Completed Games Tracker - 2014 Edition

Double post \o/

I just wrapped up a replay of Super Mario Bros. on the NES. Which I've played a lot of over the years, but mostly the SNES version. I don't remember the last time I played it on the NES. Played through every level as Mario and then played through the quickest route to the end as Luigi on hard mode. Love that game.

 

Wrapped up two games today \o/ Although both aren't really full games

With "The Legend of Zelda × Mario Kart 8" DLC I've cleared 150cc and Mirror Mode and beat the time trials. I've changed up my character/kart selection just a little bit. Pipe Frame and Slim tires, with either Link or Bowser depending on how I'm faring with their respective themed glider. Nice balance of speed with handling.

Looking forward to the Animal Crossing pack. But it's sooo far away. Not until May ;___; Oh well. This gave online a nice kick in the pants, although a group of us have been racing fairly regularly regardless. Come play with us if you're not already! Good times


I also wrapped up Mighty Gunvolt on the 3DS which was gifted to me by someone on Twitter. It's heavily NES Mega Man inspired. I haven't really played any Mega Man. I'm not good at Mega Man. The controls felt a bit backwards. But I enjoyed the NES aesthetic. Very short game although it took some practice to work it properly.

 

No one finished a game here in half a month? D: Well, don't blame me for double posting (again)...

Last weekend (I think, possibly the weekend before that? I really should have logged it somewhere :S), I beat both "Gradius" and "Rush'n Attack" for the NES. Technically, I played through Gradius twice because it loops and I didn't realize I beat it XD I thought that was the midway point. SHMUPs are repetitive anyway so I didn't really catch on that everything after that point I had already played lol

Rush'n Attack was great fun though! Side-scrolling run-and-gun game from Konami. Weird controls though. You press up to jump! Otherwise it was good hectic, fun.


And today I just wrapped up "Déjà Vu I & II: The Casebooks of Ace Harding" for the GBC. It's a port/remake of the MacVenture point-and-click adventure games from '80s. But combined here as one long continuous game. Really catchy music and some funny dialogue.

 

Today I beat "The Mysterious Murasame Castle" for the Famicom Disk System. A bit of a lost Nintendo gem. "Super Mario Bros." and "The Legend of Zelda" are 'cousin' titles on the NES, but somewhere related two those is Murasame. It plays a like a mixture of the two. A really fast paced Zelda-type game, but without the puzzles, more action-oriented, with power ups. It was a lot of fun.

I also beat "Renegade" for the Sega Master System. You may be more familiar with its classic NES sequel, "River City Ransom". It was simple, but enjoyable.


EDIT: Oh, and "Super Mario Bros. Special". An early lost sequel by Hudson Soft of all people. This was a version ported to the NES, so it looks better and plays smoother. Unfortunately, lacks all the extra enemies and power-ups. But the level design is top-notch. Much better than the Japanese SMB2 (aka, "The Lost Levels"). Tough but fair and I love the troll pipes that take you back to the start of the level or to a dead end. Multiple branching paths too, a little different for a Mario game.

 

I beat the original Dragon Quest last night. Specifically the Super Famicom remixed release

I slogged through an archaic JRPG. I'm as surprised as you are.

 

Oops, been a while since I posted here... Not that I've had much time to play games anyway, so there's not a lot to list.

Fire Emblem: Awakening
I think I'm pretty bad at these games and it took me a long time to get into this, but once I hit the halfway point the plot totally hooked me. I didn't do very well with my characters though. Only married like... 2 sets of them, oops. ._.;

Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded HD
Yeah this doesn't even really count. NEXT.

Tales of Asteria: 星のカケラ
idk what to call it in English. Star Shards, I guess? Whatever. It's the first story in the mobile game. I finished it up with a few weeks to spare before the sequel hit. :)

Pokémon Snap
I was bored one day so I sat down and reset my file in Snap and completed it again within an hour. I really want a sequel to this game.

Tales of Innocence
I needed to know something about a minor side character in this for a translation I was doing and no one could give me an answer so I just gave up and decided to play the game on my own. I own TOI-R, the Vita remake, but the Absolute Zero fan-translation for the DS version was just so phenomenal and I've heard that you should play the original before the Vita version because of some questionable changes/additions they made to the remake, so I gave it a shot. The game is pretty good. Characters (the main reason I play these games) were alright--Ange was GREAT and is easily one of my favourite Tales characters of all time--and for a DS game the battle system was pretty good. I really loved the levelling/"job" system. The dungeons were all terrible. Identical and tedious... honestly, I would have even preferred Graces's terrible mazes to how boring and lacklustre these were. The Guild Dungeons in the game, which were randomly-generated, were better than the actual ones. ~_~ The difficulty was all over the place because the game was short but expected you to artificially pad the game on your own by doing the Guild Dungeons. I didn't mind TOO much because I did a ton of grinding while marathoning an entire TV series but it still kinda sucked. I hope they fix all the problems I had with the battle system in R but I have this sinking feeling that instead of keeping the best parts and ditching the shitty parts, they'll revamp everything and it'll be all-around bad. Overall, though, the flaws were pretty overlookable because it's a DS game. Despite my complaints, I had a lot of fun playing this and I'm actually pretty antsy to get home and pull out the remake so I can play it again. (Translation was phenomenal!!!)

Aaaaand... that's about it! I highly doubt I'll beat anything else before the year is up, so my count is about 33 this year. Could be more, could be less, depending on if you could DLC episodes. Also I had intended to include games I replayed and all, but I'm pretty sure I've forgotten stuff, since I usually cross-reference Backloggery and the only games counted there are newly beaten games instead of replays. :s I did the added-more-games-than-I-beat thing again this year, unfortunately, but 30-something games is nothing to sneeze at so I'm pretty content with how much I cleared out of the way this year.

 

Wrapped up the Second Quest from the original Legend of Zelda on the NES. I played the First Quest a couple weeks back. The second one is just so much better; more challenging for sure, but more rewarding for it.

I also just finished the Japanese "Super Mario Bros. 2" (aka "The Lost Levels" or "For Super Players"). It was the first time I've played the original Famicom Disk System version as opposed to the SNES All-Stars one. I dunno. Maybe because I've played the SNES one, I know what the tricks and traps are. Maybe it's because I just played SMB and Special not too long along and am full of SMB practice. But I did not find the game as challenging as I was anticipating. Of those three early Mario titles sharing this same engine, I think I like this the least. Has a very retread-like feeling.