Smash Nostalgia, Classic Games

This post is a little out-of-date, because I started it late September but didn't finish. I finished the Game Boy Kid Icarus paragraph mid November.

One consequence of playing a lot of Super Smash Bros. lately is that I have felt inspired to go back and play a variety of the games represented by it. It's a natural result of the nostalgia that gets evoked. I mentioned a few posts ago that I felt inspired to replay the NES Castlevania games, largely as a result of Simon Belmont's inclusion in Smash Bros. Ultimate. Lately I've decided to sample quite a few others.

A few weeks ago I asked myself the question, "What Smash-related games could I go back and revisit, or possibly visit for the first time?" One of the choices I decided to investigate was Kid Icarus, which has two characters represented in it. I was surprised to learn that since Pit's inclusion in Smash Bros., there has only been one Kid Icarus game made, making a total of only three games in his series. For some reason I thought there had been at least one more.

Well, I've played through the original Kid Icarus a few times in my life and have fond memories of it. A few years ago I purchased the Game Boy sequel, but have never actually got around to playing it. I decided it was the perfect time to revisit it.

First I played through Kid Icarus again. I played it on the Switch, as one of the many NES games available through the Switch Online service. It was a good way to do it, because I didn't need to use any passwords and I could easily play it in short segments as I had time. It's been a few years and because of the game's level diversity it was good to have a refresher.

I enjoyed playing through Kid Icarus of Myths and Monsters on the Game Boy. In truth, it's a very similar experience to the NES version. It's what you might call a cookie-cutter sequel. I've often seen that term used in a derogatory manner, but I don't mean it that way. It's a pretty faithful recreation of the overall experience of the NES game, with some improvements here and there. I think if one enjoyed the NES game, as I always did, they would enjoy the Game Boy Game.

Another game I've tried out is Punch-Out! Playing on the switch is a stark reminder of how brutally difficult this game was when I was younger. I finally got to and beat Mike Tyson when I was a teenager, but I think I only ever did it once. After a few weeks of practice, I finally got to Mr. Dream on this version (the white Mike Tyson that remained after Nintendo's licensing deal expired). But I ran out of steam before I managed to finish him. I'll have to pick it up again soon.

It's been quite fun to have friends and family over for Smash Bros. game nights in recent times. It really is a fun game to play, especially with friends and family. And it really drives home just the right kind of nostalgia.

Ultimate Gaming with Friends

I couldn't settle on what to play during my lunch break. I decided maybe it would be a good time to write a blog entry instead.

I go through frequent periods of not writing here. I've said before that when it comes to dividing my time between playing a game and writing about a game, I will usually choose playing the game. But there's a certain, almost therapeutic aspect to sharing my experiences. When I was younger I shared my gaming experiences with my brothers and the few friends I had. But there aren't many people in my current regular social circles who have a large overlap in video game interests. So I'll share with the Internet and imagine that somewhere, sometime, someone will read this and enjoy it.

Lately, I've been devoting most of my gaming attention to different incarnations of Super Smash Bros. Over the last few months I've had numerous opportunities to visit with both of my brothers and other family members who I've been able to play the game with. I even hosted a Smash Bros. Ultimate game night at my house last month, and plan to host another one in two weeks.

Playing games with friends is something I always enjoyed immensely in my youth, but since becoming an adult and moving out on my own, my opportunities for doing so have been very sporadic. But, due to shifting life conditions, I see my both of my brothers a lot more frequently these days than I used to. I see some of my cousins and other extended family fairly often. I'm trying to reach out to old friends online more than I did. I think I'm realizing just how much I miss having people around to play games with.

Super Smash Bros. was one of our go-to staples for multiplayer gaming in our house on the Nintendo 64. Before we all moved out on our own, Super Smash Bros. Melee was the game we played most out of all concurrent multiplayer games. And during the rare times we got together or played online in the following decade, Smash Bros. Brawl was our go-to. But one brother didn't have internet and the other one I gradually lost touch with for a while despite technology. And the one without internet eventually sold his Wii to get an XBox 360. (Not something I would have done, but to each his own.)

I'm the only one of my brothers to ever get the Wii U and 3DS versions. I'm pretty sure neither of my brothers ever played the latter, and only my youngest brother ever played the former on my console. I got the game late in the Wii U's short life cycle, and none of us had much experience together with it.

We're having something of a renaissance with the Switch version. I've reconnected considerably with both of my brothers considerably in the past couple of years. And in the times we've visited, we've been able to put a good amount of time playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. together, like old times. Due to the game's large success, I also have more friends and family who have and play the game. So I've been having a lot of opportunities to play non-solo in recent months.

Plus, the game is just plain fantastic anyway. I remember in days gone by regarding Melee as a Nintendo nostalgic's dream game. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is similarly wonderful at evoking nostalgia in someone who has been a video game fan as long as myself. I recently completed the Adventure Mode. It's amazing how much care they take in making the Spirit battles remind you of aspects in past games, by using combinations of characters and/or conditions to approximate some character or event in a game from years ago.

It's been fun to get some of those obscure references. But at the same time, the series has grown so large that there are many represented games and series that I never played, and many references I don't get. So not only do I now want to go back and replay a lot of games, there are now a lot of games and series I want to try for the first time.

It all evokes a lot of emotion in me. It makes me want to share that emotion more. I really enjoy playing games, but I like sharing them too. This blog provides a great outlet to do so. So if I can find the time, I'm gonna try again to write here more often.

Dragon Quest Post-Game Stuff

Over the last few months I've been chipping away at Dragon Quest IV for the Nintendo DS. I decided to go ahead and play it ahead of Dragon Quest IV challenge quests I had, reasoning that if I wanted to do a similar comparison to what I did on the first three games I could do it with the Smartphone version, which I assume uses the same translation.

Over the weekend I finally finished the main game. I liked it, but as far as a remake goes it didn't feel as engaging overall as the Dragon Quest III remakes. The new town was in interesting mechanic, and the expansion of the mini-medals. I liked the Thief abilities added to Torneko and Bray. And it certainly feels nice to have manual control over all characters in Chapter 5.

On the other hand, I beat this several levels sooner than previous NES/Famicom playthroughs. I didn't even finish out my Hero's spell list before winning. Dragon Quest IV's original versions were already among the easiest in the whole series. It didn't really need to be made easier still. Several of the boss fights were made harder, but that didn't do a whole lot to make things more interesting.

The last few days I've been exploring the post-game content. I had gathered from stray comments and headlines on message boards and Google searches on the NES game that there was a Chapter 6. It involves a new dungeon and at least two new boss fights, similar to post-game content of other Dragon Quest games. It also involves unlocking a new player character, which I did today, but losing the dragon NPC that is with you at the end of the regular game (Sparkie is his name on the DS; I believe it was Doran on NES). It also adds some new story elements.

It's been a lengthier process than other DQ games where I've finished or nearly finished the post game content, which makes it more interesting. But, unlike other Dragon Quest games, the post-game content appears to eventually close off the game's normal final boss and ending, making them unavailable after a point. I'm not 100% sure of this, but that's the appearance as of where I am. I'll test it on my next play session.

My interest in the post-game content of the various Dragon Quest games has been reignited lately. All of the main games from V onward have such content, and the remakes of III and IV have some added in. I've finished the dungeons and bosses of Dragon Quest V and VI, and finished just the dungeons of III and (I believe) IV. I didn't find all of the map shards to unlock new content in VII, but I'll get back to that search someday. I had gone through the content in VIII up to the home of the Dragovians. This last week I was inspired to go further. My characters in this game have a harder time making it through regular enemies in this dungeon than in other games. I got all of the chests in the first two areas, and I think I'll try pushing further tonight.

I'm really intrigued again into trying to figure out more on Dragon Quest IX, which I plan to dive back into very soon after at least attempting the boss on IV. I've always felt that there was more to unlock story-wise in the game's post-game, but I've failed to figure out how. There's a plethora of gameplay content in that game after the "end", but aside from unlocking the Starflight Express, none of it seems to affect the rest of the game. I know there must be something, for example, to do in the Tower of Nod, but I've failed to discover just what can be done there.

Well, I'm inching away at my quest to discover all things Dragon Quest related. I'll get there eventually.

Meandering through Multiple Games

I met with a spot of catastrophe in my Dragon Quest III no-equipment challenge a couple of weeks ago. As I loaded to the opening menu, I must have somehow hit the down button twice before making my first selection, because instead of starting my game file, I deleted it instead. Having been about 40 hours into it, I was pretty devastated by it.

Since then, I haven't found the motivation to pick it back up again, but have instead been trying to figure out what I feel most motivated to play. I think I've settled into Dragon Quest XI as my current main game. I played several hours into it after I bought when it came out last year for PS4, but I kind of burnt myself out on Dragon Quest in general late last year and put it down for a bit. I'm getting back into it, but it's a hard game to play in 10-20 minute game sessions because there's just so much you can do. With my schedule it's really hard to get into a groove on the game. Should have held out for the Switch version, perhaps.

I just got the ship in the game last night. I didn't have time to do much with it, but it looks like it just opens up the possibilities even wider. It may take a while before I start feeling like I've made any headway.

In the shorter moments, I've also been playing my old NES Castlevania games. Last year they released a Netflix original show, which I tried out the first few episodes of, based on the third game in this series, and also put Simon Belmont in Super Smash Bros. I experienced a wave of nostalgia and started playing the first one not long ago, beating it through after a week or so. I started both of the next two games and have passwords on my phone for both of them.

By the way, modern phone cameras make the perfect solution to the onerous task of jotting down NES game passwords. You can do it in an instant with no chance of transcription errors (although you do have to check that you didn't take a blurry picture), and you don't have to worry about losing the paper you wrote it down on (but be careful you don't delete it by mistake). Would that these had existed in my youth to circumvent endless frustration with NES passwords.

Another interesting aside: not long after I started replaying these old Castlevania games, Konami announced an anniversary package for modern systems, including the Switch, that has all of these games as well as the SNES, Game Boy, and Genesis Castlevania games, for around twenty bucks. I've put it on my birthday list and hope to be able to enjoy me some more classic Castlevania next month.

I've also been playing Dragon Quest IV for the DS. I just got to the area formerly known as Gardenbur Castle, now called Femiscyra. I'm cruising along and I think that when I finish it I'll also finally do my first full replay of Dragon Quest V for the Super Famicom.

Aside from that, I've booted up my Smash Bros. Ultimate a couple of times (partly to play as Simon after beating Castlevania). I also play a few games of Tetris 99 most days, as I have for the past few months. It's my latest bout of Tetris addiction that has grabbed me stronger than any other version since the original Game Boy. I win about one in six games on average.

Leaving Aliahan with no Thieves' Key

For the last few weeks I have been chipping away at my last challenge quest for Dragon Quest III. I will attempt to finish this game with no items or equipment, save for 18 items that you cannot finish the game without getting.

I did this previously in Dragon Quest I and II. Like Dragon Quest II, this game has a spell which allows you to bypass keys. However, unlike Dragon Quest II, there are doors you need to open very early in the game. To accomplish this objective, you need to get a Wizard to level 35 fighting enemy groups that average less than 50 experience points per battle.

As daunting as that seems, I've determined that it can be done in approximately 100 hours of game time. That's less time, for example, than it took me to play Dragon Quest VII through for the first time. It's also considerably less time than it took me to finish my 100% items, max-levels-on-all-classes-playthrough of Dragon Quest III a few years ago.

It was a bit slow starting out, due to the struggle of fighting enemies without equipment. I started with my expected end-game party, two Goof-Offs to turn into Sages later. That was a mistake. I underestimated how much time it would take till my Wizard could survive with less than a full party. I could have breezed through that faster with two Fighters instead. But by the time I realized that, there wasn't much to be gained by switching.

At level 7, when my wizard learned Firebal, I was able to drop my two extra people and fight with my Wizard and Hero. This is advantageous because of the way experience is distributed. You get twice as much experience per person in a two-person setup as you do with a four-person setup. You get twice as much again if you have a single-person party. But the wizard just can't survive solo until around level 12 or 13. Learning the spell Bang is when I was able to go solo, but it was still tenuous for a level or two because at that point you don't always go first, or second or third.

But the Agility gains of the Wizard also picked up around that time, which increases both your speed and your defense, and I've only rarely died since. My Wizard is now level 20, and hasn't died in a few levels. At this point she usually goes first or near first, and has enough agility and HP that a couple of hits don't bother her. The only time she's ever in danger is when a Spiked Hare enemy group hits her with a sleep spell. But even then they usually run away before dealing enough damage to be truly threatening. This was still pretty dangerous a few levels ago, but I've mostly graduated past any real threat level.

That's good, because dying is inconvenient in this challenge. To get the full experience from the battle for my Wizard, my Hero needs to be dead. Otherwise each member gets only half. But if my Wizard, fighting solo, dies, it's the Hero who gets automatically resurrected. So I have to spend time having the Hero attack himself to kill himself off again, which is a minor annoyance. But it's been some time since I've had to do that.

I have a spreadsheet to keep track of my progress. I have around 11% of the experience points I need to get to level 35. It takes nearly two hours at this point to gain a level, so it's pretty monotonous and slow-going. I watch TV while I'm playing to keep from getting too bored. Last night I also took a break to play some Dragon Quest V for a short bit. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Dragon Quest in general, and the challenge isn't going to fill all my Dragon Quest appetite for the time it takes to finish it. So I may play a bit here and there on some other games.

Unfortunately, my conservative estimate, based on the time I have available to play, puts getting the open spell as late as mid-August, assuming I keep up on it that long. We'll see if I have the stomach to keep going that long.

Challenge Complete, New Challenge Started

I beat Dragon Warrior III with just the Hero. It took me till the following Monday to work my way through Alefgard, with no particular difficulty. On Tuesday the 2nd I faced Zoma for the first time...and the second, and the third, and the sixth time.

I had a nice niche of time that evening where I got home from work a little early but my family was doing something else out of the house. So I got to try the fight several times. The first fight was actually that morning, but didn't count for much because I accidentally triggered the fight before I finished healing, and actually forgot to bring the Sphere of Light, so I died in two rounds. The first three fights of the evening were meant to get a feel for what I could and couldn't do, trying out different strategies to see what would be most effective.

Here are some things I learned:

First, the encounter with Zoma seems to automatically trigger if you step on any square adjacent or immediately diagonal to him. Since I was trying to step on every square, I accidentally triggered this fight twice before I was ready, before I deduced the full zone of triggering the fight.

Second, it is likely not viable to kill Zoma with physical attacks at 196 Strength. Here's an interesting fact that I had learned some time ago when testing out a no-equipment fight against Zoma: his freezing waves nullifies his own negative status effects in addition to your party's beneficial ones. As a consequence of this, using the Orochi Sword is not an effective strategy. But without it, I don't think it's possible to overcome Zoma's regeneration in the long term. There might be a statistical non-zero chance, but I suspect it's rather low. I tested both the Falcon Sword and the Sword of Kings. At that strength score, the Sword of Kings appears to do better against Zoma, but still not good enough.

Third, at someone's suggestion, I tried using herbs against him. I wasn't expecting this to turn out the best option, and it didn't, but it was better than I thought. This is probably a relatively obscure fact: both Medical Herbs and healing spells will damage Zoma after you use the Sphere of Light on him. And herbs can do anywhere from single digits to over 200 damage against Zoma. Someone pointed out that as little as four herbs followed by a lucky Lightning spell is theoretically enough to beat him if you're lucky enough to get max damage each time. But I doubt that the chances of that happening are any better than beating him using just Healall against him.

I actually got over 100 damage each with all four Herbs, the last one doing over 200. But the total damage for all four rounds was less than Healall does in four rounds. Furthermore, you can't take 4 herbs with you without leaving most of your armor behind. On that try I definitely had to heal more often than other tries, which has a huge impact on the battle.

Another thing I definitely learned is that the battle does rely a large degree on chance. Whereas Baramos' attack pattern is scripted and therefore completely predictable, Zoma's (after using the Sphere of Light) is anything but. He uses a pretty strong physical attack, a comparatively tamer breath attack, and his freezing waves attack, at least. I don't remember if there's at least one more, but those are the ones I do remember. Furthermore, it's random whether he attacks once or twice in one round. Because of this, you can't predict effectively how many rounds you can go without healing yourself. This makes it difficult to predict effectively whether a given strategy can work.

But, my experience in a few rounds of trying pretty much confirmed what I had read in numerous places: the most effective strategy is to cast Healall on Zoma every round, except for the rounds you cast it on yourself.

Healall does a surprising amount of damage on him. I think it's over 75% of the damage Lightning does on him, typically somewhere between 140 and 180, but at less than 25% of the MP cost of Lightning. It's plenty to wear him down, as long as you don't run out of MP. But that's where it gets difficult. This relies on Zoma's attack pattern, which is random. I had hugely different results between my last two tries using the same strategy. (I can infer from my experience combined with what I've read that this battle's difficulty likely drops considerably if you have higher max MP--every 7 points would likely make a notable difference.)

One caveat I discovered: it's extremely easy to accidentally heal yourself when you meant to use the spell on Zoma. But it's also a devastating mistake to make; doing it even once can decide the fight. Just one unnecessary round of free regeneration for Zoma is way too much.

On my last try of the night (it was going to be my last try anyway because I needed to get to sleep) I got very lucky. Zoma started using almost nothing but freezing waves on me for several rounds straight, with his low-damage breath a couple of times in between. I went eight entire rounds without healing, and my tracking had over 700 damage against him before I finally did heal.

But even with that lucky streak, it came down to the wire. After a few more cycles, I found myself out of MP. My tracking had him pretty close to 900 HP down after regeneration. With no other choice I did a physical attack. I was using the Falcon Sword and, the two hits totalled 111 damage. It was enough. Zoma went down.

I felt quite lucky. Even the last attack was on the very high end of what I had tested the Falcon Sword with. And Zoma's regeneration was likely a little on the low end, since he has 1024 HP. If I had known I would have to rely on at least one physical attack, I probably would have equipped the Sword of Kings instead. But the Falcon Sword works much better against the King Hydra and Baramos Gonus, so I chose it as my weapon since I was using magic on Zoma. The weapon came through for me in the end.

The solo challenge ended up being difficult, but still not as difficult as I expected given everything I read. I think I got lucky on my natural Strength, which is probably a big part of it. But I also think that the documentation available for this challenge is far too spotty and incomplete. I hope that anyone who tries this challenge in the future and searches for information will find what I've written either here or on Gamefaqs.com message boards.

Anyway, having completed this challenge, I have finally started my "minimalist" challenge, to mirror my efforts on Dragon Quest I and II. I'm only at level 5 and feeling the struggle already. More about that to come.

No Feasting on Innards Here...Baramos is Dead

I'm still a bit stunned by this, in a good way. Last night, I hit level 99, and began what was to be my last benchmark fight before seed farming. At 196 strength, I figured, based on my data from my level 90 fight, that I might possibly be able to overcome his regeneration. I figured this battle would give me a feel for how much more I'd have to raise my strength to finish off his HP before I ran out of MP.

I used the Dragon Mail, which gave me the best overall results in my previous fights. I successfully cast Stopspell and got off four successful Orochi Sword uses in a relatively short period of time. Because I wanted to start attacking at the beginning of a healing cycle, I ended up using the Orochi Sword twice more before healing, and both attempts were successful.

Tracking my damage, I saw after a few healing cycles that I was indeed overcoming his regeneration, at a rate larger than I expected. In fact, after three rounds of attack and one round of heal, I was ended up ahead in damage somewhat more often than not. Despite the bulk of the existing documentation of this fight being against the possibility, I began to wonder if this wasn't possible.

I was consistently able to go three attack rounds before healing. There were a few, and only a few, times where I knew that taking the third round was a gamble, because my HP was lower than the max damage he could do in a round. But each time I took that gamble, I ended up alive, although in the single digit HP range. (There's always a slight gamble anyway healing every four rounds, because there's always a slim chance Baramos will go before you even at max agility.) I figured if I wanted to beat this without excessive seed grinding, I would have to rely at least a little bit on good fortune in the fight.

About 100 rounds in (measured from when I began attacking) I saw that my MP likely wasn't going to last, but I was doing far better than I thought, having dealt on the net over 500 damage. Then on round 102, I finally got a critical hit for 260 damage. Now my tracking showed 668 damage net. His remaining health, then, would be around 232, give or take, depending on his actual regeneration compared to the average I was estimating. If his regeneration was on the low end, he might be in the damage range for the Lightning spell! Even if that wasn't quite enough, I would still be able to get one more attack off. It might just be enough.

I had around 160 HP and exactly 31 MP left. After thinking about it for a minute, trying to decide if I should go for it, I decided to. I cast the spell of Lightning, doing 211 damage. And watched Baramos's sprite vanish, as the game declared me victorious.

I couldn't believe I'd pulled it off. All of the internet's decades' long history of comments about this game suggested that a solo fight against Baramos without the Noh Mask and/or excessive seed farming was impossible, yet here I was, on my very first attempt at level 99, standing over Baramos' corpse. And whereas I'm sure I did get a few seeds dropped from enemies while I was travelling the world in my stepping on each map square, I never did any actual seed farming.

Now, I am fairly confident that I had somewhat above average luck on my level-up Strength gains. I was consistently getting gains all through the 70, 80, and 90 level range. It seems, in the end, that was all that was needed.

I had 473 Max HP, and 233 Max MP, typical amounts for max level, I think. Agility was capped with the Meteorite Armband.

I think that there is a dearth of useful information posted online about how to approach this fight. Since it used to be regarded as impossible, no one bothered to try enough to develop useful strategies. Accounts like Gamefaqs user joaquintall were very useful to me in helping me figure this out. I hope that this account (which I've also posted on Gamefaqs message boards) will similarly help anyone out who wants to try this in the future.

Of course, it's not over. I still have the Zoma fight, which according to my research is no cakewalk. It seems that the Baramos fight is generally regarded as harder, but a lot of people still get hung up at the very end. I expect I'll be ready to try Zoma by the end of next week at the latest, though I'll try to get it much sooner if I can.