SMT Nocturne, The Trumpeteer boss. After so many turns he will use a 100% instant death move on your weakest character. Then later he will use a move that completely heals any character with the least health (including himself.) He was one of the most frustrating bosses I've faced in a while.... other than Lucifer of the same game.

Samurai Legend, Musashi.

Short and too easy. All I gotta say.

I'm a casual shmup fan. Early generation shmups (and a few more recent
ones) are sometimes the worst offenders where counterproductive
gameplay is concerned. In most of these games, you need to upgrade
your ship by collecting power-ups and what not. You may also need to
collect coins or some form of currency to purchase weapon upgrades
between levels. In most cases, the weapon upgrades are essential to
survival (read: completing the game). That's not the bad part. The bad
part is that if you happen to get killed, you lose everything! Every
weapon you've collected, every power-up, all your money. It's all gone.

So, I start the game with three lives (or five lives or whatever). If I get
killed once, my arsenal of weapons is gone and my ship comes back
onscreen with its default wimpy weapon, and my chances of survival are
beyond slim. What the game is asking you to do is play through it
flawlessly. One little slip-up, and the whole thing's over. I get killed, I've
got two lives left, but they're meaningless because I can no longer
compete with the opposition or even stay alive for more than a few
seconds.

I want my stuff back, you dips!

There's one game where you can actually spend your cash on an extra
life. Utterly pointless. Why do we even have a stock of lives in these
games? Cut out the BS and tell it like it is. Get killed once, game over.

Even worse is shmups that have set restart points. Make a wrong move
while facing down that menacing boss? You restart earlier in the level.
Okay, you may be able to grab a couple power-ups, but I can guarantee
your weapon strength ain't gonna be as good as it was before you got
killed. Cut out the BS. Put me back where I was. And give me back my
stuff, you dips!

Even if you're using an "infinite lives" cheat code, it boils down to: get
killed, try again, get killed, try again, repeat ad nauseaum. Speaking of
which, an "infinite lives" cheat code is BULL. Cut out the BS and give
me "invulnerability".

Fantasy Zone - Sega Game Gear
Get killed once and it's over.

Aerial Assault - Sega Game Gear
It's over if you get killed.

R-Type
Set restart points. Put me back where I was!

Gradius
Set restart points. Put me back where I was and give me back my stuff!

Star Wars: Flight Of The Falcon - GBA
In late-game levels, Tie Fighters come onscreen from behind your
ship without warning, casually trying to ram into you (and often doing a
great job of it). Cheap. Someone call the guy who's manning our aft
sensors. He fell asleep at his console again.

Star Trek Encounters - PS2
I gotta play through a whole slew of dippy story levels to unlock all the
ships and stuff before I can play them in arcade shmup mode. I just
wanted a fun arcade shmup, you dips! Give me the stuff and let me
decide if I want to play your dumb story. One of the story missions
consists of maneuvering through an asteroid field and touching all the
waypoints before time runs out. Another one is about using the ship's
sensors to track an invisible ship that's running away. Snore!

Must... reach my... communicator... warn Han... save Enterprise! Must...
blow stuff up!...

I hate, hate, hate, hate when games encourage speed running. Alright, I understand that a lot of people find it the most excitingest thing evah, but no, I'm not gonna hurry my way out of Super Metroid in freakin' under two hours only to see the better ending. Since when is speed quality? I want my good ending! What's the problem with being slow?!
This 'time attack' is an issue of a lot of games nowadays... which only make me sad =/

Well, the Metroid series has been all about speed running since the NES when it first came out... So, if you don't like it, don't play the games.

Speaking of those speedruns of Metroid games, I started a new one of Metroid Zero Mission, (This is where the bull comes in.) first, I got lost trying to get to Kraid, wasting me about 5 minutes, then, I actually got killed by Ridley.

Anyway, Gnash, the speedrun thing started way back then when you had to beat Metroid in under 2 hours to see Samus in her bikini.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of Metroid games. *goes to the videogame confessions thread*
When I first heard about that Super Metroid ending, I just saw the screenshot in some magazine and spared me the effort of a) buying the game AND b) beating the game in under two hours.
Speed-running is all about stress =P

And it's about skill (Assuming it's not a tool asset speed run). Maybe those objectives are aimed at people to found the game too easy. There isn't anything wrong with that, right?

What's a "shmup"?

Skrew that. Just give us those unlimited lives, because Game Overs don't do anything anymore, anyway. At worst, you just have to go through the title screen and load the game back to the beginning of the stage you were just in. I miss the days where getting a Game Over was actually something to worry about. Get a game over in a Mario Bros game? You're knocked back a few stages, or worse, back at the start of the game. Get a Game Over in an RPG, you lose half of your gold and don't recover any items you used up and start near the beginning of the dungeon, or worse, back at town. Now with RPGs, you have a save point right before the boss, and your inventory is left intact.

EDIT:

Do you have any idea how stupid and annoying that "advice" is? I have to agree with Gnasher. I don't want to rush through the game just to see Samus in her Bikini. I want to take my sweet time finding as many hidden secrets as I can. I am NOT going to avoid playing the game just because I hate a secret that I can't get without skipping over every other secret! And anybody else who tosses such advice on a person just because they don't like an aspect of a game should just stick a fork up their

A shoot-em-up. Usually the player pilots a space ship of some sort and
gains weapon upgrades by flying into power-ups. You shoot down enemy
ships and confront boss ships.



In the shmups I was talking about, unlimited lives wouldn't help because
you lose your entire arsenal of weapon upgrades you've collected if you
get killed. You also have to restart from a "restart point" earlier in the
level. If you were fighting a boss and got killed, you have to start over at
the beginning of the boss confrontation (with your default wimpy weapon
and no opportunity to get any upgrades until after you defeat the boss,
which is impossible to do without the upgrades). What it boils down to is
this: get killed once during the game, and it's all over.

I'm mostly talking about games from the 90s, when games in general
tended to be much harder.

~*~*~

Regarding the "speed" discussion... Yeah, speed is not quality. When I
play the "Sonic The Hedgehog" games, I score low in the speed bonus
department because I take my time and explore the entire level to find all
the hidden goodies and stashes of rings and stuff. This as opposed to
rushing through the level for a speed bonus. I like to go everywhere and
do everything.

Heh heh. Maybe you are right, Draygone. It'd be interesting to see how many people would still have the patience to make it all the way through an RPG if gaming over meant that big a penalty. ... But then RPG's like Legend of Legaia would be darn near impossible to get through.

Heh, there was a time when me and my cousin got addicted to an old Sonic Wings (or something like that) PS1 game. It even had its own Ninja Ship!

In Diablo 2, when you die, you lose EVERYTHING and start back in town. Actually, you only lose half the gold you have with you, and your equipment. But in Diablo, equipment is everything. So you had to go back to the place where you died and retreive your 'corpse' (yeah, it was kinda creepy, it was a yourself covered in blood on the floor) with your equipment. Since in 99% of the times you died surrounded by thousands of badass monsters, it was a true miracle if you managed to reach your corpse 'naked' (without equipment).
But you can teleport your corpse back to town if you leave the game and go back. With this method, you only lose the gold.

I see no problem in having unlockables for speed players. There are people who enjoy time attack, so let them have their fun. But having the best item of the game or the best ending of the game only available to those that can speed their way out of the game, that I think is terribly wrong.

I think 'terribly' wrong would be a bit over stated. I mean, it should definately be challenging. To make it easier to get would be... I don't know, of lesser value then. If that makes any sense.

There are things in games I haven't completed due to the difficulty. But I don't have an issue with it... there are people who HAVE done it. And for them, that's a real pride boost as a gamer.

I wouldn't feel half as good about myself if beating Dante Must Die in Devil May cry was easier.

If it makes you feel any better, what I really meant by that one comment, was that if you don't like the speed aspect of it, don't worry about it.

Also, one the topic of speed and game BULL... How is it possible to beat a Metroid game, 100% in under 2 hours... on hard mode!? The speed run I was talking about earlier was 1:53:17, 53% on Normal mode. I have yet to even get 100% ever in a Metroid game.

@Lantis - yeah, I guess. I personally prefer challenging things that don't have to do with speed =P In Symphony of the Night, you had to get through the whole castle... twice... to get the real juice out of the game. In Mega Man Zero 3, you have to defeat a boss that's uber-hard in order to unlock the most useful item. In FFX, you have to complete minigames designed by Kratos himself... and so on and so forth. I prefer those things to speed running; but in the end that comes down to personal preference, I guess.

Oh yeah, talking about Castlevania... I have 99,8% of the map completed in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. I made the calculations and discovered that 0,2% is one single freakin' room... I compared my map to the complete one in the internet and all my rooms are there... so it's like a non-existent 0,2%. That's really a letdown.

Something similar happened to me in F-Zero: GP Legends. I have 100% of the game complete, and there's still one freaking 'car' that wasn't unlocked yet... I've talked to a lot of people who wrote FAQs for the game and no one has any idea of what's going on.

So yeah, my GBA is the unluckiest GBA ever. =/
And those are really 'Skrewit!' things. Video game BULL.

I've got some thing... I'm playing Disgaea 2 as we speak (type). I've been training up my characters in prep for the final fights. I've got a a healer, a hand full of tanks, and some long range guys for strat.

I've spent the entire game making sure they are ready... and they are...

If it wasn't for the fact that the boss I'm fighting right now... as in it's on the screen just to my right. There was a pair of them. One was immune to magic but weak to physical attack. And the other... competely opposite.

Here in lays the problem. I don't have any mages. So this guy can not go down... period. I'm going to have to create a new character (some form of mage) who freaking starts out at level 1 and train him up to level 70 with the rest of my party just to be able to attempt this fight again. This is really retarded... this will take several game hours and I'm not looking forward to it one bit.

I call bullsh*t...

I think it's bull when the game tracks the % amount that you have, and when the final storytline campaign is over allows you to seek the additional percent without telling you that you will never get it because you missed your opportunity somewhere within the storyline tasks.

I'm not sure, but I think an example is [spoiler]Bully (spoiler filler).[/spoiler]

FFIX is guilty of this. I toatly missed the coffee bean subquest, so i could not be able to get all the stellazio.

re-TARDED!


@facts: I have gotten 100% and 2 hours and under in each Side scrolling Metroid. The Primes only require that you achieve 100% scans and Item pickups, they don't care how long you take to do it. To the contrary, I doubt that it is even possible to beat a Metroid Prime game in under 6 1/2 hours.

I thought I posted this alreadt... (maybe it was in a similar topic) but
Vandal Hearts 2's weapon collection: [spoiler]I can't remember how many hours did I spend in the game trying to raise my weapon collection to 100%... doing things like buliding a huge stair made of boxes to reach the top of a tree to get a weapon, or a map that lead me to a weapon. And when I finally did it, what did I get?
I got the usual ending you get depending on certain desicions you make, but after that, the moment I was waiting for... the screen goes black. A sentence appears. It says. Congratulations. You are a weapon master. The End.
THE END!? JUST A WEAPON MASTER!? *faints*[/spoiler]

let me say right now that my power went out and my computer reset as i was typing this but beautiful firefox saved my post for me. anyway, without further ado.

ffx was filled with these with those horribly difficult quests for the final weapons. the chocobo race where you have to get a negative time took like 5 hours and i almost blew up my ps2 in rage. i got to 8 lightening bolt jumps then gave up, no way i was gona sit there for an hour and try to dodge them. that stupid butterfly thing also was a no go, tried it so much that i decided to just beat the game and never touch it again.

ffx2 had that calibration tower. i got the last one after spending forever getting there only to take a look at the pattern and just leave. im sorry but my brain doesnt work backwards. the whole plot and feel of the game made me embarrassed to play it.

i agree that dq8's long pointless nothingness really hurt the game. i was very bunt out by the time i got to trodain after a rediculessly long walk of nothingness and being forced back due to deaths each time i tried to get there. the not being able to revive a char in battle myself was a major blow, why even have this? the string snapping nearly killed me also, i knew it was coming too. as soon as ya get the ship it was a big pile of crap. i spent so much of my time dieing and getting no where becuase every direction i traveled i ran into over powerful monsters and my best equipment was like 8 dungeons ago and i couldnt get better. not having enough money for anything, getting the same exp and gold for a hard monster as crap ones and the only damn thing that was profitable was gold golems. good game but alot of needless crap.

any game that has a huge outrageously long dungeon, usually hard without a save point for 100 miles and just before a place to save have monsters that hit you with status aliments and slowly murder you or smacks you with the mega ultra cheap 100% death spell has got to be the worst. ff games are notorious for them, they are dumb, they are frusteraiting, and they are the leading cause of broken controllers.

wa4 has tons of horrid dialog that was just plain bs. i cant even believe a simpleton would even think the way these characters did. worst enemy i found in that game frequently cast a spell that erased my exp to the next level. that 50k exp i got on this level, gone. the monsters gave crap exp too.

nocturne was just hell, pure and complete hell. ive never seen a game so devoted to the sm of the player, it was an exercise in self mutilation that i never want to undertake again. i somehow made it pretty far and it brought me to my knees. one dungeon in particular was a nightmare that had no rational purpose for how it was laid out with invisible floors and outrageously hard monster. i eventually hit a wall and couldnt get any farther and had no chance to finish the game so i shut it down and never touched it again.

My favorite game has a problem that irks me.

Claude C. Kenni runs like he is "one of those."

When I first played the game my mom asked me why I play a game with a lead character of that persuasion. I turned it off and didn't play it for a few days.