DKC Tropical Freeze hard mode high playthrough log

I'm loving the atmosphere and music of this game even more than the SNES ones. Also, once you start completely ignoring the puzzle pieces, and think of the K-O-N-G letters as optional but nice to have, the game plays a lot better. it basically feels like playing DKC1 except generally harder all around.

The difficulty on hard mode is just right... On normal it was too easy, there were checkpoints and heart refills all over the place. On hard, there are no checkpoints and you only have one kong and one hit through the whole level, you really gotta carefully navigate all the obstacles.

Worlds 1-3

Kid Icarus first playthrough log part 2/2

The world 2 labyrinth was kind of tricky to find my way around, and I ended up beating it without saving all the allies (which turns out they are completely useless against this boss anyway). Hewdraw is a really annoying boss that jumps around the room and never stop. He's very predictable but still hard to hit and avoid.

World 3 goes back to vertical scrolling levels with horizontal wrap-around, and still the challenge just isn't there at all. It feels like I'm way overleveled. There are some tricky-ish platforming segments that might've made me actually use some of those feather items if I played this when I was younger and inexperienced at platformers... now though I breezed through these stages like it was nothing.

The world 3 labyrinth, holy cow what a confusing level that was... it took me forever just to find the map. By then I had memorized the path from the entrance to the closest shop and healing spot... Then while searching for where to go I ended up grinding to 5 reserve potions, 9 extra hammers, and 999 hearts... none of which were needed. I eventually cleared the entire map and saved everyone before finally finding the boss in the top right corner. Pandora is just a stupid bubble face that floats around with a couple other bubbles. All the allies got killed, but I was able to beat him without any trouble.

Then the 4th world.. which is just a single sidescrolling stage...

Captain Silver playthrough log

Decided to try and beat this game that I played a lot when I was a kid, but never managed to make it past the first couple levels... The fact that you die from anything in one hit probably made me not want to give it a serious try. The 2nd level where you're on a boat, I barely even recognize most of it... it completely changes up all the enemies by then. It's not actually THAT hard though, surprisingly... just getting the powerups and avoiding the easy predictable enemies enough to make it to the level boss with all your lives is enough to get through it... The bosses can get kind of hard though.

Star Wars (NES Namco game) playthrough attempt log

wow this is hard... only 3 lives, and 1-hit deaths...

I'm gonna want to try and beat this with savestates. keep retrying each stage until I can beat it without losing more than the amount of lives I gained from the stage.

... wow... so I got up to the death star level on novice mode. the level is a giant maze... all the obstacles are very easy to avoid once you know they're there. it feels like I'm playing a metroid game now. I didn't feel bad about save stating here, cuz the alternative would be drawing my own map of each room so that I'd know what to avoid and wouldn't die.

it turns out, in order to beat this level, you can't pick up the blaster. if you do, you won't be able to get into the garbage shute on the detention level. and since I was on my last life, I was permanently stuck...

I like this game though... I might try and beat it from the beginning on hard mode.

Attempt #2 - 3/25/2015

no. no. nonononononono.

I retried this again from the beginning.

First of all, the first boss kills me a lot just because you die in one hit, and this boss's movement pattern is stupid and you only get a tiny precise window where you can hit him and just barely get away. That's one part where I feel the need to use savestates even on novice.

Second, the space shooting sections rely on literal dumb luck to get through. It's practically impossible to get passed these on Hard mode without losing all your lives. That's another part where I feel like I NEED to use savestates even on novice.