Anyway, I'd disagree that if someone beats Super Mario Bros. using warps that they haven't actually beaten the game. Those ending stages are plenty tough enough that if you can get through them, you can get through the rest.
By this criteria, that would also make my Battletoads run illegitimate. After all, I used two warps in the game, one to bypass the snow level, and the other to skip Volkmire's Inferno. If someone wants to quibble about that... well, whatever, dude.
dsheinem wrote:
So please understand why when looking at my personal backlog of multitudes of RPGs and SRPGs the chance of me actually beating them all is kinda nil. It feels good to walk by them and think "someday" though.
Out of curiousity, approx how many RPGs do you have unplayed on your shelf?
dsheinem wrote:
Out of curiousity, approx how many RPGs do you have unplayed on your shelf?
Hundreds
Ok.
300 RPGs X 50 hours each (average) = 15,000 hours
10 hours a week gaming = 520 hours a year
You can have them cleared in less than 30 years.
If you are looking at closer to 200 RPGs, averaging closer to 40 hours, and spending 15 hours of gaming a week, you can have those cleared out in closer to 10 years
Or, you know, you could just try to tackle one or two a month while you play other things as well for the foreseeable future...and find that you have whittled down the number of those you've been hoping to get to substantially over the next five-ten years.
For those of you in your 30s, you should have 40 years of time to play through these games. Ample time indeed for clearing out huge swaths of your backlog.
This thread grew seven pages yesterday. I left after some mention of popcorn. What has happened!?
Today I learned that I didn't beat Otomodopedius Excellenté, Akai Katana, Raiden IV, Raiden Fighters Aces, or Deathsmiles in 2013, I only completed them. Which is fine to me! I mean, for me seeing the credit screen is often enough for me. Do I ever fight the Shadow Warrior in Double Dragon II? Rarely? Did I beat the game though? For me I think I did. There's the completionists in RPG's that go after everything, collect all the secret materials, etc. It's a sizable amount of time invested, and isn't typically my cup of tea. I still admire the dedication of those that do, but I wouldn't do it.
I think the MMORPG comparison was fair too (Was it Ack?), and helps distinguish the competitive scene versus the casual scene. WoW's raiding scene early on was only for the competitive, committed, well-organized guilds. You either understand the encounters, master positioning and requirements of each raid boss. Either you know what you're doing, or your raid progression comes to a screeching halt, locked out of anything further. I watched guilds run raids for months wiping on the same content, spending hours each evening trying to master the content.
Just because I didn't beat the raid bosses on the hardest raid difficulty, doesn't mean that I didn't experience all of the dialogue, backstory of the dungeon, or the progression of the narrative. Hats off though to the raiders that do 25 man heroic raids, I'm just in it for some purples and some laughs along the way. It's funny to see the frothing at the mouth by serious (read: competitive players) when raids are dumbed down and nerfed to allow for easier progression through the content.
If we just agreed there's a difference (and there is) between content mastery/100%ing and simply completing a game, regardless of genre, we could mosey along. I think that's the key point people here are getting hung up on. Sure, I can't 1CC a shmup and I'll likely use my three continues on Streets of Rage, but I'm going to be scrappy and get to that credits screen. I still get a sense of satisfaction though when the credits do roll!
The false idea that people keep raising is that getting a 1cc is a way of "completing" a shmup or "mastering it" that only derives from some form of "competitive play" and that, by contrast, any way of beating a shmup is just as good or legitimate as another.
Shmups are typically designed so that players can approach them in one of two ways: play for survival or for score. The former is an attempt to beat the game, and requires a 1cc. The latter often generates a 1cc, but is not the end goal of a session. "Mastering" a shmup is typically considered being able to do both of these things - get a 1cc AND generate a competitive high score. But a 1cc alone is not in and of itself about competition...
Blu wrote:If we just agreed there's a difference (and there is) between content mastery/100%ing and simply completing a game, regardless of genre, we could mosey along. I think that's the key point people here are getting hung up on. Sure, I can't 1CC a shmup and I'll likely use my three continues on Streets of Rage, but I'm going to be scrappy and get to that credits screen. I still get a sense of satisfaction though when the credits do roll!
This is my stance as well. It's a bit like completing a course at school. One student passes with a C+ while another passes with an A+. Can we say that the C+ student didn't 'truly' pass the course since he/she didn't put in the same amount of time and effort as the A+ student? No. Can we say that the A+ student probably got more out of the course thanks to their diligence and effort? Probably. Maybe the C+ student picked up the course as an elective while their true focus remained on core curriculum for their major. It would be just like an RPG gamer playing through a shmup as a nice diversion. Did they 1CC it? No. Did they have fun and eventually roll the credits? Yes. Did they complete the game? Sure.
