It isn't valid to talk about completing a 2600 game - they are all about high score - you see more or less everything within 10 mins of starting a game such is the techie gap now.

Some can be "completed" by rolling the score (Megamania or Kaboom!) - most just reset the score back to zero and carry on.

There are some splendid homebrew efforts like Thrust that have proper levels and can be finished but since they were coded in the last few years can you still call them retro? A member of the Halo dev team has done a 2D version for the 2600....

Many of the better early games are really designed for multi-player too so they are hard to gauge now - Warlords being a prime example. (which is trumped by the modern homebrew Medieval Mayhem)

Others I'd opt for are Demon Attack, Atlantis, Pacman Jr., Super Breakout, Yars Revenge, Keystone Kapers, Pitfall and Pitfall2, Pressure Cooker, River Raid, and Solar Storm (paddle shmup!)

I know what you mean @davyK 10mins is indeed all you need which is why I suggested doing 5. Kangaroo is one of those you can complete, although the emphasis is still on the score. Just like Donkey Kong the game just loops round until you die but I've yet to hear of a Kangaroo kill screen.

How about Sky Skipper moot?

davyK is also correct about the multiplayer aspect of a lot of Atari games, I'd love for Combat to be one of the 5 but it's not practical.

Sounds interesting. Was that Super Mario Bros port made using these techniques?

davyK wrote:

Super Aleste - short game - normal difficulty - 1,025,820

Just finished the short game, using an average of 1 save state per level (a few more on the final boss) - 1,173,750.

Obviously I cheated, but I'll probably play this again before Monday to post a proper score, and because I reckon I might be able to finish it without save states on my next go (or the one after perhaps). Basic stuff for shmup fans, as it's clearly a practice mode for the main game, but finishing anything in this genre unassisted is an achievement for me. I did finish Trouble Witches Neo though, but only because it's almost impossible not to with infinite credits. That gaming session was an absolute car crash, I'm sure there was an integral gameplay mechanic I was missing, the last boss was insane.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

retroking1981 wrote:

How about Sky Skipper moot?

Is that the one I really liked where you rescued animals in a biplane? If so, yes.

Thats the one

Super Aleste? I may have to roll out ZSnes...

yeah - level 2 is a cracker.

Another favourite of mine sees you shooting through a maze of rock - the boss scrapes rocks off the side walls and chucks them at you - great stuff.

I'm getting used to the weapons, I quite like the near constant option to change. I'm currently trying to avoid everything except spread (or whatever the one with the pods is called), which is great when powered up, or the power/charge weapon, which I try to hang onto for the bosses, although not all the levels have a guardian. Multi direction shot is wank.

I'm dreading playing Back to the Future III again. I played it for an hour earlier in the week and wondered if if was one of those games that couldn't be completed, as even with save states I couldn't jump from the train to the DeLorean.

Remember that pressing R shoulder affects your current weapon - you can select from several different spread patterns with multi-direction shot which can become very effective once you power up sufficiently.

It will toggle a homing function with laser and with circle it locks position (same with the little pods - called sprite - R button will toggle between locking them in position and having them swarm around you when you move)

Fantasia on Megadrive is legendary for it's crapness and vertical difficulty curve....

Mwahahaha!!

That was the way it was - a game was hefty investment then.

I had a natural aversion to licenced stuff back then which meant I dodged most the crap - also meant I missed out on the odd gem but overall it was the thing to do - I'm still pretty wary of anything with a licence.

I got Fantasia a few years back - think it is still kicking around - and I couldn't believe how hard it was - especially given the subject matter. Not that big a deal when you paid just a couple of quid - a £40 game back in the early 90s is another matter.

Good games would get played through again and again even once you finished them. I must've finished something like Contra 3 in a week, but would still go through again from time to time months later. Or there were difficult games where each session would see you get a little further, always having to start from the beginning when continues ran out. Probably wouldn't bother with either now, and it shows how things have changed that save states are pretty much a requirement.

Even when there was infinite continues it didn't help you if it was bath/bed/dinner/lunch/school/visit to shit family member time.

Many years ago, me and my mates were still being enthralled by emulators. We had a pretty decent suite of Genesis/Megadrive games that all worked perfectly (56k and smaller internet landscape made the kind of rom collections that roll off the drive today a lot harder to compile.) One game was different however, that game was Back to the Future III. For some reason this was the hardest game ever designed and it was only one level, well we thought it was only one level. You were riding a horse that clopped around 100mph and the game was lost usually in around the first 10 seconds of play.

 It became a challenge game, a regular on the roster (the gatherings were based around Money Idol(Puzzle) Exchanger but I used to like to throw on Dick Tracy on the megadrive as it was one of the few game I could beat on Normal pretty handily, there was a second monitor for the other side of the room and it was incredibly surreal seeing way-too-cool girls I was into at some parties, watching me play Dick Tracy like it was some bizarre tv show. "Hey, look there's Madonna!")

It wasn't until quite some time later that I realised this BttF was a faulty rom, the sound, which would have been a tip off played at normal speed. The game could be played on normal speed, but damn did it lose its edge. I still remember getting so close through a combination of luck and memorisation. You could even see where you were in relation to Clara on the bottom of the screen, "oh, smashed into birds so fast they couldn't be shot again". That game will always remind me of a happy time in my tumultuous teenage years.