I was hoping I would be sharing my victory today, but instead I will have to settle for another update post!

This was the first time since I’ve started playing Ikari Warriors where real life got in the way of making progress. I was in a wedding two weekends ago and with all the activities going on I didn’t get to play any NES for four days. This was easily my longest stretch without playing in quite some time. Then last week I got sick which led to both playing less and playing badly whenever I got around to it. I’m feeling better now so hopefully this will be the week I beat Ikari Warriors. I’m looking forward to moving on to something new for sure!

I did reach a new personal best last week. I made it all the way to the final boss with a couple of lives but I could not finish off the game. The final stretch introduces a couple of new elements to the game that were quite a surprise to see so late in this long game. Honestly I’m surprised I got as far as I did. It was one of those lucky runs that I have written about before. The next run like that will probably be the winning run, but with Ikari Warriors you never really know for sure!

One common thread of my relatively poor playing lately has been a resurgences of deaths in Level 2. I have beaten this stage without dying many times. However I have not had a clean Level 2 since my personal best run almost a week ago. There is really no explanation for it either. I had a run where I lost a tank in Level 2 at a really awful spot and yet I somehow managed to clear a large chunk of the level on foot without dying. I still have these moments of awesome playing that get lost in the mistakes I am making that cause decent runs to fizzle out.

With any luck this will really be the last Ikari Warriors update. I am still targeting a Monday update either next week or in two weeks, but that might change depending on when I finish the game. I’m excited to share my final thoughts with you on this grueling NES game!

It was about time to start numbering these updates!

I have made some good progress since my last update. A few days after my previous update post, I beat Level 3 for the first time and then made it probably halfway through the final level on that same run. My best run so far happened a couple of nights ago where I got about two-thirds of the way through Level 4. It seems like all the stages are the same length or very close, so that is my best guess for where I’m at in the game. I haven’t been keeping track but I have made it to Level 4 probably 8-10 times so far over the past two weeks. Like I’ve mentioned several times before it is all a matter of repeating the game in order to build my knowledge so that I can better cope with the enemy attack.

I feel at this point that all it takes for me to beat Ikari Warriors is to have that one lucky attempt where the randomness works in my favor and my playing ability is up to par enough to make significant progress with a fully powered character. It could be any day now when that happens, so I need to keep putting the time in and at least get more exposure to the late game on unsuccessful runs. I’m really close to putting this one to bed for good!

So far I have been able to complete both Level 1 and Level 2 without dying numerous times, including clearing both together deathless in the same run on a few occasions. I have not been able to clear Level 3 deathless and that is because the end of level gauntlet I mentioned last time has no clear solution that I have found to be able to survive it unscathed. At best, I can take a single death and use the invincibility period to finish the remaining enemies. I haven’t seen anything approaching that level of difficulty so far in Level 4, so that says to me that a deathless run of Ikari Warriors is dependent on figuring out the last part of Stage 3. Of course, I don’t need to do a deathless run! If I am able to reach the beginning of Level 4 with only one death, then that sets me up with a pretty good chance of lucking into beating the game.

As an aside, it’s funny how I am mastering this game and yet I can still make some awful errors that completely kill a good run. Lately I have been dying way too many times within the first 30 seconds of the game. I had a run recently where I accidentally self-destructed my tank in a bad spot where I couldn’t recover. I had another run with a string of simply unacceptable deaths that were spread out enough that I somehow managed to reach the final level anyway. I still have the occasional attempt that bombs out in Level 1. I seem to be able to string together a series of good runs followed by a string of mostly unsuccessful runs that frankly are a waste of time at this point. It has been downright frustrating at times to play Ikari Warriors, but in spite of that I keep coming back for more.

This week is shaping up to be a busy one for me, so chances are I will skip next week’s update in favor of real life activities. I am feeling pretty good about beating Ikari Warriors in the next two weeks. I hope that my next update will be the full length blog post on Ikari Warriors that everyone has been waiting for. Stay tuned!

The last couple of weeks have been mostly kind to me by Ikari Warriors standards! At my last progress report I was starting to learn Level 3. I would not say that I have really learned the level yet in the last two weeks, but I can consistently make it far into the level in spite of my incomplete knowledge. In fact, I have reached the end of Stage 3 several times and I have gotten really close to clearing the level. I anticipate that I am going to start the final level by the end of the week. Maybe I can have that magical run and beat the game by the end of the month!

I think it is fair to say that I have the first two levels completely memorized as well as several sections of Level 3. The best way for me to play Ikari Warriors is to learn both the level layout and enemy spawns so that I can position myself to clear enemies quickly before they can become a real threat. However, when fully powered up I can get through many situations by playing in a reactionary and cautious manner. I am getting through Level 3 with a combination of both of these approaches. I don’t know what Level 4 has in store for me, but I suspect that I am going to rely more on playing by reaction.

Just a heads up that this is a bit of a spoiler. My attempt just last night was my best run to date. I reached the end of Level 3 with only two deaths, both of which were in Level 3. The very end of the stage is easily the most brutal section of the game I have encountered so far. It is just swarming with enemies that actively aim at me. I have developed somewhat of a strategy for that part, but I am not sure if I will come up with a method for getting through it without dying. This time I was able to clear out all of the enemies, but after that there is no apparent exit to the level. I lost all my remaining lives to the “hurry up” missiles while trying to figure out what to do. I was a bit stunned to say the least! Of course, once it was all said and done I think I realize where I went wrong. I can’t wait to get back to that part with a clear head and see about moving on toward the end of the game.

In other news, you may have noticed that I posted this up on a Monday instead of my normal Friday schedule. I get the feeling my posts are more easily ignored when posted on Friday afternoon. I know this sounds crazy, but people have better things to do over the weekend than read this blog! I chose Friday as my posting day because it is the most convenient day for me to put these posts and articles together. If I can get more attention with a post earlier in the week then it is worth working around my schedule to accommodate it. I do this blog for myself but at the same time I want this project to become more popular and generate fun discussions over obscure and overlooked NES games. I will stick to the Monday posting schedule for awhile to see how it pans out.

I am planning to do something different once again for my next post. It was something I potentially teased in a past article, so if you are a very attentive reader with a good memory then you may already know what I will be writing up!

Ikari Warriors is still beating me down, but I am getting much better at fighting back! In the last two weeks I have seen some steady progress in my grueling quest. Last time I predicted that I would see the end of Level 2 and start learning Level 3 over repeated attempts, and that prediction turned out to be accurate! It did take me a few more days to get the hang of Level 2 enough to complete it, but then my first attempt at Stage 3 was a really solid run. Looking back, that day in particular was a significant turning point. For whatever reason, Stage 2 was a real hurtle and after clearing it just once I can now get through it about half of the time. I still don’t know the exact enemy spawn points but I know them well enough that I can slow play the level just a bit and get through it without losing too many lives.

While the first two levels are similar in structure, the third level introduces some new wrinkles that ramp up the challenge even further. The general strategy of learning where things are in the level is still the same, but the new elements take some getting used to. It’s no different than what it was like starting from the beginning. Hopefully progress can continue to remain steady, but in case it does not this can be part of the reason why.

I am starting to get far enough into the game now where I am only able to get one or two attempts in per day. I play roughly one hour a day on average and it takes me 30 to 40 minutes to reach part way into Level 3. Time management has always been an issue for me and my project and that is going to be amplified in the coming weeks as runs start taking up to an hour each. There are days when I am pretty sharp and I wish I could spend more time playing on those days as I am more likely to break new ground when I’m playing better. Some days are a step forward and other days are a step back. I have to take the hand that I have been dealt, so to speak.

I have mentioned before that my policy for beating games more or less boils down to treating the game as if I bought it brand new on launch day. I try to adhere to this as much as possible on games I have no experience with. For Ikari Warriors, I want to admit here that I bent my rule just a little bit. I did a little research online in order to find the location of a Super Speed powerup in the first stage, and I was able to find one that I wasn’t able to locate on my own. Ikari Warriors has a selection of special powerups that only appear by shooting at specific locations. Walking in this game is slow and the Super Speed doubles my walking speed into a much more manageable pace. I have beaten the first level numerous times without having the speed boost but I wanted to have it if possible to clear the first stage faster. If I can shave even thirty seconds off of my Level 1 time, that will add up to significant time savings over possibly hundreds of future attempts. It is really only helpful for Level 1 because there is another Super Speed right at the beginning of Level 2, and it certainly does not increase my chances of making it through the stage unharmed as I seem to die just as often with Super Speed as I do without!

With the way things are going, I am guessing I will be playing Ikari Warriors for another couple of months. I am afraid of running out of secondary material to write about in the long term. I just don’t have a lot of experience with many other NES and Game Boy games that I want to cover, and I insist on putting in the time to beat the game before writing it up. I estimate that I will have fewer additional games in total than licensed NES games for this project. I have to consider that there will be large gaps just like this with other difficult or lengthy games and I want to have the right amount of new content no matter what the circumstances. I am thinking about either going back to posting every other week or spreading out the secondary content even further apart. I know that I want to keep this site active no matter what, but exactly what I will post about next is very much up in the air at this time. Let’s say that next week’s update will be a surprise for now! In the meantime I will keep chugging away at the game so we can move on to better and brighter things!

Progress on Ikari Warriors is creeping forward. There are no huge milestones to report but there are some tiny pebbles of progress at least! I reached my personal best just last night which is some point deep into Level 2. My hunch is that I got to the final segment of that stage, but until I actually clear the stage I can’t say for sure if I am really close or not. I had two other attempts yesterday that were just about as far as my best. Hopefully that means I am better handling the more random aspects of the game. That should turn into advancing my progress more quickly as I will have more opportunities to memorize the fixed enemy positions. However, Ikari Warriors has a tendency to beat me down so the next attempts may very well be worse!

I am continuing to evolve my strategy on the first level and I am at the point now where I can clear it just about every time. I am finishing it without deaths a whole lot more often too. There are still some attempts where I make horrible mistakes that contain me to the first level, and there are a few points in the stage toward the end where I am not yet consistent. Some of that is on me and some of that is on the game being mean.

Progress in a given run is tied very closely to keeping a tank. The tank gives better firepower, absorbs small bullets, and gives you an extra hit against stronger attacks. Lose the tank and the difficulty leaps up considerably. Some spots are mandatory on foot and those are the exact portions that give me problems. What’s worse is that a good chunk of the beginning of Level 2 must be done without the tank, and whenever I do reach the first tank in the level there is a decent probability of losing it right away. This initial segment currently demands the most practice.

Before my next progress report, my goal is to start learning Level 3. I think I am a few days away from beating Stage 2 for the first time. With enough repetition I should be able to begin clearing the entire first half of the game with some consistency. We shall see if my prediction comes true!

In other news, I did have a bit of distraction last week that limited my time with Ikari Warriors. Last week’s game in the NintendoAge weekly contest was Battletoads and I spent a significant amount of time playing it. Even though it is highly regarded as one of the most difficult NES games, I know the game inside and out and I can beat the game pretty easily. The contest was scored on furthest progression without warping with the tiebreaker of lowest score wins. Battletoads is difficult enough to play normally, but beating the game while keeping the score low provides a very interesting challenge. I won the exact same contest a year ago and I successfully defended my title this time around! My final score was 673,150 and as far as I know that is the lowest final score ever recorded in a warpless run of Battletoads. I’ll confidently lay claim to this unofficial world record!

Next week I will be reviewing another game! I know which one I would like to cover but I will need to set aside some time to play it. In case that falls through I have a backup already in mind. Until then, happy gaming!

One advantage of having the blog format is that it is very easy to make updates to both correct information and add new content where appropriate. I have been focusing so much on writing up my recent game finishes as well as actually playing the games that I have been neglecting several updates to correct and clarify some things. I will always be picking up new and interesting information on NES games and some of that will make its way back to the blog. Now is a good time to post all the updates that I finally got around to writing!

These are the changes I made:

• Dates played have been added to all completed NES games.
• Difficulty rankings have been added to all completed NES games. I added them to the posts for Super Mario Bros, Contra, and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! In addition, I added a small paragraph to the end of each of those posts explaining my difficulty assessment a bit. Definitely go back and check them out!
• The Tetris post has a new paragraph about the documentary Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters. I also included a new paragraph about my decision for the difficulty rating.
• The Castlevania post has a new paragraph about the difficulty loops.
• The Lemmings post has a new paragraph about the developer.

 
I am still working every day on Ikari Warriors. I have been getting much better at repeating Level 1 and I am starting to make headway in Level 2. If Level 2 is roughly the same length as Level 1, then I estimate that I have reached the midpoint of the second stage on my best attempt. It’s a little bit sad that I have been playing for a little over a month and I haven’t even beaten the first half of the game yet, but it just goes to show how difficult and unrelenting this NES port really is. Since I started playing I have only skipped one day of making attempts and I am going to try my best to keep at it every day until I beat it.

Next week I will have an all new full length blog post about a new topic. I have decided what the next post will be written about and I think it will be a nice diversion while I keep working on my main goal. In two weeks I will have another progress report on Ikari Warriors with hopefully some good news!

I don’t normally like to give away the games I’m playing for this blog while in progress, but I’ve finally reached a game that is going to take me so long to finish that I think it’s worth mentioning and discussing.

The next game for Take On The NES Library is Ikari Warriors. I believe this is the hardest NES game I have ever attempted to beat, and it’s looking like a solid contender for the hardest NES game period. The game is pretty lengthy and challenging, but the real bottleneck here is there are no continues outside of using a cheat code. When all lives are lost, it’s Game Over and all the way back to the beginning of the game. My personal policy is to beat NES games on console without any cheat devices or codes that aren’t specifically called out in the game manual. I don’t want to do practice runs on an emulator either. I’m sticking with just the base amount of information as if the game was purchased on launch day. Some will call me crazy trying to beat Ikari Warriors this way, and that’s fine, but I believe it’s the purest way to consider a game beaten and that is what I am planning to stick with at all costs.

I have been playing Ikari Warriors for over three weeks and the furthest point I have reached is probably a quarter of the way through the second level. There are four levels in this game and the stages seem to go on for quite a long time. I am still trying to hone in my technique for consistently clearing level one since it keeps giving me trouble on many of my attempts. Success at this game boils down to memorizing the stage layouts and the only real way to do that is to repeat them over and over again. It is a very slow grind, but I am confident that I will beat this game even if it takes me many more weeks or even months to do it.

At this time I am not going to skip ahead to the next game while working concurrently on Ikari Warriors. I feel if I decide to skip ahead then I won’t be keeping up on my skills and that makes it more likely for me to just skip the game altogether. Passing on a difficult, long game even temporarily sets a bad precedent. If I am really attempting to beat every NES game then I am going to eventually need to cross paths with a tough game so I might as well take it in stride. Plus, I really enjoy having each new game revealed to me as I complete games and I’m not about to give that up just because I ran into a real nasty game to finish. I’ve beaten games in this manner before by just grinding out attempt after attempt, and I’m still motivated to put in the time on Ikari Warriors.

Now having said all of that, I don’t want to leave the blog dormant while I continue to whittle away at Ikari Warriors. I think it’s best for both myself and the project to keep it active in some capacity. Therefore, I am planning on posting some secondary content to bridge the gap. Most of these posts will be progress updates such as this one, but I also have some ideas for other features that will be more substantial. Mixing up the post types will give me more time to put together new content while also allowing me time needed to work on my main game. I have also decided to post an update every Friday from now on. That has worked pretty well for me in my main posts and I think some consistency is healthy. Hopefully you will agree and enjoy some more regular content on the site!

Here’s a small look at what’s ahead. Next week I will have another progress update. I have been long overdue for making some miscellaneous updates in past posts, so I will be working on that and I will have a summary of changes in the next post. Two weeks from now I will have a new feature to read! I have a few ideas to pick from and I’m not sure what I’ll do yet.

I created a thread on NintendoAge about my experience with Ikari Warriors if you are craving more detail than what I have provided here. If you want to play along with me and suffer through it, then by all means have at it!