Romance of the Three Kingdoms II (#6)

My day started by dragging my sick ass out of bed for a long day of work. I had slept the previous 31 out of 35 hours after getting some kind of flu/fever combination and after about 30 minutes at work I threw in the towel and called someone in to cover me. I had the cold sweats and my valiant attempt at fighting them off ended with me right back in that bed, searching for the one spot I felt comfortable in.

By afternoon the fever was gone and even the aches and pains started to abate. I had to pick up the kids at a house I had never been to before (friend's birthday party), so I was trying to gather the energy to get up and shower. I made it through the shower without getting dizzy and picked the kids up without incident (though the parents at the party probably thought I was a zombie dad, as I weaved through the kids to gather my own and hustled them out rather quickly).

The wife gets home a bit later and tells me the kids are having friends over for the night and if I want to go to my mom's or something to escape the bedlam, it might be a good idea. *Click* "How 'bout I just shut myself up in my den and you all pretend I'm not home?" Somehow this logic worked with the wife and I figured I would finally have a solid chunk of time to knock off one of my 6 remaining games.

Good ol' Rey had posted some codes for Romance of the Three Kingdoms II at thegshi.org recently, so I might as well go after that one. I had no idea how long my energy would last and I assumed that at the first sign of game failure I would just slink into the bedroom and get another 15 hours of sleep before work tomorrow.

2 hours (and a shitload of rice codes) later, Romance II finds it's way off the "Games Left To Beat" list. I'd love to say I beat this game fair and square, but since most people now view my quest as null and void since I have used cheat codes and emulators to beat games over the last several years, my goal now is to just fight my way to the ending by any means necessary. There are now only 5 US released NES games that I have not seen the endings to.

Gemfire
Miracle Piano Teaching System
Nobunaga's Ambition II
Silent Service
Uncharted Waters

A few months ago, Koei was my worst enemy. Now with 3 of the Koei games off the list, the remaining 3 actually seem friendly compared to the Miracle Piano gorilla and that pesky little submarine game. It's too bad Konami/Ultra decided to put a sub simulator out for the NES, rather than a cool sub game, like that one for the Sega Master System. Oh well.


I'm glad your journey is over friend. Mine still continues on....

Pirates! (#7)

This isn't a really satisfying victory, as there is no ending sequence or credits when you achieve the best score (or any score for that matter). Your name goes into the Hall of Fame and then you can actually continue your game if you feel like sailing the high seas for more adventure.

I'm glad this wasn't one of my last couple of games because of the lack of that definitive ending. It seems like Silent Service has the same deal going for it as well, as from what I have read you just get ranked based upon how well you do in the game but there is no ending sequence, so maybe I should take my medecine and tackle that one next before the 4 Koei games. As much as I rag on Koei, at least they have ending.

As for Miracle Piano, I'm pretty certain there is no ending to it, like if you pass all the lessons or even beat the sub games they throw in for fun, but that WILL be the last game I tackle. It has to be. None of the other 5 games remaining on the list come even close to being as infamous as the piano game. Like I teased in my last post, the unit has been rediscovered in my garage attic. I didn't even look inside of it, I just gingerly placed it back on top of the boxes it slid down from. I'm hoping I was smart enough to put the loose cartridge in the box though. You see, I had the loose cartridge first and then I won the unit on eBay WITHOUT the cart, which worked out fine since I had it anyway and is probably why I got the high bid on it. Hopefully it has the manual/book with it, but at least some masochist at nintendoage scanned the whole f'ing thing.

L'Empereur (#8)

Let me just get this out of the way. ReyVGM is one persistent motherfucker. I went on indefinite video game hiatus a month or so ago for several reasons. I was a lazy no good around the house when it came to chores, most likely because I was up to 2am in the morning beating these bottom of my crusty video game barrel games trying to knock the final 11 off my list. Usually I would have to wake up for work several hours after going to bed or spend the day taking care of my twins, which sometimes can be harder than work depending on how much energy they have that day.

So Rey, who unfortunately will be retiring from the NES video gaming scene once he procures the few remaining ending pics he needs, keeps churning out codes and info on various games and now decides he's going after Koei's ball bag. Without getting into specifics he not only figures out how to hamstring opponents in these games by setting their food supply to ZERO, making any opponent instantly ineffective, but he figures out that each land (there are like 40+ lands in L'Empereur) has their own individual codes for everything: food, gold, soldiers, prostitutes, boats, commerce...you name it. He spends what must have been hours posting this shit to thegshi.org for the gaming community's disposal and gets rewarded with little fanfare, other than the usual praise from me and grand master G-Force (who may end up beating all the games before I do!). Years from now some dude is gonna wonder how the hell he can beat L'Empereur and will stumble across the hundreds of codes Rey made for this and will wonder who this code king was.

By the way, Rey, don't die on us before making Gemfire codes. And don't forget to thank the mods when they get around to adding the codes to the site or they will become angry and self-righteous even though you are the one fueling their site with your body of work ;)

I forget where I was headed with this shit...

*looks back at 1st paragraph*

Oh yeah, so anyway, in true Godfather fashion, I get pulled back into the video gaming zone. For a good month I was getting 8-9 hours of sleep, being a great dad, getting shit done around the house. Gutters got cleaned out, got a guy to put in a garbage disposal my wife's been begging me for, went through my closets and drawers and got rid of about half of my clothes I'd been hoarding for over 10 years that no longer fit because I am getting fatter and older (37 fucking years old tomorrow...wtf!?!). I even found the cool shirt stuffed in the back of the dresser that says PLEASE TELL YOUR TITS TO STOP STARING AT MY EYES! Now that's fucking class right there I tell ya! I've had a ton of energy at work and just basically have been getting it done and making the wife happy.

So thanks Rey for sucking me back in and turning me into the sluggish zombie I was a couple months ago. I owe you one buddy! Honorable mention goes out as well to the aforementioned GarrettForce for the occasion gaming related email that I take way too long to reply to, yet keeps me anchored in the gaming zone.

In all seriousness, I'm down to 7 games left to beat because of Rey and he has my eternal gratitude for making this 20+ year quest to see every US NES game ending a reality, even though I have to cheat like hell to get through these last few games.


Sorry Austria.

Oh yeah, I was putting stuff up in my garage and a long, heavy box slid off some boxes and landed at my feet. Miracle...Piano...Teaching...System...

Hatris

Been too lazy to blog anything substantial this month, but I wanted to put something on here. The USA and Japanese versions of Hatris seem the same, but are different. I recently beat both versions and put the endings in my NES endings guide but haven't submitted the latest update to gamefaqs yet, so if you are curious about the 2 Hatris' endings, read on:

HATRIS (Bullet Proof Software)
-This is a neat Tetris style game where you have to arrange falling hats in order of what type they are. I enjoyed the game quite a bit, but it seems to get a bad rap for some reason. At the beginning of the game you can select which Shop and Stage to start on. There are a total of 6 Shops (0-6) with each Shop having 9 Stages (0-9). Every time you beat the last stage of a shop you will get a quick intermission scene and it will go on to the next shop. When you finish Shop 5, Stage 9 (it says Shop 59 on the screen) it will show the two characters from the game (Alexy Pajitnov and Vladimir Pokhilko, the programmers) on the bottom of the screen. Alexy takes off his Abraham Lincoln top hat and pulls out letters and throws them into the middle of the screen to spell out GREAT GAME. He then floats up and bumps his head on the letters and his hat falls off. Alexy and Vladimir then proceed to run back and forth across the top and bottom of the screen. You can watch this for awhile and see both a smiley face and a bunny chase them at various points. Anyway, when you press A it will go tot he High Score screen. Enter your initials here and press start to return to the title screen. That's it??? Actually, not quite. You may have noticed on the High Score screen that it lists the Shop and Stage that the High Scorer's reached. Some of the Shop numbers have a T or an N in front of them. I wasn't sure what this meant, so I found the manual on line and discovered there is a Turbo mode to this game! At the title screen you can press DOWN and Start at the same time to trigger Turbo-Speed Mode. It won't seem like the code worked at first, but when you choose your Shop and Stage and start the gameyou will notice the word TURBO at the bottom right of the screen, above Vladimir's head on the wall. Unfortunately, you will get the same exact ending when you beat the 59 stages in Turbo-Speed Mode, so the ending to this game can officially be described as lame.

...and now for the Famicom version:

HATRIS (Bullet Proof Software)
-Wow, I wasn't expecting this. This game is made by the same company that made the USA NES version of Hatris (BPS) but even though the game looks similar, there are a ton of things different. Your helpers Vladimir and Alexy aren't in the Famicom version. You have a score instead of $$ cash. The intermissions are totally better and there is a cool ending here. I wonder why they butchered this game for the US?? The Shop/Stage layouts are kind of similar. Assuming you started at the beginning at Shop A0, you have to complete 9 stages before moving on to Shop A1. When you beat Stage 9 in Shop 0 you get an intermission showing the BPS Orchestra with a conductor but only 7 musicians in the orchestra. Now play through the 9 stages of Shop A1 and the intermission will have 11 people in the orchestra. As you keep progressing, more musicians are added to the BPS Orchestra during intermissions until you finish Shop A5, Stage 9, which is the last stage of the game. It will show a full BPS Orchestra (with 28 musicians) playing a nice little tune. It will then bring you to the High Score screen where you can enter your initials. When you do this it brings you to a screen that shows you a beautiful view out the window of a beach and ocean with a hot air balloon floating by. The credits will flash by at the bottom of the screen. As the credits roll the sun will set, butterflies will fly across the screen, a dog will walk by (and stop to scratch at fleas), the moon will go across the horizon while a volcano erupts in the background. Basically youjust get to see a bunch of cool sunsets, sunrises, lightning storms and even a rainbow. Eventually seagulls will flock across the screen and a cool sailboat will float by. It then repeats it all over again until you press reset. You can also play a Turbo-Speed Mode by pressing Down and Start at the title screen but it will not say TURBO on the screen when you start playing, but you will know it works because the Shops all start with the letter B instead of A. You do get the same exact ending that you got when beating the regular game though so this is only for people who love the game. This version of the game definitely should have been released in the States.

Mindscape

What the hell is up with these guys?? Let me start by saying I loved the game Alfred Chicken. In fact, I even wrote a guide for it.

Now let's look at the list of NES games released by them in 1990:

-RoadBlasters
-Infiltrator
-Miracle Piano Teaching System
-The Last Starfighter
-Mad Max
-Gauntlet II
-M.U.L.E.
-Loopz
-Days of Thunder
-Dirty Harry

Now if you remove the best game of the bunch (arguably RoadBlasters) and the worst game of the bunch (arguably Days of Thunder) you still have some pretty shitty games here.

RoadBlasters is fun for awhile, but gets extremely repetitive. This is one of the few games my sister would actually play back in the day, so I have somewhat fond memories of it. And this is the best game of the bunch.

I wrote a guide for The Last Starfighter, but for a game that looks like a shooter, it's more like a strategy game. One that isn't very fun. One hit deaths and not really having control of your ship make for one hell of a rocky experience.

Dirty Harry has one of the coolest endings in any NES game, as it is a completely digitized vocal monologue from Dirty Harry himself. However the other 99% of the game is just dreadful.


Gauntlet II has no ending to speak of, as the game just randomly starts generating levels after awhile. How the hell can a quest game that came out in 1990 just keep you endlessly looping??

Mad Max...I rented this several times back in the day and it gave me fits. You can't even use the final password, as you need the crossbow from the previous fucking level to beat the final boss.

Infiltrator isn't that bad...unless you are in the flying segments. I had to use one of Zach Meston's NES strategy guides to even have a clue to how to navigate these areas of the game and even then I was almost clueless.

Loopz is a decent puzzle game, though it gets nearly impossible as you go on. M.U.L.E. is an old computer simulation game. I've never really heard anyone talk about this game in NES circles, so I guess it falls into a niche category, kind of like the Koei games.

Don't even get me started on Miracle Piano.

Has any company ever had a worse lineup than this for a whole calendar year of releases???

At least they redeemed themselves in '91.



Oh wait. No they didn't.

Metamucil

I suppose you'd look like you were squeezing out the biggest turd of your life too if you were shot out of a Mayan temple all the way up to an island in the sky.

Can anyone think of an older main character in an NES game other than Stanley?

Game endings

So as most of you know, my main reason for beating games is to document the endings. If you haven't seen my NES game endings guide, it is here.

I don't think you can direct link to a particular FAQ on that site, but you'll find it there regardless.

I started working on that guide almost 10 years ago. It was first submitted to gamefaqs in November 2003. I beat a ton of NES games before that time and unfortunately only wrote down the endings in a notebook, but I've been enjoying going through a lot of them again and for a couple of them, like Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, there were actually multiple endings, some of which I didn't get the first time through.

Also, some of the games I put endings for when I first started the guide are really skimpy, so I've been going through several games a 3rd time just so I can rewrite those endings and flesh them out a bit.

There are also a ton of Famicom endings, as well as endings for the Famicom Disk System, PAL NES games, pirates, homebrews and those wily Sachen games, that nobody seems to be able to concretely categorize. If anybody doesn't see an ending in the guide that you would like to know about, please let me know. My ultimate goal is to get EVERY NES ending documented. It will get done, assuming I don't perish in the next 10 years or so.

Anyway, here's a sneak peak at some of the games that will be included in my next update:

-Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Dragons of Flame (J)
-Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Pool of Radiance
-Bandit Kings of Ancient China
-Bonk's Adventure
-Captain Comic, The Adventures of
-Castle of Deceit
-Cobra Triangle
-Deep Dungeon (FDS)
-Galaga
-George Foreman's KO Boxing
-Kalin no Tsurugi (FDS)
-Legacy of the Wizard
-Locksmith (Sachen)
-Lutter (FDS)
-Orb 3-D
-Othello
-Pipe 5 (Sachen)
-Panda World (Pirate)
-Penguin & Seal, The (Sachen)
-Roadblasters
-Rock 'n' Ball
-Roger Clemens MVP Baseball
-Rollerball
-Rollerblade Racer
-Rollergames
-Terminator, The
-Terminator 2 - Judgment Day
-Thunderbolt 2 (Pirate)
-Toobin'
-Ultima: Warriors of Destiny
-Valkyrie no Bouken (J)
-Ys (J)
-Ys II - Ancient Ys Vanished - The Final Chapter (J)


I usually update twice a year: once in June and once in December. If I get another 10 games beaten in the next month I may update it in sometime before June, but then again I always want to keep beating "one more game" before I update and just keep pushing back the date.

If you are an ending freak like myself, I suggest you check out this page:

http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/nes/

ReyVGM supplied most of those visual ending pics, which are much more stimulating to look at than my crappy descriptions. He hasn't updated since the Patriots won their last Super Bowl, but he has assured me he has one monster update left in him at some point down the line.

If anyone knows what this says, I'd love to know.