Well, it looks like it may be best for me to wait until next year to chip in, which was kind of my plan anyway. I've hit a fatigue point on Tactics Ogre and have kind of stopped playing games temporarily, but I think I can work up the energy next year to start contributing to NES completion again. Sorry I haven't been of more use this time.

I've had a six month burnout where I didn't fire up the NES, save for a couple multiplayer rounds of Jeopardy, and now that I'm back into the NES again, I have been focussed on playing games for me instead of playing for everyone else.  I do check the list when I'm wondering what I want to play next, but if nothing piques my interest I just play what I feel like.  With luck it'll spark me to play through a few for the list in January that maybe I put off because they weren't still needed for this list (I did that a few times earlier this year, which I think is what caused me to move on to other systems).  Don't feel bad about not contributing as much as you'd like, we all go through it at times

I guess we'll do unlicensed again, even though I still think it hurts our odds of beating all 677 licensed again. Since there's only one year of data, I'm planning to just use this year's unlicensed completions to determine the points. There's 83 beatable unlicensed games, so I would have the following breakdown in points:

Games	Points
9	1
8	2
8	3
8	4
8	5
8	6
8	7
8	8
8	9
9	10

8 games in each catagory, plus one more for the top/bottom. That's a total of 82 games, which leaves one game: Action 52, which I think deserves to be treated separately. It clearly should be worth more than 10 points, but 1 point per game seems a bit much. So I decided to count it as worth 26 total points, or 0.5 for each game.

That'll give us 4,118 total points up for grabs in 2014: licensed = 3,641, unlicensed 477.

Unlicensed 10 point games will be the ten unbeaten games from this year, except for Bee 52 solely based on alphabetical order (that's as good of a reason as any, since one had to be worth 9 points).

1	Solitaire
1	Maxi 15 (Stakk M only)
1	Rolling Thunder
1	Bible Buffet
1	Robodemons
1	Silent Assault
1	Super Sprint
1	Rad Racket - Deluxe Tennis II
1	Road Runner
2	Hot Slots
2	Sunday Funday: The Ride (Fish Fall only)
2	After Burner
2	Shinobi
2	Peek A Boo Poker
2	King of Kings, The Early Years
2	Challenge of the Dragon
2	Pesterminator - The Western Exterminator
3	Operation Secret Storm
3	Krazy Kreatures
3	Bible Adventures
3	Menace Beach
3	Venice Beach Volleyball
3	F-15 City War
3	Spiritual Warfare
3	Chiller
4	Tetris
4	Cheetahmen II, The
4	Blackjack
4	Puzzle
4	Shockwave
4	Death Race
4	Adventures of Captain Comic, The
4	Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu
5	Alien Syndrome
5	R.B.I. Baseball 2
5	Micro Machines
5	R.B.I. Baseball 3
5	Wally Bear and the No! Gang
5	Pyramid
5	Tagin' Dragon
5	Ms. Pac-Man
6	P'radikus Conflict, The
6	Klax
6	Raid 2020
6	Bubble Bath Babes
6	6 in 1 - Caltron
6	Fantasy Zone
6	Pac-Mania
6	Double Strike
7	Mission Cobra
7	Skull & Crossbones
7	Ultimate League Soccer
7	Castle of Deceit
7	King Neptune's Adventure
7	Secret Scout
7	Moon Ranger
7	Metal Fighter
8	Big Nose Freaks Out
8	Big Nose the Caveman
8	Baby Boomer
8	Quattro Sports
8	Impossible Mission II (SEI)
8	Dudes with Attitude
8	Fire Hawk
8	Tiles of Fate
9	Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy, The
9	Dizzy the Adventurer
9	Trolls on Treasure Island
9	Deathbots
9	Vindicators
9	Linus Spacehead's "Cosmic Crusade"
9	Quattro Adventure
9	Bee 52
10	Crystal Mines
10	Exodus: Journey to the Promised Land
10	Galactic Crusader
10	Joshua & The Battle of Jericho
10	Mig 29 Soviet Fighter
10	Quattro Arcade
10	Stunt Kids
10	Toobin'
10	Ultimate Stuntman, The
26	Action 52

Here's the list of points for licensed games which I posted a few weeks ago. A couple games have been beaten since then which means that a few of the games have been adjusted by a point, but it's 99% accurate.

http://pastebin.com/VbAHk12x...

Some stats for you guys:

Assuming no more games are beaten, the following ten players have managed to make the top 25 in completitions for both 2012 & 2013. Congratulations! Ranks for each year below:

	2012	2013
bimmy lee	8	4
Crabmaster2000	1	2
Elkovsky	13	18
khog143	9	9
Nightowljrm	4	11
Red	14	3
scaryice	2	8
Sukhov	14	5
the wizard 666	10	6
WashYourFace	5	1

Here's how our pace on the licensed games compared for both years. We started out very strongly, but lost momentum after the first few months:

	2012	2013	Days Ahead
50	2-Jan	1-Jan	1
100	4-Jan	1-Jan	3
150	9-Jan	1-Jan	8
200	16-Jan	3-Jan	13
250	29-Jan	7-Jan	22
300	6-Feb	14-Jan	23
350	17-Mar	25-Jan	51
400	26-Apr	17-Feb	68
450	7-Jun	2-May	36
500	22-Jul	10-Jul	12
550	16-Aug	8-Nov	-84
600	14-Oct
650	30-Nov
677	31-Dec

Frankly, unlicensed seems to have had nothing to do with the decline in progress this year. The numbers you just posted prove it...in mid-February we were on pace to finish the list by mid-year. Not sure what exactly caused the severe decline in interest, but I would wager that it has nothing to do with the addition of licensed games and everything to do with people simply not playing. I think the point system may just spice things up a bit though. It may be worthwhile to go back to the two years that I ran things as well, if only to have a more accurate picture with the unlicensed games. Menace Beach, for example, should be much higher than a 3 point game, I just happened to hammer it out early on this year. Of course, the point system will likely streamline itself as the years go on, so it probably doesn't matter, but yeah, figured I'd mention that.

I do think a lot of people jump into this thing in January just to pick off their handful of favorite games. As more people join this challenge, many of them are bound to be that kind of participant. So we have this "gold rush" in the first week of January, with six different players racing to be the first to beat Legend of Zelda or Mega Man 2. And when all the obvious games and cult classics are dried up, most of them disappear from this thread.

Well, that's ok. I certainly wouldn't want to force anyone to slog through a season of Bases Loaded; I know I'm not willing to do that. But I am more excited to explore the more obscure parts of the NES library, as many of the hardcore players here are also doing.

That's actually why in the second year, I made it so that you couldn't claim a point on a game you beat the previous year.  The problem with that is that it took far too much work to keep up with, and did more to push people away from the idea than to bring them into the fold, especially for those with limited collections.  But it seems too that the hardcore contributors here tapered off at around the same time frame that I myself did, so things were doomed from that point.

Hey, I've got to beat some of those baseball games at some point, and I think I'm only three short of a complete NES NTSC baseball collection, so I might as well take one of them on. I've got to take on something genuinely enjoyable first, though, before subjecting myself to that much baseball; heck, I still haven't cued up the ending screen for Basewars from several years ago because it'll take me forever to sit through all of those CPU games.

Looking forward to the 2014 thread, though. See you guys then!

Already practicing for next year!

Got my hit list set up for Wednesday

The failure of this year will light a fire to our achievement in 2014.

sort of burned myself out with this stuff. i'm sorry i couldn't help out more. excited to try again next year!

I'm interested in helping out for this next year, that way i can knock off some games off my list.

I've tried Smash TV a couple different times this year (most recently tonight), and I just can't quite beat the game. I can get right up to the Cobras boss, but can't quite seal the deal and get to the MC boss at the end. I need to take a break from it for a bit, as the two controller setup is killing my wrists

I'll definitely chip in more this year. Not sure how much more,but more. I think I knocked out 6 games this year.

The competition will start in approximately 24 hours, as soon as it's midnight NA time (eastern). You can't start a game before then and have it count. I'll have the thread up before then.

Also, I've been working on a list of exactly what constitutes beating each NES games, since this question comes up a million times. I c

Bimmy, you need to stick with it...not so hard that you kill your wrists or anything, but if you're that close, it's just a matter of time. Try it once or twice a night until you get it. Also, if the dual controller thing is hard on your hands, why not try dual Quickshot joysticks? Might also be worth trying the NES Max controllers instead of standard ones.

Good call...although AdamL's list has most of the games listed, there are some that aren't, and some of the old arcade ports (Donkey Kong, Millipede, Galaga, et al) are usually listed at an insane (or humanly impossible) level. 

Wiz, I never thought about using two Quickshot Joysticks. I already have one that I've had since I was a kid, so all I need is to get another one. Good call, my friend

On another note, I am looking forward to the 2014 list and hope to contribute as much in 2014 as I did in 2013.

I'll take a look if I have a spare...I know I have at least two, I just need to see if I have more than two. If I do, it's yours for shipping

How about using the Power Glove in combination with the Roll & Rocker?
Or you could use the Speedboard, that should help a lot.

Awesome, thanks Wiz!

Sweet! I have to work tomorrow evening so I probably won't get a crack at any of my top favorites if many people are pulling all nighters. I do think there are several on my favorites list that I don't think will be taken immediately that I'm sure I can knock out that day.

Well, I'll probably do my annual run of The Punisher, but other than that it's a crapshoot. Haven't 100% determined if I'm going out or not, but if not then Dr. Morbis will be coming by for an all-night gaming marathon as we did last year. We'll see what happens though