 S S Hello and welcome to part 2 of this goofy premise where I try and come up with new ways to play old games, for instance in part 1 I talked about how in Super Mario World, one way to do a play-through is to pick and choose which exclamation point boxes you can unlock. Maybe just one or two, or maybe none at all… as a way to increase the difficulty. There's also goofy gamemodes available in games like EA's NHL Series… where you can actually play 1 on 5 in Practice Mode. And of course, you can obviously determine your own self-imposed rules for any game you play. For example, Gretchen, my friend from high school, did an entire playthrough of Chrono Trigger using only her feet. So at the end of the day, you can come up with whatever you want. I just thought I'd use these videos to throw out some ideas here and there. However, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention randomizers. I talked about them quite a bit in Part 1. The link to the past randomizer is obviously hugely popular in the retro gaming community. As are hacks like the link to the past Super Metroid combination randomizer. In addition to that, there's all sorts of other weird ones that are worth at least trying out. Even turn-based RPGs like Final Fantasy VI have randomizers, with a good one out there called Beyond Chaos. Yeah, you still have to go through the story as normal, but still, just about anything combat-related is mixed up in some way. From the characters, to abilities, to items, to enemy elemental weaknesses, to enemy formations, to shop items, to, uh, hair color. This makes the game really difficult, as you might expect, but hey, if you manage to get far in this one, you'll find that even the characters and their locations in the world of ruin are randomized as well, so that's kind of cool. If you love Final Fantasy VI, you'll love this randomizer. Secret of Mana has a really cool randomizer hat called Ancient Cave that takes their traditional Secret of Mana combat for better or for worse, and puts it in the structure of the Ancient Cave dungeon in Lufia II, meaning all the dungeons here are randomly created and laid out in a tower structure. You just have to find the exit of each floor to move on with the game. It's kind of cool. Enemies start out easy, but get tougher the further you progress, and it's got all the usual Secret of Mana knickknacks like weapon orbs and what's the blacksmith, but again, you have no idea where and when he'll show up. The randomizer program, which I have linked in the description, allows you to arrange playthroughs that are 8 floors, 16 floors, or 24 floors, and you can adjust the difficulty as well. I know Secret of Mana isn't everyone's cup of tea these days, but I had a lot of fun with this one. But yeah, there's tons of randomizers out there. There's a link in the description that has a big list of them, so go check them out. Okay, enough randomizers for now. Let's go back to regular old games that you can play as is, just with a slightly different approach to give yourself a little more challenge. One obvious one I forgot about in Part 1 is Mega Man X. After the game's introductory stage, the natural thing to do is to go to Chill Penguin's stage, because that's when you get the dash right away, right? Try playing this one without doing that, and go to Chill Penguin's stage last. I was honestly kind of amazed at how tough of a time I had with the game. I hadn't realized how much I relied on the dash, especially for boss fights. When you've played through Mega Man X a gazillion times like I have, this is a good way to make things a little more interesting. There was one funny anecdote left in the comments of Part 1 that I need to mention. It was a comment made by Perun Plague regarding the way they play Super Mario RPG. You just begin a save file at Mario's pad, then play as long as possible without saving again. I'm talking hours. See if you can get even another character in your party. When you die, you get sent back to Mario's pad, of course, but you keep all of your levels. It's kind of like a makeshift New Game Plus, so now you can one-hit bosses. It's pretty funny. You can do this with just about any linear turn-based RPG, but they used Mario RPG as their example, so I just stuck with that. So thank you to Perun Plague for pointing that one out. Another one from the comments mentioned by Neil Purcell. He says that on the NES, he would play Turtles 2 the arcade game with a second player and let them die. The computer doesn't adjust, and you fight slightly more enemies than usual, making for a bit more of a challenge. I tried and I tried to find a Super Nintendo game that did this, but it seems many of them either adjust the number of enemies after the second player dies or just never had extra enemies to begin with. The one game I found that did kind of sort of work was Turtles in Time, but the Japanese Super Famicom Edition. It's not a huge difference, but there's definitely more instances where there's at least four enemies on screen at once, and not just the dollar brand footsolders either. This game gets quite a bit tougher. So if you're looking for a tougher challenge in Turtles in Time, try that one out, and thanks to Neil for bringing this one up. Sometimes games have what I like to refer to as buried mechanics, and by that I mean there are options that are right there for anyone to use. It's just that not many people know that they're there. For example, jumping back to Final Fantasy 6 for a bit, did you know that Final Fantasy 6 was a two-player game? Yeah, all you have to do is go to the config menu, switch from single to multiple, and you can pick and choose who can be what character. It's pretty cool. No, you can't split the party or anything, and it's only for use in combat, but still, it's nice that it's there. There's all sorts of games that have buried mechanics like that. Take Top Gear for example. There's actually a controller layout that flips the controller upside down so you can use the D-pad with your right thumb if you'd like. Kid Clown and Crazy Chase offers the same option, and you know, that's something I never even considered before. I guess it would make sense that there are some people out there who are using the D-pad with your right thumb instead of your left thumb would just feel more natural. Anyway, those are the only two games I've been able to find that have that option. If you know of any more, let me know in the comments. Finally, one part of taking an unconventional approach to old games is coming up with a completely different objective than the game ever intended. The most obvious example of this is SimCity. You all know where I'm going with this. You pick a scenario, you turn on all the disasters, you turn the game speed all the way up, and then you watch this guy flip out for the next 10 minutes. I mean, I guess anyone would if there were a fire, a flood, a tornado, an earthquake, a plane crash, and a Bowser attack all in a matter of minutes. This is always fun to do every once in a while. But maybe the best example of this is Doom. No, not the Super Nintendo port of Doom. You're gonna want to avoid that one. Regular old Doom or Doom 2 on Steam, just to abuse the hell out of all the secret codes. I don't mean accessing God mode or getting all the weapons. I'm talking about ID clip, where you simply just stroll into a room, let all the monsters see you, and then slowly back into a wall and disappear and watch all the monsters kill each other. It's the frickin' best. I remember playing Doom 2 as a teenager on our Compact 486. I put in the stage select code and go straight to the last level, let the monsters accumulate for a few minutes, then just clip my way around and watch them all destroy each other. Such good times. And yeah, I admit, I still do this every once in a while. Anyway, that's all for now. I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.