Dood's 34 Years Marathon

[Da Dood]

$60 for a party mini-game collection? Ouch.

Day 27 - Double Dragon 4 » Done!

I found DD4 forgettable the first time through, but it got more interesting as I started to unlock characters. All the effort that the devs didn't put into balancing and level design went straight to the extras. There are 20+ playable characters, most having their own fighting style and special moves. These characters don't make any of the design issues disappear, but they add some flavor to the game at least. Still a hard game to recommend.

First time playing as the Mysterious Warrior, aka DD2's final boss. Green hair and all. He's the most OP character in the game, and unsurprisingly also the speedrunners' top choice. MW can throw fireballs, do the Zangief lariat, handstand kick and more. He's fun.

This game has one of the most hilarious design oversights I've seen: you're 100% safe at the very top or very bottom of the screen. It doesn't matter how many enemies you're fighting, you can totally hide in plain sight and no one will ever bother you there. Now, it's hard to actually hit someone from those spots because enemies in DD4 have insane priority, but you can just chill and prepare your strategy with no pressure.

You may notice in the pic below that I have all my credits. That couldn't be further from the truth (lost like 2 full credits to platforming alone). What happened was, I killed the final boss and paused to get a picture of the "mission all clear" text, because the extra characters have no ending and the game just goes back to the title screen. But even if you pause after beating the boss, the level clear jingle plays normally and the game ignores the all clear text. So as I was readying the camera, with the game paused, suddenly all I saw was the title screen. Lame. Anyway, I "continued" from mission 12, beat the boss again and took the pic as fast as I could.



Clear time: 35 minutes

[Da Dood]

Day 28 - Shovel Knight » Done!

I completely underestimated NG+. It was hard, even with a maxed SK. Double damage, less checkpoints, no chicken/turkey anywhere (well... almost). What I thought was gonna be a 1h30 cruise ended up taking 3 hours, haha. Well done, Yacht Club.

And the boss rush, Jesus. If they didn't give you a turkey every other fight I probably wouldn't have done it, at least not tonight. I love these moments though, where you go from feeling absolutely hopeless to finally sort of getting the hang of the game. I don't think I truly knew most bosses' patterns until the game forced me to learn them just now. Not to mention learning decent techniques for them. Jump slash into downward stab, super fun. Ended up performing well/getting a nice enough order that I made it to the final guy (Plague) with no chalices used. I used one just to be safe.

This game is fantastic, holy hell. I haven't even touched Plague Knight or Specter yet, and there's another free campaign coming. It's crazy how much content they're still delivering for such a "simple" game. I should re-buy this for PS4 or something, because when my hand got nope'd last year I was playing this. SK isn't exactly easy on your thumb.



Clear time: 3 hours

[Velari]

Might be $50, actually, but yeah, 1-2 Switch should have just been a pack-in.

I played quite a few Double Dragon games when I was young, and quite a few versions as well. Kind of too bad that that game sounds a little broken.

I am unfamiliar with Shovel Knight's NG+ and what it changes, if anything, so I'm glad to hear it makes it harder. Which is good, because I hate games that ruin the NG+ concept by not changing anything, and it turns into a "trouncing weaklings for 90% of the game" experience, which I find incredibly boring but apparently a lot of people don't. At least Chrono Trigger threw like a dozen different endings at different points in the game at you. But some games don't change or don't add anything, and I don't understand the point. Or like one additional boss that requires trouncing weaklings and skipping cutscenes for dozens of hours to reach. And it just feels like neither the developers - nor the players who enjoy that! - understand anything, much less the concept of NG+. Rant.

I was going to ask if you've done Plague of Shadows and the like if you hadn't mentioned it. Plague Knight is kind of silly compared to Shovel Knight. he has range, a lot of mobility, most bosses can be pretty much face-tanked and their patterns ignored. It feels like Shovel Knight is Zero and Plague Knight is Megaman, but Plague Knight also has all of Zero's mobility and Shovel Knight doesn't.
... I initially wrote that example with Grolla and Spiritia instead because I've played so little of actual Megaman games that I wasn't sure which Megaman character was the fast sword character and decided to look it up, I thought maybe it was Protoman >_>

Speaking of Megaman, I was aware there's a lot of Megaman in Distorted Travesty, but I didn't realise how much of it was X2 stuff, specifically. Including the Strike Chain and those anyone floating pillar things that exist solely for the purpose of annoying wall-jump sequences, lol.

Also what the balls, X is like the one Megaman game that I actually played (I've at most played maybe a few other levels of some of the other Megaman games), and I only just learned that you can break blocks with the boots and you don't need the helm, head asplode o_O

[Da Dood]

Haha yeah, you can break blocks with boots. You still need the helmet for the X-Buster upgrade though (well not really if you get it in the fortress, but you need the head @ Flame Mammoth's stage).

I plan to do all extra Shovel Knight campaigns in one go as soon as the King Knight DLC is out. :)

Day 29 - F-Zero X » Done!

Finished all cups on Standard with Black Bull. Faaast game. I got a little salty at the rubberbanding a few times. Playing this after Wave Race is overwhelming to say the least.

Took a while to re-adjust to the sliding and physics. For some reason it's better to double tap Z/R for sharp turns instead of holding the button, which was costing me a ton of positions. Plus you really gotta destroy your rival's car, because the CPU always puts them in 1st for the rest of the cup. Black Bull is good for that, but his boost sucks, damn.

Haven't played FZX in like 10 years... I unlocked all the cars, which was pretty tiring back in the day, and then I just stopped playing. Feels good coming back to this with less pressure. Still got Master mode to try, though (one day... maybe... probably not).

Final day tomorrow!



Clear time: 2:30

[Da Dood]

Day 30 - Mega Man 3 » Done!

And it's over.

MM3 finale this year was a speedrun. Well, 3 speedruns. I didn't do nearly well enough to compete with real speedrunners, but it's cool, I had fun trying to correct mistakes and improving my time. I feel like if I had some more attempts I could've lowered that time a couple of extra minutes, but even being able to complete 3 runs was surprising because today was a very busy day (did two runs at like 6 a.m., then another one later at 10 p.m.).

Order was Top > Shadow > Gemini > Needle > Magnet > Hard > Spark > Snake. Most troublesome part was trying to land Yellow Devil 1-cycle. You have to take damage at a specific point near the end of the piece-moving pattern to spam SH under the eye while you're flashing/invincible. I got the timing right once but failed to spam fast enough.

Also I'm 34 years old! Yeesh.



Clear time(s):
1st run -- 46 min
2nd run -- 48 min (died a few times...)
3rd run -- 43 min

Insert obligatory 'gonna take a break for a few weeks' here. This year's marathon was by far the shortest, though, kinda proud of that... >_>

Thinking about game plans for the rest of the year... now that I have the Wii U again I wanna start Tropical Freeze (finally). I should also start Dark Souls 3 at some point, although I'm still a little burned out on the series. Maybe I'll get the Metroid 2 remake (if the $ allows...), and The Evil Within 2. Plus retro/replays galore.

Thanks everyone who read any/some/all of those. I think the most fun playthrough this year was Banjo-Kazooie, probably because the new controller felt super smooth with this game. Ninja Gaiden 3 was amazing as well, I even finished it a couple more times that night after posting.

[Velari]

It's amusing that they made this whole stable of characters for the F-Zero games, but I still barely know any others than the original four. I actually looked at a character list for X after you made that post, and had no idea who most of them were and that they were in the game, even though I did own a copy of that game and played it a bunch.

Cool that you did multiple runs of Megaman 3, and of course that a last one was a chunk faster than the others. Topspin in MegaMari is amazing, if the Megaman version is anything like that I can understand why you started there ;0

Here, have a thing to tide you over until the King Knight DLC. I don't think there's even a release date announced for that yet, what else are you going to do? Intense Action Platforming!

34! <(^^)>

[Da Dood]

Downloading :D

Thanks, Vel!

[Da Dood]

Drew this to celebrate my birthday... look at my hair all black and white, lol.



Thanks again for reading, guys!