RFGen 2019 NES Challenge

[Crabmaster2000]

@bombatomba - I had a very similar experience with Hydlide. I had it as a kid (pretty sure my parents meant to get my Zelda and got my Hydlide for my birthday instead), and could never get anywhere. I tried it again like a decade later and got barely any further. Eventually I just felt like I also needed closure and eventually made it my mission to beat that stupid game. If you use a guide it's not super long or too terrible......until the final encounter. Even with your character maxed out with every item and max level it's a crazy hard final battle. Had to save and restart that final dozens of times until I was able to finally finish Hydlide. Felt real good though. Hope you can get the same closure!!


I had another 4 game night tonight!! Took down: Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf, Muppet Adventure Chaos at the Carnival, Golf Power, and Mechanized Attack.

Fighting Golf was super hard. I played several hours of it yesterday (and you only have to win a 9 hole game against the cpu) and only had one run that was close and I chocked at the end. Today I had a very fortunate match early on. I didn't get particularly better at the game, but the cpu just struggled like I've never seen. At one point only a few holes into the round he just stated hitting the ball out of bound repeatedly until it forced him to give up the hole. That gave me a good buffer early on, but even beyond that he hit over half the bunkers and even went in the water on one hole. I played mostly ok, but wouldn't have beat him if he was playing at the normal cpu level. I'll take a victory however I can get it though

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Muppet Adventure was just really bad. You play through 4 different games looking for keys to unlock the final stage and save Ms. Piggy. All 4 of the games look bad, play bad and drag on way too long. The last stage is a mess of a platformer in which Kermit holds a feather for some reason. I jumped up too high and the got stuck outside of the level in the final stage and was very upset that I was going to have to restart the whole mess of a game I had just went through, but thankfully after mashing some buttons I think select exited the level for me to reselect it and start over making sure to stay lower to the ground the next time. I like the Muppets so it was sad to see them treated so poorly.

[img width=640 height=479]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48178834876_3e1eda62aa_z.jpg[/img]

Next up I went for Golf Power. Also not a great golf game, but at least it was an interesting one. Seems like it was mainly designed to create and save your own courses and then play them multiplayer (up to 4 people) with your buddies. Neat idea, but because of a lot of the extra features in the game it actually loads really slow for an NES game. With no tournament or CPU to beat it was just play a round of golf, and like that it took close to an hour to play a round because of how sluggish the game was. It started off promising having a cool title screen with catchy music too, and then the rest of the game is pure silence. The graphics also change when you get to the green to look like a late Atari game rather than an NES game. It's very bizarre how Black Box Golf is still one of the best golf games on the system.

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Lastly and most fun tonight was Mechanized Attack. It's a light gun game that you can also play with the controller. I forgot to bring my zapper with me so I thought I'd try it a couple times with the controller to get a feel for it and then switch to my zapper tomorrow, but it only took a couple tries to beat it with just the controller. Very similar to something like Operation Wolf where the game auto-scrolls and you move a cursor around to shoot bad guys before they can shoot you. There were some very challenging parts in the middle of the game and my ammo consumption was an issue more than once, but to my surprise the final level and boss were no nearly as challenging as the stuff in the middle of the game. Also had branching paths too which was kinda neat. Wasn't a bad little shooter.

[img width=640 height=480]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48178835376_d4a02fe1f6_z.jpg[/img]

For my 100 games in 100 days challenge that puts me at 21 games in 8 days so far, so I'm feeling pretty good about my start. It's already getting harder to find shorter games that are on both my need to beat list and the rfgen need to beat list though and I've got a camping trip and a couple other family getaways planned over the summer so those are going to eat up some game time and make this harder as well. With the buffer I've got so far though I'm hoping I can use that to make it through the lean times. Hopefully back tomorrow with more multiple completions.

[bombatomba]

@Crabmaster2000 - Very nice!  Four games at once and on track for your goal!  Thanks for the encouragement.  I managed to finish Hydlide, but it was a serious slog.  Frankly, like many of these early NES/Famicom games I don't know how people beat them without a guide (which it probably had on release in Japan).  It's not a terrible game (certainly not how it is treated) but neither it is a hidden gem or anything like that.  I started out honest but turned to a guide after I leveled a bit.  My final thought is that Hydlide is a fine example of a slight evolution of the Dragon Slayer games that I've been reading about all these years (but haven't played); perseverance is the name of the game, and a calm steady hand coupled with a strong dose of patience will win the day.  And the last guy took me well over a dozen rounds.  Thank God for the whole "quick save" feature of this game, else I would have had to hoof it to the final boss twenty of thirty times (depending on where the boss initially popped up).  So not bad, but not good, and not worth another playthrough.

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I'm holding off for a formal claim because I cannot decide what I want to play.  I started Star Voyager and that game slapped me so hard I traveled backwards in time.  Gonna play around a bit and try and come up with a nice list, plus a hard one to grind my teeth on.

[Misto]

I got a long weekend due to the July 4th holiday - so I'm going to try to tackle Ghoul School.  Never heard of it so I'll be going in completely blind.

[bombatomba]

Finished Top Gun and Trojan last night before I went to bed.  Trojan in many ways is about "That One Good Run" when you manage to get all the jumps and the hidden powerups.  I think I attempted it less than ten times before finishing it.  Takes less than fifteen minutes if you move your butt.  Top Gun is not easy, despite my earlier memory.  I kept trying until I could get to the last target with all my lives and nearly all my health:

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I'll take Motor City Patrol.  Always wanted to play this but never had the chance.

[Crabmaster2000]

Another 4 game night for me! Today's games were: Last Action Hero, The Punisher, Operation Wolf, & Code Name: Viper.

I knew to keep my expectations for Last Action Hero low, but going in with that mindset I was disappointed. Doesn't follow the movie, character doesn't even try to look or move like Arnold, hit detection was a mess, and some parts made no sense. First level was the hardest too, and the last level they give you a few 1ups to make sure you don't have to play the rest of the mess again. Not a replayer for me.

[img width=640 height=479]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48187901742_f1673ac1ff_z.jpg[/img]

Followed that up with The Punisher! My first attempt the game felt unfairly tough and I didn't make it very far. Second attempt I had a better grasp of how the dodge bullets better and approach bosses so it felt a lot more manageable. Then I found out the real fun of the game. When you complete a level you get rewards depending on the percentage of enemies you were able to kill. Extra health, extra grenades, and extra life (very valuable) were all very welcome gifts, but if you get 100% of the enemies you are rewarded with a Super Gun for the following area. It mows everything down and even cuts through bosses in seconds. Super fun game once you have that gun for a level. It was even worth taking intentional damage to ensure no one was escaping in order to secure the Super Gun. I was able to get it for the 2nd to lass boss and he was dead in about 5 seconds without even touching me and also for the last boss Kingpin. Was able to cut Kingpin's life bar in half before he rushed me and we started hand to hand combat, the few extra lives I had were spent, but I was able to take him down first try. I'm sure there are still a couple games of this style left for me to play, but so far it's head and shoulders the best one on the NES. Only downside is there is no music at all playing during levels, it's kind of creepy sounding.

[img width=640 height=479]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48187900932_d4e001efd9_z.jpg[/img]

Followed up Punisher with a game of the same genre, Operation Wolf. It's serviceable and not a bad game. Lots of stuff constantly happening on screen, but not to the point it's overwhelming. Some levels you have to help hostages escape, or blow up helicopters and tanks. Last 2 levels don't let you use a continue like the rest so you have to do the final 3 stages all in a row which is a bit tough and took a few attempts. Game is super short though so it wasn't too much of a headache.

[img width=640 height=479]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48187844856_b5da108b0b_z.jpg[/img]

Last game tonight was Code Name: Viper and it was a close call. It's an unforgiving game, very challenging. It only gives you passwords to continue when you've completed multiple stages. Doing stages 3-5 all together to get the code costs me all my lives/continues and I had a good run with no hits or lives left to get the password, that was a huge relief. The final 2 stages were a lot easier in comparison. It's not a terrible game kinda like Rolling Thunder or Elevator Action Returns, but with some bad platforming sections. Not my favorite Capcom game.

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For my 100 NES games in 100 days challenge this puts me to 25 games in 9 days so far.

@bombatomba - nice job on Hydlide!! I didn't expect you to finish it so quickly. I agree with your assessment 100%. Trojan was a neat game, not amazing more interesting. Motor City Patrol is such an awesome concept for a game, especially from this era. It just turned out to be incredibly monotonous after a few stages. If I remember right it took me between 3-4 hours to beat and that is mainly spent driving in circles.

[Crabmaster2000]

Got 3 more done tonight. Tonight's games are Alien 3, Addams Family & Ultimate Basketball.

Alien 3 was surprisingly fun. You get some small maze like levels in which you have a time limit to save some prisoners and escape. The Aliens are super easy to kill and you can take so much damage it doesn't really matter to the point I would constantly take huge falls and suck up the damage because it was so much quicker then waiting for platforms or walking around a longer path. Their were boss fights that made the Xenomorphs more challenging, but even those were not overly difficult. Doesn't feel like and Aliens game at all, but was fun.

[img width=639 height=479]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48196073936_b791554f90_z.jpg[/img]

Addams Family was yet another game that had a fine concept, but was not great due to bad controls and hit detection. You play as Gomez and have to run around the mansion and a couple spots outside to recruit your family and get a bunch of items you need to open up new areas. Limited lives and lots of easy ways to die and take damage made it though. Thankfully it's pretty short. I had one run where I died on the very last screen before saving Morticia. That sucked.

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Ultimate Basketball was one of the better basketball games I've played on the NES. It was quick and played smooth. Pretty catchy and energetic music. Suffers from being basketball though

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My personal 100 NES games in 100 Days challenge is now at 28 games in 11 days.

[Schlibby]

@crabmaster - your skill is amazing. If someone said to me they were going to complete 100 NES games over 100 days, without save states, I would think it could only be done by dedicating 8 hours a day. And then maybe 1 per day.

And here you are smashing out 3 or 4 a night. I know you are targeting shorter games (how do you find them all??) but even these shorter games would take me a week or more to get to the state I could scrape a win.

Top man

[Crabmaster2000]

@crabmaster - your skill is amazing. If someone said to me they were going to complete 100 NES games over 100 days, without save states, I would think it could only be done by dedicating 8 hours a day. And then maybe 1 per day.

And here you are smashing out 3 or 4 a night. I know you are targeting shorter games (how do you find them all??) but even these shorter games would take me a week or more to get to the state I could scrape a win.

Top man

At this point a lot of NES games just "click" with me and make sense very early on so I think it brings down the learning curve a lot and saves me a ton of time. I definitely don't have 8 hours a day to dedicate to games, but a lot of days I get 4-5 hours in and with the length of games I've been playing lately that's enough to get by. It's mostly about learning from your previous attempts and figuring out spots to collect health/power ups/1ups/score, recognizing which enemies are worth fighting and which are better to be avoided, how to maximize you're invincibility frames, and when to play slow and safe and when to just go for it. A lot of NES games, even the ones know for their difficulty, are not that hard when you know what to look for in their respective genre.

I do/have done a ton of research on games in the past so I typically go into a game having some concept of what I'm in for. For example for my challenge when I'm looking for shorter games I know that publishers like LJN, Ocean, Hi-Tech Expressions, & Sony Imagesoft (all of which I've played in the last week) are short (take me 1-3 hours), and typically linear games (Alien 3 was a bit more non-linear, but not to a huge degree). I also made myself a short list of games that I thought would make this challenge achievable ahead of time and didn't just go in blind. Sometimes it's as easy as checking youtube for a completed run of the game so I can see how long the game in the hands of a skilled player and then can add some time onto that for myself to learn the game.

I know it didn't seem like my output was as crazy earlier in the year, but it was just as much effort/hours. I was purposefully choosing (mostly) games that I knew were obscure, challenging, time consuming or that wouldn't be priorities for most players. Bases Loaded IV, AD&D Pool of Radiance, Athena, Michael Andretti's World GP, Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom, F-15 Strike Eagle, Bard's Tale, Mad Max, and Arkanoid were all games that met those criteria that took so much more effort than the ones I've been slamming through lately. Once I'm finish my 100 day challenge I'll switch gears back to those styles of games again though and maybe revisit Championship Pool, which to this point is the only one of 2 games I feel has (temporarily) bested me.

[Misto]

Played through Ghoul School today.  I enjoyed tis one more than I expected.  Its an early example of a metroidvania style game - good variety of weapons and a few pickups that can alter your jump.  Pretty large map (around 130 rooms based on the numbers it gives you) - but there is no in game map so its easy to get lost.  Most of the rooms aren't required to enter either and only offer health if you need it.  A few parts were frustrating with some enemies being very hard to hit and dodge, but overall the difficultly was just right.  Another nice thing was you had 5 lives for each playthrough - if you died you just restart at the entrance to the same room.  If you lose all 5 lives, you go back to the start of the game but still retain all your weapons and pickups.  Enemies also take awhile to respawn so its not so much a grind getting back to where you were.

[img width=700 height=607]https://i.imgur.com/ToiLkGt.png[/img]

[Crabmaster2000]

@Misto - that sounds pretty cool. I still need to try that one myself.

I had some stuff come up tonight so I didn't get much play time. Beat Paperboy and then attempted Paperboy 2, but got decimated pretty badly so I'll have to try that one again later. I had played a lot of Paperboy as a kid, but as I was playing last night it dawned on me that I had never actually completed an entire week in that game before. So I was able to beat a childhood favorite at long last!

[img width=640 height=478]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48204372081_d485b58d5b_z.jpg[/img]

For my 100 day challenge that puts me at 29 Games in 12 Days now.

[shane]

Beat Nightshade. If it weren't for the fighting mechanics this game would be good. There were a couple of times where I just got infinitely juggled until I died.

[img width=700 height=446]https://i.imgur.com/JMUVFRw.png[/img]

[bombatomba]

Still playing Motor City Patrol.  This game isn't terribly hard at all, but I can't seem to stop dying due to car damage.  Maybe speed boosts and steering upgrades aren't worth it.

On another note, I finished Time Lord during a "break" from Motor City Patrol.  You know what?  I am sick of people saying that Hydlide and Simon's Quest are the worst games on the NES.  Nope, Time Lord is, without a doubt.  I hope that the developers are ashamed of themselves for making such an obtuse and foolish game.  As for me, I am not ashamed to admit that I watched a playthrough from NintendoComplete, as many of the orbs needed to finish each stage are hidden or have to be picked up in an obscure manner (jump kicking?).  For shame:

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I'm going back to Motor City Patrol.

[shane]

I am sick of people saying that Hydlide and Simon's Quest are the worst games on the NES.  Nope, Time Lord is, without a doubt.

Simon's Quest is an amazing game, and one I prefer to the other two Castlevania titles on the console. I think a lot of people just regurgitate what shock YouTubers have said about certain games. I know there's some game on the NES that has you quarantining some alien virus in various rooms on each level, and I think that's probably the worst I've played on the console. Can't remember the name of it, but luck help you if you're the one having to take it down for this challenge.

I'm going to officially claim Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? since I've played it on and off and got a number of cases under my belt.

[Boshamp]

Xenophobe, perhaps? I played that a lot as a kid and don't remember much more than struggle from the experience. Ha ha

[Misto]

I'm going to try tackling Space Shuttle Project next.  Another game I didn't even know existed.  I played through the first level so far and it isn't too bad.