RF Generation Message Board

Hey All,

singlebanana and I have been scheming in the background for a bit with an idea we want to try out here. We want to do an RFGeneration NES Challenge where we rally the community to play through the entire NES library in 2019 as a collective group. The idea is for us to encourage each other to dig deep into the library and experience games we've had on our backlogs for years, try new genres that we've been neglecting, see what all the fuss is about for games that have notoriety (both good and bad!), and just to talk about and experience the library of this amazing system as a group of friends helping each other succeed.

I'm going to have a lot more information about how exactly this will work up in the next few days as I make some final tweaks to the challenge, but the basic idea is that we will have monthly targets we will try our best to hit to keep our completion rate on track, there will be a master list of all the NES games that will be crossed off as the games are beaten and a forum thread in the Community Playthroughs section dedicated to discussing the games being played, asking for help, looking for recommendations, sharing triumphs and failures and giving credit to any members who participate.

This post is a bit of an interest check so if this sounds like something you'd like to take part in please speak up and ask questions or just state your interest. Hope to see most of you playing some NES games with us starting on January 1st!!

I'm in it to win it. Also, you really need to update your signature. That show link is really out of date.

Retro is cool again

Sounds fun.

I'm down. Still plenty of NES games I need to play, and would also love to revisit some favorites.

This sounds like just what I need to relieve some work stress.  Definitely interested in the details as they become available.

So happy to see some interest right off the bat like this!!

I did this with a Sega Genesis on Sega 16 one year I'm up for this

Might be a good motivator to knock out some backlog titles.

Same! Now that my NES collection has grown to around 200 games, I'm sure there are a handful I could take on that I've never touched before, or a few that taunt me to play them to completion.

Got ourselves a good looking crew already!!

Here's the thread with most of the info up. When you guys have a chance to read it over please do and let me know if anything needs clarification or if you have any other questions.

http://www.rfgeneration.com/forum/index.php?topic=18893.msg260505#msg260505

I'm down of course. Great set up on the other page Crabby!  Super organized. I'll be down for knocking out some titles starting in January!

I would love to participate in this.  The only downfall is my schedule is very hectic for next few months or at least until mid Feb.  I might only be able to do a few games in Jan. and Feb.

If that's ok.  I'm game.  Sounds like a lot of fun.

Every little bit helps.

Any time you can spend with us would be greatly appreciate. I imagine many of us are going to have a busy month or two pop up through out the year so just participate as you are able to. It's a big library and there will still be plenty of games left to play even after a few months if you can't join us at the start of the year. I know your collection is pretty hefty too so you personally will have tons of options for games to play.  

The thread looks great, good job putting it together! I'm glad to see that it looks like using Everdrives is fair game according to the rules. I only own about 100 or so NES carts (a lot for most people, but paltry compared to most of you guys), so I'll probably need to emulate some titles.

Really looking forward to this! Bring on 2019!

Everdrives are not a problem. I want as many of you guys to participate as possible so excluding stuff like that seemed silly.  All I ask is that you play them as if it were an real NES cart. So no save states/cheats/mods/etc

Might chip in a couple of the year as I do them anyway.

Where’s the PAL exclusives though?

Very interested to see how games will be "claimed".  I won't lie, I have a few favorites  I hope I can contribute to the effort.

We actually discussed this! If guys think you can do it, and it's not too overwhelming, we consider adding them, or making them a bonus.

As 🍌 said we did indeed discuss adding PAL and Famicom exclusives. We decided to keep the list as manageable as possible thus making our success more likely and one way to do that was to keep the smallest amount of titles as possible. A lot of PAL exclusives are really good games though so it wasn't an easy decision. If we are on track to complete this challenge I would like to maybe add them on as a stretch goal later in the year though.


We don't want multiple people both investing time simultaneously into long or challenging games. We are gonna make better progress without stepping on each other's toes so we thought we should implement a "claim" system to avoid that. How it would work is each participant could "claim" one title at a time that they would have priority to complete. You would still be free to beat other non-claimed games while you are working on your "claim" though.

For example perhaps I really wanted to play a long RPG like one of the Ultima games. I could "claim" Ultima Exodus and while I have it claimed no one else can count it as a completion, but the expectation would be that I'm making continual progress towards finishing it. As long as I checked in every so often to show I'm still plugging away at it no problem. If I fail to follow up on my progress or decide I'm overwhelmed and need to stop playing it'll be added back to the regular community list again and available to everybody. While I'm playing Ultima Exodus I could still take a day or two here and there to knock other titles off the list though, so if no one else had claimed or beaten Double Dragon I could work on both of those simultaneously if I wanted.

I hope that all makes sense. I didn't intend for it to sound so complicated so to boil it down:

Claiming a game makes it exclusively yours to beat until you succeed or give up. 1 claim per player at a time. Please let me know if I didn't explain that very well.

Right after X-Mas, Dec.26, I'll start taking claims in the community playthroughs thread. All you'll need to do is post:

Name of Game - Claimed

Example:

Fisher Price Firehouse Rescue - Claimed
(Took a stab at Singlebanana's most likely claim)

Thanks, Crabby! I didn't want to sound greedy, but I definitely have my eye on some titles. Sounds like you have a good system for claims, though. Looking forward to it!

So do I! I do want people to play what they want, but I also dont want someone to hog a whole series that others may want to dabble in....except for Bases Loaded. Whoever wants to play all the Bases Loaded games is more than welcome to :)

Just a thought, but could we possibly claim two games at a time as long as one is a longer game like an RPG or sports title that we can chip away at in the background. So one title that can be done in one sitting and another with a season/long length?

How would we need to prove that we beat it? Do we need to record these or would a picture of the end screen with a paper showing your username and the date suffice?

I think that simply a pic of the beaten qualifier: end screen, stage number, score, etc. is fine, since some screens are quick and really, this is for fun, not going for any records or anything here. Standard site honor system.

Banana nailed it. If you want to a video is great, but a pic of whatever is presented post game is totally fine. Keep in mind for high score games most games will flash the highscore screen again if you let the title screen sit in case you miss yours the first time.

What about dealing with games that are a never-ending loop? RC Pro-Am comes to mind, but there's lots of titles that fit this. I guess I am unsure what constitutes "beating" this type of game.

Check out the Community Playthroughs post. There is a "Victory Conditions" section that outlines most of the non-obvious conditions for "beating" a game. RC Pro Am is specifically mentioned there, but if you find one I missed I can update that section


http://www.rfgeneration.com/forum/index.php?topic=18893.0


General rule of thumb for games that loop is to experience every part of the game. Sometimes that means see all enemy types (Joust), all level types (Spy Hunter) or beating the preset highscore (Highspeed)

I've had a few people ask about claiming games already. I was going to wait until December 26th, but that's just an arbitrary date. Do you guys want me to open it up right now and you can all start staking your claim on the first NES games you want to work on in January?

Meh, let's just wait. We don't need the temptation of starting early. Ha ha

Post Blaster Master I am terrible at most NES games now.  That being said, if there any way we can get restrictions lifted on controllers with a Turbo function?  I plan on playing with my Advantage on NES and my SN30 Pro for emulation, and both have turbo functionality

I don't want to speak for crabby on this issue, but my thoughts on it are: if there are controllers you feel more comfortable with that have a turbo feature you can use them, but do not use the turbo feature. I'm assuming that's what you're asking bomba, but if not let me know.

With other similar questions guys, think about it this way, we're doing this on and honor System mostly. I understand that there's no reward or achievement we can get for accomplishing this goal. However, going against any of the established rules or cheating would make such an accomplishment feel very hollow. There's no reason to go against the rules or cheat, so just don't do it.

Had a bit of a chat with Banana and I agree that maybe I'm being a bit too restrictive with controllers. Use whatever you want as long as you're not using extra features such as a Turbo Mode or Slow Motion.

As for being "terrible at most NES games" there are a fair amount of games that are easy completions or are slower more methodical games and don't require quick reflexes or learning enemy patterns or the things that usually make these games hard. If you want suggestions for quick or simple game completions please ask. At this point I've beaten over 350+ NES games so I feel like I can make solid recommendations no matter what style of games you're into.

 :freakboy:

Nice.  I've been practicing on 1942, and man is my SN30 getting a workout.  I am onboard for this thing (maybe my kid too), just need to figure out where I can fit in.  Thanks for running this, though.

Glad to have yo and possibly your spawn in on this! Having you take down 1942 would be awesome. Not an easy game

This is an awesome idea!  with 600+ NES games i need to place a ton of games and this is a great way to play some NES games I have not yet.  Is this only for licensed games?  I'm in!

Awesome Shaggy! Was hoping you'd join in. Yes it is licensed only. If we can manage our goal I'm happy to discuss tackling unlicensed and regional exclusives also

That's fine with me.  There are already so many games I want to play but haven't  I already know what I want to start claiming.  :laugh:

Ugh, this is killing me.  I want to start now!

Lol, me too!! I was wandering my game room yesterday looking for something to play for the next 2 weeks and I kept drifting over to my NES and had to force myself away from it. Gonna be a long couple weeks!

Lol, I was thinking the same.  I finished 1942 yesterday and started on Bad Dudes before making myself stop.

That makes you a good dude , you can have a cheeseburger with my president any time :)

Just a heads up that once we start the challenge on the 1st we are going to lock this thread so that we can keep all of the discussion in one area once we start.

Please post all your relevant posts over here from now on:

http://www.rfgeneration.com/forum/index.php?topic=18893.0

Question about emulation... For options like the Switch NES service or the NES Classic, is it acceptable to use a save state where a continue would get you normally for games, such as Ninja Gaiden or Ghosts N Goblisn, with unlimited continues? Not talking about mid-stage save states.

I would like to say no using save states in such a manor, but leaving a system on standby would be equivalent to leaving your NES on so that would be acceptable. Save states would be fine for something like Castlevania 3 in leiu of writing down a password as long as it's used on the password screen. For games like you mentioned I feel like the intention is to play them in one sitting and even though you could leave your system on indefinitely save states kind of corrupts that.

I'm not set in stone on that though. What's everybody else's thoughts?

]

My opinion with this would be the same as yours (Crabby) and Rich's with using controllers with turbo and slo-mo functionality: Since this is really just for fun (and everything we do has to be on the honor system), we should treat it as such.  Personally, I am not against it as long as it is used in lieu of a "sleep" or "standby" function on a handheld (when one needs to take extended spaces of time away from the game for whatever reason).  I don't plan on using them, but that is also because I emulate on laptops, so if I need to run, I can just pause the emulator and sleep the laptop ;)

I agree with, Crabby.

I don't see it as an issue using save stats. Like above, this is for fun.

Also in the main post can we have links to the other threads about this?

It is for fun, but it's also a challenge to see if we can legit beat the NES library so I think that's why I see the save states as spoiling that intention because of course we can beat the entire library with a Game Genie or other outside exploits.

Feel free to link away!!

How many people here have the Miracle Piano?

Yeah that one is gonna be tricky. If we can get close enough I may be willing to purchase myself one to finish the challenge off.

I’ve got one and all the parts other than the power lead. It’s a hell of a lot rarer over here in Britain though so I’ve been trying to piece it together from eBay auctions for a few years now

I have one. Need to see what parts I have for it though. I think I may have everything but the foot pedal, but I can look.

I have the Genesis one, I need to make an NES cord.  I will also look at the power block to see what you. Need