Yoshistar™ wrote on 06/20/16 at 03:16:32:


Yeah, both are really fun but too short :/

I started with the 2nd one but I probably prefer the first one too.

Finished Blood & Wine. Great stuff, really enjoyed the Fablesphere. A very worthy GOTY.
Started Uncharted 4.

Timed challenges made me stop the challenge part, personally. I don't play with other people, and have beaten the game on my own.

I decided to pop Super Mario Maker in while I was drinking my beer on a Friday night. A software update was installed to my Wii U and I was notified of a new feature-- Event Courses. Think of the Event Matches in the Smash Bros. games, but in the form of a Mario course. Anyway... I finished all but one of them. I couldn't figure out how to get past the wall in Mary O's Lunch Break (in the part where you're flying in the Koopa Clown Car)

There's a set of four contest courses from a Japanese gaming event, not unlike the Nintendo World Championship courses. I found Course 1 to be the toughest of the lot-- you have to get a Fire Flower and endure a gauntlet of cannonballs without getting hurt in order to open the way to the goal.
Course 4 in that set is similar to the NWC Course 4-- you're in a Bowser's Castle stage and have to avoid making too many platforming mistakes or you'll have to redo sections which will cost you time.

There are some nice references to older Nintendo games in these Event Courses. Even Earthbound.  

EDIT: Finally completed Mary O's Lunch Break. I hadn't realized earlier that the fire-breathing Clown Cars can fire a charged blast, which is needed to burn through the wall. Easy level otherwise-- the low completion rate is certainly due to other players not figuring out how to get past that wall.  The Japanese contest course was way harder, due to having to get past those red and black cannonballs as Fire Mario without getting hurt. That took a few tries for me but I still found it to be a fair challenge.

That does it for the event courses-- until more of them are introduced in a future update, that is.

I popped in my Super Mario All-Stars for the first time in several years to see how far I could get in The Lost Levels without warping, continuing, or using any cheap extra life tactics (e.g. bouncing off a Koopa repeatedly). Basically, playing the way Nintendo expected the typical player to play with no guides. Unfortunately, my game ended in 8-3, just two stages away from the end of the main part of the game. (However, in the Lost Levels, there's also five bonus worlds; World 9, only accessible by beating the game without warps, and Worlds A through D, the true end of the game)

8-3 was always a wall for me. It, and 8-4, are what makes the Lost Levels the Lost Levels. I believe the game wouldn't have had such a reputation for being so tough if it weren't for the brutality of these last two stages. I cruised through most of the game, having up to 16 lives at one point, losing several on World 6 and almost all the rest on 8-3. I started 8-3 with ten lives and lost all of them, despite not dying more than twice in any of the previous stages. This aerial stage has pretty much everything that makes us remember Lost Levels as the hardest Mario game of all time: tricky bounces off the backs of flying Koopa Troopas, Hammer Bros that charge at you, and invisible blocks that appear out of thin air to mess up your jumps over the enemies. Oh, and Lakitu.  

Harvey Kartel wrote on 07/26/16 at 19:18:33:


I always did this.  I needed to!  Lost Levels is insanely difficult for me  

With this, my 5000th post, I'm now a Titan on the Mario Kart Message Board! However, do realize it's only a cosmetic promotion-- Titans (and Myths) don't have any more power on the MB than Noobs, so your rank is entirely superficial, unless you are a mod or admin. I'd like to thank all the Karters who have encouraged me to improve my times in the Mario Kart series and continue to return to this forum for more than 8 years. I'm not saying that 5,000 posts is a real accomplishment-- anybody can make that many posts given enough time on these boards-- but I've been happy to be on these boards for so long to share my personal thoughts, experiences, and occasional wit and wisdom with you, and maybe give some of you some Karting or real life advice from time to time. It wouldn't be possible without YOU!

I thought I'd take a little trip down memory lane for my 5,000th post and revisit two of the games I played when I first entered the gaming community back in 1999, by joining Iacopo Sorce's Nintendo 64 High Scores, at the age of 15. Those two games are Yoshi's Story and Star Fox 64.

Please note that I wasn't trying to PR in either of these games, and probably couldn't if I was really trying-- I'm quite rusty at both games, having not made any real PR runs in either in about a decade, and also, my old high scores in them are pretty good.  

In Yoshi's Story, I did five stages in Trial Mode. In order, I did Surprise!!, Jungle Hut, The Tall Tower, Cloud Cruising, and Treasure Hunt-- five of the easiest stages. For the most part I did not try my old PR strats-- because they're a little insane, and often time consuming as well. This was more of a casual run of each stage.

I still was able to get 30 melons on all of the stages (remember though, these are the easy ones) and even pulled off some of my more complex Shy Guy-stomping combos on Treasure Hunt and Jungle Hut. However, Treasure Hunt was the only stage I reached 6,000 on. I screwed up pretty bad on Surprise!!, forgetting the default color and locations of the Shy Guys in the second part (and believe me, you have to memorize that shit to get 6,300+ WR-level scores). I didn't even get 5,900 there!  
However, my Cloud Cruising score was over 5,800, not very far from my PR. Not that there's a lot of crazy stuff you have to do with the Shy Guys there-- getting closer to PR (and WR) level means getting lucky with shooting down the flying ones and getting some 3x4's, either by shooting two down with one egg, or, near the end, have the egg hit those bees before it gets to the Shy Guy, where Snapdragon (Derek Kisman) pulled off a lucky 3x8 to get his WR, a ten-point lead over my PR. Theoretically, it's possible to get over 5,900 here... but that would require some insane luck and determination to get 3x8 or even 3x16 (yes, it may be possible) on all those flying Shy Guys at the end. Of course, since you're riding a flying dragon, you have a limited amount of time to set this up.

Next up was Star Fox 64. I knew I wasn't going to be good at this. But I surprised myself by at least being able to get over 2,000 Total Hits! I knew I had forgotten a lot of the enemy patterns, but after all these years, I mostly remembered them though my aim just wasn't as good (my Corneria score was only 219, but I got better as I played through the game). Area 6 was a bit of a struggle, and I even died there once, and had to restart another run because I was really struggling with the boss (broken wing, which means losing your laser upgrade). I knew I probably wasn't going to get 511 there. (back in the day, I thought of any Area 6 run under 511 as total shit-- my PR from 2004 was 603, and I usually got at least 580 at my peak) I did finish it with 487-- could have been a lot better, but not as bad as it could have been. Venom was my best mission-- I finished with 231! (Usually, you can't get more than 227 unless you get lucky with the charged shot and hit either a Star Wolf ship or Andross's eye for Hit+1) My final score was 2,009. (PR: 2,388)

It was nice to revisit my gaming career 15 years ago, I knew I was going to suck but I am actually not disappointed, considering how long it's been since I did serious PR runs on either game.

Maybe I'll do some Super Smash Bros. or Mario Party next.

Also, just for old time's sake, I read through Iacopo's old N64HS news updates from 2000. Can't believe it's been half my life ago now-- as close to my birth as to the present. I sure got a lot of kudos for my Yoshi's Story scores, although I really wouldn't consider them that great today. They were the best of their time, however (before Snapdragon came along a year later to show me the real limits in this game)

Well, the first game I ever played was "JakX" on the PS2

Hugo wrote on 08/25/16 at 10:01:03:


i see your bringing up your score on stuff (and on a leader-board, if you know what i mean)
i did some stuff too

also happy belated birthday XD
(i dont check the forum thread for birthdays much)

Hugo wrote on 02/09/16 at 11:03:10:


So you're 3 now  

...Just kidding. Hope you had a happy birthday.  

Tomorrow is Will Shortz's birthday...

Hugo wrote on 02/09/16 at 11:03:10:


I always sleep with a Plush Yoshi and Luigi, + one thing I've had since I was born (apparently)

My mother actually wants to buy me new ones because she says the current ones stink

It's probably true though, they haven't been washed since many years because it turned out to deteriorate them.

Blendoku
Got A 1.10 on lvl 6 and i think thats a wr XD if not, still a good toime