Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles playthrough (Xbox 360) RQ87 2026-09-28 | Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles playthrough (Xbox 360)
Street Fighter 6 playthrough (PS4, 1CC) RQ87 2026-04-24 | Playthrough of arcade mode with Ken. Street Fighter 6 was released in 2023, and I basically completely ignored it. I barely played SF5 and my interest in new games, particularly fighting games, has diminished greatly. When I watched the trailers and some versus matches, it just looked like another MvC style fighter where the combos go on and on and on, and it didn’t appeal to me at all.I decided to at least give it a try after buying a second hand copy from CEX. And… it’s ok, I guess? I found it pretty overwhelming to begin with, there’s a lot to learn with the drive impact system and the tutorial is quite lengthy. I haven’t got a PSN sub so I can’t play online. I have got this on Xbox now so I will get to play some online matches at some point.The arcade mode for this is really short. The default settings only have five stages, and one of those is a bonus stage. It’s funny that this video spends longer on the credits than it does on the gameplay.
Street Fighter V Arcade Edition playthrough (PS4, 1CC) RQ87 2026-04-17 | Playthrough of arcade mode with Sakura. Unfortunately I can’t remember a thing about this game. This video was recorded years ago, at the time Sakura temporarily made available for free to all players. So I did the playthrough then forgot I’d done it. I only randomly came across this sitting on a portable hard drive and realized it had never been uploaded. To make things worse, I'd done a playthrough of her story mode, but the file that was corrupted, so I couldn't use it.People liked Street Fighter V, right? At least, they liked it when the Arcade Edition update came out? I never ended up playing SFV much at all.
The King of Fighters XV playthrough (PS4, 1CC) RQ87 2026-04-10 | Playthrough with the Art of Fighting team. This game was released in 2022, and unfortunately really was the point where I stopped caring about the series. This game is all about using the max mode (and the new quick max mode) which allows you to extend your combos to ridiculous levels. It’s also exactly what I *don’t* want in my fighting game -it really feels like so many games want to be like Marvel Vs. Capcom these days. I don’t like it. Get hit once, sit around watching your own combo AMV. On the plus side, this game does feature auto-combos for everyone, so I can at least pretend to know what I’m doing at times.If you’re playing against the CPU then the max mode stuff doesn’t matter. The CPU is kind of frustrating to fight at times though, with some very blatant input reading going on. Certain characters seem to be programmed to be bigger jerks than others, in particular, Kim can be a nightmare to fight. SNK still can’t quite shake off that arcade “take the player’s quarters” mentality.This game has two bosses. Re Verse is really easy, and Otoma=Raga isn’t too bad by SNK’s standards. As seen here in the first round, sometimes she just does nothing. If you can get her in the corner then you should be ok, the main thing to fear with her is her high damage output. Many of her attacks send you flying to the opposite to the end of the screen. I could not help but laugh at what happened at 32:09 -the moment I inputted Ryo's super, the boss instantly counters it. I got flashbacks to that one time:youtube.com/watch?v=1wEpLFGlweEUpon defeat, the boss comes back with a bit of extra health, but other than that she’s a pushover compared to the likes of Rugal and Goenitz.
Granblue Fantasy Versus playthrough (PS4, 1CC) RQ87 2026-04-03 | Playthrough of arcade mode with Beelzebub, facing opponents on the Extreme or Nightmare difficulty levels. I played Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising on the PC a few months ago, so how’s the original hold up? Initially, I really liked GBFVR, but then I got to S rank online and that’s where I began not to like it quite as much. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not too keen on fighting games where the combos go on and on, outside of super moves I think combos should be 5 hits tops and then you’re done. But that’s just me. The original Granblue doesn’t have the Raging Strikes, Bravery points and some other stuff, the upshot of this is the combos aren’t as long. I’m fine with that!However, there’s now a few problems with the original GBFV. Take a look at the character select screen at 3:00. Note how twelve of the characters -half the game’s roster -is locked behind paid DLC. Every single one of the DLC characters in this is available for free in Rising (don’t worry, Rising has a new batch of DLC characters to pay for). Rising also has vastly better netcode, crossplay between the PC, PS4 and PS5 versions, Grand Bruise mode (it’s fun, ignore the haters), additional story content and more. So whilst this is good, I can’t recommend it, you’d be better off getting Rising.Also, it was announced some features of this game were being shut down this month, which is another reason to skip it and get Rising instead. The PC version currently has a warning about this going to happen, strangely the PS4 version does not. If you really like your physical games you should get this, since it did get a physical release, whilst Rising didn’t.Anyway, the playthrough. You have to unlock Beelzebub by playing through the RPG mode. This mode is worth going through due to some of the silly enemies you can fight (like robot Katalinas) and the gigantic bosses. I haven’t played the Rising story mode yet, my understanding is that it was simplified compared to the original.This game’s difficulty isn’t that bad, even when picking extreme or nightmare level opponents. They will counter a lot, but they don’t just sit there blocking everything you throw at them and will get hit. The only opponent to really be weary of is Beelzebub himself. He’s the final boss and is kind of a Shin Beelzebub alternate, who has some different moves compared to the regular version. He wouldn’t be too bad if it wasn’t for his meter regen and high damage output. But even on nightmare, he’s still way easier than your average SNK boss.
Fighters Impact playthrough (PlayStation/PS1, 1CC) RQ87 2026-03-28 | Playthrough with Kaede, using her Taekwondo style. This arcade port was released in 1997, exclusively for the PlayStation in Japan. This version would later be released on the PSN store, which is the version I'm using. Whilst it was only released in Japan, all of the text is in English.The arcade version of Fighter's Impact was released in 1996. Whilst it may look like a Virtua Fighter knockoff at first, and even has the same guard, punch, kick control scheme, it plays very differently. The main feature is that it has a combo system which lets you cancel any move into another move, but using the same attack more than once will stop you from continuing the combo. Some characters are able to do extremely long combo strings with this.Most characters also have multiple fighting styles, you can choose which style you want after you pick your character. The different styles give your character different moves, some moves on one style can't be used on another, and vice versa. Your character's costume also changes depending on which style you've chosen.Since this was a mid-90's fighting game, the CPU is as horrible as you’d expect. They start input reading from as early as stage 3, and will basically stop getting hit by normal punches or kicks really early on, making the entire custom combo system a waste of time. “But you’re playing on the very hard setting!” you might be thinking. The thing is, my theory is the difficulty settings in this game don’t work. There seems to be no difference with the CPU’s behavior regardless if it’s on normal or very hard.To get the 1CC you want to use throws as much as possible, but they seem glitchy at times and won’t work -sometimes, when you’re standing right next to your opponent and try to throw, nothing happens. It’s still the best strat though, there is no way to escape throws, and no whiff animations for missing throw attempts either. With Kaede, try doing her cartwheel attack (forward, forward+kick) and see what happens. If the CPU gets hit, do the cartwheel again once they’re back up. If they block the cartwheel, try and do her back+throw. This throw is really good since it puts the opponent a decent distance away from her.A reskinned and retooled version of this game would later be released in America and Europe in 1997, under the extremely generic title of "Vs.". Whilst it uses the same game engine, it makes major changes to how the game plays, and has a completely different cast of characters.In Japan, Fighters' Impact received an arcade exclusive update, called Fighters' Impact A. This game made the bosses playable and changes some things about the gameplay. Most notably, the custom combo system was removed entirely, making the it play more like Virtua Fighter than before.
Resident Evil playthrough 2/2 (Jill, PlayStation/PS1) RQ87 2026-03-22 | Playthrough with Jill. This game was released 30 years ago today in Japan. It’s the puzzle at 14:48 that gets me every time now… I was a lively boy when I first played this, then a young man, now I’m the tired middle-aged guy… so long as I never get to the old man stage I think I’ll be ok.Jill’s story is mostly easier than what Chris’. She can hold eight items whilst Chris can only hold six, which makes inventory management far better. She also gets to wield the bazooka, which is the weapon of choice for taking down hunters. She’s clearly also far more intelligent than Chris, such as knowing the login name and passwords for the computer at 2:18:23 before actually getting this info at 2:40:31.She does have one major disadvantage though: she’s got less health than Chris. One zombie bite is usually enough to take her to the yellow health level. You need to be especially careful around hunters with her, as they can one shot kill her even when her health is in the yellow level. It’s why I try to just get by several of the hunters rather than take them on, it’s easier.To get the best ending you need to have both Chris and Barry around at the end of the game. To save Chris you have to find and use all three MO disks to obtain the passwords, then find and open the jail cell. For Barry, when he drops the rope, just wait around until he comes back. Then in the underground, go with him when he asks, but don’t let him go first. Doing these things will ensure he survives.This is the PAL version, which like the American version, was famously censored -the opening FMV had several violent shots removed completely, such as images of corpses and Joseph killing one of the zombie dogs. The FMV of the first zombie also removed a shot of it dropping Kenneth’s severed head. I’m not sure why they only censored the FMVs though -during gameplay you can still blow zombie heads off and there are several violent death sequences for the S.T.A.R.S members depending on how you play.In Japan, this game was called Bio Hazard, but due to trademark issues the name was changed to Resident Evil. The game was also made more difficult, the auto aim the Japanese version had was disabled and enemies were given more health. Ink ribbons, the items needed to save the game with, came in packs of three originally, the non-Japanese version made them packs of two.
Resident Evil playthrough 1/2 (Chris, PlayStation/PS1) RQ87 2026-03-21 | Playthrough with Chris. This game turns 30 years old tomorrow -the release of the original Japanese version was March 22nd, 1996. This game was a turning point for Capcom, as it would quickly grow into their biggest franchise and replace Street Fighter as their cash cow series.This was my fourth Resident Evil game -my first was Code Veronica, then 2, then 3 and then finally I got to play this when I got the PC version. Unfortunately I never got to play it much because it kept crashing. I didn’t get to really play it properly until I got the Saturn version a few years later.Chris is the harder of the two characters to use. He has more health than Jill, but that’s his only advantage. He only has six inventory slots, which makes item management much more complicated. His weapons aren’t great either -the shotgun is fine against zombies, but I’d much rather have the bazooka to deal with hunters.This is the PAL version, which like the American version, was famously censored -the opening FMV had several violent shots removed completely, such as images of corpses and Joseph killing one of the zombie dogs. The FMV of the first zombie also removed a shot of it dropping Kenneth’s severed head. I’m not sure why they only censored the FMVs though -during gameplay you can still blow zombie heads off and there are several violent death sequences for the S.T.A.R.S members depending on how you play.One alternate cutscene I wasn't aware of until recently can happen after you encounter the first hunter at 1:26:53. If you go to see Rebecca quickly after this, it triggers an alternate cutscene where she's hiding in the save room, but will be safe (1:31:08). If you take too long to get to her, it causes an alternate scenario where she will be attacked by a hunter outside the save room, and you have to rescue her.In Japan, this game was called Bio Hazard, but due to trademark issues the name was changed to Resident Evil. The game was also made more difficult, the auto aim the Japanese version had was disabled and enemies were given more health. Ink ribbons, the items needed to save the game with, came in packs of three originally, the non-Japanese version made them packs of two.To add replay value, there are several choices you can make which effect gameplay. For example, if you say yes to letting Rebecca go with you, you’ll get to play as her later on in the game. Choose no like I did in this playthrough, and you won’t get to play as Rebecca at all. There are multiple endings too, on this run I got the best one, where Chris, Rebecca and Jill escape the mansion together.
Cyberbots Devilotte playthrough (PlayStation/PS1, 1CC, English subs) RQ87 2026-03-07 | Playthrough with Devilotte, using the Super-8 VA. The PS1 port of Cyberbots adds several extra characters and Variable Armors. Whilst Devilotte appeared in the arcade version, she wasn’t playable in it. For the PS1 port, she is playable and has her own story mode added. The cutscenes feature voice acting in this port, something the arcade version lacked.Unfortunately, the stories for the console-exclusive characters have never been translated… until now! With thanks to @shmuplations shmuplations.comTurn closed captions on for an English translation of Devilotte’s story. I have a few translator’s notes for this story:4:38 -This joke is based off a common admonishment, "oyatsu wa sanbyaku en made" (don't spend more than 300 yen on snacks!) which parents give to children when they go on field trips.5:19 - Jigoku Taishi is citing a Japanese proverb, "akunin ni kami mo hotoke mo nai"5:50 -Jin’s “In the name of heaven, I shall punish you!!” line is a reference to The Unfettered Shogun TV series, which had star Ken Matsudaira frequently say the same thing.8:48 -The title for this fight is a fictional song title and doesn't translate very well into English. It technically means something like "I'm sad and I want you", or "I'm lonely and I want you", but due to the differences in Japanese and English it's not really possible to have an elegant translation for it.
Cyberbots Chiyomaru & Tessan playthrough (PlayStation/PS1, 1CC, English subs) RQ87 2026-03-07 | Playthrough with Chiyomaru & Tessan, using the Gaits VA. Whilst Chiyomaru & Tessan appeared in the arcade version, they weren’t playable in it. For the PS1 port, they are playable and have their own story mode added. The cutscenes feature voice acting in this port, something the arcade version lacked.Unfortunately, the stories for the console-exclusive characters have never been translated… until now! With thanks to @shmuplations shmuplations.comTurn closed captions on for an English translation of Chiyomaru & Tessan’s story.
Cyberbots Shade playthrough (PlayStation/PS1, 1CC, English subs) RQ87 2026-03-07 | Playthrough with Shade, using the Zero Gouki VA. The PS1 port of Cyberbots adds several extra characters and Variable Armors. Whilst Shade appeared in the arcade version, he wasn’t playable in it. For the PS1 port, he is playable and has his own story mode added. The cutscenes feature voice acting in this port, something the arcade version lacked.Unfortunately, the stories for the console-exclusive characters have never been translated… until now! With thanks to @shmuplations shmuplations.comTurn closed captions on for an English translation of Shade’s story.I also thank GameFAQs user Tekkaman_Gamma:gamefaqs.gamespot.com/community/Tekkaman_GammaAs they uploaded a save file with all the hidden characters unlocked. I remember it being a hassle getting Zero Gouki unlocked on the Saturn version, so being able to download a save file was a huge time saver. Zero Gouki is exclusive to the Saturn and PS1 ports of Cyberbots.After playing this game on the Capcom Fighting Collection, I swear the CPU in the PS1 port is easier, even on the default settings. Maybe it’s just Zero Gouki being overpowered though. One annoyance with this port is that, sometimes, sound effects will repeat when they shouldn’t, like at 7:07 and during almost the entirety of the final battle. Watching other people’s videos, it looks like this was a problem with the PS1 version, and wasn’t exclusive to the PSN version.
Garou: Mark of the Wolves playthrough (Neo Geo Mini, 1CC) RQ87 2026-02-28 | Playthrough with Kain R. Heinlein. Kain is one of the two boss characters, but I didn’t really have too much fun using him. The only combo I was capable of was his jump in strong kick, standing light punch to schwarze panzer, and I couldn’t get that to combo consistently. His T.O.P. attack is really good though, if the opponent blocks three of those in a row it will break their guard.The Neo Geo Mini was released in 2018. There were two versions initially available: this version, which was released in Japan, and an International version, for America and Europe. The two versions have different games on them, such as the Japanese one having all the King of Fighters games on it, whilst the International one has all of the Metal Slug games.
Real Bout Garou Densetsu 2 playthrough (Neo Geo Mini, 1CC) RQ87 2026-02-21 | Playthrough with Rick. To get the bonus game you need to not lose any rounds and connect with either 5 p power super moves or 7 s power super moves. Rick’s potential power is pretty easy to hit the CPU with. The CPU in this game was made more difficult than the previous one and the controls feel a bit stiffer too. I know most think this is the best Real Bout game but I don’t really like it as much as RB Special. This made a lot of changes to character’s moves sets and made them worse.The Neo Geo Mini was released in 2018. There were two versions initially available: this version, which was released in Japan, and an International version, for America and Europe. The two versions have different games on them, such as the Japanese one having all the King of Fighters games on it, whilst the International one has all of the Metal Slug games.
Real Bout Garou Densetsu playthrough (Neo Geo Mini, 1CC) RQ87 2026-02-14 | Playthrough with Bob. Bob was a lot of fun to use, he had a few of his move inputs changed to make them easier to do than in the previous game. Plus his desperation move is good because if the opponent blocks it at the edge of a stage, it can quickly remove the barrier, leading to easy ring out wins. And if you remove a barrier at the end of round 1, sometimes you can end round 2 in less than five seconds (like at 6:15)!Billy was the hardest opponent to beat with Bob. The best thing to do is use the strong attack version of the rolling turtle move (QCB+C). If you time it right you should be able to keep hitting Billy with it. This strat also works on Geese, if you’ve got the spacing right Geese will try one of his counters and fail, leaving him open to attack.The Neo Geo Mini was released in 2018. There were two versions initially available: this version, which was released in Japan, and an International version, for America and Europe. The two versions have different games on them, such as the Japanese one having all the King of Fighters games on it, whilst the International one has all of the Metal Slug games.
Garou Densetsu Special playthrough (Neo Geo Mini, 1CC) RQ87 2026-02-07 | Playthrough with Krauser. It’s crazy to think I used to think this game was impossible to one credit clear just a few years ago, but now I’ve managed to finally clear it with another character. I almost want to say that this game is “easy” to beat with Krauser… easy in the sense it’s still difficult but compared to the other characters it’s not as hard. The Krauser strats are very basic: use his blitz ball, then if the opponent jumps towards you, use his leg tomahawk move to hit them. On certain opponents just spamming blitz ball is enough. Krauser has got a few other moves but as this playthrough proves, you don’t need them. I hate the input for his kaiser wave -why on earth would you have an up forward input??? This game, known as Fatal Fury Special outside Japan, was originally released in 1993. It has every character from Fatal Fury 2, but now the bosses are playable. It also brings back three characters from the first game: Duck, Tung and Geese. The biggest change to the gameplay is that now you can do actual combos! It also ramps the difficulty level way up to completely unfun levels. The previous game wasn’t exactly easy but it was far more playable than this. The single player mode also goes on for too long since it makes you fight all 15 characters in the game. If you manage to do this without losing any rounds you’ll get to fight Ryo from Art of Fighting at the end. This game doesn’t have an English language option, however, with the usual thanks to the Mad SNK Project:marsdragon.brontoforum.us/SNK/siteYou can enjoy English subtitles by turning closed captions on. This game’s official English translation is infamous for going off the rails (wubba wubba) so it’s nice to see what it could have been like in another timeline. Note how Krauser’s ending is completely different in the Japanese version, in the English version the text matches his spoken “what a tough!” line.The Neo Geo Mini was released in 2018. There were two versions initially available: this version, which was released in Japan, and an International version, for America and Europe. The two versions have different games on them, such as the Japanese one having all the King of Fighters games on it, whilst the International one has all of the Metal Slug games.
SEGA Rally 2 playthrough (PC, 1CC) RQ87 2026-01-31 | Playthrough with the Lancia Delta Integrale 16V. SEGA Rally 2 was released on the Dreamcast in 1999. The PC version is based on the Dreamcast port, which was also released in 1999. The Dreamcast version was seen as a disappointing port overall, whilst it added lots of new courses and cars, it had a very unstable framerate which would try to run at 60fps but would frequently dive to 30fps. The graphics were inferior to the arcade version and for some reason the colors were made duller. The PC version improved on the framerate issues, but still didn’t run things as smoothly as in the arcade.Which is where this 25th Anniversary Edition comes in. Created by Old New Pixel:youtube.com/@oldnewpixel/videosThis repack is the definite way to play the game. Its main draw is the game now runs consistently at 60fps. But it also has numerous other improvements, check it out here:archive.org/details/sega-rally-2-25th-anniversaryAs for the game itself… the Saturn version of the first SEGA Rally is one of my all-time favorite games. I can remember play the sequel on my Dreamcast a lot as a kid, probably on easy difficulty, but then kind of forgot about it. When I came back to it years later, I found the fps issues off-putting. But I also found the cars weren’t as fun to drive as they were in the first game. That, and the difficulty level was ridiculous.If you intend to 1CC this and get 1st place, this is a nightmare. I can remember trying to get a Dreamcast playthrough of it done for my channel circa 2011-12 but just gave up. I couldn’t even complete the Snowy course without running out of time. Things did not look good when I tried to practice this version, I immediately got struck with déjà vu: I couldn’t beat the Snowy course. It took a lot of practice to simply beat arcade mode at all. Getting first took even more practice, mastering the Mountain course is a must if you want 1st place (see below). I think the Lancia Deltas and the Lancia Stratos are the best cars to use.The first stage is admittedly really easy. You need to get to 11th place, and if you find that too difficult, you should probably give up on your goal of getting 1st place in an arcade mode run.The Mountain stage is where your 1st place dreams come to crash and burn. Your goal here is to get to 6th place, which is very hard. You need to really get the first half on this course mastered to be able to get to 6th place, ideally you want to have overtaken three cars by the time you get to the first hairpin right. Then just floor it and try to get past the remaining cars. As a side note, the music for this stage has one of the greatest “awesome to garbage” ratios ever.youtube.com/watch?v=rl86Nm_YOBc&ab_channel=BGMCastThe moment those “lyrics” kick in at around the 52 second mark… what were they thinking?I eventually found Snowy easier than Mountain. I think it’s only possible to overtake one car for the entire race, you can see another one ahead of you if you’re fast but I’m not sure if it’s possible to overtake it, unless you’re some sort of SEGA Rally 2 god. But that’s ok, as long as you’re in 5th place at the end of this course, you’re good. This track also features a vocal track, “Searchin’ for My Dreams”, only people actually like this one.Riviera is the final course. Unlike the Lakeside track from the first game, this course is actually fun to race on! It features two tight hairpin turns at either end of the track, as long as you can get round these you should be able to take first place just before the finish line.Overall I do appreciate this game more now, I personally think the first game is better though. It’s also a shame it’s taken a fan to make a good version of SEGA Rally 2. I really want them to do new ports of SEGA Rally 1 and 2… if SEGA were able to get Daytona 2 into Yakuza by renaming it, surely they could do something with SEGA Rally someday?
SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy playthrough (PC, 1CC) RQ87 2026-01-24 | Playthrough with Yuri and Terry. This is the kind of game you have to put on your Steam wishlist and hope a friend buys it for you because it’s too embarrassing to buy yourself. Thanks @Ragey0!Presumably aiming to attract more casual players, this game features a control scheme with just two attack buttons. There’s also a throw button and a block button, which is incredibly hard to get used to after playing KoF for so long. The way you do special moves is also greatly simplified, you can get them just by pressing a button and holding a direction on the controller to do different moves. You can’t just spam them though, as this has a spirit gauge which depletes when you use special moves. It gradually fills up, but there are ways to gain more spirit faster, like attacking the opponent. To really keep things simple, this game doesn’t let you crouch, so no need to worry about those pesky low attacks here!The tag team element lets you switch characters in an instant. When not fighting, your other character will be stood in the background. Items will appear on the stage, you can break them open by attacking them, and the item will be sent to your inactive partner. You can get them to use items during the fight, such as ones that instantly stun the opponent or give you some health back.Every character has “dream finish” moves, which you have to use to defeat your opponent. You can’t simply deplete the opponent’s life gauge to win, so don’t go spending all your spirit gauge energy. I really don’t like this system, because if you miss with your move, you’ll have to wait a bit before you can try again. If you reduce the opponent’s life gauge to nothing, you can then stun them with one hit, making it much easier to get them with a dream finish move.You’d think that if they wanted to get casual players interested, this wouldn’t have SNK boss syndrome in it, but it does. Kukri is the boss of the game and is really difficult to beat, casual players don’t stand much of a chance. He tends to use combos that bounce you off the ground a lot, and his partner is himself. Best advice is to not use special moves and keep trying to get him with basic combos. Try and get a stun item so as soon as he’s low on health, stun him then use a dream finisher.And oh yeah forget to mention the main thing SNK used to sell this was all the fan service. Yuri’s default story mode outfit isn’t actually that bad in this regard, but then look at Mai or Leona’s. And this “captured by sand” stuff in the cutscenes… well I’m sure someone out there is into that.
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising playthrough (PC, 1CC True Ending) RQ87 2026-01-17 | Playthrough with Meg. Unfortunately I don’t know anything about this game’s story so I think it’s safe to assume the obvious: with Meg and Mari getting all bedroom eyes and blushy with each other... they’re clearly cousins. But seriously, Meg is cool. I mean, she’s a shark-fu master and fused with a shark, has another buddy who tags along with her who can shoot said shark from a bazooka… not sure why she thinks she’s an “ordinary girl”. More characters like Meg, less characters like Fatal Fury football man please. I like a lot of Mari’s dialogue as well, especially what she says about Lucillius at 22:59.I started a bunch of fighting games over Christmas and didn’t care for any of them. I thought I was just done with newer fighting games in general, but then I decided to give this a try and loved it... at first. It’s an anime fighter but at low level the combos don’t get too crazy, unlike practically everything else these days. Unfortunately once you get to around S rank online, it does degenerate into massive combo strings and one hit and you’re eating a big combo gameplay, at which point I just completely lose interest. But you can still have a lot of fun with this!This game’s difficulty isn’t too hard in general, in addition to being able to select your next opponent, you also have the choice to pick a difficulty as well. Whilst the CPU will do some combos and big damage, they tend to not block everything all the time, so it feels like a fair fight for the most part, even when fighting on the very hard or above difficulties.Each character has two endings, which one you get depends on a couple of factors. Firstly, you need to get a minimum of 6 Skybound Art or Super Skybound Art finishers. The entire animation doesn’t need to play out, just so long as the Skybound Art is the final move to hit. You can keep track of how many finishes you’ve gotten after every match, there’s a bar beneath your character’s level that will fill up with blue orbs, or you can see if beneath your fighter’s life gauge. If you lose a round, you won’t get any more orbs, so it’s best to try and get all six as soon as possible. If you don’t get all the finishes, you will fight Beelzebub on stage 7. If you do get the finishes, you’ll fight Avatar Belial instead.Lucillius is the next boss, he isn’t exactly difficult, but what makes him scary is his huge damage output, especially if you’re playing him on the higher difficulty levels. Here, he starts with a full super meter! The plan is to try and trap him in the corner, and keep hitting him with combos. He is annoying to try and pin down as he tends to dash around a lot.Versusia is the extra boss. My understanding is that to face her, you need to finish either of the two previous bosses with a Skybound Art. She’s got the usual tricks like high health and damage output, on higher difficulties she also gets meter regen (watch it go up before the round even starts!) and health regen! Like Lucillius, the plan is to try and trap her in the corner and combo spam. I think she’s a little easier to beat than Lucillius though. I got very lucky on the first round, I had no health left and she could have chipped me out easily.If you get all of this done right, you’ll get a different picture for the ending than you usually would, and it’ll say “game over” at the very end rather than “to be continued”.One criticism I have of this game is the price. I mean, I got this for free (thank you @Ragey0!) but the base game is priced at $50. The standard Character pass 1 is $35, and Character pass 2 is $27. That’s over $100 for one game! It’s certainly not the only game to do this and definitely not the worst example of it, but I hate how expensive modern gaming is now. You can unlock stuff, including DLC characters, via the Rupie Shop, but it would be an absolutely insane grind to earn enough rupies to unlock everything. When I installed this game it gave me enough rupies to unlock one character straight away, which was nice, and the only reason I was able to get Meg.
Dead or Alive 6 playthrough (PC, 1CC) RQ87 2026-01-10 | Playthrough of arcade mode with Mila, on the Legend difficulty setting. Oddly you have to unlock the Master and Legend difficulty levels by playing the game a lot and reaching level 35 to unlock Legend. If you want to level up faster, try playing online versus matches, it's much quicker than playing through the single player modes over and over.Funnily enough, the Legend difficulty level in this is comparable to Dead or Alive 2 and 4 on their normal difficulty settings. Mila has some combo throws, but the CPU almost always gets out of them. But it's still not that difficult to beat on this difficulty setting. You can even beat it with just one button:youtube.com/watch?v=lwFf2PVM-dMMy understanding is that the PC version of Dead or Alive 6 was in development first, the console versions came later. So there seem to be no major issues with this, PC fighting games often get the short end of the stick but this has been running fine for me. Other than the mouse cursor not going away unless you manually move it off screen.
DNF Duel playthrough (PC, 1CC) RQ87 2026-01-03 | Playthrough of the arcade mode with Dragon Knight. This game is a fighting game spinoff of the Dungeon Fighter series, which I’m completely clueless about since I’ve never played any of them. All I know is this was developed by Arc System Works and it looks really nice.In one way this plays like Art of Fighting -whenever you use special moves, your mana gauge depletes, and if the gauge gets to zero you won’t be able to use special moves. However unlike in Art of Fighting, the gauge here charges up by itself and charges really quickly. There are two ways to do special moves, you can either do the usual quarter circle style inputs or use simplified inputs instead, such as just holding right and pressing a button. The difference is that if you use the simple inputs, your mana gauge doesn’t charge back up as quickly.This has something I wasn’t expecting: a really cheap boss. I haven’t encountered one of these in a modern fighting game for a while, but Lost Warrior is definitely up there with some of SNK’s best. What makes him so dangerous is his high damage output, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him miss with his super move. One disappointment is the arcade mode has no endings, once you beat the boss it’s back to the main menu and that’s it. Every character does have a separate story mode though.
Elevator Action Returns playthrough (Taito Egret II Mini, 1CC) RQ87 2025-12-27 | Playthrough with Edie Burret. Another week, another trashy Taito ga… wait. What’s going on? I’m having fun playing a Taito game? This is a new experience to me! Known as Elevator Action II in America, this sequel was originally released in 1995 and is held in high regard by Taito fans.And for good reason -this game is great, and this is coming from someone who isn’t proficient in shooting games. You have to find and enter red doors throughout each stage, all whilst taking out enemies, finding items and using elevators to progress or dodge enemy attacks. The graphics feature small sprites, but they are nicely animated and the backgrounds look good. The soundtrack is also fantastic, I highly recommend listening to it:youtube.com/watch?v=MIZr9G8VkEs&list=OLAK5uy_mmUbMWrCzlsb1PFsVI9P0oBp7eZGaibK4&ab_channel=ZUNTATA-TopicThere are three playable characters, but why would you pick Kart? He has his hair covering up one of his eyes, so he’s useless. Jad the Taff goes into battle with a “dessert” eagle… we’re here to shoot terrorists, not eat ice cream*! So naturally you should always pick Edie. Her fire bombs are very useful, since the fire stays onscreen for several seconds. They are particularly good against those flying enemies in stages 4 and 6. She can also fire her gun really fast. The only downside is she’s the weakest of the three characters.The first two stages are easy, stage 3 is where the difficulty increases a bit, stage 4 is where it starts to increase a lot. Stage 5 is really where you have to know what you’re doing. The section at 20:20 is really tough, but try and not enter the blue doors -if you don’t go into them, enemies won’t spawn out of them. You can take your time as well, there is a timer for each stage but you can’t even see it until you have a minute left. I’ve never seen this timer so as far as I can tell you have got plenty of time to finish each stage.Stage 6 is where you’ll want to make sure you’ve got either some bombs or the rocket launcher at the ready, mainly to deal with the flying enemies you’ll come across towards the end. When you get to the nuke, you’ve got a limited amount of time to make your way to the boss and kill him, otherwise the nuke will take off and you’ll get a bad ending. Although the “good” ending in this isn’t much better -nuke takes off with the hangar doors still closed, screen goes white, cut to credits. Guess our heroes all died? I kind of want to say the “bad” ending is the good one -sure, some country got nuked, but it means Edie survived, and I think that’s the important thing around here.One thing I noticed is that the default lives stock settings for this version are wrong. The default is two here (meaning you get three lives) but in all the other videos I’ve seen for this game, the default stock is one (meaning you get two lives). Not that it matters to me since I beat the game without dying once (that's called a no miss clear apparently!). One setting I did change from the default is the violence setting. It’s off by default, turning it on will cause enemy blood to splatter on the walls sometimes. If they get crushed by an elevator a lot of blood will be seen too.To conclude, I really like this game, its quickly become one of my all-time favorites and you should play it asap. It’s currently available on Switch, PS4, Xbox One and PC as well as part of the S-Tribute series, so go buy it!*To his credit, he does appear to be the smartest of the group. Look at him during the mission completed cutscene art -he’s the only one who knows how to stay inside moving vehicles, something Kart and particularly Edie seem to have great trouble with.
Dan-Ku-Ga playthrough (Egret II Mini, 1CC) RQ87 2025-12-20 | Playthrough with Kazuya. After Kaiser Knuckle was released, Taito realized they’d made a practically unwinnable game. The story is that they quickly put a new version into development, called Kaiser Knuckle EX, which allegedly did nothing but lower the difficulty. This version made it to location test stage, but was never released. It was instead put back into development, and further altered into this game: Dan-Ku-Ga.Dan-Ku-Ga was put on location test, but it ended up never being released either. A prototype version was dumped and has been available to play on emulators for some time now, but the Egret II Mini saw the first time the game was officially released. From what I can tell it’s almost the same as the dumped prototype, other than having character select portraits for Gonzales and Azteca (in the prototype, these two only have black squares on the character select).Dan-Ku-Ga fixes one issue I had with the original game: the button layout. The standard attacks have been simplified so you now have three different levels of strength for punches and kicks, instead of five. Many special moves have had their inputs changed as well to make them easier to do, but unfortunately there are still many dumb inputs in this game, especially for the desperation moves.So you might think that it has a fairer single player mode compared to Kaiser Knuckle. WRONG! It’s still horrible, I’d say it may be about 20% easier than last time but that’s about it. It’s still way too hard, the CPU still cheats with the blatant input reading, the General is weaker but still god tier etc. The CPU still has this habit of blocking everything your throw at it. When you start the game, you’ll be taken to a select screen with three options: normal, professional and training. I’d consider this game’s “normal” setting still more difficult than stuff like Fighter’s History Dynamite, Fatal Fury Special and the American Super SFII Turbo. However, even if you beat this mode, you don’t get the credits sequence, which sucks:youtube.com/watch?v=_9oCjmf8fnSo this is why I’m playing on the “professional” setting to get the credits. I had to pick Kazuya because he’s voiced by Kazuki Yao. Which basically means I’m playing as Earnest Evans if he was a fighting game character. The game is even named after one of Kazuya's special moves, for some reason. Kazuya actually has a desperation move that isn’t too hard to pull off (it’s basically double half circle forward plus the medium and hard punch buttons). That, and he was the only character I could beat the game with. I did try some others but could not get very far with anyone else. And even then, the amount of bs the CPU does makes this a very tough game to get a 1CC done for.Unlike last time you can’t pick your first opponent. You generally get the same group of opponents but in a different order, eg, the first few opponents will consist of Barts, Marco and Wulong. The last few you get will always be Kazuya, Boggy and Azteca etc. So here’s a guide on what to do:Barts: Keep trying to sweep him. If he’s far away, do heavy punch projectiles until he gets closer.Marco: Jump in heavy punch, crouching medium punch, QCB+P. Keep doing that combo. He does tend to use that annoying wave his arms move but just keep trying. Spam desperation if it comes to that.Wulong: Keep throwing out heavy punch projectiles at long range, he tends to get hit by these. He may try and counter with his power waves, but your projectiles will usually go over them.Lihua: She’s annoying because she counters a lot with her sword. Throw out projectiles and if she jumps towards you, hit her with a heavy punch or kick.Gonzales: You now fight him on stage 5, although sometimes I’ve had him appear on stage 6. Spam QCB+P for the majority of the fight. Cry internally when he somehow grabs you out of it and does 60% damage with one throw (8:49). He doesn’t tend to do this too often but he can do it.Liza: I lost so many runs to her. I still can’t figure out a good strategy against her either other than trying to do dan ku gas repeatedly. If she does her wall dive, block it and sweep her as she lands.McCoy: Keep doing QCB+P, if he’s far away, start spamming projectiles until he neutral jumps or gets closer. Then start doing QCB+P again.Azteca: When this guy appears is a bit random. I got him on stage 8 here, but I’ve had him appear as early as stage 7 and as late as stage 11. He’s super annoying in this game as usual. Try doing QCB+P a lot and move him to the corner. Once there, if you get him with the QCB+P, do a back dash and then throw out a light punch projectile. As soon as you do this, do another QCB+P. Sometimes Azteca will block the projectile but then get hit by the dragon punch, which is what you want. But then other times he command grabs you out of it ARRGHHHHH (14:44) or spams crouching light kicks to stop you I HATE THIS GUY**CONTINUED IN PINNED COMMENT**
Kaiser Knuckle playthrough (Egret II Mini, 1CC) RQ87 2025-12-13 | Playthrough with Wulong. Kaiser Knuckle, which is also known as Global Champion, was originally released in 1994. The Egret II Mini marks the first time the game has been released outside arcades. I had known about this game after seeing this video:youtube.com/watch?v=FCicpdHQLe0It was doing the rounds because it was the first time a legitimate recording of the General’s defeat was done. As this game wasn’t playable on any consoles at the time, I quickly forgot about it, and that was that.Years later, I watched a stream by @thegaminghellyoutubething who was streaming the Egret II Mini version:youtube.com/watch?v=YK3cIpA9keIAnd it made me want to buy an Egret II Mini to try it out myself, which I did. This game is very, very difficult, it’s basically a Neo Geo game hiding in a Taito cabinet. For the default opponents at least, this game exceeds stuff like Fatal Fury Special and maybe even Samurai Shodown II.There are some other things I don’t like about this other than the difficulty. First off, the controls. In this, you have five different punch and kick strengths, which is too many and overcomplicates things. And to do the more powerful attacks you have to press two buttons together, which I don’t like.Next, the special move inputs. If you take a look at the moves lists here:strategywiki.org/wiki/Kaiser_Knuckle/MovesThere’s an awful lot of quarter circle back, forward type stuff, which is unnatural and again, overcomplicated. And I have not seen so many stupid inputs for desperation moves since Fatal Fury Special.I was hoping to try and 1CC this with any character but Wulong. I did manage to get to the General with Lihua, but that’s unsurprisingly where my 1CC dreams with her came to a complete stop. It doesn’t help that some of her moves are too hard to do, so I quickly gave up on that idea. Instead, I used Wulong, who has a well-known strat to use against the General. Getting to the General with him still requires you to learn a lot of strats for all the other characters, so let me do a play by play:Marco: I picked him first because he’s dumber if you fight him early on. Whenever I fought him later in the game I’d lose, I don’t know how to beat him, he’s one of the most frustrating opponents in the game.Liza: Keep spamming dragon punch. She has the habit of running away from you, so try and keep close. Her AI has this weird quirk where she rapidly does light punches or kicks for no reason. Odd.Gekkou: One of the most frustrating opponents in the game because of his double jump. What you need to do is get to either corner of the stage, then let him jump towards you. Then hit him with the dp as he lands.Wulong: Get close, spam dp. I don’t usually do as badly against this guy as I did in round one, but at least I got to show off Wulong’s desperation move.Barts: This guy was one of the most frustrating opponents in the game until I figured out this great strat: spam dp (heavy punch version). He will block it, but immediately do another dp when you land and he should get hit by it. Repeat.Boggy: Throw power wave, dp him as he jumps over it. OH MY GOSH! Sometimes you can just keep doing the dp without needing to do the power wave.Lihua: Do a dp, she’ll start to walk towards you, immediately do another dp and she’ll get hit. Repeat.McCoy: Spam dp. Sometimes he randomly might counter with this jumping lunge punch that hits from above, but he didn’t do that this time.Kazuya: The strat used against the General should work against this guy, but my execution was off and made this fight look much harder than it should be.Gonzales: The first boss, with some of the most boring AI ever programmed. All he wants to do is block and throw you. That Mikado vid linked above showed the best strat: do a jumping heavy kick, jump back, repeat. It can take time to beat him, but this is the best way of doing it.Azteca: Behold, Wulong’s true final boss. I couldn’t find a guaranteed to work strat for him, making him one of the most frustrating opponents in the game. The best I could do was try to get him in the corner, do a slide, then do the light punch version of the dp. This character is just as broken as the General.General: I owe this strat to whoever was playing in that Mikado video. As soon as the fight begins, do a heavy punch dp. What you want is for the General to walk towards you, as you land from the dp, hold down and do a crouching heavy kick to sweep him. Then repeat this. I messed up a little in round one because I did a dp too far away from the General, but I managed to recover. The second round literally went perfectly.
Violence Fight playthrough (Egret II Mini, 1CC) RQ87 2025-12-06 | Playthrough with Ben Smith. If you’re watching this and thinking “wow this looks awful” then you’d be 100% right, because it is. The hitboxes in this game are a total mess, you will get hit by stuff when it looks like you shouldn’t. Of course the CPU abuses this as much as it can, and at first you’d think that this game would be impossible to complete.The only way to fight back is to abuse the hitboxes yourself. Ben is the best character purely because of his machinegun punch special move, which can be done by pressing punch and jump together. This move is very fast, so the entire strategy for this game is to constantly use that move. You have to get the positioning and timing down to perfection, most of the game is spent slowing edging towards the CPU and then hitting them with the machinegun punch. If you can quickly do this three times in succession it’ll knock the opponent over.If you managed this, back off -the CPU seems to have a couple of seconds of invulnerability when they get up, so head to the top or bottom of the screen, then prepare to move in again. Never try and go toe to toe with the CPU, you never win and the later opponents do far more damage than you do. The CPU also seems to be able to stun you really easily.The first two opponents aren’t that bad, you should be able to defeat them without too much trouble. There is then a gigantic difficulty spike when you fight opponent #3, which is where the hitbox abuse begins. Once you’ve cleared the first three opponents, the next guy is someone you can’t play as: Ron Max. His moves do lots of damage, and his diving headbutt attack has a massive hitbox.Tony Won, a Mr. T lookalike, is really the final boss. His attacks take off ridiculous amounts of life. You’ll want to try and land a hit, immediately backoff, then repeat, and try to keep him at either corner of the screen. After he’s defeated you have to fight a mirror match, which is way easier than Tony.The bonus stages in this game are a joke too. You have to fight a tiger, only your moves suck and it’s very difficult to land a hit. Meanwhile the tiger can hit you easily, and does large amounts of damage with each attack. Worse still, your can power up your punches or kicks by winning these stages, which is next to impossible to do. I have never beaten the first tiger ever, and I only just managed to beat the second tiger once when I was practicing this game. And even then, I won with just 2 life left.In terms of things I like about this game, I really like the title. “Violence Fight” is such a ridiculous name, it’s great. I also love all the Engrish, from the moment the game starts you know you’re in for a wild time. The “SAMMY YOU!” win quote is the best though.
Marvel Vs. Capcom Infinite playthrough (PS4, 1CC) RQ87 2025-11-29 | Playthrough of arcade mode with Ryu and Ultron. Last and by all means least, Marvel Vs. Capcom Infinite was released in 2017 and quickly forgotten about. Compared to the previous games, particularly the ones on the Marvel Vs. Capcom Collection, Infinite is bland in every area. As soon as the game starts and you realize there’s no intro you know something’s up. One main criticism of this game is the cast. You do get some new characters, like Ultron and Jedah, but there are no X-Men characters, and a huge chunk of the cast are from the previous game. Battles are now back to being two on two. The infinity stones make their return to the series, which have various effects. By taking damage the infinity stone gauge will increase, once it’s half full you can activate the stone’s true powers for a limited amount of time. Auto combos are the other main new feature -by repeatedly pressing the light punch button your character will automatically do a combo. The final boss for this game is one of the most boring I’ve ever fought. Why does he have so much health? The fight takes around five minutes to complete, I feel like I’m doing something wrong but as far as I can tell the fight really is meant to play out like this and it’s not possible to defeat him any faster. And then when you do finally beat him, this game has no endings in arcade mode, just a generic you win screen and that’s it.When the Marvel Vs. Capcom collection was released in 2024, it gave people hope a new game was in the works. These hopes were dashed in 2025, when Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls was revealed. It’s a fighting game, but has nothing to do with Capcom - Arc System Works are making it. So the MvC series ends with Infinite, which is a bit unfortunate.
Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 playthrough (PS4, 1CC) RQ87 2025-11-22 | Playthrough with Crimson Viper, Nova and Ghost Rider. The PS4 version of this game was released very late on in 2016. Unlike the PS3 version, the PS4 version is 1080p. It also includes all of the DLC characters and costumes, along with a new gallery mode.
Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 playthrough (PS4, 1CC) RQ87 2025-11-15 | Playthrough with Charlie, Chun-Li and Hulk, using the version of the game included on Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection Arcade Classics. This isn’t too hard to beat and features the easiest boss in the series.
Marvel Vs. Capcom playthrough (PS4, 1CC) RQ87 2025-11-08 | Playthrough with Venom and Spider-Man, using the version of the game included on Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection Arcade Classics. This game’s difficulty has been increased, the standard opponents are tougher (and by that I mean they input read more) and the new boss, Onslaught, puts Apocalypse to shame. Although I’m not sure if he’s actually harder to beat than Cyber Akuma.
Marvel Super Heroes Vs. Street Fighter playthrough (PS4, 1CC) RQ87 2025-11-01 | Playthrough with Ken and Omega Red, using the version of the game included on Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection Arcade Classics. This game is more difficult than the previous one. The CPU isn’t actually that bad, but it seems to spend an awful lot of its time randomly jumping around or backdashing.Apocalypse is the first boss, who is really easy to beat with Omega Red -just keep jumping and using his fierce punch, you can stunlock him with just that. Cyber Akuma is the new boss, who’s much tougher. He can move fast and his super moves can do a ton of damage, although he’s still not exactly that difficult to defeat… he’s no SNK boss, you know what I mean?I got a hidden challenger fight on this playthrough. Some cheat sites state you can only fight the hidden Street Fighter characters in the Japanese version, which is something I believed and had listed on my own site for years, but no, you can fight them in the non-Japanese versions. You need to get a certain amount of hyper combo and cross-over combination finishes to get them to fight you.
X-Men Vs. Street Fighter playthrough (PS4, 1CC) RQ87 2025-10-24 | Playthrough with Bison and Cammy, using the version of the game included on Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection Arcade Classics. This is the easiest game on the collection as the CPU is, for the most part, pleasant to fight. The boss is the biggest seen in the series yet, but so long as you take your time he’s not very difficult to defeat.I got the Akuma battle in this playthrough. To get him to appear, you need to win a couple of fights with team hyper combo finishes before stage 6. If you do that, Akuma will be teamed up with a random character for the stage 6 fight.
Marvel Super Heroes playthrough (PS4, 1CC) RQ87 2025-10-17 | Playthrough with Wolverine, using the version of the game included on Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection Arcade Classics. The CPU in this game is somewhat difficult at times (Spider-Man must have had a bad date with MJ the night before) but compared to the previous game it’s much, much easier.
X Men: Children of the Atom playthrough (PS4, 1CC) RQ87 2025-10-10 | Playthrough with Akuma, my favorite X-Men character. This version of the game is included on Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection Arcade Classics.ZZZZ. That’s what this playthrough is, sleep inducing. If you pick Akuma you may be thinking dur hur easy win but it’s anything but. This game was originally released in 1994, which was the year of fighting games with atrocious AI. Super Turbo, Samurai Shodown II, Virtua Fighter 2 etc. It’s crazy to me Capcom released this game with the CPU being so brutally difficult -you’d think they’d want to attract more people to play, eg fans of the X-Men cartoon series. I just have this vision of an X-Men fan trying this game out, getting their ass smashed by the CPU on the first fight, then never touching the game again.The CPU has the usual input reading and damage boosts of the era, but one of my main complaints is that it just blocks way too much. All the CPU opponents are also really fast and will counter everything you do constantly. But Akuma has a secret weapon: his air fireball. This is the move that made him a broken character in Super Turbo, and it’s even more potent in this game (at least against the CPU) as he throws out two of them. The reason it’s so good is because how much super combo gauge you can get by using it -you’ll get a bit just by doing the move, but then get more if the fireballs hit the opponent, regardless whether the opponent blocks them or not.So the game plan with Akuma is to spam his air fireballs constantly and then when the super gauge is full, do his fireball super. The CPU is going to block everything 90% of the time, but his super fireball still does decent chip damage. It’s a boring way of playing the game, but then the game doesn’t give you much choice due to the CPU’s aggressiveness. You really don’t want to try fighting toe to toe with the likes of Sentinel or Juggernaut anyway.
The Punisher playthrough (PS4, 1CC) RQ87 2025-10-03 | Playthrough with Punisher, using the version of the game included on Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection Arcade Classics. The last time this game was seen on consoles was back in 1995, with the extremely cutdown SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis port. The version on this collection is much more accurate to the arcade version.There are two ways to play this game. The first (better) option is to casually play it and have fun, admiring the graphics, all the moves you can do and weapons you can use etc. The second way is the 1CC way, which will bring you misery and suffering like never before. My original intention was I wouldn’t bother with this game and do playthroughs of all the others on the collection, because I was certain the chances of me 1CCing it were non-existent.And when I first started trying it things didn’t look good, I thought it was way too hard and the odds stacked way too heavily against me. You only get three lives in total to beat the game with, and one of those lives has to be earned first (once you get 1.8 million points). Enemies tend to have a lot of health, the enemies with the knives are one of the most annoying enemies ever, and the bosses… well I’ll get to that in a minute. After playing it for the majority of a Sunday afternoon, I was convinced I’d never be able to do this.Then on the following Monday I got the 1CC. This game is still really difficult, let me make that clear. But it does have a few mechanics that make it somewhat easier to get through, at least compared to other games of the same genre. The main one is rolling -double tapping a direction and holding it will cause your character to roll, which is very good for quickly getting out of danger.The other major thing of importance are the grenades. When I was practicing this I was basically not using them, which was a huge mistake. You start off with a few grenades but most levels will provide you with more. If you run out of them, you also get given some whenever a new level starts. Grenades are very effective against the bosses.The first two levels I could get through fairly easily. The third level is where the difficulty spikes, especially the boss. For the opening section I made a mistake at 9:18 and scrolled the screen too far forward, it’s easier here if you get in the gap at the top left corner. I managed to make do. Always try and stay out of range of the Pretty Boy enemies, they have long range punches and grabs. The boss of this level, Bone Breaker, was my first major stumbling block with this run. What you need to do is try and stay close to him and combo, does this will stop him from moving so he can’t ram you. And keep using grenades. If he starts firing missiles, just move away.Stage 4 is difficult because there are barely any life items in it. I made another huge mistake at 17:06 -I collected the food whilst trying to fight Gus, despite having around 50% in my lifebar. You really want to keep that food there for the boss fight just in case. The goal with Bushwacker is to keep throwing him. If you get a group of enemies together, start doing a combo but end it with a throw. Once Bushwacker is low on health, spam grenades.The boss of stage 5 is really boring, it’s the stage 2 boss but it’s red and faster. It can take a long time to take down, but it’s possible to use your gun on it -if you can keep certain lesser enemies on screen for long enough. I wasn’t having much luck with this whilst practicing, but somehow here I managed to use the gun against the boss quite a bit. If you can’t use the gun, you have to land a couple of quick hits, then move away since the boss will counterattack.The last stage is very long. My advice is when you get to the breakable doors at 30:01, wait around -some guys with grenades appear, try and defeat them as they will each drop a grenade you can collect upon defeat. Kingpin is surprisingly easy to defeat thanks to a simple strategy: knock him down once, then roll towards him, then jump. When you land, you should be able to pick him up whilst he’s still on the ground, and then throw him. You then need to repeat this over and over again. And of course you can use any remaining grenades you have on him.It was very satisfying to 1CC this, but for arcade scrolling beat ‘em ups I think this is all I’ll ever want to do. Streets of Rage forever
Samurai Shodown V playthrough (Nintendo Switch, 1CC) RQ87 2025-09-26 | Playthrough with Rera. The Samurai Shodown series went quiet on Neo Geo after SSIV, with new games being released for the Hyper Neo Geo 64 instead. But in 2003, the series returned to the original Neo Geo. The game is set before the events of the first game in the series.And it isn’t too good. Firstly, the graphics. Despite the seven-year gap between this and SSIV, the game reuses sprites from SSIV instead of redrawing everyone. I know KoF had been doing this for years at this point, but given how much time has passed you’d think a new set of sprites would have been in order. There are some new backgrounds, but many of them are taken from previous games, and most of them have had animation removed, making them look worse than before. My understanding is this game didn’t have much of a budget.Next, the controls. They’ve been made worse, and now you have to press the A and B buttons together to do a heavy slash attack. I disliked these two button inputs in the first two games and I hate it here, too. Worse, you’ve still got the mostly useless kick button mapped to its own button, I would have preferred it if you had to press A and B together to get the kick, and have heavy slash mapped to the C button. The D button now lets you do stuff like rolls and dodges, but I rarely ever use it.A major change with this sequel is the addition of another gauge under the life gauge. When you attack, this gauge decreases, and your attacks will do less damage. If you wait around without attacking, the gauge will automatically start to fill back up. This means you can’t just mash out attacks nonstop, you have to plan your next move carefully, at least if you want it to do much damage.One obvious disappointment is that the fatality finishes have been removed entirely from this game. The red blood is still there, but that’s as violent as it gets. I want the CPU to die a horrible death, but now they can’t.Speaking of the CPU: it’s easier than any of the previous games, but it’s still difficult. It still input reads and blocks a lot, but it also has some pretty massive exploits you can abuse. Rera in particular is a good character to 1CC the game with due to the CPU having difficulties with her wolf buddy. The ram attack the wolf has can work wonders against the CPU, just do it, jump back, and repeat. You’ll see me do this a few times in this run. Her weapon break attack is also really good, the CPU will almost always get hit by it.The main exploit to use is when you get the opponent to drop their weapon. If this happens, the opponent will often just simply shut down and remain completely still for no reason. If you have a life lead, you can get an easy time over victory. But you can also move close to the opponent and start hitting them, they may try to counter with a punch, but it shouldn’t work. You can see an example of this at 14:00.The CPU is also completely useless as mashing during the weapon clashes (4:24). They often won’t press any buttons at all! I only had to press a button once to win the one weapon clash I had during this run.There are three bosses in total. Sankuro is the first one, who appears at stage 5. He’s not that difficult other than him having backup from three different assist characters. He can also regain his health and has an unblockable attack where he fires a gun at you, but if you can trap him in the corner you should be ok. Yumeji is always the ninth opponent. Their main gimmick is that they can briefly transform into other characters and use one of their moves.Gaoh is the final boss. Voiced by Kenji Utsumi, which may explain why his name sounds so similar to a certain Fist of the North Star character. Gaoh has a big spear, and he can reflect projectiles back at you. Once he’s lost a round, he has a gimmick where he will power up and change forms whenever his rage gauge fills up. He’s invincible when he powers up, so you need to either block or jump over his charge attack. Try not to stay near him, as he has a grab super.The English version of this game leaves the intro untranslated. But far worse is that the entirety of story mode was removed. In the Japanese version, there are cutscenes and endings for each character, including pre-fight dialogue for every opponent you face. This is completely gone for the English version, which I feel was very lazy on SNK Playmore’s part. The missing story content would at least be restored for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox ports of the game.The final boss works differently in the Japanese version as well, and is more difficult. After you beat him once, in the next round he will start off in his powered up form, so you’ll most likely have to deal with his powered up version twice in the round. In the English version this doesn’t happen, he only changes form after his rage gauge fills up. I’ve done a playthrough of the Japanese version here:youtube.com/watch?v=T31QdKjr9zw
Samurai Shodown III playthrough (Nintendo Switch, 1CC) RQ87 2025-09-19 | Playthrough with Nakoruru. This game… well I’ve complained about it before. It’s far too hard, honestly I think it actually might be harder than the previous game overall. The CPU tends to either block everything, counter everything and gets massive damage boosts. Plus they always seem to get the health items thrown right at them.If your character has a command grab then it makes things a lot easier, but even then this is not an easy 1CC. What you need to do is jump towards the opponent and do an air A or B attack, which should cause the opponent to block. Then as soon as you land, do your command grab. Then keep doing this. The problem with this is every opponent seems to have drunk a ton of coffee before they fight, so they’re hyperactive and rarely stay still. Plus they often move around when they get up, making timing the next jump-in difficult.What makes this harder with Nakoruru is that her command grab does little damage. Some characters do tend to get hit by her jumping heavy slash so there’s that. But that’s really all she’s got in terms of defeating the CPU. Her weapon break move is way too hard to do and even if you manage to do it, 99% of the time the CPU blocks it anyway.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 playthrough (Nintendo Switch) RQ87 2025-09-12 | Playthrough of ring keeper mode with Knuckles. The SEGA Ages version of Sonic 2 was originally released in 2020. It has everything from the original game, and also allows you to play as Knuckles, emulating the Sonic & Knuckles lock-on technology. It also features a couple of challenge modes, such as getting 100 rings as quickly as possible in Emerald Hill’s first act. There are also some modes you can unlock by beating the game, like ring keeper mode. In ring keeper mode, if you get hit, you lose some of your rings, but not all of them. You also start each act with 10 rings, including Death Egg Zone, which to me is great because I never liked you not having rings in that level despite needing to take on two bosses. Plus you can defeat the final boss much faster when you’ve got rings.I died in at the Metropolis Zone boss due to me getting greedy. I should have waited for super mode to run out, then collected the rings just before the boss, then fought the boss. I went in thinking I had enough time to quickly defeat the boss, I forgot how much invincibility time he gets between hits. And don’t take Knuckles gambling -I have never seen FOUR tiple Robotniks from the same slot machine in Casino Night before!Embarrassing fact time: I never realized that many of the ring requirements in the special stages are lower for Knuckles than they are for Sonic until now. I thought many of these special stages were too hard, but they’re way easier for Knuckles.
Sonic the Hedgehog playthrough (Nintendo Switch, 1CC) RQ87 2025-09-05 | The SEGA Ages version of Sonic 1 adds some things from the 3DS version, including the spin dash and drop dash. But the biggest new feature is that it contains the Mega Play version of the game, which had never seen a console port before. The Mega Play was an arcade system which let players select from several titles:segaretro.org/Mega_PlayFor Sonic 1, the Mega Play version has some big differences when compared to the Mega Drive/Genesis original. Most notably, the Marble and Labyrinth Zones were removed, and Scrap Brain's third act was also cut. The special stages were also taken out, although the big rings used to enter them remain -jumping into them does nothing, you'll just start the next act instead.You have to beat each level within a set time limit, failing to do so results in the loss of a life. This means you haven't got much time to explore, you need to get to the end as quickly as possible. You can't earn any extra lives in the usual way, breaking open a 1 up item box will just give you some points instead.Beating the game will show the good ending, despite the fact that you can't collect any chaos emeralds in the Mega Play version. The credits sequence was removed, after the ending is shown it cuts to a high score table which uses the special stage's music.
Tekken 3 playthrough (PlayStation Classic, 1CC) RQ87 2025-08-29 | Playthrough with Yoshimitsu. Tekken 3 never got released on PSN, so it’s nice it was included on the PlayStation Classic. Namco tried some new modes for this game that didn’t work out too well unfortunately. Tekken Force, a Final Fight style game, isn't very good due the camera getting very confused about who you're trying to fight most of the time, and Tekken Ball is fun for 5 minutes. However, the rest of the game is just as great as previous Tekken ports, featuring lots of unlockable characters, new FMV endings and more. And they even went and toned the CPU down -whilst it does get a lot harder the further you get, it's nothing compared to the first two games.
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo playthrough (PlayStation Classic, 1CC) RQ87 2025-08-22 | Playthrough with Hsien-Ko. When you think of classic PlayStation games, does Puzzle Fighter spring to mind? The selection of games for this console really did have some weird picks.
Resident Evil Directors Cut playthrough 2/2 (Jill Advanced, PlayStation Classic) RQ87 2025-08-16 | Playthrough of the advanced mode with Jill. The Director’s Cut of Resident Evil was released in 1997. It was meant to feature uncensored FMV sequences, but famously most versions of the game kept the censored FMVs featured in the original version. Originally, this came with a demo of Resident Evil 2, but this is not included in the PlayStation Classic version.The Advanced mode features a lot of changes to various backgrounds throughout the game along with some other differences, please check out the Cutting Room Floor for more details:tcrf.net/Resident_Evil_(PlayStation)#Director.27s_Cuttcrf.net/Resident_Evil_(PlayStation)/Rooms_DifferencesThe PlayStation Classic was released in 2018 and quickly forgotten about. To me, the main problem with it is that most of the games I would want to play on it I already had on my PS3. For some reason the games are a mixture of the USA and European versions.
Resident Evil Directors Cut playthrough 1/2 (Chris Advanced, PlayStation Classic) RQ87 2025-08-15 | Playthrough of the advanced mode with Chris. The Director’s Cut of Resident Evil was released in 1997. It was meant to feature uncensored FMV sequences, but famously most versions of the game kept the censored FMVs featured in the original version. Originally, this came with a demo of Resident Evil 2, but this is not included in the PlayStation Classic version.The Advanced mode features a lot of changes to various backgrounds throughout the game along with some other differences, please check out the Cutting Room Floor for more details:tcrf.net/Resident_Evil_(PlayStation)#Director.27s_Cuttcrf.net/Resident_Evil_(PlayStation)/Rooms_DifferencesThe PlayStation Classic was released in 2018 and quickly forgotten about. To me, the main problem with it is that most of the games I would want to play on it I already had on my PS3. For some reason the games are a mixture of the USA and European versions.
R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 playthrough (PlayStation Classic, 1CC) RQ87 2025-08-08 | Playthrough of the Grand Prix mode with the Pac Racing Club team. Whilst I think a lot of people would say this was the best PS1 Ridge Racer game, I really wish the first game had been included instead of or as well as this one, it was one of the PS1’s launch games and a very important title for Sony.The PlayStation Classic was released in 2018 and quickly forgotten about. To me, the main problem with it is that most of the games I would want to play on it I already had on my PS3. For some reason the games are a mixture of the USA and European versions. The nice thing about R4 is the USA version was used. I had the Euro version on my PSN account, so let me show you guys something:youtube.com/watch?v=it6dBA7yWXASame game, but it took me just over an hour to beat the PAL version, whilst it was just under 50 minutes for this version. PAL gamers really did get the short end of the stick sometimes.Something I have to confess about this game: I didn’t realize the team select was the difficulty select. Usually I’d always pick the Mappy team because of Sophie, but since I’d already beaten the game with that team I just had to pick someone new for this version. To me there is quite the difficulty spike between the Mappy and PAC teams, you have to play a lot better in order to get through the game -you can’t make too many mistakes during a race.
Battle Arena Toshinden playthrough (PlayStation Classic, 1CC) RQ87 2025-08-01 | Playthrough with Gaia. This was the first game in the Toshinden series and Sony heavily promoted it. It went up against Virtua Fighter on the SEGA Saturn, and for some people it came out on top purely because it had more detailed graphics. Then you played it and… yeah. It’s very slow, with movement being extremely sluggish. There is also a lot of very questionable hit detection. It does feature a lot of flashy special moves, and everyone has a desperation attack. It has a sidestep move, allowing you to dodge out of the way of the opponent’s attacks. And it even has a few secret characters for good measure.Gaia is the boss of the game. Whilst it takes him around 3 hours to land from a jump, he has a very good desperation move which will most likely hit the opponent, even if they try to sidestep it at close range. So whenever your health bar starts flashing, just start using his desperation move to win.The PlayStation Classic was released in 2018 and quickly forgotten about. To me, the main problem with it is that most of the games I would want to play on it I already had on my PS3. For some reason the games are a mixture of the USA and European versions.
Guilty Gear playthrough (PC, 1CC) RQ87 2025-07-25 | Playthrough with Potemkin. For some reason this game was released for PC, Switch and PS4 in 2019. The first Guilty Gear contains one of the dumbest gameplay features I’ve ever seen: insta-kills. You can use these moves whenever you want, and if they hit the opponent, it wins you the fight, regardless of how many rounds have been fought. They aren't guaranteed to work as the opponent can get out of them, but just the idea of being able to use them whenever feels absurd to me. Later games dropped this feature.Beating the game with Potemkin mainly relies on using his command grab as much as possible, then if you’re low on health, start spamming his desperation move.
Crazy Taxi 3 playthrough (PC, 1CC) RQ87 2025-07-18 | Playthrough of the Small Apple city, using normal rules. This game was also released in arcades under the title of Crazy Taxi: High Roller. This city is the "hard" difficulty in the arcade version. Small Apple was originally featured in Crazy Taxi 2, although for this version it is set at night time. The PC version of this game was released in 2004, and has several problems. The main one is the choppy framerate, it doesn't run anywhere near as smoothly as the Xbox version. The Euro version does, at least, not have the sound bug the Xbox version has.
Crazy Taxi 3 playthrough (PC, 1CC) RQ87 2025-07-18 | Playthrough of the Glitter Oasis city, using normal rules. This game was also released in arcades under the title of Crazy Taxi: High Roller. This city is the "medium" difficulty in the arcade version, and it the game's only brand new city. The PC version of this game was released in 2004, and has several problems. The main one is the choppy framerate, it doesn't run anywhere near as smoothly as the Xbox version. The Euro version does, at least, not have the sound bug the Xbox version has.
Crazy Taxi 3 playthrough (PC, 1CC) RQ87 2025-07-18 | Playthrough of the West Coast city, using normal rules. This game was also released in arcades under the title of Crazy Taxi: High Roller. This city was classed as the easiest one, and it was originally featured in the first Crazy Taxi game. The PC version of this game was released in 2004, and has several problems. The main one is the choppy framerate, it doesn't run anywhere near as smoothly as the Xbox version. The Euro version does, at least, not have the sound bug the Xbox version has.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles playthrough (PC) RQ87 2025-07-11 | Playthrough of the SEGA Mega Drive Classics version. This version was initially something you could buy separately on Steam, and it also had a physical version as part of SEGA Mega Drive Classics volume 3. The Steam digital version has since been delisted. The Mega Drive Classics series were later given an update to include a new user interface -the games room seen before the game starts was not originally in this. Another big addition is mod support. You can download mods and play them on this, which is what I've done here. I'm playing Sonic 3 Complete, a hack of Sonic 3 & Knuckles which lets you change a lot of things in the game. Highlights include being able to play the levels using the normal mode layouts from Sonic Jam and being able to play them in their original intended order, meaning you get to go to Flying Battery Zone after Carnival Night. You can also change the music for several things, or change Sonic's sprite to the Sonic 1 version. My favorite feature is the changes made to turning Super or Hyper Sonic -you can now do this even if you have a shield, plus you can also manually turn back to normal Sonic if you want. For more details, please visit Sonic Retro's page about it: info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_3_CompleteSonic 3 Complete is great, but the Mega Drive Classics series is not. Games have random framerate drops, and there are some major music issues. It’s mainly ok for this game, but one error is the “come on!” heard during the act 1 boss fights getting a lower and lower pitch as the game progresses.
Tekken 7 playthrough (PC, 1CC) RQ87 2025-07-04 | Playthrough of arcade battle mode with Akuma. Akuma has most of his moves from the Street Fighter series, including his projectiles. He even plays a role in the game's story mode.
The Last Blade 2 playthrough (Neo Geo, 1CC) RQ87 2025-06-27 | Playthrough with Kojiroh. Kojiroh is interesting because she’s pretending to be her deceased brother. Her real name is Kaori. If you didn’t know, the PlayStation port of the first Last Blade game had an extra character called Kojiroh, who storyline wise was killed off. In this game, Kaori is hunting down her brother’s killer.The Last Blade 2 was released in 1998. I’m no expert but it appears to be more of the same but better, and there’s nothing wrong with that! It adds several new characters including the criminally underused Setsuna. The controls are almost the same as before other than changing how you do throws, as you now have to press the C and D buttons together.The CPU was made slightly more difficult in the first game, but that’s nothing compared to the final boss, who is one of SNK’s worst. I feel like I say that a lot. But Kouryu is a great example of how not to do a boss fight, especially in 1998. I made him look fairly easy here but he is a complete nightmare, he can take half your life with just two moves.Another problem is that when played in English, there’s no blood in this game, and the fatalities are disabled. And surprisingly, there’s no blood code either! Why SNK still thought this kind of censorship was still required in 1998 is a bit of a mystery, at this point games like Resident Evil had been released, which were far more violent than this. The first game didn’t censor anything, so why did the sequel?No more Last Blade games were released for the Neo Geo after this one. The series got a Neo Geo Pocket game and that’s it. There have been rumors a Last Blade 3 was in development for the Neo Geo, but it got cancelled. This site has a very brief mention about the game, which states it was shown privately to distributors:http://www.retrogames.com/092000.htmlIt also states the game was 60% complete. No screenshots of a Last Blade 3 have ever been seen, so who knows what happened to it.
The Last Blade playthrough (Neo Geo, 1CC) RQ87 2025-06-20 | Playthrough with Shigen. The Last Blade was released in 1997 and is the first in a short-lived series. It’s a weapons based fighter that plays very differently to Samurai Shodown, and to me it’s far more enjoyable to play. Characters can choose between power and speed modes, letting you either do more damage or chain together bigger combos depending on what your play style is. The other main feature is the attack deflector -by pressing the D button with the right timing you can deflect certain attacks.The CPU isn’t that bad, I guess, at least compared to a lot of other Neo Geo games. With Shigen you can get beat most opponents with this simple combo: jumping B, standing forward+C. There are a few problematic opponents who don’t fall for it as well like Okina, but most of the time it works. Shigen is very slow to move, be prepared to jump around a lot if you want to stay close to your opponent.This game has two bosses. You have to be careful with Musashi because if you jump towards him he usually uses his cross slash attack which has huge range. Once he’s low on health he tends to use his super move a lot, if you block it all you can counter with a throw. Kagami can be beaten in both forms with the combo mentioned earlier, but you need to be careful with the timing.Like Samurai Shodown IV, this game’s intro sequence was left untranslated for the English version.
