VideoGame_Discussion

Man, I really need to keep up with this thread. I JUST did my yearly playthrough of Super Mario Land.

Had I seen SML2 as this month's RTT I'd have gotten a move on and played through that as well.

Frank wrote:

You’ve still got a full day to beat it. It’s only 3 hours long if you want to beat every stage, including optional ones.

SupremeSarna wrote:

I always rush SML. My last playthrough was just under a half hour. I don't know if I want to rush SML2, but we'll see. I've been needing an excuse to try out the DX patch

SupremeSarna wrote:

It's up to you. Any amount of "play the damn game" is good in my book.

The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge - 1
Mega Man 7 - 2
Bonk's Adventure - 2
Diddy Kong Racing - 4
Mortal Kombat II - 5
Call of Duty franchise - 3
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 3

Nightmare before Christmas - 3
Diddy Kong Racing - 4
Mortal Kombat 2 - 5
Call of duty - 2

Last day for December GOTM votes!

Super Mario Land 2 is using the Carrot power-up to float off into the horizon, while Robo Aleste sits in the corner, curled up in the fetal position, complaining that life is too hard. Here are all the badges we earned this month:

benstylus image BloodPuppetX image Renaissance2K image image Scott {imgt}https://i.imgur.com/iKZyry3.png 79 75{imgt} Slickriven image SupremeSarna image image

Many thanks to those of you that took shots at the Games of the Month, and also took the opportunity to take a few more parting shots at Dracula. If you happen to beat either of November's games later on, feel free to post here to get your badge.

Coming from a list of eight nominees, here are the results for December's Game of the Month:

1. Mega Man 7 - 22 votes
2. Mortal Kombat II - 19 votes
3. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 16 votes
4. Bonk's Adventure - 15 votes
5. Diddy Kong Racing - 14 votes
6. Call of Duty franchise - 12 votes
7. The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge - 6 votes
8. Pokemon X/Y - 5 votes

Released hot on the heels of the edgier Mega Man X, Mega Man 7 is the Blue Bomber's second outing on the Super Nintendo. The game largely follows the formula of its predecessors but borrows the concept of an item shot from Mega Man's portable outings, and also serves as the franchise's introduction to Bass and Treble. The game saw a number of re-releases as part of the Mega Man Anniversary Collection and Mega Man Legacy Collection 2, and has been featured on a few of Nintendo's Virtual Console offerings.

Beat Mega Man 7 to earn the Mega Man badge. {imgt}https://i.imgur.com/BP4SNn0.gif 125 140{imgt}

If you manage to show Dr. Wily who has the bigger bolts, share a #BeatIt screenshot.

Ready for this one. I think MM7 is even already on my retroid pocket 2 +. Woot!

I'm looking to buy/trade for a nicer copy of MM7 if anyone wants to deal. :D

Is this on any Steam Collections at all?

I've tried a couple different times to play the Mega Man games on NES and they just haven't hooked me. Maybe it's time to finally give the ones on SNES a chance.

Kommie wrote:

This one

https://store.steampowered.com/app/495050/Mega_Man...

I'm early to the party with one finished Mega Man 7. #BeatIt
[imgt w=1280 h=720]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FjAdGZyakAAQCyd?format...[/imgt]
Great game with detailed graphics, fun bosses, and entertaining characters. But it sadly kneecaps itself at the 11th hour with the final boss: Wily Capsule 7. I'll give all you guys a tip for fighting him: Though he isn't weak to it, the electric weapon you get from Cloud Man can shock him momentarily, making him cancel his projectile spreadshot. You still have to dodge some sparks he sends along the floor, and you'll need to hit him with other weapons to actually hurt him, but this will help you avoid heavy damage whenever you can pull it off successfully.

I wanna see different screenshots for all the victories, people! Keep 'em creative.

I attempted a playthrough of Mega Man 7 back when I was binging the Anniversary Collection for PS2 many moons ago. After breezing through the first six games, I made it to the Wily Stages of 7 before something I remember as a "beast-like monster bot" stopped me in my tracks. Couldn't adjust to their movement patterns, couldn't find a weapon weakness, and even with save states, couldn't deal enough damage to make it past them.

I'm pretty sure that boss was the one I've just hit in Wily Stage 2, and just like before, I'm completely stuck. Although now I know that there are a ton of optional items scattered around the Robot Master stages that I didn't know about originally, and having played through Mega Man 9 and 10, I know that those bolts I keep finding can be exchanged for power-up items and refill items.

I'm taking a break to farm some of those optional items in hopes that it will make the going a little easier, though SupremeSarna's post about the final boss makes me nervous.

Renaissance2K wrote:

Sounds like Turtlerizer. He’s weak to the charged Wild Coil, but I suggest just charging Mega Buster shots and blasting his face whenever you can. Make sure you master that slide! You can deal with the mini turtles using Danger Wrap or charged Buster shots.

SupremeSarna wrote:

Just reached Wily Capsule 7, and yeah, he sucks. Really wish it didn't mean repeating the first three stages, but I think I'm going to need to start over again tomorrow, save all my E cans, and see if I can make a dent in him using your shock tip.

Renaissance2K wrote:

Rejoice: You don’t have to redo any Wily stages if you leave and play a different stage! 7 is nice like that.

SupremeSarna wrote:

That's cool for farming and such, but me and my tiny play windows just don't want to have to do the whole thing in one sitting.

image

Credit for this clear, without a doubt, goes to @SupremeSarna. There's no way I would have survived that final fight without knowing Wily could be stunned. Even then, it still took me multiple attempts and more E-cans than I'd care to admit before Wily took pity on me and started spawning low enough to be hit with a Coil/Shock combo.

@Renaissance2K Happy to help!

I beat Mega Man 7

image

Meta post time! Let's talk about ways we can do things in 2023.

Nominations & Voting
I like the idea of allowing any number of nominations during a voting month. It reminds me of when the Oscars increased the Best Picture category to ten; in theory, it allows for a broader range of options and lets more people participate.

I can't think of any downside except that - if we stick to the usual at T-minus 7 days - it doesn't leave a lot of time for either nominating or voting. It used to take a few days to reach five nominees which gave us plenty of time for everyone to weigh in who wanted to, but giving threeish days to nominate and threeish days to vote isn't a ton of time, especially if one of those blocks falls on a weekend where people seem to be less active.

Does anybody else have a problem with removing the nominations cap? If we stick with that plan, maybe we can start the process at T-minus 10 days instead of 7?

Annual Franchise Challenge
I started the Annual Franchise Challenge this year as a bit of a side quest, since GOTMs tend to favor shorter titles, which means a lot of retro titles with longer campaigns are going to be overlooked. As a trial run, I picked Lunar because of the franchise's obvious connection to the origins of this thread and the game club, offering up a "permabadge" of sorts as the reward.

As far as I know, I'm the only person that played a Lunar game this year. I don't know if this is because people don't like the concept of the quest, don't like Lunar, or didn't realize this was actually a thing that we were doing. (It's underneath the GOTM details, so it's not difficult to miss.)

Should we try again next year with a franchise that gets voted in, or should we K.I.S.S. and just do monthly games?

O Captain, My Captain
I've been thread "captain" for two years now, and I'm having a lot of fun. I've played through a ton of great games, some of which were on my radar and some of which weren't, and I've especially enjoyed when we pick a game or a franchise that stirs up a lot of clears and discussion.

I'm content with keeping things rolling through 2023, but I wanted to reach out in case someone among you has been quietly wishing you could take the reigns, either because it sounds like fun or because you want to do things differently.

Basically, the "duties" include the following:
- Keeping the OP updated with objectives and results each month
- Running the nomination and voting process
- Producing badges for GOTMs
- Coming up with themes (spooky games, sixth gen games, FPS, etc.) or "executive picks" (Darkstalkers 3, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, Castlevania franchise, etc.) for some months
- Stirring up discussion about retro topics (I've been slacking a bit here, especially in the second half of the year when I get busy with RL stuff)

Again, I'm happy to keep things going as is. I just don't want to selfishly keep it all to myself if there are people out there that wanted to take over.

Thanks. Hope everybody's having fun this month.

All I know is that my goal next year is to play the entire Pikmin series (give or take Hey! Pikmin).

@Renaissance2K unless you’re tired of all the duties or are just too busy I’d prefer to see you or @Lunar
Keep running this. Neither one of you seems biased and you both let everyone speak and be heard.
There have been arguments in the past over really dumb and or petty crap and you have never seemed
to engage in any of it. I know I’ve been in plenty of dumb arguments here and plenty of them were because
of my (or someone else) overreacting to things that don’t really matter.

I like the idea of more nominations too. And having more time to nominate and vote might
be cool too. Also why not do the regular GOTM plus one bonus game of your own
choosing so even if one person is really annoyed by a GOTM they have at least one
other game to try to play through instead? It might get more people participating.

I’ve always wanted us to play more rpgs so of course I’m on board with certain games or
series being more spread out over the year where people don’t feel forced into
speedrunning through a giant RPG with tons of different paths in one month.
Most people intentionally vote AGAINST games like that. I’ve personally never played the
Lunar games but the series started when I had less money for games and couldn’t just
buy something whenever I wanted. So I stuck more to games and systems I knew and
had already.

Anyways that’s my thoughts about everything.

I like the idea of removing the nominations cap. However, I don't know that it should be unlimited. Maybe we should have a per-person cap at least, like 3?

I somehow missed the Annual Franchise Challenge and knew nothing about it. I'd say it's fine to keep, but honestly, I'm not very likely to go out of my comfort zone and try a brand new franchise. However, if a franchise I like is selected, I'm very likely to fit in 1 of its games over the course of the year.

You've been doing a great job and I have no interest in taking over running this.

Is it time to nominate already? We are doing a FPS for January, right?

I was going to call for nominations tomorrow, but feel free to post yours if you have some in mind.

I nominate the Catacombs 3D series. It's the first texture mapped FPS as far as I am aware.

Catacomb Abyss is free shareware so you don't even have to buy it. If you like it, the whole series being available on Gog for a pittance.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/catacombs_pack

Hah - it's even on sale for 20% off! The whole series (four 3d games plus the two earlier 2d games) for under $5 total. Easy to play on any pc that uses dosbox. And all of them are short enough to not become a slog.

That game is where my current avatar comes from.

As the end of the year and the holidays approach, let's look at all the badges we've earned in December:

BloodPuppetX image Renaissance2K image SupremeSarna image

Dr. Wily deserves as many smackdowns as we can muster, and there's still time to be a cool kid and finish Mega Man 7 before the ball drops on 2023.

Let's start taking nominations for the January Game of the Month. The theme for January, as suggested by @benstylus, is first-person shooters. Nominate some games or franchises that fit the theme, and we'll play through them as a group in January.

We'll start voting on December 26 and call the winner on January 1.

Ben has already nominated the Catacomb franchise. Since we're not capping nominations anymore, I'm going to throw my hat in the ring and nominate the Unreal franchise, especially considering Epic is about to turn off their servers next month.

Let's hear some nominees!

I will nominate two games

Star Wars: Dark Forces (playstation 1 and pc)

And

Hexen (playstation 1, PC, Saturn and N64)

Both of these games may be available other places and of course I wanted to nominate
Doom or Final Doom or Doom 64 (you get the idea) but I can’t see no one else nominating it
AND the other two games are really cool and not as well known I don’t think.
There’s also insanely cool looking remakes of Dark Forces with graphics that just weren’t possible
when it was released almost 30 years ago. Worth checking out on YouTube just to see what’s different
and new. I’m not sure if there are playable builds of it anywhere but I was mostly just looking
for the original PS1 game. I never played through Hexen and always wanted to, I DID play through
Dark Forces I’m pretty sure and it was just great 😃 both games are still not crazy expensive
on PS1 so I figured they were both worth nominating.

I tried playing through Hexen when it was a new release, but there was so much backtracking I eventually gave up. I don't think I would want to try it again.

Here's another nom:

Powerslave/Exhumed
Got a great Saturn port and a remaster was recently released on Switch (and I'm assuming other current gen consoles).

I think GOG got a release. Not sure about Steam.

Steam has both the DOS version and the re-released Saturn port.

Gog has both as well, and they are currently on sale for $6.99 for the Dos version (regularly 9.99) and $14.99 for the remaster (regularly 19.99).

Can't beat free for Catacomb Abyss though

Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates.

Anybody else have any classic FPSs or franchises they want to nominate? We'll start voting on the 26th.

I’ll nominate Doom 64.

Renaissance2K wrote:

Sure I'll nominate any Duke Nukem game (since my PS1 is working again and I have Time to Kill!)

Disruptor

Happy Boxing Day! Let's unbox which of our nominees will be the January 2023 Game of the Month!

Nominees
Catacomb franchise
Unreal franchise
Star Wars: Dark Forces
Hexen: Beyond Heretic
Powerslave / Exhumed
Doom 64
Duke Nukem 3D series
Disruptor

Either publicly in this thread or privately in a PM to me, give each nominee 0-5 points. Omitting a nominee is equivalent to giving it a vote of 0. The game with the highest score by the end of the month will be the January 2023 GOTM.

I'm not going to vote because, honestly, I really want to play nearly every one of the games we nominated, and giving everything a 5 doesn't really change much. Looking forward to seeing the results, so git yer votes in.