Games Beaten In 2022

[Charlie Cat]

Hi guys,

Wishing all our members and your love ones a Happy New Year. Glad to restart the yearly games beaten thread on Atariage.com once again. 

 

Hoping everyone will have a better and more prosperous year. Enjoy life, stay safe, and happy gaming fellas.  

 

 

 

Anthony..

[Charlie Cat]

Hi guys,

 

I'll start the new year with the usual game I play. Just finished Magician Lord for the Neo-Geo. The game that started it all for me to be a buff of the Neo-Geo 32 years ago. 

 

Anthony..

[NeonPeon]

1 hour ago, Charlie Cat said:

Hi guys,

 

I'll start the new year with the usual game I play. Just finished Magician Lord for the Neo-Geo. The game that started it all for me to be a buff of the Neo-Geo 32 years ago. 

 

Anthony..

I love Magician Lord! If you played the AES version, that's an impressive accomplishment. If MVS well that's still cool.

[Charlie Cat]

8 hours ago, NeonPeon said:

I love Magician Lord! If you played the AES version, that's an impressive accomplishment. If MVS well that's still cool.

Thank you Mark. Magician Lord is my favorite game on the Neo-Geo AES and MVS. It was the game that introduced me to the Neo-Geo and made me a buff for 31+ years. 

 

Anthony..

[NeonPeon]

8 hours ago, Charlie Cat said:

Thank you Mark. Magician Lord is my favorite game on the Neo-Geo AES and MVS. It was the game that introduced me to the Neo-Geo and made me a buff for 31+ years. 

For me it's the game that saved Christmas of 1991. Hah!

 

Briefly, my story is I got the Neo Geo in Sept. 1991 (won on Video Power), and my dad generously bought me a game for Christmas that same year. It was Ninja Combat and I didn't like it as me and my brother could play through it so easily with the infinite continues. So I was disappointed. But my dad was able to exchange it for Magician Lord, which blew me away with its awesomeness. I played that a ton. It was so hard but I loved the atmosphere, the music, the bizarre-looking, enemies. Really fun game if you don't mind the difficult.

[Punisher5.0]

My first game of the year is Doom for the 32X (Resurrection). It has taken me almost 30 years but I finally finished a version of it. Which reminds me.....I really need to finish Super Mario Bros

[+jgkspsx]

Darius Extra Genesis (top path, Tiat, Extra mode, on a Nomad):

 

High score of the game:

 

[Punisher5.0]

Finished Quake64 for the first time this weekend. Had a lot of fun with this game and will definitely do multiple play throughs in the future.

[HoshiChiri]

1) Sackboy (PS5)

2) Puyo Puyo Sun 64 (N64 JP)

 

A little new, a little old. Sackboy is a surprisingly pleasant game- clearly modern but in a way that still pokes nostalgia for older 3D platformers... at least for me. Maybe because I don't play them all that often?

 

And is it just me, or is Sun oddly easy for a Puyo Puyo game? Normally going through story mode I have to continue at least once... maybe there's something in the settings I haven't found- my Japanese isn't great, after all!

[digdugnate]

I actually have one!  Final Fantasy II US (SNES)

 

Also known as the easy version of FFIV, I finished out another playthrough of it last night; the wife got to see me beat up Zeromus.  Edge didn't make it through the fight, tho.  (Big Banged to death)

 

Now to move to a different title in the series- I'm thinking FFI.

 

[neogeo1982]

PSO - Dreamcast - Solo Offline

 

[neogeo1982]

Zaku - Atari Lynx 

Very low score due to continuing at the end.

 

[neogeo1982]

Always Winter Never Christmas - Atari Lynx

A bad ending I think. But this game doesn't take itself too seriously anyways.

 

[digdugnate]

I finished Streets of Rage 2 (Genesis) again last night on 'Normal'.  Such a great game!  No picture because the ones I took were awful.

[digdugnate]

So I decided to go ahead and finish Bare Knuckle 3 (Switch, but through Sega Genesis Collection) since I was still in a SoR mood.  This pic is slightly better in quality than the one for SoR2 from last night, though I need to dust something awful.

[neogeo1982]

Atari Lynx - YNXA 

Finally finished tonight after being stuck several times.

 

[digdugnate]

I finished Metal Slug X (Switch, but through ACA Collection) again.    What a crazy game this is!

Edited February 4, 2022 by digdugnate

[digdugnate]

Followed up with an old favorite, Metal Slug 3 (Switch, but through ACA Collection)!  This game was a little harder for me and took a continue.

 

[newtmonkey]

Final Fantasy VIII (PSX)

I can finally check this one off the list, after two aborted attempts (first back in 1999, second 10 years ago or so).  All in all, the game took just over 45 hours to complete.  That includes some (but definitely not all) of the optional stuff toward the end.  Like with pretty much every RPG I've played through, I didn't need to grind at all (in fact, grinding in this game probably just makes it more difficult!).

 

FF8 has a great start; actually a great first half.  I like the concept of warring military academies set up to ultimately hunt extremely powerful witches, and I even liked some of the weird sci-fi stuff toward the end.  However, I found nearly all the characters to be simply awful.  They all seem to have one single character trait, and that trait defines everything about them.  There is basically no character development, with the only real exception being a "love story" that feels completely forced and artificial.  The game feels like it's three different stories stitched together, and I would not be surprised if the story was rewritten halfway through and then development was rushed simply to complete the game.

 

Although FF8 seems like one of the more story-focused entries in the series, it is definitely not a game to play for its story and characters, imo.  Instead, it's to appreciate some of the best pre-rendered backgrounds ever included in a game, and to enjoy the unique character/party development system. 

 

Gaining character levels doesn't really make you much more powerful.  Instead, you become more powerful by "junctioning" spells to increase your attributes (such as STR, etc.).  This system gives you a lot of freedom in how you develop your characters, and there are several ways to play through the game; there are even FAQs out there describing how to complete the game without gaining even a single level of experience.

 

I had heard that the last boss is a bit of a nightmare, but at my level (early 30s) she wasn't much of a threat.  Shell alone was enough to severely weaken even her most powerful attacks, and I made sure to keep my characters healed up (though not necessarily to max HP) at all times—pretty standard tactics for a FF boss.

 

---

 

With that, I have completed FF1-8.  I'd rank them as follows:

 

1>6>3>7>5>4>2>8

 

Although 8 is my least favorite in the series, I still enjoyed it.  I'm looking forward to moving on to FF9 next, though I might play something else before that.

Edited February 6, 2022 by newtmonkey

[digdugnate]

Again, terrible pictures so no screengrab.  I finished Gokujo Parodius (SFC) a couple of nights ago.    I think it's the easiest of the ports, personally.

[+jgkspsx]

On 2/6/2022 at 5:30 AM, newtmonkey said:

However, I found nearly all the characters to be simply awful.  They all seem to have one single character trait, and that trait defines everything about them. 

I am glad to hear someone else say this. This really bothered me back in 1999. I ultimately dropped the game and never looked back.

 

Hey, did I mention I beat Independence Day for the R-Zone? Like the Star Trek: The Next Generation handheld that it is an exact clone of, it is one of the easiest Tiger handhelds to beat. But it’s a good time and improving your score is always fun.

 

[oyamafamily]

H.E.R.O. (Atari 8-BIT) - Finished this game by scoring 1 MILLION points and then saving the day (with dramatic moments in the gameplay video below).

 

[digdugnate]

16 hours ago, oyamafamily said:

H.E.R.O. (Atari 8-BIT) - Finished this game by scoring 1 MILLION points and then saving the day (with dramatic moments in the gameplay video below).

 

wow!  that is some impressive stuff.  love the video!

[digdugnate]

On 2/6/2022 at 6:30 AM, newtmonkey said:

Final Fantasy VIII (PSX)

I can finally check this one off the list, after two aborted attempts (first back in 1999, second 10 years ago or so).  All in all, the game took just over 45 hours to complete.  That includes some (but definitely not all) of the optional stuff toward the end.  Like with pretty much every RPG I've played through, I didn't need to grind at all (in fact, grinding in this game probably just makes it more difficult!).

 

FF8 has a great start; actually a great first half.  I like the concept of warring military academies set up to ultimately hunt extremely powerful witches, and I even liked some of the weird sci-fi stuff toward the end.  However, I found nearly all the characters to be simply awful.  They all seem to have one single character trait, and that trait defines everything about them.  There is basically no character development, with the only real exception being a "love story" that feels completely forced and artificial.  The game feels like it's three different stories stitched together, and I would not be surprised if the story was rewritten halfway through and then development was rushed simply to complete the game.

 

Although FF8 seems like one of the more story-focused entries in the series, it is definitely not a game to play for its story and characters, imo.  Instead, it's to appreciate some of the best pre-rendered backgrounds ever included in a game, and to enjoy the unique character/party development system. 

 

Gaining character levels doesn't really make you much more powerful.  Instead, you become more powerful by "junctioning" spells to increase your attributes (such as STR, etc.).  This system gives you a lot of freedom in how you develop your characters, and there are several ways to play through the game; there are even FAQs out there describing how to complete the game without gaining even a single level of experience.

 

I had heard that the last boss is a bit of a nightmare, but at my level (early 30s) she wasn't much of a threat.  Shell alone was enough to severely weaken even her most powerful attacks, and I made sure to keep my characters healed up (though not necessarily to max HP) at all times—pretty standard tactics for a FF boss.

 

---

 

With that, I have completed FF1-8.  I'd rank them as follows:

 

1>6>3>7>5>4>2>8

 

Although 8 is my least favorite in the series, I still enjoyed it.  I'm looking forward to moving on to FF9 next, though I might play something else before that.

Everyone has different opinions it seems like on the Final Fantasy series and I think that's awesome.    Personally, i really disliked the 'Draw Magic' system in FF8; i felt it made the game too grindy.  FF9 is pure distilled FF goodness imo.  I haven't really played 13 or 15.

 

If I ranked the first 9:

 

9>6>4>7>1>8>5>3>2

 

If I ranked up to 12:

 

10-2>12>9>6>4>10>7>1>8>5>3>2

[+jgkspsx]

Beat Tumblepop on the Evercade through an endless succession of virtual quarters. I had some really good runs and some really bad runs. Overall I think it’s a little better than Joe and Mac Returns, its quasi-sequel that I recently beat the same way.