Beaten In 2023

[AceAerosmith]

I did a search and didn't find anything so I'll start it off....

1.Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (PS4) 01/10/23
2.Murdered: Soul Suspect (PS4) 01/16/23
3.Call of Duty:WWII (PS4) 01/25/23
4.Sniper 3:Ghost Warrior (PS4) 02/12/23
5.Assassin's Creed Origins (PS4) 02/26/23

[Az]

1. Samurai Shodown (2019) (Xbox One) 01/03
2. TMNT: Tournament Fighters (Genesis) 01/05
3. Guitar Hero 3 (Xbox 360) 01/09
4. Castlevania (NES) 01/14

For Samurai Shodown, I considered it "beat" since that was the day I finished the story mode with all characters, unlocked everything, and obtained every achievement. Fantastic game but the load times are brutal, even on a Series X. Load times on regular Xbox One were to the point I couldn't even stand to play it. Save scummed my way through Genesis Tournament Fighters on hardest difficulty to fight the final boss and get that achievement on the Cowabunga Collection... horrible game, as bad or worse than some pre-SFII fighters.

Went through Guitar Hero 3 on easy career since the achievements don't stack for harder difficulties. Played through Castlevania on the Anniversary Collection. Thank goodness for save states, as I would have never made it otherwise. I never owned this one back in the day and the farthest I think I had made it before was the Frankenstein boss.

[retroman]

I have been on a 360 racing kick of late. So far in 2023 I have beat Dirt 3, and Dirt 2. I have Dirt, Grid, and Grid 2 ready and waiting next.

[SeverThe7th]

1. Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance (GCN)
2. Blast Corps. (N64)
3. Glover (N64)
4. Buck Bumble (N64)

[Az]

5. Mortal Kombat Komplete Collection (PS3) 01/18
6. Doom (Xbox 360) 01/25

Finished the story mode in MK, just picked this up in December for PS3 even though I've had the 360 version since launch. It was only $10, which it was worth to check Kratos out.

360 doom is the version of Ultimate Doom for Live Arcade. I had played through the newer Xbox One release of this a few months ago and decided to go through the 360 version since it was fresh on my mind. My original save game was dated November of 2012... so it took me 10 years to finish this I always considered this a better port than the newer rerelease being that it had online co-op and deathmatch, but after revisiting it I've definitely changed my mind. The button layout is horrible and the turning speed is slow as molasses.

[Aussie2B]

1. SWAT Police (Arcade via MAME) 2/2

This isn't what I was expecting to be my first game beaten in 2023, but I'm a fan of the NES version of Cabal, and whenever my husband comes across a shooting gallery-style game similar to that in MAME, he wants me to give it a try (considering there aren't a ton of games like Cabal, as far as I know). So I played through this Korean game last night. It's nothing to brag about, though. I used an absurd amount of credits. This game is a real quarter-muncher, or won-muncher, I guess. There's nothing to hide behind like in Cabal, and the enemies and bullets keep swarming the screen. I can't even imagine the kind of obsessive-compulsive playing it would take to 1CC this game. Anyway, it wasn't bad, but it's got nothing on Cabal either. Granted, I can't recall if I've ever played the arcade original of Cabal, so maybe that's super cheap too, for all I know. This is why I often prefer home ports of arcade games. Even if the aesthetics take a hit, it's worth that downgrade if the difficulty gets better balanced, making the fun factor go way up.

[Az]

1. SWAT Police (Arcade via MAME) 2/2

A few years ago I came across this on one of those cheapo multi-game arcade boards I'd bought. I'd never heard of it before and was pleasantly surprised. I'm a fan of crosshair style shooters as well, even a mediocre title like this is a welcomed entry in such a niche genre. That board I played it on was a bit crap but I'm glad it introduced it to me, along with Riot and Spinal Breakers.

[Aussie2B]

1. SWAT Police (Arcade via MAME) 2/2
2. Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure (PSP) 2/7

Took me longer than I had expected, but I finally wrapped up Gurumin. It wasn't absolutely amazing or anything, but it was fun, cute, and satisfying to play. I'm glad I got around to playing it after having it in my collection for many years. Maybe some day I'll consider a replay and go for more of the unlockables (the remaining photos, outfits, etc.), but I'm good for the time being.

[Tron 2.0]

Shining Force-CD
I've now completed all the books in the game book three was the last one for the main story.Yes i did find the ticket in book two which unlocks the museum but that is simply a boss rush mode.

[Az]

7. Doom II (Xbox 360) 02/14

I had finished the "No Rest For The Living" expansion this came with first, then went back through the main game after finishing the newer release of vanilla Doom II on XB1 a few months ago. I'm not nearly as familiar with the sequel as the original, so I probably spent 10-15 minutes on each of the 30 levels.

[YoshiM]

Beat Portal 2 on Switch last night.

[Aussie2B]

1. SWAT Police (Arcade via MAME) 2/2
2. Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure (PSP) 2/7
3. Barney's Hide & Seek Game (Genesis) 2/24

I almost forgot to include this, haha. My daughter likes "playing" this game, but she also asked me to play it, so I went through the whole thing while she watched. I know this game is something of a meme, with people either saying it's the worst game ever or factitiously heralding it as an epic masterpiece, since I guess that's peak comedy to some, but the boring reality is that it's pretty much perfect for the intended audience and understandably uninteresting for older players. I know most people like to make out like their kids are gifted, and when you combine that with gamers, you got people claiming they and their kids could beat Battletoads at 5 months old, but again, the boring reality is that most games are too hard for the preschool and under crowd. I was struggling to clear stage 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. when I was 5, and my daughter, at 2, can barely do much more than mash buttons in games. Furthermore, I don't want to give her a ton of screen time anyway. But she likes watching the Barney show on occasion, and thus, we introduced her to the Genesis game. She likes pressing buttons, and while everybody makes fun of the fact the game can play and beat itself, I think the "self-play" feature is great. She'll happily sit and watch Barney do his own thing, haha. And when she's a bit older, I can see her having fun actually trying to locate the kids and presents.

[YoshiM]

1. Portal 2 (Switch) 2/22
2. Castle Crashers (Switch) 3/4

@Aussie-Looking at my XBLA downloads, I found I had purchased "Toddler Tantrum" from the Indie store. It basically let you create and move shapes around, make noises and such by moving the sticks and pushing buttons. Funny thing is, my daughter when she was your daughter's age didn't want anything to do with it. She wanted to play more what Daddy was playing (I don't remember what-she had a thing for N64 at the time so I might have been playing that).

[Az]

8. Super Contra (Xbox One) 02/27
9. Contra III (Xbox One) 03/03

First time I had ever played through Super Contra till the end. I love the graphics, animation, and vibrant color schemes of some of the weapon shots, but it does play a bit crap compared to the NES versions. Putting those huge trees in the foreground of the forest level is amateur hour game design though.

[Aussie2B]

1. SWAT Police (Arcade via MAME) 2/2
2. Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure (PSP) 2/7
3. Barney's Hide & Seek Game (Genesis) 2/24
4. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX via Vita Metal Gear Solid HD Collection)

It was "only" in 2019 that I beat the first MSX Metal Gear on the same collection (I say "only" because that's nothing for me when it comes to gaps between when I play one game in a series and when I play the next), but I'm glad I finally got around to this one. Just like the original, once I got into a groove, it was really enjoyable. I really liked both, so I'm not sure if I can say that I liked this one much more than the first, but it definitely has more personality and polish. It feels very sophisticated for an 8-bit game. The first felt a little more game-y, while this was a bit more cinematic, but this had no shortage of pure gameplay too. I went into the first Metal Gear with the plan of playing the MSX games and the Game Boy Color game, which I found for a few bucks at a thrift store years before it got stupidly expensive, and maybe stopping there, but now I'm excited to someday play Metal Gear Solid. So maybe I'll be talking about that in, say, 2027, haha.

[Tron 2.0]

Completed shining force II recently like i did with cd towards the end i did some leveling before fighting the final boss.Still the difficulty in SFII is weird at the start the damage enemies deal wasn't that bad but towards the end,if you're party member doesn't have a high amount of hp that character can be defeated easily.

[Aussie2B]

1. SWAT Police (Arcade via MAME) 2/2
2. Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure (PSP) 2/7
3. Barney's Hide & Seek Game (Genesis) 2/24
4. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX via Vita Metal Gear Solid HD Collection)
5. TwinBee Da! (PSP) 3/10
6. Detana! TwinBee (PSP) 3/13

I know I just listed TwinBee Da! as beaten a few months ago, but I decided to return to TwinBee Portable and played through it again. My personal policy for this stuff is that I can count a game as beaten once per year. (Though, if I were replaying a game repeatedly over New Years, I don't think I'd count it for both then. I mean more like totally separate sessions with a game.) And then I played through Detana! TwinBee, but that's no big accomplishment. It's one of my favorite TwinBee games, but I've always been all about the PC Engine port, which has a nicely balanced difficulty level. The arcade original just gets too crazy and cheap around halfway through, with super speedy enemies and bullets everywhere. against busy backgrounds that make it hard to keep track of things, and my playing of it always devolves into blowing through countless lives and credits by the end, which isn't particularly fun. But it does, expectedly, have nicer graphics and audio than the PC Engine port, even if that does look and sound really nice too, so it's worth playing the arcade original once in a while. (Besides, my Duo-RX is packed away right now, anyway.)

[Aussie2B]

1. SWAT Police (Arcade via MAME) 2/2
2. Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure (PSP) 2/7
3. Barney's Hide & Seek Game (Genesis) 2/24
4. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX via Vita Metal Gear Solid HD Collection)
5. TwinBee Da! (PSP) 3/10
6. Detana! TwinBee (PSP) 3/13
7. TwinBee Yahho! (PSP) 3/16

Blew through another game on TwinBee Portable while taking a break from the original arcade TwinBee. Again, it's not something to brag about, since I went through quite a few credits.

[Aussie2B]

1. SWAT Police (Arcade via MAME) 2/2
2. Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure (PSP) 2/7
3. Barney's Hide & Seek Game (Genesis) 2/24
4. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX via Vita Metal Gear Solid HD Collection)
5. TwinBee Da! (PSP) 3/10
6. Detana! TwinBee (PSP) 3/13
7. TwinBee Yahho! (PSP) 3/16
8. TwinBee (PSP) 3/19

Whoo-hoo, I finally managed to clear the fifth and final boss of the original arcade TwinBee, so I'm counting it as beaten, even if there's no actual end to this game. The numbers for the stages keep going up, but Stage 6 through Stage 10 are basically just a hard mode, akin to Konami console games that stick you back at the beginning for a harder version of the game, like Castlevania and Stinger. Only difference is that there's no credits or anything in between with this. So if I've counted those other games as beaten without doing the harder loop, I'm not gonna sweat it here either. (Actually, I have beaten the harder loop in Stinger, but that's beside the point.)