Games that cannot be finished?

[dcdrac]

did anyone ever finish Stryker in the Pits of Trogan?

[Cholo]

Commando: Freakishly hard but definately possible to "finish". Xyphoe has a walkthru.

Glider Rider: perhaps i just didnt understand the mechanics or there was some vital clue i missed. Great music tho.

Saboteur 2 (and 1): I think something got "lost in translation" from the spectrum versions. It can be a bit hard to compare them as the different difficulties. Having played the games a lot and knowing where to pick up/ do what i cannot think it humanly possible to finish the last missions in the amstrad versions .. partly to the worse amstrad platform mechanics but mainly the bad time countdowns.

Spikey Harold: I guess even the programmer realised it as the game starts you off with 20 lives or so. The game does have a "end screen" but will you ever see it without massivly cheating?

Mission Elevator: Never managed to get up to the final floor in the game even though always got pretty close. Those enemies on the last couple of floors is just too terminator-like in their behavior .. and even if you managed to block off one of the evemy spawn points (by standing in it yourself) the enemy AI simply shoots a pattern that cant be dodged/jumped. And even WITH inf life cheating .. once you reach the final floor you have to defuse the bomb .. using the codes that you collected searching EVERY item from floor 1 and up. AND if you managed to actually get all the codes you still have to figure out the unexplained "1 mistake and it blows up" right way to enter the codes.

[AMSDOS]

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.

Always remember getting to the dynamo was a pain, didn't realise I'd have to waggle the joystick once I was on the thing, probably explains all those deaths. 

[ralferoo]

   
• "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.

So, I was a bit confused by this as I know I recognised that screen (with blocks) on the CPC back in the day and from an original tape version rather than a hacked up version.

I already knew that the original JSW was bigger that the Spectrum version and the They Sold A Million version was truncated to the same map as the Spectrum version. What I didn't realise was that the original extra screens had formed the basis of JSW2 and ported back to the Spectrum and then presumably back to CPC again.

This page has more information, including the observation that the Cartography room originated on the CPC first: Jet Set Willy II: Comment from Steve Wetherill and Derrick P. Rowson and Jet Set Willy II: The Cartography Room


Jet Set Willy II: Comment from Steve Wetherill and Derrick P. Rowson

[Wolfy2k4]

I seem to remember Slap Fight being unbeatable... Or maybe I just ran out of patience. I seem to remember getting very far into it, then reaching an area with a red/black background that repeats over and over....

I think i switched off after 20 minutes of that. Was there anything more to the game?

Cauldron was another one I never got close to, I can't imagine finishing it without a few POKES....

[ralferoo]

I seem to remember getting very far into it, then reaching an area with a red/black background that repeats over and over....
I think i switched off after 20 minutes of that. Was there anything more to the game?

That could have just been a loading error.

I remember Elite really annoyed me like this. There was a time when I had a really worn out tape band, but games would usually load fine even though they sounded awful. Anyway, I'd played Elite for months and was still at a really low level and nothing much ever happened when I flew between systems and so I got bored and stopped playing. One day, I was playing it at my friend's house at it seemed more fun, so I randomly loaded it up and started playing from scratch, and within a few hours I was having a much harder time of it and had levelled up. So, it seems that the corrupted data from the original bad load was being saved and restored every time I played the game after that until I started from scratch. That was months of gaming wasted!

[Cholo]

Dandy: On the final map, the last room you enter is simply empty. The whole room flashes (to slow you down on purpose?) and you can barely move while your health get drained untill you die. I still not sure if this "ending" is intentional or not while have tried multiple versions on different hardware.

Arkanoid: Cant really see it happen without cheating and even then the ball has a nasty habit of getting stuck in a loop between 2 indestructable blocks.

Jack and the Beanstalk: The one (and only) tape version of the game came from the factory with a massive error on the tape making it only partly playable. However clever people has rescued the game so only a mild graphics error is show during on of the maps. However the game is still freakishly tough. Unlike the "gray" spectrum/c64 version they actually remade it in lovely mode 0 colour .. but with some quite harsh limitations added instead. Spec/64 = unlimited shots. CPC = 5 single shots only .. and thats for the entire game as you dont get a refill when you die. How many MANDATORY shots do you need to get to the final screen (aka enemys that you cant jump/pass unlike the spec/64 version) = 5. Once (if you ever make it to) the final screen all you need to do is :
- 64: climb down the stalk and grab the axe to the left side of the screen.
- spec: climb down the stalk and grab the axe to the left side of the screen .. AND go back to the base of the stalk.
- CPC: climb down the stalk and grab the axe to the left side of the screen .. AND go back to the base of the stalk ..AND climb up the entire stalk again .. within the freakishly short timelimit/counter that the other versions dont have.
Possible to finish? No.

[Snake_Plissken]

Funny and interesting topic.

[Wolfy2k4]

Ugh... Arkanoid why'd you have to go and mention that one. I never made it past level 5

[Gryzor]

Seriously? Arkanoid was hard, but not THAT hard!

[cngsoft]

Seriously? Arkanoid was hard, but not THAT hard!

I agree, the first "Arkanoid" for CPC, despite its shortcomings (including the enormous mistake of forgetting that the ball's angle can be fine-controlled with the paddle like in "Arkanoid 2") is completely finishable without cheating, even the famous third stage. You just gotta be pixel perfect and savescum like if there were no tomorrow.

[Puresox]

Arkanoid 1 had crap controls , and a stupid difficulty curve with level 3 being a pain in the arse , and luck playing a large role with that level.Revenge of Doh was far superior , with better controls and better level design in respect to the difficulty curve.