Beat Who Framed Roger Rabbit the other night. Not a bad game, but just too much backtracking to be able to say it's good. Next up is Robin Hood I think.

Seeing the names in there and I can feel the frustration haha. Glad you took that one down. Pinball games, and breakout drive me nutty.

Got Roger Rabbit recorded. I've started that game a couple times but for some reason I've never finished it.

Ok, I finished Pinball Fantasies. At a glance, I thought this game would just be more Pinball Dreams, and I guess it was, but Dreams is way better in terms of raw fun. Fantasies has 4 tables instead of 3, but the 3 Dreams tables are all better than any of the Fantasies tables. Fantasies felt like a chore, and the "Stones Bones" table feels like it was built to fling the ball exactly between the paddles as often as possible. It was just a game of trying to get lucky bonuses before the ball went down an unhittable path. And all the tables have huge gutters on the sides, which the ball easily and frequently rolls into. It's not fun to watch the ball bounce off of ten things on the table, then slide down a gutter. What should I have done differently? Predict the future and shake the table? I understand that's just part of pinball, but it happens far more than it did in Dreams.

I keep thinking things like "hmm, yes, I imagine the answers to all of these problems are very obvious to hardcore pinball fans. I shouldn't complain about basic elements of pinball itself." But then I think "ehh, naw, this is a Game Boy game for Game Boy game players. Hardcore pinball people would never play anything that isn't a physical table." So I'm complaining away.

Robin Hood beat. Impressive port of NES version,  but doesn't hold up well enough to recommend a play. Glad it's done. Now to figure out a next game.

I love your name and that you came here to beat the gameboy.
 

Thanks! It's my favorite system I think. I'm fairly slow though. Have a two year old that takes priority, so really only get to play in downtimes. Goal is to eventually beat all EU and US official releases, but I'm guessing it's like 10 years before I see it through. 

Next game will be Bill and Ted I think. I remember that being fun.

Mulan is done!




Its not a great game, it may barely be average.. but I enjoyed the swimming level and skating level. 

Great job! Those are some uncommonly-beaten games right there.

Castlevania Legends done w/ best ending.
My second time playing, and I still think it's the worst of the GB 'vanias. It's just so dull.  

Battleship is complete. I had a lot of fun with it. Every 4 wins gives you either a new ship or a new weapon, so that helps keep things fresh through all the stages. The music is surprisingly good and even though it's basically one song looping the entire time, I never got sick of it.
The biggest downside is the AI. I'm pretty sure there are several difficulties that is picked at random for each game, because sometimes they're extremely stupid (diverging from known ships to shoot the spots around it, or attacking the same spot twice) and other times they are impossible.
I've never seen the computer miss completely with a multi-space shot/weapon or radar. They also get to use more weapons than you do. For just about everything, you get one use for each weapon as long as your ship is afloat. They get unlimited weapons and will use them 4-5 times in a row creating a very unfair advantage.
Still, I had a blast.
Next up is Caesar's Palace - no save states or passwords there, so I just need enough time to reach 140K and some good luck.

You guys got this.

Next year I'm down to start the thread again. This year was the 2nd best ever, and next year is going to be the best ever. MARK MY WORDS.

Obviously GB isn't the most popular system on NA, so we won't likely get the numbers needed to actually beat every game. So it might be fun to do something different, to take the emphasis away from trying to complete the whole library, like maybe:
- try and beat 365 GB games, and have a calendar to show exactly how on-pace we are to get 365 by the end of the year. (but the best year on record was 217 games, and that's quite a jump to 365.)
- some kind of HORSE system, where we can challenge each other to beat games.
- use a Floating Platforms-inspired system of selecting a game at random, and having that game be worth more points, or even have it increase in value until someone beats it
- a King of the Hill system where we compete to be the last person who beat a game, and the longer you stay there the more points you get. Would need some incentive or benefit to beating games while you're the king.
- focus on exploring every game, not necessarily beating every game, in an effort to establish a full ranked list of the whole GB library
- have a blank canvas on the first post, and every time you beat a game you can add 10 pixels to the picture
- each beaten game allows you to cast a vote toward various "holy wars" issues, like Pokemon red vs blue, Gif vs. Gif, Hulk vs. Superman, etc

Or just keep it the same, no prob. Anyone have a preference?

I'd love to see us beat all the never-beaten games, so anything that puts the focus on that would be great by me. But, heck, that's always my pet interest.  

BTW I beat Noobow recently, which I mention for the sake of adding it to the Japanese-exclusive completion list.  

I was thinking, an interesting way of doing things (maybe) could be to create a Backloggery account called "NA ConsoleX", and share access to that account. Have every game for the given system on that account, and people could individually mark games as "Now Playing", "Beaten", etc..

I realize though that it might take some eyes over there and away from the thread on here, so not sure if it'd be worth it.

Also have to consider the pain inherent to Backloggery of having to manually enter every game into the system one by one.
 

That seems like a lot of work, especially if people don't go for it.

I agree with bronzeshield, though. Maybe just increase the points unbeaten games are worth?

I will try to take part next year, but might be focused on the gba again - it's become something of a pet project for me.

These seem like some pretty good choices. I'm hoping I can contribute more next year. My goal is 25 games in 2019.

I don't know if this helps in any way, but my overall goal is to collect and beat every US GB game on stream.  So, mostly that limits me in two ways - 1) I wouldn't be able to contribute with any games I don't own (currently own nearly half, completed 11); and 2) I wouldn't want to spend time beating games that I already beat in previous years (started this year).  The HORSE one sounds fun, but if I were challenged to do a game I don't have, then that's a predicament.

I like the ideas of focusing on ones that haven't been beaten yet, or in a long time.  I set up my randomization to account for that, too.  I went a little crazy with my system, and made separate loose genre lists then made sure I was switching genres as well as randomizing the games (deleting out the ones that were already completed on this year's challenge).

The King of the Hill one sounds good too, as that incentivizes people beating more games to be the most recent person.  Maybe double points for beating a game while you're already King.

I'm hoping to play through a lot of games I haven't played before, and that includes a lot of the games you played this year. So maybe I'll just follow your trail and repeat those games! I'd also like to follow some of PekoponGB's footsteps, since he's beaten a lot of games I hope to finish myself someday.

It's also unfortunate that Loxx won't be here to help out next year. But again, it's more about kicking back and playing games than it is about finishing them all in a year. So I'd love to spice things up, but it's probably best to keep it simple. Like the Game Boy itself. So I'll probably emphasize never-beaten games, but keep everything else the same as it is now.

These projects have a documentary function too, by confirming that these games can be beaten and (sometimes) showing how. A bunch of tennis games didn't have their endings or win conditions documented anywhere online until I beat them for one of these projects, and I know others have done the same for games in other sports genres.

That’s definitely an interesting element to the threads - and why I would like to do another GBA one. I think that over-complicating things could put people off, though.

Personally, I would look at ways to emphasize the competetive aspect and have the unbeaten games carry additional bonuses.

Or eliminate games beaten this year and have it ongoing. But there’s a reason some games are repeatedly beaten while others aren’t touched, and again it risks reducing the number of contributors. It’s a tough one.