Indomitable Spirit Pin - I will not be dominated!

[grantlander]

The gauntlet has long lain dormant - but is now picked up!

I can't believe no one seems to know how to attain the Indomitable Spirit Pin from Jet Moto 2. No one, that is, except, the occasional moron in a YouTube comment who claims that his brother once got it in the late 90s (screw your brother). If this is the white whale of this video game franchise, call me Captain Ahab.

I've got every other pin and I'm going to do what it takes to harpoon the IS pin. Here's the backstory: I had this game (the "Championship Edition," which is a euphemism for the cheap-o Greatest Hits iteration, actually) and played it back in the late 90s. In fact, I can recall playing it with the sound down on the phone with my high school girlfriend the first time I unlocked the Nebulous track: I was so amazed by it, she could finally tell by my reactions to the game that I wasn't 100% focused on the conversation. I picked the game back up a couple of years ago using the same saved game from the memory card I used back in the day and was annoyed I didn't have the Direct play through pin. I consulted this Jet Moto 2 trophy case guide on GameFaqs, which showed how to get that award, which I got after starting with a new save:

www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197685-jet-moto-2/faqs/18495

However, despite the accumulated knowledge and expertise of someone called Duken008 (ahem), this person admits in his 2002 FAQ that the strategy for getting the IS pin ("all full seasons on all difficulties on all racers") is *unconfirmed*. Of course, this lack of certainty does not prevent his claim that the pin can be gained by "Complet[ing] all full seasons on all difficulties on all racers." I've since read on this forum that some (or one guy, at least) has done this and STILL didn't get the pin! Initially discouraged by this, I have now been provoked to get this thing - at any cost.

In approaching this, the simplest thing to do would be to read literally the Jet Moto 2 manual: "[T]he player will need to finish the game on all the difficulty settings, with every racer, to find all the trophies." However, because people have tried this and come up short, I'll take two additional clues from another trophy in the case: the First in all races pin. So I will earn first place in each race with each rider on each level of difficulty. (I even flirted with taking a cue from the Direct play through pin and considered doing this without resetting or even saving the game, but I'm not willing to take that risk. After all, I was out of power for nearly a week last year in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.)

I figure this will take me the month of October to complete, given the simultaneous co-existence of my life. And I'll be playing the Championship Edition version on my PS2. If I still don't have the pin at that point, I'll have to get more creative. Wish me luck.

grantlander

[OskyCMK]

Welcome and serious good luck your way. So long and still there is no direct path to getting that pin.

I've mentioned in other threads how I temporarily obtained it by loading a "complete" CE save onto a original game. Going to the race results triggered the trophy reward screen. I saw the reward given to me but the game froze at the same time so I couldn't save it to my game at all.

By the way.. I have a suspicion that the nature of the CE game (offering all tracks pin by default) somehow prevents the pin from being able to be unlocked. On the other hand it might be easier to unlock because of it. (but then again anyone at some point would have unlocked it by playing the original game completely.)

Wish I had time to play again. Darn work/school/other video games. :/

[toxik87]

sounds good man- it's gonna be hard as hell to do it on the standard black one though- if that's the case- cause Slickrock is almost impossible in insane!

[grantlander]

Thanks for the good wishes, guys. CaMacKid, I found your post about loading the Championship Edition game on the original Jet Moto 2 game. As Q says in the latest Bond film, "That's vexing." Likewise, reading the wikipedia entry on Jet Moto 2 yesterday did not inspire confidence in my endeavor.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_Moto_2

If the developer and Sony basically SNAFUed the release of the game as a greatest hits title, the possibility of a glitch preventing the unlock of the Indomitable Spirit pin seems more likely than I had originally considered. I was skeptical that there could have been such a screwup in the development process in an otherwise well-made game, but perhaps this is the case. So if nothing else, I'll slave away at a project no one else believes in, only to prove conclusively that it CAN'T be done (like Oliver Sacks' early work trying to extract myelin from earthworms).

So I'm moving right along: I've passed a full season with all riders on novice difficulty and won first place in each race with just a handful of close calls. This isn't boring, exactly, but my brain is in autopilot for most of the time. I've never found the game very difficult, but playing it is satisfying the way watching a good, old movie I've seen tons of times is satisfying (Ghostbusters, say). In fact, it's so easy, that I've manually increased the difficulty (and aiming for remote possibilities for the IS trophy) by going the whole season without using turbo, placing first at every checkpoint, without using grapple, and having no wipeouts (listed in order of difficulty). I haven't accomplished any of these yet, but I've gotten close to each. I'm doubtful that the game could even keep track of such details and thus use these criteria to determine if you win the elusive trophy, but winning each race by 20-30 seconds gives me some cushion to aim for these goals, at least on the lower difficulty levels.

Also, I already have a strategy if this whole plan doesn't gain me the trophy: doing it again with a different lap number. I always race with 2 laps (to breeze through more quickly, of course), but I've noticed that when I save the game, it lists the rider, the track, the difficulty level AND the number of laps. So if beating a season with each rider at each difficulty level with 1st in all races for a 2 lap season doesn't work, I suppose I'll go up to 5 laps and do it all again (and then, 3 and 4 if that doesn't work). Yeesh - I should be done sometime in 2032. Seriously, it takes 25 minutes to do each two-lap season: I have 44 seasons to go, and thus around 20 hours of gameplay, for the first phase of the plan (man, I hope it's the only phase).

At least I dug out a dual analog controller that works; I was struggling with my dualshock controller and using the D-pad. I'm already back to my old form. Toxik, I'm not sure what you're talking about with Slickrock being difficult on Insane. I don't remember that track ever being difficult, and I know I've gotten first place in all races on Insane difficulty before, because I have that badge on my First in All Races ribbon. We'll see how many screwups I have with races where I space and fail to achieve first place. Because when that happens, I have to scrap that entire season and start over.

Enough granular detail - back to the grind! Updates to come.

[OskyCMK]

I used to think the bots were playing on Championship Edition or something. I mean 2:10? That's CE times!

EDIT: Toxik was referring to Slickrock Gorge on the original black label game. On CE it's much easier.

[toxik87]

yeah when i wrote standard black- I was refering to the original jet moto 2- that right there is a different monster man believe me- CE and Black are almost 2 different games(I know, odd)- soon as the the race starts Everyone just blasts from 0 to 100 in less than a second while almost constantly traveling at turbo speed to what feels like they're cheating by having extra turbo- the frame rate is also slower in the original and you'll automatically notice the difference once you start playing it- so far the best racer on that track is Bear he got like 2:25 with the max and i got like 2:27 with bomber- and i think the computer clocks in around 2:25 or 2:24 1st place- those are scary times to achieve on the original- yeah i think you should leave it at 3 laps cause i think if you switch it to 2 laps on the original it won't let you progress- oh my gosh I forgot about that "with All racers' detail THat's gonna take forever!

[toxik87]

have you checked out the record table yet? i mean that's the best we could do so far- there's still probably a kid out there who could tear us apart (uhmmp Japan) but this is the best we got- the best i got in slick rock in the championship edition was like 1:56 with 3 laps

[grantlander]

Thanks for the input, compadres. I haven't really checked the record table yet, because I'm only doing 2 lap seasons so far. But I'm interested to see how my times will stack up when/if I engage three lap seasons.

In terms of an update, I haven't progressed that much (my wife has been sick, so taking care of her and my two-year-old daughter has taken most of my time). I do have a report, however: I passed a whole season using neither turbo nor grapple. For the record, this was with Lil Dave--who I'm probably best with--on Novice with a 2 lap season.

It felt like vindication for my first failed season, which had happened immediately prior to that. I had gotten to The Shaft (without turbo or grapple) and was comfortably winning the race when I got hung on the edge of one of the steel bridges on the way back from the suicide turn. I was literally vertical on the side of a bridge for five seconds and I refused to let go of the accelerator (it was hard to not bust a turbo to shoot myself off). Finally, I shifted my weight, causing me to drift over the side of the bridge and wipe out. Between the wasted time and the wipeout, I fell irrevocably out of first place and, thus, had to scrap the whole season. I bring it up because I suppose I my predicament reminded me of the house Republicans and the government shutdown (of all things): my own hubris led me to an impossible position, and though I should have cut my losses, an even more brazen gambit sent the whole shebang plunging into abyss.

Well, food for thought.

[toxik87]

www.youtube.com/user/Mrbear109


here's a link of bear's youtube channel of jet moto videos- these videos right here sure helped me improve my skills Alot though they do apply more to the standard black version a bit more- but you could still use 'em for study- here's a neat trick i tell everyone now that bear gave it up finally and told me after he viewed one of my videos(it was by accident too but helped! and brought me to the next level) and that is to simply press down (the up directional button) on straightaways for faster acceleration, use it, your gonna need it. and here's an old video of mine can't believe it's already been a year since i posted it