Games I Have Finished (as far as I can remember)

[A Black Falcon]

Soul Calibur has had massive fanservice from the beginning, and each game is worse than the one before it... the newest one has gotten the most attention there, but the older ones had more than their share too.

[Bo Jackson]

Most games with female characters contain fan service, because of the immaturity of the main gaming demographic and of the developers themselves. It's like every artist in gaming who designs women learned how to draw the female form from 90's Image comics and anime porn.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, can't really argue with that. It's almost always true, design-wise.

[A Black Falcon]

Game is now over and you are victorious

NES
--
Rollergames -- Fun game... I'd never heard of it before this week, as far as I know, but it's pretty good. By Konami ("Ultra"), 1991... good graphics and sound for the NES. Interesting gameplay, one half beat 'em up (with standard left or right facing, enemies that take several hits to kill, and a jump kick and grab/throw move (plus a A+B special move, which you get 3 of per life), in static screens) and one half isometric-style '3d' action-platformer (free movement around in the level with 8-direction facing and movement (except for two auto-scroll stages), and enemies that die in one hit. No jumpkick or grab combo.). It was hard... the game has no powerups, so the health bar you start the level with is the only one you get. You also start the stage over when you die... most levels are broken into several parts though (1-1 and 1-2) and you restart at the second stage once you reeach it (only exception: the two autoscroll levels which are all one part, but they don't have real bosses, just an avoidance section at the end) so that helps a bit (though the final level, 6, has four parts, the last one of which is pretty much just the boss). One player only, but oh well.

It is kind of odd that a game based on a TV roller derby competition show has a NES game that is so totally different... there was evidently also an arcade game that tries to pretty much be an arcade version of the TV show, but apart from using the team names from the teams in the show (there are three "teams" (characters) to choose from as your character, and the other three teams are the three evil teams you need to beat), but this most definitely is not that. Anyway, interesting game... and despite how frustrating the final boss was (he's quite hard), I'd say it was fun too. :)

[A Black Falcon]

Virtual Boy
--
Virtual Boy Wario Land (Normal difficulty)

[A Black Falcon]

Virtual Boy
--
Vertical Force (Difficulty 1 (Easy)) -- Great shooter! Takes 20 minutes to beat on Easy... literally.

[A Black Falcon]

SNES
--
Kirby's Dream Course -- as mentioned in the thread in Tendo.

[A Black Falcon]

Additions recently

PC
--

Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst, Episode I (Normal) -- why do all Phantasy Star games need depressing storylines...

Emulation
--
Sylphia (Turbo-CD) (J) -- very good shmup... only moderate difficulty, but pretty good. Nice ending... I'm not sure exactly what happened there, but it was sad. :(

[Bo Jackson]

I finished Minish Cap yesterday.

It's weird, because the last time I played it was shortly after it came out. I bought it at launch and played through it basically to the end. Years later I pick it up again, hah.

In order of handheld Zelda I'd rank em as so:

1. LA
2. Oracles
3. PH
4. MC

There's a huge gap between numbers two and three, mind you.

[A Black Falcon]

I just don't quite understand all the PH hate. It's a good game...

... Okay, I'd understand disliking it for its poor story. But gameplay-wise, it's great. Sure, sure, you go in one dungeon six times or so. But it's different each time... and the touch controls work really, really well.

I probably would say

LA
OoA
PH
OoS

[OB1]

I really liked PH, but the that Sea King dungeon really brought the game down. I don't know what the hell Nintendo was thinking there.

[A Black Falcon]

But why? It's longer each time, it has shortcuts, it's a genuine challenge (in a good way), it has a halfway warp so you don't need to keep replaying the first half part... I really don't see the problem.

[Bo Jackson]

Because it's the worst dungeon in the history of the franchise? It's fucking timed and has shitty stealth elements. The only thing that could have made it worse was having to return to it several times throughout the g--oh wait you did have to do that.

Phantom Hourglass was like a wonderful five-course meal where you had to stab your hand with a fork between each plate. Oh the plates were great, but I'd rather not go through that again.

[A Black Falcon]

It was interesting and different. The other dungeons in the game were short, simple, and very easy (and thus kind of boring), so it's really the Temple of the Sea King that makes the game... without it the game would definitely be worse, I'd say. The timing and stealth elements work fine.

I thought that it was a perfectly fine dungeon. I can think of a lot of Zelda dungeons I liked less...

Forest Temple (OoT)
Lord Jabu-Jabu's Belly (OoT)
Water Temple (MM)
some of the more frustrating dungeons in LttP
etc.

[Bo Jackson]

I think you're the only person in the world who actually liked that dungeon. Seriously.

[DMiller]

I'm only halfway through PH so I can't speak from the position of playing through the whole thing, but I haven't found that Sea King dungeon to be tedious. I do like the challenge of it compared to the other dungeons.

[Bo Jackson]

Wait until you return to it for the third time... and the fourth time...

[Great Rumbler]

Games that I've finished:

Arc the Lad
Batman Returns
Beyond Good & Evil
Bioshock
Burnout 3
Call of Duty 4
Colonization
Crackdown
Cruisin’ World
Crysis
Curse of Monkey Island
Dark Savior
Dead Rising
Diablo
Diddy Kong Racing
Driver
Eternal Darkness
F-Zero X
F-Zero GX
Fable
Fallout 1
Final Fantasy VII
Full Throttle
Gears of War
Geist
Goldeneye
Grand Theft Auto 3
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Half-Life 2 and Episodes 1-2
Halo 1
ICO
Incredible Crisis
Jade Empire
Katamari Damashii
Killer Instinct
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards
Link's Crossbow Training
Luigi's Mansion
Mass Effect
Metal Gear Solid 2
Metroid Prime 1-3
Mischief Makers
Morrowind
New Super Mario Bros.
No More Heroes
Oblivion
Ocarina of Time
Oregon Trail
Perfect Dark
Pokemon Snap
Portal
Professor Layton and the Curios Village
Psychonauts
Radiata Stories
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles
Rocket Knight Adventures
S.T.A.K.L.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
Sam and Max: Hit the Road
Shadow of the Colossus
Sin and Punishment: Successor to Earth
Sonic Adventure 1
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Spyro the Dragon
Star Fox 64
Star Ocean: The Second Story
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire
Streets of Rage 2
Stuntman
Street Fighter II: Special Championship Edition
Super Mario Bros. 1 and 2
Super Mario 64
Super Mario Galaxy
Super Metroid
Super Munchers
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Sword of Vermillion
System Shock 2
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time
Tekken 3
Test Drive Unlimited
The Dig
Twilight Princess
Two Worlds
We Heart Katamari
Whiplash
XX/XY: Feel the Love
Yoshi's Island

[A Black Falcon]

Wait until you return to it for the third time... and the fourth time...

Yes, as you get to more and more interesting floors with even more clever puzzles... :)

I do like the challenge of it compared to the other dungeons.

Definitely. The rest of the game is so easy... fun, but easy.

[Bo Jackson]

you're so weird

[A Black Falcon]

GR: Haven't finished (and/or don't own) many PC games, have you...

New addition

Emulation
--
Nexzr (J) (Turbo CD) -- awesome, awesome shmup... very hard, but one of the best shmups there is.

[Great Rumbler]

I've beaten about 15 or so, not counting console versions.

[A Black Falcon]

You didn't list platforms, so I was assuming that you played multiplatform ones on consoles... is that not true for some?

Oh, and I added some games I beat a while ago but forgot to list.

Emulation (no savestates available)
--
18 Wheeler American Pro Trucker (DC) (emulated)
Triggerheart Exelica (DC) (J) (emulated)

[Great Rumbler]

You didn't list platforms, so I was assuming that you played multiplatform ones on consoles... is that not true for some?

Only one or two, mostly because until just recently I haven't had a computer good enough to play new games.

[A Black Falcon]

HAH! Take that, Gradius III (I mean, Bacterions)!

I had to use two of the three continues in the last level to finish the game, so I was starting to worry that once again I'd fail just short of the end, but this time, I didn't. Awesome... so awesome. :)

SNES
--
Gradius III - Normal difficulty

[A Black Falcon]

Only one or two, mostly because until just recently I haven't had a computer good enough to play new games.

Well, now you can catch up. :)

Dreamcast (burned disc played in actual console)
--
Under Defeat (J) -- awesome, awesome shmup... I'd gotten to the final boss before, but only with unlimited continues, which you only get at 8 hours of ingame playtime (not menus, actual play) which I only just reached earlier today, did I have enough continues to beat the last boss without hitting game over first. It's only five levels long, but the levels are fairly long, so it does take a good while. Amazing shmup, though. Exceptional graphics for the Dreamcast, great gameplay with unique design elements, a second loop at much higher difficulty level... Under Defeat deserves its reputation for greatness.

I also just noticed that I'd managed to forget to list Ikaruga (DC) (J) (burned and played on real DC) when I beat it, some months ago... so that's listed now too. :)

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah! Beat Virtual Boy Wario Land on Hard. Got all the treasures, but took 4:47 and only had 10,000 coins, so I didn't get the best ending. Oh well, I beat it. :)

[Bo Jackson]

does anyone have any gba games they'd like to sell?

I got a GB Micro and it's like the best portable ever (since I can always carry it around) and even though I have dozens of GBA games I still want some more.

[A Black Falcon]

... And just beat Vertical Force on Normal. Died several times, but beat it without getting any game overs. Easy took me 17 minutes the time I beat it, but the last time I tried Normal I got stuck on the level four boss... this time I beat the whole thing. Level 5 on normal wasn't really any harder than the level 4 boss was. :)

It's definitely a pretty good game... on the harder difficulty levels the numbers of enemies and bullets increase so you really need to be paying attention to which levels the various enemies and bullets are on.

[A Black Falcon]

DS
--
Etrian Odyssey (Beat Entreant)

[A Black Falcon]

Genesis
--
Sonic 3 & Knuckles (with Knuckles)

... for some reason Genesis S3&K was on the list already, but I don't think I'd finished that version before, actually... only the PC version.

S&K's levels are better than Sonic 3's...

[A Black Falcon]

Successful day today...

N64
--
Big Mountain 2000 -- finally finished it... great racing game, really. Highly underrated!

Genesis
--
Sunset Riders (Easy difficulty) -- great game. Not as great as the Arcade/SNES game, but great nonetheless. It's great to finally finish the Genesis game too...

Emulation
--
Mega Man (NES) -- yes, I used savestates. How DID I find the patience to beat that thing in MMAC... it's very frustrating even with them!

[A Black Falcon]

!!!!

PC
--
Mega Man 3 (DOS) -- I still like this game, even if it's nothing like a real Mega Man game... pretty easy really, apart from the tricky final level. Use slowdown programs/reduce the clock cycles in DOSBox! It's a fun little DOS sidescroller. Large levels with lots of exploration to do. Unoriginal, easy bosses, but oh well... it's fun anyway.

[A Black Falcon]

GBA
--
Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 2

Yeah, I finally got around to finishing it. As with the rest of the game, it was good, but not as good as the first one. Sure, the graphics are better, there's voices in combat (twice as large cart size will get you these things), and more, but the characters aren't quite as good, the setting in the first game is more unique and interesting, and the script and writing was good, but not as great as the first game. Still, Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 2 is a good, good game I quite enjoyed. It's just not quite as great as the first one.

I should play both games more, I still have like 30 floors to go in the bonus dungeon in the first one (finish the game at floor 50 and then you find that there are actually 100 floors...), and just started the bonus dungeon in the second game today...

[A Black Falcon]

Oh, this was a few weeks ago, but I've beaten The King of Fighters XI a bunch of times now. I've beaten it with four teams in 3v3 and one in 1v1, and have beaten some (but by no means all) of the challenges, unlocking five of the seven hidden characters there... awesome, awesome game. As I said, when I got the PS2 this game was one of the top games I wanted to get... and it's fantastic. :)

[A Black Falcon]

Erm, that's odd...

SNES
--
Power Piggs of the Dark Age -- I decided to play this yesterday, after going through my SNES games and sorting them into piles by genre and maximum number of players, and got through the first four levels -- half of the game -- last night. It didn't take too long to beat levels 5-7 (some tricky parts, but not too bad), but level 8 was quite hard... you'd hope the last level would be tough, and it was. Enemies all over, lots of very hard to avoid hits, blowholes, frustrating jumps that are easy to miss (there are no instant-death pits in this game so all this does is forces you to backtrack and try it again, but frustrating sometimes), long distances between checkpoints (the stage has three checkpoints, two in the middle and one before the boss... which isn't much, with how far you go between them)... yeah, a nice, tough classic side-scrolling platformer.

Really, I think I like the game quite a bit. The artwork is great, in that Western cartoon style, the music is pretty good, the level designs come straight out of the "huge and complex" field with many alternate routes or secret areas full of items to find along the way and often seemingly as many screens of height as length, the unique 'blowholes' concept (vents that push you upwards into the air -- not utterly unique, but this game has far more of them than anything else I've seen... they're all over!)... good stuff. The last level may have been tough, but I wouldn't have wanted it easier... it was hard, but not impossible once you learned the level, were careful, and used your special weapons strategically on the tougher enemies.

The game has a couple of flaws, though. The most obvious is the password system. For some bizarre reason, while the game has password save, it only gives you one at ONE point in the game -- at the beginning of level five, halfway through the game. What the heck? Why... why not every two levels or something? That's so weird... and annoying. Sure eight levels isn't long, but the last level takes a long time. It'd be great to be able to turn off the game and then later start right from that point, or at least from level seven (because there are only real bosses every two levels or so). You do have infinite continues (from the beginning of the level), but while great, that doesn't help if you want to turn off the game. Oh well.

Also, despite the box, manual, and backstory all clearly mentioning and describing the three Piggs in your heroic team (they own a donut shop, by the way; if Mohawk & Headphone Jack was designed by someone on drugs, then Power Piggs was designed by someone who was really, really hungry for donuts... your special weapons are all donuts, the pickups you collect (100-for-an-extra-life) are donut holes, your character owns a donut shop, etc... :)), there's only one in the actual game: Bruno, the Pigg you play as. The other two only appear in the manual and main-menu screen art (except one of the other one's head is used as the continue point marker, once you've touched it and activated the point... I have no idea why). Um... strange. The other two weren't kidnapped by the bad guy or anything like that; they simply aren't in the game. Odd. Was this game shipped only partially complete or something? Was it originally supposed to be much more ambitious with multiple playable characters, but they had to cut back (the fact that there is a password system but only one password also makes me wonder about this...)? Was it supposed to create a franchise and later titles would bring in the other characters in a more substantial way? The ending is sufficiently "there could be a sequel, so be prepared!" to think that any or all of those may have been the case... but despite how much the artwork and design make the game look like it's a licensed game based on some obscure early '90s cartoon, it's not. It's an original design.

Oh, and that initial "erm, that's odd..." was a reaction to what I just saw now, after beating the game and watching the ending cutscene (the Power Piggs saved the day from the evil Wizard of Wolff! Joy!)... it sent me back to the beginning of level 8 again? Uh... I don't get it, I don't know if I've seen a game do THAT before... oh well, I won. Fun game. Kind of rare, too -- only a couple copies are ever on EBay... not expensive, but rare.

Oh yeah, and it has a pretty cool manual. THAT's probably rare... again not valuable I'm sure, but rare. It's almost all drawn artwork showing the backstory -- the entire how-to-play explanation is three pages long, then the rest of the book is the backstory.

[A Black Falcon]

SNES
--
Raiden Trad -- at first I had trouble figuring out why this game was so popular back in the early '90s, given its bland graphics, slow gameplay, and low difficulty level (until you die, upon which time it gets a lot harder, but still not REALLY hard), but as I played it more, somehow I started to like it more... I'm not sure why, because the game is kind of boring to play, and the graphics certainly are bland... but I can't help but like it anyway. It's not a fantastic game, but it's a good, simple, and mostly fun B or C-quality shmup, really. Vertical scrolling, shoot the enemies as they come down onto the screen, megabombs and two normal weapons to choose from in each of the two types of weapons you fire (your main gun (spread gun or straight laser) and your missiles (homing or straight). Collect lots of weapon powerups to reach full power... that is, don't die or it'll take a long time to hit max power again. :)

... Still though, that doesn't quite explain why it was so popular and got ported to so many systems. Arcade, SNES, Genesis. TG-16, Jaguar, Playstation... it was everywhere.

But anyway, after not playing it for several weeks, I tried it again today, and after a few tries, managed to beat it. The final boss (there are eight levels) was quite pathetic, even with only the basic gun... were they trying to pull a Gradius or something, by having a really weak final boss, or is the SNES port just really easy all around? The hardest boss in the game is actually the level 2 boss, probably, followed by the level 6 boss (both are variations on the same boss, in fact). The other six bosses were medium at best, most of the time... a couple are tricky (level 3, for instance), but not too bad.

Oh, the music is pretty good. Not great, but good. That does help a bit. :)

So yeah... fun game, but easy and with bland graphics. It's great that the SNES port has a two-player simultaneous mode, but that'd make it even easier, wouldn't it... :)

I should try the arcade version, it's surely harder. But it is kind of boring... this is enough, probably, for now. But if you want a two-player simultaneous shmup on the SNES, this is one of your only choices.

[A Black Falcon]

Continuing the "finish SNES games" trend, I beat Donkey Kong Country yesterday. :)

I'd been stuck on area 4 (Gorilla Glacier)'s opening stretch -- a grueling struggle through five challenging levels without being able to leave or save -- for a long time, but after finally managing to struggle through it, the rest of the game came quickly. The next two areas didn't have nearly as far to go (three or four areas to the saving), and the bosses in DKC1 are absolutely PATHETIC... the only one in the game which was any challenge at all was King K. Rool, and while he took a little while, he wasn't that hard either. The later games are definitely better, in level variety, length, secrets, graphics, music, secrets and collectibles, challenge, bosses, and more... but even so, the first DKC is still a great game, and a real classic.

[DMiller]

The final battle with King K. Rool is one of my favorite final boss battles. It perfectly fits the style of the rest of the game, it was decently challenging (at least the first time through), and, most importantly of all, it was fun. DKC is still one of my favorite SNES games.

[A Black Falcon]

The part with the fake credits was definitely amusing... :)

As for the battle itself though, while it was far, far harder than any of the other (all incredibly easy) boss battles in the game, it wasn't hard; it did take me some tries to beat, though, and was well designed in that as you learned each part better, you'd progress and be able to get to the next part... and frustrating enough (even if you know you have to dodge those cannonballs, you won't always make it...) to keep you trying. So sure, it's a good boss battle, by far the best in the game...

But I do think that DKC2 and DKC3 have better boss battles, for sure. But I'd say I like each DKC game a bit more than the one before... 3 > 2 > 1, though 2 and 3 are both really, really good. But I liked the interesting, somewhat experimental level designs of DKC3 a lot. I do like the more traditional style of DKC1 or DKL1 too for sure, though, and at the time DKC certainly was pretty innovative while being traditional (mine-cart levels... :)). But I do think they improved with time after that...

But my opinions would quite likely be better if I had some kind of nostalgia-value going for one of the games or another... but as it is, the only DKC/L game I had back then was DKL1... and while I liked it, it's a lot simpler than the SNES games, for sure, and thus perhaps not quite as good.

Oh, and maybe it'd be helpful to say that I bought DKC2 and 3 quite a while (months, maybe even a year) before I got DKC1. DKC3 was the first of the three I completed (loving it the whole way), then 2 (liking it a lot, but not quite as much as 2, probably largely because of the more frustrating save system), then, quite a while later, 1... which I like too, but just can't quite think without comparing it to the later titles and looking at how Rare improved the series with time.

But yeah, in 1994, DKC was pretty amazing.

[A Black Falcon]

But yeah, all those people who used to be Rare fans but decided, at some point in the last few years, that they actually were awful and stupid and their games always were actually awful, it's just that nobody noticed, annoy me. Their games aren't awful, and never were. The DKC games are irrelevant now because their graphics aren't state-of-the-art anymore and the gameplay never was anything special?

... Um, did we play the same DKC games? Because the ones I played had many, many interesting and unique level designs, as I said in my last post, and each one had even more than the previous... but the first one had some as well, with the Stop & Go lights, the mine carts, the platform you have to keep fueled, etc. Sure, at their core, the DKC games are traditional platformers. But they go beyond it, not just with the exceptional graphics and music (I agree that some CG rendered graphics look 'off' somehow compared to drawn sprite art, but in DKC, it works very well.), but also with interesting level design concepts, challenge, and, well, great traditional platforming. Since when is that a bad thing?

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah! This one means more than many, because of my general lack of skill in the genre...

SNES
--
Doom (on the default difficulty level (medium/difficulty 3/'Hurt me Plenty', whatever you want to call it)

Awesome, awesome game. Loved it from end to end... very tense though, particularly in the later parts. It took most of a week of lots of play (and leaving my SNES on the whole time, because the game has no saving (there's only a limited episode select option) but infinite continues from the beginning of the level) to beat episodes 2 and 3, but I finally managed it... I don't know how much I want to play these games, while it was a great game, I'd probably rather play a platformer... the graphics were amazing for SNES, though (worst version of the game graphically, I know, but for SNES, it looked very, very good), the music was fantastic (great, great soundtrack), and it was pretty fun and completely playable...

So yeah, awesome game... but I'm happy its over, I think. Even with such a great automap, playing an FPS with no in-mission saving and some long levels leads to a lot of tension for a genre I'm just not that good at... but still, it was pretty fun. I was definitely impressed at how good a port of the original PC game they managed, considering... in some important ways, it's a more complete port than the "next-gen" 32X, Jaguar, or 3DO ports, for instance... and before the Xbox version was actually the only console version of Doom with level designs based directly on the PC version maps instead of the simplified Jaguar ones, and the only one to have a map screen between missions instead of a bland background, and the only one to have the full original story text segments at the end of each episode. But that wouldn't matter if the gameplay was completely broken, and while the framerate was low, for sure, it was bearable, and actually seemed to have a higher framerate than, say, most of the 3d games that used the Super FX1 chip (Star Fox, Dirt Trax FX, Stunt Race FX, and Vortex)... Doom has a Super FX2, of course, like Yoshi's Island, two Europe-only games, and Star Fox 2, but even so, I found the framerate low but perfectly tolerable. But I do have a high tolerance for low framerates, I guess.

(Oh, playing it emulated will NOT give you a real picture of the actual speed. In emulation the Super FX chips are automatically overclocked, so all Super FX games run significantly smoother in emulation than they do on the actual carts, unless you overclock your Super FX chip itself, that is... it is possible, if you know how.)

[A Black Falcon]

Playstation 2
--
Silpheed: The Lost Planet

Decent fun, but not as good as Sega CD Silpheed, and it's very frustrating that there's no saving... you have infinite continues (from the beginning of the level you're on, and there are only six levels). So you can keep trying as long as you want... but only as long as you leave the system on. With a system with a loud fan in it, that is very annoying! Why in the world couldn't there be a level select, based on which stages you have reached... it's a PS2 game there really is no excuse! And then when you beat and watch the ending video it you unlock... nothing. Bah. :(

Still, nice graphics, somewhat epic scope traditional shmup story (aliens are attacking, save the human race from extinction!) told with cutscenes between every level, fun classic shmup gameplay... it may not stun people like other Treasure shooters, but it's a Game Arts design just developed by Treasure, done to be in the style of the past Silpheed games, which explains that. And I like Silpheed on the Sega CD a lot, so that's mostly a good thing. Even if the SCD game, with its 15 levels and even higher difficulty level (five continues and then you start the whole game over... argh!), is better, this one is good too, and perhaps slightly underrated. But yeah, it's just a B-quality shmup overall, not A-quality, I'd say. Still, fun and worth playing through.

[A Black Falcon]

Update...

SNES
--
Cacoma Knight in BizyLand -- fun little easy (until the last two levels) Qix clone. Qix is a great game, so I like this game... it's short and simple until the very end of the game (I had to play it four times to beat it today... because I got game over in the last or second to last stage the first three times, and this game has limited continues.), and fun the whole way through. Qix is fun. :)

PS2
--
Taito Legends 2: Darius Gaiden (normal), Dungeon Magic (normal)

Arcade (mame)
--
Darius Gaiden

Also added Ninja Commando to the Neo-Geo list, because I've beaten that before but it wasn't listed.

[A Black Falcon]

Added Power Stone 2 and Giga Wing 2 for DC (oh, and Night Striker for SCD, but I'd beaten that before, I just hadn't added it... did beat it again though, on Normal). Giga Wing 2 is fantastic... :)

(edit: Later that day)
PS2
--
Taito Legends 2: Puchi Carat (Normal), Metal Black (Normal), Arabian Magic (Normal), Gun Frontier (Normal, used 2nd player to get continue-at-point because of the very high and unfair difficulty level)

10/26
--
Game Boy
--
Looney Tunes -- no one else cares I'm sure, but I loved this game... it was a game I played on GB when I was young, before I even got a GB, and I loved it then, but found it quite hard and never got past the first level's boss, probably (but if I did, I definitely never beat level 5!). I was pretty happy to find the GBC version last year, but I still couldn't beat it... the first level boss and the fifth level (Speedy Gonzales' level) are quite hard, even if the game is very short. It is varied and interesting though, with new gameplay in every level and some quite nice graphics. It's still a great game, and it was so great to finally beat it!

11/18
--
Taito Legends 2: Space Invaders '95, Raimais

[A Black Falcon]

SNES
--
Super Metroid (8:33, 66%)

Yeah! Very awesome...

[lazyfatbum]

I demand you replay it for 100% under 3 hours AND free the animals trapped at the end.

[A Black Falcon]

That would take several replays, wouldn't it... it is amazing though, well might be worth it. The time thing anyway... the only way I'd get 100% is if I just used a guide for everything, which gets tedious after a while. I mostly just found the stuff I found as far as missile upgrades and such go... for key items sometimes I used a map to help, but I didn't go around looking up and trying to get every missile tank or something like that, which is why I only got 66%. As for finding them myself, wandering around the whole map looking for hidden items you can't find often without random luck just isn't all that fun, really... the stuff I got is mostly either things that came with dots on the map telling me screens to search in or just things I found along the way, because I was trying to find some hidden stuff as I explored, of course.

... Is it just me, or is 2d Metroid way, way easier than 3d Metroid? I remember a few years ago OB1 saying he thought Fusion was harder than Prime... I of course think the opposite, given that now I've beaten Fusion, Zero Mission, and Super Metroid with some frustration but overall only moderate trouble, while I never got past somewhere around halfway through Prime because of how hard I find it...

[A Black Falcon]

SNES
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The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (87 "times played" -- deaths/saves)

Pretty good, but I still think it's somewhat overrated, and it's nowhere near as good as Link's Awakening. :)

Oh yeah, and they made some really, really annoying design decisions. How many times, exactly, do you really need to spring the fact that this dungeon area requires some random item hidden in some random cave or building somewhere in the overworld... far into the dungeon? Or have a dungeon locked by some random symbol, with no clue about what in the world that means unless you had the luck to find the specific item you need to get past that mark?

Seriously, without a guide this game would be borderline unplayable, really. Link's Awakening had some annoying parts the first time through for sure, but aside from the trading game, LttP is far worse. And LA had reliable hints from Ulrira for when you got stuck... the guy who gives you "hints" in LttP isn't much use at all. Thanks, Nintendo.

[DMiller]

There were hints for everything necessary in LttP as far as I remember. I don't really remember it being annoyingly hard when I first played it and I never remember being stuck at a certain point for any period of time. Granted, I have played the game so much now that I have lost all sense of objectivity, but I really don't remember being frustrated by the game.

Also, I am shocked that you never played LttP until now. What kind of Nintendo fan are you ABF? ;)