Damn. You got a tiny bit further than me. I'm gonna be bumped down to 7th.

 

"Download complete" 

491692


 

LOL. You must have grinded the shit out of this game. When you close your eyes, do you see Ironsword sprites? Are you going to dream about Ironsword?

 

^Good job. I guess all my tips helped. I definitely didn't play this game 60 times. Maybe like 20-25. You definitely didn't use the asp's tongue spell at all or collect many magic bubbles.

Awesome score, Skinny. Well done.  

It's not even a joke. Seriously yesterday was seeing the game like kaleidoscope style when I close my eyes. 

It really not to bad once you know where to go what to do. The one hit deaths are cheap as fuck! 

Last boss battle really wasn't that bad. Got knocked around like a pinball the first few attempts but once I learned a technique it was over. 

Should I post my real score now?

Kidding.  I played it 8 times, twice tonight.  That was 8 times too many.

  I don't know if I played 60 but I played pretty much all day yesterday. 

I just tried to copy that speed run on YouTube. I couldn't do it as quick but I pulled off the same route. 

I hated yes to wait till last second.... Blame sandafloor!!! 
 

You must have figured out the way to knock off health from them in chunks. It's pretty nice.

 

I was thinking you might Kobra Kai the grinder. That would have been killer. 
 

I originally planned on it, as I was also copying the speedrun, and the game definitely is short and exploitable enough if you know the path.  But the combo of work blowing up, being out of town, and finishing Lufia 2 were all nails in that coffin

...that and this game makes me want to resort to murder
 

Cool deal. I haven't looked at youtube or gamefaqs all year nor will I start any time soon. I want to play every game organically. Not saying using the interwebs is wrong,it's just my own little challenge to do the best I can with absolutely no outside assistance. I highly recommend it. It's been pretty fun.
 

Some puzzles in Ironsword are a bit cryptic so it doesn't hurt to use a guide. It's a challenge anyway.
 

Game is definitely not bad at all when you know where to go.
I just couldn't avoid hitting too many enemies and accidentally collecting a good chunk of those caches of magic bubbles, so hitting a sub 500K run this week would be impossible to me.
Congratulations to both of you, Skinny and Guts.

I respect that guts. And I usually don't resort to the inter web, but I had no chance without help this week. I mean I tried and in the first level was like WTF! 
 

My 7th place finish isn't too bad. With a little more effort I could have had 6th, but oh well. I'll beat the game once I have the cart and play it on real hardware.

I hear ya. Like I said,nothing wrong with using youtube and other resources to help you....I've done it in the past. I just made a point to not do it this year to see how I would do. I'm doing pretty well so far and I even missed two weeks. I'm sure I'd be doing better if I used some helpful guides,but I'm having fun figuring out strategies and whatnot on my own.

Oh not knocking you at all! You clobbered my score. Pretty impressive!

Also I had the initial advantage anyway since I played this a lot as a kid so it kind of wasn't fair.  

Hell,if I hadn't used youtube back in 2014 and 2015,I most likely would not have the genre icons that I do. Well,maybe not the sports one. We played all the sports games I had as a kid.  
 

*tips hat
 

I would have had much more trouble beating Double Dragon for the contest had I not found a trick for beating Machine Gun Willy in a particular Youtube playthrough. It's a trick that I'm surprised isn't common knowledge because it makes beating the game so much easier.





 

But yeah...awesome score man! I would think that is pretty close to a perfect low score. I know my score was jacked up collecting extra bubbles and using the asp's tongue spell once. That raised my score I'm guessing 4-5k at least.

I noticed you got a helmet . I didn't get anything except the keys and items. I was able to get the final boss pretty quickly. Didn't take many hits. And I didn't use the asp tongue spell.
 

Yeah,I got the one the the cloud area and I normally got the one in the fire area. I usually got them because I'd have extra keys and didn't want them to go towards my score. I probably should have just passed on the horned helmet as stepping on the craters that were spewing lava can also jack up your score...and your health of course. 

Plus I would get the helmet because Kuros looks like a dipshit without one.  

Do the helmet and shield reduce damage at all, or are they only there for looks?

Minimal usefulness of defensive equipment makes me think that this game was released in an unfinished state. I can't believe that programmers intended for armor to be useless. The helmet was probably meant to protect against one hit kills from enemies touching your head.