Taking a break from Final Fantasy - Mystic Quest, I decided to start with Super Mario World (SNES). Originally, I had planned to have that as a long term game to play, since I thought it would take some time to fight my way through all the achievements, doing multiple runs of the game and so on.
First I learned that you could re-visit castles by pressing L+R, so that was one obstacle gone! Yay!
However, it was very fun to play SMW, more than I remembered. At first I struggled a bit with the controls since I haven't played it all that much. But soon enough it felt really good, and I got one achievement after another. A few days later I had unlocked most of them. Collected the Dragon Coins, pressed the big switches with the same colored Yoshi, found all exits, beat certain stages without touching the walls, blocks, or enemies, or without using the main mechanic of that stage...
One after another they were ticked off. And eventually I had beaten the game, taking all 96 exits, went through every door in Bowser's Castle, collected every dragon coin...
Suddenly I only had 2 achievements to go. Those would require a fresh file!
Beat the game in the shortest possible way. That's 12 exits.
Beat the game without dying.
I decided to try to combine these two, the stakes were high as I slowly made progress to not lose any power-up I might need, not to lose Yoshi if he would be needed. If I got hurt, I wouldn't be able to go back to a previous level to take a power-up (I think!) and I would really need Yoshi and the feather to get to the secret exit on most of the levels.
And this is where I messed up. In the final star level. I was thinking about the stage where you go underneath the goal, jump off Yoshi, and go past it. It wasn't that stage. I would've had to drop Yoshi more towards the middle of the stage instead.
So now I had to go through the normal exit, play the level again, and continue.
I hadn't died yet though, so I decided to continue, and pretend that I didn't mess up (to see if it would be possible for me).
And then I went to Bowser, beat his castle using my favorite sections, beat him... and actually beat the game without dying! Wow! I thought I would struggle more! But it was 13 exits instead of 12. Booo!!!
So I restarted the game, and went for the shortest possible way again. I was careful this time around too, to not lose the power-ups... but wasn't afraid to die (even though that would've been bad for the sake of the power-ups).
And on that try, I did beat it. And I didn't die that time around either. huh! (and I kinda timed it, using the logs from a discord chat. and it took from 00:53 to 01:13 my time. so 20 minutes. That's including pausing and chatting some more!)
So:
Super Mario World (SNES)
It's Super Mario World... a classic. It was a fun and completely manageable challenge! No overly difficult bullshit or anything, but well thought out and well implemented challenges.
63 achievements. 400 points.
That's all for now.
I'll still want to hear more suggestions on fun games to play, with nice achievement sets. The Final Fantasy ones and other JRPGs tend to have a lot of achievements that aren't fun. (beat the game with a really low level, so you have to run from everything and not grind for anything... and then also max out every character.... so you'll have to play through a full RPG at least twice... no thanks).
First I learned that you could re-visit castles by pressing L+R, so that was one obstacle gone! Yay!
However, it was very fun to play SMW, more than I remembered. At first I struggled a bit with the controls since I haven't played it all that much. But soon enough it felt really good, and I got one achievement after another. A few days later I had unlocked most of them. Collected the Dragon Coins, pressed the big switches with the same colored Yoshi, found all exits, beat certain stages without touching the walls, blocks, or enemies, or without using the main mechanic of that stage...
One after another they were ticked off. And eventually I had beaten the game, taking all 96 exits, went through every door in Bowser's Castle, collected every dragon coin...
Suddenly I only had 2 achievements to go. Those would require a fresh file!
Beat the game in the shortest possible way. That's 12 exits.
Beat the game without dying.
I decided to try to combine these two, the stakes were high as I slowly made progress to not lose any power-up I might need, not to lose Yoshi if he would be needed. If I got hurt, I wouldn't be able to go back to a previous level to take a power-up (I think!) and I would really need Yoshi and the feather to get to the secret exit on most of the levels.
And this is where I messed up. In the final star level. I was thinking about the stage where you go underneath the goal, jump off Yoshi, and go past it. It wasn't that stage. I would've had to drop Yoshi more towards the middle of the stage instead.
So now I had to go through the normal exit, play the level again, and continue.
I hadn't died yet though, so I decided to continue, and pretend that I didn't mess up (to see if it would be possible for me).
And then I went to Bowser, beat his castle using my favorite sections, beat him... and actually beat the game without dying! Wow! I thought I would struggle more! But it was 13 exits instead of 12. Booo!!!
So I restarted the game, and went for the shortest possible way again. I was careful this time around too, to not lose the power-ups... but wasn't afraid to die (even though that would've been bad for the sake of the power-ups).
And on that try, I did beat it. And I didn't die that time around either. huh! (and I kinda timed it, using the logs from a discord chat. and it took from 00:53 to 01:13 my time. so 20 minutes. That's including pausing and chatting some more!)
So:
Super Mario World (SNES)
It's Super Mario World... a classic. It was a fun and completely manageable challenge! No overly difficult bullshit or anything, but well thought out and well implemented challenges.
63 achievements. 400 points.
That's all for now.
I'll still want to hear more suggestions on fun games to play, with nice achievement sets. The Final Fantasy ones and other JRPGs tend to have a lot of achievements that aren't fun. (beat the game with a really low level, so you have to run from everything and not grind for anything... and then also max out every character.... so you'll have to play through a full RPG at least twice... no thanks).