I finally did it

maximaz

maximaz

Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!


I have owned Super Mario Bros, in one form or another, since I was a kid. Like many older gamers, I have come to memorize the first few stages down to the number of floating bricks, over the years. From time to time, I'd be repeatedly baffled to realize that I had never actually finished the game but my every attempt had resulted in my ass being handed to me quite fiercely... until moments ago!

I did it old school: I used no saves or warp zones and I did not look up any hints or playthroughs online. I used whatever secrets I had discovered over the years, which was basically just pressing down on every sewer pipe in hopes of a secret coin area. I used no glitches or tricks and Game Over meant exactly what it would have all those years ago.

After not having played the game for a few months, my first attempt on Saturday got me to World 7-1. I'm generally not a gaming pro so that wasn't bad, I felt. The second attempt on Sunday, got me to a nail-biting, heartbreaking 8-2. Monday, I got to 8-4 twice (and close to losing my damn mind) and a revenge 3AM session got me the screen you see above.

I was actually quite surprised because I had no idea that 8-4 was the last castle. I was sure that there were at least 9 worlds, and for some reason I expected the last level to take place on a ship with bullets flying my way (I was confusing it with some other Mario game, Mario 3 I think). I'm also surprised at how short the game is (I got it done in less than an hour in my last session) and how close I had actually gotten to beating it before.

Anyway, this may not be the most impressive gaming achievement out there but it is one of the most significant ones for me. Sure, I am entirely more pleased with this than a grown man should be, but if you think about it, it's almost a life long gaming goal, so :drunk:




Oh, to justify the thread, if anyone wants to share their equivalent of this or one that they are planning, I'd like to read it.
 
Your brave effort makes me feel ashamed, maximaz! It reminded me of Flappy, a great puzzle game, which I had left behind unfinished several decades back.

Brace yourself, nostalgia oldfag reporting in broken English! :mrgreen:

I started with PMD 85 running on 8080 CPU back then, because there was not anything else widely available in Slovakia. All the programs, mostly a clones of western or japanese games, have been created by local programmers, either Czech of Slovakian. I've taken a lot of lessons in assembler/debugger on this machine too, followed by poor amateurish attempts to make some programm on my own, before I jumped on more sophisticated Atari 800 based on 6502 CPU a few years later.

Back to the game though! There's a lot of logical games for PMD 85, mostly created by Czech group VBG Software. They're utilizing basic ASCII graphics with redefined characters, instead of colourful sprites created in PMG layers, so those old gems would be considered "a piece of shit" by many modern gamers used to high-poly 3D graphics. Old-timers won't get fooled tho, because they know how complex mechanics could be hidden behind this monochromatic screen. I've finished many of them, Fred or excellent Boulder Dash clone for instance, but not Flappy, this fucking game! Besides its challenging level design, there are dangerous enemies lurking around. Flappy is a chicken, trying to push its egg through levels full of angry frogs, using only his trustworthy tranquilizer darts to disable them temporarily or crushing them with heavy stones falling from above, if there are enough of them. This is how I ended most of the time - eaten by frog!

Encouraged by your brave deed, I'm going to give it another try right now. In case anyone else is wondering what's this mumbling about, there's link to Slovak site with emulator, some games for download, and even detailed documentation for programmers, mostly in Slovak language: PMD 85
I do believe that emulator is fully translated to English though and those puzzle games doesn't contain any text usualy.
 
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Reminds me of the time I beat River Raid on my Atari 2600 as a kid. The score changed to all exclamation points, "!!!!!!!!!!"

I took a photograph of the screen and mailed it to Activision because there was a special offer if you managed to beat the game. They sent me some stickers or something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Raid

Make sure to read the bit at the bottom about how River Raid was banned for minors in Germany. Man, is that funny.
 
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maximaz I'm pretty sure I never got past the 5th world in the original game. That's really impressive.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
UniversalWolf said:
Make sure to read the bit at the bottom about how River Raid was banned for minors in Germany. Man, is that funny.
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Heh, interesting. Germans are well known for banning stuff left and right.
On a side note, I do remember split-screen multiplayer sessions with my younger brother in River Raid resorting to slight form of common sibling violence sometimes, so I can't blame them at all. :smile:
 
ever notice games you played as a child have a weird habit of being crazy difficult to beat as an adult?
 
The Vault Dweller said:
maximaz I'm pretty sure I never got past the 5th world in the original game. That's really impressive.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
Click to expand...

It's one of those things you can really only do in the middle of the night after having a few. Kind of like dancing.
 
A fine accomplishment!

It reminds me of the first time I beat Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (for Game Gear). That was one helluva ordeal! Unlike the Genesis version, you could only beat the game by finding every hidden Chaos Emerald, and they weren't earned from secret levels, you had to find them strewn around the regular levels. So if you missed one, start all over again! Not to mention the first and last bosses are infamous for their random and unpredictable patterns and habit for bullshit unavoidable instakills. That game just threw frustration after frustration at me, so when I finally beat it, I felt a level of happiness I'd never experienced before when that "Good Ending" credits music started playing. I would later getthat Home Alone 2 trademarked cassette recorder device and record the music after another successful run so I could play it back over and over whenever I wanted. I cherished that track for many years, and every time I heard it I was always reminded of the massive accomplishment of beating that bastard of a game.

Games sure offered fine goals for beating them 20-25 years ago, didn't they? Good times... =)
 
no, no, I am pretty confident that it is one word, as I am saying The Battletoads instead of battle toads, which I would say if I want two different toads to battle each other.
 
@SnapSlav: It was a rare thing for me to find a handheld port to be anything but a watered-down time waster, but Game Gear's Sonic 2 is a perennial favorite. I used to play it every time I was home sick from school (which was a lot), and even though I got beating it down to a science it never seemed to lack challenge or an attendant sense of accomplishment. God, they just don't make them like they used to. Then again, they hardly even made them that way back then.

Glad I'm not the only one who was oddly obsessed with the music. Sometimes I'd purposely get the bad ending just so I could hear the more haunting end theme you got when you failed to rescue Tails before turning around and going again so I could collect the emeralds and do it right.

As far as the topic at hand goes, I think it took me about ten years of desultory playing to beat Super Mario Brothers 3 and Mega Man X, and two or three to 100% Super Mario World. To this day, I don't think I've ever actually finished any of the original Mega Man titles.
 
Yamu said:
@SnapSlav: It was a rare thing for me to find a handheld port to be anything but a watered-down time waster, but Game Gear's Sonic 2 is a perennial favorite. I used to play it every time I was home sick from school (which was a lot), and even though I got beating it down to a science it never seemed to lack challenge or an attendant sense of accomplishment. God, they just don't make them like they used to. Then again, they hardly even made them that way back then.

Glad I'm not the only one who was oddly obsessed with the music. Sometimes I'd purposely get the bad ending just so I could hear the more haunting end theme you got when you failed to rescue Tails before turning around and going again so I could collect the emeralds and do it right.
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Yeah, that's for sure. Sonic the Hedgehog on the Game Gear was nothing special, apart from the Scrap Brain Zone music and the 2nd to last Act (the giant airship) as well as its associated music. But "watered down" more or less covers that game quite appropriately. Some segments were just tiny excuses for levels, like the second Jungle Act... and suspending the entire breathing mechanic for the Labyrinth boss?

But Sonic 2 sure was one hell of a great game, even as a "handheld port" (though I think I read it actually predates Sonic 2 for the Genesis?), you could say it was my first "console game" that I ever played or owned, and it was the game that attracted me to the department store Game Gear kiosk. I still remember years of conversations with classmates over the game because of how intensely challenging it was, and how ecstatic I was when someone knew the location of the Gimmick Mt. Chaos Emerald. Every time I learned something new, the walk home from school was filled with so much excitement! Ah, the memories.
 
SnapSlav said:
A fine accomplishment!

It reminds me of the first time I beat Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (for Game Gear). That was one helluva ordeal! Unlike the Genesis version, you could only beat the game by finding every hidden Chaos Emerald, and they weren't earned from secret levels, you had to find them strewn around the regular levels. So if you missed one, start all over again! Not to mention the first and last bosses are infamous for their random and unpredictable patterns and habit for bullshit unavoidable instakills. That game just threw frustration after frustration at me, so when I finally beat it, I felt a level of happiness I'd never experienced before when that "Good Ending" credits music started playing. I would later getthat Home Alone 2 trademarked cassette recorder device and record the music after another successful run so I could play it back over and over whenever I wanted. I cherished that track for many years, and every time I heard it I was always reminded of the massive accomplishment of beating that bastard of a game.

Games sure offered fine goals for beating them 20-25 years ago, didn't they? Good times... =)
Click to expand...

Damn. That sounds crazy to me because I remember Game Gear and playing that thing was like staring at laser pointers. It had that particularly terrible display which you had to really squint at and hold at a certain angle to still not quite see shit. Oddly, Sonic 2 was the only game I played on it and after a couple of levels I was freaking done. Or maybe it was the batteries. All I know is I never went back to that thing.
 
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