea Me...

[+thegoldenband]

6 hours ago, player1"NOT"ready said:

This took a few attempts but I did win against my Atari 2600 In chess.

That's a pretty slick checkmate to pull off, especially given that you were down a Queen and Rook (for a Knight and Pawn), and with Black about to launch its own mating attack after 1...Qd1+ (though I don't see an immediate checkmate after 2. Bg1 Bf2 3. Nh3). Well done!