To get straight to the point, we did not make our goal of beating every North American licensed NES game in the year 2019. Is that a disappointing outcome? Heck no! We ended up conquering 514 of the 669 game list in a single year. We had 30 members participate throughout the year! Some of which I havn't really had a good opportunity to interact with before and it gave me a chance to get to know them better. Beyond those 30 players we had several other members offer advice and support and simply cheer us on. Even though we fell short at the end we had an incredible time exploring new worlds, gritting our teeth over challenging areas, mashing buttons faster than ever before and most importantly, sharing our accomplishments with our peers.
It was quite heartwarming to see people scratch games off their backlog, overcome childhood hurtles and discover new favorites. Every game is not a winner, but I do feel there is something valuable to learn even from playing a stinker. I hope that every player feels that the time they invested in this community challenge was as worthwhile as I did. Whether you joined us for 1 game or 100 I'm incredibly thankful for your participation.
The RF Generation community of collectors and players has committed themselves to demolishing the entire licensed NES library in the year 2019. Is that even possible you say, with your help it totally is!! Check out the RFGen 2019 NES Challenge thread to see how to join in at anytime throughout the year. There is plenty of opportunity to participate regardless of your skill level, favorite style of game or the amount of time you have to invest. Come over and play with us here:
Here we are everyone. The final month of 2019. It's fairly obvious at this point that we will not reach the goal of beating the entire licensed NES library in 2019, but we gave it a valiant effort and have put a monstrous dent into it. However, I and a few others still plan to keep taking down NES games this month to see how close we can get. Please join us if you want to mess around in the weeds of what's left of the Nintendo Entertainment System library.
The RF Generation community of collectors and players has committed themselves to demolishing the entire licensed NES library in the year 2019. Is that even possible you say, with your help it totally is!! Check out the RFGen 2019 NES Challenge thread to see how to join in at anytime throughout the year. There is plenty of opportunity to participate regardless of your skill level, favorite style of game or the amount of time you have to invest. Come over and play with us here:
With the year rapidly closing in on us we need all the help we can get! The list of remaining games may be smaller than ever, but boy is it dense. We need all sports stars, adventurers, action heroes, pilots, drivers, puzzle masters, strategic geniuses, arcade wizards and cartoon characters on hand to beat the remainder of the NES library.
Check out the list of remaining titles or even just pop in the thread to share tips or encourage our players to keep on going. With everybody banding together we can accomplish this lofty goal!
The RF Generation community of collectors and players has committed themselves to demolishing the entire licensed NES library in the year 2019. Is that even possible you say, with your help it totally is!! Check out the RFGen 2019 NES Challenge thread to see how to join in at anytime throughout the year. There is plenty of opportunity to participate regardless of your skill level, favorite style of game or the amount of time you have to invest. Come over and play with us here:
4 months left in the year and we are still going strong! 461 games beaten through January to the end of August 2019. That means we've got 208 titles left to beat in the next 4 months. With the community working together that's definitely an achievable number. We have taken down pretty much all the classic games at this point, but there are still a lot of great games, a lot of short games, a lot of easy games and of course several big challenges. If you're up for taking on a time consuming RPG or sports title, a much neglected Strategy game, maybe an largely ignored genre like a flight sim or even a hard as nails shmup we'd love to have you join our quest to beat the entire NES library in 2019.
The RF Generation community of collectors and players has committed themselves to demolishing the entire licensed NES library in the year 2019. Is that even possible you say, with your help it totally is!! Check out the RFGen 2019 NES Challenge thread to see how to join in at anytime throughout the year. There is plenty of opportunity to participate regardless of your skill level, favorite style of game or the amount of time you have to invest. Come over and play with us here:
We are back and stronger than ever!! After an extremely slow May I was having my doubts about our progress in this challenge. But after a crazy productive June and July we are back on track to make this challenge a reality!! As of July 31st we've collectively beaten 432 NES games which leaves us with an achievable 237 games to beat in the final 5 months of the year. With our selection of games dwindling we are getting into the weird, the bad, the ugly, the seedy underbelly of the NES. If you really want to deep dive into this amazing library now is a great time to join us in the NES Challenge.
The RF Generation community of collectors and players has committed themselves to demolishing the entire licensed NES library in the year 2019. Is that even possible you say, with your help it totally is!! Check out the RFGen 2019 NES Challenge thread to see how to join in at anytime throughout the year. There is plenty of opportunity to participate regardless of your skill level, favorite style of game or the amount of time you have to invest. Come over and play with us here:
With May being our slowest month to date thing's where not looking good for us to pass the halfway mark of the NES library by the halfway mark for the year. But with some very impressive June participation from several members we are more than 30 titles past the 50% mark of the entire licensed NES library! Starting July off with an impressive 370 NES games beaten by our own community members since January 1st 2019.
Join us for July as we press forward to our next milestone!
The RF Generation community of collectors and players has committed themselves to demolishing the entire licensed NES library in the year 2019. Is that even possible you say, with your help it totally is!! Check out the RFGen 2019 NES Challenge thread to see how to join in at anytime throughout the year. There is plenty of opportunity to participate regardless of your skill level, favorite style of game or the amount of time you have to invest. Come over and play with us here:
For the last couple months even cutting our community goal drastically we've continually fallen short of our monthly targets. So this month, and possible just going forward, I'm scrapping the community goal to hit a certain number of games. I was really hoping to have at least half the library done by now (and we are extremely close to doing so) to give use some extra wiggle room later in the year, but we will persevere regardless.
Participation has dropped off massively in the last 2 months and we could still use all the help we can get. So please take a look at the list of remaining games and join in if you're able to. Still lots of great titles that haven't been attempted yet as well as many hidden gems to yet be uncovered!
2 of our amazing members and NES challenge contributor's spend many hours putting together this video and recording all of the amazing music in it to immortalize our efforts in the first 2 months of the NES Challenge. Huge shout out to Wempster and Disposed Hero for making this happen!
If you want to see your own name show up in a future video all you have to do is beat an NES game with us. Check out the link below for more info. We can use all the help we can get!
The RF Generation community of collectors and players has committed themselves to demolishing the entire licensed NES library in the year 2019. Is that even possible you say, with your help it totally is!! Check out the RFGen 2019 NES Challenge thread to see how to join in at anytime throughout the year. There is plenty of opportunity to participate regardless of your skill level, favorite style of game or the amount of time you have to invest. Come over and play with us here:
The RF Generation community of collectors and players has committed themselves to demolishing the entire licensed NES library in the year 2019. Is that even possible you say, with your help it totally is!! Check out the RFGen 2019 NES Challenge thread to see how to join in at anytime throughout the year. There is plenty of opportunity to participate regardless of your skill level, favorite style of game or the amount of time you have to invest. Come over and play with us here:
Even with our committed members slaying games left and right we managed to fall a little short of our Community Goal of 300 Games beaten by March 31st. Our unflinching players are not discouraged and continue to journey towards our ultimate goal of beating the entire NES library in 2019. We still managed to defeat 282 total games last month with 52 of those being in March alone!
This could be YOU if you join our happy rfgen NES Family
The RF Generation community of collectors and players has committed themselves to demolishing the entire licensed NES library in the year 2019. Is that even possible you say, with your help it totally is!! Check out the RFGen 2019 NES Challenge thread to see how to join in at anytime throughout the year. There is plenty of opportunity to participate regardless of your skill level, favorite style of game or the amount of time you have to invest. Come over and play with us here:
With 2019 upon us, I propose a challenge to all my RFGeneration friends. Let's join forces to tackle the Nintendo Entertainment System licensed library in one year starting TODAY!! I think if all of us pool our combined knowledge, resources, collections, gaming skills, and support each other throughout the year, we can accomplish this lofty goal.
Once upon a time, I was walking through an OfficeMax to get printer paper or some such, when I spotted the PC games cart. Do you remember those? This was sometime in 2004, so pretty much every store imaginable had some sort of budget or reduced price PC cart, and given the breadth and width of PC gaming at that point in time, the contents of the PC games cart were always a surprise, and this time was no different. From the middle I pulled out an orange "small box" PC game with the title, Konami Collector's Series - Castlevania & Contra (KCS-C&C) printed all over. Per usual, I had no idea what I was holding in my hands, though I was pretty sure it was a collection of pre-1990 PC ports of some of the most beloved classic console games, and that had me very excited.
I imagine you can see where this is going. Wait, wait, don't look it up yet; you will spoil the fun and possibly deprive yourself a good chuckle at my expense. The rest of you - well, you know what's coming.
When we last left off, our brave hero had ended his second run with 1,463,900 points with 3 lives remaining. On the following night, 7/23/12 I began a third run and ended with 2,208,300 points and only 2 lives remaining. After a solid first run, costly mistakes and an increase in enemy forces had caused my lives to dwindle down and I was at the edge of having to start over. It wasn't long into my 4th attempt, that I lost my remaining lives and finished with a score of 2,259,200..........to make things worse, I died at that damn waterfall stage.
Not to be discouraged, took a break for the rest of the night and came back on Tuesday to do a few practice runs and get a better feel for the game, to memorize unroaming enemy locations, and to get a better strategy for the final boss fight (where I was losing a few lives sometimes). I learned that I had a lot of success in keeping a spread gun and had learned where to locate one in almost every board. I also found a better route in the Energy Zone and pretty much mastered the level by slowing down a little more and being a bit more patient around the flamethrowers.
Tonight (7/25), I sat down in my gaming chair and decided that my opening strategy was to attempt a "no death" run on the first run through and try to do my best to stockpile lives, since the game gets harder. Though I had to reset the first time after losing a life on Stage 2, I lost only one life on my first full run. I was a little miffed (the perfectionist in me), but decided that this was fine since I had accumulated 746,00 points and started my second run with 11 lives (stockpiling . The second run also went pretty well. I lost a few lives on silly mistakes, popping up too early in bases and a knucklehead jump at the Waterfall boss; however, I managed to get through it with 1,497,300 points and 15 lives (stockpiling an additional 4). I'll take it.
Though I was getting a little fatigued, I decided to give it another go. My third run started off pretty well; there were some deaths that couldn't be prevented (i.e. crouching under fire, while roaming enemies run up behind you), but I was playing pretty solid and made it through the Snow Field, Energy Zone, and Hangar with no deaths. I made it to the end of the Alien's Lair without dying, but lost a life in the battle pretty early and lost my spread. I tried to gain a foothold, but lost 3 lives total in that fight, which was a bit discouraging. However, at the end of the run, I had accumulated 2,242,300 points and now have 18 lives (banking an additional 3).
I'm always skeptical about pausing, since I never know if I'll reenter the game with the same attention to detail as I had before. Since it's my only copy of the game, I can't really warm up on another TV and I can only hope to be as sharp was I was tonight. It might be beneficial to watch some end boss strategies, since I am still losing a few lives there and could possibly stockpile a few more with better play.
Tonight I had some extra time on my hands, the kids were asleep and the wife had gone to a "Dirty Dancing" 25th Anniversary party.....yeah, I'll never understand women, and why bother now? Anyway, I cranked up the ole NES2 and begin playing pretty loosely through a few levels to get my bearings and a feel for where all of the enemies were laid out. As most of you know who have played Contra, the boss battles aren't really difficult and it seems that you lose most of your lives to petty gunfire, or stray enemies bouncing onto the screen.
Though most of Contra is a side scroller, one particular level, The Waterfall, scrolls up and is filled with jumps and random enemies that spring from both sides of the screen. I noticed that in my second run through, the enemy foot soldiers were a little more plentiful than they were in the first; a trend I imagine will continue. In some areas, you are forced to the far left or right of the screen to advance and this really poses a problem with limited lives. After several runs, I found that I lost the majority of my lives on this stage and needed to be a little more careful by spraying the sides of screens with bullets before I proceeded upwards. On a good note, I found that I was particularly efficient on the "Snow Field" tonight and lost only one life on about 6 runs through it. I had similar success in "The Hanger," but the "Energy Field" gave me quite the headache on my final run of the night. It was quite the evening of up and downs.
After about 4 runs through the game, I decided to give a go at a solid attempt. The first run through was solid and I ended up with a total of 7 extra lives at the end. One particular thing I noted was that you average earning about one extra life per stage. My strategy/hope was to accumulate a comfortable amount of extra lives, as I had done through the first run, but my second run, was filled with several silly and costly mistakes, which I attribute a little to tiredness as the night wore on. At one point, I lost three men to the flamethrowers in the Energy Field. Not that this section of the game was tougher than it had been on the first run, I just found myself becoming a little impatient and trying to run through some of the flames with the initial invincibility at the start of each new life. After the Energy Field, I sailed through The Hanger and Alien's Lair with ease and ended the second run with 1,463,900 points and 3 lives remaining. My hope is that I don't come into my restart rusty and can finish a few stages untouched to build up my surplus of lives again. I'm also contending with a few nasty storms in the area and a dog who likes to lie a little too close to my NES, both of which threaten to reset my game.
Until next time, "Nobody puts Contra in the corner!"
One of the games I remember most fondly from my childhood is Contra for the Nintendo Entertainment System. One of the first great shooters on the NES, it's a game that is a must for anyone's collection.
A friend of mine was having trouble with his NES cutting off during the middle of game play and I suggested he purchase a 72 pin connector and offered to install it for him. After completing minor surgery on his system the other night, I put in a copy of Contra to test it out. I figured a full run would be long enough to ensure that the pins were install correctly and that my friend's issue with his system was corrected. I consider myself a pretty good Contra player and typically never use the code unless playing with a friend (or on the rare occasion, my wife). Anyway, I ran through the game with ease the first time and began a second run with 5 men. I quickly finished the 2nd run and again, had more men than I started with (I estimate 8 or 9) and a score somewhere just over 1 million.
I started thinking.....how high does this game score and is it possible to roll it over? Well, after a quick Google search, I discovered an article on a guy who scored 6,553,500 points. Hmmm.... After two quick runs and what seemed to be no increase in difficulty, I thought that surely I could beat this score if I put the time in. My next move was to take it to the source and check Twin Galaxies. Wouldn't you know it, there are 15 other people with the same score..... With the impossibility of 15 people reaching an endgame with the same score, I figure that the game's score is cut off at this amount.
Though disappointed, I figure why not still give it a shot. Hopefully, I'll be posting this score soon, stay tuned.
We are a community of collectors, gamers and the likes, and some of us enjoy to let the world know what is on our mind. For those members, we have the community blogs, a place where they can publish their thoughts and feelings regarding life, universe, and everything. Some of those members might even choose to write about gaming and collecting! Whatever they write about, you can find it on their blog. You can either see the latest community blog entries in the feed you see to the left, or you can browse for your favorite blog using the menu above. Interested in having your own blog hosted on RF Generation? It's rather simple, first be a registered member, and then click the "My Blog" link that you see in the navigation above. Following those two steps will certainly get you on your way to blogging.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy our entries, rantings, and completely unrelated series of thoughts. We write for you to read, so we certainly hope that you enjoy our material.
. The second run also went pretty well. I lost a few lives on silly mistakes, popping up too early in bases and a knucklehead jump at the Waterfall boss; however, I managed to get through it with 1,497,300 points and 15 lives (stockpiling an additional 4). I'll take it.
