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 closing in all around us we've had a slight surge of renewed interest in the NES Challenge with a few members putting in some last minute efforts, come old players reappearing and a couple new names added to the scoreboard. We've still got a ways to go, but as of this writing we have collectively destroyed 492 game for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 2019.......which is pretty impressive, but still short of our goal of the entire North American licensed library. Click that link above and take a look at our remaining list of games and jump in and lend a hand. Still a surprising amount of variety to play so no excuses in these last two months!!!
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!
Ninja Gaiden III: Ancient Ship of Doom is the third entry in the classic Ninja Gaiden series for NES, a series known for its unforgiving difficulty, and on the surface, NG3 pushes this over the line when you compare it to its predecessors. Unlike the first two games, there are no 1-ups for points, all enemies do multiple points of damage (and they come in swarms!), any death sends you back to the very beginning of the level (instead of segmenting the levels), and youre limited to 5 continues.
But heres the catch: the more I played NG3, the more I came to appreciate its game design, which is nothing short of ingenious throughout the experience. It also, somewhat surprisingly, might be the most balanced and fair game in the series.
Full disclosure- Growing up, I was a huge fan of the first two games in the series, and still consider NG2 to be one of my favorite games of all time. I rented NG3, and it just felt different. Ryus jumps were floaty instead of quick and crisp, and he now made noise whenever he slashed his sword. On top of that, the story seemed to have nothing to do with the first two games. Suffice to say I was disappointed. Later, as a teen, I discovered Ninja Gaiden Trilogy, and was pumped. At the time, I only owned NG2, so here was a way to play any Ninja Gaiden I wanted, without having to change over any hookups.
I bring this up, because my earliest in depth experience with NG3 was on NG Trilogy, playing it a ton as a freshman in college on the dorms (and boy am I glad nobody knew its potential value back then). It does feel more like the first two, with unlimited continues and taking less damage on hits. I made it deep into the game, and I appreciated NG3 more, but only to the point of it being a good game, but nothing special.
Fast forward to 2019, when I was finally able to acquire NG3 for NES through a friends generosity. I also felt like I kind of owed it to my friend to go through and complete the game, since he knew how much of a Ninja Gaiden fan I was. And boy, did I ever sell this game short over the years.
Lets get the obvious out of the way. Yes, this is a difficult game. But part of that difficulty comes from looking at the game through a misrepresented lens. If you go into the game expecting a platformer based on exploration, similar to Mario Bros or Metroid, the game will seem overly difficult. But likewise, going at this game from a run and gun (or hack and slash in this case) survival style, as was the case for the previous two Ninja Gaiden games, makes the gameplay seem overly unbalanced.
The problem is you have to look at this game as more of a puzzle platformer, akin to Super Ghouls and Ghosts, only about 10 times faster and more fluid. Its about learning how to get through each section taking minimal damage, while still offering high adrenaline action. You have to learn when to wait and when to run, when to take out enemies and when to just move on.
A great example of this element is level 5-1. If you rush over the 1st jump, and enemy will trigger that runs in and likely knocks you back into the pit. Clear that, and a few jumps later you're on a platform with enemies coming from four directions diagonally above and below you. Stay and try to fight off the swarm, you'll probably take a bit of damage. Kill the enemy to the upper right of you and get to a safer spot, you won't take any damage. It's more like finding the right path through a platforming maze, but once you find the right path, it's often fluid and fun, and the difficulty sort melts away.
And when looking at it that way, all those negative difficulty spikes I mentioned earlier become positives, in that the game makes you master each level before youll be able to progress. I can see where this could be a turn-off for newbies, but the payoff for getting good at it is immensely worth it, as it is extremely satisfying to get into a rhythm and just start dominating the levels that had kicked your butt initially.
Recently, in the Shoot the Core-Cast for Zanac, the guys and guests briefly got into why people play video games in the 1st place, and Im paraphrasing but the consensus opinion was how good it feels to be on a power fantasy and plow through everything that stands in your way. As you get good at it, this is a great representation of that type of experience. A great example from my personal experience with it was one of the later levels, which throws swarms of enemies at you while you navigate several perilous jumps from platform to platform, while those platforms start slowly disappearing once you touch them. Didnt have a clue initially how Id get through it, but once I figured it out, its an awesome level to play. As you gain consistency, the more the game throws at you, the more you find yourself grinning at the game wanting to say aloud, What else you got?!
Thats where NG3 is a masterstroke in game design. For all the game throws at you from a difficulty perspective, it also in many ways sets you up to succeed. I could go level through level with examples of this, but theres also several general examples of it. Earlier I discussed how I was turned off by the floaty jump mechanics when I first played it as a child. Now that Im through it, this was a necessary change, as levels like 4-1 and 7-2 would be impossible without that change.
It also sets you up beautifully for the boss battles. In almost every level, the last weapon you receive is also the most effective against the boss. Tecmo even throws some other subtle assistance at you, as Act 7 is by far longest level, nearly impossible to complete on one life because of the timer (yeah, theres another element to add to the difficulty), you can pick up two different 1ups in level 7-2. It shouldnt go unnoticed that its the only time in the entire game there is more than one 1up in an Act.
Also, a few things set it apart in the platforming itself. First, a much needed fix from earlier games is the handling of respawning enemies, of which NG1 was infamous for. Respawning is handled in a very fair manner. If you kill an enemy, and trigger its spawn point again, nothing happens. If you avoid an enemy, and it de-spawns by going off screen, then it will respawn if you go over its trigger point. Completely fair.
It also should be noted that this game never asks the impossible. There are no precise, nearly pixel perfect jumps to make, just many that have to be deliberate. Go through technical sections with conviction and a plan, theres very few difficult spots. Go in wildly, or get in a panic, and you wont last long.
Needlessly to say, in terms of game design, this is one of the best games Ive ever played, period. The only downside is that you have to start mastering it before youll realize everything its doing right. And that brings me back to a point about what sets it apart as a great game.
If the difficulty was anything less, it ultimately undermines the overall experience (hence my initial experience with NG Trilogy)
You wont fully appreciate this game until youre good enough to overpower it, and without the difficulty set up exactly how it is, there would be no reason to get to that level of mastery. For how difficult the levels are, theres only two spots in the entire game where you take what seems like unavoidable damage: One of the last screens in Act 5, and the Act 6 boss because of a somewhat random attack. Thatsit. The rest of the time its just about taking the correct route through the game.
This far into the review and I havent mentioned graphics, music, and controls, so lets briefly run through them-
Controls- As fluid and responsive as any game Ive ever played on the NES
Graphics- fantastic looks to the levels and backgrounds, with plenty of variety mixed in. Nicely done cutscenes (though late in the game it incorporates a strobe light effect that may negatively affect some players)
Sound- Absolutely fantastic, plenty of high adrenaline tunes for the levels, mixed with mystery for the cutscenes.
All this isnt to say the game is flawless. From a story perspective, the game does jump the shark. Its by far the weakest story of the three NES NGs, with the only really interesting point coming about midway through the game (dont worry, no spoilers). The environments arent nearly as connected to the story as they were in the first two games.
Also, there is one spot in which the difficulty doesnt seem right: the boss order. While none of the bosses have overly difficult patterns, the Act 3 boss is probably the toughest, next to the final boss rush, while the Act 5 boss is the easiest. None of the bosses, including the final boss rush are anywhere near the difficulty of Jaquio, from earlier in the series.
I went into this having defeated both NG1 and NG2, and Ive played both semi-regularly for nearly 30 years. Ill just throw this out there- for all that is said about NG3s difficulty, its the first in the series that Ive beaten start to finish without using a continue.
In the end, Ill take a soapbox moment and say its sad that NG1 is the game recognized by casual fans, because its the 2nd and 3rd entries that are among the best games on the system. But thats in a way what truly works against it. The more time you put into this, the more youll get out of it, so it hinders it from being a casual gaming experience.
But once you do put the time into it, you find that it wouldnt be as special to overcome its challenge. Ultimately, its because of its difficulty and near perfect game design that its a unique and fun game to play, and the deeper you get into it, the more it becomes one of the most satisfying and rewarding gaming experiences ever made. Period.
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.
Started the night off right by killing Jaws. It still took me several tries to stab the big jerk, but I eventually did it. I think the trick was to wait for him to be moving away from you when you get him to jump out. Thats the only thing I can think of because I'm pretty sure all my previous attempts were with him charging me. Whatever the method was, I'll never have to use it again
Thought I'd sink my teeth into some Ninja Gaiden after that. Spent about 1 and a half hours playing and getting my ass handed to me by Jaquimo's (I dont remember if I spelt that correctly) second form. Took a break and did some work (I actually have to do that once and a while:P) Came back and had a much better run. Still took a few tries more than I would have liked, but I really cant complain to much.
Future Plans - More Ninja action. If I need a break I might try Where's Waldo again though. Got a cheap headset yesterday. Bickman2k is helping me set up the audio so I can give it a try. Shouldnt be much longer before I can try out a commentary.
Just today, Tomonobu Itagaki announced that he is leaving and suing Tecmo over unpaid bonuses. He claims a completion bonus for Dead or Alive 4 has gone unpaid; further stating, "President Yoshimi Yasuda chose not only to violate this agreement, but also turned defiant, telling me 'if you are dissatisfied with the decision not to pay the bonuses, either quit the company or sue it.' " So far, Tecmo has yet to respond.
Tomonobu Itagaki (via his translator, Andrew Szymanski) has contacted a number of news outlets requesting prompt reporting of this story. This news arrives the same week as the release of the highly anticipated sequel, Ninja Gaiden II. This severance of ties to Tecmo ensures he likely won't be able to work on any future Dead or Alive or Ninja Gaiden projects.
Itagaki is most known for his work with Team NINJA where he created the Dead or Alive series and the modern reincarnation of the Ninja Gaiden series. He derives his success from incorporating 'fun' into his projects to ensure satisfying gameplay. Itagaki's cognizence of Western gamers' interests also allows his hits to become international successes instead of Japan-only treasures.
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.
Just today, Tomonobu Itagaki announced that he is leaving and suing Tecmo over unpaid bonuses. He claims a completion bonus for Dead or Alive 4 has gone unpaid; further stating, "President Yoshimi Yasuda chose not only to violate this agreement, but also turned defiant, telling me 'if you are dissatisfied with the decision not to pay the bonuses, either quit the company or sue it.' " So far, Tecmo has yet to respond.