The Hell run in
Cave Story is aptly named.
Contra-level difficulty there. I wish I'd beaten it normally the first time through. It's a good game, but it's not
amazing. But at the same time, it needs to be judged for when it was released; 2004 is a looooong time ago in indie years. And by one dude, no less? Super impressive. This is when a lot of people realized, "Wait, I can make my own games now? Sweet!"
January:February:March:April:May:June:July:August:September:75) The Mafat Conspiracy (NES) (5.0) (9/1) (~1.5 hours)76) Snake's Revenge (NES) (8.0) (9/4) (~4 hours)77) Ys: Memories of Celceta (VITA) (7.5) (9/4) (~25 hours?)78) Skate or Die 2: The Search for Double Trouble (NES) (5.0) (9/7) (~2 hours)79) 1943: The Battle for Midway (NES) (7.0) (9/9) (~2.5 hours)80) Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom (ARC/360) (5.0) (9/9) (~1 hour)81) Arkista's Ring (NES) (6.0) (9/9) (~1 hour)82) Bad Dudes (NES) (4.0) (9/9) (~45 minutes)83) G.I. Joe: The Atlantis Factor (NES) (7.0) (9/10) (~2 hours)84) Target: Renegade (NES) (2.0) (9/10) (~1 hour)85) Gyruss (NES) (8.5) (9/11) (~1 hour)86) Renegade (NES) (3.5) (9/12) (~30 minutes)I've always liked
G.I. Joe: The Atlantis Factor a lot. I know the first game is more beloved, but this one is slightly better, even if it has some problem areas. I used to be able to consistently beat this one in the days of no save states and all that. I'm not as good now, but you can radio for health restoratives or an ammo dump (which uses up one of the radios). It's a good idea to play through routes just to pick them up. Also, the order you pick up your Joes is important if you want to use particular ones; I didn't get Snake-Eyes or Duke until the end, and by that point they were hopelessly behind in strength.
At any rate, it almost doesn't matter who you go with as long as you can get their life meters up with some Chevrons, then get their fists and the laser gun upgraded (once you have it). That thing rips through bosses like nobody's business.
EDIT: Straight trash, y'all.
Target: Renegade is straight trash. I did finally figure out a good way to deal damage quickly, but the game is balanced terribly, with cheap shots galore (even more than usual in a brawler). I'm not even sure I'd recommend trying this one from sheer morbid curiosity like I did.
EDIT 2:
Gyruss was one of my favorite games growing up. I didn't have the NES version, but a guy with a tire shop in my town had arcade machines next to my uncle's service station, so I got to play what he had at times. (And for the record, the fact that this guy had those games was crazy; I come from a town of maybe 250 people.) I got to play stuff like
Ninja Gaiden,
Double Dragon,
Robocop, and, of course,
Gyruss. I love the circling-the-screen mechanic, and the action is blistering. I don't remember the changes between it and the NES version, but I don't remember a lot of the boss-type encounters being in the arcade version, nor do I remember that power shot. They're both interesting additions to what was a pretty simple (but awesome) game. It's sad that this version of Konami isn't kicking anymore.
I'm probably going to claim a legit win on this one. The couple of times I restored state, I died again soon after and just kept going. Getting the final boss pattern was the trickiest, but once I had it, power shots sped things up and also made for a good defense against his lasers.
EDIT 3:
Renegade ends up much better than its ersatz sequel, or at least the NES one does. It's very short, but the moveset is varied, and you can even do running attacks, which is something not seen until the third game of the
Double Dragon series. (Of course, Technos did it in some other games of theirs before
DD3.)
Really, what brings it down is the very, very unfair enemies. Most you can deal with, but it really takes good usage of your running attack, or your ground-and-pound. Bosses in particular will stomp you if you don't use the dash attack. The last boss is even worse, much like
Double Dragon, he wields a gun, and
unlike that game, one shot and you're dead. This is made even worse if he catches you in your dash attack, because he'll hit you with a melee attack and immediately follow with a shot. Basically, you can't really get hit here. The only way I found was to move above or below, and do the dash attack with perfect timing as he moved onto your plane. Otherwise you're likely to get capped.