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 #13: Time Zone (NES)

 

    This was not my intentional plan in anyway. Megan had recently gotten Dragon Quest XI for the Switch so she was playing it out in our living room. As I was still waiting for my Retroid to be delivered I decided to pull out our little TV and my RetroPie I built last year. I wasn't crazy about the RetroPie which is why I don't use it too often. Without going down a long winded hyper-critical reason why I don't like playing on the RetroPie, this game fell on my lap with the 'random game' option built into the RetroPie menu. Seeing it was a game I have never played before & I had just finished smoking I figured, "what the hell". The opening was a cute little animation opening up for a possibly good game. Although the story was in Japanese (I do believe there is a English patch that is supported by RA) the cute artwork drew me in. I was not prepared for the strange frustrating but loving journey I was about to go on. The game immediately gives Super Mario 3 vibes. With it's overworld map and selecting the level, even in actual gameplay it plays very similar to it. This wasn't too uncommon by this point in the game industry though either.

        Each world consisted of 4 levels and one quiz stage & the game itself only contained 6 worlds. The four levels definitely played very similar to each other in each world. As in there is a introductory stage, than a moving screen stage, precise jumping stage, usually to a mix of the whole bag on the last stage. What really drew me into this game aside from the artwork was how the character attacks. Getting the feeling of "I have played something like this before..." my initial reaction to seeing the first enemy was to jump on them. Luckily this already taught me something which was you don't kill enemies by jumping on them, but also you don't die either. This will come in handy to my surprise when fighting bosses. But the main character's primary attack was he would throw his hat similar to a boomerang. But instead of a simple throw forward and it comes back to you the hat moved in a way similar to almost like a yo-yo. With the proper throw & jump the hat would circle your main character like a fly hovering dog crap. You can't throw the hat again until it returns back to the character, this simple fascinating mechanic wasn't used very often in the NES library. When thinking about it this kind of weapon doesn't exist in many games in general, but when throwing your hat & hitting an enemy the hat keeps going in motion hitting other enemies as well. Doing this attack releases some endorphins in my brain, it's like knocking over a bunch of dominoes lined up. It's difficult to explain without playing it and seeing it but it's such a cool mechanic that isn't used very often in gaming.

 

     Now to the nitty gritty, the achievements. Like mentioned before I randomly choose this game, so I had no idea what cheevos (short name for RetroAchievements) was in this game. I just randomly selected it the game and just figure I would play earning any rando cheevos along the way. After earning the first cheevos beating the first world was when I was interested in looking up the other cheevos. I noticed rather quickly this was a small simple set of only 6 achievements. https://retroachievements.org/game/4687

    It was at this point where I became way more attentive and interested in earning all the cheevos to this game. Seeing it was just a simple "Beat the game" cheevos set I started my quest. I was trying my best to beat the game in one sitting, but since it was a work night & it was already getting rather late I tried my luck beating it all in one go. At this point I realized just how annoying this game can be, mixed with the drowning repeating music the level designs were not the greatest & the enemy placement is almost meant to mess you up more than be 'obstacles'. The playable character moves fast & whenever he throws his hat he jolts forward a bit, but how the screen renders it doesn't give you the ample time to react when an enemy spawns on the screen. This gave me to a lot of game over screens which thank goodness this game gives you unlimited continues. After several trial n' errors I had to forfeit the night and prepare to power through it on a different day. But I felt comfortable getting farther faster for this game can be easily memorized thus getting far in each world is rather quick. 

This jump took me forever. How was I suppose to know that the blue head dinosaur was suppose to launch me up into the air to land on this tree?

    Getting to the end of the game was much easier 2nd time around. Also even though I can't read Japanese entirely I was able to figure out the answers to the quiz questions which stacked up even more lives on my stack. The only issue I had was fighting bosses again. The bosses overall was rather simple, just memorize their pattern and attack when open. Each boss actually was pretty fun, the boss fights had elements of Megaman boss fights mixed with Joe & Mac boss fights. Obviously some bosses were more difficult than others, like the 1600's Japan levels boss was a frustrating pattern to learn. Than there were others where I was confused exactly what the last boss was like the early 1885 America levels where you fight a train as the last boss. But since this was my 2nd run I got to the final world pretty fast.

This was the World 3 (1885 AD) where you fight a train as the world's boss.

    Fighting the last boss Dr Wily..I mean Dr Time was not an extremely difficult task. Just follow the method as the previous bosses. Learn the pattern & attack when you can. Also much like Dr Wily the doctor has two forms to him, since you can only get hit once I died a handful of times on his 2nd form. At first it seemed rather random but of course there was a rhythm to it. But when I did finally earn that last cheevo it was my last guy before getting a game over & although when you die on the level you have to repeat the entire level over again. But with a game over you have to repeat the entire world over again, which in retrospect isn't THAT difficult but just rather time consuming. But with much focus and not blinking I was able to beat the doctor, but I won't lie I did hold my breath for another form of the doctor. Thus I sat back and watched the ending with all it's glory & just happy to be done with the game entirely. 

    I know there were a lot more things that I missed to this game. And I know I can probably do some cleaning up and rework on this post but I am still a bit new to this idea and just trying to flush everything out without making it a novel of a review. I know I missed talking about the power-ups and such but just trying to get the perfect mix of the story of me hunting for the achievements & the lite-review of the game. Hope you enjoy none the less!

On the left is an enemy from Time Zone. On the left is a picture of ToeJam from "ToeJam & Earl". These two look like they could be brothers or cousins.

Mastery #12: Family Feud (NES)

     I know this is number 12. It's only number 12 because I didn't really think about doing this until the 12th game. But that's how the cookie crumbles hahaha. Besides that, my goal this year is to master 20 games. For a quick understanding, but I play retro games on a emulator and using specific emulators I am able to earn retroachievements. This is prominently done by hex-code conditions in the game & is totally free to sign up and start earning your own achievements. RetroAchievements. With that quick blurb out of the way for the 12th mastery (4th mastery of the year) I choose Family Feud for the NES.

    Family Feud the show holds a unique spot in my heart. I love Steve Harvey, and although this one doesn't have Steve Harvey I still couldn't help but to hear his voice sometimes when playing the game. Even as going as far as writing down silly answers just to imagine what his face would be in that response. Granted it only made me laugh but sometimes it was ways to keep my sanity in this utter bullshit of a game. That's right, I just called this game utter bullshit. Because it is. Allow me to explain in detail. This game came out in 1991, but most of the answers seem closer to 1989 questions/answers. Already anyone can imagine that the answers would be different from than to today. Like the question "Name something you put on a Pizza" would probably have Pineapple as one of the answers with today, but in 1989? Hell no. I'm not even sure if Pineapples were even invented yet...(I know they were). But when I get questions like, "Name someone who has to listen to problems all day long" and I put "Therapists" and get zero points. I can't help to get mad. And please note that I still don't know what the highest answer is. This question was during fast money & it doesn't tell you what the number 1 answer is. Friend, Boss, Teacher all warranted zero points the only thing I got SOME points on was for the answer "Judge". Even than that only rewarded me with 4 points. Even with this being 1989 I am sure it was a known profession and I understand all the answers from Family Feud are gathered from surveys not professionals.

    Even with all the bullshit I still overcame the challenge. Granted I feel I should've accomplished this much faster than I anticipated but the journey this game put me on is what really started to make me think about blogging my journey through earning retro achievements. The amount of research and data collecting that went into this game is more than I was expecting. I won't lie since all these games have to be played on a emulator I used this to my advantage. Pausing the game and searching for answers is not only available but to be expected to earn these achievements. Call it cheating if you want, but I welcome you to try and get all these answers right by memorizing or just knowing what people's answers were in 1989. But when playing this game & having a 3 strategy guides open with all different types of answers to the questions, I kept finding myself stuck with questions & no answers on the guides. The guides were rather pretty big too, so it surprised me when I came across so many questions that there were no answers on the guides. This lead me to search even deeper online thinking 'There has to be a place where all the answers are'. I didn't go on some long extensive search deep into the dark web or anything but simple searches through Google & DuckDuckGo gave me no answers. I did happen to come across someone else's work for questions on the Family Feud's Achievement page which helped out immensely filling up some of the gaps of questions that I was missing. But even still I would come across so many that literally stumped me. This led me to start my own database of questions and answers, what I didn't expect is just how many questions this game had. With the total of 4 strategy guides open & my 500+ lines of questions/answers on my personal guide I was still getting questions I never saw or had answers too. This opened me up to a new found respect for this game. To how much bullshit it pulled by stealing questions by answering the most abstract answer ever just to win the round, to just calling game over without going to the next round when there is only a 20 point difference, the amount of questions this game has just seems to have no end in site. It's impressive just how many questions this game holds and how often it would throw different questions at you. It's RNG is better than Spotify's or YouTube's RNG algorithm.

     

    Most of the achievements were easy except the last two. Last two being "The Overachieving Family" & "The Perseverant Family". Other achievements to this game can be found here: https://retroachievements.org/game/1680. Winning the fast round with $200 always seemed easy to me when watching Family Feud. But when playing the game with these older questions caused a lot of headaches for me. But it also started making me learn about new things in life. Like different pet birds, what different types of roofs are made of, no one's grocery bill was $150. This is something else this game really caught my attention on, the fact that I was ending up trying to research online what some of these answers might be. Which opened my mind to new and different things. The other person who ended up helping me out a lot about this game is Megan. There were a handful of times I found myself with two wrong answers & only one answer left on the board asking Megan for the final answer. Many times she would be right other times she would give me two answers & I would choose the wrong one. 

    On one of my last runs of the night I was able to finally achieve the last two achievements needed. Although it wouldn't go without issues, first being my cat Stark stepping on the keyboard during gameplay. And not just any key, he pushed the space bar, which on the emulator it fast forwards the game. It wasn't like he did this at a time where there was nothing going on. He did it during the question time, so not only did I not have the chance to read the question I didn't have the chance even ring the bell to answer. The other family ended up answering it and passing the play to my family which than left me frantically trying to get my cat off the keyboard in the nicest way possible. By the time I did finally get him off the space bar I was already down two wrong answers and one more would of given the other family an opportunity. Luckily the question was one that was on my list of questions I happen to capture so answering them was easy.  After winning "The Overachieving Family" achievement I was entering what I originally thought would be my final round. Nervously hoping that the question the game would throw at me would be ones I have answers too. In previous runs when getting this close to the end of the game the game would throw some crazy curveballs my way by asking a question I had never seen before. But this time around it was a bit more forgiving, easily being able to get to the fast money part all I need was to win this and it would have put me over the $20,000 limit and earning "The Perseverant Family" achievement. But of course the game throw the a curve ball my way, in the fast money section it asked me all questions I had no good answers for. Including "Name someone who has to listen to problems all day long" which it was at this time I was finally able to get some points with the 'Judge' answer. But I didn't win it, forcing me to play against another family. The last family I went up against was named Trump, at the time I laughed cause I was thinking, "Oh great this is how I know the game is going to cheat me". But to how unclimactic this may sound but the game just threw me the most simplest questions. I mean this was like 3rd grader doing a 1st grader spelling bee. After that it put me in the fast money once again & just like the questions it tossed me in the round, once again I was able to smoothly slide through the last questions pushing me over the $20,000 limit.

   

    

    Thank goodness the game was able to spell Congratulations correctly. Although the only thing that makes me curious about this ending screen shot is that the 'leave' is written in a different font & color making me wonder if there is an alternate ending to this game or what? But with all of that said this was a quick over view of my journey collecting all the achievements for Family Feud for the NES. May the family ASSCHEEK forever be remembered in Family Feud NES History.