Wrecking Crew: Won!

It's done. I had no idea a first generation Famicom game would take me more than a month to finish - but it did.

And the final six levels are all interesting! Please note that "interesting" does not necessarily mean "fun."

Level 95

Oh. My. God. There's Nintendo Hard, and then there's this. An almost entirely linear one-solution level that actually requires frame-perfect input to complete. Victory takes under 45 seconds, but save states weren't enough - I had to use TAS tools to finish this one.

Right from the start you are chased off a ledge and down a zig-zagging pattern of three floors with four walls to smash each, and no way of getting back up. You've got to start moving immediately and cannot pause for even an instant longer than needed to break each wall or else the eggplant man will get you before you drop down to the fourth floor. And that's not even the hard part.

Oh, no. The hard part is breaking the five brick walls on the fourth floor, which require 2-3 taps each, where you'll have an eggplant man breathing down your neck hard with a wrench not too far behind you. There's not nearly enough time to demolish this floor - you'll have to do half of it, drop down, climb up the ladder, and do the other half before dropping down again - and you only get one chance, because the wrench will make climbing back up the ladder a second time impossible. And for the three leftmost brick walls which are on the eggplant's patrol, you'll need to stand on exactly the rightmost edge of its bounding box - stand even a pixel to the left of it, and you'll get got as you swing your hammer.

A GIF best illustrates the solution - I slowed it down 3x during the impossible part.

I even duck under a fireball, which I didn't know was possible (and barely is).

All Youtube longplays solve this level with the golden hammer, which I am still certain was not meant to be found by normal players, let alone held onto this long.

Level 96

 

The hard part about this cluttered, confusing level is reading it. Otherwise, it's actually pretty fair. Challenging, but fair.

There's no slipping past the two Gotchawrenches on the upper floors. You have enough time to smash the walls, but the red wrench will climb the ladder here by the time you're done, and then there's no way for you to climb back down it - you will get surrounded. You can drop a barrel on one wrench's head, but this will just put the other one between you and the ladder.

So you'll need to use dynamite to drop down to the bottom floors, where you'll need to deal with three eggplants. One can be easily trapped inside the door here. Another can be trapped by breaking a support and stranding it ontop of a barrel. The wrenches can be dealt with this way too, but you'll need to plan carefully to not cut yourself off from an undemolished part of the stage.

Level 97

 

Huh, this one's rather easy! It took me a few tries, but still, this is by far the easiest level of the final ten.

It's tempting to go straight for the dynamite. In fact, this is the only way to demolish the two center ladders sandwiched between the barrels. But this will cut you off from the top floor - so go there first, avoiding the eggplants, break the walls, and don't touch the dynamite there.

Then you can go down to the fourth floor and use the dynamite.

There's still an element of luck. If you're unlucky, an eggplant will fall and land in the center of the stage where it will be trapped between the bottom barrels, making it impossible for you to get there yourself. But if you're lucky they won't, and will eventually wander into the barrel trap on the third floor, where they'll stay out of your business and allow you to finish the stage in relative peace.

Level 98

 

Right after the easiest scene of the final act, we go back to some frame-precise nonsense.

It's nowhere near as bad as level 95, at least. In fact, I beat it without using any save states. The solution has a little bit of leeway, and only one part of it requires absolute frame-perfect timing. Though fireballs just love to come at inconvenient times to ruin things.

First off, though, you'll need to smash the left of the two brick walls on the upper floor right away, and then tap the one on the right once. Spike will finish it off, knocking you down to the bottom.

Easy enough to run away from the wrenches here and climb up the ladder, where you can attack one of the floors.

Each floor is patrolled by a wrench, and has dynamite. Blowing yourself up is the only way to leave, but if you blow up the wrench, then it escapes too, and gets angry. Which is bad.

Start with the top floor - drop off, follow the wrench as close as you can, and hit the dynamite on the exact frame where it is possible.

If you do this right, you'll blow up yourself, the row of walls, and not the wrench, leaving it trapped on its floor. But if the wrench gets caught in the explosion, then it will drop down to the lower floor, and you'll have to deal with three wrenches there instead of two, moving at different speeds. Better you avoid that!

Next, go for the bottom floor. Ignore the walls - just hit the dynamite to damage them.

Getting back to the ladder should be easy if you've managed not to accidentally free any wrenches. Otherwise, it's a gamble, and fireballs just love to come at you while you're on the bottom floor.

Do the middle floor just like the top one - only this time you'll need to hit out the support before you set off the dynamite. Once again, you need frame-perfect timing to avoid blowing up the wrench here.

With a bit of luck, the wrenches should be grouped up enough that you can wait for them to climb down the ladder, wrap around, climb up and finish the lower level. And not get fireballed while doing any of that.

Level 99

 

This stage looks impossible. And it almost is. Clearing the top part looks hard enough, with Spike eager to knock you down and no way back up, but how are we supposed to clear both pockets of walls at the bottom? They're separated by an impassable barrel!

It's possible, of course. But you'll need to first clear the upper floors, and this part is insanity. You've got to break everything without Spike knocking you down, and without accidentally knocking him down either! I used save states freely, as I quickly lost my patience for even pretending to do it fairly.

Clearing the bottom floor isn't actually that hard. Save the fifth ladder from the right - the one directly over the barricading barrel - for last, and let Spike break it, knocking you right down into it.

I've used this trick before, but this time it is certainly the intended solution - you fall into the barrel's space, not onto it, and then you can reach out right to tap the dynamite without leaving the bounding box, and then left to clear the other pocket. Again, this feels dirty, but there can't possibly be another solution here.

 

Level 100

 

Deterministic chaos reigns this final level as six eggplant men climb up and down this cascading array of ladders, bouncing off each other, changing directions, and generally being hard to predict.

You'll need to clear the triangle of walls on the right before you can get too crazy with the dynamite, but these rows become inescapable deathtraps if an eggplant man (or fireball) enters before you leave.

It looks crazy, but you can introduce a bit of order here with a well-placed tap. Take out the third ladder from the left, and they'll settle into a stable and more manageable loop on the two leftmost ladders.

 

Of course, you might want to clear out the walls located on said stable loop before you do that.

Beat level 100, and your reward is to loop back to level 1, only now the fireballs start coming at you 4.5 seconds in (down from 30) and respawn in 4 (down from 12). Which does make the first dozen levels somewhat more interesting, but it quickly becomes impossible to deal after that, and the effect only lasts until your next game over or manual restart. They really don't want you to keep playing.

GAB rating: Average. Like Lode Runner, Wrecking Crew overstays its welcome with an overabundance of levels that wear out the formula long before it's over. Unlike Lode Runner, it never really finds its stride as a puzzle game. The toolset is just too limited for that. I got the most enjoyment out of the first 30 levels or so - there's occasionally a decent level after that which strikes the right difficulty balance or does something clever, but for the most part of the latter portion, when things are fair, they're too easy and/or familiar to be interesting, and when things are challenging enough to be interesting, they're unfair.