Hello and welcome to my last post before I go on an indefinite hiatus. Since I knew for a while this would be the final post I would be making for a while, I decided to go all out for the finale. For the finale I decided to do the hardest video game challenge that I know of. Super Mario Galaxy 2’s The Perfect Run. First things first though, just to unlock this challenge you need to collect all 120 Power Stars in the main campaign, 120 total Green Stars from every level, and you need to have beaten ‘The Ultimate Test’ which is a level that tests everything you’ve learned from playing the game. The Perfect Run is the same layout as ‘The Ultimate Test’ but you only have one point of health and no checkpoints. You’ll have to be perfectly prepared for this behemoth of a finale. Now if you’re watching someone play through this level you might think it’s easy, but that’s just what the game wants you to think. You have to do the entire gauntlet with one health so of course it looks easy. Actually beating the level is another matter entirely. In both Super Mario Galaxy games one of my biggest problems is I over or underestimating my longer jumps, so this gauntlet is a nightmare. The final part of this challenge involves a gauntlet of Hammer Bros which lead to the final three Boomerang Bros you need to defeat to end the level once and for all. If you don’t deal with the Hammer Bros on the way to the Boomerang Bros the Hammer Bros will still be attacking you while you’re trying to deal with the Boomerang Bros and that is a lot to deal with all at once. I would only recommend this challenge if you have obtained all 242 previous stars and studied your route multiple times using the easier version of the level.

Hello and welcome to a challenge that isn’t Pokemon for a third week in a row. This time I’ve thought up a challenge based on an anime I really enjoyed. The Rising of the Shield Hero stars Naofumi who has been transported to another world as the Shield Hero. While having no attack he has incredible defense and is aided by his companion Raphtalia. Since I really enjoyed the anime I decided to do a run of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild with a custom rule set. Following the anime’s example, Only shields are allowed to be used for combat, any other tool like sledgehammers and torches can still be used as long as they aren’t being used for combat. As soon as I leave the Great Plateau the plan is to get a horse, appropriately named Filo, and make my way towards Kakariko Village so I can unlock the amiibo rune for the Sheikah Slate as soon as possible. With the amiibo rune and a Wolf Link amiibo I can summon Wolf Link to act as our version of Raphtalia of the run. If ‘Raphtalia’, she can’t be resummoned for 24 hours, so your best bet is to act like the Shield Hero you were meant to be and defend while ‘Raphtalia’ attacks. I think this is a great way to change up how a casual playthrough of Breath of the Wild is. Normally you could easily focus on attacking and defending yourself at the same time, but now you’re forced to defend your only viable offensive options. I’d also recommend watching the anime for the Rising of the Shield Hero or reading the manga if my minor plot summary interests you.

Hello and welcome back to my latest bad idea. Sticking with last week’s Pokemon trend, I decided to make use of something I picked up a gaming convention last year for this week’s run. If you ever get a chance to go to the Midwest Gaming Classic in Milwaukee I would highly recommend going. This week I’m going to be playing Pokemon Green. Now what makes this game a challenge is the fact that it was only ever released in Japan. So with almost no knowledge of Japanese I only have my knowledge of the game and the attack animations to serve as a guiding light. I’ve played fully through the Kanto region through various games so I have a pretty good idea how to get around at this point. Since I’m playing the very first Pokemon game there are tons of exploitable things I can do to make my run easier. The first thing is that I’m going to pick Charmander and primarily use him during the run. I’m doing this because Charizard learns Slash at level 36, and slash is a high damage physical move that almost always lands critical hits in Generation One. The second thing I’m going to do is write down what level my planned team knows certain moves so I don’t accidentally skip learning a move I need. Third is catching Articuno and Zapdoes when I have access to them because it will help me cover my weakness in the Pokemon League. Fifth and finally I’m going to get a Nidorino that knows Horn Drill, a low accuracy one hit KO, and buy a bunch of X-Accuracies to exploit the glitch that allows Nidorino to have 100% accuracy when using Horn Drill to defeat anything Charizard, Articuno, and Zapdoes can’t handle, my final two team members will just be there so I have Pokemon that can learn the HM moves needed to navigate through the game. While these strategies could be applied to a normal playthrough of Pokemon Red or Blue, it’s an interesting challenge to see if basic reading ability is truly needed to enjoy a game like many boxes suggest.

Hello and welcome to my bad idea of the week. As I said back in my ‘Low Dex’ Run of Pokemon FireRed, you might have expected me to do the classic Pokemon Nuzlocke someday. You’ll be glad to know that today is finally the day I do a Pokemon Nuzlocke. For those that are unaware, a Pokemon Nuzlocke is a special rule set that can be used to make any run of a pokemon game much more difficult. The two main rules are that if a Pokemon faints, it’s considered dead and cannot be used for the rest of the game, and you can only catch the first Pokemon you catch in each area. There’s a plethora of extra rules one can apply if they desire to modify the experience. In the past I only played about half of a Pokemon Pearl Nuzlocke up until my main damage dealer had fainted and I didn’t feel like grinding my Pokemon to catch up. Level grinding and knowing the biggest challenges a game has to offer are two of the most important things you need to form your strategy. For example, if you pick Charmander in Pokemon FireRed, you should either make sure you have a pokemon with a fighting type move or overlevel your charmander to the point where it can sweep Brock’s entire Rock type gym or your run will end right then and there. For my run today I’ll be playing Pokemon Emerald and using Mudkip because he’s a viable pick for the entire game. In retrospective I should have added the No Duplicate Pokemon clause so I didn’t get three Poochyenas in a row. Overall I think it’s a fun playstyle if you want to mix things up for your next pokemon run.

Hello and thanks for taking the time to answer my poll last week, after collecting the feedback I have an idea of how I want to move forward with this blog. Now for this week’s round of suffering, Super Mario Brothers 2. Now at first glance you might be thinking, “Oh the game where you can play as Toad and Princess Peach while throwing turnips? That’s not a challenge at all, what are you trying to pull here?”. Well stop those thoughts right now because it’s time for a Nintendo history lesson. You see, there are actually two versions of Super Mario Brothers 2. One is the turnip throwing version which is globally known as ‘Super Mario Bros 2 USA’. The version that I’ll be playing today is now referred to as ‘Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels’. Originally, the Lost Levels was supposed to be the true sequel to the original Super Mario Bros, designed for players who had mastered the mechanics of the original game. However, Nintendo of America deemed it too hard for American players, so we got the version of Super Mario Bros 2 that most are familiar with today. If you want to play the Lost Levels today, it is available on the 3DS and Wii U Virtual Consoles, along with Nintendo Switch Online’s NES game library. While I do consider myself at least decent at 2D Mario games, I will admit this one intimidates me a bit because of its legacy. I personally stopped somewhere in world two out of the game’s eight worlds. If you really want to try it out I would highly recommend using the Nintendo Switch version so you have access to the rewind feature.

After taking a nice long break I’m ready to get back into the swing of things. However, I realized I didn’t want to completely torment myself this time around so I decided to do a more light hearted challenge. This time I’m going to be doing a speedrun of my favorite 2D Mario game, Super Mario World. To be more specific, I’m going to be doing an 11 exit glitchless run, which means I’ll be beating the game by clearing the game by doing the absolute minimum number of levels. Luckily I’ve been playing this game since I was in elementary school, so I have more than a few years under my belt. I know speedrunning is on a whole other level when compared to casually knowing the game like the back of your hand, so I know I shouldn’t set my expectations too high. Personally I have always wanted to give a real speedrun a try, but I’ve always been intimidated by the low times and how many of my favorite games are either mastered to the point of near perfection or they are games that are simply too long for me to want to sit down and run. The only exception that really comes to mind is Cadence of Hyrule, but that’s because every run is always a bit different so it’s fun. Overall I would say that Super Mario World is a game that is both fun from a casual perspective and a speedrunning perspective and I would recommend playing this classic if you haven’t played it.

Hello and welcome to this week’s bad idea. This week I’m going to ignore one of the most iconic lines in gaming history “Gotta catch em all”. That’s right, it’s finally time for some Pokemon  challenges. If you’re a follower of my blog and are a Pokemon fan you probably would have expected me to do a nuzlocke as it’s the most common type of challenge run within the community. Well have no fear, that day will come in early April 2020. For today, we’re doing what’s called a ‘low dex run’ which means I’m going to complete the game while catching as few Pokemon as possible. I got the idea to do this run because a youtuber called Alpharad played through the entirety of Pokemon Emerald with just a Mudkip. This time I’m planning on playing through Pokemon FireRed. I decided to start my playthrough by choosing Squirtle as he is very bulky and can learn Surf, which is both needed for for overworld navigation and is a good move to use in battle. Unfortunately, I will need to catch at least one other pokemon to use the HM moves Cut, Flash, and Strength. Squirtle can also learn a set of moves that is tailor made for taking down the Elite Four and Champion at the end of the game. As I went through this run I realized how easy the early pokemon games really were if you could overlevel our starter to insane levels by the endgame. When I first tried this run out over the summer of 2019 I believe that I had beaten the Champion with a level 79 Squirtle. If you want to mix up your classic Pokemon experience I would highly recommend giving this run a try.

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of me having bad ideas and acting upon them. Last week I attempted to beat Super Mario Sunshine without jumping which ended rather prematurely to say the least. So this week I decided to try something that was within the realm of possibility. This week I am going to play through Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones on the highest difficulty available, which is Hard Mode. For those unfamiliar with Fire Emblem games, they are a series of turn-based tactics games that could be compared to a giant game of chess by some. I personally found the series in high school when a friend of mine at the time told me about this cool game he had found for Game Boy Advance. It was actually the seventh game in the series, Blazing Blade. However that eventually led to me eventually picking up many more games in the series later in life. However, I never got around to trying Sacred Stones until recently. When I asked one of my roommates what game in the series I should do this week, he said Sacred Stones because it’s his favorite game. The run itself isn’t going to have any special rules like last week. After all, I would like a chance to actually finish the game this time. I’m going to play however I want to on the highest difficulty. Overall I felt my run was lot easier than I was expecting it to be. For the maps I played I honestly had more difficulty with Echoes on a lower difficulty than I had had with this game so far. I’d highly recommend it if you’re looking for a challenge but you don’t want something too insane for a challenge run.

Hello fellow gamers and welcome to the first ridiculous endeavor I’ve decided to try out! Super Mario Sunshine without jumping. I figured what better place to start this series off with than one of my favorite games of all time combined with a ridiculous challenge attached to it. Super Mario Sunshine was one the early titles for the Nintendo Gamecube and sadly hasn’t been remastered since. In the game Mario is falsely accused of covering Isle Delfino with a mysterious goop and has to clean all of it up. To help him clean the island, Mario meets FLUDD, a hi-tech water gun that even has a hover function. As I’m sure you can already guess, FLUDD’s Hover Nozzle is going to be the primary way of rising up in a world where Mario’s most iconic trait is not allowed. Now, those of you familiar with the game are likely aware of the obvious roadblock of the secret levels which restrict FLUDD from being used. My answer to that is to clear the stage normally once when FLUDD is banned, and immediately redo the stage once FLUDD is unbanned. It’s not a perfect solution but it stops the game from being unfinishable. So this run is also considered a minimum jump run. For the sake of not subjecting anyone to pointless cutscenes, I edited out the very long cutscene at the start of the game. Personally I think this was a great way to learn the game even more in depth than I already had from my years of experience. I already knew what my limitations were but the real challenge and satisfaction for me was trying to use everything within my reach as I tend to pick the speediest ways nine times out of ten. It felt great finding that one platform I needed to make everything work together well. I think my favorite missions were Ricco Harbor One and Three because of how much I needed to use the map layout to my advantage to finally reach that Shine Sprite. In the end, I only managed to get 9 Shine Sprites truly with no jumping required. Someday I would not mind giving this run another shot now that’s I’ve figured out some of the optimal routes for the early game.