So You Can Beat a Game? Big DealJune 23rd, 2008 by Gloria
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Beating games is the easy part. What? It is. Following the linear storyline and fighting the end boss, gathering all the necessary items or whatever it takes to unlock the final cut-scenes. Obviously there are some notable exceptions: Nobody would consider the credit rolling scene during K.K. Slider’s songs to be the ending of Animal Crossing. But the fact remains, most games require a bare minimum of effort to get to any of the plot points including the ending.
Side-quests are added in for a reason. A lot of the fun element in games is challenging yourself to get higher scores, better endings, or new outfits. Gamers have also been inventing ways to challenge themselves for decades. Who out there doesn’t have a 100% Zelda: Ocarina of Time save file? A better question: Who out there has actually taken up the three heart completion challenge? Significantly fewer people.
Admit it. Beating Sephiroth was easy a sin. Getting knights of the round? Not so much. Even more daunting was the added challenge of the emerald and ruby weapons. The first time I ran into ruby weapon, I had been cruising around on my brand new gold chocobo. I spotted something bizarrely phallic sticking out of the ground and did what every smart person does. I ran over it. I realized how big of a mistake it was when Tifa and Red XIII were dead in two seconds.
I took it upon myself to find all the jiggys in Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie for next to no reason. I learned to hate jinjos with a passion. It also reinforced my undying hatred of most underwater levels. I forced myself to beat Diddy Kong Racing but there was just no way for me to make myself play it to full completion. I consider even beating that game to be a badge of honor.
Red Jewels in Illusion of Gaia? Been there. Fully leveled spells in Secret of Mana? That was one of my first accomplishments. Culex in Super Mario RPG? That one was fun. If you had asked me over a decade ago if the 100% ’secret’ ending for Link’s Awakening was worth it, I would have screamed: “HELL YES!”
And then there were the platformers and the shooters. Tearing my hair out over that dumb animal pals level of the lost world in Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest. Getting the Screech’s Sprint level down to under two minutes. Super Mario 64? Screw that game and its red coins. Even more hilarious than watching me trying to play through Bowser’s last level was watching me try and beat all my friends in Goldeneye with only proximity mines. That never ended well.
The original Myst? I shudder at the mention of its name because the ending made me furious. Myst is on my list of games I was just happy to actually beat. Lion King is on there too, sitting next to the Ren and Stimpy and Beavis and Butthead games.
The self-imposed challenges are always the most interesting because they offer no other reward than satisfaction. I have no idea what compelled me to make a full team of pichus in Pokemon, or why I wasted time training up that pixie/dragon in Monster Rancher. Driving backwards through all the Mario Kart levels? Hilarious, yet ineffective. Score after score beaten, time after time shortened.
The weird thing about all these strange accomplishments is that we did them for next to no reason. We wanted to do it for ourselves. Nobody was going to see us race our gold chocobo. Nowadays people raid for the best armor, or grind for the top live spot. People do it to get noticed, to flaunt, to be the best. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but do remember why you originally started trying to achieve the close-to-impossible. For yourself.
June 23rd, 2008 at 3:10 pm
My favorite challenge is to beat OoT without getting a Sword. You can only do it on the original N64 or else you cant get by that annoying elf kid in the beginning who demands your sword and sheild. And guess what you have to substitute for the sword?
DEKU STICKS!!!! MILLIONS OF DEKU STICKS…
But I completely agree, side quests is where its at. Who wouldn’t want to beat FFVII with all level 1 party members?
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Haha, I leveled my monsters in Monster Rancher too, especially my Pixies and Obelisks. They were always my favorite. My rabbit-monster ran away, I forget the breed though. I feel like with the advent of leaderboards people only care about showing off to their friends, which sort of irritates me. I love achievements because they are sort of the new “have-tos” for the 360’s era. I don’t care who sees them, but I always feel awesome when I get a hard one.
I remember playing through Amplitude and Frequency about a billion times each just so I could say I beat it on the hardest setting. XD No one I talk to even likes them, so of course it doesn’t matter to them, haha.
June 23rd, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I don’t think I’ve truly wrung the life out of any game since FFVI, though I’m quite close to doing so with The World Ends With You.
Maybe part of what was so much fun about beating FFVI was the bugs. I never quite got around to the “beat the game with nothing but Cyan with no Espers” challenge though…
June 23rd, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Oh yeah, also, SCREW red jewels. =\
June 23rd, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Demosthenes: Ahaha, I never actually tried that. You’re making me want to dig out my old N64 and play. OOT was one of my favorite games.
Brit: I <3 monster rancher. I hated pixies. I always tried to raise dragons but their life spans were so short. My problem was getting into the top leagues and then my monster would be old and dying. xD So I’d just freeze it and combine two into a new one. I also really, REALLY hated suezos. I think my best one ever was a worm. Lame
William: You heard about the Cyan bug, right? It’s pretty crazy. And yeah, the pisser about Illusion of Gaia was they fact that if you missed a red jewel at any point in the game, it was gone forever. I felt like crap after I beat the game and found that out. Second time was the charm, though.
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Now if only I can apply this mindset to something somewhat productive. Like visiting every Starbucks in the city. Acing exams without reading material. Stopping pucks while balancing on my head. Blogging without stopping.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:36 am
A FFVI Haiku:
Cute green dance of death
That exploits two bugs at once
Go, Psycho-Cyan!
June 24th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Beating a game used to be a big deal, because, back in the day, there was no saving and games were long and difficult. Blaster Master for the NES would be a perfect example of that combination. Other examples would be Super Mario without the warp zones or Contra without the cheat code. Nowadays, games have been n00bed for a wider level of access, and saves mean you now have all the time in the world to finish and can take a mulligan whenever you want, instead of hosing all the work you’d done to get to that point with one bad move.
June 24th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Joe! Hi! I’m TheReclaimer. I’m glad you came to check us out.
Also I wanted to add that I just realized today that I have let achievements on 360 games control my play style as of late. I used to never spend time on games after I had finished them but lately I am going through just to get the achievements that seemed ridiculous at first look. It’s a bad habit. I really need to stop and go give my PS2 some lovin’ since it IS my favorite~
June 24th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Another good one I did recently was doing all of Ravenholm with just the Gravity Gun. God, that was awesome.
June 25th, 2008 at 1:27 am
I felt Like an underachiever, but then I remembered I beat Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal with only the wrench
June 25th, 2008 at 9:57 am
My boyfriend once leveled up Cloud and Barret in FFVII to level 99 BEFORE beating the first boss. It took him 3 months, he said.
Yeah………… I never even had the patience to level up Aerith before she died, let alone level up the two main characters fully before the first boss.
He’s crazy.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Honestly, trying out all the little in-game secrets or collecting items has always been more interesting to me than actually beating the game for some reason. I have dozens of games I love and have owned for years but never beaten, simply because I like starting over…I play more for the fun experience than the end-game rewards.
I love testing the limits of a game…like exploring places in Mario Kart to figure out new ways to complete the track (or running it backwards).
And proximity mines are actually my favorite way to play Goldeneye.
Rather than hunting down my opponents to blast them as quickly as possible, I enjoy setting up elaborate mine traps and spend the rest of the time drawing pictures on the walls with the paintball guns while I wait for my friends to stumble into the traps. I find that way more fun that more traditional playing styles.
June 28th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Demosthenes.. lol amazing idea.. beating OOT without a sword XD
And yes Sparkk.. my life has been all about acheivements for this past few days too.. good goddd..
June 29th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Wait, what was so bad about the original MYST? There was one aggravating bug (at least in my 90’s-era disc) where if you screwed up the code to raise the sunken ship even once, it would never work, but other than that I found the puzzles doable. That’s not to say easy — they had me pulling my hair out more than once — but it’s a game centered around puzzles. If they had been too easy it would have sucked.
Of course then again I’m the Myst outcast who thinks Riven was the best of all of them…but that’s a rant for another time
July 11th, 2008 at 3:48 am
First game i beat absolutely 100% was spyro 2 main reason i did it because that game actually had decent rewards to get 100% they opened up a mini-world full of fun games and after that a super powerup.
It was a challenge and the reward was brilliant so i went back and tried to get 100% on all games i did it on Super Mario World only to find the grand reward was a change in the colour palette. Bit disappointed about that one.
Finished GTA 3 and Vice city 100% too couldn’t finish san andreas that game is just far too massive.
I love the look of 100% completion and the way square enix rewards you for it is also pretty awesome the extra hidden endings.
Rewards for 100% are a must in my opinion but honestly the amount of stuff needing to be covered in the GTA’s absolutely required those damn strategy books and i just can’t be bothered when there is no further difficulty and it’s just taking a shot of a damn billboard across the street from your damn safehouse.
Damn!