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« on: June 24, 2006, 01:53:47 PM »
I think we should have a topic where we brag about our gaming accomplishments. And this will be that topic where we drop humility and show off.
I'll start. I play a lot of games, and usually finish 100% of most games I care too, which is nearly all of the games I touch. Which is bragging in itself, I guess. But the ones I'll point out are ones that stood out...though I think some of you will find them a little ridiculous.
Soul Calibur II (Arcade) - 10000 Wins in Conquest Mode
I think this one's a little unfair, cost-wise, as I worked at Playdium for over a year (some of the best times of my life, since work and play were so intertwined!) - and one of the benefits was having a half-hour TimePlay card with every shift. (Playdium fitted all their game machines with a swipe-card system, so people could either purchase Credits or TimePlay on a convenient PlayCard.) So essentially, this would've cost me A LOT of money if I didn't have that advantage.
Anyway, I specify the Arcade version because it has one mode the console versions don't have - the Conquest mode (though one area in the console games' Weapon Master mode actually has the same music and layout). In Conquest mode, you create a character, join one of four armies, and fight (computer-controlled versions of) others from opposing armies to increase your rank and gain territory. When one army takes over the world, it starts again with each army having 25%, and the top four players are, by default, resdistributed to being the leaders of the four armies and it starts all over again. That part comes and goes, but your personal record of wins and losses continues as long as you play often enough to keep your character account active.
I used Nightmare, and called him "VGMAPS.COM" (seriously). I started playing and soon got addicted, enjoying the whole part about raising my rank. For a while I tended to work weekdays, when it was quieter in the mall...and so I noticed the regulars, including a guy who used Cassandra (who he named Kai) who was probably challenging my record. As I got more wins, so did he/she. When my character encountered his character, I was impressed that she gave me a challenge. (Or rather, that he used enough moves with her that the AI version could kick my butt as often as I kicked his/hers.) We never really spoke (I guess I didn't put off a friendly enough vibe) and even though I'm sure he knew I worked there (he bought Credits from me a few times) he still wanted to put in the time and money to keep his rank comparable to mine.
In single Conquest rounds, which put you against eight opponents, I had a habit of consistently finishing them all off in four minutes. So by my estimation, if I never had any losses, for 10000 wins, it still would've taken me 5000 minutes...or 83 1/3 hours. So, say, maybe 85-90 hours including losses. On an ARCADE GAME.
And I did get that 10000 wins. I played a little more, but not much...Kai had given up by the 8000s, so I had no more rivals. And it got ridiculous that one day I came in for a whopping 750 games (using a few monthly two-hour TimePlay cards)...yeah. Anyway, Playdium soon closed a few months after I quit, sadly, and the arcade machine was auctioned off...I wasn't going to buy it for $1000, but if I actually had to buy all the Credits necessary to get 10000 wins, it wouldn't surprise me if it would've been about as much or more.
Animal Crossing (GameCube) - 999999999 Bells without the use of an Action Replay
This game is an example of more tedium. I don't know if Nintendo just wants you to find a way to cheat, or to seriously play often enough to do this. One piece of "furniture" in Animal Crossing is the Post Office Model, which requires a maxed-out savings account (1 Bell short of a billion Bells). But it really takes a long time in normal play to save up to a million...how could anyone get a thousand times that much? It would take years - many more than most people would play for.
Now, some people resorted to using cheat devices - such as the Action Replay - to punch in a few codes and voila: a lot of Bells or a Post Office Model or whatever.
But not me. I managed to do it without resorting to something so simple. I did it with an in-game glitch...but it still cost me a lot of time to do, so in a twisted way, it really does count as a kind of accomplishment.
Using the "doppleganger" money-making method (leaving town on another Memory Card, then removing that Memory Card and resuming your real save game as if you never left, leaving you with a Gyroid doppleganger of yourself to play as, then taking out all your money and throwing it outside, then coming back to town as yourself - with your bank account magically back to what it was when you left, but all your money also sitting on the ground outside), I was essentially duplicating (or "duping") my money. But here's the catch - the GameCube game only let you have bags of up to 30000 Bells, and each bag would take up a whole space. And the increasing distance between the Post Office and the next empty space made each run-about longer. Typically I would fill up four acres in one hour, which would allow me to "dupe" 22.5 million Bells, so it was part of my daily routine for a while. About a month and a half of doing this majorly tedious run-around just about every day, I finally got to 999999999 Bells. Which means that I dropped, duped, and picked up about 33334 bags of money. You're thinking I'm a lunatic now, I'm sure, but at least I have my Post Office Model.
Star Wars: Rogue Sqaudron II - Rogue Leader (GameCube) - All Gold/Ace Medals (including Endurance!)
With the drought of GameCube games worth owning in the first year of its life, I revisited my first purchase (which I had bought a week before the GameCube itself) - Rogue Leader. I figured I might as well try to earn some more Silvers, after finishing the game with mostly Bronzes and only a couple Silvers. Now, I was NEVER any good at any game involving flight...or at least I never felt I was a fluent flyer. Yet with not much to play at the time, I just kept going at Rogue Leader...eventually earning all those Silvers, and then some Golds! I soon had enough points to unlock Endurance.
For those of you who don't know, Endurance is the fifth bonus mission, devoid of any story. You're just flying around above the Death Star, as 99 waves of TIE Fighters come at you. Actually, it's not really 99 waves...every tenth one is of Imperial shuttles whereupon you get an extra life.
Each wave is a flurry of craziness, unless you use a certain technique, in which case it becomes a test of patience. The best method is to use the Naboo N-1 Starfighter, fly really far out, then as all the TIE fighters far behind you seem to "line-up", you turn around, fly into and through them with lasers blazing. You'll get a bunch but likely not all of them, so each of the 99 waves takes a few passes and takes a couple minutes.
It is an awkward feeling. It's tedious, but you don't want to screw up so you try and stay awake even though you think you can be doing it in your sleep. If you were doing this, you probably would have gotten used to never considering losing any life (especially to have gotten all the Golds in all the other missions beforehand), so you would freak out if an errant action sent you smashing into the Death Star below. I remember losing two lives on one of those waves with just shuttles. >_< You don't want to waste what would soon be a three-and-a-half hour ordeal by being careless. It's like reading a phone book to save your life or something.
The first time I did it, I was extremely nervous nearing the end of it. Though it's been said that surviving Endurance is a near-guaranteed Gold, there's still the slight possibility that maybe I shot nothingness a few too many times, hurting my accuracy. Or something. That little twinge of "uh oh" is a big scary moment as you wait for the medal to show up on screen after knocking out Darth Vader's TIE in the final wave...and it feels longer than usual...and then BAM! GOLD! I was absolutely ecstatic.
But then I realized that I'd have to do it again in Ace Mode. >_< Which I did. o_0 But let me tell you, 7 hours of just shooting TIEs is enough to drive people crazy. So, you know, don't...unless you're sure you want to and can handle to insanity of repetition. And be hopeful that there is never a power outage during those runs...
Anyway, now I know I can beat games of less-familiar genres if all I have to do is spend more time with them.
Pokémon: Ruby Edition (Game Boy Advance) - Growing 100 of every berry (except Enigma)
Plant a berry, water it often, come back later, voila, more berries.
By my estimation, I spent as much time, or maybe slightly more, tending to the berries than actually trying to catch all the Pokémon.
Some berries, like the much later ones, only grow one more after 3-4 days. Sure, if there was room for a straight doubling-up each time, it should only take a few rounds to get to 100...but there wasn't the room for that, I had to travel enough as it was from the Berry Master's dirt patches to a few nearby ones, and so it took me months to get 100 of them all. Months! What insane hoops will I have to jump through in Diamond/Pearl?
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