Try blowing into the cartridge
January 30, 2025 1:37 PM   Subscribe

Prolific Mario speedrunner Grand Poo Bear has a new series on YouTube (The Games NO ONE Can Beat) trying to beat notoriously impossible classic video games: Lion King (SNES), Silver Surfer (NES), Where's Waldo (NES), Bart Vs. Space Mutants (NES), Fester's Quest (NES), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES), A Boy and His Blob (NES), Milon's Secret Castle (NES)
posted by Christ, what an asshole (25 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
I've beaten at least three, and possibly four, of those. I'm not sure I remember finishing Bart vs Space Mutants. I know I've finished Fester's Quest, TMNT and Milon's Secret Castle.

On the other hand, he's beaten plenty of kaizo Mario World hacks that I could never finish. I think he still wins.
posted by JHarris at 1:47 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]


Ninja Gaiden conspicuously absent, the guy's not completely insane.
posted by star gentle uterus at 1:48 PM on January 30 [6 favorites]


Ninja Gaiden conspicuously absent, the guy's not completely insane.

I finally beat Ninja Gaiden with a NES Classic, cheating by basically making a save every time I got a successful hit against one of the final 3 bosses.

Even with NES Classic saves, I've never even made it to the 3rd level of Ghosts and Goblins. Man that game is hard, and IMO is not very rewarding to fail at playing.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:03 PM on January 30 [5 favorites]


The one I’m curious about — but not curious enough about to actually look for it myself — is whether anyone has exploited glitches to beat two player Battletoads, which due to an uncaught bug1 in one of the later levels is literally unbeatable using conventional techniques.

1: I 100% love that this bug made it into the release version of the game. It indicates that either the two player game was never tested at all, or else that the head of the QA team or whatever they call it was like “eh, ship it, no one’s gonna get that far anyway.”
posted by Sperry Topsider at 3:06 PM on January 30 [2 favorites]


The end of the blob game is kinda funny. I've never played it, but his confusion at what to do and how the blob got in a tiny jail - pretty funny.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:19 PM on January 30


I had a friend in school who insisted that he beat Bart vs. The Space Mutants and at the end Bart did a dance and sang a song about kicking their butts. He demonstrated the song and dance. I remember some of the words to it. Like literally it was a a chorus of mutants singing "Bart vs the Space Mutants!" and Bart dancing by and interjecting with things like "I kicked butt!" Like I have a false memory of this thing existing in even though I never saw it because Ari painted this vivid picture and swore to God that it was true. Let's see...

... yeah so that was a lie.

Next you're going to tell me you couldn't actually fight Sheng Long by going 99 rounds with M.Bison in Street Fighter 2.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 3:20 PM on January 30 [5 favorites]


But can he outrun the yeti in SkiFree?
posted by downtohisturtles at 3:24 PM on January 30 [7 favorites]


Here's where I admit I've finished US Ninja Gaiden on real hardware. I always thought it was twitchier and generally worse that Castlevania, which it's obviously patterned after.
posted by JHarris at 3:48 PM on January 30 [3 favorites]


Oh this is cool. No one believes me but I did beat TMNT. (but i never beat the original super mario bros so idk whats up with that.)
posted by capnsue at 3:57 PM on January 30


oh man, I've watched a couple of these in the past week, and having played them, I do think that "impossible" is a fairly apt descriptor of both Milon's Secret Castle and Where's Waldo. The latter especially is just kind of… pointlessly cruel. Absolutely dreadful game.
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:16 PM on January 30


Dang I almost forgot about festers quest. It was pretty good!

Unpopular opinion: TMNT is one of the best NES games and not that hard really. Y'all just gotta manage your turtles and know how to swim :)
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:50 PM on January 30 [2 favorites]


I think it's underrated too! It has its faults (that frame rate, oy), but it was ambitious and cool! Displaced Gamers' Behind the Code series did a coulple of videos on its internal workings, on jumping and its frame rate and on that damn dam.
posted by JHarris at 5:30 PM on January 30 [4 favorites]


Isn't a lot of the difficulty of TMNT due to the water level's code actually being broken?
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 5:48 PM on January 30


Thank you JHarris, the water level ruined that game for me and knowing why and seeing the visualization of the hitboxes really helped me understand that it was the game being broken and not me.
posted by omegajuice at 6:03 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]


To The KaijuCommander: Yep, that's what the dam video is about.
posted by JHarris at 6:05 PM on January 30


Thanks! Sorry, hadn't gotten to that one yet, but seeing it in the list triggered a memory.
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 6:10 PM on January 30


I was blessed and cursed to have Silver Surfer when I was a kid, and that game sucks but the soundtrack goes INSANELY hard.

RIP Geoff Follin.
posted by Reyturner at 6:13 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]


Ninja Gaiden conspicuously absent, the guy's not completely insane.

Watch SummoningSalt's history of Ninja Gaiden world records and prepare for true insanity...
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 6:59 PM on January 30 [3 favorites]


> Isn't a lot of the difficulty of TMNT due to the water level's code actually being broken?

naw, there's just some screwy inertia swimming. when I played it, I could reliably get through without any issue. it was the final stretch with the technodome or whatever that would bury me.

ghost and goblins had unlimited continues, but the pisser is that you beat it and get the bad ending, so you had to play thrive the lady level or two until you beat the final boss with the shield. then it starts you at the beginning.

you want obnoxious NES, try Golgo-13. It has 52 continues and then game over.
posted by lkc at 7:01 PM on January 30


grandpoobear was my main streamer until he dabbled in GTA roleplay and I kept watching that after he moved on.
posted by tresbizzare at 7:35 PM on January 30


Yep, that's what the dam video is about.

A dam video is the only way to control the water level….
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:30 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]


Watch SummoningSalt's history of Ninja Gaiden world records and prepare for true insanity

I saw that video! I used to occasionally watch Arcus and TheRetroRunner go back and forth for the record.

Imagine so many people losing to an NES game so often as children that two of them build an entire career around beating the game publicly while several hundred of them watch.

Over. And. Over. Thirty-five years later.
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 7:21 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]


I watched this dude suffer through the first two and a half levels of Bart Vs the Space Mutants and then I found a a TAS of this game in 12:58 and it was super hilarious to watch Bart just gliding through these increasingly tortuous levels via a constant backwards jump and its weird, echo-y sound effect.
posted by egypturnash at 8:15 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]


Had to watch the TMNT one because I could not remember if I actually beat that one but I definitely dumped a ton of hours into it as a kid. I had the underwater level down. Could flow through it without taking any damage. So I thought, OK, must have beat it, right? Well, he gets to the technodrome fight, and I definitely did that, and I feel like I beat it, but nothing after it looks familiar in the slightest. Everything up to that I remembered, but that post-technodrome phase is all alien to me. So I guess I never beat it after all. Loved that game as a kid though.

> Ninja Gaiden conspicuously absent, the guy's not completely insane.

I remember really liking this game but I played it on an emulator some years ago and could not believe how absolutely mean it was. I did manage to get to the level I couldn't pass as a kid and sure enough, that is where I decided to stop that time as well. F that.
posted by DyRE at 4:14 AM on February 1


GrandPooBear is one of my favorite streamers. Very personable, able to play and talk to chat at the same time, and organizes charity events every year. I think what clinched it for me was his childlike glee at the 2019 Nintendo Direct that introduced Mario Maker 2.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:18 AM on February 1 [1 favorite]


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