I marathonned a few hours through the SNES R-Type on normal, getting to the 7th stage, but i didnt beat it. My excuse is that it was the only the second time i actually played the game. And today, I played a round of Gradius 3 on normal, going through the first 5 stages flawlessly, dying twice on the 6th stage, and losing the rest of my lives on the boss of 7th stage like the chokemanek i am. Don't worry, i've passed that before several times, but not in a while...

Jeez, i think i'm going to have to unlock the curse sometime soon- that i haven't beaten a sidescroll SNES shooter on difficult. I own 4 of these type of games (R-Type, Gradius 3, Earth Defence Force, and Thunder Spirits), but i rarely play them. The challenge in these games are difficult to get used to, most notably the borderline-fair/unfair situations. So the new goal is that i'm just going to peck away at these games for about a little while every day, in a somewhat ritualistic manner. I lost EDF about 2 years ago, so i'm going to have to not touch that one for a while, though i almost beat it on difficult like 5 times before dying on the final bosses.

As for Ninja Gaiden 3, I'm going to own it when i next play it- just so long as it doesnt freeze up before level 3, like it usually does 90% of the time.

O ya! Once again, my independent gaming life has meaning. Yay.