Gratification of returning to defeat games

[WackerJr]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is one of the latest retro game re-release / update.  Over recent years I’ve found that a growing number of titles that I could never complete as a child have been given HD updates or re-releases.  This collection in particular contains another of the games that defeated me as a child: the dreaded side-scrolling NES TMNT game.

I’ve found it incredibly satisfying to play these games and finally reach the end.  To such extent that I’ve delayed playing some of the better modern games in order to finally get some ‘closure’ for the younger me!

Does anyone else get that same gratification or ever have the urge to return to a game they could never defeat and finally complete?

The introduction of rewind features to many of these has helped and I think that will finally enable me to defeat Shredder and finally justify the countless hours I spent as a child getting my butt kicked by the hordes of respawning enemies, losing heroes to the infamous underwater section, or being squashed by the tanks wandering the overworld.

Examples over recent years for me have included Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Flashback, Aladdin & Lion King (Disney Games Classic Collection), and even one of the first games I ever played and used to terrify us in primary school: Granny’s Garden (a BBC game that saw a re-release on mobile).  The latter in particular is a very dated game for children, that I probably gained more joy for finally completing as an adult than I really should have!

This image alone haunted many schoolchildren in the 80’s!

Is it just me? Or do you have any games you’ve been determined to finally beat, even if you’ve had to return to it many years later?

[Hero-of-Time]

Strange, there was a very similar thread on Era that was posted yesterday. A guy started playing a Master System game in 1988 and finally beat it this year.  

These collections of old games do certainly help people to get some closure on games they played as a child. I'd love to see Battle of Olympus show up in a collection or on the Switch service. I loved that game as a kid but never did beat it. I never actually owned it and only borrowed a friends copy. He wanted it back before I was able to see the end.  

[bob]

I remember my sister and I struggled for years to beat this game:

Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow

 

We got as far as a level where the lava keeps on rising, and you have to swing up and out of the volcano before the time runs out, but could never get past it, and eventually concluded that it was impossible. 

I always wonder whether I would be able to beat the game now, or if it was actually as bullshit as I remember. I know there was some crappy hitbox detection when using your staff to lock onto special nodes and use them to swing. It would always fail to register when the staff blatantly was in the right place...

[Hero-of-Time]

I always wanted to play that game when I was a kid. It was never available to rent in any of my local stores though.

[Glen-i]

I've actually ran out of childhood games to conquer about 10 years ago. I've got nothing else. Any retro games now will be ones I've never played before. So, I've got nothing to contribute here.

[Jonnas]

The games I had as a child, I've mostly been able to beat them. The ones I didn't, was usually because I never had much time with them to begin with (like, they belonged to a friend, or something).

But I can think of a few examples that fit the thread:

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: Played it as a teen, but got so bloated I stopped at some point. I ended up restarting it several years later, and forced myself to play it until the end, crossing it off my bucket list. Turns out, all those years ago, I had stopped playing at about 3 missions before the end!

Flight of the Amazon Queen: A charming point&click for the PC, I had a demo of this game, but was utterly unable to beat it... because it was legitimately bugged! A certain item I had to use with a puzzle wasn't working properly. As an adult, I found it for free on GOG (still is) and decided to slay this bad memory by beating the whole game.

Theme Hospital: I couldn't beat some of the later levels as a kid... But as a smarter, more efficient adult, I could! Also, I appreciate that the difficulty was fair, and the reason I couldn't beat it back then was definitely due to my shortcomings. This was the most satisfying "slay" of the three titles I'm mentioning, as it reminded me of how much I've grown.

[Cube]

I did this (sort of) with Donkey Kong 64. In Donkey Kong 64, I got everything except the DK coin, and could never fight the final boss. Now, on the Wii U virtual console version, I did "cheat" with save states (mainly because the only "punishment" is walking back to where you were, so I used save states to retry) as well as pause buffering (some minigames are impossible without it due to the Wii U running the game smoother - it was balanced around the N64 struggling to run it).

 

Blast Corps. I was absolutely awful at it when I was younger, so I was surprised that it wasn't actually too bad when I played it on Rare Replay, the game is incredibly good fun. 

 

And another was the Tribals in Jet Force Gemini. It's so much better to play it with the updated controls on Rare Replay, and I got to finally complete the game. 

[Aperson]

There are quite a few games which I've put down only to return to later. I think my most notable example was Spider-Man 2 on Gamecube where I got up to Chapter 14 only to be stuck on the Warehouse fight for ages. I started the game back in 2004, it was in 2018 however when I finally beat the game.

Actually, 2018 and 2020 were main "clear the backlog" years where I went back and finished games I'd for one reason or another put down.  During that time I finished Golden Sun (and then started and played its sequel to completion) finished Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and The Two Thrones, even buying Warrior Within to play between, finally finished Majora's Mask, played Metal Gear Solid 2 to the end to its completion after owning it for 11 years, finished Dragon Quest IX a whole decade after buying it and finally put Dark Souls down for three years before returning to beat it during early 2021. It was good timing too, it left me fresh for Elden Ring when that arrived.

[BowserBasher]

I have similar experiences but it's more newer games that I'm in the middle of that get put down when a new game is released and I Neve go back to them to complete them. Last one was Luigis Mansion 3. Never got round to finishing the first time I played it, but pick it up again about a year ago and played through from start to finish that time. I think Bayonetta 2 is like that too.

Older games? I'm sure there are lots of my SNES ones that I never finished and I know I never finished Prime 2 and 3. I bet there's loads I could go back to a complete.

[Ike]

I got to the final boss in Golden Axe once, but there was a giant hole you had to jump over, and I wasted most of my lives because I wasn't able to make the jump.

Similar with Comix Zone, I got to the final boss but couldn't work out what to do and ended up getting timed out. Subsequent playthroughs I used the invincibility cheat code but there was a ledge with a lava pit below it that I could never jump up without landing in the lave first, but due to the cheat code the game would crash. Never figured out how to do it.

I beat both later thanks to save states.