5 Games I’ve Beat – Donkey Kong edition

Welcome to a new edition of 5 Games I’ve Beat.  Today, we’ll take a look at 5 games I’ve beat from the Donkey Kong series.  I’m actually a little hesitant to call it his series, since in two of the games being showcased you don’t even play as DK, but you fight him!  And you gotta rescue him in the other two!  But anyway, they all featured him in some way.

Donkey Kong as he appeared before Donkey Kong Country

The original Donkey Kong was an immensely popular arcade game in the ’80s.  You were actually a carpenter known as Jumpman (who would switch careers to plumbing and be later known as Mario).  Donkey Kong abducted Jumpman’s girlfriend Pauline, and the man in overalls would climb up 100 meters of construction zones to rescue her.  Mario went on to become a hero of the Mushroom Kingdom and an international star, but what about his rival?  Hit the jump to see the games that feature the stupid primate and his shenanigans (because, according to his creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, he was going for that meaning when he came up with “Donkey Kong”):

5 Games I’ve Beat – Zelda Edition

Welcome to a new edition of 5 Games I’ve Beat, this time tackling another beloved Nintendo franchise: The Legend of Zelda.  Yes, I could still go on about Mario games, but whereas Mario symbolizes how fun games can and should be, Zelda emphasizes how epic a videogame experience can and should be.  I can’t find another word to describe it.  The moment you start a game you know you are in for a great adventure in a wondrous fantasy world with diverse creatures and a menacing evil that looms over your quest.  This ain’t just about saving the princess.  It’s about saving the world (does that more or less sound like a Heroes sound tag?)!

Link in the original The Legend of Zelda

For the uninitiated, The Legend of Zelda is about a boy in green with a sword and a shield, who must gather items and clear dungeons in order to open up the path to the final boss.  That’s oversimplifying the whole thing, but it pretty much sums it up.  The very first Zelda and all its sequels are unique in that the games are not divided by stages, but rather it’s one huge overworld, with all the dungeons hidden in the landscape.  You must find their entrances.  Once there, generally you gotta solve field puzzles to progress.  You hack and slash the enemies that oppose you with a variety of weapons.

Now to be honest, I’ve never been able to finish the first two NES Zelda games.  I don’t know if they are harder than the rest in the series or I just stink at this.  I know I haven’t spent as much time with them as with the other games.  I did manage to finish 5 so far, so without further ado (well, you gotta hit the jump first):

5 Games I’ve Beat – RPG Edition

Welcome to this week’s edition of “5 Games I’ve Beat,” where after one edition I’ve already run out of franchise-based or character-based entries because I stink at videogames!  Instead we are going to look at at a particular genre, it being RPGs.

For the uninitiated, RPG stands for Role-Playing Game.  To put it simply, an RPG puts you in control of a character or a team of characters, each with their own personality, backstory, attributes, and abilities, in order to overcome some powerful evil.  Often, you must crawl through dungeons and investigate towns in order to advance the plot.  Unlike other genres, the game is not structured by stages or levels, but rather it pits you in a large world, where you may explore each area as you please (often only some of these areas are accessible at the beginning, but more open up as you progress).

Perhaps the more defining characteristics of RPGs are the battle mechanics.  As you begin, each character begins weak or at the lowest level, but as you fight and defeat your foes, you earn experience points.  Enough points let you increase your level, allowing you sometimes to learn new techniques or abilities or even magical attacks.  The fighting is turn-based, meaning that you select what you want your characters to do first and then watch as they are played out in battle.  On the one hand, it’s great to have all the time in the world to make up your mind or assess the situation, but it might be weird to not be directly involved with what’s going on as you would in a platformer like, say, Super Mario Bros.

Because of the nature of RPGs, they are more conducive to tell stories that sometimes put novels or TV shows to shame.  But this introduction is already going pretty long, so hit the jump to look at 5 RGP games that I have beaten (did I mention that they are usually pretty long games):

5 Games I’ve Beat – Mario Bros. Edition

So after a long hiatus, the Two-Bit Specialist is back now in the outset of summer.  I’m hoping now that I can post a little more frequently now.

As many of you may know, my library of games is rather large, going upwards of 200 games by now.  Mainly for my own benefit, I decided to chronicle that games that I have finished (the requirements for completion will change from game to game, but usually beating the final boss and getting 100% is necessary).  I hope you guys get a kick out of it.  I’ll go through 5 at a time, as that way it won’t seem so overwhelming and it will give me a chance to go a little bit into detail about each game.

To start things off, what better than 5 games about a mustached Italian plumber who is almost synonymous with video-games?  Hit the jump to see 5 games in the Mario series that I have beat: