Gaming Underground

Clear Time: 42:40 A run of Rambo on the NES with all optional bosses defeated and no wall glitches. This game gets a bad rep for being a poor quality Zelda II knockoff, but I don't think it's that bad to be honest. I also incorrectly called it an LJN game when it was actually Acclaim. I think this one is not as bad as people say. It's definitely a flawed game for sure, but it's also an enjoyable adventure that follows the movie. My only complaints are, I wish there were more areas to explore (including more neutral areas with townsfolk), and I wish the enemies had better AI without the cheap hits. Overall, I'd give this game a 6 out of 10.

Clear Time: 26:08 A bonus no warps SMB run to complement the 5-minute warps run earlier. Unfortunately, this run is not deathless as you will see, and I could not be bothered at all to try and redo it. I won't spoil it, but I'm at least satisfied I got as far as I did with no deaths.

Clear Time: 5:44 A short and sweet run through the classic platformer. I'm not the best Mario player but I guess this run is alright.

Final Score: 296,360 I was just starting to come down with something when I recorded the commentary, so that's why my voice sounds a bit strange. Anyway, this is Space Invaders '91, or Space Invaders '90 depending on what part of the world you're from. I picked this game up because I thought it looked interesting and thought it would be great for a score run. My Review: There's not much to say about this one. I can see what the designers were going for in trying to update the classic arcade game. I think they did a decent job of adding new elements while keeping the classic gameplay. My only gripe with the game is it gets repetitive and it's too short. I would have appreciated some different enemy types on the later levels. A lot of people praise the music in this one and I'd have to agree, it's full of bangers. Overall, I'd give this one a B-.

Clear Time: 14:21 Back with a classic! This one turned out to be not as tough as I thought it would be. A lot of the enemies move erratically, but they're also fairly predictable. Hopefully this will be the start of a new series!

Clear Time: 26:06 Casual speed run on hard mode of a "classic" Genesis game. Not one of my personal favorites, though. On hard mode, the designers threw a lot of dick-ass enemies in quite a few places which just takes memorization to know what's coming. Been wanting to to World of Illusion for a while but I have something special planned for it.

Final Score: 255,900 Here is my high-score run of the Game Boy port of Bubble Ghost. I tried my damnedest to get a no death run, but the deathless Gods were not merciful to me. So, I decided to upload the best run I could get. This run isn't too bad from a time perspective anyway. I only died in two rooms and still got the best score I've ever gotten.

Clear Time: 12:37 A brisk run through one of my childhood favorites. I used to play this with my dad all the time as a kid, but we could never pass the final level! So, here I am today beating it all with one credit, haha. This run has its fair share of slips and a slow skeleton fight at one point, but it's the first time I beat it without losing a credit so that's good. This game is kinda hard to beat without dying at all just because the enemies can pull some cheap shit quite often, especially the skeletons!

Total Score: 342,000 Here's a high-score run of the much better (in my opinion) but much less popular sequel to the arcade classic Dig Dug. The NES version is a faithful port of the arcade game but with 40(!) extra levels added. In this run, my goal was to at least get past level 32 (the original arcade ending) and get at least 300k points. This game is extremely hard to get all the way through without game overs, so I'm not too bummed I didn't make it!

Clear Time: 13:35 Played on extra mode, which is sort of like the "second quest" of the original Kirby. It has faster, stronger enemies and upgraded boss fights. Quite tough to get through without dying, especially the final boss rush. I had a few hiccups on this run in particular. I'd say it was about 30 seconds of time loss in total. Probably could get 13 minutes flat or high 12 minutes if I were to not make any mistakes at all.

Clear Time: 51:53 Here is a brisk run through of the original Zelda without Up+A warping and silly screen wrapping glitches. I took some safety measures throughout this run as you can see. I also lost a few minutes after level 7 trying to get bombs, and ended up having to go to the shop like a dope. No sword run next maybe? :)

Clear Time: 35:39 Shout outs to the following: OneCreditBen - https://www.youtube.com/c/OneCreditClassics The Retro Challenger - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheRetroChallengerV TricKyBoy - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYLZ5imuoaHP98DsJvNMEpA I didn't play the classic Metroid series all that much as a kid. While watching other players speedrun this game, it always seemed like a frustrating experience with random BS and awkward controls. But, after seeing a few of my pals tackle it, I decided to give it a try. What I learned was that it was an addicting and rewarding game to play. It's a different kind of run, one that is more of a test of patience and improvisation. No two Metroid runs are the same. As for this run, it was going alright up until after the Kraid fight. I had a big but funny flub while climbing the disappearing blocks, and I also had a very slow Mother Brain fight because I was too scared of losing!

Clear Time: 23:41 A brisk run through one of my childhood favorite Genesis games. I used some safe strategies at some points, so I could probably have gotten a 22 or something, but this is alright. My review: This is a game I used to rent all the time from the store. After playing it today, I can say that the gameplay and controls are pretty good. It's fun to whack baddies with your club. The graphics look nice and colorful. However, once you get partway through stage 4, the game turns yabba-dabba-dogshit. It cranks up the artificial difficulty with cheap one-hit deaths, beginner's traps, leaps of faith and unavoidable damage. Overall, I'd give this game a C+.

Clear Time: 4:27 I hadn't actually heard of this game until AVGN's video of it in 2006. After that, I decided to give it a try and found it quite fun. Played the hell out of it and got to where I could beat it in 5 minutes. As for this run, I got juggled a bit on stage 2 and stage 4, but it went alright overall. I couldn't really be bothered to keep going for a perfect run so this will do.

Clear Time: 14:27 Two shout-outs to make for this run. One is for The Retro Challenger for streaming his PB attempts for this one. The other for Mr.Unkillable for his no damage wall strategy. In this run, I decided to use low level strats to get through the first stages quickly. I was doing alright until mission 4 where I had some ass fights against the Chins and final bosses. I love the double dragon series, so obviously I wanted to do a run of one of the games. However, all three original games have cons when it comes to deathless runs: DD1 has awkward controls and you have to unlock your moves by gaining exp like an RPG. DD2 you pretty much use two moves the whole game that require stupid timing. Plus, there's insta-death bullshit toward the end. DD3 you have to fight the same enemies on the same screen for minutes at a time which is monotonous as shit. I think DD1 is the easiest of the three to beat without dying. I do want to do a DD2 run eventually though since it's my favorite in the series.

Final Score: 100,425 I was going for no crashes and perfect delivery, which I ALMOST achieved until I missed one house on the last stage due to total BS. But, I did accomplish my other goals which were to get over 100k points and no crashes, so I'm satisfied with this for now. After reviewing the tape, I got totally bullshat on the missed house on Sunday. It looked like it was thrown perfectly but then just disappeared into thin air?? Anyway, this score could be easily improved by: 1) Using death abuse on the first stage to replenish your papers and cause more destruction 2) Playing more loose with papers. I played pretty conservative in this run to not miss any houses.

Clear Time: 30:30 Little Nemo is a game I had always heard about but never played. Curious, I decided to give it a try and promptly got my ass kicked on the first level. So, the next obvious step was to do a deathless speedrun! I played through the rest of the game, occasionally consulting a map, and then did a few speedrun attempts. After about a week, I was able to pull out this run! As for the run itself, I choked a bit on Topsy-Turvy which cost quite a bit of time. The nightmare king also took a long time to beat for some reason. I was hoping for a sub-30 time but I guess this will do for now.

Combined Score: 33,761 A fun challenge I decided to try to give tetris a unique twist. I only got to level 2 on both sides, and I'm not the greatest tetris player. But, I did manage to get a decent combined score.

Clear Time: 10:21 Didn't bother timing the A-D worlds because of all the deaths. This one took me more attempts than I thought. I also made some mistakes that caused my time to be over 10 minutes. I will come back to this one with a vengeance in the future!

Final Score: 2,575,200 points A deathless high-score run of one of Konami's underrated gems. I decided to only do one loop. This is one of those games that loops endlessly, so you can theoretically get an infinitely high score. I missed a couple bonus stages and flubbed up a bit on Stage 5, but a nice run overall and probably even my best score.

Clear Time: 4:33 So not my best run through of this game, but it's still a deathless Game B run regardless. Game B is the harder variant of the two. I think it includes more knife guy spawns and more hazards. This was supposed to be my last attempt of the day, so that's why I look a bit flustered, lol.

Clear Time: 14:49 Another game bites the dust. This is the lesser known sequel to Contra on the NES. The gameplay and controls have been slightly improved, with all new monsters and baddies to fight. This run isn't so bad, although some of the bosses took a tiny bit longer to kill than usual. I also decided to play it safe and kept the spread on the final sprint.

Clear Time: 13:25 Back to doing a classic run through Ninja Gaiden. Had a few errors which cost me some time, including taking to much damage on Stage 6 which forced me to forego a few skips. Overall, a decent run.

Clear Time: 11:01 Decided to re-re-revisit this game after a long hiatus from playing retro games. Sadly, I don't have a very large cartridge collection, so from this point on, I'll have to start using emulator. On the bright side, this will open up a plethora of new games to challenge!