It took me about 7-8 months to get around to finishing Valkyria Chronicles.
Right now my white whale would be Okami. I've had that game for nearly a year and haven't advanced.
Play Okami! It really is so much fun! I would really recommend it on PS2 as well over the Wii version. I played the ps2 version, and i've heard it was more difficult to control the brush with the wiimote.
Yeah, the PS2 version is what I have. I'm stuck after the first dungeon/level/whatever and I'm supposed to go into a forest I think. But the only way through is a small river and I keep drowning.
Ammy definitely can't swim! But have you gotten the water lily power yet for the celestial brush? You get it in Kamiki village if I remember right. It's where you can draw lilys onto the water, then you step on those to get across it. Because I believe there is a long tunnel you have to go through to get to the forest that's filled with water. Hence why you need the water lily power to get through it.
I'd say my white whale is Ultima VI: The False Prophet and, by association, every Ultima after it.
This was pre-Internet patch availability days. I was fairly well along in the game and decided to use a raft to travel down a small lake. Apparently, there was a save corruption bug if you were on the raft, so I lost everything. After a phone call to Origin, they sadly informed me I was fooked and they'd mail (not e-mail) me a patch disk. However, after all of the progress lost, I just couldn't do it again.
This essentially killed my Ultima progress. I'd finished Ultima IV & V.
Eihnhander for PS1. I absolutely love this game, but I can never actually finish it, even with the super weapons. I remember the last boss being some kind of satellite thing, and then after you finish that, you have to do some crazy part at end with hundreds of ships coming at you. It's hard enough surviving to the end of the game with enough lives to beat the boss, then they throw that crap at you.
My other whale is Castlevania on NES. For the longest time I couldn't beat the Grim Reaper right before Draculas stage. From what I remember you need the boomerang and 3 times multiplier to make the fight less chaotic, but right before you get there, there's a bat or something you have to kill right at the same time your next to a candle with the axe, a much shittier weapon to use on the Reaper. I think I beat this game once, if that.
The Grey GOAT on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death." -HST
The Orc campaign in Warcraft 2: Beyond the Dark Portal has a hell of a finale that I could never beat despite how into that game I was as a teenager. I last gave it another try a few years ago, but I just found it impossibly disorienting trying to play without modern RTS controls that I got so accustomed to in the meantime. Don't think I'll ever take this one down.
It's literally been years, but I think the most reliable strategy to finish that mission (and really, any of the particularly 'big' missions in WC2) was to exploit certain AI strategies/bugs. Even then, it could be a little difficult.
This is gonna sound really stupid, but Diddy Kong Racing.
I got stuck on the first Wizpig race for years cause I didn't know about the game-breaking zipper glitch.
Now that I DO know about it, everything is way too easy. I even managed to get that stopwatch character as a playable character.
T.T. (the stopwatch's name, not me crying, although that game did make me cry). But what's the zipper glitch? I liked playing DKR in co-op mode with one of my friends, but it always pissed us off that the bosses forced you to alternate.
It took me about 7-8 months to get around to finishing Valkyria Chronicles.
Right now my white whale would be Okami. I've had that game for nearly a year and haven't advanced.
Play Okami! It really is so much fun! I would really recommend it on PS2 as well over the Wii version. I played the ps2 version, and i've heard it was more difficult to control the brush with the wiimote.
Yeah, the PS2 version is what I have. I'm stuck after the first dungeon/level/whatever and I'm supposed to go into a forest I think. But the only way through is a small river and I keep drowning.
Ammy definitely can't swim! But have you gotten the water lily power yet for the celestial brush? You get it in Kamiki village if I remember right. It's where you can draw lilys onto the water, then you step on those to get across it. Because I believe there is a long tunnel you have to go through to get to the forest that's filled with water. Hence why you need the water lily power to get through it.
Aye, you need to help Mr. Orange perform the Konohana shuffle. Talk to him, he'll give you a hint as to what you need to do if you're not there yet.
First off is Chrono Trigger. I love everything about the damn game, but for some reason I've only gone and tried to beat Lavos once in all the years I've owned the game, and that was way back when I was 11 or 12. I think I had almost defeated his final form when I died largely because I stupidly used Marle and Lucca in my party instead of any other characters. And no matter how many times I sit down and resolve myself to see it through, I've never gone back to the Apocalypse.
Oh man, conquer that beast! And there are multiple endings!
Agreed, the ending to Chrono Trigger is just sooo satisfying. And that's just one ending.
Mild Confusion on
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
So this time around with Wind Waker I am having way more fun.
I dunno why it was such a chore last time but I mean this game is just charming and fun in all the right ways.
Are you sure you haven't repressed the memory of The Triforce Piece Hunt?
Another one protesting about the Triforce hunt? Tch. You guys are pussies :P. The only bothersome part of the triforce hunt was having to pay a million rupees to that scrooge Tingle. Other than that, it was not a single trouble and certainly not the game killer people seem to insist it is. I mean, it took like a tenth of the time finding the Chozo artifacts in Prime did, and sailing sure is a lot more pleasant and less stressing than trekking around a million caves poking everything.
So this time around with Wind Waker I am having way more fun.
I dunno why it was such a chore last time but I mean this game is just charming and fun in all the right ways.
Are you sure you haven't repressed the memory of The Triforce Piece Hunt?
Another one protesting about the Triforce hunt? Tch. You guys are pussies :P. The only bothersome part of the triforce hunt was having to pay a million rupees to that scrooge Tingle. Other than that, it was not a single trouble and certainly not the game killer people seem to insist it is. I mean, it took like a tenth of the time finding the Chozo artifacts in Prime did, and sailing sure is a lot more pleasant and less stressing than trekking around a million caves poking everything.
Backtracking is a staple of the Metroid series and the Chozo Artefacts weren't exactly hidden.
However when I'm playing a Zelda game I'd prefer not to be told that I have to traipse across the entire world gathering rupies wherever I can so I can buy maps from the least likeable character in the game so I can traipse all around the map again looking for pieces of macguffin so I can actually start playing the game again, instead of exploring dungeons, which is what I had expected from a LoZ game.
So this time around with Wind Waker I am having way more fun.
I dunno why it was such a chore last time but I mean this game is just charming and fun in all the right ways.
Are you sure you haven't repressed the memory of The Triforce Piece Hunt?
Another one protesting about the Triforce hunt? Tch. You guys are pussies :P. The only bothersome part of the triforce hunt was having to pay a million rupees to that scrooge Tingle. Other than that, it was not a single trouble and certainly not the game killer people seem to insist it is. I mean, it took like a tenth of the time finding the Chozo artifacts in Prime did, and sailing sure is a lot more pleasant and less stressing than trekking around a million caves poking everything.
ohhh effing Chozo artifacts. I never did finish Metroid Prime, got to the end and it said "HEY U DIDNT GET ALL THIS RANDOM STUFF THROUGHOUT THE GAME SO GOOD LUCK FINDING IT!"
Screw you Samus, I have better shit to do than scan every random object I walk by, I'm busy killing mans.
You should have picked up at least half of the Chozo artifacts during the normal course of the game anyway. Even early on it's kind of obvious that they're important.
I played this game for around an hour and turned it off in disgust. Everything it did made me angry, and it was doing it on purpose, and it enjoyed it. Somewhere there were developers laughing at me.
Weeks later I realized that I missed the whole point of the game. It had exposed how soft most current games have made me. I will probably never go back to it, but it will always be there as a very good game I dismissed for foolish reasons.
A quote I saw once in reference to Demon's Souls "The game gets harder when you die. Why? Because fuck you is why."
So this time around with Wind Waker I am having way more fun.
I dunno why it was such a chore last time but I mean this game is just charming and fun in all the right ways.
Are you sure you haven't repressed the memory of The Triforce Piece Hunt?
Another one protesting about the Triforce hunt? Tch. You guys are pussies :P. The only bothersome part of the triforce hunt was having to pay a million rupees to that scrooge Tingle. Other than that, it was not a single trouble and certainly not the game killer people seem to insist it is. I mean, it took like a tenth of the time finding the Chozo artifacts in Prime did, and sailing sure is a lot more pleasant and less stressing than trekking around a million caves poking everything.
Backtracking is a staple of the Metroid series and the Chozo Artefacts weren't exactly hidden.
However when I'm playing a Zelda game I'd prefer not to be told that I have to traipse across the entire world gathering rupies wherever I can so I can buy maps from the least likeable character in the game so I can traipse all around the map again looking for pieces of macguffin so I can actually start playing the game again, instead of exploring dungeons, which is what I had expected from a LoZ game.
Nintendo were Trollin'
Well, personally, looking into every nook and cranny for heart pieces was always a part of my Zelda experience. The triforce hunt just added maps, making it easier and a lot faster, and Tingle, which is admittedly an annoying thing to add in any circumstances. And since I liked sailing a lot more than I ever liked horsing around in Epona or equivalents, it was plenty pleasant to do.
I've been playing these games since the first one. If I had to guess, I'd say I've played thousands of games of the various incarnations of Civ and completed hundreds; I recently cleaned out my saved game folder for Civ 4 and deleted in excess of 200 distinct games from mid-2006 through to Jan 1 2010, and that was the second machine I'd had Civ 4 installed on. Nonetheless, there are two things I've never done in any Civ game:
1) Beaten the game on the highest difficulty level in a "normal" scenario (i.e. not some cheesie single city on a tiny map game).
2) Played a multiplayer game.
I consider Civilization my "white whale" due to the ongoing obsession and my inability to truly "beat" the game. I've got lots of games I've never finished (most of the games I buy, in fact) but no others that have engendered an ongoing relationship like the Civ series.
Ultima 6 and ultima7 parts 1 and 2 ... I always just dick around forever and forget about the main quest.
same with morrowind. I still load these up from time to time with about the same results. Funny when you still avoid spoilers for games you've had for 10 years.
I Played the crap out of Ultima 7. My jobless roommate at the time played it a lot more than me and showed me the ending of Serpent Isle (part 2)...never did finish it myself. I can still hear the "Guardian" laughing at me.
Has anybody ever met anyone who finished "Legacy of the Wizard" on the NES. That game haunted me as a kid, I could never get to any boss, I could never get items that had no conceivable value. I could wander for hours and never find where I was supposed to go though.
^ ALSO THIS! OMG THIS! ^
I always regret not getting to even SEE Fatalis in Monster Hunter on the PS2 and there's no chance of that now that the servers are down. I WILL see/kill every monster in Tri.....I WILL!
The Shadow Hearts Series. I finished the first game and played the second for a couple hours but got diverted to other things.
Most of you people have it easy. All of my "white whales" are games that I had as a kid and was never able to beat. I happened to own a LOT of NES games, since my parents loved going to flea-markets and yard sales on weekends and often came back with games they found for cheap. This resulted in me having a bunch of absolute crap sitting around that I played anyway because I was a kid and didn't know any better. Now that I'm older (23 actually), I still have those games sitting around and it really irks me to have something on my shelf that kicked my ass back in the day and hasn't been beat yet, regardless of its quality (not that they're all bad). In the past few months, I finally sat down to rectify this for good. Here's a sample of what I've put myself through recently.
Kid Kool
Castlevania 3
Fester's Quest
Snake Rattle and Roll
8 Eyes
Ghostbusters II
Super Ghouls and Ghosts
Adventure Island
Ninja Gaiden 1, 2 and 3
Here's what I have left.
Battletoads
X-Men
Cybernoid
Swords and Serpents
Ultima: Exodus
Battletoads and X-Men speak for themselves I think, though the only serious problem I'm having with Battletoads is that awful glitch during the rat race that forces you to reset, which I somehow managed to activate three times in a row. Otherwise, I'll be ok if I just play the crap out of it. X-Men is just...ugh.
Cybernoid is easily the most evil game in my library. As a kid I never made it past the first level. Now I'm barely surviving to level three. I have had NIGHTMARES about this game. It's personal now.
As for Swords and Serpents- I've never actually liked the first-person dungeon crawler genre, but this was my first experience with them and I'll be damned if I let it slide after beating the rest of this crap. Same goes for Ultima.
As an amusing side note, Dragon Warrior (the first one) took me ten years to finish, playing the same save file the whole time. My tolerance for grinding is very close to zero, so I could only stomach playing it about once every 3-6 months; generally lasting for about 10-20 minutes before putting it back on the shelf to collect dust again. Finally beating that was cause for celebration.
BTW, this is my first actual post after lurking here for quite a while, so hi. I just had to vent a bit after attempting X-Men again this evening.
EDIT: My wife actually bought Legacy of the Wizard a while ago, so one of these days I'll have to put myself through that mess. Luckily it wasn't one of MY childhood memories, so I don't feel like I need to do it anytime soon.
This is gonna sound really stupid, but Diddy Kong Racing.
I got stuck on the first Wizpig race for years cause I didn't know about the game-breaking zipper glitch.
Now that I DO know about it, everything is way too easy. I even managed to get that stopwatch character as a playable character.
T.T. (the stopwatch's name, not me crying, although that game did make me cry). But what's the zipper glitch? I liked playing DKR in co-op mode with one of my friends, but it always pissed us off that the bosses forced you to alternate.
Technically not a "glitch" per se, but once you discover it the game becomes embarrassingly easy.
Right before you hit a zipper, let go of the acceleration completely. Do not just power through it like normal, just let go; don't hit the gas until you're completely out of the boost. Instead of a pink/purple boost behind the cart, you'll get this weird green one that leaves behind a rainbow smoke trail when finished.
You'll move twice as fast and go twice as far, and I mean it. You will haul ass with this, and every challenge in the game almost becomes a chore.
This method is also the only way to beat all the T.T. time trial races.
It took me about 7-8 months to get around to finishing Valkyria Chronicles.
Right now my white whale would be Okami. I've had that game for nearly a year and haven't advanced.
Play Okami! It really is so much fun! I would really recommend it on PS2 as well over the Wii version. I played the ps2 version, and i've heard it was more difficult to control the brush with the wiimote.
Yeah, the PS2 version is what I have. I'm stuck after the first dungeon/level/whatever and I'm supposed to go into a forest I think. But the only way through is a small river and I keep drowning.
actually....I haven't touched Okami (on the Wii) past the tutorial, I also never got past the tutorial in Red Steel 2, I think I'll change my gaming white whale to the Wii.
Bonus points because it's actually white, white's also the colour the outside of my eyes used to be before the Wii's graphics made them bleed constanly ^_^
I played this game for around an hour and turned it off in disgust. Everything it did made me angry, and it was doing it on purpose, and it enjoyed it. Somewhere there were developers laughing at me.
Weeks later I realized that I missed the whole point of the game. It had exposed how soft most current games have made me. I will probably never go back to it, but it will always be there as a very good game I dismissed for foolish reasons.
A quote I saw once in reference to Demon's Souls "The game gets harder when you die. Why? Because fuck you is why."
Any game were you are dead on the front cover should give you the idea the game might be tricky.
As much as love Wind Waker, whenever I had to sail somewhere I'd just set myself on the right path, flick AV channels and watch TV for a few minutes. If my controller rumbled, hit Start and switch back.
Willeth on
@vgreminders - Don't miss out on timed events in gaming! @gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
As much as love Wind Waker, whenever I had to sail somewhere I'd just set myself on the right path, flick AV channels and watch TV for a few minutes. If my controller rumbled, hit Start and switch back.
That means you never saw any of the interesting water creatures, like the albino physeter macrocephalus!
As for Swords and Serpents- I've never actually liked the first-person dungeon crawler genre, but this was my first experience with them and I'll be damned if I let it slide after beating the rest of this crap.
That game gets insane towards the end.
Snake Rattle and Roll was also nutty. I could never get past the ice stage where you had to make those jumps up some weird staircase. Yay! I got there again... Fall, Fall, Fall, Rage.
I was doing fine, whittling away, had all the turrets and shield etc done, onto the main face, chipping away, healing now and then...and then...DOOM METER. And dead.
I know I could probably do it if I went and did some grinding, but up until that point it was more or less a cakewalk, and that boss is like a brick wall relatively speaking.
And the worst bit? It happens JUST as everything begins to get explained.
Most of you people have it easy. All of my "white whales" are games that I had as a kid and was never able to beat. I happened to own a LOT of NES games, since my parents loved going to flea-markets and yard sales on weekends and often came back with games they found for cheap. This resulted in me having a bunch of absolute crap sitting around that I played anyway because I was a kid and didn't know any better. Now that I'm older (23 actually), I still have those games sitting around and it really irks me to have something on my shelf that kicked my ass back in the day and hasn't been beat yet, regardless of its quality (not that they're all bad). In the past few months, I finally sat down to rectify this for good. Here's a sample of what I've put myself through recently.
Kid Kool
Castlevania 3
Fester's Quest
Snake Rattle and Roll
8 Eyes
Ghostbusters II
Super Ghouls and Ghosts
Adventure Island
Ninja Gaiden 1, 2 and 3
Here's what I have left.
Battletoads
X-Men
Cybernoid
Swords and Serpents
Ultima: Exodus
Battletoads and X-Men speak for themselves I think, though the only serious problem I'm having with Battletoads is that awful glitch during the rat race that forces you to reset, which I somehow managed to activate three times in a row. Otherwise, I'll be ok if I just play the crap out of it. X-Men is just...ugh.
Battletoads is definitely on my list of top 10 hardest games of all time. I somehow beat it as a kid using the extra lives trick from level 2 but still I don't think I could have the patients for it today. Good luck with that one.
I recently downloaded Castlevania 3 on the Wii VC and I remember it being relatively easy back in the day, now I can hardly get past the 4th level.
The Grey GOAT on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death." -HST
That one sequence of jumps in Snake Rattle and Roll alone took it from a game I planned on beating in an hour or two to a whole evening's worth of frustration. I eventually got past it by using the spaceship warp from level 1 to the water area so I could get some practice, then going through the whole game again to build up some lives. The final boss probably would have ruined that playthrough as well, but luckily I had been reading about the game earlier and happened to know about the insane health regen on the ice foot. That always confused me as a kid when I tried to count how many hits it took to kill a foot.
In fact, I've recently been noticing a lot of things about these games that I never understood as a kid, which certainly contributed to their "white whale" status. For instance, I always assumed for some reason that the traps in Ghostbusters II only worked on ghosts, and I did not discover otherwise until a little while after I beat it a couple months ago. That would probably explain why I never even saw the Statue of Liberty stage until my high school years, and why I had to devote an entire day to finishing the thing.
Same thing with Wizards and Warriors II (which should be added to my "recently completed" list above). I never knew about the whole RPG mechanic going on, and just attributed the fact that I randomly took damage when I hit things with my sword, or bumped into enemies without taking damage, to shoddy hit detection.
Somehow my current intolerance for grinding and luck in my games is balanced by near infinite patience when I decide to beat an action game. At least in those I feel like I'm making some personal progress, and that I always have a better chance of beating it on the next attempt. I look to Swords and Serpents with far more apprehension that I do to Battletoads since I know that I can't speed the process all that much just by being good at it. If I remember right, you really didn't even have any combat options aside from a few spells.
Actually, I think what made me rage quit that game as a kid was the fact that it didn't save the portions of the map you had uncovered. Knowing what I do now about the NES's limitations I can understand why that was, but in my childhood it felt like a personal insult. Of course, I'm going to enjoy the massive rush of nostalgia when I finally sit down to finish those maps, as I believe the ones I made on graph paper of the first four levels are still in the game's box, complete with random scribbles around the edges. I think I even burnt the edges of the paper with a match to give it what I thought of at the time as an "old map" look, but that might have been another game.
BTW, quick question for those of you who played the Ultima games. WTF is a fuzzy? I keep imagining it as something between a hobbit and an ewok.
the one thing that really sticks out that i want to do is beat the spec ops missions in MW2. i havent found anyone who wanted to co-op them yet, but hopefully one day i can make it happen.
This is gonna sound really stupid, but Diddy Kong Racing.
I got stuck on the first Wizpig race for years cause I didn't know about the game-breaking zipper glitch.
Now that I DO know about it, everything is way too easy. I even managed to get that stopwatch character as a playable character.
T.T. (the stopwatch's name, not me crying, although that game did make me cry). But what's the zipper glitch? I liked playing DKR in co-op mode with one of my friends, but it always pissed us off that the bosses forced you to alternate.
Technically not a "glitch" per se, but once you discover it the game becomes embarrassingly easy.
Right before you hit a zipper, let go of the acceleration completely. Do not just power through it like normal, just let go; don't hit the gas until you're completely out of the boost. Instead of a pink/purple boost behind the cart, you'll get this weird green one that leaves behind a rainbow smoke trail when finished.
You'll move twice as fast and go twice as far, and I mean it. You will haul ass with this, and every challenge in the game almost becomes a chore.
This method is also the only way to beat all the T.T. time trial races.
Well, fuck. Now I'm pissed because I actually beat that game "legitimately" (as in not knowing of/using this technique). It took a hell of a lot of swearing though.
So does that work only for the carts or does it work for the plane as well? I only remember there being like 3 or so hovercraft levels, so it probably doesn't matter much if it works for them.
Posts
Ammy definitely can't swim! But have you gotten the water lily power yet for the celestial brush? You get it in Kamiki village if I remember right. It's where you can draw lilys onto the water, then you step on those to get across it. Because I believe there is a long tunnel you have to go through to get to the forest that's filled with water. Hence why you need the water lily power to get through it.
3DS FC: 5343-7720-0490
This was pre-Internet patch availability days. I was fairly well along in the game and decided to use a raft to travel down a small lake. Apparently, there was a save corruption bug if you were on the raft, so I lost everything. After a phone call to Origin, they sadly informed me I was fooked and they'd mail (not e-mail) me a patch disk. However, after all of the progress lost, I just couldn't do it again.
This essentially killed my Ultima progress. I'd finished Ultima IV & V.
My other whale is Castlevania on NES. For the longest time I couldn't beat the Grim Reaper right before Draculas stage. From what I remember you need the boomerang and 3 times multiplier to make the fight less chaotic, but right before you get there, there's a bat or something you have to kill right at the same time your next to a candle with the axe, a much shittier weapon to use on the Reaper. I think I beat this game once, if that.
"Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death." -HST
It's literally been years, but I think the most reliable strategy to finish that mission (and really, any of the particularly 'big' missions in WC2) was to exploit certain AI strategies/bugs. Even then, it could be a little difficult.
I got stuck on the first Wizpig race for years cause I didn't know about the game-breaking zipper glitch.
Now that I DO know about it, everything is way too easy. I even managed to get that stopwatch character as a playable character.
I dunno why it was such a chore last time but I mean this game is just charming and fun in all the right ways.
3DS FC: 5343-7720-0490
Are you sure you haven't repressed the memory of The Triforce Piece Hunt?
I don't remember the zipper glitch.
I beat the wizpig races by changing racers to someone with less control but more speed and accelleration.
I mean, damn, that mouse was overpowered when it came to handling but her speed sucked.
Agreed, the ending to Chrono Trigger is just sooo satisfying. And that's just one ending.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
Another one protesting about the Triforce hunt? Tch. You guys are pussies :P. The only bothersome part of the triforce hunt was having to pay a million rupees to that scrooge Tingle. Other than that, it was not a single trouble and certainly not the game killer people seem to insist it is. I mean, it took like a tenth of the time finding the Chozo artifacts in Prime did, and sailing sure is a lot more pleasant and less stressing than trekking around a million caves poking everything.
Backtracking is a staple of the Metroid series and the Chozo Artefacts weren't exactly hidden.
However when I'm playing a Zelda game I'd prefer not to be told that I have to traipse across the entire world gathering rupies wherever I can so I can buy maps from the least likeable character in the game so I can traipse all around the map again looking for pieces of macguffin so I can actually start playing the game again, instead of exploring dungeons, which is what I had expected from a LoZ game.
Nintendo were Trollin'
ohhh effing Chozo artifacts. I never did finish Metroid Prime, got to the end and it said "HEY U DIDNT GET ALL THIS RANDOM STUFF THROUGHOUT THE GAME SO GOOD LUCK FINDING IT!"
Screw you Samus, I have better shit to do than scan every random object I walk by, I'm busy killing mans.
That could be it but I am optimistic about this play through.
I mean what better 'white whale' game to beat than one that actually involves an ocean.
3DS FC: 5343-7720-0490
A quote I saw once in reference to Demon's Souls "The game gets harder when you die. Why? Because fuck you is why."
Spoilered for Huge
Well, personally, looking into every nook and cranny for heart pieces was always a part of my Zelda experience. The triforce hunt just added maps, making it easier and a lot faster, and Tingle, which is admittedly an annoying thing to add in any circumstances. And since I liked sailing a lot more than I ever liked horsing around in Epona or equivalents, it was plenty pleasant to do.
I was unable to escape the exploding death star, and never went back to the game.
Wonder if I still have the cartridge...
I've been playing these games since the first one. If I had to guess, I'd say I've played thousands of games of the various incarnations of Civ and completed hundreds; I recently cleaned out my saved game folder for Civ 4 and deleted in excess of 200 distinct games from mid-2006 through to Jan 1 2010, and that was the second machine I'd had Civ 4 installed on. Nonetheless, there are two things I've never done in any Civ game:
1) Beaten the game on the highest difficulty level in a "normal" scenario (i.e. not some cheesie single city on a tiny map game).
2) Played a multiplayer game.
I consider Civilization my "white whale" due to the ongoing obsession and my inability to truly "beat" the game. I've got lots of games I've never finished (most of the games I buy, in fact) but no others that have engendered an ongoing relationship like the Civ series.
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats
I Played the crap out of Ultima 7. My jobless roommate at the time played it a lot more than me and showed me the ending of Serpent Isle (part 2)...never did finish it myself. I can still hear the "Guardian" laughing at me.
^ ALSO THIS! OMG THIS! ^
I always regret not getting to even SEE Fatalis in Monster Hunter on the PS2 and there's no chance of that now that the servers are down. I WILL see/kill every monster in Tri.....I WILL!
The Shadow Hearts Series. I finished the first game and played the second for a couple hours but got diverted to other things.
Kid Kool
Castlevania 3
Fester's Quest
Snake Rattle and Roll
8 Eyes
Ghostbusters II
Super Ghouls and Ghosts
Adventure Island
Ninja Gaiden 1, 2 and 3
Here's what I have left.
Battletoads
X-Men
Cybernoid
Swords and Serpents
Ultima: Exodus
Battletoads and X-Men speak for themselves I think, though the only serious problem I'm having with Battletoads is that awful glitch during the rat race that forces you to reset, which I somehow managed to activate three times in a row. Otherwise, I'll be ok if I just play the crap out of it. X-Men is just...ugh.
Cybernoid is easily the most evil game in my library. As a kid I never made it past the first level. Now I'm barely surviving to level three. I have had NIGHTMARES about this game. It's personal now.
As for Swords and Serpents- I've never actually liked the first-person dungeon crawler genre, but this was my first experience with them and I'll be damned if I let it slide after beating the rest of this crap. Same goes for Ultima.
As an amusing side note, Dragon Warrior (the first one) took me ten years to finish, playing the same save file the whole time. My tolerance for grinding is very close to zero, so I could only stomach playing it about once every 3-6 months; generally lasting for about 10-20 minutes before putting it back on the shelf to collect dust again. Finally beating that was cause for celebration.
BTW, this is my first actual post after lurking here for quite a while, so hi. I just had to vent a bit after attempting X-Men again this evening.
EDIT: My wife actually bought Legacy of the Wizard a while ago, so one of these days I'll have to put myself through that mess. Luckily it wasn't one of MY childhood memories, so I don't feel like I need to do it anytime soon.
Technically not a "glitch" per se, but once you discover it the game becomes embarrassingly easy.
Right before you hit a zipper, let go of the acceleration completely. Do not just power through it like normal, just let go; don't hit the gas until you're completely out of the boost. Instead of a pink/purple boost behind the cart, you'll get this weird green one that leaves behind a rainbow smoke trail when finished.
You'll move twice as fast and go twice as far, and I mean it. You will haul ass with this, and every challenge in the game almost becomes a chore.
This method is also the only way to beat all the T.T. time trial races.
3DS FC: 5343-7720-0490
actually....I haven't touched Okami (on the Wii) past the tutorial, I also never got past the tutorial in Red Steel 2, I think I'll change my gaming white whale to the Wii.
Bonus points because it's actually white, white's also the colour the outside of my eyes used to be before the Wii's graphics made them bleed constanly ^_^
Any game were you are dead on the front cover should give you the idea the game might be tricky.
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
That means you never saw any of the interesting water creatures, like the albino physeter macrocephalus!
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
That game gets insane towards the end.
Snake Rattle and Roll was also nutty. I could never get past the ice stage where you had to make those jumps up some weird staircase. Yay! I got there again... Fall, Fall, Fall, Rage.
I was doing fine, whittling away, had all the turrets and shield etc done, onto the main face, chipping away, healing now and then...and then...DOOM METER. And dead.
I know I could probably do it if I went and did some grinding, but up until that point it was more or less a cakewalk, and that boss is like a brick wall relatively speaking.
And the worst bit? It happens JUST as everything begins to get explained.
Battletoads is definitely on my list of top 10 hardest games of all time. I somehow beat it as a kid using the extra lives trick from level 2 but still I don't think I could have the patients for it today. Good luck with that one.
I recently downloaded Castlevania 3 on the Wii VC and I remember it being relatively easy back in the day, now I can hardly get past the 4th level.
"Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death." -HST
If he's dead he's dead from exhaustion, which is even more hardcore, I guess.
Like, there's no arrows through him, no major damage to his armor, nothin.
In fact, I've recently been noticing a lot of things about these games that I never understood as a kid, which certainly contributed to their "white whale" status. For instance, I always assumed for some reason that the traps in Ghostbusters II only worked on ghosts, and I did not discover otherwise until a little while after I beat it a couple months ago. That would probably explain why I never even saw the Statue of Liberty stage until my high school years, and why I had to devote an entire day to finishing the thing.
Same thing with Wizards and Warriors II (which should be added to my "recently completed" list above). I never knew about the whole RPG mechanic going on, and just attributed the fact that I randomly took damage when I hit things with my sword, or bumped into enemies without taking damage, to shoddy hit detection.
Somehow my current intolerance for grinding and luck in my games is balanced by near infinite patience when I decide to beat an action game. At least in those I feel like I'm making some personal progress, and that I always have a better chance of beating it on the next attempt. I look to Swords and Serpents with far more apprehension that I do to Battletoads since I know that I can't speed the process all that much just by being good at it. If I remember right, you really didn't even have any combat options aside from a few spells.
Actually, I think what made me rage quit that game as a kid was the fact that it didn't save the portions of the map you had uncovered. Knowing what I do now about the NES's limitations I can understand why that was, but in my childhood it felt like a personal insult. Of course, I'm going to enjoy the massive rush of nostalgia when I finally sit down to finish those maps, as I believe the ones I made on graph paper of the first four levels are still in the game's box, complete with random scribbles around the edges. I think I even burnt the edges of the paper with a match to give it what I thought of at the time as an "old map" look, but that might have been another game.
BTW, quick question for those of you who played the Ultima games. WTF is a fuzzy? I keep imagining it as something between a hobbit and an ewok.
So does that work only for the carts or does it work for the plane as well? I only remember there being like 3 or so hovercraft levels, so it probably doesn't matter much if it works for them.