VideoGame_Discussion

I beat Super Metroid. Though I didn't list listed under consoles, since I don't currently play it that often, so no need to count it. Wanted to post a beaten game here, since it's been awhile.

Pretty fun game. Holds up well. I got lost numerous times, which sometimes made things tricky, but overall it was a fun experience, and worth playing.

@WithinTemptation Gotcha recorded! Do try to update more frequently so it's not a tidal wave next time. But hey, congrats on reach well beyond 200!

nonamesleft wrote:

So how'd you play it? Wii? Switch Online? An eeeevil emulator? How would you like me to record it?

SupremeSarna wrote:
No need to record it. I was just writing a game that I beat, since I haven't posted here in awhile that I beat a game.

It's already listed as a beat but I'll just post my review here as well:

God of War Ragnarok: 7.5/10

I'm going to post everything behind a spoiler. Major spoilers, obviously

I beat it at 21.5 Hours with no side content on story mode.

On all technical levels, it's a great game. Just the bad/not-so-great story drags it down so much.

The story feels a bit rushed just to get it out for Q4

I've got a tradition of playing a Griptonite-developed Harry Potter RPG every December, and this year was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (originally GBC). It's a great little adaptation of the book/movie with tongue-and-cheek writing and charming visuals. It and the first one could use some improvements--spells and items don't tell you what they do until you've already chosen them, enemy weaknesses aren't told to you on the battle screen even after you used Informous to learn them, and armor is so expensive you probably won't have every slot equipped before the final battle. I avoided the Card system since it never really jumped out at me, but it might've fixed the steep difficulty spike in the last hour of the game. In this case...

I got through it all just fine, but there were some really close scrapes at the end that a hypothetical remake could iron out. Don't take me as a Moaning Myrtle here--it's a quality game that's worth your time if you like the Harry Potter series, and the dialogue was both witty and accurate to the book. I recommend it!

I got one of these as a free bonus in a trade from someone here. Will need to see which one it was.

benstylus wrote:

There are three: HP1 (GBC), HP2 (GBC), and HP3 (GBA). The GBA versions of HP 1 and 2 aren't RPGs, so I can't recommend them from experience.

My funny story was at a flea market. I found a seller offering bother HP1 and 2 for $5 each. I didn't know if I'd actually get around to playing them, but I had both in hand. I ultimately dropped HP1 and just bought HP2, since I'd heard that it was better. As I turned to leave, I walked past a glass case owned by a different vendor that had exactly two video games in it--one was HP1 with a slightly-damaged label, and had a $2 price tag. Score!

I have Chamber of Secrets.

Pocket Academy 3 - IOS
Finally getting around to some of the newer ones after focusing on old ones (1 year + old). This one was really good. Kairosoft has definitely improved over the years. I am playing Convienience story right now and it's also very good.
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Call of Duty Modern Warfare - XBOX 360
The original that started it all. While it was the 4th Call of Duty. This was the big award winning super title that made Call of Duty. I beat this years ago, but since I have my 360 hooked up to a small TV, and I have a new gamertag. Might was well play it again. Because I am going to be playing most of the Call of Duty games. On 360 first, and then onto Xbox One.
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#30 - Pac-Man (Arcade 1UP) New personal best high score of 62,550
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#31 - New Super Mario Bros. 2
Aside from absolutely throwing coins and 1-ups at you throughout the whole game, it actually provided a bit of challenge. I ended with 300+ lives! I appreciated that I had to slow down on some levels and explore a bit for all the Star Coins. I ended up collecting all 99 of them. I have to finish the last few Star Road levels, but I look forward to it.
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#32 - Hades
Took a long time to finally get around to playing this. I'm not a huge fan of the Roguelike genre, but this is a story-driven Roguelike done right! Even in death I still feel like progress was made, that I'm not absolutely back to nothing. It lives up to the praise and accolades it has received. I got my first clear using the Raging Rush version of the Eternal Spear. I look forward to several more clears.
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Personal Stats/Achievement related to this topic
- Gamecube and Dreamcast can be removed from my platform list. I no longer have games for these consoles after my recent downsizing.

- I feel like Hades is difficult enough to count towards the Grown-Ass Man badge. Roguelikes are built to be challenging. Hades + Elden Ring would earn me the badge.

I beat two games: WarioWare Gold and Fire Emblem Heroes .
[imgt]https://i.imgur.com/ThmNDvH_d.webp?maxwidth=640&sh...[/imgt]

For $30 used, I expected more from Gold. It boasts 300 microgames and full voice acting, so I expected it to be longer than WarioWare Touched, which took me about 5 hours in 2020. Instead the story mode wrapped up in about 3, and three of the 18 chapters were tutorials! Every character got one chapter and then appeared in the last cutscene—weak! There are other challenges I can play, and I probably will, but they lack the same charm as story chapters.

As for Fire Emblem Heroes, Book 6 has officially concluded for the year, which we count as the game being “beaten” for this year. I finished every Story and Paralogue on each difficulty over the course of 2022. This was the year they made my dream come true and added Brigand Boss, a random side villain from Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. He’s glorious with his new art, though it looks like he put on some pounds.

If the Minerva's Den DLC for BioShock 2 is worthy of being counted as a clear, then that's my #47. version

SupremeSarna wrote:

Nintendo was still desperate for money at the time of Warioware's release. Switch had only been out a year and while it was doing well, they had a lot of ground to make up from Wii U.

2027/2018 releases included Mario Party Top 100 and Rhythm Heaven Megamix were also both "best of" compilations (Mario Sports Superstars was arguably another one); the Pokemon release for that year was Ultra Sun/Moon, an expanded remake of Sun/Moon; we got ports of Yoshi's Woolly World, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Luigi's Mansion, and ports of not one but two Mario & Luigi games.

In short, I'm not surprised WarioWare Gold isn't your favorite. Nintendo was scrambling for content.

benstylus wrote:

They’re porting Megamix in five years?! What’re you doing leaking that?


M&L is a little more complicated than that. AlphaDream was a small company that had the Mario & Luigi IP but very little support from Nintendo. They didn’t have the funds to develop expensive HD games for the Switch, and their 3DS entries were bringing in less revenue as fan interest waned. After Paper Jam, they only had enough money to remake existing games for the non-HD handheld, which was on its way out. And then Bowser’s Inside Story 3DS bankrupted them in 2019 by selling less units than Mario’s Virtual Boy games. Ouch.

If AlphaDream could have ditched the 3DS for the Switch, I think they would’ve. Shame, really. As for me, I would’ve dug if they’d made Mario & Luigi: Partners in Team + Admiral Shroob’s Armada.

SupremeSarna wrote:


If Nintendo had paid them to make new ones they would have (just ask Platinum games about Bayonetta). But since Nintendo were also hard up for revenue back then, ports of existing games would be faster and cheaper.

Honestly they would have done much better as Switch ports. BIS especially because the 3DS could already play the original so people wondered why they should pay $40 for the new one instead of $20 for the DS version.

You say Alpha Dream couldn't afford hi res graphics for switch, but again, it all comes from the budget they are given. I don't think even Nintendo believed in the series anymore.

benstylus wrote:

It was a darn shame, truly. Would’ve been cool if Nintendo lifted them out of bankruptcy when the story broke in 2019. It’s sad to think the series’s creativity peaked with Dream Team in 2013 and they just kinda sputtered out over the next six years.

At least Captain Goomba was likeable in Bowser’s Minions. That new side story was legitimately quite enjoyable.

SupremeSarna wrote:

Paper Jam was just as good as Dream Team.

I don't think the creativity really sputtered, just the sales. And with declining sales Nintendo didn't see a point in keeping it going. I wouldn't be surprised to see a new entry eventually though, from another developer.

Want to talk about Nintendo published games that declined in creativity, let's talk about the Professor Layton series. Should probably have ended after the first trilogy. I'm partway through game 6 now. Game 4 was OK, Game 5 had a rubbish story (the ending especially absolutely infuriated me), and Game 6 doesn't appear to be any better so far.

In fact, I am enjoying May's Mystery: Forbidden Memories for DS more than the later Layton games.. It's very low budget but interesting to see a different studio's take on a Layton game

2nd of Dec, 74th overall, 3 title
Hob
Earns me Hyrule Hero with Tunic

I loved Runic's first game - Torchlight and had this on my radar for a good while and had started it a long while back, but decided to push to beat it recently.
For a game with no dialog it did okay with telling a story of a beautiful land corrupted by some purple ooze and monsters. You play as a dude who gains a mechanical arm in the first 5 mins of the game and has to traverse the land to find stuff and eliminate the purple infection. It feels a LOT like a Zelda title, especially the earlier ones and it was fun to play, I'm happy I finally put the time in to finish it.

I found just about everything too - the 20 butterflies, all 12 pieces of sword to upgrade mine, the 3 different cloaks, all of the skill upgrades and I think all of the observation spots. I didn't collect enough currency though to be able to afford either of the final 2 upgrades I found (1 being a cloak that I wouldn't have used anyhow), but that was kind of a bummer. I used an online map to track my progress of collected things (until the image file I was drawing on crashed with only a mere few to locate, so that could be how I missed them). In any case I enjoy exploring the wonderfully crafted world and the atmosphere and music/audio of the title.

Paper Jam was my favorite of the new Paper Marios on .

I don’t know why I beat this.
[imgt]https://i.imgur.com/2dGSY4z_d.webp?maxwidth=640&sh...[/imgt]
I bought a GBC/GBA lot a few weeks ago to play PAC-MAN, and SpongeBob SquarePants: Legend of the Lost Spatula came with it. I liked the video Lonely Goomba made about it on YouTube, and I was bored/ill tonight, so I tried this out. Took about 3 hours, maybe less.

@Frank said this was a good game—y u b lion 2 meh? SpongeBob jumps like Bubsy the Bobcat and enemies are small and often flying. Different enemies require different weapons to dispatch, but switching between them forces you to pause the game and pull up a window to do so. It’s tedious and frustrating. It starts going downhill at stage 3 and never really redeems itself, sadly. Best part of it was the intro, where Mr. Krabs explains a wild legend through a still image of his face. The GBC can’t capture the zany linework of the show, so his unchanging expression just makes him look kooky. It’s pretty funny, tbh.
[imgt w=412 h=339]https://i.imgur.com/ceRJ7SN.jpg[/imgt]

SupremeSarna wrote:

Oh I never said it was good. And if I did it musta been a late night. I had this game as a kid (still have it). It was never very good but I liked it back then. Music was a jam though!

playing games as a kid will definitely make not great games much better in your experience. Lagoon is one of mine. Mostly because of that amazing opening town music. Music for the entire game is really good.

#66 down: The Callisto Protocol on PS5. I had pre-ordered Marvel's Midnight Suns months ago from Target, but they are the worst, and it's "backordered" for some indeterminate amount of time, so I picked this up in the meantime. I enjoyed this game. It has some truly next-gen visuals, and the level of detail is impressive. It also has pretty solid sound/voice acting, and it nails the atmosphere. My one gripe: not being able to run was annoying. It's almost like they're trolling you, because, at one point in the game, you actually have to run, and it lets you, but it's the only time when you can. Otherwise, you walk around at this plodding pace. It does force you to be strategic in combat though and learn how to dodge/perfect dodge/block well.

ErickRPG wrote:

I’ll assume you’re not counting that as a clear.

My example is an infamous Wario game. Maybe when it becomes GOTM, I’ll see why so many people detest it. I’m willing to listen, but I’ll admit I don’t see what’s so heinous about it myself.

It's Mr. Iwata's birthday so I beat a Nintendo game.

It's one that was intended for earlier in the year, but the game ended up being a lot longer than I thought; so I ended up putting it down several times as I went through it. I knew it went beyond the arcade game but didn't realize just how many levels there were.

It's Donkey Kong for Game Boy!

What starts out as a perfectly good portable rendition of Donkey Kong evolves into a vast array of dozens of levels of puzzle platforming. Each world has its own gimmick and there are some great throwbacks to classic DK levels as well. If you want to see the genesis of Mario vs Donkey Kong on the Game Boy Advance, this game is the template.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZyrS9XWLE5CvgbDLA

One of Game Boy's best. It's even better on Super Game Boy if you can play it that way.

January:

February

March:

April:

May:

June:

July

August

September

October

November

December

I beat Kirby’s Pinball Land .
[imgt]https://i.imgur.com/smz8Sxh_d.webp?maxwidth=640&sh...[/imgt]

This quality pinball game is secretly one of Kirby’s best outings. Three fun tables made from the pieces of Kirby’s Dream Land and Kirby’s Adventure, plus some original enemies. Three sub-games to help you rack up a high score, and four bosses to conquer. King Dedede shoots lightning from his hands here, so they were still working out what his abilities were in 1993. Blade Knight, Ax Knight, and Meta Knight only appear on the second playthrough, if Kirby performs certain actions on the top level of each Pinball Land. And did I mention that the Wispy-Woods Land music is one of the best tracks in the series? Play this game, I beg you!

Fun fact: The default high scores are named after the Mobile Suit Gundam cast.

SupremeSarna wrote:

yeah not a clear, just a discussion. I plan to play it some day on my retroid.

I beat Mega Man Xtreme
[imgt]https://i.imgur.com/PWkCb64_d.webp?maxwidth=640&sh...[/imgt]
I beat two of the three modes. As far as I can tell, the third mode just puts the previous two together with pretty much no changes. So that seems unnecessary to me.

Game’s pretty good. Middy is the greatest Reploid in existence.

I beat Kirby: Squeak Squad . Can I make it to 200 clears before 2023?
[imgt]https://i.imgur.com/SfE5Rot_d.webp?maxwidth=640&sh...[/imgt]
Good game, blazed right through it.

I beat New Super Mario bros.
[imgt]https://i.imgur.com/g3wUd0h_d.webp?maxwidth=640&sh...[/imgt]
19 to go.

------- OP NOW UPDATED

Took a while, especially to put in over 50 for 1 user alone, but big thanks to @SupremeSarna for recording all of the those clears and a hat tip to @WithinTemptation for beating an unreal number of games this year, earning the first ever for over 200 clears.

I put in all of the December titles so far as well, so after adding 100+ games, please check your lists to make sure I didn't make any mistakes.
Shout out to @Bleed_DukeBlue for earning the 2nd full set of badges and @SupremeSarna for earning the first for completing a title on all systems, he's the first/only one to do that with 20+ consoles.

Nov's leaderboard ended up with the following:
1. 16 Clears - @WithinTemptation
2. 9 Clears - @SupremeSarna & @TalonJedi87
4. 8 Clears - @incubus421 & @Renaissance2K & Slickriven
7. 5 Clears - @Bleed_DukeBlue & @BloodPuppetX & @ErickRPG (sorry missed you on the first pass)

With only basically 3 weeks left for me to run this thread, I thank y'all for participating and putting up with my rules and how I ran this. Clearly some folks participated a lot and I hope they enjoyed the thread. Others seemingly stopped following it and if that was b/c of me, I'm sorry, maybe they'll rejoin in '23 with Sarna running it.

SupremeSarna wrote:

That is on my want list. Definitely want to play it again soon (not sure if I actually fully beat it).

Thanks for making this happen. I know it’s a lot of work, and I’ve enjoyed being part of it.

Slickriven wrote:

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:

Thanks again guys and same here. It’s fun to see and record how many games we conquer in a year. I’m way behind compared to my games beaten last year but I’ve also been playing longer games and been a tad busier this year. I am still hoping to finish God of War Ragnarok at least for my final game clear of 2022.

I don't think I'm gonna beat every system this year but I did play more systems than last year, including , , , and

I'm gonna try starting next year with my least played systems. a game and game.

Slickriven wrote:

@Slickriven Thanks a lot for hosting this. It's been fun, and has motivated me to dust off some of the consoles I haven't picked up in quite some time. As time goes on I find it harder and harder to even keep up with everything new that's coming out each month. This leaves less and less time for going back to consoles I still have games to beat for, or just playing through something I love simply for that nostalgic experience. Up until this year I hadn't beat anything on my , , , or in 4-5 years. Even worse, I hadn't beat a game in 10 years! That game from 10 years ago? AR Tonelico II Melody of Metafalica. This may be too much info, but I've kept a spreadsheet since 2007 that details all the games I beat in a year. I started doing this in the first place thanks to GameTZ. I find that the spreadsheet helps jog my memory if nothing else. I seem to forget less major events in my life rather easily. I couldn't believe it had been 10 years since I beat a PS2 game, once my most beloved system.

I'm looking forward to participating next year as well with @SupremeSarna at the helm.

Although miniscule, I saw a few things that could be edited on my card in the original post. These things are mostly moot at this point as we come down to the last few weeks and I don't foresee me having many more clears at this point.
First, my games beat says 29, but it's actually 32. Fun fact: 34 is the most I've beat in one year since keeping track. I could still beat this number!
My consoles are listed at 14/20, but should be 14/18 with and needing removed
In the total systems covered section, I am listed at 13, but it should be 14

Thanks again!

I beat Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards .
[imgt]https://i.imgur.com/WPHFrTB_d.webp?maxwidth=640&sh...[/imgt]
Great game! Love the story, characters, music, camera system, and cavalcade of mixable abilities. This one’s a classic for sure!

I tried playing that recently, I thought it was awful. Like, really, REALLY bad.

I beat WWE2K15 on the xbox1

In the words of a certain angelic hero, "Sorry to keep you waiting!" I have a few quick completions to catch up on, but I'll start with Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3DS.

When Kid Icarus: Uprising was announced at E3 2010, it was a pretty big deal. Coasting on the momentum of a surprise appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii, the new Kid Icarus was the first new entry to the franchise in twenty-five years. Rather than taking the easy route and make yet another eccentric platformer for the sequel, Uprising would tap into the gaming trend du jour and be an intense third-person shooter with a massive arsenal of collectable weapons, multiplayer modes, and extensive banter. Oh, the banter. Palutena would go down in gaming history as one of the most pervasive "radio buddies" ever, but that's jumping ahead a little bit.

Though my exposure to the franchise was extremely limited (I purchased and played the original on the Wii Virtual Console, only to die a few hundred times on the first level), I pre-ordered the game and picked it up at release because the first run package came with the 3DS Stand, a cheap piece of plastic that would prop your console on a desk at the optimal angle for demon busting. I didn't think too hard about it. I could have asked obvious questions like "Why would the optimal way to play a handheld game be stationary on a flat surface?" and instead just got slackjawed over a free goodie that came with a game that I'd probably end up buying and playing anyway, given its elevated blockbuster status on an otherwise quiet platform.

Nearly every level in Kid Icarus: Uprising follows the same formula. The level begins with an on-rails shooting segment where Pit - endowed with the power of flight for five minutes - approaches the level's primary arena or battleground and destroys whatever resistance standing in his way. I love these segments. They move incredibly quickly, the handheld's 3D effect does them incredible justice, and the experience varies quite a bit with whatever weapon Pit happens have brought into the fray. With 25 levels in the main campaign, the developers did an excellent job of making sure environments and their design language don't get repeated too much, and these introductory sequences do a great job of showing them off.

Pit eventually lands, and the main level segment takes over, which is more like a traditional run-and-gun third-person shooter. Pit moves with the Circle Pad, aims with the stylus, and performs melee and ranged attacks (automatically selected based on the range to your target) by smashing the shoulder button as fast as you can. And if that sounds uncomfortable, well, now you understand why the game was bundled with a stand... to take some of the weight off of your aching wrists. Even before considering consumable weapons and equippable powers, Pit has a pretty advanced moveset, each attack of which is some variation of "move a certain way and shoot," which is probably great for people that take the time to master the game and get extremely technical, but for a mook like me, it just meant that Pit spiced up every encounter with unintentional acrobatics that usually ended with the target exploding.

I played through three Guitar Hero: On Tour games last year, which unforgetably launched with millions of cries of "ARGH, MY WRIST" at the expense of the game's guitar grip controller. Even my cranky old man hands didn't find a reason to complain about it. But DAMN, if my cogs weren't barking after an extended session of Uprising. Maybe it was more tolerable with an old school, original-sized 3DS, but one unstable hand is not nearly enough to support the weight of a full-size, late release 3DS XL, when your dominant hand has to stay completely devoted to the stylus. When things go south, it's way too easy to think that the outcome would have been different if you had been playing with a keyboard and mouse like with a traditional shooter, or even a twin-stick gamepad.

That said, it's hard to not be really impressed with the game. From the moment it boots, it bears more than just a passing resemblance to Super Smash Bros. Brawl with its large, colorful menu icons and layout. Brawl seems to have been a template for packing game content as well as Uprising features a whole bunch of collectathon mechanics - equippable powers, idols (think statues from Smash Bros.), and more weapons than you can shake a bag of sticks at. It may as well be thousands, considering how many there are, and how difficult it is to obtain all but the most common ones. Speaking of difficulty, like Smash, each level has a baseline difficulty (and rewards generosity) that can be increased or decreased by paying out currency. Higher difficulties unlock challenging side paths with special weapons drops, and they increase the power level of a handful of one-off "legendary" weapons that are scattered around the universe. You can use Play Coins to roll for new idols, weapons can be combined to make new weapons, there's a Treasure Hunt screen - another Smash callback - that reveals artwork as certain objectives are met, and if that's still not enough content, you can pay a 3D model of Palutena to... well... I'm not really sure exactly. She just kinda floats closer to you or something. That's it.

Did I mention the banter? Pit, Palutena, and their cornucopia of side characters talk A LOT as the game unfolds in front of you. It's hard to adequately convey exactly how much dialogue there is in this game. It's CONSTANT. And for their credit, Pit's goofball personality and neverending barrage of fourth wall breaks are actually genuinely funny more often than they're cringey. But it's almost alarming how pervasive the conversations end up being, to the point that - if you find yourself in a moment of peace and quiet - it probably means you're taking way too long to do something important.

The single most commmon thought I had playing the game, though, is sheer disbelief that this was just a 3DS game. For fans of the platform, it's an incredible demonstration of what the little handheld could pull off with a lot of passion. For fans of Kid Icarus, wherever they may be, it's better than what they could have ever hoped for after such a long absence. It's like jumping straight from the original Super Mario Bros. straight into Super Mario Galaxy.

There's still a couple of other quick completions that I need to update, but I'll break here so I don't lose this monstrosity that I just typed.