Games I Beat In 2014 #21-30: March-May

This is the landing page for the third batch of 10 Games I Beat In 2014. Once again, I beat four of the ten games for the first time, although Golden Sun was the only game I came into 100% blind. As always, below are the titles and first few words of each entry.

#21 (#9 NEW!): Golden Sun

How badly does a piece of media–game, book, whatever–have to fall apart at its end to retroactively ruin the experience that led up to it? Golden Sun exists to test this question. Released in 2001 for the Game Boy Advance, Golden Sun is an RPG that I had heard almost exclusively good things about. I …

#22 (#10 NEW!): Shatterhand

It seems to be a theme of late that I’ve been playing great games that, for one reason or another, fall apart at the end. Luckily, Shatterhand, unlike Golden Sun, is a complete, self-contained, satisfying experience once you make it to the end. Actually getting there, though, is one of the more aggravating experiences I’ve …

#23 (#11 NEW!): Nightshade (NES)

(NOTE: If you want to be technical, this wasn’t actually my first time “beating” Nightshade–about 11ish years ago, I played through it on an emulator with the help of save states. I don’t count that for the purposes of this series, mainly because the game itself has no save system built-in…in other words, I cheated …

#24: Super Mario Land

This was something of an unexpected entry into the series, coming about because of my inability to stream Another Metroid 2 Remake earlier in the week. Game Boy games go! While Tetris was its pack-in game–a savvy move by Nintendo, as Tetris was one of the first games to appeal to “Casual” gamers and broaden …

#25: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan

Late in the run of the 1980s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series (The cartoon has since been revived several times), Shredder admits that, in trying to come up with an evil plan, his solution occasionally is “*Shrug* I got nuthin’. Let’s just kidnap April O’Neil again.” I bring this up in reference to today’s Game …

#26: Trio The Punch – Never Forget Me…

We’re doing things a little different this time–this is the first game in the series I beat on an emulator, specifically MAME. While this particular game did see a Japanese PS2 release, that’s not the one I played. Why will become obvious soon enough. You may notice that this is going up on April 20th …

#27 (#12 NEW!): Dragon Ball Z: Buu’s Fury

Last time on Games I Beat In 2014! Emptyeye wrote about a game that lacked any coherency in an article that did likewise! Now, our hero is faced with his toughest challenge yet…writing about a licensed game based on a property that he doesn’t even like! Can Emptyeye recover his form? Or was the previous …

#28: Contra (NES)

He’s a shirtless marvel who looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger and has to front-flip when he jumps. It’s a futuristic machine gun that can be customized with a variety of destructive modifications. Together, they fight alien invasions! Released in 1988 by Konami (Look, after several false starts, it’s our first “proper” Konami game!), Contra has nothing …

#29: Ninja Gaiden (NES)

Apparently the theme of this cluster of updates is “Games that are, or at least have a reputation for being, stupidly hard”. This game certainly fits the bill. Released in the US in 1989 by Tecmo, Ninja Gaiden is, much like Rygar, a game Tecmo advertised as “THE NUMBER ONE ARCADE SMASH!!” Unlike Rygar, though, …

#30: Batman: The Video Game

It’s funny how history repeats itself. Around August 2013, it was announced that Ben Affleck would be playing Batman, and the Internet at large rushed to preemptively declare the resulting movie “Ruined Forever”. Apparently no one remembered the reaction to Heath Ledger as the Joker, or, going back to the time before the Internet as …