Hoskat

Genre: Puzzle Publisher: Nintendo Total time played: 15 hours Short review: A near perfect transition from the early days of arcade gaming mixed with 100 levels of interesting puzzles that still entertain over 30 years later. Interesting links related to Wrecking Crew Soundtrack Video Review (Pat The NES Punk) Video Review (CG Undertow) Video Playthrough (James and Mike Monday) Level 95 Walkthrough Black Box Game Henry Ford once said “you can get a Model T in any color as long as it’s black.” The NES started much the same way. The first 28 games released had boxes designed to look the same, featuring an accurate, colorful example of what to expect from the gameplay and a label in the bottom left corner that gave the genre of the game. Things were more simple in 1985. Even the games title screens were similar. Not all of these are Black Box games but you can still see similarities in their title screens. I was just 3 years old when the NES game out meaning the first 28 games game out before I was old enough to be aware of them. While I played every black box game as a kid I never really seriously played any (with the exception of Super Mario Bros. and for some reason Hogan’s Alley). The reason is that I am more into games that have a beginning and end, games I can play over and over and get better with the ultimate goal of finishing it. Many of these early black box games were more like arcade games that don’t have a true end, the goal is just to get a high score. I always assumed Wrecking Crew was this way, I was wrong, kind of. I’m Gonna Wreck It Of course I had to see Wreck It Ralph when it game out. I loved the idea of a major film studio making a great animated movie based on video games. I didn’t realize how many similarities there were between Ralph Wreck It Ralph and Mario in Wrecking Crew…you heard that right, the main character is Mario in Wrecking Crew. Game Play The game features 100 levels that get progressively harder. Each level is a single screen full of ladders, doors and walls. Your goal, as Mario, is to break every item in the level while dodging bad guys of many types and avoiding fireballs. While the game does require fast reflexes on occasion, each level is laid out like a logic puzzle where you must find the best way to break everything without being trapped by an enemy. Some of the levels are quick and easy while others will require dozens of attempts to learn the correct path to victory. A few of the later levels took me close to 100 attempts and over an hour to solve (levels 80, 91 and 95 I’m looking at you!). Break the doors, brick walls and white ladders before the Elmo looking guy gets you. Controls The controls are simple. D-pad moves Mario left and right and up and down ladders. Both the A and B buttons swing the hammer that is used to break things. The start button pauses the game and the select button takes you back to the title screen. I used the select button feature quite often if I got into a spot where I knew I couldn’t finish a level. The title screen features the ability to start the game on any stage you want which is a feature I’m not fond of. This seems like a feature that should only be accessible once you beat the game or as a game genie cheat. Can you imagine if you could play any game and just start from the last level?? It takes a lot of will power to play the game through from the beginning when you don’t have to. The Enemies Gotcha Wrench and Gotcha Wrench Jr. These guys can be either red or purple. The only difference I noticed is that the purple ones walk much faster. These enemies will constantly move towards Mario and if they touch him you must restart the level. Eggplant Men Similar to the purple wrenches these guys move fairly quickly. If they reach a ladder they will climb or descend 1 floor and continue walking in the same direction until they hit an enemy, wall or barrel. Once this happens they turn around and walk the other way. Foreman Spike This guy looks just like Mario but walks behind the walls instead of in front of them. If Spike is behind a wall, door or ladder and you break that item Spike will fall all the way to the bottom of the stage. But, if Spike breaks the item from behind while you are in front of it Mario will then fall to bottom level. More times than I care to admit Spike would break a ladder that I was climbing causing me to have to restart the level. Sometimes Spike knocking you to the bottom of the screen is just an annoyance, other times it causes you to restart the level because there is no way back up. Fireball Every once in a while a fireball will appear on one side of the screen and slowly makes its way across. At first, I found the fireball to be helpful as it seemed to only appear when a ladder was broken making it impossible to finish the level. I looked at the fireball as a way to kill Mario without having to manually restart the game. But, then I discovered that the Select button takes you back to the title screen making the fireball unnecessary. As I progressed farther in the game I realized that the fireball is nothing more than a troll. It appears if you stand still for too long and also seems to appear when I’ve almost finished a hard level to kill me when I only have one or two items left to break. Strategy There are multiple ways to beat each level but there are a couple of strategies I found helpful. If you see a green door and hit it with your hammer it opens. If a bad guy walks past that door he will enter it and the door will shut trapping them inside. You can walk off the right edge of the screen and appear on the left edge. Sometimes it is necessary to travel through the level this way to avoid enemies and access ladders to higher or lower levels. Many levels have bombs scattered throughout. If the bomb is directly next to a row of doors and the bomb explodes it will take out all of the doors/walls/ladders in a chain reaction. But, hitting the bomb also makes Mario fall all the way to the bottom level of the screen (if you are quick you can hit the bomb and run away and not fall). Sometimes this is necessary to finish a level and other times it is just a way to get away from enemies who have you trapped. If any of the bad guys are climbing up or down a white ladder when it is broken they will fall and become temporarily stunned. The Golden Hammer I almost didn’t even mention this as in my entire play through I never once received the hammer. From what I’ve read online, if you break the blocks in a specific order on most levels you are rewarded with a hammer which allows you to walk faster and break all bricks with only one hammer swing. You keep the hammer until you die. Many stages would have been much less difficult with the hammer but playing levels over and over breaking blocks in random combos was harder than just beating the levels with the normal hammer. In fact, if I didn’t read about this item online I wouldn’t have even know it exists. I’m Not Proud Throughout the course of the 100 levels many of them gave me trouble but I never once relied on the internet to beat a level. That is, until I reached level 95. I spent 2.5 days (probably 2 hours of total time) playing through this level well over 100 times. I never was able to come up with any solution that got me any closer to beating it. I broke down and looked up a walkthrough. I scrolled down to level 95 and the first line says I know the solution...there is no alternative solution... but I cannot execute it. I have the step-by-step process that I've been using, but it doesn't work. PLEASE e-mail me and let me know what I'm doing wrong so I can change it. At this point I felt like I was never going to solve it on my own so spent some time watching YouTube videos. Of course, almost every video I found used the golden hammer or some cheat to get by. In fact, the video I copied to beat the level involves running under the fireball, which I didn’t know I could do. It also required exploiting the hit detection on the enemies, which I also didn’t know I could do. I am convinced this level cannot be beaten without exploiting something. I searched the internet and could not find one instance of it being beaten without dodging the fireball. I feel like this level is equivalent to level 8-3 in Adventure Island which is notorious for being nearly impossible. Design Your Own Level While I had no desire to build my own levels I do appreciate that the game allows players to build a level and try it out. Super Mario Maker gets rave reviews for letting players design their own game, but, Wrecking Crew and Excite Bike both offered this feature 3 decades earlier. Unfortunately there is no way to save the levels you build. I Should Have Taken Better Notes I would like to know how many times I died on each stage so I could determine what the hardest stages were for me (I do know 95 was by far the hardest). But, I didn’t. Hind sight is 20/20. Final Thoughts I am pretty mad I waited over 30 years to give Wrecking Crew a chance. The game is easy to learn and hard to master. It features 100 unique levels that require you to use your brain. Even though it is nothing like Adventures of Lolo I find the games similar in the way you have to think to beat them. I think if you are good at Lolo you will be good at Wrecking Crew. Wrecking Crew may very well be my favorite Black Box game (other than Super Mario Bros). It has more meat to it than I expected an early NES game to have and I highly recommend it. I am sad there is no ending screen, after you beat level 100 the game loops. So, technically, since you can start the game from any level you are going to have to take my word for it that I beat this one. View the full article

Genre: Children – Educational Publisher: Gametek Total time played: 20 Minutes Short review: Interesting links related to Fisher Price: Firehouse Rescue Speedrun (12min 48secs) Finally!! There are 3 Fisher Price games on the NES, two of which (I Can Remember and Perfect Fit) I have owned for years and see almost every time I go into retro game stores. The third is Firehouse Rescue which I have seen only once in a store and the label was all torn so I didn’t buy it. I recently decided to just buy it on eBay. So, after 20 years of collecting I finally was able to play this crappy Fisher Price game. How to Play You know when you were a kid and would go to dinner at a restaurant and the kids menu had a maze you would try to get through with a crayon? Well, that is exactly what Firehouse Rescue is like, except you use a controller to direct a firetruck through the maze. Once you get to the house that is “on fire” you enter it and move your firetruck ladder under the window with the person needing help and press A. The person will come down the ladder to safety. Here we go! The city planner really needs to work on his road design. I’ll save you, even though the house is definitely not on fire. Difficulty There are 4 levels of play labeled 1, 2, 3 and 4. Each level consists of 4 rescues. There are only slight differences in the 4 levels single screen, no time limit scrolling screen, no time limit scrolling screen, 50 second time limit scrolling screen, 50 second time limit, must find key hidden in maze before going to the house. I ran through the game pretty quickly only having to redo 2 of the mazes. Sound I usually don’t have a sound category in my reviews but the sound was very special in this game. The intro plays some very familiar circus music. The game itself features no music. All you hear are a few beeps and boops and the surprisingly realistic (for NES) rumble of the firetruck. Final Thoughts For a small child this game could be fun for 10 minutes. For a 35 year old man it is passable and there are no glaring glitches or bad programming but there is never any reason to play it again. View the full article

Genre: Children – Educational Publisher: Gametek Total time played: 20 Minutes Short review: An easier, slower moving, less fun version of Classic Concentration. Interesting links related to Fisher Price: I Can Remember Video Playthrough Soundtrack Isn’t It Ironic? Don’t You Think? While logging all of my NES games in Pat Contri’s awesome iPhone application that allows users to track and sort their collections I realized something funny. I had marked Fisher Price: I Can Remember as a game I’d completed. I have a distinct memory of playing through the game. However, when I double checked this blog and my photo album with all of my completed games I noticed that I had not played the game at all. So, I had a false memory of playing I Can Remember. Let’s just hope that now that I have played through the game I won’t ever misremember anything ever again. Upon further reflection I’m pretty sure I remembered playing through Fisher Price: Perfect Fit which looks very similar to I Can Remember. How To Play Because the game is for ages 3-8 you get a pretty streamlined an easy to understand game. Choose the number of players Choose whether player 2 is a human or computer player If you choose computer player you then select difficulty 1, 2, or 3 Once the game starts you are shown a screen with 20 numbered squares. Player 1 will select two squares revealing items beneath. If the items beneath the two squares you selected match those squares disappear and you earn some points. As more and more matches are made more squares disappear revealing a large image in the background. If this was Classic Concentration you would have to guess what the large picture behind the squares is, but since it is a Fisher Price game you just get to look at the picture once all the matches are made and no squares are left. The two roller toys have been revealed behind squares 7 and 14. They will disappear revealing more of the airplane. How To Beat The Game The computer player named “Electro” is no slouch playing on level 3. He has a great memory and very rarely misses a match that has previously been revealed. In order to beat the entire game you must have the highest score after 3 rounds of play. For each match that is revealed you will earn less points. As there are fewer squares to choose from it doesn’t take as much brain power to find a match. The key is to be the first person to find a match on the board and earn 500 points. By the time the 10th and final match is revealed you only earn about 125 points. The player who reveals the final match on the board also gets a small bonus. Being close to 30 years older than the high end of the recommended age it is slightly embarrassing it took me 2 tries to beat Electro and when I beat him on my second try my score was still lower than his score on my first attempt. Final Thoughts The game is very slow. When you select a square it takes 3-5 seconds for the square to slide away revealing the item below. If you don’t get a match it takes another 3-5 seconds to have the square reappear on the screen. I also kept getting distracted by the music which was Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or Ba Ba Black Sheep. I kept mixing up the lyrics and singing both which also took away from my concentration of remembering where items were located. This is not a good game but it is a competent game. I will probably let my daughter try it when she is 3 years old but I bet she will find it too slow to be fun. But, because it was slightly more challenging than Fisher Price: Perfect Fit I’ll bump it from 2.5 to 3 hearts. Notes I Don’t know why I waited 139 games to start putting the game completion number on the photo. I have to act like I’ve been doing it all along or my OCD will make me go back and add a number to the prior 138 games. View the full article

Genre: Role Playing Game Publisher: Enix Total time played: 30 Hours Short review: The first of 3 sequels to the grandfather of all NES JRPGs. It will take a keen eye to notice any graphical differences between the original and this sequel but under the hood it features many noticeable improvements. Interesting links related to Dragon Warrior 2 Speedrun (4Hours 41min 52sec) Soundtrack Video Review (SuperDerekRPGs) Written Walkthrough (Jason Venter) Walkthrough and Maps (Mike’s RPG Center) Dragon Warrior 2 Unveiled Secrets PDF scan A Noticeable Improvement This was my first (and honestly, probably last) playthrough of Dragon Warrior 2. When I first turned the game on I was almost distracted by how similar it looked to the first game. The graphics are identical as is the music. But, I quickly noticed two things: I found that the battles seemed to be faster paced and I began leveling up much quicker than I did in the first game (more on this later). The battle scenes now were on a black background where in the first game they showed the enemy with a different background depending on the location of the battle. At first I was disappointed that the battle graphics weren’t even as good as Dragon Warrior but I quickly realized why. In the first game you never fought more than one enemy at a time. In part 2 you can fight up to 7-8 enemies at a time depending on their size. Taking out the battle background allowed for more intricate character sprites and more on screen enemies at one time. As I got farther in the game this really changed my strategy as every battle had the chance to be a combo of enemies I had never seen before. This was a huge improvement over single enemy battles that played out the same way every time. Dragon Warrior 1 battle screen. Much prettier, but the 75th time you fight the golem it gets a little old. 7 enemies at once? I’ll take the black background in exchange for tough battles like this one. (Thanks google images, I forgot to take my own photo) P-A-R-T-Y? Because I gotta!!! For the first time in a Dragon Warrior game you aren’t alone on your journey. It takes a few hours of quests and grinding, but, you eventually find a Prince and Princess to help you out. The combination of two additional party members and battles with random combinations of enemies really fleshes out the battle system. Prince The prince is not nearly as strong as the hero and can’t use many of the stronger swords or armor in the game. He does however have the ability to use magic which comes in very handy. At the beginning of the game I used the prince to heal the party during and after battle. As the game progressed he gained a very helpful spell called “Firebane” which attacked every enemy on screen. The Prince also has the ability to cast “outside” which will exit a cave immediately and “return” which will instantly transport the party to the last town in which you saved your game. These spells were a necessity when I would explore a bit too far from safety and be on the verge of death. Unfortunately it seemed that more times than not when I was deep in a cave and in danger it was because the Prince was dead meaning I could not cast “outside” or “return”. Princess The princess quickly differentiated herself as a better healer than the Prince as she starts the game with the “Healmore” spell which as the name suggests, heals more than the “heal” spell. Eventually she also learns “Heal All”, take a guess at what that spell does. The princess is very weak physically but carries spells that can aid in battle such as “sleep” which puts the enemy to sleep causing them to miss a turn to attack, “Defense” which lowers the defense of the enemy making my attacks against them cause more damage and “Surround” which causes the enemy to miss 25% of their attacks against me. As the game progressed I learned that using the “Staff of Thunder” weapon as an item in battle causes the Princess to cast “infernos” which is a fire spell that attacks all enemies. This spell came in very handy early on as it gave the Princess some much needed attack power and didn’t use any magic meaning I could use all the magic to heal the party when needed. The Map The map of Dragon Warrior felt big enough to feel like an entire world but small enough to never get too lost. Dragon Warrior 2 does something special, to understand you need to know the story of the game. Basically, this game takes place several generations after the end of the first game. You are the descendent of the first game’s hero and it is up to you to save the world. The game designers took the map of the first game and changed it up slightly as hundreds of years would naturally do. But, if you recently played the first game or grew up playing it you will recognize several of the locations. The map to Dragon Warrior II is massive, too big in fact. I never truly felt comfortable navigating without a map. See that red square? That is the ENTIRE map of Dragon Warrior. All the rest of the map is brand new for Dragon Warrior 2. A huge play area like this would be a welcome addition to almost any game. But, in order for the map to be a plus and not a minus the player needs to ability to access the map, along with your current location in game. That feature does not exist in Dragon Warrior 2. So, without a physical map, internet map or strategy guide it would take until the end of time to know where you are going in this game. How Would I Know That? Dragon Warrior 2 features a lot of things that you couldn’t possibly know unless you had a guide or got lucky. In fact, I’m starting to think this game was made with the purpose of requiring the player to buy a strategy guide to succeed which of course would increase the profits of the game maker. Luckily for me the internet exists so I didn’t have to buy the guide The point of the game is to collect 5 crests, use them to enter a cave to get something or other and use that to do something else and then use that one item to open a cave and then a bunch of other cryptic things. I’m being vague on purpose for 2 reasons…I’m too lazy to research again the exact item names/locations and my description is about as much direction as the game gives you. Let’s talk about the Sun Crest. Look below at a map of where to find it. How would you ever find that without knowing where to look? I didn’t even know you could walk on the outside of the walls, and even if I did discover that I wouldn’t have known to search that perfectly regular piece of grass. See the bottom arrow? You can walk through that X which I thought was a wall. The top arrow is where you search to find the Sun Crest. One Little Time Saving Secret Without this little “hack” I learned online I don’t think I would have had the energy to finish the game. When you fight a battle inside the jail cell of a castle you earn the item “Staff of Thunder” which I mentioned early as the weapon of choice for the Princess. If you sell the staff at the item shop you earn $25,000 gold. If you then visit the king and save your game and then turn off the Nintendo, when you turn the game back on you can fight the jail cell battle again earning another “Staff of Thunder”. I did this about 6 times which meant I then always had enough money to buy items/weapons and stay at even the most expensive inns. As Forrest Gump said “That’s one less thing”. As I never needed money I could focus on other things. I imagine this little hack saved me about 10 hours of grinding to earn money early in the game. “If He Dies, He Dies” If a character falls in battle you have a couple of choices to bring them back to life. Go back to the nearest town and pay money to the holy man who can revive them. This is a very handy option as it doesn’t cost too much money and you are one cast of “outside” and “return” away from brining the deceased party member back to life. But, if you are near the end of a quest or dungeon it doesn’t make sense to leave and then have to start all over. Unfortunately, for about 90% of the game this is really the only option. There is a small island in the bottom right corner of the map which is a small desert with one green square. If you search this square you find an item called “Leaf of the World Tree” which will revive a character who has fallen in battle. This is very handy to have so you don’t have to stop your quest and return to a village to revive. But, you can only carry one at a time and the location is so far out of the way it is actually quicker to have the holy man revive the deceased member of the party and start your mission over. The Prince learns “Revive” late in the game allowing him to bring someone back to life as long as he has enough magic. It did come in handy in the final castle but it would have also come in handy through the other 95% of the game had he learned the spell a little earlier. The Dungeons The game starts off with caves and dungeons that are not too bad. They are small enough and only have one or two paths to explore. As you get a bit farther in the game the dungeons get insane: They are much larger, some consist of up to 7 or more large floors to explore. There are multiple branching paths Some of the paths are maze like in that if you don’t walk in the exact right combination of squares it loops endlessly. The whole screen isn’t lit up only displaying a few squares at a time. This is to be like the small area that a torch would light up if you were really inside, I thought it was a cruel trick the game makers were playing on me. There are invisible trap doors that will cause you to fall to a floor below Some rooms have enemy encounters with every single step you take The last major cave in the game is called “The Path To Rhone”. In order to even find the cave you have to stand in a specific location on the map and use an item to open up the hidden entrance. Again, without a strategy guide this would have been impossible. Once you are inside each of the floors is littered with everything I mentioned above. Sometimes while attempting to get through I would encounter 4 green dragons which I did beat one time but was so severely injured I didn’t stand a chance at progressing farther. I would venture to say it took 20+ attempts for me to actually make it through the cave. Even with 2 different maps I found online, one showing the path to take and the other showing all the trap doors it was nearly impossible. Some of that was that I tried to go through the cave at too low a level and the enemies were too strong for me. The Grind Earlier I mentioned how quickly I started earning level ups early in the game. This was a dirty trick played by the game makers. They made the game feel fast paced until I was hooked and then decided to make leveling up feel like such a grind. When I passed through the “Cave to Rhone” which is the final cave before the final castle I was level 20. According to guides I read the final boss shouldn’t be attempted until level 30-35. It took me longer to level up from 20-35 than it did for me to start the game and get through the “Cave to Rhone”. What this means is that from a time perspective, preparing for the final battle took as long as the other 95% of the game. The Final Battle After I got to level 31 I walked to the final castle and when I got inside it looks just like the castle I started the game in. I stayed at the Inn to refill my life and walked around confused. I then used one of the online guides to find out I needed to take the 5 crests I had collected to a spot on the opposite side of the world to get an item that when used in this castle reveals that it isn’t a castle at all but a place full of monsters and the final boss. So, after spending 30 minutes getting the item I missed I came back, used the item to reveal the true castle and began exploring. Several of the rooms were floors covered with life draining designs. I used the Stepguard spell every few steps to protect my party from injury. Basically, just the game makers way of making sure you have less magic when you get to the end. Eventually I had to use the guide again to know to use the Eye of Malroth on a square deep in the castle to reveal yet another illusion. Luckily after this point the game wasn’t too unforgiving with mazes. However, the enemies here, even at level 31 were intense. I found running was the best option for most battles. Isn’t it obvious, turn right to reveal a hidden door. However, there were 3 battles you couldn’t skip, enemies which guarded staircases that were much more powerful than any I’d faced so far. The good news is that while grinding levels I picked up a cursed sword and cursed armor. Since the castle was cursed I could freely use these items which also happen to be the strongest in the game. Sometimes I was unable to attack because of the curse, but usually the very next turn my hero would deal over 200 hp of damage, enough to defeat pretty much any enemy in the game with one hit. After the 3 boss fights that didn’t tell you they were boss fights I met Hargon, who was definitely a boss. He wasn’t so bad to defeat, the Hero attacked and the Prince and Princess used Heal spells to keep everyone alive. After this 4th boss battle you meet the final boss. There is no mistake this is the last guy as he is huge. His attacks pack quite a punch but it only took me two tries to take him out. I expected the game to end right then and there but I had to travel all the way back to Midenhall castle, which of course I didn’t know how to get to. So, even after defeating the final boss and ridding the world of evil I still needed a guide to beat the game. He’s so big I didn’t realize Vari had 140HP and wasted a HealAll spell because I thought she only had 40HP Final Thoughts Re-reading everything I just wrote makes it seem like I really hated this game. But, that isn’t the case at all. I feel a great sense of accomplishment after beating it even though I had to rely on maps and strategy guides. I would have hated this game so much is I had played it as a kid without access to these online guides but I would have had all the free time in the world to explore. As an adult, I don’t have that much free time so using the guides was a necessity, and even with that, I could have better spent my time playing a newer or more polished RPG. Because I did enjoy my time with the game (when I wasn’t cussing it under my breath) and also appreciate how it was better than just about every other RPG that was released around the same time I have to give it props. 6 hearts for its historical significance. With a few minor tweaks and a game that could have been beaten in half the time without the need for external resources it could have been an all time classic. View the full article

Genre: Board Game Publisher: Hi-Tech Expressions Total time played: 30 minutes Short review: No twists or turns, no dated animations, just plain old chess with a very competent computer opponent. Interesting links related to The Chessmaster Speedrun (13 secs) Soundtrack Video Review (RetroStadium) Cover Art I want to know the backstory to the guy on the cover of this game. I mean, obviously I know the part where he was the groundskeeper at Hogwarts, but, what else did he do with his life? Don’t bother if you can’t play chess Every day after elementary school I would ride the bus to my grandparents house. My grandfather had a chess set that I loved to open up and play with the pieces like they were action figures. Eventually my grandfather decided to show me how to set up a chess board and then how to play chess (my grandmother on the other hand taught me to play poker). I picked up the rules to chess very quickly and started to consistently beat my grandfather. Basically, at age 8 I had mastered chess. As an adult I fully realize he was letting me win. That point was driven home as I played The Chessmaster and got destroyed a dozen or more times. Granted, I hadn’t played chess in 15 years, but still, I never realized how much I sucked. Quick Start When you see the menu screen and hit the start button the board is set up immediately and it is your turn to move. The board looks pretty plain but it doesn’t need to be fancy. The game is pretty fast paced and you don’t have to wait long for the computer to make a move (this may be different on higher difficulties). It took me quite a while to learn there is a menu if you hit the select button at any time during a match. I didn’t take the time to mess with any of these options but it looks like the game is much deeper than I originally thought. I realize now that I wasn’t playing the chessmaster, but just playing against the easy computer setting. Still, it wasn’t easy. My playthrough It took me about a dozen attempts to actually beat the computer. Almost every one of them ended in checkmate much quicker than I care to admit. It turns out, you actually do need to think several moves ahead to have any success with this game, even on the easiest setting. I finally made a run and was able to beat the computer. I had a Rook that captured an opponents piece about 7 moves in a row which helped out a lot. Eventually the computer was left with only the king and gave up. Even though I didn’t checkmate I still call it a win. The funniest thing that happened during my playthrough was when one of my pawns made it all the way to the other side of the board and I was able to turn it into the game piece of my choice. As I filtered through my options and contemplated the benefits of each piece I finally decided on adding a second Queen to my side. After that 30 second deliberation it took less than 2 seconds for the computer Queen to capture my newly appointed Queen, so much for that advantage. Final Thoughts It takes a lot of restraint to take a classic board game and turn it into a video game and not add a bunch of goofy animations that get old after one playthrough (I’m looking at you Monopoly). I can’t imagine someone who is really into chess getting this game and being disappointed in how it plays. There are 16 levels of difficulty to challenge even the best players (at least according to the box art). It is fast paced and a very good alternative if you don’t have another human to play with or a chess board to play on. Even though I’ll probably never be a “chess head” (I assume that is what they are called) I can see the brilliance of this game and would venture to say it has the best AI of any game in the entire NES library. View the full article

Genre: Arcade Publisher: Hi-Tech Expressions Total time played: 3 Hours Short review: A Pac-Man style game with more variety but suffers from dated late 80’s/early 90’s style which now seems dated. Interesting links related to Trog! Speedrun (12min 7sec) Soundtrack Video Review (Panik100) What the heck is Trog!? A Trog is a one eyed caveman who wants nothing more than to kill and eat you, a dino-mite named Bloop (1-player) or Spike (2-player). The game plays like Pac-Man but has quite a bit more gameplay variety. Unfortunately the game suffers pretty bad from early 90’s style that makes it feel very dated where Pac-Man has a classic timeless style. How to play There are 50 levels in Trog!. The goal of each level is to collect all of the eggs while avoiding the Trog! who are trying to kill you anyway they can. Once all eggs are collected you must exit through the “home” that appears somewhere along the edge of the screen. The game is very simple to learn but takes a while to get the hang of and learn the ins and outs to be successful. Once your Dino-mite is moving he will continue to move in that direction until you tap another direction. This adds a level of difficulty to the game because if you hit the edge of the screen you will jump straight into the water and lose a life. Level 3, not too much going on here. Just collect the eggs and find the exit. As you progress through the game things get a bit crazier. The Trog! get smarter every few levels as shown through cut-screens Trog! learned to create fire, a new obstacle to avoid. Throughout the course of the game the Trog! learn new skills to kill you and get faster and you will need better timing with your attacks to kill them before they kill you. You start the game with 3 lives and 2 continues. You earn an extra life every 1,000,000 points. Defend yourself Your main course of defense can be activated by hitting A or B when a Trog! approaches. This allows you to attack them knocking them out. But, like the ghosts in Pac-Man as soon as you defeat them they reappear somewhere else on the screen. Powerups Leaves – This will speed up your Dino-mite making him harder to catch, but, also harder to control. Mushroom – The mushroom slows down your Dino-mite. I try to avoid these unless I have collected several leaves and my character is racing around the stage uncontrollably and I need to slow him down. Pineapple – The pineapple is the equivalent of the big pellets in Pac-man. You are now invincible and can eat the Trog! Also, your Dino-mite is slightly smarter and won’t jump into the water by accident. It only lasts a short time so make the most of it. You earn 10,000 points for the first Trog! eaten and it doubles until you get 80,000 per Trog!, this is a great time to build up points and try to collect extra lives. Horseshoe – The horseshoe makes you invincible for a short time but I never saw any indicator of when the invincibility wore out. Your character doesn’t change color and the music doesn’t change. I found myself dying quite a bit by hitting a Trog! while I thought I was still invincible. Ice Cube – Temporarily freezes all enemies on the screen. Hot Tamale – I very rarely ran into these. If you get a tamale you gain the ability to shoot fireballs for a short time which is great for killing Trog! from a long distance. Hazards Trog! – These cavemen wander the stage trying to kill you. If they touch you before you hit them you die. Jumping Trog! – Just like the regular Trog! but they jump erratically and can land on you with little warning smooshing you dead. Wheel – These wheels appear out of nowhere and run in a straight line over anything in their path, this includes you as well as the Trog! There is nothing more satisfying than a wheel running over 3-4 Trog! in a row. Fire – Trog! will kneel down and rub sticks together to create fire. You will need to avoid this fire or you will be burnt to a crisp. Hole – Trog! will bang their club on the ground creating a hole that will kill you if you fall in. Tar Pit – A black smudge that will cover your Dino-mite in tar causing it to die. The Secret to Success Trog! is a really fun game. It is like Pac-Man but requires a bit more strategy. The game can get a bit repetitive across 50 levels unless you learn the secret to success. At the start of each level an egg will sparkle for a split second. In my experience it is always the egg in the bottom right of the screen. If you collect this egg last a small warp zone hole appears somewhere on the screen. If you go to the hole instead of the “Home” exit you are warped 3 levels ahead and get a bonus of 300,000 points. This drastically shortens the game and boosts your score. The catch is, you need to be really good at the game to pull this off. If you die at any point during the stage you can not access the warp. So, you must play the level flawlessly in order to access the warp. Music The stage music is nothing special, but, the bonus stage/pineapple powerup music is some of my favorite music on the entire NES. The music isn’t good, it is just so outlandish that it literally makes me laugh each time I hear it. Visuals The graphics are fine, but I just feel sorry for how dated the game looks. Bloop, arrow, Yo!, spirals, exclamation points. What is this? The intro to Martin or Clarissa Explains it All? Final Thoughts Trog! is way more fun than it should be. It is kind of addicting. Even once you beat the game you want to play again and try to get a higher score. While nothing will ever compare to Pac-man I think Trog! is probably the best Pac-man clone I’ve played. It is definitely a hidden gem on the NES. Side Notes I started playing this game around the first of July. I’d give it one or two attempts every couple of days and typically get to a level in the 30’s or low 40’s. On July 14th I spent a bit of time playing Resident Evil VR after my wife went to sleep and then attempted Trog! again. No luck. The next morning at 8am my wife woke me up and said we needed to go to the hospital as she wasn’t feeling well. I quickly packed a bag and we headed across town. As it turns out, she wasn’t feeling well at all and we ended up staying 2 days in the hospital. But, we finally got to come home; she is feeling much better and we now have our first child. Needless to say I haven’t had much time to play games these past couple of weeks (and probably for the foreseeable future). But, I was able to sneak in 15-20 minutes today which was enough to finally beat Trog! View the full article

Genre: Puzzle Publisher: Nintendo Total time played: 2 Hours Short review: Nintendo’s take on Tetris which is different enough to be a classic on its own but doesn’t have quite the same universal appeal as Tetris. Interesting links related to Dr. Mario Speedrun Level 20 High Speed (4min 9sec) Soundtrack Video Review (Classic Game Room) How To Play Dr. Mario sits in the top right corner of the screen and throws pills into a pill bottle which has viruses scattered throughout. The pills come in many shades but are all the same shape. Blue/Blue Yellow/Yellow Red/Red Blue/Red Blue/Yellow Red/Yellow The goal of the game is to match groups of 4 of the same colors together to get rid of all the viruses on screen. This can be accomplished by 3 pills on top of a virus or 2 pills on top of 2 viruses of the same color. You can also stack pills under or beside viruses to accomplish this task. Stage Select Dr. Mario, unlike Tetris has an end. At the start of the game you select a stage and a speed. Stages go between 0-20 and speed is low-medium-high. I almost wish you couldn’t select a stage and were forced to start at level 0 and play through all 20 levels to beat the game. But, because you can select a stage I played the first few for practice and then jumped straight to the hardest level. Virus Level 20 I thought I was going to be tough and beat the hardest level with the fastest speed. After never coming close after 50+ attempts I dropped the speed to medium and once was able to clear the viruses down to about 50 before choking and dying I decided to just beat the game on the slow speed. I plan on revisiting Dr. Mario and doing the fast speed at some point but I’m trying to knock out a few more games before the birth of my first child so slow speed will have to do for now. Virus level 20 aka the hardest virus level. One wrong move and it is game over. Strategy I never really locked down any one strategy to help me beat the game. I just brute forced it by attempting it over and over until I got a good virus lay out with a lot of viruses of the same color stacked. This allowed me to drop a double sided same color pill on a stack of two viruses and clear them out much quicker than one at a time. The only other strategy is to keep one eye on Dr. Mario so you can see what the next pill will be. This allows you to plan out your moves one step ahead. Sound Music and sound effects are great. But, there are only 2 songs and you will get sick of hearing them eventually. I think I prefer the Tetris music to Dr. Mario music. Final Thoughts It is hard to make a game that is easy to learn, hard to master and appeals to people of all generations. I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying Dr. Mario. It is cute, fun, and challenging. I only wish there were more game mode options and there wasn’t a stage select to make it feel more like a game with a beginning and end. But, other than those couple of gripes this is a masterpiece. View the full article

Genre: Arcade Publisher: Kemco Total time played: 30 minutes Short review: A short pointless game that is so unintuitive I had to read the manual to be able to play. Interesting links related to Spy vs. Spy Speedrun (tool assisted) (2min) Soundtrack Video Review (Classic Game Room) Written Review (Take On The NES Library) My First Time I have a vague memory of not being able to find a game I wanted at the local neighborhood video store one Friday evening. My dad had driven there me and was getting annoyed at my indecisiveness. He is not a gamer and never really understood the appeal of the NES. But, he loved MAD Magazine and convinced me to rent Spy vs Spy that night. I’m sure there was a bit of curiosity, but mainly he was just sick of me taking up his Friday night being indecisive at the video store. We also got a MAD Magazine so I could be exposed to Spy vs Spy. However, all I remember about that magazine was the back cover that you could fold to create a new image. That was the only thing that ever made me want to buy MAD Magazine. Eventually they started sealing the magazines in plastic because so many people were just folding the back cover to see the hidden image and then putting it back on the shelf, or, maybe I was the only one who did that. This kind of art was what impressed 8 year old me My brother and I took turns playing Spy vs Spy against the computer and against each other and never understood what the point of the game was. This was pre-internet and the store we rented from didn’t provide the instruction manual. Unfortunately the game wasn’t fun enough to spend much time learning the mechanics. How to Play Thank goodness for the internet. I now officially understand how to play Spy vs Spy and it is a completely original game unlike anything else on the NES. But, that doesn’t mean it is fun or even worth playing. Title Screen Select your difficulty between training (level 0) and level 8 (hard). Select whether you are playing against the computer or against a second player and hit start. Objective The objective is to search the building you are in for 4 items: a plane ticket, a key, a bag of money and a passport. Put these items in a suitcase and exit through the door with a silhouette of a plane on it before your opponent does and before time runs out. The Traps Each player can cycle through traps with the B button and set a trap behind a bookcase, a tv, another book case, a photo on the wall, above a door, etc. If you set a trap and you or your opponent searches the item with the trap you die. But, only a few seconds later you will re-spawn and can continue searching. All traps have a remedy that can disarm the trap. The only one that was obvious to me was the umbrella which would keep water from falling on your head when you open a booby trapped door. Since it takes a few seconds to set a trap I found it to be pointless as it only slows down your opponent for a few seconds. So, the time saved by killing your opponent is wasted in setting the trap. Fighting Every once in a while you will find yourself in the same room as your opponent. You can either run or fight. I would always run unless I happened to be holding a weapon. If I had a weapon I would quickly kill my opponent and keep searching for items. There is no point to fighting, it just breaks up the monotony of the hide and seek game you are playing. How to Beat the Game It doesn’t matter if you beat the game on the training difficulty or on level 8, you see the same ending. It isn’t a traditional game where you beat level 1 and then go to level 2. Once you beat a level you beat the game. But, after learning the ins and outs playing the first 3 levels (training, 1 and 2) I was getting bored so just ramped up the difficulty to level 8. I figured if I could beat the hardest difficulty that was good enough. The only difference in difficulty is the size of the building you are searching and the number of booby traps that appear to be set by default in the level. Tips and Tricks As mentioned earlier, I found setting traps to be a total waste of time. So, just start searching. The map screen is your friend. It is just a bunch of squares. You are the white square and your opponent is the black square. Yellow squares symbolize traps and blue squares symbolize items you need to collect. I can’t be totally sure because I didn’t play that many times, but it seems that all the items are initially located in the same spot each time you play. Find where the suitcase is and go there first. Trial and error is your friend until you know where the suitcase is. Once you have that just run to the other blue square rooms, collect the items and find the exit. Complaints To view the map you have to hit the B button 5 times. This cycles through all of your traps and the item you are holding. If you are holding the suitcase (or any item) and cycle through your traps to view the map you lose the suitcase and have to search an item in the room you are in to get it back. If you are holding an item and search for another you place that item in the thing you are searching. While it is realistic that a booby trap doesn’t play favorites I don’t like it that you can be killed by your own traps. The game should give you a warning at least that you set a trap behind that item before searching. If you find yourself in the same room as your opponent both characters appear on the bottom half of the split screen. If you kill the opponent the screen flashes and your character appears back in the top half of the screen. It is pretty jarring and every time I found myself confused for a second. If you opponent cycles through their items and views the map the entire screen flashes, again, it is fairly jarring if you are focused on what you are doing and it happens quite often. The split screen is unnecessary unless you are playing 2 player mode. I never once found looking at the bottom half of the screen useful. All the rooms look alike making it hard to know where you have been without viewing the map which breaks up the game’s pace quite a bit. Graphics and Sound Highly unmemorable. Some of the rooms really mess with your eyes. Thin stripes are a no-no on TV and in games. Not good on the old peepers. Final Thoughts Once I figured out what I was doing I almost saw the appeal of this game. If all of my gripes above were addressed I could have even seen where the game might be enjoyable. But, when I play games I typically like there to be a beginning and an end. I was never a fan of 2 player games where the goal is to just beat your friend. I was more of a co-op game where you and your friend work together towards a goal. There isn’t much replay in this game, but, I gave it a little love just for being unlike any other game on the system. A for originality, D+ for fun. View the full article

Genre: Shooter Publisher: FCI Total time played: 30 minutes Short review: An early side scrolling shooter with decent controls, primitive graphics, bleep bloopy sound and not very much replay-ability Interesting links related to Magmax Speedrun 2 loops (16min 46sec) Soundtrack Video Review (Classic Game Room) Written Review (Take On The NES Library) Amazing Box Art The box art for Magmax is amazing. It features a mech with a light saber fighting a multi-headed robot dragon. Most NES games with box art this awesome don’t live up to the hype. Magmax lives up to the hype, you play as a giant mech and do fight a multi-headed robot dragon, but, it is very anti-climactic. Graphics and Sound The graphics for Magmax leave much to be desired. If this was a launch title I would forgive it for being so plain, but, it came out 3 years into the NES life cycle so there is no excuse for such plain graphics. The sound isn’t any better. It is a bunch of simple beeps and boops and a song that loops too quickly and doesn’t fit the style of the game at all. Keep this in mind, Magmax was released AFTER Mega Man 2 in North America. That means there is no excuse for graphics and sounds so plain. Gameplay Magmax came out at the tail end of games that didn’t really have levels or an end. It is kind of a mix of a high score and traditional game. There are 4 levels in the game that loop endlessly. When you beat a level you don’t get notified, the background just changes slightly. There are bosses at the end of the 2nd and the 4th levels. Both bosses are the same, the dragon from the box art. Unfortunately the boss just stands still and shoots slow projectiles that are easy to dodge. In fact, I never once died fighting the boss. Once you beat all 4 levels you have “beaten the game” even though there is technically no ending, the game just loops back to the beginning and gets slightly harder. You get 3 lives. You can earn extra lives at 30,000 points and then every 50,000 points after that. One thing that is slightly interesting is that you start above ground but can travel underground if you fly over a silver circle that randomly appears on screen. If you fly into the circle you are transported below ground. While underground you can fly into a silver circle and be transported back above ground. I would have preferred that the hole actually looks like a hole but it doesn’t. And, when you are underground the hole to get back above ground is sometimes on the bottom of the screen which would make me think it would take you even deeper underground. It just doesn’t make much sense. The above ground level seems to be slightly easier, but, there is no advantage to playing the game above or underground. In fact, you can beat the game without ever traveling underground. The mech dragon boss appears above ground or underground. Mech Warrior The game starts you off as a ship that wouldn’t look out of place in a side scrolling shooter like Life Force or Gradius. As you move through the level you will see a pair of legs, a torso with a head and a gun. You can pick these up in any order (You must have the torso or legs to pick up the gun) to change the appearance of your ship. If you pick up all 3 pieces your mech warrior is much stronger, shooting out multiple bullets and a fireball (if underground) or laser saber (if above ground). But, the trade off is that your mech is larger making it an easier target for enemy fire. For each add on it takes an extra hit for you to die. If your mech is fully built it will take 3 hits to kill you and usually if you are hit and lose your legs or torso you can find another again before dying. One hit and you are dead With the leg attachment you now get two hits With the head and leg attachment you can take 3 hits before dying and shoots 3x as many bullets. Arcade I didn’t care to do much research on the arcade game the NES game was ported from. But, I did a quick Google search and it appears that the graphics are much better than I would have expected. This is another reason I’m let down by the NES port, it’s like they didn’t even try to make it pretty. Even with the grainy screenshot I found online the arcade version looks much better. Final Thoughts There isn’t much to Magmax. I was surprised at how let down I was by the game even though for once the awesome box art gave an accurate representation of what you actually do in the game. The NES has 2 buttons, but both shoot your gun, the designers could have easily added a secondary gun, a bomb that cleared the screen of all enemies or some other feature. But, the designers chose to do the bare minimum to make a playable game. It is playable, but after 15 minutes you will seen everything the game has to offer. View the full article

Genre: Platform Publisher: Seta Total time played: 3 Hours Short review: A very simple platform game with horrible graphics, one hit deaths, no link to the reference material and no depth. Interesting links related to Adventures of Tom Sawyer Speedrun (10min 25sec) Soundtrack Video Review (Under the Radar Games) My First Time The summer when I was 15 years old I set a goal to beat every NES game I owned. I decided I would beat games in alphabetical order. The first game alphabetically that I owned at the time was Adventure of Tom Sawyer. My brothers friend Eric game me this game (per notes on an old spreadsheet I found). But, I never remember any of my other friends owning it, mentioning it or even seeing it at the video store. I’m pretty sure Seta decided to make the game in hopes that parents would buy it since it was based on a classic novel it must be an educational game. I was less patient at 15 than I am now. I played the game for 10 minutes and decided it was too hard because I couldn’t even beat the first stage. The graphics were awful and even though the controls were fine, the one hit kills made it not worth playing. I ended up shelving the game and my dream of alphabetically beating every game and went back to playing Final Fantasy VII and Bottom of the Ninth ’97 on Playstation 1. 20 Years Later I’m not sure why I decided to give this game another shot. I don’t really have a rhyme or reason for the order I’m playing these games. I apparently am much more patient now than I was back then because very quickly I was able to learn the enemy patterns and slowly progress my way through all the stages. As I got deeper into the game I noticed some weird inconsistencies. The first stage has horribly plain graphics but the last stage looks like a decent NES game and most of the bosses are pretty impressive looking. I also expected at some point for there to be a bonus game or a secret hidden in a stage but I never found it. Graphics don’t get much more plain that this. Source Material If I have ever read Adventures of Tom Sawyer I don’t remember it. I’ve seen the movie with Jonathan Taylor Thomas (or was that Huck Finn?). Even though I haven’t read the book I am familiar with the source material because it is almost common knowledge. The games stages put you on a pirate ship, rafting down the river, in the clouds, in a cave and even a haunted mansion. There is decent variety in level design but the graphics just are never impressive. The enemies throughout the game feature pirates, lobsters, a giant crocodile, bats, birds, a giant mouse, a giant octopus, a pink gorilla, flying fire breathing dragons and an Indian on a dinosaur. I’m 100% positive the book featured none of that nonsense. How to Play The controls are simple, A jumps and B throws rocks in a small arc. Throughout the level you can either jump over enemies or hit them with a rock. With the exception of the mini-bosses and the end of stage bosses every single enemy is killed with one hit. There are 3 item drops that are possible when you kill an enemy: A square block with a T in it – If you collect enough of these I think you get an extra man, I never collected enough. But, as the game has unlimited continues and the levels are pretty short I never missed the extra lives. A square block with a skull in it – This takes your T count back down to 0. Again, not a big deal. Slingshot – The slingshot gives you a short window where your projectiles are fired straight out in front of you instead of in an arc. Since every enemy dies with one hit and you get used to the arc shot that you have it most of the time there was really no advantage to this. Final Thoughts The game is very frustrating but the enemies spawn in exactly the same place every time allowing you to beat the game by memorizing the levels. Since there is hardly any depth and pretty ugly graphics there aren’t many reasons to play the game. However, the controls are pretty tight so it isn’t as bad as some other games on the system. I doubt there is a game based on an intellectual property that has less to do with the source material though. View the full article

Genre: Action, Arcade Publisher: Acclaim Total time played: 1.5 Hours Short review: A very respectable port of a brutally violent arcade classic full of memorable sleazy bad guys. But, all the violence and gore is negated to parents of kids who played the game because you are a police officer killing drug dealers. Interesting links related to N.A.R.C. Speedrun – no death (11min 17sec) Soundtrack N.A.R.C. “explosive tips” video Arcade playthrough My First Time My cousin Chris rented this game and invited me over to play it shortly after it was released. It was the first truly violent video game I had ever played. As a side note, Chris is also the person who introduced me to Mortal Kombat a few years later when he found the arcade cabinet at a gas station in the back of our neighborhood. Chris and I spent hours trying to beat N.A.R.C. We both loved how crazy looking the bad guys were and loved the rocket launcher that blew them to bits all over the screen. We eventually got to the final boss, Mr. Big. No matter what we did we couldn’t beat him. We even used the game genie and were unsuccessful, no matter how many bullets or rockets you hit him with he wouldn’t die. A few years later, Stephen, a high school classmate traded me his copy of N.A.R.C. for the Green Day album Kerplunk that I bought after falling in love with with the album, Dookie. I ended up not liking Kerplunk at all so had no issues trading the album to relive the sweet memories of blowing up drug dealers. How to play N.A.R.C. was originally an arcade game and the NES port is spot on (with worse graphics). The game was originally meant to suck quarters so be prepared to die a lot, this is what I would call a bullet hell shooter. The point of the game is to move to the exit of each stage without dying while busting bad guys. Along the way you will encounter a colorful list of characters who want to kill you. You must stop them by any means possible: shoot to kill – use either your machine gun or rocket launcher to blow away the baddies. When you kill the enemies they will sometimes drop items which include: Machine gun ammo Rocket Launcher ammo money drugs The first two item drops are pretty self explanatory, more bullets for shootin’. The drugs and money are points that are tallied at the end of each stage. This is where strategy comes into the game. You will get 1,000 points for each pile of money collected throughout the stage and 2,000 points for each pile of drugs. To earn an extra life you need to gain 100,000 points. The game starts you off with 3 lives and there are no continues so strategizing to get the most points out of each stage is a must. There is one other way to take out some bad guys. You can “bust” them. This involves walking right up to them and just standing over top of them, after a couple of seconds you have arrested the bad guy and earned 5,000 points. What this means is 20 busts equals 1 extra life. There are plusses and minuses for busting enemies. The major plus is that you get 5,000 points for each bust making this a necessity to stay alive in the later stages. The negatives are that the enemies you bust never drop extra ammo for your weapons which you will need to take down enemies that you can’t bust. Also, because you have to get up close and personal to bust an enemy it makes it riskier and you will get shot a lot. For me, the secret was to bust 80 guys on the first level to earn a 4 extra lives on the easiest stage with only 1 enemy type to worry about. From then on I just ran through the stages trying not to die. One last thing, most of the stages require a key card to exit. The key card is randomly dropped by an enemy on the stage. You can only get the card by shooting the enemy. Luckily the enemy tends to drop the card in about the same place in each stage but sometimes you might need to kill 20 or more people to have him drop the card. Controls Walk – Use the D-Pad to move left and right and up and down around the mean streets of whatever city you are supposed to be in. Jump – double tap the B button. Jumping is really only needed in stage 3 to get past the dumpsters blocking the road, but I also jumped around a lot as I found it was harder for the bad guys to shoot me if I moved in crazy patterns and jumped constantly. Duck – hold the B button to duck. This comes in handy when you are attacked by dogs, the only way to kill them is to duck and shoot. Don’t worry, they don’t really die, they turn into puppies and run away. Machine Gun – hold the A button to shoot your machine gun. Most enemies can be killed rather quickly this way. Rocket Launcher – tap the A button. This is the gun that made me fall in love with this game. Some of the enemies will literally explode into body parts when hit with the rocket launcher. Since this weapon is so powerful the ammo isn’t that plentiful. Let’s meet the bad guys Level 1 – Das Lof Gang Members (left – NES) (right – Arcade) Weapon – Shotgun Can be busted These guys walk around hunched over with a trench coat. Every few seconds they open the coat and shoot a shotgun that was hidden inside. These guys are the most common enemy in the game and the easiest to bust or kill. Level 2 – Dr. Spike Rush (left – NES) (right – Arcade) Weapon – giant needle Can be busted In level 2 you meet Dr. Spike Rush who is wearing a black leather jump suit and shoots giant needles at you. If the needle hits you it is going to drain a good portion of your health. The closer you stand to this guy the less likely he will be able to hit you with his needle. Level 3 – Joe Rockhead (left – NES) (right – Arcade) Weapon – crazy hand to hand combat Cannot be busted Level 3 introduces you to Joe Rockhead aka Joe Crackhead (I’m sure Nintendo made them tone down the name). Mr. Rockhead is fast and large and if he touches you prepare for a beat down. You can blow him away with a rocket launcher (although he doesn’t explode) or shoot him with multiple machine gun bullets. This guy is tough, I usually just outrun him. Level 4 – Kinky Pinky (left – NES) (right – Arcade) Weapon – knife Cannot be busted Kinky Pinky is fast and if he gets too close you will be stabbed over and over until you are dead. He will take multiple machine gun shots or one rocket launcher hit. Level 5 – Sergeant Sky High (left – NES) (right – Arcade) Weapon – gun and flamethrower Cannot be busted This guy runs full speed in a straight line across the screen. Usually he appears so fast he is hard to dodge but if he happens to appear at the top of the screen when you are at the bottom there is no fear of getting injured as he will just blindly run across and off screen in a matter of seconds. Level 6 – Mr. Big Henchman (left – NES) (right – Arcade) Weapon – guns Can be busted These guys appear in large number, run erratically around the screen and shoot pretty much non-stop. On top of that they take a bit longer to bust. Level 7 – Mr. Big (left – NES) (right – Arcade) Weapon – wheelchair, guns, tongues (yes, really), flames, skeleton head Cannot be busted This is the final boss in the game. After knocking him out of his wheelchair with 3 rocket launcher blasts you fight just his head. This is a tough fight. You must knock both the sunglasses and hat off of Mr. Big’s head to reveal his true form. To accomplish this you must jump and as you are falling back to the ground time a rocket launcher shot to hit Mr. Big’s glasses and hat. I’m not sure how many shots it takes to do this, it may be one perfect shot but I never experienced that. Mr. Big will turn into a skeleton with a long spine once his hat and glasses are gone. Luckily the skeleton doesn’t shoot projectiles. This part is really easy if you know what you are doing and really hard if you don’t. I can’t tell you how many times I made it this far only to run out of bullets and had to kill myself and start over. Stand with your feet just slightly above the bottom line of the tiles on the top row of the floor. When the skeleton head swings down to be at its lowest point shoot your machine gun. From what I can tell you have to shoot the top of each vertebrae of the spine to kill it. Once all vertebrae are gone Mr. Big is dead. Fun backgrounds Throughout the game you run across some amusing backgrounds. Here are a couple of my favorites: Adult Books XXX – Kinky Pinky’s Theater – Hotel Le Snob Conclusion Even though there was only one boss in the game the colorful cast of characters and varied enemies in each stage mixed with the hilarious back drop of the slums makes this game a riot to play. The fast paced action of an arcade shooter mixed with the mild strategy of collecting points for extra lives while trying to stay alive makes this a great 1 or 2 player game. It is probably partially the nostalgia talking but I liked this a lot more than I expected. View the full article

Genre: Educational Publisher: Konami Total time played: 10 minutes Short review: Tiny Toon Cartoon Workshop really tried to make something unique and give kids the ability to make their own cartoons. Unfortunately the NES limitations and unintuitive controls make it virtually unplayable. Interesting links related to Tiny Toons Cartoon Workshop Soundtrack Gameplay Footage A completed cartoon by HexenDarkside “Murder In The ACME Woods” My video attempt to play this “game” Not good in 2017 – or ever I was always intrigued by games that let you design your own game. Games like RPG Maker, Little Big Planet, Minecraft, Super Mario Maker and probably some others I’m forgetting. But, all of those games have one thing in common…I’ve never actually played them. The idea sounds great in theory but “ain’t nobody got time for that”. I barely have enough time to play games that other people make. So, I always shy away from these games because I’m afraid I would like them too much and lose several hundred hours of free time that I don’t have making something that isn’t as good as what a game making professional can make. All that aside, I decided to give Cartoon Workshop a try because it is on the NES and I’m determined to play everything on the system. It has been sitting on my shelf collecting dust (a lot of dust and gunk too) for years. In fact, whoever I got the game from must have been a slob. It took about a dozen q-tips to clean it well enough to get it to play in the NES, and it took another 5 minutes of wiggling around and blowing to get it to play even after a thorough cleaning (and if you watch my video play through you will see that even after all of that the game is still dirty and froze up on its own). How to play This isn’t a game maker, it is a cartoon maker. You choose 2 characters, each doing a small handful of actions and place them on a back drop. You then give each character motion, add some pre-scripted text, sound effects and music and watch your masterpiece. As a young kid in the 90’s, before the internet, before smart phones, before HDTV, before YouTube, before affordable intuitive editing software and every household with a computer Cartoon Workshop may have been a decent experience. Controls I can’t really go into much detail on the controls because in my short play session I never really got a good handle on them. Basically, you click around until you figure something out, realize it would have been easier if the controls were programmed differently and then giving up. What changes would I have made? At the top of the screen are your controls. The first option is to choose character 1, then you select your scene. But, if you select your scene it gives you a warning that changing your scene will erase your progress. So, why not have you pick what scene you want on a previous screen and then not give you the option to accidentally erase all of your work while you are still working? Also, this would clear up more screen real estate for other options. Second, give the ability for the creator to type their own text bubbles. I understand why Nintendo probably didn’t want this option, kids would type cuss words and make Tiny Toons characters say/do things that neither Warner Bros or Nintendo would approve of. But, this game came out pre-internet, so who would have seen it? You may have shared your naughty cartoon with 4 friends but it would not have been enough to tarnish the name of the cartoon company. However, in retrospect this was probably a smart move because the internet does exist. Third, have all of the controls on screen at all times and make them consistent. I feel like sometimes B did something under one setting that A did under another setting. In my short time with the game I never felt comfortable doing anything. Fourth, add the ability to save cartoons. This was always my gripe with Mario Paint as well. Why not splurge and add a battery backup so after spending 2 hours making a masterpiece you can save it and show your friends? I realize in this day and age that isn’t as big of a concern, but in the 90’s unless you were really tech savvy you would have had no way to save your work. Conclusion Is it bad? Yes, very. But, some of that has to do with the fact that I’m not a child stuck at home with no other entertainment. I played this knowing that much better examples of the same type of application exist. But, if I had played it years ago I probably could have had a weekends worth of fun with it. I give it an A for effort and originality which is why I rated it 1 heart and not 1/2 a heart View the full article

Genre: Platform Publisher: Konami Total time played: 2 hours Short review: A sad followup to a decent NES game that has more in common with Adventures in the Magic Kingdom than Tiny Toons. Interesting links related to Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Trouble In Wackyland Soundtrack Video Review (Brotherhood of Gaming) Tool Assisted Speedrun (13min 13sec) An unneeded sub-par sequel When I was a kid I played the Tiny Toons NES game quite a bit and really enjoyed it. Revisiting it as an adult I really didn’t care for it that much. But, somehow I never realized that a sequel had even been released. It came out in 1993 and I had moved on to Sega Genesis and was probably obsessing over Mortal Kombat at the time. Finally, 24 years later, I decided to give it a shot. It is like the game designers took everything good about the first game and removed it. All that is left is a shell, a game with only 5 levels and no way to change characters. How to play The game has just as much in common with Adventures in the Magic Kingdom as it does with the original Tiny Toons. The game starts off with a level select screen that looks like a theme park map and you are tasked with “riding” four different rides. If you can finish the ride you get a golden ticket. Getting 4 golden tickets gives you the ability to enter the castle at the center of the park. The one feature of the game I kind of like is that the points you collect on each level can be traded in at the ticket gate for extra tickets. This is essentialy your lives. You start off with 10 tickets and each ride costs a different number of tickets to ride. If you run out of tickets and you don’t have enough points to buy more tickets it is game over. Of course there are continues, so it isn’t truly game over. Also, once you get all four golden tickets and reach the final stage there is no more need for tickets meaning you can try the final level 100 times and never get a game over. Unfortunately none of the levels feature a checkpoint meaning that if you die you must start at the beginning every single time. Most of the levels can be beaten in under 2 minutes, but if you make it 1 minute and 59 seconds into the level and die you have to play the entire thing again. Each stage features 3 ways to die: Falling into a hole Getting hit 3 times without picking up a heart which restores one hit point. Running out of time (this is only an issue on the bumper cars and final stage as the other 3 are all self scrolling stages.) Choose your stage Level by level Rollercoaster – Cost to ride – 4 tickets – Play as Babs In this level you ride a “roller coaster” through a bunch of obstacles that require you to jump, duck and even hang upside down from the roller coaster cart. Be prepared to play this level a lot as there is a lot of trial, error and memorization needed to reach the end. Train – Cost – 2 tickets – Play as Hampton This is probably the easiest of the games levels. Basically you move left to right on top of a train car while jumping over signs, ducking under tunnel entrances and hitting birds or bad guys that come your way by tapping B and lunging into them belly first. Other than the final level this is the only one that features a boss. The boss is a dog who pops out of holes in the front of the train. In order to beat him you must bop him with your belly a few times before he punches you to death (it sounds more violent than it is). Log Flume – Cost – 3 tickets – Play as Furball This level is very similar to the roller coaster level. But, now you are riding on a log through water instead of hanging from a roller coaster track. The level is slightly easier than the roller coaster level because you don’t have the option to hang upside down giving you one less move to have to consider when avoiding obstacles. Bumper Cars – Cost – 1 ticket – Play as Plucky A top down view of a small bumper car arena that has bumpers that bounce you around like in a game of pinball. There are 3 different arenas where you must knock two opponents into the small hole into the floor before they knock you in the hole 3 times. There isn’t much strategy involved, I found just brute force and button mashing got me through this stage pretty quickly. Funhouse – Cost – 50 regular tickets or 4 golden tickets – Play as Buster Like most NES games the final level is the hardest in the game. This one required me to look up how to beat it online, but not for the normal reason you would expect in a maze level. There are several different sections of this level all involving platforming. The goal is to jump over holes, kill the bad guys, walk through the maze of doors and walk on both the floor and ceiling until you find the end. There was one specific spot that I could not get past. I was on the ceiling and there was a wall in front of me that I could not jump over and the gap at the bottom was too small to walk under. Halfway there. Now to run and slide again. I didn’t realize that holding B while walking allowed you to run, the reason I didn’t know this is because I was 95% of the way through the game and I had never needed the feature. Once I figured this out I was able to run and slide under the small gap at the bottom of the wall to progress. This was pretty tough as I was on the ceiling but the down arrow on the controller still made me duck, it just wasn’t intuitive. Once you finally get through the maze you come to a room with your secret admirer, Elmira. You must jump across small ledges above her to the door on the opposite side of the room. If you fall she will smother you with kisses, but she does not take away a heart like every other enemy in the game, she takes 10 seconds off of the game clock. This is the only stage I ever ran out of time on and I did it more than once. The key is to just not touch Elmira. I figured getting passed her was the end of the level, but there was still quite a bit to go. Luckily, no more mazes. After finally getting through the entire level which took more time than all of the other stages combined (because I kept dying) I reached the final boss, Montana Max. Max rides in a blimp and throws bombs that you must kick back into him. It takes 5 hits to beat him and luckily I did it on my first try because I was sick of playing the final stage. Final Thoughts While this is not a good game I can’t fault the controls or the graphics. There are some good ideas that just weren’t completely fleshed out. If there had been twice as many levels, the ability to play as whatever character you wanted and some of the longer stages had checkpoints this would have been a great game. But, I rated it 3.5 hearts because it felt like the game designers were being lazy and it isn’t one that has a lot of replay value. View the full article

Genre: Sports – Baseball Publisher: Culture Brain Total time played: 3 hours Short review: An arcade style baseball game with stat tracking and super powers and one of my favorite sports games on the NES. Interesting links related to Baseball Simulator 1.000 Soundtrack Video Review (CGRUndertwo) Written Review (Nintendo Legend) The First Great Baseball Game on the NES Each sport has a standout game on the NES. Football has Tecmo Bowl, Soccer has Nintendo World Cup, basketball has Double Dribble, hockey has Blades of Steel. Baseball not only has more games on the NES than any sport (20 games) but also is the only sports game where there isn’t one standout. Some people say RBI Baseball is the best, others say Baseball Stars, some like the arcade wackiness of Base Wars and then there is me who thinks Baseball Simulator 1.000 is the best of the bunch. The most fun I’ve had playing against friends My brother and I would rent this game constantly and the two of us and my friend Nathan would take turns playing against each other all summer long. This isn’t your typical baseball game as it features the “Ultra” league where the players on each team have super powers. Using the super moves in a two player game is so rewarding. If you are pitching and the bases are loaded it is so satisfying to use a super pitch and guarantee that no runs are scored. It is basically like telling your friend “screw you buddy”. If you are batting and use a super move you are almost guaranteed to get on base. Something about the timing of using the super moves in a two player game is so much fun. Tell me more about these super moves Each team in the ultra league starts off each game with a certain number of points (around 120). Each time a super move is used your point total decreases by a few points. There is no way to replenish the points during a game so the timing of using the points has to be strategic. If you use them all in the first half of the game you are probably going to jump out to a big lead but if your opponent doesn’t do the same then the second half of the game is going to be tough. If both the batter and pitcher use a super move on the same pitch a lot of times it is a wash and no one gains an advantage. Each player on a team has pre-determined moves. Some of the moves are as follows: Batting If you hit a popup several shadows of the ball appear making it hard to determine where the real ball is. If you hit a popup the balls shadows moves quickly in a large circle making it hard to see where the ball will land. A line drive that will push anyone in its way all the way back to outfield wall. A bomb that causes an explosion when the ball lands knocking out anyone in its path. A Tasmanian devil move where the batter spins quickly in a circle creating much more power when the ball is hit. Pitching Pitch 3 balls at once making it hard to know which is the real ball. Throw a super fast ball up to 137mph (at least that was the fastest I saw) Throw a ball that is solid black and dense causing the batters bat to break Stop pitch, hit A to pitch and A again to pause the ball halfway to the plate, basically a guaranteed strike. Fielding A super jump where the fielder jumps 100 feet in the air to rob a homerun (I never successfully used this move). Statistic tracking This game features statistic tracking over a season making it rewarding to see how your players rank in homeruns, RBIs and batting average compared to other teams. The stat tracking is very basic and only major categories are tracked but it is much better than other games from the same period. I think Baseball Stars offered a deeper statistics tracking experience but I still find this game more fun (at least from a nostalgic point of view). Season Play This is the first time I played a season as usually it was just my friends and I playing one off two player games. You have the option to play a season with as few as 5 games or as many as 165. After playing the 5 season game I can almost guarantee only crazy people could play 165 games season due to one major gaming flaw. Playing the season you choose the league you want to play, I chose the ultra league as I wanted the ability to use the super powers while playing. The other leagues do not allow the use of the super powers. The Ultra League features 6 teams, you play each team one time during the season and then the top two teams play in the equivalent of the World Series. But, you have to either watch or simulate every single game played by every single team. In a 5 game season with 6 teams that means you have to simulate 2 games for every 1 game you play. This isn’t the only game that requires simulation of CPU vs. CPU games but I would venture to say it is the slowest simulation of any game ever. A game takes around 20-25 minutes to play, a simulation takes 10-12 minutes. That means after playing a game you have to simulate 2 games that when combined are just as long as a playing a game. I would usually play on my phone until the simulations were done. I can’t imagine having to simulate games for every team during a 165 game season. Simple math tells me you would spend close to 70 hours watching the scoreboard update a half inning at a time for teams that aren’t you in simulation mode. That means you could beat most RPG’s in the time it would take to simulate baseball games that you aren’t playing. You are looking at close to 150 hours to beat a full season in this game, no thanks. I also quickly found out that during a season playing against the computer the super moves didn’t really give me any advantage and I found it kind of annoying. Turns out what makes the super moves so much fun is screwing over your friends, the computer doesn’t react the same way which takes away the joy. Attention to detail The game features a lot of little things that make it great: The pitchers breath hard and start to sweat as they get tired letting you know it is time for a substitution. (But, they tire out very quickly, sometimes I’d throw 10 pitches and the pitcher would be worn out.) If a runner is on bases the pitcher will do a couple of head fakes and look at the base where the runner is before pitching the ball. There are 6 distinct stadiums, each with advantages and disadvantages. The most fun is the outer space stadium where the gravity is absent meaning you will hit way more homeruns. Unfortunately, during my short season I never once played in space. If you hit the scoreboard with a homerun it breaks a hole in the scoreboard. After hitting a homerun the music changes to the “rally” music heard so often at baseball stadiums around the country. When in the field your fielder will look up and hold up his glove to show you that you are in the perfect position to catch a pop fly. If you are ahead by 10 runs the game ends in a mercy rule. I experienced this quite a bit as a kid playing with friends but playing the computer I never was lucky enough to be ahead by so much to have a game end early. My team I’m sure at some point as a child me, my brother and my friend Nathan played as every team looking for the best. But, I can only ever remember playing as HE (the teams don’t have full names). The HE team’s logo is a baseball with a face on it. There were two reasons: The leadoff batter Boyd is the fastest player in the game. If you bunt the ball you are guaranteed a double. You cannot be thrown out stealing bases. If you hit a pop fly that isn’t caught or hit a line drive that goes to the wall you can get an inside the park homerun every time. As kids we always said “Boyd is truckin’ around the bases.” Of all the memories I have of this game saying the word “truckin'” in response to Boyd’s speed is the strongest. The 5th batter Bret hit 14 homeruns in my 5 game season. If you make contact with the ball you are knocking it out of the park. Bret is more dominate in this game than Bo Jackson is in Tecmo Bowl. Final thoughts The game isn’t nearly as fun playing one player and the impossibly slow simulation makes playing a season not worth it. But, the attention to detail, fast arcade action and nostalgic memories of screwing over my brother by throwing the STOP pitch makes this game a must play. If I was rating solely on two player play it would be a full 8 heart game, but as you won’t always have a friend to play with I dropped it down to 6 hearts due to the less than stellar one player action. If you get a chance to play two players may I suggest playing as the HE team and setting the game in outer space. That is a guaranteed good time. I have marked all of the players on my team with a blue dot. View the full article

Genre: Platform – Puzzle Publisher: Kemco Total time played: 2 hours Short review: A simple puzzle game spread across 60 levels where the goal is to collect the carrots and not touch Sylvester, Wile-E-Coyote, Daffy Duck or Yosemite Sam. Interesting links related to The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle Soundtrack Speedrun (Tool Assisted by Brandon Evans in 40min50sec) Video Review (Angry Video Game Nerd) Can I compare this game to Pac-Man? While playing through this game I kept thinking to myself that it was fairly similar to Pac-Man. Each level consists of a room full of stairs and doorways (maze in Pac-Man). There are carrots scattered around the room (pellets in Pac-Man) that you must collect and there are bad guys in the form of Looney Tunes characters (ghosts in Pac-Man) that you must avoid. If you touch a bad guy you lose a life and have to start the level over. If you collect all the carrots you move on to the next level and receive an extra life. The game is kind of a puzzle game and kind of a cat and mouse game. I need to get that carrot without touching those bad guys. How to Play Stairs – hit up to go up the stairs, hit down to go down the stairs. Doorways – There are two doorways in the game, one door which appears to have a set of stairs inside of it and one that is just a black opening. These stairwells connect, if you hit up on the door with the stairs you will go inside and appear in the door that is all black. If you hit down on the black door you appear in the doorway with the stairs. Pipes – These work exactly the same as the doorways, up goes up a pipe and down goes down a pipe. The difference is, to know where the pipe leads you have to follow the pipe path on the screen. Carrot Juice – a small bottle that makes you invincible for a short time. If you run into a bad guy when you are invincible they fall over and disappear. Boxing glove – If you pick up a boxing glove you tap the B button to shoot it across the stage in front of you. If it comes into contact with a bad guy he falls over and disappears. Anvil, box, safe – These items can be pushed into an enemy or pushed off a ledge onto an enemy, either way the enemy falls over and disappears. Carrot with a circle and slash – this is a tricky item. When you pick it up it appears Bugs dies, but he is taken to a bonus level. If you complete the bonus level you receive 3 extra lives, if you fail the bonus level (which I almost always did) you are taken back 3 levels in the game. Level Design There isn’t a lot of variety in this game (really only 2 level designs), but as the levels are all very short I still enjoyed playing as every 2-3 minutes I made tangible progress towards the final stage (level 60). The only two different looks you get throughout the 60 levels. One Major Flaw The one major flaw of the game is the control. Bugs continues to move after you stop hitting the right/left button. If you begin going down stairs and realize that you are going to bump into Sylvester at the bottom you can’t turn around and go back up the stairs. If you are trying not to walk off of a ledge you better gently tap the directional buttons because if you hold them down and then let go you are going to move about 2-3 steps before Bugs finally stops. The game was easy enough that this never really became an issue but if the game had been 10% harder it would have been controller throw annoying. The superior Bugs Bunny game Even though Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout offers more variety in gameplay (barely), is longer and has more characters it features an infuriating refresh rate that makes playing it almost vomit inducing. The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle has a very smooth refresh rate and is easy on the eyes. Even though the game doesn’t have much variety or challenge it is a simple game that is moderately fun. I would almost go as far as to say it is slightly educational as you have to think about the path you need to take in each level. Most levels you can do it in one try but a few are like chess games where you need to think a minute. Of course, the game has unlimited continues and you start on the stage you died on so there really isn’t a penalty for messing up. I put off playing this game because 60 stages sounded daunting, but the stages are short and fairly easy so I plowed through this slightly better than average game in just 3 sittings of around 40 minutes each. I’ve got to give a shout out to Arnpoly at www.takeontheneslibrary.com who gave me the suggestion to play this game. Life has gotten hectic recently and I haven’t had much time to devote to the NES, this game was able to be played in small doses so it didn’t interfere much with my day to day activities. View the full article

Genre: Sports Publisher: Tecmo Total time played: 5 hours Short review: Considered to be the first great sports game on the NES and the first to feature real teams and players. Fast paced arcade action that is easy to learn and hard to master. Interesting links related to Tecmo Bowl Gameplay Footage Soundtrack Video Review (PatTheNESPunk) All I know about Football… Growing up I was a huge baseball fan and got into basketball during the Dream Team NBA/Olympics era but I was never really into football. I put off playing Tecmo Bowl for a long time and when I finally did I was blown away. What I realized playing through the game this week is that almost all I know about football I learned from this game. I understand the down system, the extra point, the punt return, the field goals and the kickoff. I have picked up a few other football rules over the years watching the Super Bowl (which I usually watch for the commercials) but 90% of my football knowledge comes from Tecmo Bowl. Tecmo Bowl is probably my favorite sports game on the system (not counting Mike Tyson’s Punch Out as a sports game since it is more of a rhythm game). When I played Tecmo Bowl it was usually with friends and I usually lost but it was so much fun I didn’t care. If I did play the game 1-player I would play a game or two and turn it off. It wasn’t until now that I actually played through the entire game where you must beat each team once to win the Tecmo Bowl. Pick A Team Anyone who has ever played this game knows one team is better than all the others, the L.A. Raiders. Bo Jackson is the best player in the game and also one of the most impressive athletes in human history. Seriously, the 30 for 30 ESPN film on him is jaw dropping. At first I felt like I was cheating because if Bo broke through the defense he could pretty much run for a touchdown every time. But, as I got farther in the game the defense got better, stronger and faster and I realized if it weren’t for Bo Jackson I wouldn’t have been able to beat the game. How to Play Tecmo Bowl is to football what NBA Jam is to basketball. Some of the rules are there but anything that may slow the game down was not added. There is no pre-game coin toss, the human player always receives the kickoff in the first quarter and the CPU player always receives it in the 3rd quarter. There are no fumbles There is no 2-point conversion. There are only 9 players on each team and whichever you select before each play is the only one you can control during the play. The clock stops after each play which leads the 1:30 quarters last for up to 5 minutes. Some plays only last 1 second. After each play you are taken to a screen with 4 plays, usually 2 running plays and 2 passing plays Select the button combination for the play you want. When both teams have selected the play the action begins. The offensive team will hike the ball with the A button and the team will automatically move into formation of whichever play was selected. If the computer team picks the same play as you do they will get through the defense and sack the quarterback. Since there are only 4 plays that means the defense has a 25% chance for a sack on each play. While running with the ball if you tap the A button it will help ward off would be tacklers. Bo Jackson can always push a defensive player off that tries to tackle him, he will only go down if two or more players tackle him at once. My Strategy Since there are no fumbles in the game I used running plays about 95% of the time. The other 5% I would try a passing play which almost always ended in throwing an interception. So, instead of the 4 plays you have to choose from I only ran the 2 running plays. A human player would have easily figured this out giving them a 50% chance to blitz my quarterback each play, but the computer player never caught onto my strategy. Of the dozens of touchdowns I scored I would guess Bo Jackson scored all but 3-4, which were scored by Marcus Allen. On defense I almost always selected a passing play so my team would be in formation to sack the quarterback if he tried to pass and if not I could use the one player I controlled to hunt down and tackle whoever held the ball. I didn’t figure this strategy out until mid-way through the season and when I did the game got a lot easier. As there are no fumbles the only chance to stop the opposing team was to blitz them 4 times before they made it 10 yards to get a first down or to intercept the ball. Using my strategy I would get 3-4 interceptions per game and as I never used passing plays I never gave up any interceptions. I also never kicked a field goal and the only time I did a punt kick is when I selected “UP+A” for my Bo Jackson running play on 4th down before selecting “cancel” on the field goal/punt options. As far as kicking extra points I probably only missed 3 the entire game, and the reason was that the defense broke through and stopped me. I actually think it may be impossible to miss the kick otherwise. I never did get a handle on stopping the other team from kicking an extra point. I always would select a player in the back of the defensive formation and had no issue breaking through and reaching the kicker but most of the time he still kicked the ball and scored the point. Luckily, these extra points never decided a game for me. Difficulty The first few games were a piece of cake and then the computer players all got faster, dove and slid longer distances and seemed to pick the same play as me more than the 25% chance that should have been. I found teams that had 3 passing plays were easier to defeat as I had a chance to intercept a pass 75% of the time. I lost a few games but unlimited continues and a password system made progressing forward much less time consuming. If I were forced to win all games in a row without losing a single game you wouldn’t be reading this blog right now, if ever, as I would have given up. The two teams that gave me the most trouble were Denver and New York. I’m not sure if it was due to the point in the season I faced them, if I played them before solidifying my strategy or if they were just good teams. Interesting Observations I think of the NES as a very kid/family friendly system. Somehow the provocative shots of cheerleaders shown during halftime made it through the censors. Since I spent so much time scoring touchdowns with Bo Jackson I saw the short animation of two players high giving after scoring. Why wouldn’t they show the guy who scored the touchdown celebrating? Final Thoughts Personally, I like this game more than its superior sequel, Tecmo Super Bowl. Because this game has fewer plays to select and features less authentic action I find it easier to play. You won’t find a male from 30-40 years old who doesn’t have fond memories of playing this game. It is one of the few games that can be liked by sports fans and non-sports fans alike. A look at each game of the season (minus the Tecmo Bowl which I won 40-20 against the Miami Dolphins. The score flashed so quick I didn’t get to snap a photo): View the full article

Genre: Action Publisher: Capcom Total time played: 3 hours Short review: The sequel to G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero that features more complex gameplay mechanics and level structure and never quite captures the magic of the original Interesting links related to G.I. Joe: The Atlantis Factor Speedrun (9minutes 50seconds) Speedrun (tool assisted) (7minutes 15 seconds) Soundtrack Video Review (Classic Game Room) Video Review (Haruokay) Game walkthrough (wish I had seen this before I played) My History Like most kids who grew up in the 1980’s I lived and breathed G.I. Joe for a few years. I used to watch the cartoon (along with The Real Ghostbusters) every morning before school. I had dozens of the action figures and would take them to friends houses and play with them every weekend. I even turned my room into an obstacle course full of zip lines made of yarn at one point. But then, I out grew G.I. Joe and ended up selling all my action figures at a yard sale for probably a quarter each. The original NES game has always been one of my favorites and I even prefer G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero to Contra. I also find that the original has some of the best music on the system, so much so that I once recorded the music on a cassette tape by holding a cheap microphone to my TV so I could listen to the music while I was out on my paper route. Fast forward to 2003, it was my senior year of college and I moved into a house with 5 roommates, 4 of which I had been friends with for years and one guy i had never met who was a classmate of one of my other roommates. His name was Wes, and living with him exposed me to two NES related things I had never seen before. Wes owned a top loader NES which was the first one I had ever seen. In fact, to this day, I still don’t own one. He had the sequel to one of my all-time favorite games, a sequel I didn’t know existed, G.I. Joe: The Atlantis Factor. I remember being so excited I couldn’t contain myself. I immediately popped the game into Wes’ top loader and turned it on. I played the first level and it seemed like the game was going to be just as awesome as the original. That is until I got to the mini-boss with the sledge hammer about 2 minutes into the game. No matter what I did I couldn’t beat him. Keep in mine this was pre-YouTube so I couldn’t watch others play the game. After a dozen or so attempts I gave up and decided that the sequel was too hard. After a year of living together Wes and I parted ways for a few years until he ended up moving in with me post college for a bit. This time, when he moved out to get married he gave me his copy of this game and that is the copy I played today. How to Play The game is pretty straight forward. Choose a stage, reach the end and fight a boss or collect a radio. When you defeat a boss you earn another playable character. If you find a radio you earn the ability to call a sub-character to either revive a dead character, re-fill ammo or re-fill your health. Each character starts off with a punch and a gun. You can alternate between them by pressing the Select button. When you defeat an enemy they will usually drop an item that may include: POW – collect 4 of these to level up the selected weapon. Each weapon maxes out at level 4, meaning 16 POW blocks will max out your weapon. Bullet – refills ammo K – refills a bit of health Chevron – extends your life bar and refills your health. As you progress through the game you earn new weapons including missiles, laser and other guns. Each of these can be leveled up as well. The strongest weapon in the game is the laser, but it uses 4 bullets per time fired meaning it doesn’t last long. The levels are fairly varied, the most common being the “move left to right, fight a mini boss and then fight the boss”. Other stages have you rescuing hostages or placing bombs. Some stages do not have a boss, and when you reach the end you collect a radio. Watch out, if you get a game over you lose all of your collected radios and you can’t go back and collect them again meaning you can’t call your sub-character to help you out. Map screen with helpful numbers added The above image is the map screen where you select your path to victory. The path I took was 1 – 2 – 6 – 11 -13 -16. By the end of the game I had amassed 3 radios and 3 playable characters (General Hawk, Wet Suit and Duke). I got Duke pretty close to the end and he wasn’t leveled up at all. Both Hawk and Wet Suit were close to max level on every weapon and had the maximum amount of health. My strategy was using Wet Suit throughout each stage and switching to General Hawk for the mini-boss/boss fights as he would have a full health bar. One of my issues with the game was that I didn’t even see half of it. Since I took the shortest path to the end I had no reason to play through the other stages. By playing those unneeded stages I risked getting game overs and using my radios prematurely. I almost wish the game was linear making me play through each stage. But, I understand the developers were just trying to make a game that gave the player more choices. Another issue is that several stages had a large under water part that only Wet Suit could explore. I discovered this by accident by falling into the water. I was disappointed that this was optional and not at all needed to complete the game meaning I usually never explored. Difficulty The first stage is a nightmare, it took me 13 years to play the game a second time because of how hard the first level was. Honestly, it is just the mini-boss that is so hard. Strange thing is, there are 4 different mini-bosses you fight multiple times throughout the game and the hardest one whose pattern I could never quite get down is the one you fight right at the beginning of stage one. As you progress through the game and start maxing out your weapons and collecting other playable characters the games difficult goes from “extremely hard” to “slightly harder than average”. I also found the character select screen shown before each stage to be needlessly confusing. I played for a while before realizing that hitting “decide” allowed me to change the playable characters. Visuals and Music The graphics look no better than the original and the music, while enjoyable, doesn’t have the same classic feel as the original. Verdict The game developers took some chances to make the gameplay different than the original. But, too much of the game didn’t need to be played to reach the end. The ending says “to be continued” and there was never another sequel which is very disappointing. I would have been happy with a “The End” or “Congratulations”. It is a great game, but if you only play one G.I. Joe game, make it the original. View the full article

Genre: Platform Publisher: Hi-Tech Expression Total time played: 3 hours Short review: A stiff platformer aimed at young girls that would have been a piece of cake if it weren’t for the broken controls. Interesting links related to Barbie Speedrun (12minutes 42seconds) Soundtrack Video Review (CG Undertow) Video Review (Angry Video Game Nerd) My History with Barbie I grew up with a brother and most of my friends didn’t have sisters who were into video games so as a kid I never ran across Barbie. When I was 14 I met a kid named Andy in Freshman year French class. We became good friends, played on the school baseball team together and ended up living together in college. But one of the first interactions we had was talking about video games. Andy kept talking about a game called Earthbound on the SNES that came in a huge box that he got for Christmas one year. He said it was the best game ever made. I had never heard of it. Andy’s parents were divorced and his mom lived a few hours away, and that is where his copy of Earthbound was. To this day, I have never played through it. I did play about an hour on an emulator once and was digging it but hated using the computer keyboard as a controller so ended up quitting. Anyway, back to Barbie. Andy found out I collected NES games and gave me all of his games as he no longer was playing them. Among the games was Barbie. I’m not sure why Andy had Barbie as he didn’t have a sister. I popped in the game just to make sure it worked, and it did, so after no more than 2 minutes I turned it off. I didn’t play it again until this week when my friend Jason beat it. The same Jason who beat Ninja Gaiden a couple of weeks ago. I asked how hard Barbie was and he said “easier than Ninja Gaiden” which was all I needed to hear. Difficulty Jason was right, Barbie is easier than Ninja Gaiden, however, it isn’t as easy as it should be. The game consists of 5 levels, none of them on their own are hard but there are several places where I could never find a way to get past an obstacle without getting hurt. On top of this, you only get 1 life per continue and 2-3 continues (I’m not sure how many as I played the game so many times one play through ran into the next). There are never any holes to fall into that kill you instantly like almost every other platformer on the NES but even without the instant deaths the final level is a nightmare, more on that later. How to Play Basically you just move left to right until the stage ends. Barbie wears a charm bracelet that features 3 charms. You can throw one of the charms by pressing the B button on the controller. The longer you hold B the farther you through the charm. Each of the 3 charms do different things but I couldn’t ever figure out which charm would work on which in game object so I just threw all 3 until one worked. All charms look the same and they were unlimited so there was no reason to not just throw them all. Some charms would cause in game items to do different things. In one stage throwing a charm to a dog makes the dog grab a ball or a newspaper and run off with it. If you don’t do this the ball/paper will hit you taking one hit point away. Other charms make birds or Cadillacs fly creating a platform for you to jump onto and over an obstacle. The rest of the levels typically consist of fountains or trays of food spewing projectiles that you have to avoid as you move through the stage. You start with 5 hit points which are represented by Z’s, if you lose all your Z’s you wake up and it is game over. Throughout each level you collect items such as giant letter B’s which sometimes will give you an extra hit point. You can also grab a bubble to make you invincible for a short while. Each stage has a collectable item that gives you points. Points do nothing so they aren’t worth getting. These items include pearls, starfish, music notes and records. Barbie is about as basic as it gets for gameplay. Visuals and Music Barbie is large and wears several different outfits throughout the game which would probably have made me happy if I were a small girl and it were 25 years ago. The level design leaves a bit to be desired though. Each level features a minimal color palette and way too many things going on in the background. Was the baseball wallpaper necessary? Boss Battles The plot of the game revolves around Barbie falling asleep dreaming about all of the shopping she has to do the next day. I have no issue with the story or the levels. But, the bosses are a little underwhelming. How scary, a pizza oven boss The dreaded banana split boss! The final boss, which I didn’t take a photo of is a juke box that spits out music notes. To beat the juke box you must jump on the 3 coins that are placed on the floor. When you jump on the coin about 15 times it begins spinning really fast, make all the coins spin at once to beat the game. Wow, what a final boss! Barbies outfits I honestly didn’t pay that much attention to what Barbie was wearing, but I do know she changed several times throughout the game. At one point she was a mermaid, and the game play on that stage was not nearly as good as the gameplay in The Little Mermaid. She also wore a poodle skirt at some point and when you beat the game she puts on the ballroom gown. But, I’m sure no little girl ever saw the ending due to the nearly impossible final stage. The final stage The final stage consists of a staff of music with notes strung along it in a seemingly meaningless pattern. I can’t read music but I am pretty sure it would not have played a pretty tune if if someone actually transcribed the notes. The stage features the only real platforming in the entire game. You must jump across about 30 music notes, spinning records and some yellow balls. The notes do nothing when you land on them, the records spin so if you stay on it too long you will fall off and the yellow balls begin falling when you land on them meaning you must jump to the next platform immediately. If at any point across these 30 jumps you falls you land on a blue path below that pushes you back to the start of the level. You don’t die, but you are forced to make every single jump again. I fell off with the end in site more times than I like to admit. On top of this, there are a few flying projectiles that you must dodge while jumping between the notes, a couple of them I found impossible to dodge which means you only get a finite amount of attempts before it is game over and Barbie wakes up. If this were Super Mario Bros., Mega Man or a Bucky O’Hare game this level would not have been hard. But, because the hit detection in Barbie is awful this level became a nightmare. I would, more times that not, jump and land directly on a platform and fall right through it. I eventually discovered that not only did it matter where you landed, it also matters where you jump from on the prior platform. This stage was all about trial and error and even then I still fell a lot. If I landed on the platform every time I should have this final stage would have been a breeze. But, I wasn’t going to give up right at the end. Much like Ninja Gaiden, I spent more time on this final stage than all other stages combined. Barbie is not a good game, not even for little girls. It is short and playable which is why I stuck with it. I see what the game designers were trying to do and if it had been a bit more polished it wouldn’t have been bad. But, because they appeared to rush it to market the game is worse than average. View the full article

Genre: Action Publisher: Tecmo Total time played: 8 hours Short review: A puzzle game disguised as a fast paced action game featuring revolutionary cut scenes and some of the most stress inducing levels on the NES. Interesting links related to Ninja Gaiden Speedrun (12minutes 29seconds) Speedrun w/ no sword Soundtrack Video Review (CG Undertow) Video Review (Angry Video Game Nerd) The game The game is pretty straight forward, A jumps, B swings your sword. Once you have these basics down you can begin to add in some other moves. The games features a wall jump mechanic that allows Ryu to reach high spots by jumping back and forth between two walls. Ryu will automatically attach to a wall if you jump into it and the just tap left/right to jump back and forth. Also, throughout each stage there are stationary items that can be hit with your sword that drop goodies. Some drop ninpo (ninja magic) and others drop secondary weapons. This is equivalent to the heart and sub-weapon system in the Castlevania series. To use your secondary weapon you tap UP + B. The secondary weapons include everything from ninja stars to fire to super fast sword slashes. The secondary weapons are not needed to beat any part of the game but the right weapon can turn certain stages from near impossible to doable. The key here is to know which weapon is needed in each situation. Several times I had a good weapon and hit the wrong stationary item and replaced it with a crappy weapon; memorizing where all of the powerups are located becomes more important the further into the game you go. Difficulty The difficulty in Ninja Gaiden is through the roof. This game is always one of the first mentioned when someone refers to “Nintendo hard”. But, with some patience and practice and lots of memorization the game becomes very manageable. It is never unfair although it does a few things that make it harder than most. When you get hit you fly backwards, the game designers always seem to put enemies in the perfect spot to where you fly back and land in a hole. Most games feature a cool down period after you get hit to allow you time to get out of danger. Not Ninja Gaiden; if you get hit you are never invincible to allow you time to escape danger or catch your breath. Several times I would get hit, fly back, hit another enemy and then fly back into yet another enemy or into a hole. Enemies re-spawn quicker than any game I can think of. If a bird appears on screen and you stand still and kill it as soon as the bird is dead another bird appears. This works for all enemies, if you are in a bad spot and kill an enemy another is coming at you before you have time to react. This means you have to know all the safe spots to stand to kill every enemy. The farther in the game you get the more this becomes important. Visuals and Music Some of the levels look better than others but overall Ninja Gaiden features some very memorable graphics. Each stage has a unique look and no matter the number of enemies on screen the game never slows down. The game features an actual story with dialogue and beautiful cut scenes that are easily the best in the NES library. Ninja Gaiden is a rare exception of a game that is known for what happens between levels as much as the actual gameplay. The music is absolutely classic. I don’t think it is top 5 best music on the NES but it is definitely top 10. My First Time I don’t remember the first time I played Ninja Gaiden but I do have a strong memory from the 5th grade when my brother, my friend Nathan and I rented Ninja Garden and obsessively played all weekend on my families floor model console TV. We would take turns, each time we would get a game over the control would be passed to the next person, as we got further into the game sometimes the game overs would happen as often as every 30 seconds. After 2 days of playing we finally reached level 5. We played over and over for at least an hour when things got out of hand. Nathan died and his anger was expressed in the form of his fist into the control panel of the TV. From that point forward the remote control quit working on the tv. I decided it was time to give the game a rest and reached up and pushed in the power button. Nathan grabbed my hand before I could release the button turning off the system, he said he could beat it and wanted one more try. For the next 20 minutes I sat with my finger holding in the power button as Nathan tried over and over at level 5 and failing. We finally had a MacGuyver moment and leaned one of my parents heavy encyclopedia volumes in front of the Nintendo holding in the power button. We tried for another hour before finally giving up. Level 5 was impossible. My College Experience My freshman year of college I moved into a spare room at my aunt’s house which was close to the college campus where I was attending school. I hooked up my 13″ tube TV and my surround sound system and would play NES with chip tunes blaring loudly from my speakers. I hadn’t played Ninja Gaiden in 8 years and decided that now that I was older and had hundreds more hours of gaming experience I could knock it out. I rolled through the first 4 levels and after some work I was able to patiently learn level 5 and get to stage 6 which I had never seen. As it turns out, stage 6-2 is probably the hardest stage of any game on the NES. I left my NES paused for a week and would try dozens of times every day after class but could never get past 6-2. I eventually had to call it quits leaving the game unbeaten again. A bat, a bird, a ghoul throwing knives and a hole. This single screen caused me 500+ deaths and an embarrassing amount of time to get passed. Modern Day Fast forward 16 years and I finally decided to give Ninja Gaiden another shot. The main reason is that two friends of mine recently beat the game. I figured if two friends of mine can beat the game then so can I. I now have a Retron 5 allowing me to create save states and that keeps me from having to leave the NES on for weeks while I play the game. I didn’t cheat, I would create a save state when I was done playing the game based on where I started when continuing. This time I really struggle with stage 4-3 and the twin dogs boss at the end. After two days of trying I finally got passed and got through level 5 quickly even though I struggled with it so much as a child. After finally mastering level 4-3 these stupid dogs kept killing me. When I finally got back to level 6-2 I was hoping that I could breeze through it now that I’m older, more mature and more confident in my NES abilities. I was wrong, so very wrong. I wish I had kept count at how many times I died, I would bet it was easily 500+. I finally gave in and watched some YouTube videos on how to get past the stage. This is where I learned something about the game I had never thought about. The game is portrayed as a fast paced action game but it is actually more of a puzzle game. Every time you play the game the enemies always follow the same patterns and appear in the same spots. Even though the first few stages are easy enough to run through the later stages should be taken very slowly and you will need to memorize where to stand and where to jump and which magic to use to get past each stage. Once I realized this I was able to zen out and calmly take stage 6-2 a few steps at a time until I was able to get through it most of the time with no trouble. 6-3 was tough but after the gauntlet of 6-2 it didn’t take too long to master it with my new found realization that Ninja Gaiden is a puzzle game, not an action-platformer. But, the most annoying challenge still was yet to come. The final boss of the game is fought in 3 waves. If you die on any of the waves you are transported back to stage 6-1 even if you still have extra lives. So, what this means is that if you don’t beat all 3 forms of the final boss on your first try you have to fight your way through 6-1, 6-2 and 6-3 just for another attempt. The only consolation prize is that if you beat a form of the boss you start at the next form the next time you get back to the boss. Everything I read online said form 1 was very easy. I did not find this to be the case. It probably took me 15 tries to finally knock him out. That wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have to play through all of level 6 after each death. Wave 1 The second form of the boss I found to be nearly impossible. I watched YouTube videos and read walkthroughs and although I felt I was doing what I had seen others do I could never get more than 1 or 2 hits before dying. That is when I learned if you get the SpinSlash ninpo it will kill the 2nd wave of the final boss in one hit. So, that meant I had to find the SpinSplash somewhere in level 6 and then make it to the final boss without accidentally picking up another weapon and also having ninja power left when I got there. What makes this tough is that anytime you jump and press the B button to attack the SpinSlash activates, since so many enemies require the jump + attack maneuver to get passed I was alway running low on ninpo. Luckily after only 5 or so tries i was able to get to the boss with SpinSlash and 5 ninpo, enough for one use. That one use was all it took, just as the walkthrough said, SpinSlash killed the 2nd wave boss in one hit. Wave 2 The final boss (wave 3) should not have taken so many tries. Everything I read, every video I watched and talking to my 2 friends all told me that the final boss was the easiest of the 3. I easily died more on the final boss than both other forms combined. I would estimate it took me 50 attempts to beat this boss. The strategy was pretty straight forward: Kill the head, when it falls off you are guaranteed to get hit at least once Kill the tail Kill the heart Step 1 and 2 were pretty easy but killing the heart was tough. The boss would randomly throwing dozens of shrimp shaped projectiles that I couldn’t find any pattern to which hit me over and over. Each time I got hit it took off 3 pellets of health meaning if I didn’t get to the boss with near full health it would only take a few hits to kill me, factor that in with a guaranteed hit when the head falls off meant I had to play almost flawlessly. I’m not sure what I did but on my winning run I jumped and landed on the bosses heart and instead of jumping and swinging my sword I could just swing the sword over and over again. I am not sure if I was standing in a place where the projectiles couldn’t hit me or if I just got lucky and didn’t get hit. After watching the final cut scene that nicely wrapped up the story I can finally say I beat Ninja Gaiden. I am looking to playing through Ninja Gaiden 2 as I hear it isn’t quite as hard as the original. But, I hear part 3 is near impossible because you do not get unlimited continues. View the full article

Genre: Platform Publisher: Virgin Interactive Total time played: 4 hours Short review: McDonalds propaganda wrapped up in a surprisingly fun and innovative platformer that is a complete rip off of Super Mario Bros. 3 with graphics that are designed for children who are much too young to fully enjoy this game. Interesting links related to McKids Speedrun (22minutes 24seconds) Soundtrack Video Review (CG Undertow) When I was about 11 years old a friend whose judgement I did not trust told me that M.C. Kids was a really good NES game. I brushed him off and thought there was no way that a game about McDonalds with kiddie graphics could be any good. Over 20 years later I finally gave it a shot and was pleasantly surprised. The game is clearly a Super Mario Bros. 3 knockoff featuring a similar overworld map and level layout. Each level features some pretty innovative and continually changing game mechanics that make it more interesting than most NES platformers. Example of a world overview map. Look similar to Super Mario 3 much? Where the game loses some of its charm is in how the game progresses. The basic story is Hamburglar stole a magic bag from Ronald McDonald and you have to get it back by playing through 6 worlds, each ruled by a familiar McDonalds mascot. The catch is that you can’t just reach the end of the 6 levels in each world, you have to explore each level and find a hidden card. Each world requires you to find a different number of cards to move on to the next. If you beat the level without finding the card you will need to play it again…and again…and again until you find it. To make matters worse, the overworld map will show you when you have completed a level, but it won’t tell you if you have found the card in that level. More than once I found myself replaying levels looking for a card that I had already found. The thing is, some of the cards are hidden really well and I found myself struggling to find them even if the actual stage wasn’t that large. I think that as long as you reached the end of each stage you should have been able to beat the world and move on. The hidden cards would have been a good bonus feature to add replay value to the game, I didn’t like that it was required to move on. But, the good thing about this gaming mechanic is that you are never required to beat every stage in a world. So, if you only need 3 cards to progress, you only need to play 3 of the 6 stages in the world. This kept me from having to play some particularly tricky stages throughout the game. There are unlimited continues, however, if you continue you have to start the world you are on completely over. A couple of times I would have completed 4 or 5 of the 6 stages, found the hard to reach cards and then would get a game over. This would force me to pay all of those stages again. Luckily, I eventually found a level that featured this little scene: I discovered I could pick up one of these extra lives while standing on the other, I would then pick up the second extra life and fall to my death. But, each time I would do this I would gain one extra life. The best part was that this was the very first scene in the stage so it was about 10 seconds of gameplay to get an extra life. I would do this over and over until I had 20 plus lives, once I was running low I would come back and do it some more. This kept me from having to ever get a game over and start a world over. Throughout each level you had a few goals. Collect little “M” icons that are the equivalent of coins in a Mario game. If you collected 100 throughout the level you would be treated to a bonus game when you beat the stage. If you could beat the bonus game you would earn several extra lives. I only made it to the bonus a few times and never completed it. This wasn’t a big deal as I never ran out of extra lives thanks to the trick I talked about in the last paragraph. Bonus stage I never completed 2) Look for the hidden card Here is a hidden card 3) Don’t fall into a hole 4) Don’t get hit by enemies enough times to run out of hearts There were several unique features that make this game better than average: This digging looks very similar to Super Mario Bros. 2 If you run into the little star at the end of the platform you can walk upside down similar to Metal Storm. Somewhere in the level is a block to fit into that hole which will allow you to access new areas. Zippers are trap doors that take you to hidden areas full of extra lives, magic cards or both. There was even a stage that took place on the moon where the jumping mechanics completely changed and forced you to relearn the controls. The final world takes place inside a cave where everything is tinted red and there is lava that kills you in one hit if you touch it. The frustrating part is that you can’t tell how much health you have because the heart meter blends into the background. A lot of new game mechanics are added in this world. You are forced to navigate the lava by riding on a lava rock that must be found and thrown in the lava like a boat. Earlier in the game you would do this with a bucket in water but if you fell out you didn’t die instantly. The second mechanic involved floating treadmills that traveled on a track in the opposite direction of the direction you walk. This took a bit of getting used to. Luckily there were only 3 stages in the final world, however, all three were very difficult. When you enter the 4th and final stage of the final world you are greeted with a short ride on a lava rock and a couple of runs over bridges were you must outrun a fireball and then greeted with the final boss of the game. The final boss is fought in the 3 waves, the first you fight what look like sperm in a turtle neck sweater, then a magic wand and then a rabbit in a hat. It took me 20 or so tries to finally beat the three waves and in turn the game. The sperm and the rabbit were easy but the magic wand was tough and required you to be running full speed and jumping into it holding a rock while avoiding the magic the wand shot at you, it was tougher than it sounded. You tell me a better way to describe than “Sperm in a turtleneck” The magic wand that gave me so much trouble. Honestly, if the game wasn’t such a clear ripoff of Super Mario Bros. 3 or wasn’t a money grab for McDonalds and had graphics and marketing that aimed it at an older demographic it could have been a classic game on the system. The difficulty is perfect, it gets harder as the game progresses but never so hard you can’t proceed. The controls are really tight and the music is better than average. Honestly, this is a really good game and everyone should give it a shot, don’t let the kiddie graphics and McDonalds propaganda scare you away. View the full article

Genre: Puzzle Publisher: Taito Total time played: 1 hour Short review: An unappreciated NES puzzle classic that is addictive, fun and rewarding while also keeping you on the edge of your seat. Interesting links related to Qix Soundtrack Qix high score run by Playing For Points (4min 50sec) (131,226 points) Video Review (Retro-Matric Gamer) When my family got our first computer in 1996 I spent way too many hours playing the game Jezzball that came on the computer. It was a simple puzzle game where you would draw lines with your mouse to trap balls that were bouncing around the screen. It was just a fun relaxing game to play after a long day of school. I have been familiar with the game Qix for a long time but after 20 years of collecting NES games have just recently added it to my collection. It isn’t particularly rare or expensive, I just had never seen it in person to buy. From watching gameplay footage I always expected it to play a lot like Jezzball, and I was right. Qix follows a very similar gameplay structure to Jezzball but actually has a bit more strategy involved. Instead of trying to trap bouncing balls you are trapping a bouncing Qix which looks like a bunch of rotating lines. The Qix cannot hit you when you are not drawing a line but if it hits you or your line while it is being drawn you lose a life. On top of avoiding the Qix you also have to avoid what appear to be sparks that travel around the edge of each line you draw. Unlike the Qix these sparks can hit you when you are not drawing a line. If you draw a line and pause before finishing it the line acts as a bomb fuse and causes you to explode. As you progress farther into the game there are multiple Qix and multiple sparks as well as other floating objects that will kill you if you hit them and give you extra points if you trap them. The goal of the game is to draw lines and boxes on the screen to cover a certain percentage of the screen. The first few levels require 65% coverage but as you move up in level you must cover 70, 75, 80, or 85% of the game board to move on. When drawing a line there are two ways to do it. Draw by holding the A button to move quickly or draw by holding the B button to move slowly. Using the B button gets you more points but is more dangerous. The strategy I found was to make a bunch of small boxes stretching almost across the screen using the quick draw A button and then closing in the final small space with the slow draw B button to maximize points. Getting a high score is the name of the game is so the more points you earn the better. For each percentage of the screen you clear over the required amount you earn 1,000 points. The most I ever got was 25,000 points for clearing 90% of the first stage when only 65% was required. If there are two Qix on the screen and you draw a line separating them the stage ends regardless of how much of the screen is cleared. Your reward for doing this is that your points double going forward, if you do it again your points triple. I assume they quadruple if you do it a 3rd time but I never did that to test my theory. There is no end to the game and I could see myself playing this for hours and hours and never get sick of it so I decided once I beat the computer high score of 100,000 I would consider it beaten. Googling the game I couldn’t find any scores higher than about 135,000 but there is no way that is correct because I am not very good at the game so I should not be so close to the world record. However, the game is one no one talks about so maybe no one really ever gave it a chance to master. Qix is a lot of fun, fast paced, makes you think (but not too much) and is a game that you get a little better at each time you play it. I would definitely consider this an NES hidden gem. View the full article

Genre: Adventure Publisher: Electrobrain Total time played: 1 hour 15 minutes (using walkthrough) Short review: A horror themed game featuring the exploring mechanics of Metroid and item system of Mega Man or Zelda. Unfortunately it does not live up to any of the games that influenced it. Interesting links related to Ghoul School Soundtrack My Video Playthrough (1 Hour 13 minutes) Tool Assisted Speedrun (TAS) AndrewG1990 (5 minutes 27 seconds) Video Review (BenevolentDick) Walkthrough provided by Arnpoly Written Review (www.takesontheNESlibrary.com) When I was about 15 my mom agreed to take me to a flea market to look for NES games if I agreed to go to a psychic fair with her. At the psychic fair I had a crazy woman tell me that the rock sitting on the table in front of her was haunted by a spirit so evil that she kept the rock buried deep in her backyard when not attending psychic conventions. I am not sure if she was trying to scare me (it didn’t) or was just crazy (she was). After leaving the fair my mom took me to a flea market where I met another woman, this woman had a large box full of hundreds of NES manuals for $1 each. This was in 1997 and no one really cared about NES at the time so she didn’t have a lot of people at her booth. I remember pulling out a stack of manuals for the game Princess Tomato In The Salad Kingdom. At the time I had never seen this game before and only recognized the name from the NES rarity guide online. I decided that I didn’t want to waste a dollar each on a bunch of manuals so bought the only game she had, a complete in box copy of Ghoul School for $5. Unfortunately I sold the box and manual years ago in a lot of empty boxes and manuals for $35 on craigslist. Some of the boxes included Contra Force, Gyromite, all 3 Castlevania’s, all 3 Double Dragon’s and Rockin’ Kats…my single biggest regret in my collecting history. On the way home I read the manual and studied the box art and couldn’t wait to play. When I got home and popped the game in I gave it about 5 minutes, realized I had no idea what I was doing and put it on the shelf until today. This game is fun, the music is better than average, the controls are tight and there are more than enough weapons and shoes that change the way the game is played to keep anyone interested. Unfortunately there is one thing that makes the game nearly unplayable, the confusing navigation. The game features over 100 different rooms and no map system. There is nothing that tells you where to go or where you have been. Basically you just walk around aimlessly until you find an item and then find a place to use that item. It is much like Metroid in this regard, but even though Metroid is hard to navigate I found it slightly more intuitive than Ghoul School. Thankfully my friend Aaron (Arnpoly, who writes the amazing www.takesontheNESlibrary.com) wrote a really detailed and easy to follow walkthrough that I followed to the T and was able to beat Ghoul School in just over an hour. The game features the following weapons which are collected throughout, each weapon has a strength and weakness: Bat – The first weapon you get in the game, decent range and attack power but once I got the weapons I only used the bat to take out the vents on the school’s roof. Towel – I personally never found this short range weapon of any use at all. Deweytron – a long range gun. This is a very weak weapon but allows you enough distance to kill most full sized enemies without taking any damage. Spinal Zap – kills most enemies in 1 or 2 hits but has no range meaning you are likely to get hit while using it. Still, this is the weapon that I used most. Digestaray – shoots in an arc allowing you to hit the really short enemies. The enemies are very fast and if they get too close to you it is near impossible to get far enough away to use this weapon to kill them. Sickle – short range, effective against the undead ghostly figures or plants enemies you encounter in a couple of rooms. Sandwich – used to kill Frankenstein in the cafeteria. Embalm Fluid – great for killing the slimes on the ground and a must have for rescuing your girlfriend after defeating the final boss. Gamma Gun – Long range weapon much like the Deweytron but is almost as powerful as the Spinal Zap. By far the best weapon in the game. As well as having a multitude of weapons to choose from you also have 3 pairs of shoes and a secret golden apple which reduces enemy damage by 50%: Sneakers – regular old sneakers Spring Shoes – allow you to jump much higher, the shoes make you taller meaning a larger hit box for enemies projectiles. Suction Shoes – wear these to walk on the ceiling to avoid enemies or spike beds. The goal of the game is to rescue your girlfriend and turn the school from Ghoul School into Cool School. You start the game with 5 lives, if you lose a life you start in the room where you died which is very helpful. But, if you lose all 5 lives you start back at the beginning of the game which means you have to find your way through the maze to the spot you died. This happened to me 2 times while playing the game today and I then spent the next 10 minutes trying to figure out where to go again. I wish I would have liked the game more but the inability to play it without a walkthrough or drawing your own map really decreased my pleasure. There are several good tunes and the designers had fun with enemies and classrooms. You fight a skeleton in the anatomy lab, a musical note in the music room, basketballs in the gym and a plant in the botany classroom.If you took out the navigation, made the game more linear with multiple levels and bosses or added in a map system I would have rated the game on the same level as Metroid. The game isn’t hard, even the final boss is a piece of cake if you have the right weapon but because of the navigation issues it would have taken me 50+ hours to beat without a walkthrough. View the full article

Genre: Arcade Publisher: Activision Total time played: 1 Hour today (dozens of hours since I was a kid) Short review: A poorly executed licensed game with a near impossible final stage that almost ruined one of my favorite 80’s franchises. Interesting links related to Ghostbusters Soundtrack Video Playthrough (17 minutes 23 seconds) Video Review (AVGN) Stairwell Glitch (James and Mike Mondays) For this game I have to go way back in time. My grandfather lived out of town when I was young and I didn’t get to see him as often as I would have liked. But, when I did visit we always had a lot of fun and he would introduce me to movies that I had never seen. The most memorable of those movies being Ghostbusters. I was definitely too young the first time I saw it but that didn’t stop it from becoming one of my favorite movies of all time. As well as owning the movie (which he undoubtably recorded off of HBO) he had an Apple computer and the Ghostbusters game. This is my earliest gaming memory, playing the Apple version of the Ghostbusters game that was later ported to the NES. This scene was not featured in the NES game. I never did beat the computer game and never did own the NES game as a kid because it wasn’t that good and I played it more than enough times on the computer. But, in high school, my friend Jimmy (who I have known since I was 7 and still work with today) gave me his copy of the NES game. I played it a bit but after determining the stairwell scene at the end of the game was impossible put it back on the shelf for almost 20 years, until today, when I finally beat it. Let’s talk about how to play the game: The point of the game is to earn money by defeating ghosts to buy equipment that will be used to kill Zuul. Here are the screens you will see in the game: This is the main screen of the game. You control the Ghostbusters logo and drive up and down the streets searching for buildings that flash red and then enter those buildings to capture ghosts. If you drive your logo over the yellow ghosts they freeze in place which accomplishes 2 things: It keeps the ghosts from entering the Zuul building which slows the PK Energy meter at the bottom of the screen. This meter determines when you can enter the Zuul building to fight the final boss. You don’t want the meter to fill up too quickly or you won’t have the items you need to fight the boss and you don’t want it to fill too slowly or you will slowly go mad from the monotonous gameplay and annoying music. The ghosts will appear on the driving screen when you enter a building. If you have the ghost vacuum you can suck them up on the highway and earn quick money. The “specialty” buildings are as follows: GS – Gas Station – you will most likely spend a lot of time driving to and from the gas station as the Ecto-1 guzzles gas more ferociously than a Hummer. GBHQ – Ghostbusters Headquarters – If you have the regular trap you will need to visit GBHQ after capturing every ghost to empty the trap. If you have the super trap you never need to visit GBHQ. Shop – Where you spend your hard earned money to upgrade your equipment. Zuul – Once the PK Energy is high enough you will be asked to enter this building via a scrolling text on the screen. You can ignore it if you aren’t ready for the final fight but if you ignore it too long the game ends. The shop will need to me your first visit of the game. You start off with $10,000 to spend however you wish. There is a second page of items you can purchase if you keep scrolling down. I typically buy the following items to start the game: Ghost Vacuum – used to suck up ghosts in the driving stage that you drove over on the map screen. This is the quickest way for me to make money in the game. Capture Beam – a short beam used to capture ghosts on the ghost busting screen. This is a short beam that I upgrade to the much longer hyper beam as soon as I can. Single trap – I use this until I have enough to buy the super trap which doesn’t need to be emptied and is a huge time saver. The ghost food, ghost suit and sound generator are needed during the stair climbing portion of the game. But, thanks to this video I learned about a small glitch in the level that keeps you from needing those items and greatly increases the speed at which the game can be played. Once you have loaded up on items and driven over all the yellow ghosts on the map screen and selected to enter a building that is flashing red you are greeted with the driving stage. If you have the ghost vacuum you can drive over a ghost in the road and hit the A button to suck it up. If you hold down your car slows down making it easier to avoid obstacles and uses less gas but drags on the stage for far too long. If you hold up you fly through the stage, use a lot of gas and risk getting hit by other drivers. If you are hit by another driver it will cost you between $200-$400 which adds up fast. Notice in the image above there is a distance meter on the left and gas gauge on the right. The distance meter changes based on how long you drove around on the map screen before entering a building. If the gas gauge hits E while driving the Ghostbusters get out of the car and push it to the nearest gas station which means you don’t get to go to the building you selected on the map screen and fight ghosts. In the driving stages you can pickup red gas barrels as you drive but I found myself missing almost every single one of them. The driving stage is great for making quick money if you have the ghost vacuum but everything else about it is pretty annoying. If you happen to make it to your destination without running out of gas you will be greeted by 4 ghosts. The controls here are a little wonky. To start both ghostbusters move together and are holding the trap between them. Move where you want to drop the trap and hit A. Now you control the left ghostbuster, if you tap B you can control the right ghostbuster. Up and down change the direction of your proton beam. I found that never adjusting the proton beam path was very effective. If you move the proton beam of a ghostbuster and it touches the other ghostbusters beam the stage is over. If the ghosts enter your beam they are frozen, you can walk them over to the trap and hit A to deploy the trap and capture the ghosts. You want to get as many ghosts in your beam as possible because the dollar amount collected for each subsequent ghost doubles. 1 ghost nets $200 and if you get all 4 ghosts you get $3,000. Be careful as you only get to deploy your trap once so make sure as many ghosts are in its path as possible. After the ghost stage you are returned to the map stage. If you have the regular trap you will need to go to GBHQ to unload the trap. If you have the super trap you can just enter another flashing red building. This sequence of events is the entire game until you enter the Zuul building. After you bust ghosts for a bit and upgrade your gear you are asked to enter the Zuul building. Once you do you are greeted with this lovely stairwell and 4 ghosts. This is where my game always ended when I was a kid. If you get hit 3 times by the ghosts it is game over. If you are lucky enough to have the anti-ghost suit you can get hit either 5 or 6 times. If you have the sound generator the ghosts move much slower and if you have the ghost food it attracts the ghosts but as soon as the food is off the screen the ghosts come right back for you. There are a few things that make this stage impossible without the glitch mentioned above… you don’t move by holding left and right. You move by holding left or right while tapping the A button. One tap equals 1 step. It takes about 100 steps to walk across the floor and up the stairs and you have to climb up 23 flights of stairs. If you don’t have a turbo controller you will hit the A button a minimum of 2,300 times. I actually didn’t use a turbo controller and my thumb was cramping by the top of the staircase. The key to the glitch that makes this stage beatable is discussed in this video but for those too lazy to watch the video I will explain: Walk up to the 4th floor and stand in front of the door, let the ghosts hit you twice and then open the door to reveal a ghosts who will hit you a 3rd time. Typically this means game over but for some reason if the ghost behind the door hits you on your last life it makes it to where you can get hit unlimited times by the ghosts. By doing this I was able to get to the top of the stairs with no trouble, I probably got knocked down around 25 times by the ghosts which is almost 10 times as often as the game allows under normal conditions. What this means is that I would never have been able to do this without the glitch. Here is the final screen of the game. Zuul stands motionless in the middle of the screen and shoots projectiles at you while the two demon dogs do the same. Zuul also releases cute little white ghosts with their tongues out. This screen of the game plays like a bullet hell shooter and took me several times to actually beat. If you need some reprieve from the bullets you can walk towards the bottom of the screen and are greeted by StayPuft climbing the building. The more times you visit this screen the closer to the top he gets, and if he reaches the top of the building it is game over. There are two reasons to walk into the StayPuft screen: to clear the Zuul screen of bullets and ghosts. When you walk back into the Zuul screen after seeing StayPuft the screen is clear giving you the change to get in a few hits before all the bullets are back. On accident. If you get anywhere near the bottom of the Zuul screen it will scroll to StayPuft, I did this on accident more than I did on purpose. After you defeat Zuul you are greeted with one of the worst ending screens of all time. So. Many. Typos. Without the glitch in the stairwell stage Ghostbusters would be impossible. Since this game is one of my earliest video game memories and reminds me of my grandfather I have a soft spot for it but even so, I cannot justify giving it a very good review score because it is not a good game. View the full article

Genre: Action Publisher: Color Dreams Total time played: 1.5 Hours Short review: A short find and seek action game with clunky controls and repetitive music Interesting links related to Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu Soundtrack No Death Playthrough (15 minutes 37 seconds) Video Review (AVGN) To my knowledge Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu is the only game that mentions alcohol or being drunk in the NES library. I would venture to say the name alone is why the game could not get the NES seal of approval and was forced to be released as an unlicensed game. Even the great Punch-Out was forced to sensor the game for its NES release. Vodka Drunkinski from the arcade game was changed to Soda Popinski on the NES. Several years back I passed up buying Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu at a local game store and then proceeded to lose about 4 eBay auctions trying to buy it. Last week a friend from my hometown saw it in a store and asked if I had it. By the time I saw the message he had left the store. I happened to be in town about a week later to help my brother and dad build a wooden fence at my brother’s house. When we finished the fence I drove to the store and picked up the game for a better than eBay price. I came home and cleaned the cartridge and tried it out. I had never played the game before and didn’t know what to expect. When Round 1 began I was caught off guard by the awkward controls. A shoots, B waves a fan to block projectiles (I never once used this) and UP jumps. It took a while to get a handle on the controls. I moved from the left of the screen to the right while shooting my projectile at snakes and bats. Certain places I would shoot would make a red and white yin/yang symbol appear. Other spots would reveal a scroll which powers up your projectiles until you get hit by an enemy. There was also a book that provides an extra life, a walking man that fully refills your health, a small pearl which replenishes two health points and a necklace which provides invincibility in exchange for around 10 seconds of the most annoying fingernails on a chalkboard type sound effect I’ve ever heard in a video game. I played the first stage for a few minutes and reached the end of the screen and nothing happened. I ended up turning the game off figuring there was something I was missing. I eventually read online that the goal of each Round is to collect 8 of the yin/yang symbols. Once this is accomplished a door appears and the character is automatically transported to it no matter where on the screen he is at the time the last item is collected. The door leads to a boss. Each boss is beaten simply by shooting them while avoiding projectiles. All of the bosses seemed to follow the same pattern and take about the same number of hits to kill. In fact, every boss in the game can be beaten by being patient and waiting on the floating platform until the boss walks under it, drop down and shoot while the boss has his back turned. When he turns around, jump back to the platform and repeat. Once the boss is dead you need to shoot around the room to find the hidden key to complete the level. The final two rounds (rounds 9 and 10) of the game are nothing but boss fights. In the earlier boss fights if I got hit a few times in the process it was no big deal as health regenerated after each level. The final bosses are still pretty easy, the difficult part is fighting so many in a row and your health is not regenerated between matches. Although, if you are lucky sometimes the bosses will drop health when they die. Each of the stages is also about the same difficulty. There are a lot of cheap hits where the enemies hit you before you know they are there. The hardest part is finding the arbitrary places where the yin/yangs are hidden. Some stages feature set pieces of blue or red yin/yangs that look identical to the ones you collect, however you can’t pick these up. Collect the red yin/yangs but not the blue yin/yangs. The game I could most closely relate this to is Milon’s Secret Castle where everything is hidden and only becomes visible when you hit the secret spot with a projectile. I think Milon is probably a better game even though I haven’t played it in years. Master Chu is not that hard and can be beaten in 15-20 minutes. But, the arbitrary hiding of the items you collect, clunky controls, repetitive music and uninspired boss fights make the game below average. It isn’t absolutely horrible but it also is not very memorable. I should also note, the last review I completed for Krazy Kreatures stated that I would probably never beat another unlicensed game…little did I know the very next game I beat would also be unlicensed. View the full article

Genre: Puzzle Publisher: American Video Entertainment Total time played: 45 minutes Short review: A puzzle game that is simple enough for a chile, fast paced enough to entertain people with short attention spans, difficult enough to be rewarding and easy enough to complete. Interesting links related to Krazy Kreatures Krazy Creatures James and Mike Mondays NES Gameplay I picked up Krazy Kreatures (which my computer keeps auto correcting to Crazy Creatures) about 20 years ago. I don’t remember where I got it or how much it cost but I do remember playing it my junior year of high school while talking on the phone a lot (this was before texting and instant messenger was a thing). I had never heard of the game before and I have never met anyone who had this game as a kid or even knew it existed. In fact, I forgot it existed even though it was sitting right there on my shelf. The game is really easy to play but kind of tough to explain…here goes. There are 32 waves (levels) where the titular Krazy Kreatures try to fill up the screen before time runs out. Mike Matei (in the linked video above) says each level looks like someone dropped a box of animal crackers on the ground. This as good of a description as any. Your job is to move the Kreatures into rows of 3 or more, think Dr. Mario. For example, if you move 3 cats into a line they disappear from the screen. The first 15 or so levels are pretty simple and almost therapeutic if you like organizing and categorizing things (which I do). Each level has a timer and the kreatures keep bombarding the screen until you make a certain number of lines. Once the line goal is met a timer counts down and you have time to make more lines for extra points with no further kreatures appearing on the screen. On the left you see a stage where there are a lot of empty spaces and places to move the Kreatures and on the right you see the panic of needing to clear some Kharacters (see what I did there) from the screen before every space is filled up. There is a little strategy involved but not a lot. You will have no trouble beating the early stages. As you progress you will need to line up 6 or 7 creatures in a row which is hard as there is a constant barrage of them flying around the screen and landing in your way. The game is really fast paced so even though me and my friend Chase were playing cooperatively it was impossible to come up with a strategy to work together and several time we got our cursors confused with each other or would move a piece out of a line the other was working on. I think this may be the hardest game to describe but the easiest to understand once you see it in action. I really enjoy this game even if it doesn’t seem quite as polished as many other games on the NES (look at the crappy ending screen) it still has its charm and based on the 4 people who watched us play it seemed to be somewhat interesting to watch as well. It would have gotten a higher score if there was a little more variety in gameplay or level design. 32 levels seemed just about the right length as the game does become repetitive even though it is fast paced. I believe this is the first unlicensed NES game I have beaten for the blog. It may also be one of the last as most of the unlicensed games are garbage are impossible. Krazy Kreatures may also be the best unlicensed game on the entire system (Micro Machines may give it a run for its money though). View the full article