Board 8 > Wallz Plays Every NSO Game

(+) Yeah! (+)

Probably the Japanese Arcade version

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/6/9/AAAOt_AAEvHh.jpg

Oh wow didn't know that, cool

Oh its even more fucked up than I remembered

I did a little research wallz and this is what I found for beating the first set of games:

The following games have a final boss/stage:
Double Dragon
Ghosts 'n Goblins (although you need to beat it a second time on hard for the "true" ending
Gradius
The Legend of Zelda
River City Ransom
Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. 3

Other games with clear requirements:
Balloon Fight - 12 unique phases
Dr. Mario - 21 stages (0-20)
Excitebike - 5 tracks (I think you need to finish top 3 in order to qualify for the next one)
Pro Wrestling - Win 5 matches to challenge the champion, then defend your belt 10 times to face Great Puma*
Tecmo Bowl - defeat every team (you get a password after each win)

Not sure what to do with:
Baseball
Ice Hockey
Soccer
Tennis
Yoshi

* It is worth noting that some Nintendo aficionados consider the Great Puma to be one of the most difficult boss characters to ever appear on the NES. - via Wikipedia. Nice!

Play a match of things like soccer and call it a day tbh

Tennis has a highest difficulty level. If you can beat that in a singles match, then you've mastered it.

MZero the hero. Thanks so much for that! And man here I was thinking Ghosts n Goblins was the main thing to worry about, I was completely disrespecting the Great Puma. SMH

Ctes Im leaning towards a similar approach to what you suggested but instead of just playing a single match of those games, Id like to win a match.

MZero how is Pokmon TCG treating you so far?

I just finished mountain 16 so Im halfway there. Play time is 1 hour, 10 minutes. Normally Id have played more these last couple days but wife and I burnt the midnight oil watching a miniseries these past few days and it cut into gaming time. We finished last night so now its back to the grind!

wallmasterz posted...

MZero the hero.

This account doesn't make as much sense now that the 11 is gone

wallmasterz posted...

Ctes Im leaning towards a similar approach to what you suggested but instead of just playing a single match of those games, Id like to win a match.

agreed on this

wallmasterz posted...

MZero how is Pokmon TCG treating you so far?

the coin absolutely hates me but i got the first badge... actually, they're called medals on this game. Ironically I almost lost to a few trainers but rolled the gym leader with one Seaking

HeroFromHeaven posted...

the coin absolutely hates me but i got the first badge..

I remember being convinced back when that you only had at best a 1/3rd chance on coin flips in this game. If I'm not super lazy I might keep tabs on it during the playthrough.

Just got seven tails in a row cheers

Sports games of the era are generally impossible to beat, especially at higher difficulties. I wouldn't try too hard!

PrinceOfKoopas posted...

Tennis has a highest difficulty level. If you can beat that in a singles match, then you've mastered it.

pjbasis posted...

Sports games of the era are generally impossible to beat, especially at higher difficulties. I wouldn't try too hard!

Yeah I think mzero and I will have to discuss best approach here. I am not opposed to trying to win a match on the highest difficulties but if its one of those deals where it would take many many many hours of practice, might just call the game beaten with a victory on the standard/default difficulty. If I enjoy the game enough I could see myself making a note and come back to try the harder difficulty again later but I dont want to lose momentum on this project either

normal is fine imo

Oh yeah I meant win the match

Had a funny exchange with my two year old daughter this morning as I tried to sneak in a little Ice Climber. Shes sweet and has zero sense of sarcasm yet which made it funnier

Daughter: Whats that daddy? *points to game*
Me: Its called Ice Climber. Im trying to get to the top of the mountain
Daughter: whats that? *points to enemy*
Me: a yeti, or something. Do you think I will make it to the top of the mountain?
Daughter, completely genuine: No.

Anyway she was wrong and I completed mountain 20 before I had to take a break. She also grabbed the remote and said I want the ice climber to go bye bye so not sure weve got a gamer on our hands in the near future lol. yes I realize there is zero real insight to gain from this

Well my 7 year old daughter is loving Pokmon TCG. Shes never played a game made before the Switch to my knowledge besides a few minutes of Kirbys Adventure or Super Mario Bros., but her love of Pokmon cards has given this some major appeal! Ive been helping her out with strategy a bit but shes doing pretty well. Im gonna have to note the play time before I start so I can figure out how much came from me, heh.

Nice. I had pokemon cards at like 10 and didn't understand how to play at all

Nothing like trying to show a kid a YouTube video about Pokmon and the opening line of the video is Im your host, Gengars Chode

Fortunately they do not know what that is lol

pjbasis posted...

Nice. I had pokemon cards at like 10 and didn't understand how to play at all

Wasn't it like that for all of us lol

I knew how to play it and would play with my younger brother, and I was less than 10 when the cards came out. As long as you bought a full deck or starter set it came with the rules

I think we just never read that or cared much and just wanted to collect them.

That 'gotta catch em all' marketing sure was potent. Silver lining, if you still have them and never playing with them kept them in mint condition: $$$!

Started up TCG, went with Squirtle and Friends because I think Blastoise was the first starter I pulled back when.

Rain Dance is one of the strongest archetypes in the game, may as well start building it early

Thanks for the heads up! Was expecting the game to start kicking my ass before too long.

wallmasterz posted...

Me: a yeti, or something. Do you think I will make it to the top of the mountain?
Daughter, completely genuine: No.

lmao

wallmasterz posted...

She also grabbed the remote and said I want the ice climber to go bye bye

mildly concerning

ctesjbuvf posted...

Wasn't it like that for all of us lol

I actually knew how to play the Pokemon Card Game back then, but Yugioh was way too complicated for my kid brain

Neat topic. Tagging so I remember it exists

Also Double Dragon 3 also has coop not sure why Jakyl said only 2 does. Unless there's something weird about the NSO version

Double Dragon 3 isnt on NSO, so that would be the messed up thing about it

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/7/2/AARMM-AAEvVo.jpg
Game #3 - Ice Climber (Nintendo, 1985)

As Popo, players use a trusty mallet to work their way up the mountain. They chip away at the blocks overhead and then jump up through the resulting hole to the mountains next level. Once Popo reaches the top level, he enters a fast-moving bonus stage in which he can pick up veggies and, hopefully, reach the summit for a big point payoff. Of course, not everyones supportive of Popos pastime. Toppies fill Popos holes*, so players must jump through the gaps quickly. Its easy to slip off some of the icy levels, as Polar Bears, Toppies, and other ferocious fauna dont want players up there. There are 32 challenging peaks to scale. How will you fare?

*Authors Note: Toppies fill Popos holes? excuse me?

https://youtu.be/bCVbaaDphLg

This is the best mountain 32 hype music.

I have mixed feelings about Ice Climber. I agree with all of MZeros thoughts on the controls, jumping onto platforms, and so on. Theres fun to be had here but a few issues cause frustration to sometimes outweigh the positives. Being unable to land on the edges of platforms is odd and annoying. And the red bird enemy (not the condor atop the bonus stage, this is a common enemy), called nitpickers, get a bit frustrating at times too. Youre supposed to kill them if you jump into them with your mallet, but I ran into a few instances where I died instead. Im sure it just has to do with timing or the angle of your jump but it didnt seem as consistent as youd hope it would be.

Gripes aside, its not a bad game imo. Its a lot of fun to nail a few jumps in rapid succession and the music and art style are enjoyable. If this games controls had the precision of something like Super Mario Bros., and jumping onto platforms worked a bit more intuitively, it would be a lot of fun. Instead its only worth recommending to either 1) huge fans of platformers and/or 8-bit games or 2) Smash fans who might want to take a few minutes of their time to see the origin of Popo and Nana.

I did at least fare a bit better on the bonus stages, completing probably 6-8 of them, but I earned absolutely no style points while completing Ice Climber.

Final time: 2 hours, 43 minutes
High score: 22,790

NES games beaten: 3/65
Total games beaten: 3/217
Total play time: 8 hours

B8 NSO High Scores

Donkey Kong - 87,000 (Ctes)
Mario Bros. - 207,650 (Wallz)
Ice Climber - 22,790 (Wallz)

Wallz Game Ranking

1. Mario Bros.
2. Donkey Kong
3. Ice Climber

Maybe its just my inner Mario fan talking but if I had to spend an hour playing any one of these, Ice Climber would be my last choice. I think the controls being meh and landing on platforms being spotty drags it down a bit. I would say theres no big gap between these games, in any case. Havent played a true stinker or great game yet, with all due respect to Donkey Kongs historical significance.

it's pretty funny that a game whose primary verb is jumping has a jump that controls horribly

I feel like Ice Climbers would have become a long-running, beloved Nintendo franchise if it weren't for the absolute dog-shit controls.

This isnt a perfect genre breakdown of the remaining 17 games NSO launched with, but close enough. This has Pro Wrestling under fighting. Think I might try to keep switching up genres as I go. Ill tackle my first sports game next not sure if Ill do Baseball, Ice Hockey, Soccer, Tennis or Tecmo Bowl.

Sports (5)
Fighting/Beat em up (3)
Platform (3)
Puzzle (2)
Action (1)
Action-adventure (1)
Racing (1)
Horizontal-scrolling shooter (1)

Pokemon TCG is like ~10 hours I think so I'll probably squeeze in whatever sports game you choose. Tecmo Bowl would take quite awhile if you go for the Championship I think

As for Pokemon, the Water leader was busting me up so I went to the Electric gym hoping to get some Electric energy and I did! Got the medal and going to get revenge on that buthhole Water gym next.

If you want energy cards theres a guy in Masons Lab that will give you energy-only boosters if you beat him

I destroyed pokemon tcg with Venuzard. I think it's more fun than Rain Dance, but I was always a bulbasaur kinda guy.

Actually the most fun one might be the "haymaker" deck lots of basic hard hitting pokemon team.

I typically avoid playing games in handheld mode as much as possible because I really prefer playing docked, especially for games that didnt start off as handheld games. But I might actually start playing through the GB/GBC games in handheld mode when its convenient.

Might even start Pokemon TCG tonight.

All this TCG talk is reminding me I still need to play through the translated sequel at some point. Maybe I'll do that soon.

NBIceman posted...

All this TCG talk is reminding me I still need to play through the translated sequel at some point. Maybe I'll do that soon.

If you do, please feel free to share your thoughts here if youd like. Unless you want to do your own thread which is perfectly fine! But Im guessing there are several people who would enjoy following along with you.

wallmasterz posted...

I typically avoid playing games in handheld mode as much as possible because I really prefer playing docked, especially for games that didnt start off as handheld games. But I might actually start playing through the GB/GBC games in handheld mode when its convenient.

Might even start Pokemon TCG tonight.

I agree on playing in docked whenever possible but the GB/GBC games actually look better in handheld I feel.

You said your daughter was playing ot, right? I think you can only have one save file in true Pokemon fashion, so keep that in mind

NBIceman posted...

All this TCG talk is reminding me I still need to play through the translated sequel at some point. Maybe I'll do that soon.

I really hope they put this on Switch Online because the physical cart is quite pricey

Unless an official english prototype from back in the day exists (like with Mother 1 and Star Fox 2), not likely. No game has received a new translation on that service, with the slight exception of the title screen of Mystery Tower.

MZero posted...

I agree on playing in docked whenever possible but the GB/GBC games actually look better in handheld I feel.

You said your daughter was playing ot, right? I think you can only have one save file in true Pokemon fashion, so keep that in mind

I agree with you about the GB/GBC games looking better in handheld. I think Ill play the GBA games in handheld as well. I have always been a predominantly console gamer but playing games which originated on a handheld on handheld doesnt feel wrong to me lol. And the Switch does have a pretty nice screen.

Also yes, youre only allowed one save file. But I tested this and you can get around it with save states. So I created a suspend point for my daughter and then deleted her game lol. She played for an hour and a half yesterday but part of me thinks shell never go back to it.

I played about 45 minutes of Pokmon TCG. It was fun but I would not say Im particularly good at it yet. Ill share some more thoughts shortly, since I always intended to give ongoing thoughts for all the games with actual campaigns.

WazzupGenius00 posted...

Unless an official english prototype from back in the day exists (like with Mother 1 and Star Fox 2), not likely. No game has received a new translation on that service, with the slight exception of the title screen of Mystery Tower.

Well I don't expect them to translate it, but I'm hoping they just throw up the original as a region exclusive at least a la the Fire Emblem games

wallmasterz posted...

I agree with you about the GB/GBC games looking better in handheld. I think Ill play the GBA games in handheld as well. I have always been a predominantly console gamer but playing games which originated on a handheld on handheld doesnt feel wrong to me lol. And the Switch does have a pretty nice screen.

It's funny how similar we are. I am predominantly a console gamer as well! For a long time I just couldn't finish handheld games other than Pokemon because I rarely played them and they eventually got dropped

wallmasterz posted...

Ill share some more thoughts shortly, since I always intended to give ongoing thoughts for all the games with actual campaigns.

I was wondering about whether to post everything at the end or give updates

My battle with the Water leader was very anti-climatic. She only got like 2 Goldeens or something and ran out of Pokemon so I won with 4 prizes still on the table. Didn't even need those Electric energies because I only used a Nidorino

Ice Climber high score is 90080. Getting a good grip of bonus levels, I don't think this is hard to beat in early levels. I got this after 7 mountains

I would love to be able to do Ice Climber in one go but game is not fun enough to sit through that.

Mario Bros high score:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/6/4/AAQiSbAAEvjk.jpg

This was where I stopped.

Yeah ice climber kinda sucks

WTF

Why in the world is the Gyarados card weak to Grass? The Magikarp card's weakness is Electric but it changes to Grass, even those Gyarados is Flying-type and thus not even weak to Grass and even more weak to Electric than Magikarp? What kind of logic is that?

I'm so peeved because I was doing a Challenge Cup (you have to win three matches in a row) and I lost the last match because I sent in my Gyarados against a Swords Danced Scyther that did 120 damage

ctesjbuvf posted...

I would love to be able to do Ice Climber in one go but game is not fun enough to sit through that.

Correct lol

Nice job on Mario Bros. and Ice Climber, ctes!

B8 NSO High Scores

Donkey Kong - 87,000 (Ctes)
Mario Bros. - 208,530 (Ctes)
Ice Climber - 90,080 (Ctes)

Its beginning to look a lot like C-TES

MZero posted...

WTF

Why in the world is the Gyarados card weak to Grass? The Magikarp card's weakness is Electric but it changes to Grass, even those Gyarados is Flying-type and thus not even weak to Grass and even more weak to Electric than Magikarp? What kind of logic is that?

I'm so peeved because I was doing a Challenge Cup (you have to win three matches in a row) and I lost the last match because I sent in my Gyarados against a Swords Danced Scyther that did 120 damage

This sounds really annoying. Sorry to hear it, mzero! Yeah, I dont get the logic at all.

Guess what? I got the NSO Expansion Pack! MZero, feel free to go any direction you wish but this means Ill probably be shifting gears and mix it up with games from a variety of consoles, instead of having tunnel vision for NES games.

Well, I started this project one week ago today. I am not necessarily going to track week by week formally but during week 1 I played for 8 hours and 37 minutes. I was hoping Id play more but life is quite hectic so Ill take it and hope to up my playtime this week. I beat three games (Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Ice Climber) and started a fourth. Speaking of which

Pokemon Trading Card Game

Pokemon TCG is interesting so far. It feels like it was made to get kids to play the card game and not only collect the cards, even going as far in-game to explicitly say playing the game is more fun than just collecting them lol. Yes, I was also one of the kids with an obscene amount of cards who never quite figured out how to play the game. I only had a Christmas gift taken away once in my life and it was a big set of Pokmon cards (booster pack? Cant remember what theyre called) that came with the instructions on how to play and all that. I was warned not to snoop and I did not heed the warning, so you can blame my child self for only now learning how this card game works.

I got a kick out of the game prefacing its tutorial with it may be best if you follow along in your instruction booklet. I wish I could Dr. Mason :(

So despite playing for 37 minutes I never even left Mason Laboratory. I got through the tutorial fight against tech Sam, chose the Bulbasaur and Friends starter pack as a nod to Bulbasaur being the first ever starter I picked in a Pokmon game (this was in Red for me) and then fought tech Aaron, specifically the water & fighting deck. Apparently I can farm energy cards forever by fighting this guy repeatedly but Im just gonna hit up the rock gym er excuse me the rock club next time I play. Im not sure how important it is to build a deck beyond what youre given to start the game but I guess Ill figure that out if I get stuck.

And oh yeah, I chuckled when I checked my email and got a booster pack. It never occurred to me Id get anything for looking at the computer the same way you can get a potion in the other games. Theres obviously more than a few nods to the early games here.

Master Medals won: 0
Album: 54/226
Play Time: 0:37

wallmasterz posted...

If you do, please feel free to share your thoughts here if youd like. Unless you want to do your own thread which is perfectly fine! But Im guessing there are several people who would enjoy following along with you.

If you're sure I wouldn't be stepping on your toes, I might take you up on that. Don't think that's the sort of project that would merit its own thread but I also don't want to hijack your thing here.