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Hoskat

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  1. Hoskat

    Ghostbusters

    By Hoskat,

    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.
     



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  2. Hoskat
    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.


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  3. Hoskat

    Krazy Kreatures

    By Hoskat,

    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).


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  4. Hoskat
    Genre: Adventure
    Publisher: Broderbund
    Total time played: 6 hours
    Short review:  A clone of Zelda II that is harder than Castlevania III and more cryptic than Castlevania II featuring characters from Greek Mythology.
    Interesting links related to The Battle of Olympus
    Speedrun (31min 09sec) Soundtrack Video Review (HalfBlindGamer)
    Written Walkthrough My first memory of this game was during the brief period of my childhood when I was obsessed with Greek and Roman Mythology.  I would rent this game and the movie Clash of the Titans on a regular basis.  I always enjoyed the game but never beat it. Playing it as an adult I see why, it is probably the hardest game on the NES that I have played for the blog up to this point.
    Let’s get this out of the way right up front, I had to use save states to beat this game.  In the game your currency is olives  which enemies drop when they are killed. In most games to pick up an item you walk over it, in Battle of Olympus you have to kneel down in front of the item, a realistic touch. When you die you lose half of the olives you have collected.  At the beginning of the game this isn’t that big of a deal but when you have to get through a maze of enemies while trying to not fall into holes to get to a remote location with 70 olives to buy a sword or 80 Olives to buy the Power Bracelet it becomes an issue.
    At first, I tried to play the game legit only using the save states to not have to write down the extremely long passwords. Honestly, the passwords in this game, and Metroid, are so long that it would take 5 or more minutes to input them just to start the game.  The save states allow me to just turn on the system and start playing which means that 5 minutes that used to be for inputing a password is now for getting farther in the game.
    The Retron 5 save states saved me from having to enter a long password like this each time I turned on the game.
    I ended up dying over and over trying to get the final sword in the game.  Each time having to spend 20+ minutes getting back the olives I lost when I died.  After several tries I gave up and just decided to create a save state at the beginning of the part of the world where the sword was and when I died I would reload that saved game so I didn’t have to spend all the time collecting olives again.  Technically this is cheating, but I never used the save states to advance slowly through hard sections, I used it solely to save time from collecting the olives over and over again.
    The story is very typical of an NES game but features a lot of the mythological Gods and creatures that I loved as a kid which made it a little more special (even if all the Gods look just alike).
    The game has a few major flaws.  First off, it is impossible to know where to go or what to do.  You can walk into each cave or building and talk to the townspeople who will give you hints on where to go next but I didn’t find the hints obvious enough to help.  I had to rely some on video and written walkthroughs.
    World map – looks simple enough, right?
    The game starts you off inside a house in Arcadia.  When you leave you can walk to the left or right.  If you walk one direction you end up going to Argolis, the other direction takes you to Attica or Peloponnese?  I honestly can’t remember, it made no sense.
    I would have been ok if you walk right or left and ended up walking to another part of the map but that isn’t how the game works.  The small hut in the picture below takes you to a different spot on the map.  It is almost as if that entire part of the map is inside this small house. The map made even less sense to me than the map in Friday the 13th (which at the time of this review I still can’t beat).  Luckily you eventually get a harp that allows you to call pegasus to pick you up and take you to a pre-determined location on the map (but, there is no rhyme or reason as to why calling Pegasus in Pythia takes you to Laconia.) Unfortunately you can only use the Pegasus when you are standing in front of a specific small statue.
    Walking into this house takes you to a different spot on the map
     
    Riding the Pegasus to somewhere.
    Or what about this one.  Do you see the black rectangle in the middle of the black area behind this woman that is inside a tree?  This takes you to another spot on the map as well, things like this are so easy to miss.
    How did I miss the door behind the old woman? Because it is nearly invisible.
    Once you get a handle on how to navigate the world (you won’t ever feel comfortable) you have to stay alive.  At the beginning it isn’t too bad but as you progress and get stronger weapons and items the enemies get harder.  There are bats throughout the game that I never once felt comfortable attacking.  Their patterns seemed random and they were perfectly positioned to knock me into a hole on a regular basis.  I found them to be more annoying that the Medusa’s in the Castlevania games. Speaking of Castlevania, there are also little jumping monkeys similar to those in Castlevania that I never felt comfortable fighting.
    Castlevania monkey on the left, Battle of Olympus monkey on the right.
    I appreciated that the game had secrets but I didn’t like that the things needed to advance even a little bit into the story were hard to figure out.  The walking between different sections of the map never felt comfortable and as the game progressed there were more mazes.  Mazes in the forest, mazes in the mountains and mazes inside castles.  The final stage of the game is a maze of death.  I gave up and had to look at the map online because I was tired of wandering in circles getting killed by bats and monkeys  and gargoyles and snakes and medusas and never getting anywhere.
    The menu featuring the 4 weapons you use throughout the game on the first row. The second row is the harp that calls Pegasus, the Ocarina which calls a dolphin, the flask which refills your life bar and the two crystals which make hidden doors and the final boss visible.  Third row is the shoes that allow you to jump higher and walk on ceilings, the shield, the number of salamanders you have (another form of currency that I never even had 1 of), the power bracelet which makes your attacks stronger and a key that opens a door.
    When I started playing the game I thought “this game is very fun, the controls are tight, the graphics are bright, the music is good and each part of the world looks different so it is never boring.” At first it is every bit as enjoyable as Zelda II and even non-gamers could pick up the controller and have some fun. But, if you goal is to beat the game it isn’t going to happen without some help (save states, video walkthrough, written walkthroughs or 100 hours of practice).
    If I wasn’t dying I was getting lost.  This could have been a perfect game if the difficulty had been ramped down by 50% and there was an easy way to navigate between worlds and the townspeople actually gave you better clues to find hidden doors and items that only appear if you are standing in a certain location and blow on your ocarina.
    I’m glad I’ve finally beaten Battle of Olympus but I’m sad I couldn’t do it without the use of save states. The controls, graphics and sound are all an 8 heart game, the difficulty, mazes and cryptic gameplay are horrible meaning I couldn’t justify giving the game more than 4 hearts.


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  5. Hoskat

    Dragon Warrior

    By Hoskat,

    Genre: RPG
    Publisher: Nintendo
    Total time played: 14 hours
    Short review:  The first accessible RPG on the NES.  Not as good as Final Fantasy due to an unnecessarily menu system but still a classic.
    Interesting links related to Dragon Warrior
    Speedrun (tool assisted in 17min 47sec) How to beat Dragon Warrior in 5 minutes Soundtrack Video Review (CGRUndertow) Dragon Warrior dungeon maps I first heard of this game through Nintendo Power and it wasn’t something that really struck my 7 year old fancy.  However, my mom and a friend of hers bought it on release day, plowed through it in a week and then sold it to a local video store before I had a chance to play it.  I ended up buying all 4 Dragon Warrior games for $2 each at a yard sale a couple of years later and played through the first game in high school.
    Dragon Warrior is the first RPG I played and I loved it.  But, that is because it was the first RPG I had played.  The game is very basic compared to other games in the genre.  The story is very typical “save the princess.”
    The game features a large overworld similar to Zelda where you walk long distances to reach towns to buy better weapons and longer distances to find dungeons where you pillage treasure and fight monsters.  That is pretty much the entire game.  It is a loooong game by NES standards.  While walking around the overworld you are randomly thrown into battles with enemies ranging from a small slime to a giant dragon.  As you start the game you are very weak, have no money, no weapons, no armor and no experience.  The only way to get these things is to fight monsters.  As you kill enemies you earn experience points and gold.  Experience points help your character level up which increases your hit points, magic points, attack power, speed and every once in a blue moon you learn a new spell.  The gold is used to buy stronger weapons, tougher armor and healing herbs.
    The enemy that drops the most gold is the “Goldman” who I did not encounter often enough.  He would drop up to 199 gold with each fight, other enemies drop between 1-99 gold mid-way through the game.  Some of the items cost over 10,000 gold so, I spent a lot of time trying to build up gold.
    Here is the Goldman – I forgot to snag a photo of him on my play though. So I would like to thank “Davy” and Google for helping me out.
    If you were to break down the game it would be 90% fighting the same enemies over and over trying to level up, 10% actual progressing the story.  Not to mention, without a map of the overworld and all of the caves you are going to spend a lot of time wandering aimlessly looking for something to do.  As the game progressed I went from being mad at how many fights I got into and how much time I spent grinding gold and experience but at some point I quit getting mad and found the fighting to be almost therapeutic.  The music fits perfectly and every time I would get a level up or acquire a new item that makes fighting a little easier I got a little rush. But, once I had the best sword and armor and no longer needed gold for anything I started to grow tired of fighting enemies again but I had to keep doing it as I wasn’t strong enough to fight the Dragonlord.
    I spent many hours walking back and forth in this area collecting gold and experience.
    The enemies kind of guide you on your journey. If you find a new enemy and it kills you really quickly you probably aren’t ready to go that way just yet.
    At the beginning of the game you are given the option to choose the speed at which the text appears on the screen throughout the game.  If you do not choose “fast” you are going to regret it.  Each battle is filled with text of the attacks you and your enemy do and after a very small number of battles you will be pulling your hair out wishing they would go by faster.  Later RPG’s keep the same formula but the battles are now more action based and don’t require as much reading.
    My biggest gripe about the game, other than the amount of time I spent trying to build experience, is that you have to open the menu and select “stairs” to walk up or down stairs, select “door” to open a door, select “talk” to talk to someone.  In the other great NES RPG Final Fantasy all of this is done by hitting the A button, you don’t have to open a menu.  The menu and the level grinding make Dragon Warrior drag on longer than it needs to.  I understand that back in the early days of gaming programmers wanted people to get their money’s worth out of a game so they did anything they could to make it longer but in 2016 I would rather play a shorter game that isn’t so tedious.
    Looks like pre-Mortal Kombat Noob Sabot moonlighted as a Demon Knight in Dragon Warrior
    I ended up beating the game on level 19 which required 22,000 experience points.  To put that in perspective, I don’t know that I found any enemy who gave me more than 54 experience points per battle and a lot of the enemies give 2-10 experience points per battle.  Well, that is unless you count the metal slime which gives 115 experience but I only was able to defeat 2 of them while playing.
    My routine was as follows:
    walk to a spot where the strongest enemies I could beat were Fight enemies until my hit points were low Use the heal spell to replace hitpoints fight enemies until him hit points were low and I had no more magic power to perform heal spell Use herbs to heal myself until I ran out of herbs walk back to a village and stay at the Inn to replace my hit points and magic power. repeat Eventually, when I got the strongest armor in the game I no longer needed to do all of that as each step I took replaced one hit point.  This means I didn’t need to use as many heal spells or herbs which meant I didn’t have to walk back to town to stay at the Inn as often.  But, even with that I still had to spend 3-4 hours fighting random battles from the time I was able to fight the final boss until I was strong enough to defeat him.
    The game is still a classic and if you are looking to play an RPG for the first time and have 12-15 hours to kill this one will teach you the basics without confusing you with difficult spells and complex side quests.

     

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  6. Hoskat

    Nescape

    By Hoskat,

    Genre: Puzzle
    Publisher: Khan Games
    Total time played: 3 Hours
    Short review: A point and click adventure in the vein of Shadowgate where your only job is to escape!
    Interesting links related to Nescape
    Kickstarter Project A New Game!
    It has been 25 years since the NES had an officially released game but since then dozens, if not hundreds of “homebrew” games made by small teams, or in some cases, a single person are still coding out and releasing new games using antiquated assembly language. Seeing what these developers can do to push the boundaries of the NES hardware is pretty incredible.
    What is it?
    NESCAPE, developed by Khan Games takes a simple point and click formula and combines it with real life escape logic to create a new and unique puzzle game. The game, at first seems pretty simple, you are trapped in a room and must escape. The room is full of puzzles that must be solved in a specific order to get out. Although the entire game takes place in a single room there are 4 screens that you click between, each represents a wall in the room. And, there are 4 phases for each of the 4 walls so there is definitely more to do than you see at first.
    Every kid I knew had one of these, but, this is the first time I’ve seen one in an NES game.
    Eww, a bug
    The first time I played the game I accidentally turned on my flashlight and then traveled in a specific direction causing the game to lock up. Luckily it happened 2 minutes after I started so a simple reset wasn’t a big deal. A quick search online let me know that I wasn’t alone, the games developer didn’t know about this bug until the game shipped. He has agreed to fix all copies of the game if you want to ship back to him. But, since it requires such a small specific group of steps that is easily avoided, I’ll probably just keep my copy with the bug in tact.
    Even with the bug, the game is still much more polished than a lot of officially released NES games.
    How Do You Know What To Do?
    You don’t, and that is the point. The game starts you off in a pitch black room, all you can see if your cursor which is an eyeball. Luckily the answer to the first puzzle, where the light switch can be found, is in the instruction manual. If it wasn’t you would spend a lot of time poking around in the dark.
    At the start of the game my advice is just to click on everything and see what you find. There are several puzzles scattered along the 4 walls and the game gives you just enough information to be able to deduce which puzzle requires your attention next.
    I’d be lying if I said I didn’t play The Simpson’s theme song on this thing.
    Fast Paced
    The game itself isn’t fast paced but because it is a new game it was able to avoid all the programming pitfalls that slowed down older games. Playing some older games is tough today because of how slow the cursor moves or how many extra steps are needed to complete a simple task. With 25 years of programming from the last official NES game the new developers can really make new games more fun for newer audiences and streamline the commands needed to complete tasks.
    Across the bottom of the screen is a spot to hold up to 8 items. To select an item you simply click on it to highlight it. Until you click the item again or click another item you have the item in hand. This saves some time when trying to figure out which lock a key belongs in. Select the key once and try all the locks, older game would have made you select the key before testing each lock.
    These symbols have to mean something.
    Gross, A Slide Puzzle
    As a kid it seemed like every restaurant, toy store or friends bedroom had some form of a slide puzzle game. I was never any good at them even though I’ve probably spent dozens of hours of my life trying to figure them out. When I saw one pop up early in Nescape I was afraid this would be the end of my journey. The puzzle is a 3×4 picture of a mask.
    I actually solved the puzzle my first time (it took 15 minutes) but even so I spent an hour or so laying in bed that night watching videos on YouTube of strategies to solve slide puzzles that I hoped would make solving the in game slide puzzle easier. Unfortunately I never found a video for a 4×3 slide puzzle so the tips I found only went so far.
    The dreaded slide puzzle!!
    Of all the puzzles in the game this is the one that took the longest to get past every time I played. Luckily the game is pretty short (if you know what to do) and I only had to complete the puzzle 5 times as that is how many attempts it took me to escape.
    Why Do The Lights Keep Going Off?
    Throughout the game the room goes through 4 transformations. I think of these as 4 different stages. Once you solve certain puzzles all the lights turn off and you are taken back to the pink wall where you must again find the light switch (it is in the same spot every time). Each time this happens there are subtle changes across the 4 walls and new puzzles are revealed.
    Impossible
    There were 3 times in the game where I had to rely on the internet for help. None of these were things I couldn’t have figured out on my own, in fact, I knew exactly what to do, I just couldn’t deduce something because of hardware limitations.
    I played this game on a real NES on a tube TV that is pushing 25 years old. I didn’t realize it at the time but apparently the color on the TV isn’t as good as it once was. There was a puzzle in the game that featured some colored lights on the wall and some candles with different colored flames. One of the flames and colored lights on the wall was red but it looked gray on my TV. So, I was confused why there were 2 gray lights and candles. When I looked up a screenshot online I noticed right away that my TV was the issue, not my brain.
    That second row is red…it looked dark gray/black on my TV.
    The other item that messed me up was the walkman. At three different times in the game you find tapes for the walkman that play a single word that you must use to solve a puzzle. The first word came through pretty clear but the second and third words were impossible to decipher through my crappy tv speakers and the NES’s crappy sound chip. So, again, I knew what to do I just couldn’t understand the word the game was yelling at me.
    There were a couple of other graphical limitations that made some puzzles harder than they needed to be, but nothing impossible.
    Final Thoughts
    I’m a big fan of escape rooms. I have done 9 different rooms and as of now I have never not escaped. This is not because I’m great at them, but because I make sure I play with smart people who are easy to work with.
    This NES game feels very similar to an escape room. It takes elements of other point and click adventures like Shadowgate and cleans up the things that slowed that game down. It adds a clock that makes it the perfect game for modern speed runners to try to keep besting their high score.
    But, the game isn’t without its issues. The biggest one being what I mentioned above with the bad sound chip and color/graphical limitations of the system making a couple of the puzzles harder to solve than they need to be. Also, once you figure out what to do the game can be beaten very very quickly making subsequent playthroughs less satisfying (this is also true of real life escape rooms). Also, there wasn’t really much of a story other than you need to escape the room. Honestly, I am not much for stories in older games but having just a little something more would have really made this game stand out.
    But, the game designers should be very proud. They made a game that is highly playable in 2019 and is much better and more polished than over half of the games from the NES library. I will definitely pull this one off the shelf to show friends when we have a game night.

    Spoilers (Walkthrough)
    If you get stuck and need a little guidance I have a rough layout of how to navigate through the puzzles below. Highlight the text to reveal. But, please, try to play through the game on your own. There is nothing more satisfying than solving puzzles on your own. Plus, the developers put a lot of time and effort into making the game and cheating makes their effort less valuable.
    Turn on light (located just to the left of where your cursor starts the game) Pick up flashlight and hairdryer on white vanity Use the flashlight on all 4 walls to reveal shapes on the photos hung on the wall. Find the order that makes sense for the pictures and enter the shapes into the blue box get key, paper and walkman from the blue box use key on desk with statue sitting on it get extension cord combine hairdryer, extension cord and use on the outlet on the wall. use hairdryer on the statue to reveal a key. use key on the chest by the clock to reveal the dread slide puzzle solve puzzle and pick up tape and paper combine two papers together use the code on the paper to move the grandfather clock hands pull lever inside clock Turn on light (switch is in the same spot as before) pick up the 4 paintings and place them on the wall where the frame outlines can be seen. putting paintings on the wall reveals a panel in the wall with 4 buttons each with 4 positions. Listen for the note in each column that is different. Play those notes on the piano  get the ball from the piano Use ball on maze on the left side of the pink wall Get key Use key on blue wall desk Get batteries combine batteries, walkman and tape select walkman and press anywhere in the room to hear a word. enter the word in the typewriter (YOU) turn on the lights (switch is in the same place) pick up matches inside typwriter arrange newly visible wall switches to where each row has a white light light candles in the order of the white light switches (using the color behind the light where it matches the light of the flame). When all candles are lit and stay lit examine the tree get symbols off tree branches (notice how many leaves on each branch) Pull books out of shelf where the symbols match what you saw on the tree. Play game located above white vanity where you find the differences in photos. Pick up key near grandfather clock on the wall. Use key on white vanity pick up tape and play in walkman enter word you hear in the typewriter (SHIVER) Turn on light (switch in same spot as before) rearrange the pic over the phone (not a slide puzzle) pic up hammer on shelf use hammer on piggy bank pick up 3 coins look at typewriter and solve the fiddle (look at first letter of each word) use 3 coins in phone enter number from typewriter view the rearranged pic with the flashlight to reveal morse code alphabet decode message playing over phone. enter decoded word in silver box with word lock Play simon says (write down the order as it is about 10 sequences long) get tape enter word in typewriter (WARMS) turn on light (switch is in same spot as before) use key in lock in the door on the pink wall The end  
     

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  7. Hoskat
    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


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  8. Hoskat
    CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
    CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE EPISODE TO YOUR COMPUTER
    The guys sit down to discuss one of the 1980’s and early 1990’s biggest icon’s, Pee-Wee Herman. They go into the man behind the gray suit, Paul Reuben, as well as all of the movies and TV shows the character was associated with.
    1950’s TV character Pinky Lee inspired Pee-Wee Herman’s style. 
    Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Check out that thumb.Pee-Wee agreed to dress in drag to help this hardened criminal get through a roadblock. He escaped prison after cutting the “do not remove under penalty of law” tag off of a mattress.Francis has a HUGE bathtub.Is this not the coolest bike on the planet?The man, the myth, the legend!There is not a 80’s kid in the world who wasn’t scared by Large Marge.Pee-Wee with his co-creator Phil Hartman on the set of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.Ricardo was a regular at the play house.Larry Fishburne as Cowboy Curtis and Miss Yvonne in the Playhouse.Not sure what is happening here, but this is the kind of wacky antics we would look forward to every Saturday morning.Pee-Wee sitting on Chairy.Conky spitting out the word of the day.Paul Reuben’s in Buffy the Vampire Slayer…a much different character than Pee-Wee Herman.Arrested after an unfortunate incident in a movie theater.Not a great follow up to Pee Wee’s Big AdventureHalloween 2010, Matt as Pee-Wee Herman and Jenny as Antoine Dodson.He couldn’t resist taking this picture. 
     
     


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  9. Hoskat

    #46 - TV of 1985

    By Hoskat,

    The guys discuss the best TV shows of 1985. Turns out, Jason is really into cartoons aimed at young girls, Luke talks about watching G.I. Joe while sitting on a warm vent, Jason talks about the weird ritual he had when his ex-girlfriend was in the bathroom and Matt Mr. Belvedere's himself.
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