Video Games You've Completed Many Years Later...

Rawtooth · Post by **Rawtooth** » 2006-09-02 03:24pm

Megaman X and Link to the Past are my two main ones. Played both of them when I was younger, never even came close to beating them. Found them recently and stomped them into the ground.

Karza · Post by **Karza** » 2006-09-02 03:27pm

X-Com. I was 13 or 14 when I got it, played like mad and always ended up toast within a year or two in-game time. Then 5 or 6 years later, I took it up again and beat it. Wasn't even all that hard, the key was in being less of a chickenshit in the tactical part.

Then there was Jagged Alliance 2. Bought it right when it was released, but never played past the first fights. Seemed like a pain in the ass liberating villages with just pistols. Then a few years later took it up again, and once I got past the "liberate villages with a bunch of low quality gunslingers" phase, the game started to kick ass, all the way to the end.

And Yosemite Bear, beating NetHack definitely counts. I've been at it for god knows how long, and never gotten further than Medusa's Fortress (What's that mob? Ah, whatever, A few swings with Excalibur will do it. "You hit Medusa! Medusa stares at you! You turn into stone... Do you want your possessions identified? (y/n) )

Post by **Edi** » 2006-09-02 04:30pm

I still haven't finished Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Throne. I've got all teh saves from way back when and the last mission to play but it's just too boring in some respects and a bit hard on some others since you need to get the right heroes at the start and as many of the cities as you can or the kick-ass über-munchkins that transfer from the campaigns will get snapped up by the opposition.

HoMM3 Shadow of Death is unfinished as well, I need to play through the final missions and the HoMM4 chaos campaign and the expansions. Most other games that I've seriously played I've also finished, but if I ever intend to finish Might and Magic 4 and 5 (XEEN), I'm going to have to play them through from the start because I fucked up too many things on my first try and wound up short on gems and gold.

The Summoning was also a game I played very far the first time, long enough to get to Shadow Weaver's castle. That was on an old 486 back in the early 1990s. Got the game as part of a five game collection that also included Populous and Might & Magic 3 (which I've never played) and installed it and finished it in 1998, I think. Always did love that game.

The X-Com games (Enemy Unknown, Terror from the Deep (*puke*) and the third X-Com game) I played through without stopping. Terror from the Deep required several restarts, though. It was a really fucked up game in more ways than one, basically just cashing in on the fame of the first one and nowhere near the same level.

Edi

Big Orange · Post by **Big Orange** » 2006-09-02 06:37pm

Rawtooth wrote:Megaman X and Link to the Past are my two main ones. Played both of them when I was younger, never even came close to beating them. Found them recently and stomped them into the ground.

Sorry to sound snobbish, but I actually got round to beating Link to the Past before I hit the age of 12 (I found the final boss, Gannondorf, very fun but relatively easy - plus the ending credits were quite fun). I also managed to complete Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask on the N64 as well. However I haven't got round to completing Banjo-Kazooie or Banjo-Tooie.

Lazarus · Post by **Lazarus** » 2006-09-02 07:13pm

Rogue Squadron was another one, I couldn't get past the Thyferia mission for the longest time.

It's that bloody Interceptor isn't it? There's one TIE Interceptor that's about twice as good as any other TIE, and always gets on your tail. I hated that bastard with a vengeance. I got stuck on Defection at Corellia myself because of the AT-AT trip that took me about a year to finally manage.

I was gaming on the PC from about 1994 when I was 5, and left the majority of my games incomplete due to my age, however I did possess quite a dogged spirit which led me to go back time and again to try and finish games.

1. Lemmings: Never even came close to completing it.
2. Red Alert: Attempting to complete for about the 5th time as I write this.
3. X-Wing vs Tie Fighter-Balance of Power: Completed this earlier in the year after about two or three past attempts.
4. X-Wing Alliance: Still haven't completed, after 3 attempts. The farthest I've got is a few missions past the one where you have to rescue your Uncle from the station.
5. Emperor-Battle for Dune: Just can't get past the last mission, after 9 attempts, including each house campaign individually, only reaching the last level on the final attempt.

There's probably many more, but that's all I can think of now.

fnord · Post by **fnord** » 2006-09-02 10:29pm

Ah, XCOM: Enemy Unhappy....

That sorta fits in the "didn't finish until many years after got it" category, but not to the level of D/Generation (to quote the back of the box as I read it, "It's out of control. Now it's IN CONTROL.").

Took me about three years to finally play it out to the bitter end, including a successful conclusion to the Cydonia Assault, with liberal use of Kuo-sheng Chang's Unofficial Strategy Guide.

To win that, all you have to do is take out the alien brain. You don't have to clear the facility. First time I did that, I used psi strong rookies as suicide bombers.

As I type this, I'm in the middle of a game of the collector's edition (the version that will run on win 95) and on the second difficulty level (they fixed the difficulty levels for the CE release).

It's the middle of June 1999. The UK withdrew from the XCOM Project in April, and it looks like Brazil will bail end of this month. Battleships are turning up a little too frequently for comfort - one inbound, balls to the wall, with the mission descriptor reading "Alien Retaliation" is only a matter of time.

UFO activity worldwide has increased over the past six months. Aliens have terrorised London (twice), Paris, Canberra (pity they didn't run off with Johnny Howard), Novosibirsk, Caracas and Brasilia.

Yet, XCOM still struggles against the oncoming tide. With functioning intercept bases near the Russian border, the Brazilian border, Hawaii and in north west NSW, each base having at least one twin plasma-armed Interceptor and hyperwave decoder to boot, XCOM maintains almost global intercept coverage, except over North America, Africa and northeast Asia.

Personal equipment has improved as well out of sheer necessity. The well dressed XCOM soldier in June totes a laser rifle as his standard weapon, two proximity and two alien grenades in his belt along with a medikit, and is encased in a flying suit, allowing for vertical envelopment.

The well dressed HW trooper totes either the trusty autocannon, along with four clips of HE ammo and one clip of incendiary ammo, plus grenades and medikit as above, and a laser pistol as a backup weapon, or the awesome blaster launcher, five blaster bombs, grenades, medikit and laser pistol. Flying suits are the cutting edge of fashion for the well dressed HW trooper, too.

Currwent projections indicate the first troops will commence psi training at the end of July.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2006-09-03 12:14am

Karza wrote:X-Com. I was 13 or 14 when I got it, played like mad and always ended up toast within a year or two in-game time. Then 5 or 6 years later, I took it up again and beat it. Wasn't even all that hard, the key was in being less of a chickenshit in the tactical part.

Then there was Jagged Alliance 2. Bought it right when it was released, but never played past the first fights. Seemed like a pain in the ass liberating villages with just pistols. Then a few years later took it up again, and once I got past the "liberate villages with a bunch of low quality gunslingers" phase, the game started to kick ass, all the way to the end.

And Yosemite Bear, beating NetHack definitely counts. I've been at it for god knows how long, and never gotten further than Medusa's Fortress (What's that mob? Ah, whatever, A few swings with Excalibur will do it. "You hit Medusa! Medusa stares at you! You turn into stone... Do you want your possessions identified? (y/n) )

Medusa didn't bother me. I activated a magic item. got stormbringer, used stormbringer to kill death. (thus armed with a soul devouring sword that kept me fed, and the armour of the Grim Reaper) Since the Reaper's robes protect you from gaze attacks, I was finally able to beat nethack. of course at that point my character was pure evil, and death.