Finished Bonk's Adventure. Not hard or long, but I still got stuck on the last boss for a while till I figured out a good way to beat him. There are 2 different behaviors he does where he's vulnerable, but one of them sometimes hurts you for some reason when you attack him. Instead of figuring out why, I just stopped trying that one and got good at the other one. I guess I'll fire up Bonk's Revenge next.

I'm halfway through NBA Jam Tournament Edition. It's way better than the first NBA Jam on Game Boy in my opinion, plays faster, the players have unique appearances (ie. Dennis Rodman and Mark Price look more like themselves than in the first game), and the controls I think are more responsive too.

I'm trying to get better at Q-Bert, but it's a tough game. I can get as far as Level 10 before I really get taken for a ride. Once you have to overlap every spot twice but also not step on one a third time (lest it turn back to white), it gets pretty dang hard. I really like the game though, it plays great. Definitely something worth keeping around on your GB library.

It's a first for me, completed Zen on stream last week:


Apparently the twitch link doesn’t work. You can find me there under user: wiedo84 or copy paste this link https://www.twitch.tv/videos/476632686?t=1216s

Welcome wiedo. Looks like twitch embedding is a problem, I thought I had seen someone else work it out, but I can't find it now.

If you have any tips for beating Game Boy games, here's a tips & strategies companion thread that needs filling in: http://nintendoage.com/forum/mess...

Ok, time to slam out some easy wins. I beat Othello.

You know, I am so bad at Othello. I tried it and failed pretty hard.

It's been a while since I reported a clear, but as of this morning I have finished Castlevania Legends. It's not a bad game, but it's pretty easy, especially compared to Castlevania Adventure. I liked the powers though, it would be neat to see a fangame that revisited and expanded on Sophia Belmont (since she's been relegated from "official" canon in the series a proper followup can't happen).

Nevermind, I forgot you need to get all five items, I didn't do that. Welp! Back to the drawing board on that one.

Went back and 100%'d Castlevania Legends, got the special ending. I will say that during my first playthrough, I discovered burning mode only on the last level. On my second playthrough, it reduced the game's difficulty to a trifle. The combination of easy healing and super mode pretty much ensured little hardship. Most bosses will die to the full power whip being mashed in burning mode before the burning meter runs out, so it's a rather effortless win. The whole game kind of strikes me as being very easy. Maybe it's just the culture shock of going from mostly early GB games to this, one of the last B&W games on the system, but you can really feel that the games got much, much easier. Maybe it was just Konami deciding their GB games didn't have to demand perfection, but I dunno. Either way, it's over now.

I have cleared up to the final boss battle in Bomberman GB, I think I will go back and finish that one too.

Hey all, congratulations on all the progress that's being made. Just wanted to quickly say that I had to put GB on the back burner for quite a while, but I think I'll finally be able to start PGA Tour '96 tomorrow. My personal goal was to beat 25 GB games in 2019 (even if not all count for this challenge) and I'm at 20 so far - 19 that counted here.

Just 5 more to go and I think I'll have some good time in October. Excited to get back into it!

Bomberman GB is a great game. I played through it last year but never beat the final boss, lol. It's not too hard to learn the patterns, I just needed a lucky run and it was the end of the year before I got one.

I think PGA Tour 96 might be my favorite Golf sim on GB, it's decently full-featured and you get a password after every hole.

I'm back to working on Megalit. There aren't even that many puzzles, but they're becoming tricky enough that I can't just wing my way through them on the first try anymore. There's a password every 5 levels, but limited lives, so I'm literally writing down solutions as I find them, which is tedious and hurts the game's enjoyability. Otherwise a neat concept.

I beat WildSnake. Really not too hard, but it does take a small amount of luck. It's fun but doesn't quite rise to the level of Tetris or Dr. Mario. The controls feel slippery, I don't feel like I've really mastered them, even after beating the game.

Each challenge has a qualifying round which is increasingly tricky, but still doable enough that I never failed them. Then you get to do the actual challenge. If you fail a challenge, you have to redo the qualifying round. If you fail a qualifying round, you have to start all the challenges over from the beginning. Interesting way to offer "unlimited continues" that still makes you pay for your mistakes.

There's a quick credit roll after you beat all 8 King Cobra challenges.

Slammed out some Penguin Wars. I should try out the Switch remake.

Okay, it took a week longer to get around to playing it than I expected, but PGA Tour '96 is done.  Splain, I understand why you like this one.  It was surprisingly arcade-y and I did perfectly fine with just hitting the button for power and to complete the swing.  There were options to apply back or top spin, but I ignored it because it didn't affect the ball in the same way as I was used to playing NES Open and I didn't want to take the time to experiment. Still, the controls were responsive and I think the swings and courses were pretty forgiving.  I expected more of a challenge from what looks like a more realistic sim. I picked the Houston course, and maybe that one is easier than others? I liked that you could game the wind a bit and wait for it to blow in a friendlier position before hitting the ball, but sometimes it felt like it didn't carry or stop the ball as much as expected.  The greens had little pockets of slopes and gradation but it rarely affected anything in my 4-day tournament run.  I utlized the password after every hole feature of the game earlier on as I was learning the basics (and once late game when I had some unexpected water hazard issues), but this could certainly be completed without restarting any hole if you're willing to put in a little extra time.  I wanted more graphically from the game like cut scenes for good shots (like my hole in one or Eagle) or the celebration screen, but what was there looked nice enough. Overall, a good time, but I wouldn't play the full 72 hole tournament in one day.

Splain, since you have some experience with this, do you know if the Skins challenge gives a different end screen? I was thinking about going in and trying that out just to complete my own personal winning screenshot collection, but I'll save myself the hour if I'll just end up in this winner's circle again.


Next up is going to be Double Dragon, which I'm hoping to complete tonight.  If it goes quick, then Mole Mania will be waiting.

Nice job! I've never played through a skins challenge to the end, so I'm not sure. Maybe there's a YT playthrough, though I checked a while back and didn't find any kind of playthrough for PGA Tour 96.

Lol, that Winner's Circle screenshot. Everything looks pretty good for a GB, except the banner looks terrible  

No worries. I briefly checked YT as well but didn't see anything.  I'll do some science on it at some point soon.

Yeah, that screen is...disappointing. It would be fine in Rugrats Golf, but I can't tell if the orange blobs are people or bushes or lava....  I wanted an oversized check with my custom name on it, dang it!

Double Dragon is done.
I am not good at video games.  What took other GB console challenge streamers 3 hours max took me over 7.  What's sad is that this version is actually super easy until the last section in stage 4. Most of that time was spent trodding through the first 3 levels to get back and try again.  That last part was a huge jump in difficulty because of the randomly opening spike doors that suck you in and kill you instantly followed by the completely randomized drawer thingies coming from the wall that hurt you and send you back.  For the drawers, it's pure luck. I watched for a while and there is no pattern, you just have to go for it and hope you don't get hit.  On the spike doors, I eventually found that punching was the best attack to stay more grounded, but there's still chance to contend with.  It's such a long hallway that I rarely had much health leftover for the boss and I kept getting stuck in a loop of bullets where I would get hit by his gun as soon as I stood and couldn't escape.  Wouldn't be so bad if you could respawn where you died, like in the arcade (or possibly every other version of Double Dragon?), but you have to start at the beginning of the section to try again.  Punching is your best bet for the boss as well and stay above or below and punch when he walks to you.  Overall the game is fun but pared down a bit much. The music is good, the sprites are better than expected for the GB and the levels are close enough to what you know from the arcade. The enemy weapons are lacking. Part of the fun is being able to grab the bat or whip or whatever, but you rarely see them and when you do, it disappears after one enemy.  A lot of sacrifices had to be made to make this game fit on the cart, and it shows, but they kept the responsive controls and fun factor at least.


Next up for me is Mole Mania. I started last night and got through level 1. Already looking forward to exploring the rest of it.

For whatever reason I love the GB version of Double Dragon.. that said, that last level is a pain. The drawers are the worst part. The final boss is annoying so I usually just use the "stand at the bottom of the screen so he falls to his death" trick to beat him. Congrats on getting through it without that trick! It takes waaaaay more tries that way for sure.
 

I like it a lot too, it's hard to go wrong (although the C64 one I grew up with tried hard).  I had no idea you could bait the boss to drop off the edge. I would have been too scared that I would fall off myself and have to start over to even try that method.  I've also heard tale of some elbow method for enemies, but I don't know if that's a thing in this version. It didn't seem like you would need it anyway since you can't elbow those dang drawers!

I think the elbow was more of an NES thing. Gameboy is just punch punch kick kick and that gets you through most of the game. Speaking of bad ports, don't try the Atari 2600 one :\
 

Floating Platforms inspired me.

Double Dragon 2 beat. I'd never played this version before. Much easier and almost no cheap deaths throughout, which means I beat it over a single lunch hour. If I woulda bought it as a kid and beat it on the way home, I'd still be happy I think. It's a game I woulda just beat over and over getting better and better at it. Overall, really good, but I enjoyed the 1st more.

Double Dribble beat. Found a spot where you just don't miss 3 pointers and it became easy.