ucanbeatvideogames – Set Side B https://setsideb.com The Flipside of Gaming Wed, 23 Oct 2024 17:45:21 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://setsideb.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/cropped-mascot512-32x32.png ucanbeatvideogames – Set Side B https://setsideb.com 32 32 U Can Beat Video Games Video Directory https://setsideb.com/u-can-beat-video-games-video-directory/ https://setsideb.com/u-can-beat-video-games-video-directory/#comments Thu, 16 May 2024 14:00:00 +0000 https://setsideb.com/?p=7438 Continue reading "U Can Beat Video Games Video Directory"]]> We’ve linked the Youtube channel of U Can Beat Video Games repeatedly in the past, most recently for their sprawling guide to Final Fantasy II(IV). Yet they keep making new videos. Just a few days ago they did a video on all of of Book I of Ys for the TurboGrafx 16/PC Engine, with one on Book II promised soon. And since they post (usually) weekly, if I did a post here every time they released a video, it’d become one-seventh of our posts!

Here is the video on Ys Book I, it’s 2 hours and 2 minutes:

And here is a directory of every game video U Can Beat Video Games has put up to date. I haven’t inlined the videos because there’s over a hundred!

NINTENDO

SUPER MARIO

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA

METROID

STARTROPICS

OTHER

RPGS

FINAL FANTASY

  • Final Fantasy (NES)
    Part 1 (2h59m) – Part 2 (3h38m)
  • Final Fantasy Adventure (Gameboy)
    Part 1 (1h37m) – Part 2 (2h57m)
  • Final Fantasy IV (II in its original US release) (SNES)
    Part 1 (3h44m) – Part 2 (4h8m) – Part 3 (4h17m) – Part 4 (3h36m)

DRAGON QUEST

NIHON FALCOM

OTHER RPGs & RELATED GAMES

BEAT-EM-UPs (“belt scrollers”)

TECHNOS

OTHER

KONAMI

GRADIUS

CASTLEVANIA

CONTRA

METAL GEAR

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES

OTHER

Bucky O’Hare (NES, 1h6m)
The Lone Ranger (NES, 1h57m)
The Adventures of Bayou Billy (NES, 56m)
Jackal (NES, 44m)
The Goonies II (NES, 48m)

CAPCOM

MEGA MAN (a.k.a. RockMan)

GHOSTS ‘N GOBLINS (a.k.a. Makaimura)

DISNEY

OTHER

TECMO

NINJA GAIDEN

OTHER

SUNSOFT

RARE

WIZARDS & WARRIORS

BATTLETOADS

OTHER

LJN

STAR WARS

ICOM ADVENTURES

THE SIMPSONS

Uncategorized

and…

EXTRA: Top Ten NES Missed Secrets (17m)

]]> https://setsideb.com/u-can-beat-video-games-video-directory/feed/ 1 U Can Beat Video Games Covers Final Fantasy IV https://setsideb.com/u-can-beat-video-games-covers-final-fantasy-iv/ Wed, 10 Apr 2024 14:00:00 +0000 https://setsideb.com/?p=7231 Continue reading "U Can Beat Video Games Covers Final Fantasy IV"]]> I’ve posted about the great Youtube walkthrough channel U Can Beat Video Games several times in the past, so I try not to report on every video they do. And lately, as they’ve been tackling bigger projects that take a lot more time to finish, there haven’t been as many to post about.

But now they’ve completed their four-part series, each at three-plus hours, on one of the most iconic JRPGs from the era, Final Fantasy IV, which of course got released in Western markets as Final Fantasy II. It goes over everything in the game, every secret, every step of the story, a lot of cool tricks and strategies, and more.

I understand some people use this as background for doing other things, or as their adult replacement for Saturday morning cartoons (look them up). In any case, it makes for a lot of viewing, so block off a fair amount of time for this.

Here are the direct links and embeds:

Part 1: Beginning to Cecil’s promotion to Paladin (3h44m)

Part 2: To Dr. Lugae in the Tower of Bab-Il (4h8m)

Part 3: The Underworld and up to the Bahamut optional fight on the Moon (4h17m)

And finally:

Part 4: The remainder of the game, and the ending (3h38m)

If you think this is huge, it’s only going to get huge-r when they reach Final Fantasy VI (er, III)!

]]> U Can Beat Video Games Tackles Super Metroid https://setsideb.com/u-can-beat-video-games-tackles-super-metroid/ Tue, 26 Sep 2023 14:00:00 +0000 https://setsideb.com/?p=5626 Continue reading "U Can Beat Video Games Tackles Super Metroid"]]> It’s yet another Youtube video post, but the subject is pretty notable, U Can Beat Video Games at last tackling the highlight of the Metroid series, Super Metroid for SNES, in an epic-length episode. Often big games get split up into multiple parts, but this time the whole game is covered at once. These videos can’t be easy to put together, and I appreciate the effort that goes into them!

As usual UCBVG covers the entire game, including all items and known cheats, and alternate endings. If you’ve ever wondered why GDQ players, hosts and audience ever shout “Kill the animals” or “Save the animals,” the ending to this video should fill in the blanks to an acceptable degree.

U Can Beat Video Games: Super Metroid (3 hours 37 minutes)

]]> U Can Beat Video Games: Dragon Warrior III https://setsideb.com/u-can-beat-video-games-dragon-warrior-iii/ Fri, 24 Feb 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://setsideb.com/?p=3965 Continue reading "U Can Beat Video Games: Dragon Warrior III"]]> I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time! U Can Beat Video Games has finally covered the best NES Dragon Warrior, the third game in the series. It was Dragon Quest III in Japan, due to some trademark issue with TSR I think. IV isn’t bad, and has fun characters, but there aren’t as many variant strategies in it, and in the last chapter you don’t get to control the actions of most of your party members. DWIII always gives you full control of your characters, plus it lets you create characters with names and classes of your choosing, meaning, like the first Final Fantasy, you can make completely custom parties and play the game in many different ways. It was the game that spawned the urban legend that the Japanese government requested that Enix release Dragon Quest games on weekends, because so many people ditched work to stand in line to buy it. (I don’t know if it’s true, but the story has often been passed around.)

It’s also the first Dragon Quest/Warrior game that allows for class changing, which resets a character to Level 1 (similar to an human AD&D character who dual-classed), but only halves their stats, and lets them keep all the spells they learned. Since they’re Level 1 again, they gain levels very rapidly for a while, allowing them to quickly surpass their previous heights. It’s kind of an early version of the “prestige” mode of clicker games, where you reset all your progress in exchange for faster progress afterward!

It also has a cool story that eventually connects with the first two games, and has a good variety of activity, including growing a town from scratch like 25 years before Breath of the Wild and betting on monster fights! It’s also got all the challenge of the early Dragon Quest games, with later monsters who can cast instant death spells on everyone in your party at once, as well as doing other horrible things to them.

Because Dragon Warrior III doesn’t pull its punches against the player, the various tricks that the narrator does to use the engine’s bugs against it feel like playing fair, and yet, even with full knowledge of the game and multiple player leveling and cash gaining strategies he still has problems once in a while. It’s a really tough game!

This may end up being U Can Beat Video Games’ magnum opus, at least of the NES era, it’s a really long game that takes three videos, of almost 12 hours total length, to cover in its entirety! Here they are:

EPISODE ONE: Creating Your Party Through to Getting the Ship (3 hours, 59 minutes)

EPISODE TWO: Getting the Ship through to Defeating Archfiend Baramos (4 hours, 22 minutes)

EPISODE THREE: The Dark World to the Final Boss, Plus Extras (3 hours, 35 minutes)

Please enjoy, and Rubiss help us all!

]]> U Can Beat Video Games: Super Mario Bros 3 https://setsideb.com/u-can-beat-video-games-super-mario-bros-3/ Mon, 14 Nov 2022 15:00:00 +0000 https://setsideb.com/?p=3102 Continue reading "U Can Beat Video Games: Super Mario Bros 3"]]>

We’re brought up U Can Beat Video Games before (here’s all of the videos they’ve done to date, and here is their home page with a merch store), but this time they’ve covered Super Mario Bros. 3 in their typically completionist style, covering every level and every secret in the entire game. Sometimes they split a long game into two or even three videos, but not this time, this one video goes through the whole game, and it’s three hours and 23 minutes long! The other reason to link them this time is it’s their 100th video!

They’ve done some other interesting games since the last time we linked them, which was when they covered A Link To The Past. Some particular games they’ve done in the meantime:

Even if you don’t have an interest in seeing these games taken apart so thoroughly, many people enjoy using their videos as background while doing other things. In a Youtube environment where video makers feel encouraged to go nuts with editing and fill their footage with distracting noises, UCBVG is a model for how to create interesting and informative videos. They are great! And they have a couple of adorable dogs who appear in every video, too!

]]> U Can Beat Video Games: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past https://setsideb.com/u-can-beat-video-games-the-legend-of-zelda-a-link-to-the-past/ Mon, 25 Apr 2022 22:00:00 +0000 https://setsideb.com/?p=298 Continue reading "U Can Beat Video Games: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past"]]>

U Can Beat Video Games (their YouTube channel) has only been around for a bit over a year, but they’ve already covered a lot of challenging games. It serves as a complete video playthrough, often revealing all the game’s secrets, and has remarkably restrained and helpful audio commentary by YouTube standards.

UCBVG videos cover the entire game, and can be long. The most recent, the covering A Link to the Past with a second part, is nearly two hours but it uses YouTube’s timeline annotations to mark any potential trouble spots you may have. Even if you’ve mastered the games he covers, I find it relaxing to watch anyway to refresh my memory on these decades-old amusements.

To date, UCBVG has covered 70 titles across the NES, SNES, Game Boy, and Mega Drive/Genesis. Some highlights include their videos on the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for NES (the first game on the channel), Mega Man I, II, and III, The Legend of Zelda, its second quest, and it’s sequel, Ghosts ‘n Goblins, Legacy of the Wizard (a.k.a. Dragon Slayer IV), Castlevania and Simon’s Quest, Blaster Master, Punch-Out!!, Ninja Gaiden and its first sequel, Clash at Demonhead, Metal Gear, Crystalis, Wizards & Warriors and its sequel Ironsword, Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy (in two parts), Actraiser, The Guardian Legend, Kirby’s Dream Land (including Extra Mode!), the weird and unique The Magic of Scheherazade, Sonic the Hedgehog, and even the notorious Battletoads, among many other games.

They update weekly, so why not take a look!

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