Games that cannot be finished?

[Wolfy2k4]

So,

A few quiet hours in the office and I decided to fire up a classic. Dynamite Dan. I played it all through my childhood and never managed more than 4 or 5 dynamites in a single run. But today, with much perserverance, I got them all! I even made it to the safe room, got into the safe.. but what the hell? I can't jump up and collect the blueprints! I tried for nearly 15 minutes jumping from every conceievable angle. No luck and now I'm miffed.

Which brings me to another one from my youth... Subterranean Stryker. Yeah, it's a not exactly a great game, but I felt, with advanced age and honed skills I would be able to best it. ... Not so. Anyone played this one? has ANYONE managed to fly their ship under the spider? .... It doesn't seem possible.

Anyone played through a game they enjoy, only to hit a brick wall?

.... Jet Set Willy also comes to mind, but I've never come close to collecting all the items to finish it anyway.   *Rant over*

[Puresox]

Yeah I remember that  problem with Subterranean Stryker, with the spider, I had no success getting past that and could not see a way how too??? Bloody annoying cos it is right at the start of the game, pretty much.I would be interested to hear if anyone has??

[tastefulmrship]

.... Jet Set Willy also comes to mind, but I've never come close to collecting all the items to finish it anyway.   *Rant over*

Jet Set Willy (The Final Frontier) is more than completable... it's just feck-off hard! I remember completing it back in the day, and with "Snapshots" in WinAPE, I completed recently without having to cheat*




(* Ok, so using Snapshots is kinda cheating, I know, but I mean without resorting to InfLives or Invul cheats!)

[Bryce]

Jet Set Willy is the ONLY game I have ever completed on the CPC, so it can't be that hard. I was (and still am) shit at playing 8-bit games.

Bryce.

[TFM]

Took me month to finish Hacker II - one of my first games I bought back the day. I remember nights in the caravan, playing with friends all night long. And of course we had Billy Idol music running *ggg*

[MacDeath]

Jet Set Willy is the ONLY game I have ever completed on the CPC

shame on you you couldn't finish Gryzor and Robocop... nor Target Renegade in co-op mode...


otherwise :
Airwolf (bug)? Commando (really hard)?


Duet ?

[AMSDOS]

I couldn't complete Technician Ted even with the map, cheat - which would let you portal straight to the rooms you had to solve the problems and I even had the sequence of rooms I needed to go to, to solve the problems. Seriously that is one nasty game to crack.


Probably the hardest game I've completed is Rainbow Islands and the thing about that game is once you've completed it, I've struggled to complete it again because you might play other games, or you forget what you did to get passed something. What surprised me was I found Doh's Island really hard and found Robot Island really easy by comparison (cause it's a bit like Monster Island), and then Dragon Island is tough because it has the largest areas to complete with a short time limit before the water comes to get you, so you have to move fast. Toy Island is also fairly tricky one too and that took me a while to kill the end-of-level baddie on it.

[Bryce]

shame on you you couldn't finish Gryzor and Robocop... nor Target Renegade in co-op mode...

I wasn't really a gamer, so I didn't own any of those back then.

I found Dan Dare extremely difficult, but I think my brother finished it. He also finished Fued every time he played it (which I thought was a bit pointless playing it at all then).

Bryce.

[sigh]

I'm pretty sure that my sister had got to a certain level on puzznic, where the game either crashed or there was a puzzle that may had missed the testing process, rendering the game uncompletable.

Wasn't Impossible Mission also a game that couldn't be finished? Or was that just the C64 version?

[robcfg]

I always had problems with Jack the Nipper II, there were always something missing so I couldn't finish it.


I don't know if it was a problem with the version distributed in Spain or a general error...

[Bryce]

Wasn't Impossible Mission also a game that couldn't be finished? Or was that just the C64 version?

Well it was called "Impossible Mission", that would kind of suggest that it wasn't completable?

The Duct was also a game that went wrong half way through.

Bryce.

[awergh]

I thought the text adventure with pictures The Secret of Bastow Manor was meant to be impossible without looking at the basic code because something was missing something from one of the scenes so you couldn't finish it without knowing it was already though.
But I guess thats not technically uncompletable but kinda is without knowing stuff. (I never got up to there though)

[pacomix]

I always had problems with Jack the Nipper II, there were always something missing so I couldn't finish it.


I don't know if it was a problem with the version distributed in Spain or a general error...

I never played that game in an Amstrad but I did on Spectrum and I finished it. It is quite playable. But I put my hand on fire that there is a bug where, if I remember correctly, if you try breaking the bridge too late you can not break it anymore rendering this into a not-possible-to-finish play.


1943 was a neverending game as far as I can remember and also Slap Fight.


Also a I neighbour of mine had the 6128+ with the game U.N. Squadron in disk and two car games in cartridge (Burning Rubber and Chase HQ) if I remember correctly. After playing months to all of these games we couldn't finish the car games (we were too bad playing them) and U.N. Squadron, I think it was before the last level, instead loading the next level from disk it asked to "PRESS PLAY ON TAPE" on a line in the lowest line of the screen with red background and white ink !?!?!?!?!?!?! (I remember this clearly) I didn't play with an image of U.N. Squadron on a 6128+ emulator so I can not ensure if this was a general problem when playing the game on the 6128+ or not.


Regards!!!




P.S.: Take in account the form of the verb gave up. That means past.

[Carnivius]

U.N. Squadron, I think it was before the last level, instead loading the next level from disk it asked to "PRESS PLAY ON TAPE" on a line in the lowest line of the screen with red background and white ink !?!?!?!?!?!?! (I remember this clearly) I didn't play with an image of U.N. Squadron on a 6128+ emulator so I can not ensure if this was a general problem when playing the game on the 6128+ or not.

I play that game often on WinApe and it says the tape message before and after every level despite it being a dsk file.  Still runs just fine though.  Also as great a conversion as it is, that game is one that makes good use of the 'turbo' mode in WinApe's general options menu for smoother play.

[Devilmarkus]

Did someone EVER finish Cauldron 1 (Without cheating!!!)

[Wolfy2k4]

Jet Set Willy can be finished!? I always thought a bug prevented it! Bah! Still, my personal best was 90 items, so hats off to anyone who finished it.


The Hacker games always gave me trouble, i never came close to finishing those.


Slap Fight... I Played that to death, then I seem to remember reaching an area with a red/brown background and repeating over and over and over.... I assumed that would continue for infinity, so i quit....


Jack the Nipper II I got quite far until I had to move through a secret tunnel in a fireplace, I couldn't seem to enter, so I never finished it.
Gryzor and robocop I finished, Technician Ted I failed miserably at, even with the aforementioned help and as for Cauldron.... Jesus... I never got far at all.


Feud I rocked at, I won that game many times


The more I think about it, the more games I remember being unfairly difficult. I won't list them as you all know them

[mr_lou]

Which brings me to another one from my youth... Subterranean Stryker. Yeah, it's a not exactly a great game, but I felt, with advanced age and honed skills I would be able to best it. ... Not so. Anyone played this one? has ANYONE managed to fly their ship under the spider? .... It doesn't seem possible.

I remember making it to level 2, which is a purple level as far as I remember. I don't remember the spider as being that tricky. Sure it killed me sometimes, but not that often.

[cngsoft]

After reading certain things in this thread I'm going to share my two cents about several games.

   
• "Dynamite Dan": completely finishable, you just have to remember that the game has a particular collision detection that lets you stand on platforms after walking on its very last pixel; reversely, you can jump on them from below with Dan's feet standing right after the platform.
• "Jet Set Willy": completely finishable, just very hard. Savescumming is the key to success.
• "Jet Set Willy (The Final Frontier)": all the versions I found in the wild lack a vital component: the internal data of "Cartography Room", that fills with tiles as you explore the game. However, I discovered that by copying the 129-byte table from the Spectrum version to the area where the CPC version expects it ($A700) the room works as expected! The game becomes finishable then. My compacted copy includes this patch, as well as the usual optional pokes of infinite lives and invulnerability. EDIT: screenshots before and after the patch, including the shortest path needed to reach "Cartography Room" and the full map you get after walking all the screens.

   
• "Technician Ted": completely finishable, just ultra hard. Get a map of the game and draw a path that requires walking the fewest rooms between each mission; otherwise you'll run out of time. Oh, and keep savescumming too!
• "Rainbow Islands": completely finishable, albeit I don't know how many of you know that, by grabbing the seven diamonds of each island in order (red, orange, yellow... the colour depends on the horizontal coordinate of the dead enemy when it hits the ground and turns into a bonus; remember that they turn into diamonds instead of fruits if you kill them by "breaking" the rainbows over them rather than hitting them with the star that creates the rainbows) you'll get an additional item after each boss, and if you do it on the seven islands, you'll watch a different ending.
• "Feud": finishable and not too hard, although all the useful potions require a complicated trip to the garden of the third wizard.
• "Jack the Nipper I": finishable, in fact it's relatively easy once you know what all items are for. The secret passage behind the fireplace is like all normal doors, press the RETURN key and you'll go inside.
• "Jack the Nipper II": finishable too, but harder because it's much longer and trickier. One of the comments is right: if you use the woodworm on the wooden bridge from the right side of the screen you'll be unable to go to the left half of the game ever again, so say goodbye to any pranks you still had to do there. There's an additional catch (and a really weird one, but it's intentional, because it comes with its own solution): the woodworm itself must NOT be picked up empty-handed but swapped against any other item (two good nearby candidates are the honey pot and the pineapple) because it doesn't get restored to its original location if you're killed or abort the game. However, there's a second woodworm hidden in the caves below the aforementioned wooden bridge: pick it up, go back to the location of the first woodworm (you'll have to endure a very long and difficult minecart race to get there!) and swap it against the item you left in place of the original woodworm.
• "Cauldron 1" is finishable, just pathologically hard due to poor design. Cripes, its demential sequel "Cauldron 2" is easier to complete!
• Last but not least I'd like to mention "Sepulcri", an iso3D game published by Ariolasoft in 1986. I don't know whether it's actually finishable or not, but the versions in the wild have major bugs in the collision routines: when I compacted the game I needed to patch +100 bytes of code to ensure that everything would work as expected. It's a game in dire need of mapping, we should contact Pavero from WorldOfSpectrum.org and tell him about it.

EDIT: "Roland in Time" also deserves a mention because it expects the player to find 139 items but the game has 143, and because of the flakey arithmetics, if you grab more than 139 items you can't finish the game! I fixed it with six pokes, all of them replacing $8B with $8F. Luckily "Roland in Space" is clean.

[Wolfy2k4]

@cngsoft JSWII was the game I had in mind, not the original, thanks for confirming that, and thanks for showing us a way around it!
Your knowledge on these games seems rather extensive, so I will try once more with Dynamite Dan.. I WILL get those blueprints!


As for Roland in Time.... Well, I gave up on that one after just a few tries.. It's extremely difficult in my view.


Thanks for your input! (oh, and thanks for bb4cpc!)

[mahlemiut]

http://www.homeactionreplay.org/search.php?game=322&tourney=2

Yes, it's the Spectrum version, but to my eyes, the gameplay is practically identical to the CPC version.

[AMSDOS]

"Technician Ted": completely finishable, just ultra hard. Get a map of the game and draw a path that requires walking the fewest rooms between each mission; otherwise you'll run out of time. Oh, and keep savescumming too!

Or just use the cheat which takes you to the rooms. 

"Rainbow Islands": completely finishable, albeit I don't know how many of you know that, by grabbing the seven diamonds of each island in order (red, orange, yellow... the colour depends on the horizontal coordinate of the dead enemy when it hits the ground and turns into a bonus; remember that they turn into diamonds instead of fruits if you kill them by "breaking" the rainbows over them rather than hitting them with the star that creates the rainbows) you'll get an additional item after each boss, and if you do it on the seven islands, you'll watch a different ending.

I'm such a lazy gamer, I never even picked up on stuff like that, all I've heard is you've got to collect the Diamonds in sequence to get to the Secret room or something.

"Feud": finishable and not too hard, although all the useful options require a complicated trip to the garden of the third wizard.

I don't think I ever played this enough to complete it, even though I always felt I was making some progress.

EDIT: "Roland in Time" also deserves a mention because it expects the player to find 139 items but the game has 143, and because of the flakey arithmetics, if you grab more than 139 items you can't finish the game! I fixed it with six pokes, all of them replacing $8B with $8F. Fortunately "Roland in Space" is bug-free.

I guess they weren't counting on people to find the hidden rooms, Zone 4 has one completely hidden away behind your telephone box which you have to be careful getting to so you don't hit the bomb while you jump. Zone 7 also looks like it's only a single room, until you find the Crumbling City and the other two rooms, so I guess if you put those rooms together there's about 4 Gems tucked away I think?


Unfortunately Roland in Space is too difficult, I prefer Roland in Time with it's singular screen. Has anyone ever mapped out Roland in Space, because you really need to know where the nasties are travelling.


Has anyone ever completed Codemasters Vampire game? That was another one I always felt I got through it and then I'd die in the end.

[TMR]

Wasn't Impossible Mission also a game that couldn't be finished? Or was that just the C64 version?

The C64 version can be completed, i've seen it done by a friend but never been good enough to manage it myself. The Atari 7800 NTSC version has a bug that puts code pieces in places that can't be searched so that one really is impossible.

[cngsoft]

Has anyone ever completed Codemasters Vampire game? That was another one I always felt I got through it and then I'd die in the end.

Codemasters' "Vampire" is actually Dinamic's "Phantomas 2". It's finishable but very difficult (the caves before the dynamo are specially grating because they're a 4x4 screen area where almost all platforms are mobile) and due to a programming oversight (limited inventory) you risk locking yourself inside the caves: the crucifix must be ignored the first time you see it, and only pick it up once you're back from the dynamo, otherwise you'll be unable to grab the key that opens the caves. Speaking of which: the dynamo requires waggling the joystick -or the keys- like if Phantomas were Daley Thompson! It also drains your energy and kills you if it falls below zero even if you still have several lives, so you must enter the dynamo room with the energy as close to the max as possible.

[tastefulmrship]

"Jet Set Willy (The Final Frontier)": all the versions I found in the wild lack a vital component: the internal data of "Cartography Room", that fills with tiles as you explore the game. However, I discovered that by copying the 129-byte table from the Spectrum version to the area where the CPC version expects it ($A700) the room works as expected! The game becomes finishable then. My compacted copy includes this patch, as well as the usual optional pokes of infinite lives and invulnerability.

Ha. This I never knew! Thanks for the info.

The Cartography Room (#109) worked perfectly on the original TAPE version from back in the day (from memory). There was a Teleport Patch in ACU that I recently reworked for DISC and I did mention the problem with #109 and (wrongly) assumed it was because of the Teleport code; however with your 128 byte patch, it now works fine! Top job as always!

[Puresox]

Just tried Subterranean Stryker again and have managed to get past the spider at the end of the level , I think once you get used to how the collision detection works, and get the rhythm sorted on getting past these obstacles, then it is not to bad . Its nice to find out it is possible!