This game is not so bodacious, dudes!

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 11/5/18 – 11/28/18
Difficulty: 5/10
My Difficulty: 5/10
My Video: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure Final Level

Another day, another video game adaptation of a movie I haven’t seen.  In this case, I have at least played the game before.  Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure seems like a strange choice for a tie-in video game.  It could make for a decent educational game with all the historical figures from different time periods.  Instead, we ended up with a game that’s not much educational but has all the fun of an educational game, meaning it’s not that exciting.  Kudos to the developers for trying, at least.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is a comedy from 1989.  In the movie, two high school students from San Dimas, California get access to a time machine that allows them to collect various historical figures to help them complete a history project.  Stephen Herek directed the film which stars Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, and George Carlin.  While not a critical success, it performed well at the box office.  A sequel, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, was released in 1991.  A third installment is reported to be in the works as of May 2018.

The movie spawned several video games that are all unique from each other.  The NES game, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure, was released in August 1991.  It was developed by Rocket Science Games and was published by Acclaim Entertainment under the LJN label.  This wasn’t the first game based on the movie.  The PC version from 1989 was a graphical adventure game.  The Game Boy game, aptly title Bill & Ted’s Excellent Game Boy Adventure, was a puzzle platformer.  Finally, the Atari Lynx version also from 1991 is a top-down adventure game.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure on the NES is an isometric adventure game with a plot loosely based on the movie.  Rufus from the movie summons both Bill and Ted to help on an important mission.  Space-time rebels have used the time machine to take historical figures and put them in the wrong time periods.  Both Bill and Ted must work separately to find each person and return him or her to the correct time period.  They need to do this because if history isn’t made right again, our heroes will miss the big concert that will launch the career of their band the Wyld Stallyns.  Unfortunately, they only have access to a pay phone that requires coins before they can time travel.  Your job as Bill or Ted is to find both the historical figure and a specific item that you can use to lure them back home.  You beat the game once you finish all six levels.

After finishing or skipping the introductory story segments, you are presented with a phone book of sixteen historical figures.  (Interestingly, none of these people played a part in the film from what I’ve read.)  The last page in the phone book is your password, which is a seven-digit telephone number that always starts with the fictitious prefix 555.  As you thumb through the phone book, you will come across a second telephone number on one of the pages that blinks red.  This is the number for the person you need to locate in the wrong period.  Press Select at any time to bring up the telephone.  Press A to dial digits and press B to undo them if you make a mistake.  When you have the blinking red number entered correctly, press A to connect the call.  You also use this same telephone screen to enter passwords.

Placing a call puts you in the Circuits of Time.  This is a mini-game that allows you to complete the call.  There are circuits in the background along with circled junctions, one of which contains a spinning phone booth.  Most of the junctions contain one digit of the call you are placing.  The idea is to move to the right from junction to junction until you get to the junction with the last digit of the phone number.  If you don’t do anything on this screen for too long, you will automatically transfer the phone booth to the next junction along the circuits.  You want to avoid this if possible because each automatic transfer costs two coins.  You start out with 15 coins but they get spent very fast this way.  What you can do is press A to launch the phone booth out of its junction in the direction it is facing.  This costs no coins and lets you skip ahead digits if you aim properly.  There is also a red floating junction that you can control with the D-pad used to catch the phone booth if it goes in the wrong direction.  Some junctions contain skulls which both deduct a coin and fire off the phone booth in a random direction, often setting back your progress.  When you reach the last digit, you will have to leave things alone and let the call finish.  The circuit ends in a three-way fork, and as the call is finishing you can take the top fork by holding Up, the bottom fork by holding Down, or the center fork without touching the D-pad.  This determines where you land in the next area.

The main part of the game takes place on the ground in one of five time periods: Medieval World, Western World, U.S. Revolutionary World, Modern World, and Ancient World.  These levels are in the isometric perspective and you can walk around freely.  Use the D-pad to walk around.  Pressing Up moves you to the upper-right and all the other directions follow from that same angle.  It acts just like the default movement in Q*bert.  Press the A button to jump.  You take pretty large jumps and you can leap over some areas you can’t normally walk on.  However, if you land in a non-walkable area you will fall down and get temporarily stuck.  The only way out is to jump your way out, and sometimes it can take several jumps to get back on the path.  Use the B button to toss out your Good Stuff to help ward off some of the angrier locals.

Pressing either Start or Select during gameplay brings up a menu screen where you can see and do a few things.  The upper left shows where you place another call, should you so choose.  Hold Up and press A to bring up the touch pad to place a call.  In the upper right are the keys you need to get you out of jail.  Your Good Stuff is in the middle, along with a red selection box that you can move to choose which item you want to use with the B button during play.  You also see your coin count and which historical items you have collected so far.

As you are exploring the worlds, there are locals also moving around.  There are three types of locals who are distinguished by how they behave.  One type is the standing local.  You can walk up to them and talk to them.  They can give you items, coins, or hints on where items or historical figures might be found.  They also might tell you to leave them alone.  After speaking with them, they turn into the second kind of local which is the walking local.  They move slowly and mind their own business.  Don’t try to talk to them or even walk up to them.  When they are on the move they get angry and standing in their way will cost you a coin.  If you don’t have any coins left, then you get thrown in jail instead.  The third kind of local is the angry local.  They will pursue you directly with arms outstretched.  If you get caught by one of them, you get thrown directly in jail.

When locals are causing you trouble, you can use your Good Stuff.  These are four different disposable items that affect the locals.  Press the B button to throw them.  You can throw different distances depending on how long you hold the button.  Pudding cups draw all locals toward them.  You normally want to throw them in the opposite direction you want to go.  Should a local grab the pudding off the ground, all the locals will go back to their original state except for the one who got the pudding.  That person mellows down.  Firecrackers have the opposite effect; when you throw one everyone runs away.  You can also throw a firecracker close enough to someone to blow them up.  Harsh!  Highly dangerous textbooks are smart bombs that clear the screen of locals.  Finally, cassette tapes start up some music that makes everyone dance.  Now you can go freely for a little while, but you still need to keep from running into a dancer or you’ll get tossed in jail.  Also, when the music runs out, any local on screen will switch to angry mode.

At the start, you are dropped off in a world you don’t know while trying to find someone without knowing their location.  You are going to need some assistance from the locals.  Occasionally, a standing local will provide some information on where you might look for items or which direction you should go to find the historical figure.  You will have better luck holding conversations with people indoors, but they aren’t always easy to find.  Throughout the worlds there are several buildings or houses with open doors.  Sometimes the door is locked and you can’t get in.  Other times you come into an empty room.  These rooms often act as warp rooms where you can jump to a different building across the map by leaving through the other door in the room.  Other rooms will have someone standing inside that you can talk with.

You can engage in conversation with a person within their home or building.  Walk up to them to start talking, then press A to advance the dialog.  When it is your turn to respond, you will see some possible numbered responses.  Press A to cycle through the different options, then press B on the one you want to say.  Each person has at least one possible conversation where they will be persuaded to help you out by giving you a hint on where you can find something outside.  Say the wrong thing and you will either anger all the locals outside or even get thrown directly in jail.  You get to learn which things to say to help get what you want.  After you leave, you can’t go back into the building you just left until you enter another one first.

The historical figures will always be located inside one of the buildings, however either they won’t be in the room or the outside door will stay locked until you first hold their historical item to lure them out.  There are both sixteen historical figures and sixteen historical items in the game, and it’s up to you to figure out which item belongs to which person.  All the people and items are listed out in the manual, so I did some pre-work to try and match them up beforehand.  Some pairs make sense right away, like King Arthur and the Holy Grail.  Some of them are silly matchups based on jokes, like Julius Caesar and Salad Dressing.  A few of them had an unexpected match.  For instance, I assumed Elvis would like the CD Player but that’s not the right pairing.

Finding the items is one of the biggest challenges in the game.  The items are located outside in very specific locations.  These are all off the main walking path and you have to reach them by jumping on top of them.  Did I mention they are invisible?  The hints you get for their locations are generally unclear, like “check the last fence” or “there’s something near a rock in the north.”  What helped me the most were the maps listed in the manual.  They give you the general structure of the world as well as a few specific locations marked.  They show you where the jail is, as well as the lower, middle, and upper portals, which correspond to which branch you took entering the world through the Circuits of Time.  The unmarked dots on the map represent either a building you can enter, a hidden stash of Good Stuff, or one of the historical items.  (I deduced that after playing for a while.)  The specific location of those dots on the map are not accurate, but they do help determine how many things you should be looking for between intersections.  You will still have to comb over areas well enough to find the item spots.  When do you find one, write the location down so that you can better find it again later.

The maps also indicate horse paths and canoeing sections.  You can take a canoe or ride a horse by approaching the path from the southmost entrance and hopping on.  Both generally function the same way.  Use Left or Right to steer, press Up to move faster and press Down to move slower.  On horseback you can jump over obstacles with A.  In the canoe you can find items on bubbling spots in the water.  If you make it all the way to the end, you earn some coins.  If you crash, then you don’t get anything.  Falling in the water pushes you all the way upstream, while if you fall of the horse you have to walk from where you landed.  I had a bad habit of missing the jump to the canoe at the start of the path, which also pushes you all the way upstream with no rewards.

When you find both the item and historical figure, you get a chance at sending them back to their own time.  You speak with the person and select the item the same way you handle conversation dialogs.  Pick the wrong item and you get thrown in jail, plus you have to locate the historical figure all over again.  Choose the right one and they will call a phone booth over so that you can complete the call through the Circuits of Time.  Completing the call returns the person, but if you run out of coins you get returned to the world and must collect enough coins to try again.

I’ve mentioned jail a lot and all the different ways you get sent there.  The concept is simple enough.  You can get out of jail by using one of your skeleton keys and walking right out the door.  It’s weird that the jailer doesn’t confiscate your things.  If you run out of keys, you are stuck there and it’s Game Over.  The worst part of jail is that it’s often located far away from where you need to go.

There are six levels in the game.  In Levels 1 and 2, you only have to return one person.  In Levels 3 and 4 you need to find two people, and in Levels 5 and 6 you get to return three people.  Each historical figure is in a separate world along with his or her corresponding item, so thankfully there are no crossing time periods to match an item up with its historical figure, at least that I noticed.  After completing each stage, you get to see the Wyld Stallyns in concert.  While not great musicians, they do progressively get better the further you get in the game.

I’m not sure how I ended up with this game, but I had just the loose cart in my childhood game collection.  I do remember spending some significant time with the game, but I have no idea how far I got or what I accomplished.  With no manual I had to go at it truly alone.  When you’re a kid who likes video games, you will spend a lot of time playing just about anything.  A loose cart is cheap, but in my experience, it was one I didn’t see much.  I believe my childhood copy is the only one I’ve owned.

It took me some time to get going on this game.  I managed to clear a couple of levels in the first week mostly by dumb luck.  A few days in I figured out what kind of information I could glean from the maps, so then I started mapping everything I could find.  Most of my time spent playing the game was doing the mapping and carefully examining every stretch of land.  I figured out most if not all of the possible landing spots for the historical figure in each world as well as all item locations but one.  Each world has four historical items but I only located three in the U.S. Revolutionary World.  The last level turned out to be pretty challenging and I just barely finished it in my video.  I ran out of keys after returning two of the three people and had to play super carefully.  The last person was in the U.S. Revolutionary World and the item I needed was found in the third and final position I documented, so I almost got stuck not knowing where the item would be.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure is always perceived as an undesirable NES game.  My view is that the game is essentially video game busy work.  The recipe for success in this game is having a good sense of direction and taking notes all the time, with a side of endless perseverance.  I made progress just about every time I played, no matter how little time I spent.  Every element on the map marked, every conversation I figured out, and every historical item properly associated with its owner helped the next time I played go a little bit smoother.  This makes the game tedious to play, but not necessarily difficult.  The number of angry locals increases in the final stages, but by then you know how to handle them with items or getting yourself off the main path where they can’t reach you.  The person’s location and items are always randomized, but there are only so many places they could be and you will narrow things down.  Sometimes you just get lucky and find what you need right away.  I imagine few people have beaten the game due to the time it takes to build up a knowledge base and catch a lucky streak, while stretching that out over several levels.  I feel comfortable saying it’s an average difficulty game with an above average amount of time and effort needed to see it through.

I will say that Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure is mostly a technically solid game.  There aren’t that many NES games with isometric viewpoints, and this game manages that along with a jumping mechanic for veering off the path occasionally.  The graphics are nice, particularly the character sprites and some of the background elements.  The music is pretty good but they didn’t loop any of the tracks, while eventually results in silence a lot of the time.  The controls work well.  The only sticking point is that jumping when off the path only works if you allow Bill or Ted time to stand up first.  The music issue is kind of bad, but other than that the game works well enough.  It’s just that the gameplay is dull, repetitive, and dragging.  It’s like filling out a spreadsheet where the cursor repositions itself at random.  One wrong step and you get thrown in jail, and now you have to backtrack or try a different way.  You are asked to do this history hunting too many times over.  I’m not sure what they could have done to make the game more varied.  Maybe you already knew about this game and just thought maybe you misunderstood it.  I’m here to tell you all your assumptions were true.  I don’t hate this game, but I wouldn’t recommend playing it.

It’s an outdated version of the long running TV quiz show!

To Beat: Win a single round
To Complete: Win a single round on the highest difficulty
What I Did: Completed the game
Played: 12/1/17 – 12/2/17
Difficulty: 2/10
My Difficulty: 2/10
Video: Jeopardy! Longplay

This is another one of these project milestones, as today I am covering the first game show game on the NES. Well, that’s only true if you don’t count American Gladiators, I suppose. Even at the time of the NES game release, Jeopardy! was already a popular, long-running TV game show. It is still going strong today and I doubt there is an end in sight. This NES game suffers solely because of its age as the questions and answers are now nearly 30 years old, but it holds true to the Jeopardy! formula we are familiar with.

Jeopardy! first appeared on NBC in 1964 as a daytime show. Merv Griffin is the show’s creator. The original version ran until early 1975, which slightly overlapped a brief nighttime syndicated version airing from 1974 to 1975. A new version called The All-New Jeopardy! aired on NBC for a few months during 1978 and 1979. The show would return for good in daily syndication beginning in September 1984. This is the version of the show that is still running today. Art Fleming hosted the first three runs of Jeopardy! with Don Pardo as the announcer for the first two runs and John Harlan for The All-New Jeopardy! The current run of Jeopardy! is hosted by Alex Trebek and announced by Johnny Gilbert. It has won 33 daytime Emmy Awards and is now in its 34th season.

There have been many video game adaptations of the show, ranging from the mid-1980s up to 2017. The first version was the 1987 release on Apple II, Commodore 64, and DOS. The NES has four distinct versions of Jeopardy! with the original release coming in September 1988. Jeopardy! Junior Edition released in October 1989 and Jeopardy! 25th Anniversary Edition followed in June 1990. Super Jeopardy! was the final NES release in September 1991. Rare developed and GameTek published all versions of Jeopardy! on the NES, and all were US exclusives. GameTek published most video game versions of the game show until they filed for bankruptcy in 1998.

Since the NES game follows the same flow as the TV show, it makes sense to cover a basic overview of how Jeopardy! is played. Three contestants play three rounds aiming to earn the most money to win. Clues are given as answers and the contestant must respond with the appropriate question to earn money. The winner, or champion, of the prior game of Jeopardy! returns to play again and can accumulate winnings over multiple shows for as long as he or she keeps winning. The returning champion sits on the left and begins each game by choosing the first clue.

In the first round, the main game board is filled with six categories of five clue each. Each clue is assigned a dollar amount representing a wager. The original run of Jeopardy! had values ranging from $10 to $50, and the current show ranges from $200 to $1000. Typically, the higher the value, the more difficult the clue. One contestant chooses the category and a dollar amount on the board, and the host reads the full answer. Then, contestants can buzz in and provide the question. Correct responses add the dollar amount to that person’s total, while incorrect responses take away the amount. Totals can dip into the negative. The contestant with the correct response may choose the next clue from the board, or if no one answers correctly then the original contestant may choose again. The round ends when all thirty clues have been given.

One clue hides a Daily Double. When a contestant chooses that clue, the Daily Double is announced and only that contestant may give a response. The player must provide a wager of his or her own choosing, ranging from $5 up to their current winnings. If a player doesn’t have any accrued winnings, he or she can choose from any wager remaining on the board. Then the clue is given and the contestant gets a brief time to respond. Dollar amounts are added or deducted just the same as in normal play. Finally, the contestant gets to choose the next clue for everyone to play.

The second round is called Double Jeopardy! and it plays out the same way as the first round. Six new categories appear but this time the dollar values are doubled. The player with the lowest total from the prior round gets to choose the first clue. This round hides two Daily Doubles. Once all those clues have been given, then Final Jeopardy! is played. Only contestants with a positive score may play this round. Here only the category is given to start and players must wager a dollar amount of his or her choice from $0 up to their current winnings. Then the clue is revealed and each contestant writes down a response within a shared time limit. One at a time, each question is revealed and the wager is added for a correct response or deducted for an incorrect response. The player with the highest total wins the game.

The NES game begins by choosing the number of players. One to three players may compete with computer players filling in any open spots. Use the D-pad to choose and press either A or B to select how many human players will participate. Next, choose the Skill Level 1, 2, or 3. Then, one at a time, each player enters in a name up to six characters long. The D-pad scrolls the cursor and either A or B enters the character. The cursor may wrap around from any edge to the other side. Then a player character is displayed at the stand and the game asks if you want a new character. Choose Yes to swap in a different character as many times as you want, then choose No to lock that character in. The character selection repeats for all human players and is filled in automatically for computer players. Player 2 uses the second controller and Player 3 uses the first controller, if necessary. This holds true for the entire game.

The first round starts with six categories and dollar amounts ranging from $100 to $500. Player 1 gets to pick the first clue. Press Left or Right to select a category and press A or B to lock it in. Then use Up and Down to select the wager and press A or B. Next, the answer appears on screen along with a timer shown in the corner. Players can buzz in at any time. Player 1 must press any key on the D-pad on the first controller to buzz in. Player 2 does the same on the second controller, while Player 3 uses the A or B button on the first controller. I guess you have to set controllers on the floor or on a table when playing with three players.

When a player jumps in, the question entry screen appears. Inputting the question here is the same as entering in your name at the start of the game, but here there is a time limit for submitting your response. This is where the skill level comes into play. Skill level 1 gets 50 seconds, level 2 is 45 seconds, and level 3 is 40 seconds. These aren’t actually full seconds. Unless the skill level also makes computer players buzz in more quickly, the skill level doesn’t mean much at all. Anyway, you will enter in the response and then choose End to submit. You don’t have to phrase your response in the form of the question because the game handles it for you, which is convenient. Other players get a chance to buzz in if the wrong answer is given. Daily Doubles are also handled similarly where you can input the wager you want or choose from one of the preset wagers if you haven’t earned enough money.

Final Jeopardy! is handled a bit differently than the first two rounds. Normally, contestants all submit their wagers and responses at the same time by writing them down. To get around it here, each player submits their response and wager while the other players are asked to look away from the TV. Of course there’s the potential for cheating if players 2 and 3 aren’t honest, but there’s really no other way to do it on the NES. Once the final submissions are resolved and scores are tallied, someone is crowned the winner! The game goes back to the title screen from here.

I’m sure this was not my first time playing Jeopardy! on the NES. I mean, I don’t remember exactly. It’s not a long game and so I may have completed a full round or two just to see what it was like. I imagine this was the first time I won a game. I managed to beat Jeopardy! on my first time playing, though it took me three tries to win. In all games, I had a reasonable score but didn’t have the lead going into the last round. On the first try, I missed the final question, and on the second try I got it right but didn’t wager enough to win. I played better the third game and nailed the Final Jeopardy! round to claim victory.

The clear problem with older versions of trivia games like this is that the information is outdated. Sure, there are general questions and answers that are more timeless in nature. It just seems like about half of the categories or clues have to do with musicians, movie stars, or TV personalities of that period, and most of that information isn’t common knowledge anymore. I just had to hope that the computer would miss or ignore the ones I couldn’t answer, while buzzing in quickly on ones I knew I could answer. I also needed to get a good enough mix of categories that catered more to my knowledge. Perhaps I came out a bit lucky to only need three attempts. As an NES game though, it’s an easy one and a relatively quick clear.

If you want to try out NES Jeopardy! for some reason, here are a few tips for success. Both first and last names are required when the clue is about a person. Spaces for multiple word submissions are not required, though spelling is pretty important to get right. For numbers, you can type out the word or just the digits. Be sure to give the plural form of the words if you are responding with “What are” instead of “What is.”

Those are all input related tips and are somewhat useful, but I do have a couple of more helpful trends I noticed about the computer players. Sometimes the computer will buzz in and get the question wrong, and when they do they will enter in gibberish. Their incorrect response is the same as the correct one only with most of the letters replaced by symbols, so from that you know both how long the correct response should be as well as some of the correct letters in the spelling. You can sometimes glean the correct solution from this, and it’s even better because the opponent also loses points from the wrong response that can help you get the right one. It’s also to your benefit to place a full Final Jeopardy! wager unless you have a commanding lead. Most rounds will be decided by Final Jeopardy! anyway and you have nothing to lose but time if it doesn’t pan out. If you have a really big lead, you can simply wager nothing and probably win. I never saw the computer place particularly large wagers anyway.

Jeopardy! on NES is a competently programmed game and a good adaptation of the popular show. You don’t need flashy graphics or presentation here, but what you get is more than good enough. It’s just nothing special, and it’s too bad that the outdated questions and answers make it even less fun to play now. It was an easy clear for me, and for that I am thankful and won’t complain. For anyone else though, I wouldn’t bother with it.