This is the Frequently Asked Questions for my SNES Challenge over at https://www.twitch.tv/Peebs where I am beating every SNES game.

Q : What is “Every SNES Game Ever”?

A:  The concept for Every SNES Game Ever is simple. I play and beat every unique US, PAL, and Fan Translated JP release on default difficulty. These games are played 100% spoiler free with no walkthroughs, no save states, and no help from chat. I’m reasonably strict on this because I don’t believe this would be a challenge or nearly as entertaining if I broke my own rules. The only information I will use are things included with the original purchase of the game. Even then, the manual is ignored 95% of the time. I enjoy figuring things out on my own.

Rules Regarding Fan Translations :

We’ve had a lot of problems with Fan Translations breaking or not actually being fully translated we’ve made a separate set of rules.

#1. Only games with 100% translations will be played.

#2. The Readme files for these translations will be read to determine any / all problem spots in the games. Crashes / Game loops to avoid.

#3. If the translation breaks something horribly like it deletes all the save files, we will switch to emu and use save states, but only as a backup for saving.

#4 If for some reason a translation says it’s 100% and then dies out, we will still do our best to complete the game. Sometimes that means switching to the JP version and migrating the saves. Hopefully this shouldn’t / won’t happen.

#5 Exceptional edgy or rough written localization will not be played. This is basically to avoid any translation that includes hate speech of any kind. Sometimes people think they’re being funny but this doesn’t belong anywhere in society and especially doesn’t belong on my stream.

Q : Where did the inspiration for the challenge come from?

A : One night, while hanging out with my buddy Octane, we were playing with a modded Wii that had a disc with all of the SNES games on it. We ended up playing Eek the Cat for well over an hour trying to figure out what was going on. It was after this as well as playing many other weird games that I started to wonder if anyone had ever beaten some of these games. I’d already been collecting and beating tons of NES games and I’d missed the SNES as a system growing up so even most of the well known classics I’ve known nothing about. It just seemed like a fun thing to do and it really has been.

Q : What makes your challenge different from other challenges?

A : I’m a weird gamer, and when I say weird, I mean that I genuinely enjoy playing all games. I have yet to rage or get salty or any of the normal associations with bad games. In fact most of my fondest memories are from playing bad games. I’m also extremely stubborn and refuse to accept any help. I don’t care if I get stuck for hours because I missed something simple, I’ll figure it out eventually, and then generally laugh about how big of an idiot I was. See Pac-in-Time where I couldn’t figure out how to open a pipe for 2.5 hours.

Q : How many games are on the SNES?

A : There are 721 US, 63 unique PAL, and 160 Japanese fan translated official releases on the list.

Q : How did you choose the overall list of games?

A : The list is being sorted and organized as follows.

#1 Titles released in the US

#2 Unique titles released in PAL

#3 Unique titles released in JP w/ a 100% Complete Fan Translation

Q : Why are sports and RPG’s separated from the others?

A : 2 Part Answer

#1. Sports. Due to the overwhelming number of sports games, a sports game has to be played approximately every 1 in 5 in order to avoid the end of the challenge being just 50 sports games.

#2. RPGs are my favorite genre and the opposite of Sports games. I try to spread these out as well so I don’t run out of them by the time we get to the end of the challenge.

Q : Why is X Game locked?

A : Games are locked for four reasons.

#1. The Prequel hasn’t been played yet. Including previous years of sports titles. I enjoy seeing how mechanics evolve for developers over time.

#2. Certain games are locked for special occasions. Example Final Fantasy VI will be played for game 600.

#3. Games that require peripherals (ex: Super Scope, Light Gun, etc) are locked until I can set up a CRT to play them.

Q : How do you choose your next game? How can I make you play something?

A : 90% of the time when I complete a game we will have a raffle in chat. The winner of the raffle gets to choose and appropriate game on the list. There are other ways to get to choose a game as well for special events as well.

We have also recently added raffles for people that have never gotten a chance to pick a game before. So if you’ve never won a raffle. It’s your best chance. As a bonus, if you’ve never won a raffle before, you can pick any game you want so long as it’s not grayed out.

Q : What are you playing next?

A : !thelist is the command that can be used in chat in order to view what is coming up.

Q : Have you played X Game yet?

A : !completed is the command that can be used to view the document of finished games.

Q : Why do you do everything “blind”? What constitutes a spoiler?

A : Blind to me is simple. No outside knowledge of the game or anything that influences my way of thinking. No walkthroughs, no youtube videos, no advice or hints from chat. Spoilers also include game mechanics such as controls, length of the game, number of bosses, etc..

Q : How are you playing all of these games?

A : SNES Console w/ Real Carts when possible. SD2SNES if I haven’t found a copy of the actual cart yet. Have to use SD2SNES + Super NT for PAL games because they won’t function on an NTSC system. Also EU carts can be expensive to import.

Q : What is your plan for games with peripherals like the Super Scope?

A : Any games that need a peripheral in order to be played will be played when I have the peripheral. There isn’t any point to beating a light gun game if I’m clicking with a mouse, that’s not how the developers intended their game to be played.

Q : What happens if you get stuck in a game and can’t progress?

A : So far there have only been three major instances of getting stuck. I generally don’t consider myself ‘stuck’ unless I’ve made 0 progress for an entire 5-6 hour stream.

#1. The first was in Mechwarrior, 14 hours in, I had done too much early grinding to buy a better mech and in that game every time you do a mission the difficulty scales. By doing too many easy early missions for cash, the difficulty scaled in the story so much that a base defense mission would always fail. The solution for this was to start the game over from scratch and do 0 grinding. Worked great.

#2. The second instance was during Last Action Hero in which my copy of the US version would get to the same exact time on the 2nd driving level and my car would just explode and kill me no matter of my positioning on the screen. For this we had to procure an EU copy of the game and play through it. The EU copy worked fine and easily let me get past the spot that had killed me many times.

#3. Dragon Quest II had an obscure objective hidden in a tile that I needed to search. It took many hours to find the correct tile, but eventually I did without help and finished the rest of the game. Another fun note about DQ2 was that the fan translation broke part of the game so I had to beat it with only two out of three party members.

Q : How do you plan on playing games that you can’t read? ( Japanese Games )

A :Games we play from the Japanese releases will have Fan Translations that are 100% complete or not enough text to matter.

Q : How are win conditions decided for sports games?

A : In regards to a sports game there are three ways to clear it.

#1. Win the championship / tournament / etc…

#2. Experience all content

#3. Beat all Teams

Q : How are win conditions decided for puzzle games?

A: The first completed mode counts as victory. Usually yields credits as well. All other modes are optional and I’ll either stretch it to a 100% clear if I feel like it or keep it at any% and put it on the revisit list.

Q : How are win conditions decided when there is no clear ending?

A : Since playing all games on default difficulty doesn’t always lead to a clear ending. Some games are considered beaten after one complete loop on default difficulty. Other games, such as puzzle games like tetris will have specific goals such as “Get to Speed X” or “Clear X Lines.” Most arcade games will be simply “Set High Score.” Sports games are considered beaten after winning the championship (Superbowl, World Series, Stanley Cup, tournament, etc), after beating all opponents, or experiencing all content.

Q : What if there is a game that can’t be completed due to glitches / nonsense / etc ?

A : The closest game that we’ve found to be impossible was Dorke and Ymp. In which a level of the game itself, the mechanics were designed in a poor way making it impossible to complete the level. The solution was to flutter jump 34-40 consecutive times and took quite a while to pull off. However had the flutter jump not existed or worked. I’m not exactly sure what would have happened. I probably would have spent a long long time trying to figure out alternative methods to make things work. I don’t like to give up.

To be fair though, this was not a retail release game so it didn’t have the same standards of quality control. This game is also the primary reason why homebrew games are not on the list.

Q : What has the longest game been so far?

A : SimCity 2000 (118 hours). The goal was to reach a population of 10 million, like the newspaper at the beginning says. Most of the time was spent waiting on the map screen for money to build Arcologies, since in-game time moved the fastest while viewing the city map. To everyone’s surprise, the game actually had an ending once that population goal was met!

The second-longest is Populous. The game has 988 Maps to clear in order to get to the victory screen. It took 96 hours. #3 is Lufia 2 : Rise of the Sinestrals, I completed as much content as possible including beating the Boss in the 99 floor Ancient Cave. The 4th longest was Fire Emblem : Seisen no Keifu, not because I did bonus content, but because that game is exceptionally long.

Q : What has the most difficult game been so far?

A : This will be a multi part answer because games are difficult for different reasons.

#1. Umihara Kawase was the most difficult game in regards to technical ability and skill.

#2. Space Ace was the most difficult game in regards to memorization and execution.

#3. Wario’s Woods has been the most difficult puzzle game due to RNG.

#4. The Wizard of Oz also had the most difficult RNG mini game with insane odds. ( See Toto Dice Section Below )

#5. Sunset Riders is the most difficult game I’ve played where sticking to default options made a contributing factor. Were I able to switch to easy difficulty and roll with 5 lives + 5 continues, it would have been much easier. But… rules are rules.

Q : What has been your favorite game so far?

A : It’s hard for me to pick a specific favorite, but there are a bunch that I really enjoyed. Super Ninja Boy was a fantastic RPG / Beat em up combo. The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang was a fresh take on a Zelda style adventure that was amazing fun. Biometal has the most memorable soundtrack. Hagane was also just superb.

Q : What is the weirdest game that you’ve played so far?

A : Toys, by far.

Q : Do you only play SNES games?

A : Occasionally a modern title will come out such as Fallout 4 or Final Fantasy XV and I’ll play that for like 200 hours straight then go back to SNES games. I also really enjoy indie games that can offer me a fun and unique experience.

Q : Which is better SNES or Genesis?

A : I’ve always found the console wars a bit childish. I love playing video games and I really don’t care what console they’re on. Good games are good games.

Q : How long do you expect this challenge to take?

A : 4+ more years at minimum.

Q : What are you going to do after you beat every SNES game?

A : I don’t know what I’m going to be doing next week let alone a 5 years from now. Probably play a lot of games that I haven’t gotten a chance to play while doing nothing but play SNES games as well as visit a wide variety of classic games / series that I never got a chance to play. The Phantasy Star RPG series for example. Every Dragon Quest game? Everything released by Ocean, LJN, and Titus? All sorts of weird things. Bootlegs? Plug n Plays? GBA Shovelware?

Q : What is Toto Dice?

A : Toto Dice, is a mini game from The Wizard of Oz called formally as Lemon Drop Elimination. Someone spoiled the location of the 7th ticket so I decided that the only fair way to proceed was to beat Toto Dice. This is the only point in the challenge where we legitimately thought we could be stuck forever. Thankfully, the ridiculous RNG only took 8 Hours and 46 minutes to complete. We had a vod of it, but twitch deleted it. Which means some day, I’ll be playing Toto Dice again. Here is a breakdown of the overall odds of winning.

Probability of Rolling a specific value ( 2d6 )

2 1/36  ( Snake Eyes )

3 1/18

4 1/12

5 1/9

6 1/7.2

7 1/6

8 1/7.2

9 1/9

10 1/12

11 1/18

12 1/36  ( Box Cars )

Easiest way to beat Toto Dice ( 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 7, 7, 7 )

1/36 x 1/18 x 1/12 x 1/9 x 1/7.2 x 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6

1 in 653,034,700.8

Quickest (Least Rolls ) to beat Toto Dice ( 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 6 )

1/36 x 1/36 x 1/36 x 1/36 x 1/36 x 1/36 x 1/7.2

1 in 15,672,832,819.2

So Easiest = 1 in 653 Million, Quickest is 1 in 15.6 Billion

Powerball is only 1 in 292,201,338.00