What games have you "MASTERED"

Sleeping Dogs & Metal Gear Solid 4! .. Earning the Big Boss Rank is a feeling nobody will get unless they earned the rank.

I'm a jack of all trades, master of none. lawl

I got the best badge in MGS4 if that counts? Or at least, I would have if not for that fucking unskippable cutscene at the end.

I have been mastering a Speedrun of Super Mario Brothers 2 for the last several years. I am down to like 16 minutes or less. The WR is like 9.

Zelda A Link to the Past without loosing a life and in less then 3 hours.

Although now, games with save states, I tend to unlock just difficult to find weapons ad my big master, like MGS3 getting the stealth device. Or getting the Big Boss emblem

I've beaten The Binding of Isaac without getting hit with every character, I've S ranked the Advance Wars hard campaign (which to my knowledge there is no guide anyway to do so...perhaps I should write it), and I hold a few speedrun records in Blast Corps for the N64.

Outside of BoI (which only takes like 30 minutes to finish), I just don't have the time to try and utterly dominate games anymore, sadly.

Well I did the three heart challenge for Wind Waker. So that, I guess.

I guess mine would be... Aladdin for SNES. Never got into the Genesis version, though I hear it is superior.

I've got 100% completions on GTA III, VC, SA and IV. But those were easy really, although I did do III/VC when I was like 10 years old, so there's that I guess.

Bushido Blade, Order of Ecclesia, Ultima Online.

eh.....Journey ? lol i dunno , I don't "master" games i just play them.

Probably just Limbo, which I beat without dying and was the 50th person to fully complete.

Also in the first Infamous I locked myself out of all the upgrades I got throughout the game because I'm stupid. So on hard mode I was stuck fighting the last boss without any upgrades. So I'd say I mastered that game.

I could probably tell you where everything is in Might and Magic VII from memory, but I haven't done any single character runs or whatever the hell crazy people do.

I used to be pretty good at speed running MGS1 on Extreme, doubt I could do that anymore though.

Does beating Resident Evil 4 on Pro with the starting pistol and a knife count?

Let me take a crack at this...

WWF WrestleMania 2000

WWF Attitude

No More Heroes 2. Because the period of time where my 360 was broken and when I got a new one, I beat it 4 times and 100% all collectibles and shirts.

Wow, lots of activity on this thread since I last checked it. I'll reply to a few posts:

@DeF said:

@astrotriforce: what's your backloggery page? Mine's http://backloggery.com/main.php?user=dacellafella

I'm not really into these hardcore "master runs" but I tagged my BioShock playthrough on Survivor w/o Vita Chambers as a master run and my A Link to the Past 0 Deaths + 100% items run as "mastered".

Sweet man thanks, I'll add you! My Backloggery is: http://www.backloggery.com/astrotriforce

@FreakAche: Way dude. Way

@Hizang: @TooWalrus: Funny to see so many people say Banjo-Kazzooie. I love that game. I've had the itch to reply it recently as I just got done re-reading the old EMGs from my magazine collection that covered the title heavily before it came out from 1998.

@LikeaSsur said:

Holy crap, I'm not mastering games ever. I'm not masochistic.

I'm not saying it's wrong for you, but jeez, I could never put enough time and practice to even come close to mastering a game. Also, I don't have the hand-eye coordination required.

Heh. To each their own. Master Runs are really done just to give you an even greater sense of achievement. When I was able to successfully beat Resident Evil Remake without saving once or dying, the sense of fullfilment was profound. It's a game I LOVE however, and I've played it probably more than any other game ever released since Super Mario Bros. on NES. No joke. So if you do it with a game you love, it only adds to it. It's funny too, because before then I had never even COMPLETED all of Remake. I like to play the game slow and take in the atmosphere, and thus I never was able to get myself to try blazing through it, or try the harder modes like Invisible Enemy or Real Survival (Item Boxes not linked). But I'm glad I finally did AND "Mastered" it to boot.

@TobbRobb said:

MGS 3, no kills, no rations, no tranq. I pussied out on alerts though... That was a LOT of fun, but I don't think I could do it again. So satisfying seeing the empty street hanging around the sorrow.

Sands of Time speedrun without sandpowers. I don't remember the exact time, and its nowhere near some of the lunatic speed people have managed... But I definitely went out of my way to skip encounters and take the shortest route.

Symphony of the Night speedrun with almost all the secrets. I'm confident I can find at least 90% just out of memory at the moment, and just finishing it only takes like 2h.

I did the pure physical/no magic runs in both FFX and FFVII. That can be kind of a bitch at some points. No magic means no summons as well. That mostly worked because of overpowered manly man Wakka and Rikku's potion spam in X and the W-Item glitch and broken E-Skill mighty guard in 7.

I think there might have been more stuff, but I havent done anything like this in a whiiiile. No game captures my attention long enough. I could try and do something cool with Dark Souls, that is the only game I would even consider.

NICE man. Congrats. Those are some insane stunts right there. I've barely met any people that have even beaten most Final Fantasy games, I think anyone who even beats one more than once is nuts. Much less speedrunning or doing a Master Run for them. FFX is one of my favorite games, I'm playing FFVIII right now, and I'm considering re-playing X... although they are remaking/remastering it for PS3, so I might hold off and replay IX instead. I'm very curious about IX because I only played it when the PS2 first came out, which was so long ago, and it was my FIRST Final Fantasy game (before this we never owned a PS1 and I never played the FF titles as a kid, so i had only watched my cousin play them or played a bit of FFVII myself). To this day I consider FF9 to be in my top 5 favorite games off all time. I'm very curious to see if I'd still hold it in such high regard by replaying it today. Or if FFX still takes the cake. Having said that, I still want to replay X for the same reason. :P So far FF8 has held up though, and I still think it's an incredible game and really fun. I already spent TWELVE+ hours on the Triple Triad Card Game alone. Of course, I'm unemployed, so that helps. :P

Thanks for all the comments everyone! It's cool to hear how everyone does, or doesn't, do Master Runs.

I love the idea of this but I would get way to frustrated with myself and end up hating what I'm doing. A single playthrough on normal difficulty is the way I do things.

Congrats though, I'm impressed.

Umm,. Super Mario Bros.

@astrotriforce: I prefer X over IX, but that is mostly because I know more about it. I actually think IX holds more options for "mastering". There are a lot of secrets and fun spells in that game, I just haven't taken the time and effort to find them. I really should get to giving that an honest go... Actually, going for an Excalibur II run sounds like fun.

Never really liked VIII. It just didn't click as well with me, not sure if it's the characters or what.

I wanna go for some kind of Dark Souls Challenge, I've played through it about 6-8 times, so I know most items and strategies... I just don't know what challenge would be fun. Low level runs are the obvious ones, but I dunno what to add on to that.

EDIT: @PollySMPS: MASTER! TEACH ME YOUR WAYS! I always wanted to do something cool with Super Metroid, but I just feel really unreliable in that game. My best run was like a bit over 2 hours and I never could do it again. Lot's of respect from this corner.

i was never the type of humanoid to "master" games, it's more of my liesure time then a hobby or lifestyle. but to look into retrospect, the game i was able to master was a while back, about 11 years ago to be precise, Jak and daxter. if any typical individuals here remember? i think i'm more of the person who can master games that do not require me to to click every node of my neural network on. it was simple fun.

When I was a kid (about 20 years ago), I could beat Ninja Gaiden (NES) pretty much without taking any damage except during the boss stages (or if it was advantageous). That's probably the only game I can say that I've "mastered" but I don't possess that skill anymore.

I used to be able to "Master" JSRF back in the day.

I can beat the fuck out of some Sonic 3 and Knuckles. I don't know what mastering it would entail, because it's not like you can avoid rings or anything. I can go through it without dying, without picking up lives boxes, and without super Sonic. On the other hand, I can also get super Sonic within the first two zones.

Ghosting in the Thief series y'all. I loved deadly shadows,

Mastered..... No, nothing comes to mind unless you count being able to finish Soul Calibur 2 arcade ladder in 20 minutes. That's pretty fast... But I can't say I've ever liked a game SO MUCH as to have spent enough time on it to Master it. There are too many games out there to do that.

Pocket Pool is the only one that comes to mind.

At one point in time, I could consider myself a "master" of RE4. Still love the shit out of that game, but I don't play it as often these days, so my skills have dwindled a bit.

I suppose the closest I've come to anything like "mastered" was finishing MGS3 with no alerts.

I'm considering going for a max rating on all missions on all difficulties in DMC3, but I'm guessing it will be quite frustrating and tedious.

I did a perfect Excalibur II run in Final Fantasy IX. That was pretty crazy, and required a ton of knowledge on what exactly I needed to do to collect all that shit in under 12 hours. I also finished the game multiple times before doing the run, so it's safe to say I know that game pretty well now.

I did a lot of straight character challenges in Final Fantasy Tactics and have finished the game a total of around 23 times, so I know that one inside and out as well.

I know Earthbound pretty well too, since it's my favorite game of all time. Played through it many, many times and still remember basically everything about it, even though it's been a few years since I played all the way through it.

@PollySMPS: Wow that's amazing dude. Maybe I am mistaken about beating it in under an hour. lol. It's sounding like that's impossible, I swear that was it though. I don't know if I have it Mastered that well, but I do know where every item is (sans possibly one, I seem to get 99% these days when I play it so one of them got lost the sands of time) but I play it legitimately, I'd never use tricks outside of the built-in ones like wall jumping. Skipping the Plant Boss entirely :O *mind blown*

@TobbRobb: I hardly play modern games at all. I haven't touched my 360 in over a year. But Demon's Souls/Dark Souls are on my list as games I REALLY do wanna play, along with Dead Space, the Assassin's Creed games, there's a lot, but Demon's Souls seems really awesome. Ahh, interesting fact about IX and there being more options for Mastering. I'm new to this whole Mastering thing. I don't even really want to think about a FF game, those games have so much to them that just beating them is an accomplishment in my eyes. Beating FFIX in 12 still seems IMPOSSIBLE to me.

@Seiken_Enhasa: Wow dude that's incredible stuff. Congrats. That FF9 thing blows my mind. It took me around 120 hours I think to beat it. Took me 170 to beat FFX. Wow EarthBound too?! I've still never beaten EarthBound. I really, REALLY want to. I started playing it about a year ago now but I stopped for some reason. I finally gave in two years ago to downloading the ROM since I'm against pirating games, but my legit copy always erased games. So ever since I bought it in 1998 for $15 at Blockbuster, I was never able to beat it. My bro finally did using the ROM, and then I started playing the ROM. I still wanna go back and do that and review it just in case Nintendo does re-release it. I've never passed Summers, or whatever it's called, although I barely even remember it. I think I only did that once, virtually ever other playthrough I get to Fourside and that's around when I quit for some reason. Just like FF8, to this day I've never gotten passed disc 3. I'm determined to do it with my current playthrough that I just started.

@guiseppe: I'm gonna start playing RE4 soon, after I finish of RE3, and then play Code Veronica (which I've never beaten) and REZero. My original plan was to play them all before RE6 came out, but it's getting closer and closer so not sure if I'll get to 4 before then. I do love RE4 though. Amazing game.

So what defines "mastering" a game?

I guess I could say I have mastered the first three Splinter Cell games since I have completed them without getting detected and without killing anyone without saving and reloading the game at all.

I absolutely destroyed Ace Combat 5 when it came out. I S-ranked every mission on Ace difficulty. My flight time counter (which only recorded flight time, not time spent in the game) rolled over after 99 hours, and I was about 20 hours on after that before I finally moved on. I've never played a game to such a degree until this game. I honestly don't know why I loved that game so much, but it holds a special place in my heart. I still pop it in from time to time.

@Village_Guy: I already answered this, look at some of the other pages and you'll find it. It's basically doing something to artificially make a game harder, that's outside the "normal" way of beating or completing a game. The best example would be beating Zelda: Ocarina of Time, or any Zelda game, by never collecting another Heart Piece (keeping only the three hearts you start out with).

People come up with their own challenges. For me. I beat Resident Evil Remake without saving once. I also beat Super Mario Land without getting hit or dying, keeping the Superball the whole time, and now I'm attempting to do the same with Super Mario Bros. NES. www.backloggery.com is a great site where you can mark games in your collection as "Mastered", and you can see how other people are doing Master Runs.

Ace Combat(4,5,0), MegaMan Legends1&2, Star Fox 64, and Smash Bros.

My dad and me played a ton of AC4, we loved seeing who could get better times and scores, and it continued on with 5 and 0. I also loved my N64 and those are just the games I loved most on it.

Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 3, Little Nemo: The Dream Master, Mega Man 9,

Darks Souls, got platinum & beat it in 8 hours the 3rd time.

Riddick AoDA, i ruled the pitch black online mode.

Time Pilot. I own the arcade cabinet. I have maxed the score and continued playing for over an hour. I have also maxed the score in both the Xbox Live Arcade version of it and the Game Room release of it. I do loves me some Time Pilot.

I guess Zelda Twilight Princess. While I'm not the world record holder or anything, my speedrun still sticks on the leaderboards. Maybe because no one likes running that game. Hell, I don't even like it myself any more.

Besides that, I guess I'm pretty good at Crysis 1. It's not a very hard game to learn however.

Oh yeah, I'd love to be good at some MGS game. Right now I'm playing through MGS2 on European Extreme, and not even halfway through I already have like 500 continues... Eh.