5 Likes
I would love a 2D Sonic with a hidden final level that was just the most beautiful thing imaginable. Like a more intensely extravagant Green Hill zone with effervescent tunes.
2 Likes
Teleroboxer on the Virtual Boy has a secret final boss that you can only fight if you beat all 7 previous fighters without losing at all. And if you lose to the secret boss, you canāt fight it again without starting a new game and beating the 7 fighters without losing again.
Hereās a timestamped video of it:
This scared the shit out of me the first time as a kid and the final boss just absolutely fucking wrecked me, it ruled.
What I love is that this is the first time the game prompts you to enter your name, makes it feel like youāre putting it all on the line. I kinda wish the LPer above was worse at the game because this boss is absolutely brutal and fights faster and less predictably than anyone before. So good.
EDIT: the credits are also a treat, watch those.
14 Likes
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you had a Virtual Boy?!
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this reminds me of how it is such a waste that they didnāt reference Teleroboxer at all in Arms. they couldnāt even make it a DLC character?
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I love that the Legendary Champ is just a weird robot cat. That has to be the Secret Boss Character with the least amount of Secret Boss Character energy. I love that the operator is just a literal cat named Milky. Thatās incredible.
4 Likes
I loved my virtual boy!!! My parents got it for me for super cheap after it died, and we would randomly pick up games wherever they showed up. Ended up with Teleroboxer, Mario Tennis, that baseball game, Panic Bomber, and Red Alarm. In adulthood I got Wario Land and Galactic Pinball as well.
I left all of this with my dad when I moved, as temporary storage, but then he got divorced and physically lost a bunch of shit so itās gone now :-/
But I have an Oculus Quest that emulates it perfectly so, not so bad after all
4 Likes
As someone whoās only played the DS Shiren, Iām aghast at the item and monster distribution in the original, as seen in this video. How do you get the Kabra Sword and Sight Bracelet twice within three crawls of each other? And in the early dungeon? While I can see that adding to the gameās charm, it makes me really glad for the changes in the remake.
(And also, for the addition of idle sprites for monsters. Their absence feels very wrong.)
In any case, fuck yeah, Final Puzzle. I find myself returning to this every two months or so. It is such a consistently pleasant diversion.
ETA: CURSED ITEMS ACTUALLY STILL WORK? What is this coddling?
ETA2: Watching this guy play is going to be my super-villain origin story. Like, dude, NO.
ETA3: WHAT ARE YOU DOING DUDE?! Donāt complain about low inventory space and then buy items THAT MAKE MORE ITEMS YOUāRE NOT GOING TO IMMEDIATELY USE.
ETA4: You have two leather shields, one heavy shield, one merging pot, and youāre worried about food. This is not difficult!
2 Likes
Yeah the original SNES Shiren is pretty broken. The item distribution is simply uniform, if an item is allowed to spawn in a dungeon then it has an equal chance of spawning as any other item. Blank Scrolls all day every day
I prefer the SFC Shiren balance to the remake so much lol. Theyāre from different philosophies. The remake was after many Mystery Dungeon games, it rebalances to where basic player knowledge can complete Table Mountain and then the āreal challengeā becomes optimizing for and completing the extra dungeons. In the original, Table Mountain is the central fixture. the extra dungeons open up as you slowly chip away at it. Beating the game is already the āreal challengeā. The extra dungeons are there to unlock items that will make beating Table Mountain easier, and then you can bring your knowledge into the extra real challenge that is Feiās Final Problem
I think it makes sense that blank scrolls are rarer in the remake. I also think that it sucks because blank scrolls are an interesting item that demand creative use from the player. Iād rather be given a very hard game that is breakable with my own creativity than a carefully balanced game where the hard parts are optional. Like i said though, different philosophies
5 Likes
thinking about the Virtual Boy again (I should look and see if anyone has a fix for the deteriorating ribbon cables mine is suffering from), and the discussion about 3DSās and the Sega AGES collection made me realize the Virtual Boy never got any Sega Super-Scalar-style games. No racing, no Galaxy Force II, not even anything like Space Harrier; nothing whose whole purpose is making small sprites big
now I love Red Alert and the nightmares it gave me but it sure wasnāt fast or spectacular
2 Likes
After you 100% Tomb Raider Anniversary you unlock the Style Units, an art test level used during development to nail down the aesthetic of each of the gameās areas.
5 Likes
Super Chase H.Q. has five regular stages in which you are a cop taking down a crime syndicate. It has one bonus stage in which your car becomes a make-shift ambulance and you deliver blood to a childrenās hospital.
8 Likes
Super Monkey Ball 1 has a some extra floors that are only unlockable by 1CCing Expert and Expert Extra. I love the vibe they have.
(Master 3 is by far the hardest level in the game if you donāt take the shortcut. IIRC, it took some high-level players hundreds of tries to first complete it back in the day.)
Super Monkey Ball 2 has a similar thing, though in that game you can earn up to 99 starting lives, so getting to it is less of an achievement.
9 Likes
Wow, this is exactly the sort of thing I wouldāve been obsessed with along with F-Zero GX and Sonic Adventure 2.
The real way to unlock Green Hill in sa2 was to use the dreamcast browser and download a save file onto a vmu from gamefaqs.
4 Likes
Shining Force 2 has that secret post credits battle with all the bosses and the floor isshaped like Sonic
2 Likes
itās pretty common(?) in shmups to have a secret final boss when you 1cc the game, which is the same sort of vibe to me. i think most of the touhou games do this, but at the same time they have a brutally difficult Extra Stage accessible from the title screen with no lead-up or prerequisites, which i always thought was pretty funny
3 Likes
Actually touhou 8 is (afaik) unique in the pc series with the alternate 6th stage. All the other games only have the stand alone extra stage unlocked after a 1cc.
The special final stage in 8 is hilarious because youāre actually way less likely to finish the game if you make there without continuing. Not only is the special boss is a way longer and tougher fight than the normal one but you lose all continues at the start of it. Good game
3 Likes
i could have sworn there were others where the extra stage started accessible but yeah most of my experience is with 8 oops
Akuma in Super Turbo?
tunes or tubes?