Beaten in 2019

[Aussie2B]

1. Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Dancing Museum (N64) 1/7
2. Magic Knight Rayearth (GB) 2/21
3. Sesame Street: The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (GBC) 2/23

This is hardly one to be proud of, haha. I was talked into playing this for a laugh during a hangout. I expected it to be mind-numbingly easy, so I put it on Hard, but that just left me wondering how much easier Easy could be. I blew through the whole thing in a matter of minutes.

So far, I'm three for three for licensed games. I gotta play some more normal games, haha.

[Aussie2B]

1. Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Dancing Museum (N64) 1/7
2. Magic Knight Rayearth (GB) 2/21
3. Sesame Street: The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (GBC) 2/23
4. Skate or Die: Bad 'N Rad (GB) 2/24

I've been doing a good job hammering out some games these last few days while I've had some free time and been hanging out with friends and family. This one was, by far, the biggest struggle, and even then, it doesn't seem like I got the best ending? I wouldn't have even realized it if I didn't want to rewatch the credits online and saw a scene I didn't get. I don't know if there's some kind of glitch going on or if there are multiple endings and I didn't meet the condition for the best, whatever that may be. There's barely any info on this game, and I can't find anything about ending variations. Either way, it took a ton of practice just to beat the game at all, so I'm happy with that accomplishment.

[Aussie2B]

1. Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Dancing Museum (N64) 1/7
2. Magic Knight Rayearth (GB) 2/21
3. Sesame Street: The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (GBC) 2/23
4. Skate or Die: Bad 'N Rad (GB) 2/24
5. Crayon Shin-chan 2: Ora to Wanpaku Gokko Dazo (GB) 2/25

Another one down (and yet another licensed game). I'm probably about coming to an end of the Game Boy games in my collection that I've yet to beat and can get a quick turnaround out of. I have about 10 still unbeaten, and they're ones I'm either not enthused about playing or they'll take a significant chunk of time. But I'm not done with Shin-chan for now anyway. This was more of a test run for me. It's no big thing to just blow through this and get the regular ending, so I'm working on beating the game with all 25 smileys. But it's good to first know precisely where the stages end, because it can be easy to advance to the next stage unintentionally before you've collected everything. I can get all five on the first three stages. I got four on stage 4 before I accidentally completed the stage. I've located four in the fifth and final stage, but I didn't have any left by the time I beat the boss. The final boss isn't hard, but it seems like it could be a little tricky beating him without taking a single hit (and thus losing a smiley).

[Steven]

First game I beat this year was Resident Evil Revelations 2. Missed out on it back when it first came out and really enjoyed it!

[Aussie2B]

1. Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Dancing Museum (N64) 1/7
2. Magic Knight Rayearth (GB) 2/21
3. Sesame Street: The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (GBC via emulation) 2/23
4. Skate or Die: Bad 'N Rad (GB) 2/24
5. Crayon Shin-chan 2: Ora to Wanpaku Gokko Dazo (GB) 2/25
6. Sorcerer's Maze (PlayStation via emulation) 3/3

Another game we came across via emulation and I then ended up playing through the whole thing. These sorts of weird budget games are one of the reasons I love the PS1's library. I ended up ordering a legit copy to add to my collection. There's no denying that XS Games butchered a lot of the stuff they localized and gave them hilariously bad covers that didn't remotely match the content of the games, but I'm still glad they were around to localize this kind of stuff that would've stayed in Japan otherwise.

[Aussie2B]

1. Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Dancing Museum (N64) 1/7
2. Magic Knight Rayearth (GB) 2/21
3. Sesame Street: The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (GBC via emulation) 2/23
4. Skate or Die: Bad 'N Rad (GB) 2/24
5. Crayon Shin-chan 2: Ora to Wanpaku Gokko Dazo (GB) 2/25
6. Sorcerer's Maze (PlayStation via emulation) 3/3
7. Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth (Wii) 3/7

I started this back in December, but as is often the case for me in recent years, games that I think I'll blow through quick end up taking me months because I'll go weeks at a time between each of my play sessions. It's even likelier to be the case when it's a home console game. But despite playing it irregularly, it was a fun game, and it's always nice to knock out another Castlevania. There aren't too many left that I've never beaten, at least not among the ones I have any desire to play (couldn't care less about the Lords of Shadow sub-series). Now that I think about it, as surprising as it may be, considering I've had a Wii since shortly after its launch, this must be the first actual Wii game I've ever beaten. Virtual Console, sure, I've done that, but I have a pretty small collection of games actually developed for the Wii and have only really dabbled in them. Of course, this is just a WiiWare game, so that still leaves regular, retail releases.

[Aussie2B]

1. Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Dancing Museum (N64) 1/7
2. Magic Knight Rayearth (GB) 2/21
3. Sesame Street: The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (GBC via emulation) 2/23
4. Skate or Die: Bad 'N Rad (GB) 2/24
5. Crayon Shin-chan 2: Ora to Wanpaku Gokko Dazo (GB) 2/25
6. Sorcerer's Maze (PlayStation via emulation) 3/3
7. Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth (Wii) 3/7
8. McDonald's Monogatari: Honobono Tenchou Ikusei Game (GBC) 3/14

I gotta admit that this feels like a bit of a dishonest victory, haha. A little over a month and a half into the in-game year that this game lasts for, I didn't appear to have anything left to do. Maybe I'm missing something, considering I don't have the manual and am far from what one would consider fluent in Japanese, but it really doesn't appear to be the case. I maxed out the protagonist and all the staff members, and with no currency or items or anything, those seem like the only goals there are. It's probably no coincidence none of the files that were already on the cart were past that second month. So I just slept through the remaining 10 months, only checking email each day for invitations to the handful of special events. The ending didn't really acknowledge anything I had done, so it doesn't seem like it was a good or bad ending. Really, it seems like they developed the five mini-games based on duties at McDonald's and then threw them in something resembling a sim without taking the time to flesh it out. In a way, the execution of it all is even stranger than the concept itself. So even though I'm still scratching my head, I guess I'm finished with it. If there's some big underlying gameplay aspect I somehow missed, then I guess I won't know until when and if there's an English patch or FAQ for it.