Vidya Game Pride

Inspired by Chun-Li I did tabata sets of roundhouse kicks, made it up to 19 kicks in each 20 second interval.

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I found a minus world in the NES rygar and it was the coolest thing I’ve ever done probably

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My best expert-level Minesweeper score would have placed second in the 2007 Minesweeper World Championship.

Then I switched to a touchpad and lost my skills forever.

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itt I learned that there was a 2007 minesweeper world championship

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It’s a well-designed metrovania in an open environment in which you switch between different characters with unique abilities and fight charming bosses. I remember the bosses being pretty straightforward, so I guess it would be cooler if they were, like, Zelda bosses with a trick to them or something.

But basically, it’s a good game in a genre that was pretty rare until the indie game boom of the last decade (and is still relatively rare).

I’m not really sure why the blue skies feel is a negative. Obviously a matter of taste, but I probably prefer “kiddie” appeal to just about every other established video game aesthetic. Like I said, with a default Easy Mode, Gimmick! would be in the kiddie game category along with Kirbie or Starfy.

Completed every damn thing in F-Zero GX. Beating the mission where you had to outrun a self destruct timer was probably my proudest achievement there.

I played a 1v1v1 Starcraft game with my friend and a rando, but we secretly allied to beat the guy because we were assholes. He figured it out early on and whipped us entirely. It was pretty amazing, if not exactly a proud moment.

Mario Kart Double Dash had a final GP mode where you had to go through every single course in the game in a row. I was on the last course and pretty solidly in first place overall. I did the math and determined that I would win if I got any place except for last. I had not gotten last in any race up to that point, so figured it was pretty solid. Three blue shells later, I got last and second overall.

That’s not the proud moment. The proud moment was (and continues to be) that I turned off the game and have never played it again.

I honestly think losing is better than winning.

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Halfway through, I thought this anecdote was going to be that you brilliantly realized that you should maintain second place for the entire race, so you wouldn’t be brought down by a blue shell.

Is that a thing that people do in Mario Kart? It probably should be, right?

This works in F-Zero GX too because the AI cheats and catches up when you’re the pack leader, but if you stay behind it’s a lot easier to just gun it at the end.

God, I would love it if high level Mario Kart play involved everyone racing to be second, to the point that they were nudging people in front of them.

I love when shit game design leads to invention.

But I’m guess that in tournaments (or whatever) they just turn off the blue shells?

fucking wii-mariokart basically made it necessary to do this, and it’s one of the reasons why I love Sanic Kart 2, which is pretty obvious about how it wants you to fight for honors, instead of making-everyone-a-winner-mario-kart.

Halo(s) on legendary are one of the few times I’ve found a higher difficulty setting rewarding. I’ve soloed all of the Bungie ones on legendary and it’s a different game. Reach and ODST in particular feel great on legendary because they’re reinforcing the narrative of desperation. Absolutely worth it and the only thing that comes to mind as far as skill goes for me.

I’m also proud of cheesing Raithwall’s tomb in FFXII to auto-level my party but that’s not quite the accomplishment.

Oh hey: here’s something.

Basically as soon as the Mario vs. Airman Hack came out, I put it on my PSP emulator, stayed home from all my college classes that day, and kept playing until I had muscle-memorized how to beat it without save states.

I was pretty proud of this, because at the time, the only videos online of people beating it involved completely abusing save states; and I only used one in the entire process of learning the game. After that, I would pull it out when I had a minute or two and enjoy the flow state of beating it. I even discovered that as you beat it successively it seems to turn the clock speed up or something? Enemies move faster, so the MegaMan flying things tend to pile up, and you have to vary your jump pattern to land on the floating platforms. By the sixth play-through, you have to make some leaps of faith.

To this day, Mario vs. Airman Hack is one of my favorite games, and it inspired a fascination with the idea of something that I’m going to call “counter-design.” I really like the idea of designing a game so that the player character’s skill set is not perfectly matched to the situation. Instead of their jumps perfectly clearing a gorge, they tend to go a little too high and a little too long. There gun is stuck on spread shot, but the enemies never attack in that pattern, forcing you to do weird things to line up the shot. You have a grappling hook, but there aren’t any platforms that are particularly high. Basically, I think it would be cool to play a game where you’re stranded on an alien world that is not designed for you to traverse it. That’s what makes it alien. You’d incorporate “bad” design tropes, but employ them in such a way that they could only be intentional–Thelonious Monk style.

Anyway.

Yeah.

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Related pride:

Mario

When I was about 9 or 10, I fell in love with SMB through the Mario Deluxe GBC cart. Once I discovered one of the more obvious infinite life glitches, I–for some reason–sat around on a Saturday morning, watching cartoons and repeating this infinite life generation loop, just to see my score counter go up.

To my surprise, when I got bored of this, I realized that I had unlocked an entirely new game.

It was Deluxe’s version of the SMB2J, which I had never heard of. They were called the Luigi Levels in this version. They were a bit more fair, because they didn’t have the random gusts of wind, and Deluxe overall allowed saving between levels, so you didn’t have to play the whole thing in one sitting.

The way that the Luigi Levels punished knowledge of the rules and rhythms of SMB completely blew my mind and changed the way I viewed video games. I had no idea that these levels existed elsewhere, so as far as I knew this was something special that likely very few other people knew about.

Megaman

I played through Megaman 2 for the first time in preparation for Megaman 9. I had never gotten into the MM games, but I wanted to have some relationship with them, in the hopes of enjoying 9. For some reason, I decided that I should play through it using only the peashooter. Part of it was that I didn’t want to bother sussing out the level order, but I also like a stiff challenge.

It was actually really, really fun playing the game this way. It forces you to really learn the robot master patterns. I had such a fun time playing that way that I beat 9 and 10 the same way, and that’s just how I play MM games now.

So yeah: not gonna lie: totally proud of that.

Ohh, yeah, once I stayed at my friend’s place in California for a week, and two of those days he needed to go to work, leaving me with like half a day to kill by myself. I borrowed his PSP and his copy of Mega Man: Powered Up (which I’d never played before) and proceeded to beat the game using Roll and a big limp fish.

That game is really satisfying.

megaman 2 is one of the best games to start that habit with, actually. one of the ways the sequels became more monotonous, i think, was how aggressively weapon weaknesses were pushed on players. the buster does progressively less damage to bosses in each of the first four games, and the idea of some bosses having weapons they were “partially” weak to is thrown out after 2, if i remember correctly. making the metagame of weapon-weaknesses almost mandatory for a normal playthrough ultimately made these games less interesting or supportive of multiple playstyles.

also i think mm2 is the only game where a boss (metal man) is instantly killed by its own weapon. i wish the later games had done more with this joke

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Whoa! Didn’t know that about Metalman!

Yeah, I totally “got” the MM series with MM2 and then loved MM9. MM1 didn’t work as a cartridge or on my PSP emulator, so I never got around to it. But man, did MM3 not gel with me. Just felt wrong. I was weirdly bad at it, and had no interest in learning how to be better. MM4 and 6 felt better to me, but I also just wasn’t interested enough in them to learn the levels.

I’m one of those guys who thinks that the slide and charging were missteps. It doesn’t bother me too much, but it just seems to add unnecessary elements, and I don’t like the hoarding mentality that charging encourages.

mm1 rules you should check it out

dr wily’s revenge is cool, too, particularly if you consider it as something that was lead by a particularly competent mm1/mm2 fan. do people ever talk about that game? I don’t know

anyway

fuck sliding fuck charge shots 2016

charging would have been so easy to fix–just up the charge shot’s damage slightly, and make the buster automatically fire at full charge; or, even better, have the “full charge” only active for a limited frame window (complete with a satisfying sound/visual cue) before going back to a partially charged shot. both of these would have been way more interesting than what they actually went with.

sliding was a dumb but at least not especially harmful gimmick. it definitely was not as bad as having to interrupt the flow of a level to go into a menu and pull out the mandatory Rush Spring

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Back when Shenmue was new, there were online rankings of various things, including the sprite scaler arcade games. The rankings were sorted by various factors, including region.

At the time, I was the #1 Shenmue Space Harrier player in Maine.

I maintained that rank for a few months, until I stopped paying attention.

How many other players were there in Maine? Er. Not sure. More than 1, anyway!

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Yeah if I was smart I would have realized this. The worst part is that blue shells will hit you if you’re in 6th as long as everyone in front of you has finished the race, so you’re never truly safe. Double Dash and Wii were absolutely the worst for this- they’ve toned blue shells down a lot in 7 and 8

People do sit in lower places in Mario Kart 7 and 8, especially the first lap. It’s worth it to get a really good item sometimes. The problem with sitting in second is that you typically have limited options for passing first except for “going really fast.” You end up relying on blue shells to put you in first, but those explode anyway so you can get caught in the blast. The best bet is to just get as far ahead as possible and minimize the damage of a blue shell by being in the center of the road. If you’re really good, you’ll actually maintain a very slim lead, then slow down as soon as you know a blue shell is coming. It’s risky though, because it locks on earlier than it might seem, so you can still get hit even if you’ve been in second place for a second or two.

7 and 8 aren’t nearly as random as their predecessors, although you can always end up going from first to third with bad luck. The online rating system gives you positive points for anything above 5th so it feels less punishing to be in first the whole race and get creamed right at the end. Plus the races are short- always another shot at first right around the corner, unlike a 40 minute Mario Party slog.

I’ve played a lot of Mario Kart

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