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Post by anayo on Sept 26, 2022 18:12:30 GMT -5
When I got Sonic Mega Collection for the Gamecube in 2004 or 2005, I wanted to play Sonic 3 and Knuckles. But I couldn't do that right away. You have to first play Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles 20 times each. In practice, this means you just have to open and close each of those games 20 times. I guess it didn't actually take very long, but it was so repetitive and stupid, opening and closing them over and over and making tick marks on a piece of paper until the message "yay! you've unlocked s3&k!" appeared. I wish they had just let me play what I wanted to right away.
When I got Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles for PSP in 2008, I held onto it until 2015 when I learned that it had Castlevania Symphony of the Night included on the UMD. I wanted to play SotN, but there's no menu on the start screen reading "click here to play sotn." Instead you have to play quite a ways through the 3D polygon Dracula X game and find a hidden item. At first I tried to unlock it the way Konami intended, but found I just didn't like playing Dracula X. Finally, I went onto the Internet where I found and downloaded someone else's save file with SotN already unlocked. Thankfully I was able to drag and drop it onto my PSP's memory card and start playing SotN
This approach didn't work with the NiGHTS into Dreams on the Wii, though. I was excited for a sequel to my all time favorite Sega Saturn game. But the Wii version forced me to watch its lame, unskippable cut scenes. I was honestly having trouble sitting through them. It occurred to me the Wii had an SD card slot and I could save my game progress on it. So, I tried using my same approach with SotN by going online and downloading someone else's save file where they had already watched the cut scenes. But NiGHTS for the Wii checks to make sure your save file actually belongs to you and won't let you load someone else's. They must REALLY want you to watch those cut scenes. I guess this isn't the same as a whole other game included on the disk being hidden by some lousy hoop they want you to jump through, but I still felt like mentioning it.
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Post by bonesnapdeez on Sept 26, 2022 18:21:02 GMT -5
I hate this shit.
Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection had some stupid ass ones.
Want to play Phantasy Star? Just defeat the first boss of Sonic 2 with two players (I've only ever owned one Xbox 360 controller).
Shinobi is unlocked if you beat the first stage of Shinobi III without using continues. So, you have to play a sequel before the original game.
There's other arbitrary nonsense too, like needing to collection a set number of coins in DeCap Attack to play Zaxxon.
(The "rebuttal" to these complaints is that the unlockable games aren't actually Genesis games and thus should be treated as bonuses. I don't care -- let me play the shit I payed for).
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Post by Xeogred on Sept 26, 2022 18:58:10 GMT -5
This doesn't totally fit the bill with collections and all that you guys are getting at...
But when I revisit old games that I 100%'d back in the day, it irks me going back now when stuff like Donkey Kong Country 2-3, or Bomberman 64 that I'm playing again right -now-, have awesome challenging content locked behind tedious collectibles.
In Bomberman 64 there are 5 main worlds, each with 4 levels, 2 normal and 2 boss fights. There are 125 "Gold Cards" collectibles with 5 per stage. The boss ones are particularly weird and random triggers, like having to throw a bomb and bounce them off a boss, hit them with a powered up bomb, kick a bomb to them... I have no idea. To unlock the "Rainbow Palace World", the secret challenging end game world, you need 100 Gold Cards. So that's still having to get MOST of them. I think I only have a little over 50-60 and I just have two levels left.
This was more than likely a way to get more artificial play time out of a release. Gameshark and codes can sometimes get around it, I'm going to check into that with Bomberman 64 (maybe I can find a save?), I would love nothing more than to play these challenging levels again, but getting all those obnoxious collectibles again is a chore that doesn't interest me.
I love the Lost World's in DKC2-3, but I have never played them fully through again since I was a kid, purely because of the collect-a-thon nature of unlocking them.
One of my biggest pet peeves revisiting retro games. But yeah modern games can still do this too and have their own slew of problems. Ubisoft is bumping their prices up to $70, but don't kid yourself, you're still not buying a full game with publishers like them.  |
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Post by anayo on Sept 26, 2022 19:15:40 GMT -5
I hate this shit. Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection had some stupid ass ones. Want to play Phantasy Star? Just defeat the first boss of Sonic 2 with two players (I've only ever owned one Xbox 360 controller). Shinobi is unlocked if you beat the first stage of Shinobi III without using continues. So, you have to play a sequel before the original game. There's other arbitrary nonsense too, like needing to collection a set number of coins in DeCap Attack to play Zaxxon. (The "rebuttal" to these complaints is that the unlockable games aren't actually Genesis games and thus should be treated as bonuses. I don't care -- let me play the shit I payed for). That sounds like trash. Stuff like this is why an action replay seemed like a good investment for my Gamecube. What sucks is that those unlock requirements don't go away. If I wanted to play S3&K on Sonic Mega Collection in 2022, I'd either need to find my old memory card, find my old action replay, or open and close Sonic 3 and S&K 20 times. I have never seen a genre age so poorly as the collectathon. It's so surreal, too, cause in elementary school I loved games like Donkey Kong 64 and Tonic Trouble. But today I just can't. The only collectathon games I can replay now are Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine. Those are S-tier, though; the best of the best. This is also why in Ex 's N64 reminiscence topic I brought up how NES has aged better than N64 even though N64 was a bigger part of my childhood. |
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Post by Xeogred on Sept 26, 2022 19:33:27 GMT -5
Yeah, Mario definitely gatekeeps and has for awhile now. But I agree something about that series never annoys me in ways other collect-a-thons tend to.
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Post by Ex on Sept 26, 2022 20:31:04 GMT -5
Always annoys me to get a new fighter with half the fighters locked, then you have to do arbitrary stuff over time to unlock them. Same thing with racers, where a third of the racers and a cup or three is locked the same way. The Mario gatekeeping is real too, that crap made me stop playing Super Mario Galaxy 2. And Super Princess Peach. But what REALLY grinds my gears, is DLC locked on disc. IIRC Capcom started that crap. Literally you buy a new game, but a chunk of the game is locked away as "DLC". So you have to pay $$$ to unlock the DLC that is right there already on the disc. That's just anti-consumerism in the extreme and should be illegal. |
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Post by anayo on Sept 26, 2022 20:39:15 GMT -5
Always annoys me to get a new fighter with half the fighters locked, then you have to do arbitrary stuff over time to unlock them. Same thing with racers, where a third of the racers and a cup or three is locked the same way. Yes, this! I love the Super Smash Bros. games, but hate how you have to do random crap to unlock all the fighters. And that same thing in racing games has a lot to do with why I don't want to play Gran Turismo. I read about that before. Wasn't there a "DLC" for a Capcom game that was only a few hundred kilobytes? Then some data detectives looked into it and found it was just unlocking files already on the disk! I can't remember which game it was, though. |
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Post by Ex on Sept 26, 2022 20:48:19 GMT -5
Wasn't there a "DLC" for a Capcom game that was only a few hundred kilobytes? Then some data detectives looked into it and found it was just unlocking files already on the disk! I can't remember which game it was, though. Yep that's correct, and it's the game I linked to in my post above. |
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Post by Sarge on Sept 27, 2022 16:11:57 GMT -5
Ninja Gaiden on XBOX did this. The steps:
Unlock NES Ninja Gaiden - Collect all 50 Scarabs.
Unlock Ninja Gaiden 2 - Method 1: Achieve Master Ranking in all chapters of Normal difficulty.
Unlock Ninja Gaiden 2 - Method 2: After earning Ninja Gaiden 1, head to the Clock Tower Plaza in Tairon (you can do this in successive play, if you want) and aim your arrow at the clock face on the tower. Head through the door to the clock down and get to the opening to find the chest with NG 2 inside.
Unlock Ninja Gaiden 3 - Method 1: Achieve Master Ranking in all chapters on Hard or Very Hard difficulty.
Unlock Ninja Gaiden 3 - Method 2: After unlocking Ninja Gaiden 2, when you are in the Peristyle Passage, Mario jump between the first and second columns to the left of the entrance (when facing the entrance). On top of the broken column is NG 3.
Not ideal. I think I may have unlocked NG1, but I'm honestly not sure. I don't mind unlocks like this if they're not too onerous, but sometimes they are absolutely terrible.
Oh, right, that reminds me that Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time did this as well. You could unlock the original by finding a hidden area in the GC version (probably PS2 as well), and unlock both PoP 1/2 in the XBOX version by completing the game for the first and a secret area for the second.
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Post by anayo on Sept 27, 2022 20:41:46 GMT -5
Ninja Gaiden on XBOX did this. The steps: Unlock NES Ninja Gaiden - Collect all 50 Scarabs. Unlock Ninja Gaiden 2 - Method 1: Achieve Master Ranking in all chapters of Normal difficulty. Unlock Ninja Gaiden 2 - Method 2: After earning Ninja Gaiden 1, head to the Clock Tower Plaza in Tairon (you can do this in successive play, if you want) and aim your arrow at the clock face on the tower. Head through the door to the clock down and get to the opening to find the chest with NG 2 inside. Unlock Ninja Gaiden 3 - Method 1: Achieve Master Ranking in all chapters on Hard or Very Hard difficulty. Unlock Ninja Gaiden 3 - Method 2: After unlocking Ninja Gaiden 2, when you are in the Peristyle Passage, Mario jump between the first and second columns to the left of the entrance (when facing the entrance). On top of the broken column is NG 3. Not ideal. I think I may have unlocked NG1, but I'm honestly not sure. I don't mind unlocks like this if they're not too onerous, but sometimes they are absolutely terrible. Oh, right, that reminds me that Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time did this as well. You could unlock the original by finding a hidden area in the GC version (probably PS2 as well), and unlock both PoP 1/2 in the XBOX version by completing the game for the first and a secret area for the second. I had no idea about any of those, especially the Ninja Gaiden ones. I have Ninja Gaiden for XBOX, although unlocking that stuff doesn't really matter to me since I have Ninja Gaiden 1 & 2 on NES and NG3 on Famicom. I remember back in the days when unlockables like that seemed like a selling point, though. Doesn't Panzer Dragoon Orta also have the original Panzer Dragoon locked as some kind of in-game achievement, too? I know it's on the disc, but somehow I doubt they'd just let you freely play it. |
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