I have some more in-depth thoughts and explanation in the video description, but long story short, for being the FIRST hidden stage you can buy for cheap, it is a bastard and a half. 11 attempts just to beat it [no POW blocks used] and barely - I was at the edge of everything stacking into disaster again but the last second moves I had to clear the colors I needed happened to be enough to bail me before I had to call it a dead run again.
Oh, and started trying it out again because I figured out how to get cheevos in the game [BizHawk does support cheevos unlike RetroArch for some reason] and wanted to give it a shot again knowing that my first run missed out on the cheevos. And also GO Series: 10 Second Run, but that will be a bit to talk about here whenever I keep going at it again.
At least in its first half - because I tried Dark Stage 1 after completing Stage 15 and was flabbergasted to see how they IMMEDIATELY start jumping you even though you could unlock that stage with 20 coins at the start...but anyways, was neat to revisit this after more than a decade later ever since I lost my DSi [and oddly enough, don't have memory of installing it on my modded 3DS while it still had a functional battery - I remember installing Flipnote Studio...but not this??]
Anyways, here's the playlist for you to watch the [currently] three parts of that ordeal - the second part taking as long as it did ONLY BECAUSE I TRIED USING RETROARCH WHICH FEELS MORE FINICKY TO USE THE TOUCHSCREEN MOUSE WITH AND WAS FOR NOTHING WHEN I CHECKED THAT THE GAME WAS NOT BEING PROPERLY READ AS COMPATIBLE WITH RETROACHIEVEMENTS AUGH so I went back to melonDS in part 3...and even then, Stage 14 was DESTROYING me for over 25 minutes until I got it.
So I've already actually played like...three more MMX games and even the first Mega Man between the last time I updated this log...oops. The MM1 up to MMX4 runs [which also includes playing X3 Zero Project AFTER Vanilla X3] are avaiable in the replay channel as well as how they are also logged with some text for each in my Backlogged account, but yeah. Dates for those are in each video/entry but I indeed did that much under a week to the point that now I think that I might retire off the MMX marathoning either after whenever I feel like picking up X8 16-bit as I still haven't tried it, or going for an X4 full completion run with X since my first completion recently was a MINIMALIST run as X of all things.
Buster only for the first eight bosses [cheevos challenge], then went for all upgrades, then Zero died [not], then I went for Hadoken after that, and then I went through the rest of the Sigma gauntlet until Sigma himself. Hadoken and then Rolling Shield. It was more convoluted than that, but...yeah, MMX completed in less than three hours yippie
Was satisfying to otherwise go through the entire game again and get everything without online searches beyond Bospider's weakness lol
The montage below really sums it up, but a few days before that, I had played like...seven or eight runs of Die Hard Arcade- the first four or so having no clue of the extra moves until I caved in and looked up on GameFAQs. On the second to last try, I found out about Deep Scan gifting you credits, so I stocked up 10 and went in again...only to die to the final boss. So I grinded more credits [like 27] and that time I could eventually make it through the entire thing after 17 credits. It's aight Austin, but I'd still take SOR2 or even Spikeout...although it is technically faster to beat than Spikeout because DHA/Dynamite Deka is WAYYY shorter than Spikeout no matter what.