Folks, it is that time once again – time to leap into our recap of four Twin Galaxies bounty challenges, issued in the bygone days of September, and also to look ahead to four new challenges aimed at the far-flung year of… June… of this year. As always, these are intended to be fun, unique gaming challenges, not featured on typical high score or speedrun leaderboards, and not covered by existing RetroAchievements objective sets.
FINAL FANTASY 7: ESCAPE MIDGAR WITHOUT USING MATERIA
Gaming challenges come in two varieties. One angle is to perform some immense feat using the game’s full provided ability (and control) set, perhaps in some exceptional manner. This would be like beating a difficult game on “impossible” difficulty, or within a target time. (Five-minute Mario, first-round Tyson, etc.) These are hard to issue as unique challenges, as they mostly announce themselves. “Here I am! Take your best shot!”
The other side to this coin are challenges which set a normally-mundane goal, but restrict you in some other fashion. This category is always ripe for new ground, as there are always more and newer restrictions one can layer on an existing rubric. And it’s here where today’s FF7 challenge firmly lies. Normally, it’s not that difficult to clear the opening Midgar sequence in Final Fantasy 7. Millions of players have done it, and in many ways, the game holds your hand in doing so. However, it’s a totally different matter to do so without materia (the game’s magic- and ability-granting artifacts).
In practical terms, this means not using any materia-granted abilities during the early game, before the materia menu is unlocked, then unequipping all materia at the earliest opportunity. Everything else the game offers – items, limit breaks, etc. – is still on the table. While there is no formal “No materia” leaderboard at Speedrun.com, players have uploaded complete game “No materia” runs, proving that this challenge is possible.
This challenge was conquered by TG user LAH16 in 2:07:44. LAH16 actually completed the challenge three times, with the first run as practice, and the second one succumbing to a Facebook Live recording glitch. I guess what they say about third times is true!
https://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/265897
After dialing up menu settings and dispatching the first required fight, this run relies on the same strategy you see in every other RPG tale of heroism and valor: Running from every encounter!
Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?
Unfortunately, discretion only gets one so far. After doing some nominally terroristy things, our heroes encounter Guard Scorpion, the standard “Only attack when I’m doing X and not when I’m doing Y” half-boss, half-ATB tutorial. LAH16 had clearly played this sequence a few times, as he did not enter Cloud’s limit break at first opportunity, instead waiting a few seconds for Scorpion to begin its tail-raising animation.
More encounters are eluded during the Earth Liberation Front’s getaway to safety. At about the 25-minute mark in the video, LAH16 is finally given access to the materia menu, and the glowy power stones promptly come off:
However, the most important moment of the whole run comes just a few moments later, as LAH16 drops by the shop, acquires a free Ether, then sells it, Barret’s fancy new Assault Gun, and all his materia to buy 44 Grenades:
Obviously, the Grenades make a lot of sense. Personally, on Final Fantasy games that use ATB, I’m used to battling the encounters as they come, as the games are typically balanced such that fighting all the random enemies in one dungeon builds up your party to tackle the next dungeon, and so on, all the way to the endgame. But with this challenge, there is no real “endgame” to worry about. Grenades allow you to flee all these encounters through this early stages without suffering a drop in damage output. Just, you know, don’t hold on to them too long.
At the second reactor, the Grenades start flying at our second boss fight. A few are queued, but only two end up being thrown. And in keeping with this theme of twos, we also see our second and third limit breaks, as Barret and Cloud drop a Big Shot and a Braver right in Air Buster’s back.
Cloud then meets Aeris, who convinces him to dress up like a girl, because I guess that’s her thing. Also, very importantly, LAH16 dominates the squats game, 20-14.
After all of Cloud’s effort to pretty up, Don Corneo still picks Tifa to be his special friend. This results in a few unescapable encounters with Don’s creepos, which bring the Grenade counter down to 35. This total goes down further to 24 against the sewer boss Aps.
Interestingly, while LAH16 used Cloud’s and Barret’s limit breaks whenever they became available, he always eschewed Tifa’s limit break in favor of more Grenades. I assume this was a basic damage calculation. But I was more surprised to never see Aeris’ limit break get used. I just assumed, with healing magic unavailable, her Healing Wind would come through for a clutch group heal at some point, but it never did.
Like a Flock of Seagulls, our heroes ran, ran so far away, all the way up the Sector 7 support tower. Just prior to the climb, LAH16 hit up a panicked merchant for a whopping 48 more Grenades. This raised the count up to a comfortable 72, before the Reno battle lowered it to 63. The only basic attacks we saw in that fight were to bust those stupid pyramids to free our friends.
Back at Sector 5, LAH16 buys 6 more Grenades, then sells an Ether for 750 gil to afford the Batteries. He is also sadly relieved of a useful Phoenix Down by some ruffians. Thus, our brigade enters Shinra HQ with a Grenade count of 69.
Unsurprisingly, LAH16 took the stairs, using 6 Grenades on a single ensuing battle on floor 59. He spams the mayor’s riddle, netting a Potion for a fourth-try guess, before fleeing several encounters on floor 65. Soon after, we meet our favorite red poochie, who has his own default materia to unequip… following another boss fight, of course.
As you all know, some story bullshit happens, then all fucking hell breaks loose. The elevator party burns an average 10 Grenades per Gunner boss, before tossing the mic back to Cloud, who takes the opportunity to equip some loose armor for his own fight with non-Carlin Rufus and his doggo of evil. The two of them then trade Grenades and shotgun blasts like it’s a friendly match of tennis.
Cloud’s PTSD therapy will have to wait. With 32 Grenades left, our heroes hit the highway, a la a classic Metroid escape sequence. Being the final boss of our challenge, Motor Ball would seem to have had the best shot at ending LAH16’s journey. Its Twin Burner attack dealt some serious damage each time. But a few limits and 17 Grenades later, and the no-materia challenge was complete.
Another thing I like to do with these challenges is, hopefully, inspire folks to take on longer campaigns. I believe this run is a good template to start a full game no-materia run. Just don’t be surprised if you find yourself crossing this bridge a few thousands times farming those Right Arms:
ROBOTRON 2084: THE “BROKEN ARROW” CHALLENGE
Previously, I described how I had stumbled onto the idea of playing original Donkey Kong without using the jump button. This lent itself to a particular style of restriction challenge: Playing the game as normal, while disabling your controls. What I would call a “broken button” or “broken control” challenge.
I’d hoped to apply this concept to another arcade favorite – Robotron 2084. (Not to make anyone feel old, but at this point, we’re almost halfway to the real 2084.) That game is sweet as hell for the way it uses two joysticks: One to control movement, and the other to control firing. You can move left while firing left. You can move up while firing down behind you. You can move diagonally while sniping something at another diagonal. It’s so satisfying – however, less so when one of your directions isn’t working right.
Like all arcade games I’m aware of, the game doesn’t use eight sensors on each joystick. It knows, if the up and left contacts are both active, that your character (or weapon) should go up and to the left. Thus, if I were to recreate a faulty contact by way of this challenge, this should involve restricting a cardinal direction and its two related diagonals. There also didn’t seem to be a point to restricting one of eight directions of movement all by itself. After all, if you negate “move left”, you can simply move a combination of diagonal up-and-left and diagonal down-and-left to achieve the same thing. I did, however, want the choice of which direction is restricted to be left up to each player. I was interested in how some may choose to restrict movement, while others may restrict a firing direction. Strategy!
The concept was easy to understand, but hard to describe succinctly, thus I called it the “Broken Arrow” challenge. There was also a question of implementation, as it’s a little more complicated than “Just don’t press this jump button” (especially if one wised to play on original arcade). At any rate, it was certainly worth a spin.
While I did get a couple private inquiries about the challenge, only one player – Evan04 – ended up submitting a run, choosing downward weapons as the disabled control.
https://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/265232
This run is a bit shorter than the FF7 run, by a magnitude of two hours, but despite the brevity, it is not any less interesting. Right from the get-go, Evan is diverted up, with no way to fire down at the oncoming horde.
Thankfully, he’s able to escape to the right wall, placing the Grunts to his left.
The danger of the restriction starts showing itself in Wave 3, as a trip to the top right corner proves perilous:
But once again, Evan is able to escape to the far wall and survive.
While being unable to fire down invites an immediate threat, it also poses a longer-term danger, when the player is encouraged to escape in a direction they are also unable to clear beforehand. This catches up to Evan on Wave 4, as he makes a narrow escape around the baddies and down to the bottom wall, before succumbing to the horde he was unable to thin out earlier. This leads to Evan’s first death at 29,400.
Yet another threat reared its head later that same Wave, as Evan was forced to play long-range dodge ball with a couple Enforcers, who he was unable to fire at. This unfortunately cost him another life, at 33,225.
Evan racks up big points on Wave 5 saving civilians from the predatory Brains while hugging the bottom wall as much as possible. Evan defaults to this strategy as much as possible in subsequent waves. However, each Wave’s initial onslaught becomes too much to handle without the ability to clear that downward path at the start. The Spheroids’ tendency to park in corners also hinders him, since Evan must travel all the way down to the bottom wall to kill them. On Wave 7, Evan gets pinned in the top right corner with one life to go:
Sadly, Evan’s final life doesn’t fare much better against the oncoming swarm, resulting in a final score of 122,100, although that was good enough to top the default list at least.
Evan took his winning opportunity to offer the following kind remarks:
Thank you for posting the Robotron bounty it was really fun, I would highly recommend checking out the bounties page on the TG page.
https://www.twingalaxies.com/bounty
And thank you tremendously, Evan and LAH16, for participating in these bounty challenges (and for giving me something to write about)!
While Robotron is probably my favorite classic arcade game, I must say I’m not very good at it. I would be curious to see how far a “broken arrow” game could be pushed, if it would be possible to marathon indefinitely, or if the dangers posed by the restriction are too much to overcome long-term. At any rate, thank you Evan for showing what is possible!
MEGA MAN X: GET AS FAR AS YOU CAN WITHOUT TAKING DAMAGE
That covers the non-ersatz submissions this round, but I’ll briefly cover the other two challenges. People have beaten Mega Man X all the way through completely damageless, which sounds daunting, until you realize it’s just a matter of learning each stage and executing them consecutively. Don’t get me wrong, like a perfect score on Pac-Man, it’s still a highly impressive feat, but it’s more accessible than it may at first seem. For this challenge, I chose a damageless intro stage as the minimum for entry.
My submission was streamed with no mic, so occasionally you’d see me pause and incidentally flick the cursor around as I was typing in Twitch chat. On my first try, I got all the way to the final platform!
The transition to that platform was tricky though, with that car coming in hot. Most everything else along the way was predictable and easily accounted for, except for the big flying bee things. Sometimes they’d offer you a safe attack pattern, and other times, they’d shoot missiles which were hard to anticipate:
Eventually, I decided to save state right before the last platform transition, to practice it a bit, but this was never needed, as I cleared it and the stage on my next try.
I got a little ways into Chill Penguin’s stage before taking damage from one of those lumberjack things.
I played out the streaming session trying to at least complete each section of Pengy’s stage individually, if not sequentially. The most frustrating sequence was the one with the snowball-throwing guys, especially the last one:
Eventually I figured out the best way to approach them is to get right up under them, where they can’t hit you. After some practice, I was able to complete each sequence of the stage and the Chill Penguin boss fight without damage, albeit not all in one go. I guess you could say the Penguin got away this time.
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA (NES): SWORDLESS AND DEATHLESS
And that brings us to the original Legend of Zelda, sans sword, and sans death. Note that you can’t actually beat Ganon without the sword, thus the “swordless” challenge is considered complete once you enter Ganon’s room with no sword in hand. This challenge didn’t receive any official submissions, but I did make a couple streamed attempts. I’m not going to give these the full breakdown, both because I prefer to focus on others’ play in these bounty write-ups, but also for a surprise reason you’ll see in a moment. But I will cover it briefly for the benefit of anyone else interested in the same challenge.
I had completed the first quest swordless many, many years ago. I hadn’t done so deathless, but I figured, whatevs, it’s just a matter of doing the same thing while being careful not to die, right?
Obviously, the most important first goal is to get the Blue Ring, but to do that, you’ll need lots of cheddar. On my first attempt, I made a beeline for the NE corner, where I could get 100 hidden rupees and the special Letter. (“Cheddar”? “Letter”? I’m a poet and I didn’t even know it.) Unfortunately, acquiring the Letter pinned me behind all those jumpy things.
I did survive, but found myself on low health. I ended up dying to some stupid thing on my long trek back to home base.
Of course, I took a second stab (or whatever you would call it when no swords are involved). I once again went for the distant 100 rupees, but decided the side trip for the Letter was unnecessarily perilous at such an early junction. I returned home, and bought the Blue Candle and some Bombs, which helped me collect all the “secret to everybody” investments. The rupee farming was a bit tedious, since my main source of damage (the aforementioned Candle) could only be fired once per screen, but against Octoroks, it did the trick. After maxing out my bank account, I blew all those donations on some nice sapphire jewelry for myself.
After acquiring Arrows, some more Hearts, and that Letter I had skipped earlier, I finally started clearing some dungeons. The one I was most worried about was Level 6, since that has all those Wizzrobes which are a pain in the arse even when you have a sword. I wanted to get as many hearts as I could before tackling that one. Most urgently though, I was sick to death of having to screen-scroll every time I used my only consistent weapon. So I took the shortest path to Level 7:
Behold, the awesome power! I can actually attack things at will, as much as I wanted. In this challenge, the Red Candle may as well have been an infinity stone. I was invincible!
Then I went to Level 4, and did something extremely stupid, lol.
I didn’t bother consulting a guide before jumping in. I mean, I’d done the whole swordless thing before. There’s nothing really to it, right? Just sling some Candles and Bombs, no biggie.
But it turns out, Gleeok was invulnerable to everything I had. Bombs don’t work. Arrows don’t work. Flames do nothing. The only things he’s vulnerable to are the swords… and the Rod… which was sitting comfortably in that Level 6 dungeon I was avoiding. Whoops! And of course, being the dungeon boss, he locks you in with him, like it’s a UFC cage match. Four-and-a-half hours in, and I ate my first death.
I decided at that point it just wasn’t meant to be. Also, while I did (and still do) want to complete this challenge, I was really only playing at that moment so I’d have something to include in this write-up, in case no one else submitted anything. But don’t worry! I patched everything up with some Billy Mitchell strats:
If someone is looking to tackle this challenge in the future, the last thing I’d advise is to avoid the Silver Arrows altogether. This may seem redundant, given that you will never need them, since you won’t be defeating Ganon, but I know some of you, like me, are completionists (forgive the term), and are just inclined to fill out those inventories. The Silver Arrows are already difficult to get swordless, since they’re guarded by Wizzrobes who are only vulnerable to Bombs. 16 should be enough to get to the Arrows, but without lucky drops, that may not be enough to get there and return alive through more Wizzrobe rooms.
Oh wait, there’s also a second quest, isn’t there? When setting up the challenge, I pondered how I’d resolve folks wanting to submit the same challenge on the second quest. The TG bounty system doesn’t lend itself to folks submitting slower-yet-swaggier times to the same listing, so I set up an entirely different challenge entry for the second quest. I did end up doing second quest without a sword, and WOW, that shit was way harder than I thought. Without a sword, you can’t farm money for Bombs or the Blue Candle, which means you have to start out with a few very specific free sources of revenue, one of which is on the far side of Lost Woods. These grant you a grand total of 70 rupees that you must spend wisely. Anyway, I generally prefer not playing out the challenges before I post them (so they’re not like “Here, do this thing I’ve already done”), and I knew deathless/swordless second quest was technically doable. But that would be way harder than what I typically aim for with these bounties.
Okay, that was fun! There weren’t many submissions this round, which may be due to my choice of games and challenges, but could also be due to the Billy Mitchell bullshit blowing up in the last month-and-a-half of these bounties, which occupied time I would have spent reaching out to folks. At any rate, we’re just having fun, so we’ll give this wheel another few spins.
NEW BOUNTY CHALLENGES
If you’ve followed these bounties, you’ve probably noticed a few common themes. I mentioned “broken button” challenges earlier, but I’ve also issued a new “damageless” challenge each round. These are great for the fact that they scale well, they involve distance- rather than time-based competition, and they serve as potential introductions to full-game damageless runs. Granted, this has yet to result in any non-ersatz submissions toward these damageless challenges, but I hope that changes here.
Yes, this time, we’re gonna clear as many stages in Super Mario Bros. 3 as we can without taking damage. (Obviously that includes not dying.) Everyone reading this can clear SMB3 stages without getting hit, and can probably do so consecutively. I’m setting “Escape World 1” as the minimum for entry, though whether you do so by using a Warp Whistle or by kicking Larry Koopa’s butt is up to you.
Alternate exits count, such as the Warp Whistle endings in World 1, the Jugem’s Cloud exit in the skies above 3-7, and the Music Box exit hidden in 5-1 (and anything else similar). The final count also includes what I will call “bonus stages” – the Hammer Bros and Piranha stages that appear on the map, coin ships you conjure to replace said Hammer Bros, and Leaf stages in World 8. This also includes one trip up the World 5 Tower, but does not include a return trip. The challenge does not include warp pipes, or safe minigames like Toad houses or card-matching. (Obviously, you can do each of those as required or desired, they just don’t count toward your total stages cleared damageless.) This also obviously doesn’t include stages you skip outright with Jugem’s Clouds or by simply going around.
We’re gonna open this up to any licensed version of SMB3 (original platform or emulated). This includes All-Stars on SNES and Super Mario Advance 4 on GBA. Unlike previous damageless challenges, major glitches will not be allowed for this one. (I feel like, when I say glitches are allowed on damageless challenges, folks may feel like I’m telling them they are expected to compete with glitches, which was never intended.) Note that the trick on 1-3 where you crouch on a white block/platform/thing until you fall behind the background for a limited time is not a glitch, and works on all white block/platform/things throughout SMB3, so it’s fair game… unless you use it to “hide” behind water like on 3-9, in which case that probably gets into “major glitch” territory.
Your final score is the number of stages you clear. So sure, you can warp ahead to World 8, and could even beat Bowser without taking damage, but you may come in with a lower score than someone who dies halfway through World 3.
Here’s a challenge that was suggested by a friend of the site. (Yes, you can do that.) This one’s pretty simple: Score as high as you can on arcade Missile Command without using the central missile base, a.k.a. “Delta Base”. It was suggested to me that this challenge may have been a real thing back in the day, but I was unable to find any surviving documentation or score benchmark. Marathon settings are fine. Original arcade or MAME are okay, but no ports for this one. Oh, and you can use whatever damn trackball settings you feel like, lmao. I don’t know if this can be played indefinitely, or if there’s any sort of maximum score attainable (a “perfect game” of handicapped Missile Command, if you will), but I’m interested to see what folks find!
https://www.twingalaxies.com/bounty/missile-command-highest-score-without-using-delta-base-ppmdc
We haven’t done a Kirby challenge yet, and the magnificent Arena mode on Kirby Super Star / Kirby’s Fun Pak – one of my favorite special modes from any game ever – certainly lends itself to fun opportunities. Originally, being the apparent novice that I am, I thought it would be clever to issue a challenge to clear the Arena while leaving behind as many life-restoring Maxim Tomatoes as possible… until I discovered that “Beat the Arena without healing” is already a RetroAchievement in the base set.
Well, shoot. That seemed rather difficult to me (and I was about to discover why), but I certainly wasn’t out of options. I pondered offering “Beat the Arena without Plasma ability”, which I was eventually able to do after several failed attempts. (Honestly, I just wanted my first instance of “Collect the Plasma ability” on RA to unlock after “Complete the arena”, merely for the swag of it.) But one of the recommended strategies I saw was to turn to stone and let your helper do the hard work.
That’s when I realized “no helper” is an underrepresented challenge genre in KSS. So that’s what we’re doing! Beat the Arena without ever making a helper… and without healing.
This bounty may be on the more difficult side, but if it sounds daunting to you, I discovered something shocking about this game in the course of researching this challenge: Kirby Super Star has a block button! Did you know you can press “L” or “R” to block most everything, instead of always having to dodge it? I’ve beaten this game so many times, and I literally never knew about this, lmao. (“Beat the Arena without blocking” would be fun, but could be tedious to adjudicate.)
“Top billing” will go to the fastest in-game time on your victory screen. I see no reason this challenge shouldn’t be opened up to the classic Arena mode on Kirby Super Star Ultra on DS, but since there could be timing differences, I’ll give a different “top billing” to SNES and DS players. (Also, the versions are functionally different, since on DS you can press Select to discard an ability without making a helper.) Note that, since you can’t make a buddy, your time may suffer if you refuse to take the sword Meta Knight offers; I leave that decision to you.
Oh!! I almost forgot! Normally, I offer “pick up and play” challenges, either showcasing the beginning of long games, or full games of something short. KSS here is my first endgame bounty. Of course, you can play on your existing SNES or DS save, on cartridge or emulator. But if you don’t have such a save and want to skip ahead, I’ve provided a 100% save file, which I believe will work on most any SNES emulator:
https://perfectpacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Bounties04-Kirby-save.zip
Our last new challenge is on classic Sega RPG Phantasy Star. I love RPGs too much not to include one, and this gem of a game gets unfairly overlooked in the shadows of its Nintendo-based brethren. It has been several years since I played it, and I was hoping to issue something like my “magic only” Dragon Quest 3 bounty a while back. Sadly, the game’s early magic is pitiful, rendering a “magic only” challenge impossible and a “no magic” challenge meaningless.
But I didn’t give up! The speedrun route prioritizes buying a mighty Iron Sword early and tossing that starter Nerf sword in the trash. But what if you had to stick with your original equipment as long as possible? It would probably be a difficult climb, at least until you recruited this guy:
His name’s Odin, and he hits things hard. There are better weapons you can give him, but his default should get you where you want for a while. This restriction only applies to equipables; you can still buy as many healing items and Flashes as you want. I set the finish line as acquiring the Shortcake at the ill-placed Shortcake shop. Look how kind I am! You don’t even have to fight any bosses… although if you did keep playing past the Shortcake and did take on some bigger Skeleton fish using your starter gear, I would add some major swag points for that.
In fact, as always, each of these challenges are really just suggestions. Rules are rules of course, but if you find ways to heap a bit of extra swag onto your run (like doing SMB3 without damage and without power-ups), that makes you the real winner – and I will absolutely note any observed swag in the write-up.
Happy gaming, y’all!