Mastery #21: GunForce (Super Nintendo)

 

    What the hell is GunForce and why did I pick this? I didn't know that much about this game going in and although I technically did some research on this, I'm not really going to go into detail about that. More or less this game was a okay arcade game by IREM but was ported over by "Bits game". I have yet to play the arcade one so I can't properly describe the differences but this game is so slow & clunky it's ridiculous. The game in itself is roughly about 30 minutes of gameplay & isn't that difficult in the slightest. Although it has a 'hard mode' the controls of the game is already hard enough. Looking like a Contra/Metal Slug clone it sadly doesn't control the same way. Your character moves slow & jumps like they are from Castlevania. One thing that took me awhile to realize was if you 'touch' an enemy you don't immediately die thankfully. Remembering games like Contra I thought the same thing when going into this game but it does carry on it's one shot & your dead. 

    I'm not even sure why I picked this game. It may of been one of those times where I just choose a random game one day. I didn't even get to the sub-title part. This game's full name is "GunForce: Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island". It sounds like a title to a RiffTrax or MST3K movie but that's the full name of the game. Other than that this game has a lot of flaws to it. The screen slowly pans to the left causing all sorts of problems and very easy ways to get hit by a bullet without have the ability to dodge it. Also it's awful inability to properly jump on machines or vehicles. And considering how short the game is it really surprises me how many vehicles they have in this game that you utilize for 30 seconds. 

    The first level alone has you drive a jeep type vehicle with a turret on the back. You can also jump into big turret guns which don't do that much except shoot the enemies that literally just run from right to left on the screen occasionally stopping to take a shot at you. Than you have a helicopter you fly in the first level...the ride is roughly about 15 seconds and the helicopter takes up the entire screen. But than you never ride a helicopter again? Why? Like why have it in the game at all? The other levels you get to ride a trolley, & a mech for the last level. I say 'mech' but really I mean it's ED-209 from Robocop. This leads on to the next part of the frustrating part of the game which was the controls which jumping & landing on things. So to ride all of these vehicles you have to be able to jump onto these vehicles to ride them right? Well this game falls for the same crap lot of other games do when you're trying to jump onto something. You have to press slightly up or down & lightly hit 'A' along with it. It's hard to explain without really experiencing it. 

On the left is the Mech you ride in GunForce on the Right is ED-209 from Robocop (Specifically the Mega Drive version of Robocop Vs. The Terminator

    Man after all is said & done I'm glad I mastered it. I really want to get this game for my collection too, although for the past few paragraphs I may of made it seem like it was a bad game. And I still stand by that notion, but even bad games have a special place in my heart. Except maybe DreamTV....

Mastery #20: Wild Arms 2 (Playstation)

 

    WHAT A SET & GAME. This game hits home for a lot of reasons for me. This one along with a couple of other JRPG's from the same era. When this game came out or actually when I very first started playing this game was during a time I lived in Arizona. So playing a anime JRPG that is suppose to be kind of like a wild west theme I was all over it cause it felt like my backyard was part of the world. I don't want to go into too much detail (I will save more for other blog posts of other RPG's) but I moved to Arizona when I was about 13. At this time in my life I was a nerd with closed curtains; playing video games that was not a sports game or Tony Hawk Pro Skater or really any kind of video game for that matter you were some what of an outcast. Not in the same traditional way you see in movies but more like you would lose cool points. To add an extra layer to this I also loved anime, which again, at this time in American culture it was deemed 'weird' or 'childish' or 'nerdy'. Any time I would bring up anime to anyone, I was always met with "Isn't that like cartoon porn?". When moving to Arizona I had never moved before that so being in a all new school with new kids was extremely nerve racking to me and it ended with many bus rides home in tears clinging onto my previous home & friends. I would eventually find my way into a group of friends that shared all the same interest with me, which if I am being honest my old friends didn't even really care for RPG's & anime. My new friends loved anime, games, jrpgs, technology, music, it had really felt like I had found my home. 

    

    JRPG's at the time were rare even during this time. We may have been lucky to find one or two at a funcoland or fry's electronics. So many times my friends and I would share each other's games. It was almost kind of like unwritten rule of some sorts. One friend would buy Tales of Destiny, while another friend would buy Arc the Lad, while another Suikoden game. Thus when one was done playing one we would loan it to the next friend while we took on another. The games traveled so many times I firmly believe I still have some of my friend's game copies (Sorry John, Jarrod & Josh). I forgot who introduced me into the Wild Arms 2 game but I remember borrowing a copy and playing it at my friend John's house. I remember the opening theme and animation was so ingrained into my head after starting it up. It wasn't too uncommon to see anime openers for certain JRPG's but this one has always stuck with me. Even today before I started this retroachievement hunt I would often hum or whistle to the opening animation theme. I also remember so many of my friends were always like "The 2nd disc opener is way cooler and the song is better". Well I never got to disc 2 until recently earning the cheevos, remember this was a time before youtube so I couldn't really just pull it up online. Although there may have been a time or two I had seen it before but just forgot. After seeing the disc 2 opener....I still like the first one better. /fightMe

    Before I talk about my journey earning the cheevos on this game the one thing I want to mention is, after all these years, I never realized how this game does anime openers & closers. Let me explain or if you want you can watch my gif I uploaded below. But each time you start up your file it will play the opening animation, which was somewhat typical of JRPG's at the time or even now really. You start the game and before the opening screen it plays the typical anime opening. But if you were to save your game and than choose to no longer play the game it would play another animation with a different song and a typical anime ending cut scene. This little discovery gave this game a whole new level of respect for me. Such a small unique detail that I don't often find anymore in games.

    Now for the cheevos. Damn these cheevos were a blast but the last three proved rather difficult. For the most part all the achievements for the game was for story progression which I really enjoyed. Along the way was some side quest things but nothing too major. Normally for these games I typically have a bunch of save files so if I ever need to go back I can. I also loved that the achievements also helped if you defeated the other 'parts' of the boss. This game has a lot of boss battles in it, but instead of a simple single target to a giant boss this game provides different targets to a boss to weaken it & earn more experience. Thus many achievements required you to do this & I loved it. Especially since you get some extra experience with it.

I was so pumped I got this much damage on Zavorg when I was playing. Looking back on it now I'm like, "Oh I have done way more damage than that lol"

    I started theses achievements back in July 2022 and was planning on finishing it by October 2022 but with the release of PS2 achievements & some of my friends got me sucked back into Rocket League this fell to the wayside. I assumed that I was going to finish it by October 2022 cause all I had was like 5 more achievements. Which just so happened to be possibly the hardest ones to get lol. 3 of them being defeating the 3 hardest secret bosses in the game, and the last one being complete the monster card album. I decided to hit up these last few cheevos when I got to the end of the game so I can explore the world & hope the bosses would be rather easy if I was high level. How wrong I was...Bulkogidon & defeating his Belly & Drill (counted as two achievements) was the first one I tackled. Luckily I had to find a special strategy guide for that one. The next two was the infamous Ragu O Ragula & Angolmois. At this point in the game did I realize that I messed up their leveling. You see in this game you gain levels like normal through experience but there is also a thing called 'Personal Skills' and this increases certain stats based on the personal skill level. For a quick example there is a personal skill you can upgrade called 'Up Hp' & after every level your HP increases more than normal if the personal skill level is high up too. (Don't quote me exactly on the naming convention please xD ). Well most guides suggest you level this up early on so everyone has a lot of HP to take on these bosses, I didn't do that because I did start the game with a guide at first so I missed a pivotal piece of information. So what else can one person do?

I know, I know, Brad technically isn't at level 99...but his stats are so OP even at 97 he was insane xD

    Get all your characters to level 99. And that's exactly what I did. I leveled up all my characters to 99 which still to my surprise the Ragu & Ango fight was still difficult. Without a proper strategy the bosses were rather difficult and would decimate my team. From doing previous readings it would seem people discussed which one was harder. Some said, Ango others said Ragu....my vote is Ango. When I finally beat him by this point he was the last one in my monster album I hadn't filled out yet, so finally when I took him down I ran around the house lol. I know dramatic but the set was so much fun & I really learned a lot more about this game. When I was younger & I played it understanding all the themes sometimes just went over my head or I just didn't really pay too much attention to them. This game will always hold a special place in my heart. Like I said before, just hearing that opening theme...

Mastery #19: Whomp 'Em (NES)

 

        So brings on a new year with all new retroachievements to master this year. This year I have decided to try mastering 25 retroachievements, well at least that's what I have on my vision board this year lol. Last year I had one up there for mastering only 20 and I walked away with about 10, but with the release of the PS2 retroachievements in October that messed up what I originally had planned to master other games. Ah well, it's not that big of a deal. My goal of this really isn't to be the number 1 spot of retroachievements leaderboard or anything. Not to say if I did hold the number 1 spot I wouldn't be happy, but really it would be a title I could care less about. My only enjoyment is coming from playing these games in a different way & play games I would normally pass up on. Also sometimes being a collector you also carry the mentality of being a "completionist". But I digress, my most recent mastery was the game "Whomp 'Em" the rather interesting Mega Man clone from Jaleco. The concept of this game is rather really cool. Given there really isn't any Native American type of games out there or that many where you play as one, this game was somewhat ahead of it's time if you ask me. Although the name could be changed, not saying I don't like it but it's just ehhhh for me.

        Right off the get go you're dropped in this game with nice assets & graphics. The character sprite is nice and the different actions his weapon can do make it just look even crispier. The game will immediately remind you of basically most platformers, bright skies, gaps to jump over, oddly placed enemies. Yeah, one of the few odd things about this game is the oddly placed enemies. There are a few enemy placements that feel weird or off, not that big of a deal but it can cause for some unwanted damage at times. Speaking of the hit detection in this game drives me crazy. There was many times where I feel the hit was unwarranted or the hit box was just too far out from the sprite. This was massively more apparent when fighting bosses. Being that you're main weapon is a melee close range weapon you can understand more why the hit detection can be even more frustrating. For the most part everything else felt really smooth. 

        The game as follows puts you in a first opening level. The level is rather short and boring but the opening music puts you in the right mood for the rest of the game. But we will get to the music soon, I have much more to say about that. After the introduction level you are presented with a stage selection screen with 6 levels. Some levels being called 'test' can be rather confusing but when playing this game since there is a giant mountain in the middle all the levels I thought it was like, "Oh you have to overcome all these trails before you can defeat the last boss. That's cool". It technically became that considering after each boss you defeat for each of the six levels you get a new power up to your weapon. Each level has it's own 'theme' to it, but it can be kind of a loose theme. And what I mean by that is there is two forest levels. One being the 'Sacred Woods' the other being the 'Magic Forest'. After beating all 6 levels & their bosses next is taking on the last level & the last boss. Now, most of the levels in this game were rather simple & easy, the only real struggle challenge came from the bosses. Well, the last level they went all out. Including the last boss. 

    The last boss gives you very little to work with at first. It definitely takes some trail & error with it. Thank goodness there wasn't a achievement for beating the last boss damageless cause I'm not sure if that would be possible. Now to spare everyone the time of this, I will discus the music to this game but I won't go on a very big rant I promise. That's the magic word though, promise. Cause this game's music holds so much promise to it, it honestly almost feels incomplete in some places. Like the opener is just absolutely jamming. Almost on par to a point I honestly thought this was a Capcom game. But by the time you get to the last level the music just goes on & on.

    There is one other major factor I want to talk about this game with. The bosses. This game has some similar traits to like how Joe & Mac is, short levels with a more emphasis on the boss fight. This game has a similar feel, small short levels with a boss fight, which makes this game not a very long game at all. But a really fascinating feature this game includes is the boss can steal your health potion. A game trait I would assume would be in a game such as Dark Souls was in this one. And honestly I'm not surprised no other game has really implemented this. Throughout the level you can get a energy tank...I mean a potion to refill your health when it depletes. Opposite of it's counterpart the energy tank this items activates automatically when you reach 0 health, which is a nice feature. But if you come across a boss and have one of these potions if you don't use it inadvertently on the boss, well the boss will have no problem using it on itself. I can't express how much I loved this feature but also hated it with obvious reasons. 

    The achievement set for this game was fun but I won't lie I was surprised it wasn't filled with more achievements but considering how short the game is the achievements could theoretically be broken up into smaller pieces to seem to be "more" but honestly I think this set was perfect for what it is. Also the only other thing I can think of is cheevos for "not dying" in the level...better not be damageless boss run. I could talk on forever about this game and the pros & flaws but I'm still getting use to this writing thing. So hopefully I haven't bored you so far. This game will one day be in my collection of games, now playing it and mastering it. It shall be mine. 

Mastery #18: Final Combat (Watara Supervision)

    

         The Watara Supervision a game system I had no idea even existed until Retroachievements. To be honest I'm not even really sure what the story of the Supervision is besides it was a handheld system. I know a simple search into wikipedia I could get information on it but that's not the point of me writing this. My main focus on this is mostly my journey through this game. 

    I love the title to this game. 'Final Combat' it's so dramatic for something as simple as handheld game. The game right at the start reminded me of any other arcade tank type game. Mainly thinking of the Atari 2600 Combat, you take control of a tank and shoot other tanks that appear at the top of the screen. All while a big gun fires at you from a fixed location, and a spiral pool covered by blocks. The premise of the game from what I gathered was you have to destroy a X amount of tanks, then at the bottom of the screen it will tell you to 'Go'. Not entirely sure where that is to 'go', after some trial and error I realized you have to destroy enough blocks around the spiral pool. But also shoot the spiral pool? I'm still not even exactly sure what the real trigger is for it. Some levels I beat it via destroying the blocks. Other levels I defeated it by shooting the spiral pool (granted it's possible the explosion from the bullet could have hit one of the blocks) the game only has a total of 8 levels so there isn't that much time to really figure it out.

The ending screen. No idea what Next Sector is lol.

    It also took me awhile to realize that you can destroy the stationary guns. The sound effect it gave when your bullets hit the stationary guns it sounded like it didn't do any damage. Similar to the sound when you hear your bullets ricochet off of enemies in Mega Man. But nope, in this game you just have to shoot them enough before they destroy. Most of this game is just finding the sweet spot to shoot everything. Since the stationary guns always follow you, there is usually a spot where the bullets won't hit you. Then you can fire at your leisure to destroy the stationary gun.

        This may seem like a short post but truthfully this game only took me 30 minutes to master. The set for it was perfect. But not to round back about the Watara Supervision itself but this is one of the reasons why I love Retro Achievements so much. I would have never of known about this system, let alone the games on it. Not like any of these games are triple A titles but it's really nice cool to see & play things you never even knew existed. This along with many other reasons is why I play & earn Retroachievements. I don't care to be number 1. Just to experience & play games in a different light.

Mastery #17: Mr. Chin's Gourmet Paradise (Game Boy)

 

    Well I believe this is my first Game boy master. So that's sort of exciting? I guess? I never played this game before it was just at total random. I was a bit excited since this was the very first mastery I got on my Retroid Pocket 2+. But just randomly scrolling through my game boy games last night I choose one at total random and it just so happened to land on this game. Almost similar to my time with playing  & mastering Time Zone. Although this game is crazy short, this is a game I would be mad to spend fifty dollars. Although Game boy games didn't really get that high of a price brand new they usually sat in the thirty or twenty dollar range. The game consists of great music, arcade style gameplay, & about 15 minutes of your time. 

The simple objective of the game is to use the two tesla domes to shock the virus amoebas to turn them into peaches so you can consume them. Honestly the game may actually have a story to it but at first pick up that's pretty much what I thought it was. The 'tesla domes' as I call them was a interesting mechanic/weapon that took me a moment to learn. One of the faults to this game is picking it up and playing it & not knowing how the 'tesla domes' work.

Being a Gameboy game the system only has two buttons, jump button & action button. So when starting the game it puts you on a platform similar to Donkey Kong and as you become familiar with the buttons you find one jumps and the other sets down a 'tesla dome' which is actually called 'DEMOE Beam'. Well, at first beginning screen you see these monsters coming towards you (albeit they fall down the first hole they see as seen in the screenshot below) but you don't know if the enemies can jump or fly so it's almost like a instant panic of just hitting buttons which one of the two buttons will release one of your demoe beams. Than in a flash a beam goes by and suddenly the monsters turn to peaches. The problem with this at least for me was I was confused as to how the mechanic worked. I didn't realize you have to place two of them down trapping the enemies between the demoe beams. The first level of the game does teach you this but it's just poorly done.

This is the beginning screen of level 1

I could go on & on about game mechanics but I don't want to rant about cause it can be very boring. The other really captivating thing to this game was the music. Personally I really enjoyed the music to this game but I can't help but to feel like the music was stolen from another game & than was remixed on all 8 stages. Especially the stage 7 music sounds very familiar to me (one day I will figure it out as to where). Another obnoxious thing was the pipe at the center bottom of each level. The pipe acted like a warp to the top level of the platforms which the player & enemies can fall through. But the window to fall through is so incredible small. Actually most of the game had weird hit detections to it. Spots where you thought you could jump up to instead you just hit your head on a block. The achievements to this game was well done too. Another charming attribute to this game was in regards to points. Instead of a simple 'points' they took the extra mile and put KCAL instead. Since Mr. Chin consumes the peaches after zapping the monsters one would obtain calories as well, just a small little change that can be rather charming in my eyes. Considering how short & simply this game is this was a very easy set to master. Being mostly story driven achievements except the one called 'Safety First' which took some research but other than that was a fairly great set.

Mastery #16: Pac-Man (Atari 2600)

 

        

        I don't have that much to really say about this game. Many people know just how terrible of a port this game is compared to it's arcade counter-part. One of the most difficult parts about playing this game is that the ghost flicker on screen so much sometimes you can't really tell if they are blinking to where you can eat them or if they are just flickering normally. The arcade game made it very clear when a ghost was eatable, even had a sound effect to tell you when they were edible. But the Atari 2600 version nah, it does play a sound effect but even when the sound ends you still have maybe like 2-3 seconds still you can eat the ghost. I died so many times because of this. 

https://retroachievements.org/game/13094

    Most of the achievements to this set was fairly simple with the exception of 2 that caused me a lot of problems. Some of the cheevos were slightly difficult like the getting 5 lives total, or the reaching 5k score. Normally it doesn't look that bad and truth be told it wasn't really now looking back on it. But what really caused me the most trouble was the 10k points & the 9 lives. And those only proved difficult because of one reason. It was because what level I was on playing the game on. 

    

    For anyone that didn't know the Atari 2600 had a switch on the console that controlled different difficulty levels for games. Most of the time it would just change the speed of the game or just throw more enemies your way, but in the specific case to Pac-Man it would just speed up Pac-Man. Which in hindsight now is an ABSOLUTE MUST to earn the two cheevos that caused me the most problems. As you progress in this game the ghosts move faster but Pac-Man remains the same speed the entire time so when you get to the later levels the ghost move faster. So in mode 1 or I guess on difficulty 1 Pac-Man moves rather slow. So getting through the first 3 levels is fine but once you start getting to level 5 it become just way too difficult.

        

    

    So after I moved up the difficulty of the game the last two cheevos became much easier cause Pac-Man could actually keep distance from the ghosts. The other huge factor I used to master this was the "CC Pattern". This is a pattern in the map that you can move to avoid the ghosts almost every time. This pattern was created by Casey Coenen and can be found on the gamefaq page for Pac-Man. This pattern only applies to the Atari 2600 version too apparently. But it frustrates me that it says if you stick to this pattern you can go on forever, that's not true. Not true at all. I am sure they didn't actually mean it that it can work forever but still I didn't think there were going to be so many hiccups with it still. I died a handful of times, most of the time I had to go off the normal path just to avoid death. But I must say once I got the hang of it & understood what the path was doing it's not that difficult adjust. 

    

   

    Overall the achievement set was good set & the game was well not the greatest but if you turn off the piercing sound it makes & pop on a 80's arcade remix it's not nearly as bad. 

Mastery #15: Mega Man Soccer (SNES)

 

    Mastery #15 what a great game to make my 15th mastery. This game was another little gem from my childhood. At the time when I bought this game my two favorite sports was hockey & soccer. And one of my favorite video game franchises/heroes was in fact Mega Man, so this game to me was peanut butter & jelly. This game overall was a pretty standard soccer game, select your roster, formation, pass. kick, slide tackle. Except it had one other feature which was super shots. Super shots were like if Mega Man were to put his powers into the shot. So like when Ice Man shoots the ball, it will turn into ice and as soon as it hits it's target it freezes them. With skill this could be the goalie you're shooting at and if so the ball will drop & roll behind them resulting it into a goal. When I was younger seeing the computer team do it to me was beyond frustrating since I didn't know how to return it back to the computer. This was the times before the internet so it wasn't like I had any easy way to figure out the button combination to do the super shot. (It's holding down R + Shoot button).

    Looking back on it now & playing it again to earn the achievements I've really come to realize just how great of a gem this game really is. It's no Mario Strikers Charged but it definitely paved the way to that point. Even many sports anime use this super shot adaptation in there show (Prince of Tennis & Eyeshield 21 & Inazuma Eleven). Even movies used a similar adaptation in Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer where someone could perform a super shot of some kind. Now I'm not saying all of these examples took what Mega Man Soccer did, because although I didn't perform any proper research but I am sure this "Super ability shot in a sport" doesn't all just come from this game. But to look back on it now it does seem like a relatively great idea for a Soccer video game. 

    This may be unpopular opinion but despite James Rolfe's comedic take on Mega Man Soccer (AVGN Episode 139) I think this a great game. Now I wouldn't necessarily put it on my top 10 or anything but I would love to see this game get a rerelease or a new updated version for the Switch or PC. Basically doing their own take of Mario Strikers Charged but just with Mega Man characters. The controls are good, the game has a decent good pace, it's not over challenging in any way, and it has some great SNES music to it. Like Dr. Wily's field theme just sounds so cool.

    Now let me glance over some of the frustrating flaws to this game. The two major frustrations that come to mind is the slide tackle/jump button & the control of shooting. Both make sense to me on a technical level, as in the same button functions slide tackle & a jump block or header. But when you press it if the opposing player has position of the ball your character will perform a slide tackle but if the opponent chooses to pass or shoot, your character will perform instead a jump block or header. This becomes frustrating because you will behind your opponent just about to catch up to them to perform a slide tackle but instead just jump up into the air looking like a fool. 

 

    The achievements to this game were all pretty simple and straight forward. https://retroachievements.org/game/1021 Score a goal with each character's super shot, win in the League, win the Capcom Championship & Win the tournament. There was one cheevo that I was surprised was not in the list though, which was winning in a shoot-out, my whole time while earning all the cheevos for this game not once did I enter in the shoot out screen:

    Now it's possible that was a cheevo before and it's since edited to be removed for whatever reason. Just like how by the time anyone who would be reading this, somebody may have added this cheevo in. Other than that this was a great game to master, it can be a bit time consuming and repetitive but not something too difficult where it would take up a lot of your time.

While finishing up this blog post I did come across some information that I was completely unaware of. This game released in the United States was not a fully finished game. It was missing the entire ending sequence & the ability to play as Dr. Wily. Since than someone has come along and fixed this issue (https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4215/) but it just begs the request even more, RERELEASE MEGA MAN SOCCER!