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

[A Black Falcon]

Shouldn't this be in the 'bought' thread, or some new thread, and not the 'games finished' thread? :p

I'll go with TWINE then for a blue cart. I've got no particular interest in Hydro Thunder's lesser version. Battletanx sound pretty good, I'll stick with that.

I bought Hydro Thunder for the N64 back in 2001. $50 for a used copy, I believe. Never regretted it for a second; of course I didn't have a Dreamcast at the time, but it is a good version of the game (not the worst version, it's better than the PS1 version for sure...). It's got good graphics, all the content, and plays well. The main drawbacks are that the graphics aren't quite as good as DC -- it doesn't have those nice reflections, for instance -- and the game feels a bit slower. Otherwise it's good, and I do like that it's the only home version of the game with 3-4 player support. But yeah, it's not essential if you have it for DC.

Army Men: Air Combat is a simple overhead helicopter game, like a Strike game but easier. Ever played them? The N64 game is a version of the first PS1 game, and the GC game is a version of the second PS1/PS2 game. They're easy but somewhat fun games. They are probably the best Army Men games, overall, though I do also kind of like the original Army Men for PC, which is a top-down action/shooting game with some bits of strategy.

I've heard that Rage Wars isn't all that good and doesn't really connect well with the other anyway. I'm also not exactly keen on searching high and low for a glitch free version of it. I'll go with Turok 2 then (and maybe Turok 3 if I enjoy 2). I'll just keep Rocket. It's got my "red" quota met quite well.

Turok 2 is a huge game. Do you like Turok 1? Turok 2 is kind of like that, but with a larger world, even longer gaps between save points, a persistent world which, for instance, saves which enemies you have defeated and leaves their bodies around pretty much forever (cost: massive save file), and a frustratingly high difficulty level. Oh, and an iffy framerate, made worse by Hi Res mode if you turn it on. Turok 2's definitely the most popular Turok game, but I got frustrated by how far apart the save points are and by how hard it is. The nonlinear elements can be frustrating too.

Turok Rage Wars is the arena-shooter of the series. It's the best multiplayer Turok game for sure, but in single player isn't as good -- it's arenas only, no full levels here. The game is definitely no match for Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament, but for the N64 it's pretty decent, probably one of the N64's better multiplayer shooters really. It's no Perfect Dark multiplayer, but it can be fun. The bug is that in multiplayer you can't finish the game 100% because of some level that doesn't work right; I forget the details.

Turok 3 is quite different from the first two; as I said in my N64 summary thread, it feels kind of like Turok mixed with Half-Life. The levels are smaller and more linear, though there is still exploration within each area. You'll need to explore each area to find the way forward, but areas aren't as huge as before; the game makes up for this by having more areas along the way. You can save anytime (it saves at the beginning of the area, which are now frequent), the draw distance isn't as close (but graphics overall might not be better, I'm not sure), there are events that happen as you go around levels (hence the Half-Life comparison), and such. It's quite unlike any of Acclaim's other N64 FPSes. There are also two playable characters, each with some areas only they can go do.

Acclaim's other N64 FPSes are South Park, which I have not played and isn't in a black cart anyway but have heard is quite average and bland, and Armorines. Armorines is a more straightforward game than any of the Half-Life games. It's pretty much completely linear. One or two people walk forward shooting aliens. There are some basic puzzles here and there, but it's mostly about the shooting. It has two player co-op, though, which is cool and isn't something in any of the Turok games (though PD of course has it.) There's also an awful Playstation version, which shows one reason why the PS1 never got Turok games... Armorines is another black-cart game, and it's amusing enough to maybe be worth a few bucks if you like the genre; otherwise pass.

As for those other black-cart games, Battlezone, Fighter Destiny 2, Scooby-Doo, Road Rash 64, and Nuclear Strike 64 are for genre/series fans. I guess you aren't, for any of those, though having at least one of the Fighter's Destiny games is worth it if you like 3d fighting games -- they're unique in some interesting ways. Rally Challenge 2000 is a decent arcade racer, fun stuff. It's not as good as Top Gear Rally, but is better than I was expecting from the same developer as the thoroughly mediocre (at best) games GT64 and MRC.

Aidyn Chronicles... I really need to play that again and write some much more comprehensive thoughts on the game. It's a REALLY interesting game, but also really flawed. It's a huge Western RPG with a good battle system, a large world to explore, companions to find, and more... but it's also kind of hard to navigate, buggy (keep backups of your save files, save into multiple slots, save often, and load if someone dies because you cannot resurrect dead characters, period), and quite slow paced. It's very much love or hate; some people really hate it, and I can easily see why, but I'm on the 'likes it' side.

Last, I think that Tony Hawk 2 is actually red, instead of green; Rocket's still the only one that color definitely worth having, though, I think. I never have cared for Tony Hawk, and Jeremy McGrath is such a bland game, stick to the all-time classic (in my opinion at least!) Excitebike 64 and the surprisingly good Top Gear Hyper-Bike for N64 motorcycle games.

I'm also looking into other color carts for other systems. For the SNES, I've already got Killer Instinct (black). I know that Doom and Maximum Carnage are both red. However, I already own Doom. Hmm, was Maximum Carnage any good? I mean, it's by LJN... On Gameboy, I think I've got it all covered. I've got Donkey Kong Land, and every original GB version of Pokemon, so that's Yellow (twice), Red, Blue, Silver, Gold, and translucent blue (okay Crystal is actually a GBC exclusive game). I doubt I'll bother importing Pokemon Green (our blue) just for a green cart. (Check) Okay, turns out Japan never had color cart releases for the 1st gen pokemon games. Gold and Silver had colored carts, but they weren't even the right colors. Crystal was the same as our's though. Come to think of it, I think the only color cart for the Genesis was, again, a red Maximum Carnage. That complicates matters.

NES, outside of unlicensed carts, had Zelda and only Zelda as gold carts. (This may just be nostalgia, but the gold paint on those NES games is my favorite gold, extremely shiny compared to the duller gold used in later Zelda hardware.) Actually, there's also that gold championship cart, but I'm NOT going to bother with that, and I've got gold covered.

I've got the red Maximum Carnage for Genesis, and the red Doom and black KI for SNES, so that covers those... apart for SNES Maximum Carnage, but I definitely don't want both versions. I really like SNES Doom, it's so much better than I thought it would be. Maximum Carnage is a pretty bland game, though; I can't stay interested in it at all. It's not terrible, but I don't like it too much. Don't blame that on LJN, though; LJN was just an Acclaim label at that point, and they only put that on the SNES version -- Acclaim's Sega-focused Flying Edge label published the Genesis version.

As for the Game Boy, I have all three Donkey Kong Land games (they're all good!), Pokemon Red, and a Japanese Pokemon, uh, Gold or Silver, I forget which (never used it, probably never will; it's from a lot I got for other stuff). I don't have the other Pokemon games, and am quite fine with that. I don't need the color variations enough to buy games I don't want for them. (This is one reason I don't have any of the Pokemon N64 games other than Puzzle League, of course.)

As for the NES, remember unlicensed games; they come in various colors. There are some gold ones, blue, etc. I've got one gold unlicensed game... Quattro Sports, horrible game that. Also I have some black unlicensed carts in several styles, both Tengen of course and American Video Entertainment.

The Famicom, on the other hand, that one's got a color for every season. I'm not even sure Famicom carts HAVE a default color. Just about every game had some sort of color, resulting in a LOT of overlap. Let's see, I've got "Robot Block" (stack up), which is white, Devil World (blue) and Mother (red). The Famicom carts were so unique that practically every single third party company had their own shell design on top of that (much like Atari, actually). Part of this comes from the simple fact that the Famicom (unlike the first design of the NES) had no lockout at all. Again, like the Atari. To that end, it's pretty easy to get the whole rainbow and make it up entirely of good games. However, my Famicom collecting is very limited by the simple fact that I stick with games I can understand (aside from Mother, which I bought to keep my translated ROM legal). I actually slapped together a famicom to NES converter using a converter board inside an older NES games and plastic parts from both a broken NES game and a Game Genie. It works, but not if the Famicom game has custom sound chips built in (none of mine do).

Nintendo allowed third parties to make Famicom carts, and many of them make them in many colors. And even Nintendo mixed up their colors in games, too, from game to game. So did third parties; I think all six FC Mega Man games are each in a different color cart, yes? It definitely makes things more interesting looking than the US, but it makes collecting all the colors very difficult except for people who are going to build up LARGE Famicom collections. :p

As for custom sound chips, thankfully (for us) only a relative few games have them... Castlevania III (JP), Lagrange Point (a JRPG), and not many others. Of course though, the Famicom Disk System has such a chip in it too, meaning FDS game audio would be missing that channel for anyone just using a FDS normally on a US NES. There are some workarounds for this, for modders... but considering how failure-prone the FDS is, and how awful floppy disks are in retrospect (stupid things die so quickly), I'm not too tempted to get one.

As for Famicom games, I also don't have any with language barriers, but there are a fair number that aren't a problem -- the FC has plenty of platformers we didn't get, after all. Shooters, too.