Keeping with the Ahhnold theme tonight I took on the Predator. This one was probably the most fun of the movie games so far. And probably also the game that least followed the plot of the movie. There are 30 stages in total and 6 BIG stages that act as boss levels. During the normal stages you simply have to find your way to the door to the next area. If there is a predator at the end of the stage you have to kill him before you get access to the door, otherwise just walk on in. Simple as that. Nice variety of enemies that are ALL completely unrelated to the movie. Some simple puzzles and platforming tossed in there too. Pretty basic and not to challenging.
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NES Games Finished In 2012
(click on a title to view the video)
Silver Surfer
Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom
Double Dragon II: The Revenge
Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones
Ghosts n Goblins
Tetris
Pro Wrestling
Gradius
Zanac
Adventure Island
Karnov
Trojan
Excitebike
Baseball
Spy Hunter
Adventure Island II
Tennis
Battletoads
Shadowgate
Battletoads/Double Dragon
Pinball Quest
Section Z
Godzilla
Hydlide
Marble Madness
Back to the Future
Darkman
Terminator 2
Robocop
Total Recall
Predator
Future Plans - Since I've exhausted my Schwarzenegger reserve it seems I'll have to move on to something considerably less manly. Maybe Rambo?
As stated yesterday I had already played a bit of Robocop. Was able to finish it up tonight. Nothing to write home about. Short and bland. It was a little wierd that you had no control over when you pulled out your gun or that you couldnt jump. Another meh kind of game.
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Followed that up with another classic Arnold movie-game, Total Recall! Say what you will about it, but it had one great thing going for it. The biggest most badass 8-bit Schwarzenegger you'll ever see. It was very satisfying to punch tiny little men in the face. The game was also riddled with Terminator quotes. Fantastic!!
[img width=632 height=478]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/TotalRecall-Ending.jpg[/img]
NES Games Finished In 2012
(click on a title to view the video)
Silver Surfer
Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom
Double Dragon II: The Revenge
Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones
Ghosts n Goblins
Tetris
Pro Wrestling
Gradius
Zanac
Adventure Island
Karnov
Trojan
Excitebike
Baseball
Spy Hunter
Adventure Island II
Tennis
Battletoads
Shadowgate
Battletoads/Double Dragon
Pinball Quest
Section Z
Godzilla
Hydlide
Marble Madness
Back to the Future
Darkman
Terminator 2
Robocop
Total Recall
Future Plans - Keepin up with the Arnold theme and will hit Predator pretty soon.
Thought I'd start off my movie marathon with three games based on 3 movies that I have enjoyed very much.
Back to the Future has a well known reputation for sucking, so I had to check it out first hand. Its definitely not a great game, but I think its slightly better than it has a rep for. The skateboarding levels are actually kind of fun. The Soda Joint, School and Dance parts are all kind of boring and quite easy. The only part of the game that absolutely frustrated me was the final level getting the Delorean to 88mph across the electrified wire. One chance at it and its very easy to lose your speed at the last second. Its probably part of the game that is most true to the movie, yet its easly the most annoying part of the game. Good thing the rest of the game was short because I had to play through it 5 or 6 times just to beat that one level.
I love me some Darkman so I was pretty psyched to see they made a game based on it. I didnt think a movie like that would warrant a game, but I'm glad it did. Darkman is not too bad and actually stays fairly closely to the movie. Its also got a decent amount of variety in the levels. So if you havnt seen Darkman the premise is that your face is burned off by a man named Durrant. This leaves you hideous and a bit unhinged. Good thing your a brilliant scientist who recently discovered how to make a realistic synthetic skin like substance. He uses that discovery to make masks to not only cover his face, but also impersonate people. Light makes the material fall apart so he tries to stay in the shadows (hence the name).
The game jumps between taking pictures of the next area's boss (so that you can make your mask), hanging from a helicopter dodging traffic, action platforming and maze-like moving platform stages. Its a pretty cool little game. The fighting is horrendous though and takes some getting used to. If they had spent some time cleaning that up, this would be a very solid game.
Terminator 2 was kind of a disappointment too. It seemed like half a game. T-1000 was a joke. The brawler in the bar at the beginning was more trouble. Maybe the first one will be better.
NES Games Finished In 2012
(click on a title to view the video)
Silver Surfer
Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom
Double Dragon II: The Revenge
Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones
Ghosts n Goblins
Tetris
Pro Wrestling
Gradius
Zanac
Adventure Island
Karnov
Trojan
Excitebike
Baseball
Spy Hunter
Adventure Island II
Tennis
Battletoads
Shadowgate
Battletoads/Double Dragon
Pinball Quest
Section Z
Godzilla
Hydlide
Marble Madness
Back to the Future
Darkman
Terminator 2
Future Plans - Made some good progress on Robocop tonight and then got stuck because of a glitch. Should be able to bypass the area I got stuck on though so not a big deal. Might try a couple more Arnold themed games tomorrow.
Between vacations and site down time my blogs have been fairly sparce lately. I'm feeling revamped after my hiatus though and ready to tackle some more NES goodies!
Because of the forum loss I dont have access to the list I had made with the difficult NES games I planned to tackle. Fortunately I had already finished most of the list. The two games I know I didnt finish before the crash were Hydlide and Arkanoid. Arkanoid was, and still is, giving me a fair amount of trouble so I'm going to put it on the back burner until I can get a Vaus pad to try out.
Hydlide on the other hand was fair game though and something that has been a thorn in my side since my 7th or 8th birthday. No longer though. I was finally able to slog though the mess of a game that is Hydlide. And it was righteous! If your one of those guys that likes seeing me die a lot this video will be one of your favorites. Since I didnt want to map it out myself again (I seemed to have misplaced the maps I made about 5-6 years ago) I used a map from gamefaqs in order to shorten the play time.
Just before I left on my trip I was also able to squeek out one more win on Godzilla. Duke and I had planned to get a commentary for it, but I was having some tech issues on my end. Unfortunately it didnt pan out.
NES Games Finished In 2012
(click on a title to view the video)
Silver Surfer
Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom
Double Dragon II: The Revenge
Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones
Ghosts n Goblins
Tetris
Pro Wrestling
Gradius
Zanac
Adventure Island
Karnov
Trojan
Excitebike
Baseball
Spy Hunter
Adventure Island II
Tennis
Battletoads
Shadowgate
Battletoads/Double Dragon
Pinball Quest
Section Z
Godzilla
Hydlide
Future Plans - Early next week I'll be starting another list of games based on a theme. I'm thinking about doing a Movie Marathon and playing a pile of movie licensed games. Shout out your favorites (or not so favorites) in the comments. Hoping to play stuff like: Die Hard, Dirty Harry, Predator, Back to the Future, etc.
I'm finally back home! A little bit sun burnt, but back. I recently returned home from 9 days in the Orlando, Florida area and a few extra days spread around some other areas. The purpose of the trip was just to have some good old family fun and get my wife to stop bugging me about never taking here anywhere 
Rewind back to the end of February and we dropped the dogs off at my parents house, loaded my son into his car seat and hit the road towards Seattle. Turns out driving down to Seattle for a flight was going to save us approx $2000 as opposed to flying from home. Its nice and close though, only about a 11-12 hour drive. So we got to the Seattle area fairly early and had most of a day to kill. We walked around the mall, went bowling and of course tried to track down a retro game store! Found 2 in the phonebook and punched them into the GPS. Turns out the first one we went to was no longer there. And neither was the second one  But wait whats that across the street! Its a Game....... Lobster?!?! A completely different one that either of the 2 we were looking for. Seemed like my kind of place so we went to check it out.
Tons of stock in the store. Only problem was that pretty much all of it was just in huge heaps everywhere. The NES stuff was actually organized in a display case though so we check it out first. The prices were very reasonable, unfortunately he didnt have a single cart that I didnt already own. So I sifted through his piles of beaten up games looking for something worth my while. Had a few loose systems I would have been interested in if they were a little bit cheaper (Jaguar, CD-i, Gold N64). Looked like he had some interested Saturn/SEGA CD and PS long boxes behind the counter. Asked him if I could walk to the back and check them out. He responded with "its probably to dangerous". I peeked a little further over the counter and saw massive piles of accessories and the like. After I little more prodding I got the clerk to clear a path for himself, bring a stool and climb up to the games I had spotted (he really didnt seem to impressed to help me). Prices were a litte higher on these items, but what the hell I'm on vacaction could be a cool souvenir to take home. EVERY single game I might have wanted was either: scratched to hell, missing manuals or missing inserts. Definitely not paying his sticker price for the condition they were in. So Game Lobster was a bust..... On to Orlando!
Spent the next several days at theme parks. Noticed a cool Little Nemo display right over a gift shop at Universal Studios. Checked the whole shop out hoping to find a cool item Nemo related item to toss into my game room, but unfortunately the didnt have anything for me.
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My son has been just recently getting into his Super Hero and Action Figure stage so Univeral Studios was really awesome for him right now. We hit a toy store on the way one day while he was sleeping and grabbed him a few of his favorites: Captain America, Thor and Iron Man. They were a hit, but he was a little sad that he slept through the toy store. We promised we would take him back later and he could pick something small to take on the plane with us home. After picking up and setting down an endless stream of recognizable characters he finally grabbed a pokemon toy and said he was happy with that. On the way out though something caught his eye and he bolted to the lowest shelf hidden off in the corner of the store. He quickly returned with a box of several Super Mario Bros toys! So proud.......
Since this was mainly for my wife I really didnt plan on having much time to hunt for games. I had already planned to meet up with Shadow for one day so I figured that would be my only gaming related time on the trip. As my wife was watching the local news she saw that there was a riot at the mall over the new Air Jordans. Thats right, we survived the great Shoe Riot of 2012! We were a little worn out from the theme parks and decided to check out the mall to see if there were any upside down flamming cop cars from the previous night  . While their I got to visit my first Game Stop. Shortly after entering I was approached by someone who asked if I had seen the new PSVita yet. Before I had a chance say anything "BAM!" it was right in my face. He actually did yell BAM at me as he held it up, lol. Checked it out a bit and asked a few questions. Seemed like there was one knowledgable staff out of the 3 that were on and he was easily able to answer my questions. Ended up picking up a copy of BlazBlue Continuum Shift and a Yoshi DS Game Case that my son wanted, and signed up for my first Game Stop Member Card. Chatted with the silly PSVita man for a minute about retro games and collecting. Overall Game Stop seemed ok to me for what it was.
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Fast forward a bit and we were busing getting lost in Mount Dora trying to meet up with Shadow. He eventually set us straight and came out to find me. Hopped in his car and spend off to his new home. Really nice place!! They had literally just moved in the day before so I mostly got to see boxes, but of course he had his 360 setup to go! After getting the grand tour and meeting his wife we sat down to some 360. He showed off Batman Arkum City Imposters for a bit. Beat me pretty thuroughly at Street Fighter 2 for a bit. Swapped over to BlazBlue shorty after. After getting the hang of the game I was able to redeem myself for the many Haduken's I had just eaten. Popped in Blood Bowl, which neither of us had played before. After a long clunky and mistake riddled game I was able to eke out a win with my one touchdown. And we finished up out gaming session by having me get beaten at Soul Calibur IV while Shadow went to get the door (thats right he just mashed some buttons in a different room and beat me )
After that we decided to head out to his local Flea Market and see if we could do any
damage there. After a little trouble finding the ATM and spotting a small handful of games at a couple vendors we finally made it to a dedicated game vendor and much to my enjoyment they had a buy 1 get 1 free sale on NES and SNES games! After several minutes scouring the entire store I ended leaving with: Ghost Lion, Legends of the Diamond, Kick Master, Sesame Street Hide & Speak, Slalom, Genghis Kahn, Skate of Die 2, AD&D Dragonstrike, Flight of the Intruder, Trog and a CIB - Gunvalkyrie (Xbox).
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We eventually made our way to another vendor peddling his retro-wares and I got second chance at scooping up some more NES games. Shadow and him chatted quite a bit and he was able to soften the guy up to give us some pretty sweet deals. I ended up pulling out around $55 of games (his sticker prices), but oops! I only had $36 left in my pocket. I mentioned tossing some of them back, but he told me he was fine with it. Nice! Ended up leaving that booth with: Arkista's Ring, Tom & Jerry, Qix, Space Shuttle Program, Star Trek 25th Anniverssary, Spelunker, Lode Runner, Defendor of the Crown, Whomp 'em, Grand Slam Golf, Treasure Master and a CIB - Junction (Gen). Played a bit of Sonic the Hedgehog while Shadow cleaned him out a bit more (sweet deal on the CD-i!!).
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Still wanted to grab a modern game as a souvenir so we hit a different Game Stop by the place we were staying at. Another cool staff member finished dealing with some pretty annoying customers and helped me track down a copy of sealed Hyperdemension Neptunia. Or so I thought...... Turns out I graded MK2 which I didnt even know existed. Still happy with my pickup, just means I still need to search out the first game though.
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Being the awesome guy that he is Shadow hooked me up with a nice private tour of the EA Sports studio he works at. One of his co-workers/friends gave my family and I a great tour of the place! One of the highlights of my trip for sure. We checked out the wicked ball filled boardroom, showed me some of the stuff the dev-kits were capable of, explained what he was responsible for in their new game in depth (he gets to work on the Cheerleaders!), toured the work areas, tried to track down Shadow (he was away from his desk though ), checked out the recording studio and he let us know all the changes on each floor that had been made since he had been there. It was a blast. And of course we ended the tour in the gift shop! It was the employees only EA store which he said we could pick something up in if we wanted. Turns out I didnt need to grab that copy of HDN MK2 afterall.....oh well . Picked up a copy of Mass Effect 2 took a nice family photo outside and went on our way.
[img width=700 height=525]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/P1000537.jpg[/img] [img width=700 height=525]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/P1000538.jpg[/img] [img width=700 height=525]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/P1000539.jpg[/img] [img width=700 height=525]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/P1000540.jpg[/img] [img width=700 height=525]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/P1000541.jpg[/img] [img width=700 height=525]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/P1000544.jpg[/img] [img width=700 height=525]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/P1000542.jpg[/img] [img width=700 height=525]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/P1000566.jpg[/img] [img width=700 height=525]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/P1000567.jpg[/img] [img width=700 height=525]http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk189/Crabmaster2000/P1000545.jpg[/img]
Finished up our time in Orland and started making the long trek back to Seattle. Drove up BC stopping in Abbotsford to visit some famly briefly and then again in Vernon. While staying with my Uma and Dziadziu in Vernon I always have to check out a cool little store called Ebeneezers. When I was quite young I would go there with my cousin to check out comics. Each trip afterwards they would typically have some cool new product like magic cards, action figures, movie memorabilia, etc. and eventually started getting in old games! Checked out their expanded game area and ended up picking up a goodie for my buddy Duke.Togo. Hes getting close to the end of his NES journey so its getting harder and harder to find new games he doesnt have. I was more than happy to scoop up a copy of Death Race to help him out.
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Later that night while still in Vernon, my wife was lamenting that she didnt really have a big souvenir yet, just some small odds and ends, and the trip was almost over. We went out for a little drive and ended up in Wal Mart. After looking around she decided she was in need of a new 3DS. I swear I didnt promote the idea. I even tried to talk her out of it and into something she might appreciate more in the years to come. Try as I might she had her heart set on it though. We ended up heading over to Future Shop to see if they had any different games. Didnt see any games at either store that interested her so we just left with the system. The rest of the ride from Vernon to Prince George was filled with laughter and the sound of raspberries as my wife and son played some competitive games of New Super Mario Bros across their DS and 3DS systems.
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After all that we finally made it home. And waiting for me their, besides my pets, was a nice little parcel on the kitchen table. Darkwing Duck, Dragon's Lair, Krion Conquest, and Day Dreamin Davey I had bought off a racketboy member before the trip. Great way to end a great trip!!
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Well its been a while. And as unfortunate as the recent fall from grace and subsequent rise to its former glory was, I cant solely blame the rfgen downtime for my absence. I've been having some computer issues and have currently sent my machine back to the manufacturer for them to deal with. I did however manage to knock several other games off my list of difficult titles and get them recorded in some fashion. Included was:
Battletoads - I've finished this a couple years ago so it was just a matter of refreshing myself. I remembered the warps fairly well and the rat race, which I remembered as being brutal, wasnt nearly as bad as before. I did have a little more trouble than expected on the Dark Queen, but overall the run was decent.
Battletoads/Double Dragon - I beat the SNES version of the game last summer and expected a significantly inferior version. I was pleasantly surprised that it was nearly indentical. Really well done beat'em up for the system and definitely one of my favorites.
Tennis - Pretty lame game. Takes a little bit of time to get used to how to position your player to hit the ball in the first place. Once you get that down its just a very boring game.
Pinball Quest - This was a recommendation on the list for challenging games. While I didnt find it that challenging, I'm still glad it was recommended. I didnt have any plans to play it in the near future and it turned out to be a lot of fun. It was a real hidden gem and just a blast to play through.
Section Z - This was one of the sweetest NES victories I've had ever. This game used to drive me nuts as a kid. My grandmother had an NES and about half a dozen games so when visiting her we would often hide in the basement and play when we had the chance. Among the small stack of games was Section Z. We never made it past the first boss. We'd often get lost and die within a few short screen.
The video is rather long and probably a bit annoying to watch. I decided to map it out as I went to you'll notice me pausing the game after most rooms so that I can scribble some notes and directions on my paper. I ended up with 3 pages of custom maps and was finally able to knock off a game that seemed impossible to my 10 year old self. Always a great feeling!!
Godzilla - Had some bigger plans for this game than I ended up showing, which I'll explain in a minute. Wasnt sure what to expect as I dont often hear people talk about this game at all. It was ok a first, but quickly becomes very repetitive. It also becomes much easier the further you go in the game. Overall kind of forgettable.
And finally a special treat, that a few of you have been bugging me about for quite some time now. A commentary video!! Now this isnt just any commentary video. I was still having some concerns with doing a solo commentary vid so I recruited one of rfgen's finest to help me conquer another title. The game was Shadowgate so I needed someone with unparalleled puzzle solving skills, an eidetic mind, and an unshakable sense of direction........ instead I ended up with Duke.Togo.
Join our quest through Shadowgate and let us know what you think. We could use any and all feedback you're willing to provide as we plan to do more videos and hope to keep improving them in any way possible. So please post anything you have to say either here on this blog or in the youtube comments.
Now the video consists of me playing for the first time ever and Duke desperatly grasping at his fleeting youth so it ended up being just over 4 hours of video in total. If your interested in seeing us talking out solutions, scratching our heads over riddles and meeting our end through some trial and error try the video from the start. If your more interested in seeing the condensed version skip ahead to 2:37:00 if you want to see a less painful playthrough. Also should point out the during the first 2:37 of the video I was using a recorder that added a nice little static sound every minute. Its failry annoying, but we got that ironed out for the last chunk of video.
Also want to thank Duke.Togo for helping me out by doing all the editing, listening to my annoying voice on skype and a ironing out a few other technical issues. Wouldnt have got this video up without his and Bickman2k's assistance. Thanks so much to the both of you.
PS - I'm heading down to Florida with my family for the next 2 weeks so dont expect to hear the soft scuffling of Crabmaster for the next little while. I'll still lurk around the forum, but I probably wont be posting a whole lot while I'm gone.
I finally got the willpower mustered up to shelf my King of Fighters addiction and get back to NESing it up. I spent far to much time trying to beat Mike Tyson in Punch Out!! over the last few days. I've beaten him twice in the past and cant see why I'm having so much trouble with him this time. I'm probably spent 6 -7 hours on just the Tyson fight alone, which is crazy. He is hard, but not that hard. I'm hoping that its just a small amount of lag thats is holding me back so I'm going to add it to my "record with a VCR" pile and hope things go smoother on a TV setup.
I really wanted something fun after that frustration so I popped in a charming little platformer, Yo! Noid. Its a fun game that I've spent time with in the past. It really helped me unwind from hours of defeat at the hands of Iron Mike. Nothing to crazy and got it done without much trouble. Finally, that first game I've finished in over a week now.
Followed that up with some Xexyz. Got to stage 5 and wrote the code down. There are a few blinking sprite issues, but they seem very minor. I'll keep moving forward as I can, but if it gets to hard later in the game I may have to finish it up on a VCR also. I really need to track down a couple good condition tapes to record these on.
Beaten Since Oct.8th - 63/100
(click on a title to see the video)
Super Mario Bros
Super Mario Bros 2
Super Mario Bros 3
Mega Man
Mega Man 2
Mega Man 3
Mega Man 4
Mega Man 5
Mega Man 6
Castlevania
Adventures in the Magic Kingdom
Duck Tales
Duck Tales 2
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers 2
Felix the Cat
Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout
Ren and Stimpy Show: Buckaroo$
Double Dragon
Contra
Super C
Contra Force
Power Blade
Power Blade 2
Dynowarz: The Destruction of Spondylus
Metal Storm
Journey to Silius
Air Fortress
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Blaster Master
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turltes 2
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3
Legendary Wings
BreakThru
Commando
Guerrilla War
World Games
Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular
Caveman Games
DK Classics
Jaws
Ninja Gaiden
Where's Waldo?
Bonk's Adventure
Panic Restaurant
Bubble Bobble 2
Dr. Mario
Bubble Bobble
MC Kids
Batman
Circus Caper
Roller Games
Widget
Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures 2
The Jetsons
The Little Mermaid
Monster in my Pocket
Gremlins 2
Kirby's Adventure
Kickle Cubicle
Kung Fu
Yo! Noid
Future Plans - Finish up Xexyz if possible and then I think I'm feeling like some Battletoads.
Firstly I want to apologize for not updating this blog more often. I intended to, but came to the realization that time spent blogging was time spent not playing KoF XIII. I did however try to update the blog the night prior to the event, but a certain Shadow (who will remain nameless) toppled the rfgen empire that day. Anyway....
When we last left our hero (me ) he was giving serious thought regarding his choice of team members. Kyo was on his way out, with a few people sitting in the shadows waiting to claim his spot. Fast forward to Nov.22nd and I was finally able to grab a copy of KoFXIII after salivating over youtube videos and fighting forums for weeks. After playing around with many ideas for teams I ended up playing Joe, Robert and Yuri. I was happy enough to take that team online and start challenging real players. I was quite confident going in, but quickly found myself getting destroyed game after game. I chalked it up to being unfamiliar with the genre and still learning my characters. But.... before I knew it I had played 80 games and had a win ratio of 10%. Things were not looking good and time was running out.
I gave some serious thought as to why I was losing so much. Control method, lack of experience, missing combos/drive cancels/ etc. and character choices. I noticed that Robert was holding me back and Yuri wasnt delivering like I'd hoped she would. I spent more time in practice mode exploring my options and was delighted with what I found. Two characters I previously overlooked seemed right up my alley. Robert and Yuri were tossed aside for King and Andy.
I also had to change my play style to accomodate my new characters and the 360 pad. I scrapped the idea of impressive combo chains and focused soley on short and consistant combos that had a bit of knockback. Also on single powerful hits and ranged attacks.
After taking this new team and strategy online I was immediately succesful. After nearly 200 more matches I was able to rise my win percentage from the pitiful 10% well above 40%. With more time I have no doubt I could have gotten it above 60-70% even.
I was able to get the achievements for 100 matches won (I was ranked 8 out of thousands of players for numbers of victories), another achievement for 10 ranked victories in a row and peaked at number 13 on the leaderboards. My confidence was back and I was winning more than ever.
Now onto the tournament!
Got off work at 7am (event was at 11:00am) on game day. Snuck a quick nap in until 09:30 since sleep seemed more important than a couple more hours of practice. Woke up and had a quick meal, shower, prepared a lunch/drink/snacks for myself to bring along and then knocked out 3 more battles online. My parents arrived to take my son during the event. Dropped my wife off at her cousins house and made my way to EB Games were the tournament was taking place.
I got there about 10 minutes early and there were a few others already there playing practice rounds on the 360 kiosk in the store. I played a warm up match against the youngest competitor (12 years old, all the other contestants were my own age). With all my practice I found my best order was King followed by Andy with Joe being my tail. I went with that and was able to win my warm up with little trouble. The boy had little experience with the series and I gave him a few pointers on the gameplay (he wasnt quite sure how the drive meter worked for instance). After that I watched several others play a few games. It was quite obvious who the 2 best players to watch for were. There was a lot of names on the sign up sheet for the tournament, but after waiting until about 11:30 we started the event with only about 10 players.
I was up first against one of the stronger players I saw during practice rounds. He plugged himself into his Ipod so I couldnt trash talk him mercilessly during the round. He choose Kensou (who I dont like being matched against), Andy and another character that slips my mind. Match started and after a fairly slow battle he took out King with his first character Kensou. We started the next round with his Kensou at half health and me a little flustered that the first round didnt go so well. Must have been performace anxiety or adjusting to the play area. Whatever it was I was able to do fairly well with Andy (easily my strongest character) and pull a close win out. The matches were best 2 of 3 so I still had to repeat my win again to move on. This time around went much better and I was able to nearly defeat his first 2 characters with King. Andy finished up the scraps and we didnt get to Joe this time.
1 down and he was 1 of the 2 I had to worry about. Definitely feeling good so far. Watched the others play for a bit and learned my next match was going to be against who I felt was going to be my toughest match up. Went to the washroom and made sure to eat and drink.
Next match started. He was playing King, Leona, and Kim. First round went by and his King destroyed mine. He had nearly a full meter going into the next round. Ouch! Luckily Andy was able to earn his keep and took out King and most of Leona. Joe finished Leona and we entered the final round at close to even meters. He started off a lot better than myself and I was struggling at under half my health while he was comfortable with nearly three quaters of his. One of the reasons I like keeping Joe at the end is that his Neo Max is quite easy to do and with a little practice is fairly easy to connect with . I was able to blast him with one and drop his life to nearly nothing. A couple pokes and a Flying Knee finished the deal. At the end I had 1 or two hits of life left. It was much to close. Our second fight went surprisingly similar. I played a little better out of the gate this time though and ended it with another Joe Noe Max. Not as close as the last fight, but still uncomfortable.
Had to wait a while for my next game so I made sure to scope my competition in the meantime.
Next pairing was against a store employee. I hadnt seen him play much since he was helping customers much of the time I was there. The match started off strong with King and was finished easily with Andy. The next fight was a slaughter and really helped me feel like I was unstopable. This match was for a spot in the finals, so I was very happy to win the entire fight only using King. Thats right I was able to strike fear into my upcoming opponent by showing them the only 3 round fight that took place that day. It was very good momentem to bring with me to the last battle.
Another hiatus while people slugged it out for a chance to take me on in the final game. Not much to my surprise I was met once again by the player I had defeated in the second round. Rematch for the championship!!!
This time I made sure to take it a bit slower and did much better in our King on King mirror match. His Leona was able to deal a lot more damage to Andy than I would have liked though and once again we entered the final round on quite equal ground. Luckily for me since the only time he had seen me play as Joe I relied on Neo Max moves he hadnt really seen me play him. After several crossovers I was able to get him close to death while keeping my hyper drive meter at 4 bars. This meant that I could just spam my EX Hurricane Upper at him several times (12 hurricanes in a row!) and kill him through his block. Not the most honorable victory, but I was out to win. I apololgized for the lame victory and we moved onto our 2nd fight. Played out quite similar again, but when we reached our final round my Joe took much more of a beating this time. on the verge of death I was to once again save myself with a well placed EX Hurricane Upper juggling him across all 3 tornados for an anti-air victory.
Although there were some close calls I never actually lost a single match. The prize for my victory was a sealed copy (with the pre-order bonus soundtrack) on my choice of system. Since I had already grabbed it on the 360 I snagged a PS3 copy for my collection. I'll likely keep it sealed as a trophy since I've got another copy to play. Got my picture taken for the EBgames website also.
Other than my hard work paying off in a victory the best part was just chatting with fellow gamers my own age. I learned through my first match that there is actually a Street Fighter Club in town that meets each Sunday for league play! Cant wait to go check it out now!
Who wants to read another fighting blog, but about Street Fighter IV now? What? Nobody?
I was finally able to find someone online to play with yesterday! I fought the same guy 3 times in a row (after waiting for 35 minutes to get matched with someone). I won the first of our 3 matches. I could have loved to play more, but I guess he wanted to get a little more variety and took off after our 3rd battle.
A great feature in KoF XII though is that I was able to record all 3 fights and review them as many times as I wanted. It was painfully obvious in the 2 matches that I lost that I need to slow it down and be able to react to his moves. He was quite obvious a few times and I completely missed the cues and got punished for it. I also need to learn how to better exploit my opponents openings.
Last night I also spent several hours researching KoFXIII combos. After reading through many pages of character bios and watching tons of youtube videos I'm happy to stick with Joe and Robert. Since I'm going to be using a standard Xbox 360 pad and not an arcade stick I need to be able to execute simple, high damage combos. Both of those characters can delivery.
I am going to be swapping Kyo out of the rotation though. After last nights cram session here are the current candidates for his replacement: K', Shen, Iori, Maxima, Yuri. I'll dig into those 5 a little closer tonight and make sure I have one locked down today since XIII launches tomorrow and I want to get started on them asap.
Thought I'd have a quick two games done again tonight, but I was sadly mistaken. Apparently I'm fat and out of shape these days because I got my ass handed to me tons of time tonight on Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Mostly these were not honorable defeats. I did fine during the first two circuits, but the 3rd circuit just gave me way to much trouble tonight. I'll get crackin at it again tomorrow night.
Took a break from getting clobbered and snuck in some Kung Fu though. Its short and sweet so at least I got something beaten tonight.
Beaten Since Oct.8 - 62/100
(click on a name to see the video)
Super Mario Bros
Super Mario Bros 2
Super Mario Bros 3
Mega Man
Mega Man 2
Mega Man 3
Mega Man 4
Mega Man 5
Mega Man 6
Castlevania
Adventures in the Magic Kingdom
Duck Tales
Duck Tales 2
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers 2
Felix the Cat
Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout
Ren and Stimpy Show: Buckaroo$
Double Dragon
Contra
Super C
Contra Force
Power Blade
Power Blade 2
Dynowarz: The Destruction of Spondylus
Metal Storm
Journey to Silius
Air Fortress
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Blaster Master
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turltes 2
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3
Legendary Wings
BreakThru
Commando
Guerrilla War
World Games
Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular
Caveman Games
DK Classics
Jaws
Ninja Gaiden
Where's Waldo?
Bonk's Adventure
Panic Restaurant
Bubble Bobble 2
Dr. Mario
Bubble Bobble
MC Kids
Batman
Circus Caper
Roller Games
Widget
Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures 2
The Jetsons
The Little Mermaid
Monster in my Pocket
Gremlins 2
Kirby's Adventure
Kickle Cubicle
Kung Fu
Future Plans - More Punch Out!!. And if time permits, Rampage or Yo! Noid depending on my mood.
Had a bit of a setback yesterday which cut significantly into my KoF time. We had a pretty big snowfall and when I went out to snow blow (this is my first year with one so I was pretty psyched) I couldnt get the auger to spin. After a few hours of tinkering with my snow blower and finally shovelling snow, I found some time to relax.
Once again I couldnt find any online games so I after finishing arcade mode on Hard again (started with Kyo to get in some more practice with him) I jumped into practice mode. With all 3 of my characters I set out to practice executing moves from the 2P position. Quarter circles and Fireballs were no problem. I could get 10 or more off in a row without mistake. Moves that required a reverse dragon punch motion though gave me a lot more inconsistancies.
I'm also starting to doubt my choice in Kyo. I have definitely spent the least amount of time with him, but I'm kind of leaning towards swapping him out for someone else when XIII launches. I'll surely stick with Joe and Robert, but I may leave Kyo out for someone like Mai or Yuri when the new game arrives. This wont leave me with as much practice time with a new character, but it will allow me to narrow my focus before XIII launches to the 2 guys I'm happy with.
Went ahead with my plans for Kirby and Kickle Cubicle tonight. Choose Kirby first. It was a lot longer than I remembered. I'm pretty sure I've beaten it a long time ago, but not positive since a lot of stuff in the last couple levels seemed very unfamiliar. Kirby has always been a little awkward moving for my taste. Still a solid game though. The second to last boss fight was a lot of fun.
Followed Kirby with some Kickle Cubicle. Neat little puzzlish game. Kind of similar to Adventures of Lolo. Lots of talking food, and apparently the royalty that rules over said food is human. And you play as some kind of snowman with ear muffs. And the evil wizard that takes over the fantasy realm wears an upside down metal bucket on his head. Its has a very unusual setting and characters. The game was fairly easy until the 4th and final stage. It really ramped up the amount of deaths there. After getting the ending I was treated to a "special game" which was more puzzles, but if the first 2 were any indication they were going to be much more difficult.
I probably wont get to recording an audio track this week like I suggested earlier. I'm trying to focus on King of Fighters so I've put that on the back burner until after its done on the 26th.
Beaten Since Oct.8th - 61/100
(click on a title to see the video)
Super Mario Bros
Super Mario Bros 2
Super Mario Bros 3
Mega Man
Mega Man 2
Mega Man 3
Mega Man 4
Mega Man 5
Mega Man 6
Castlevania
Adventures in the Magic Kingdom
Duck Tales
Duck Tales 2
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers 2
Felix the Cat
Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout
Ren and Stimpy Show: Buckaroo$
Double Dragon
Contra
Super C
Contra Force
Power Blade
Power Blade 2
Dynowarz: The Destruction of Spondylus
Metal Storm
Journey to Silius
Air Fortress
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Blaster Master
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turltes 2
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3
Legendary Wings
BreakThru
Commando
Guerrilla War
World Games
Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular
Caveman Games
DK Classics
Jaws
Ninja Gaiden
Where's Waldo?
Bonk's Adventure
Panic Restaurant
Bubble Bobble 2
Dr. Mario
Bubble Bobble
MC Kids
Batman
Circus Caper
Roller Games
Widget
Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures 2
The Jetsons
The Little Mermaid
Monster in my Pocket
Gremlins 2
Kirby's Adventure
Kickle Cubicle
Future Plans - I've still got 59 days left to finish at least 39 games right now. I've got two more work days in this week so I'll bring something to play for those days, but starting Sunday until next Saturday I'll be bringing my 360 to work to keep blasting away at King of Fighers. So I'll be taking about a week off from this Nintendo Challenge to focus on the upcoming KoF tournament. I'm hoping since I've gotten a little bit ahead of schedule so far that this wont hurt me to bad in the long run.
So I got home and spent some time going through arcade mode with my new team. Getting very used to the characters. Kyo feels like my weakest so I'm going to put more focus on him today. I'm confident I made the right choice with Joe as he seems to be the star of my team.
After getting a bit tired of arcade mode I decided it was time to go online. I signed up for a month of Xbox Live Gold ($9 what a scam), and attempted to venture into the world of multiplayer. I said attempted, because apparently nobody plays KoFXII online anymore. I was hoping that with XIII being so close to release people would be picking this up again in preperation. I was only able to find one online match the entire day. I literally left the game searching for a match while I mprepared and ate some food and it was still searching when I returned.
The game I did manage to find had a decent amount of lag so it wasnt a great test. I did however manage to not lose to embarassingly to someone who had a SSS rank compared to my F rank.
Since I was having so much trouble with the online, I decided to go back to Arcade mode and max out the difficulty. The AI is kind of crappy though and its still fairly easy to win an entire match with 1-2 characters and I dont think I ever needed to dip into my 3rd fighter.
I did notice that I'm not as consistant as I'd like to be with several moves when performing them from the 2P side. Today I'm going to fix that by sitting in practice mode doing reverse dragon punches and the like for hours. Gonna have to iron that out.
Hopefully when XIII launches I'll be able to sink into the online a lot more.
Mashed some monsters tonight. Started the evening with some Monster in my Pocket. Its pretty short and sweet, but its surprisingly fun. All of the boss fights are on the easy side, and there are only a couple spots in the levels that are even remotely challenging. I've always played with Dracula so I decided to switch it up this time and go with Frankenstein. They seem to play identically though so that didnt really matter. If your looking for something mindless with super tight controls, you might want to check it out.
Gremlins 2 was next up to bat. The last couple levels took me about an hour to beat (someone skilled in the game should have them done in 5-10 minutes). They are brutal. Tons of platforming on conveyor belts with pits, fire and enemies all around. Plus there is one enemy that spins around and throws top hats at you, he is a huge pain. I've only ever seen the first Gremlins movie so the cut scenes didnt make any sense to me at all. Apparently telephones can shoot laser beams that melt evil Gremlins.
Was hoping to have some more time to start another game, but since Gremlins took me so long I didnt
Beaten Since Oct.8th - 59/100
(click on a title to view the video)
Super Mario Bros
Super Mario Bros 2
Super Mario Bros 3
Mega Man
Mega Man 2
Mega Man 3
Mega Man 4
Mega Man 5
Mega Man 6
Castlevania
Adventures in the Magic Kingdom
Duck Tales
Duck Tales 2
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers 2
Felix the Cat
Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout
Ren and Stimpy Show: Buckaroo$
Double Dragon
Contra
Super C
Contra Force
Power Blade
Power Blade 2
Dynowarz: The Destruction of Spondylus
Metal Storm
Journey to Silius
Air Fortress
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Blaster Master
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turltes 2
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3
Legendary Wings
BreakThru
Commando
Guerrilla War
World Games
Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular
Caveman Games
DK Classics
Jaws
Ninja Gaiden
Where's Waldo?
Bonk's Adventure
Panic Restaurant
Bubble Bobble 2
Dr. Mario
Bubble Bobble
MC Kids
Batman
Circus Caper
Roller Games
Widget
Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures 2
The Jetsons
The Little Mermaid
Monster in my Pocket
Gremlins 2
Future Plans - Thought I'd try to take down Kirby's Adventure and Kickle Cubicle soon.
Since my efforts to capture more NES games failed tonight, I found myself with lots of time on my hands and no games to play. I used that time to do some more KoF research and I've come up with a team that I'm happy with and even the order in which I'll be using them for most match ups.
My first fighter will generally be Joe. His fireball is fantastic for me to keep people at bay (it hits low AND mid areas as opposed to just one of them), and I am competent enough to use him without his desperation attacks. I'll be using him to keep enemies at a distance and at the same time build my special attack meters in case I need to fall back onto my other teammates. He also has pretty decent speed and anti-air attacks should they be able to dodge my fireballs. It'll probably come of as a little cheap, but I'm out to win so I'll fight dirty if need be.
Next up will be Robert. Like Joe I find him to be fairly strong even without his desperation attacks, so if the first round doesnt go my way he is still a solid fighter. I'm not very knowledgable regarding bad matchups yet, but so far it seems like he is a good match against most, so having him in the second spot should mean he is more likely to fight 2 opponents while 3rd spot would likely fight 1 in most cases.
The tail of my team is going to be Kyo. He is similar to Robert for me, but I rely a bit more on his desperations. Having him in the 3rd spot should ensure that I've always got a couple ready to dish out.
I cut Goro since I felt like I needed a strong starter and Joe seemed much more capable.
Now I'm off to practice hopping and combos.
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