Take on the NES Library

I suppose I am all about starting up completely new categories on this blog!

I decided that I wanted to try my hand at writing up my very first game walkthrough. I had teased this idea in my Ghoul School blog post and today I made it a reality. I had mentioned this in that same article, but for my first playthrough of Ghoul School I meticulously mapped out each new room that I entered so that I could more coherently explore the school to complete the game. A walkthrough really makes sense as the next logical step to consolidate all of the information I collected while I played. This would be a good resource for someone who either got stuck in the game or for someone who wants to just cut to the chase and take the most straightforward way through Ghoul School.

Ghoul School Walkthrough

In addition to the walkthrough, I edited the Ghoul School blog post with a link to the walkthrough, and I also added a link to it in the Game List. That should give it enough visibility!

The last couple of weeks have been mostly kind to me by Ikari Warriors standards! At my last progress report I was starting to learn Level 3. I would not say that I have really learned the level yet in the last two weeks, but I can consistently make it far into the level in spite of my incomplete knowledge. In fact, I have reached the end of Stage 3 several times and I have gotten really close to clearing the level. I anticipate that I am going to start the final level by the end of the week. Maybe I can have that magical run and beat the game by the end of the month!

I think it is fair to say that I have the first two levels completely memorized as well as several sections of Level 3. The best way for me to play Ikari Warriors is to learn both the level layout and enemy spawns so that I can position myself to clear enemies quickly before they can become a real threat. However, when fully powered up I can get through many situations by playing in a reactionary and cautious manner. I am getting through Level 3 with a combination of both of these approaches. I don’t know what Level 4 has in store for me, but I suspect that I am going to rely more on playing by reaction.

Just a heads up that this is a bit of a spoiler. My attempt just last night was my best run to date. I reached the end of Level 3 with only two deaths, both of which were in Level 3. The very end of the stage is easily the most brutal section of the game I have encountered so far. It is just swarming with enemies that actively aim at me. I have developed somewhat of a strategy for that part, but I am not sure if I will come up with a method for getting through it without dying. This time I was able to clear out all of the enemies, but after that there is no apparent exit to the level. I lost all my remaining lives to the “hurry up” missiles while trying to figure out what to do. I was a bit stunned to say the least! Of course, once it was all said and done I think I realize where I went wrong. I can’t wait to get back to that part with a clear head and see about moving on toward the end of the game.

In other news, you may have noticed that I posted this up on a Monday instead of my normal Friday schedule. I get the feeling my posts are more easily ignored when posted on Friday afternoon. I know this sounds crazy, but people have better things to do over the weekend than read this blog! I chose Friday as my posting day because it is the most convenient day for me to put these posts and articles together. If I can get more attention with a post earlier in the week then it is worth working around my schedule to accommodate it. I do this blog for myself but at the same time I want this project to become more popular and generate fun discussions over obscure and overlooked NES games. I will stick to the Monday posting schedule for awhile to see how it pans out.

I am planning to do something different once again for my next post. It was something I potentially teased in a past article, so if you are a very attentive reader with a good memory then you may already know what I will be writing up!

I thought I was getting some kind of RPG, but I ended up with an arcade game instead!

The title screen is misleading too, but it works!

To Beat: Set the high score
To Complete: Beat Wave 99
My Goal: Complete the game
What I Did: Completed the game
Played: 6/28/16
Difficulty: 3/10
My Difficulty: 3/10

Crystal Quest caught me a bit by surprise in a number of ways. I was not expecting to be writing a Game Boy post right now, but circumstances can be a funny thing sometimes and so here we are. I didn’t know anything about the game until just last week, but when I saw the cart I figured it would be something I would want to have for my collection. When I ended up with was not the game I was guessing I would get, but it turned out to be a fun little diversion that took me almost no time at all to complete.

It all started last week while looking at game lots for sale on eBay. I am always keeping an eye out for good deals as well as games to add to my ever growing collection. One listing I found was for a small Game Boy lot that included Crystal Quest. This was the first time I had ever seen the game while looking at Game Boy games over the last several months. It looked intriguing just based on the cover art alone. I put it in my watch list and hemmed and hawed about buying it before deciding to let the auction end without placing a bit.

I still wanted to know more about the game so I did a little bit of research about the gameplay. Surprising to me, this game with the word Quest in the title was actually an arcade shooter. I hopped on over to eBay and found a copy for under $7 shipped, and when researching prices it seemed to be worth around $10, so that was enough for me to take the plunge and pick up a new game for the collection.

Yep, definitely not an RPG!

I received the cart earlier in the week along with a few other games I had ordered. I opened up and cleaned the carts like I always do, and then later on I fired the games up to test them out. When I got to Crystal Quest, I played through a few levels only to lose all of my lives rather quickly. Rather than putting it away, I decided to go for one more try. All of a sudden, I had that beautiful moment where the game clicked with me. I played and played and I got to the point where I could play indefinitely, which is about as good as it gets for an endless game like Crystal Quest. It started with cart testing time, and it ended up with the base for a new blog post!

Crystal Quest was originally released in 1987 for the Apple Macintosh and the Apple IIgs. It was developed by Patrick Buckland and published by Casady & Greene. The game is notable for being the first game in color for the Macintosh. Crystal Quest is loosely based on the Atari 800 XL game Crystal Raider, which is a platformer instead of a shooter style game but with a similar premise. There would later be a sequel released in 1993 named Crystal Crazy, and much later in 2006 Crystal Quest was ported to the Xbox 360 on the Xbox Live Arcade. A Kickstarter was launched in 2015 to create a new version of the game, but unfortunately it did not meet its funding goal. The Game Boy version I played was released in September 1991, published by Data East, and developed by Novalogic.

Crystal Quest is a top down arcade shooter with a very simple goal. You pilot a spaceship inside an arena that is scattered with crystals. The goal is to collect all the crystals and escape through the hatch that opens at the bottom of the screen. That sounds simple, but of course there are obstacles designed to prevent you from easily clearing the room. Randomly strewn on the screen are mines that will explode the ship if touched. There are also two hatches. One is on the left side of the screen and the other on the right side, and they spawn various types of enemies. Each wave consists of a single screen of randomly placed crystals and mines, and the enemies will keep flowing until you escape to the next wave.

Death is pretty common in this game.

The controls are really simple. Use the D-pad to move in any direction. Press the A button to fire a bullet, and press the B button to use a bomb. The movement in the game is very inertia heavy so it is pretty easy to slide around all over the place. Pressing in the opposite direction to slow down is an essential skill. The shooting in this game is unique in that the bullets go in exactly the same direction as the ship is moving. For instance, to fire right means having to move to the right. That makes it challenging to attack enemies coming directly toward you. Even more strange is that shooting without moving at all will place a stationary bullet as sort of a makeshift mine.

The bombs are very powerful weapons that wipe out all of the enemies on the screen. Of course bombs like this can only be used a limited number of times so they must be used conservatively. There are bomb icons in the levels that can be collected to add a bomb to the supply. These turn out to be crucial in keeping alive through as many waves as possible.

There are several different enemy types that will stand in the way of completing the level. They are very tiny sprites and it is typically difficult to distinguish exactly how they will move and attack by sight alone. I just observed them for a second to see how they would attack instead. Some enemies shoot, some enemies home in on you, some enemies drop mines, some randomly bounce around the screen, and so on.

Ride the wave!

Crystal Quest is primarily a score attack game and as a result there are several ways to earn points. Collecting crystals and killing enemies give a small amount of points. There are diamonds sometimes dispersed in the level that are there to provide a nice point boost. Occasionally a large diamond will appear that appears to be an enemy at first, but it can be collected and it is worth a lot of points. After the wave is completed, there is a time bonus that depends on how long it takes to complete the wave. The score starts out adding up slowly but it really ramps up after about a dozen stages or so.

There are 99 Waves total in Crystal Quest. I know that because I got to Wave 99 and after beating it the game just loops Wave 99 over and over until you quit or run out of lives. Every 15 waves or so there is a small cutscene where a bug gets shot and explodes, and you are rewarded with a one-word attaboy like “Radical” or “Awesome.” Eventually these cutscenes cease once the Wave 99 loop starts. At some point, the escape hatch start moving back and forth along the bottom of the screen which adds a little extra challenge to slipping out of the arena at the end.

I found that the game takes a little bit of practice to get used to, but after that the Waves become really short. It doesn’t take long to start making good progress into the game. Crystal Quest is also very generous with extra lives doled out at a regular pace. I couldn’t discern any sort of pattern of when I would get an extra life but I would earn one at least every other level, and so I could earn lives faster than I could spend them. At the very least I could maintain roughly the same number of lives. The bombs worked the same way so I never ran out of them or even got particularly low.

The high scores may seem out of reach but they are managable.

I developed a good strategy for playing Crystal Quest. I would sweep each level counter-clockwise starting with the right side of the screen. Early on I stopped shooting altogether in favor of collecting the crystals and exiting the stage as quickly as possible. If I got into any trouble I dropped a bomb and kept moving. This was tricky when collecting crystals around the side enemy hatches. Usually activating a single bomb as I approached the left hatch and quickly flying through seemed to do the trick most of the time.

With repeating that strategy, I reached Wave 99 in a little over a half hour with about 5 million points. I figured that the score would either cap or loop at 9,999,999 so I kept going until then. As it turns out the score keeps tallying above 10 million points, so I called it quits shortly after that. There’s no way I wanted to spend several more hours in an attempt to max out the score just to see what happens!

Endless games are always a challenge to pin on a winning condition. There are several options and there’s a good argument for every one of them, but I had to choose something so this is what I decided. I like to choose the point where all the levels are completed, but that does fit well here since the level layouts are completely random. Beating Wave 99 seems a little excessive to me, so I opted to use that as the Completed winning condition. The next option is either setting the high score or finding where the difficulty maxes out. I decided upon setting the high score as the winning condition since Crystal Quest looks to be all about getting a high score. The high score on the hall of fame screen is 1,750,000, so exceeding that score is the minimum to consider the game beaten in my opinion.

Crystal Quest is a fine option to pick up and play for a few minutes every now and then, but there’s not really enough to the game to want to play it any more than that. It’s a competent game for sure, but I feel that it’s not worth seeking out unless it’s really cheap. I had a fun time with it however so it was worth the cost to me!

Game Boy #2 – Crystal Quest

Game Boy #2 – Crystal Quest (High Score)

Ikari Warriors is still beating me down, but I am getting much better at fighting back! In the last two weeks I have seen some steady progress in my grueling quest. Last time I predicted that I would see the end of Level 2 and start learning Level 3 over repeated attempts, and that prediction turned out to be accurate! It did take me a few more days to get the hang of Level 2 enough to complete it, but then my first attempt at Stage 3 was a really solid run. Looking back, that day in particular was a significant turning point. For whatever reason, Stage 2 was a real hurtle and after clearing it just once I can now get through it about half of the time. I still don’t know the exact enemy spawn points but I know them well enough that I can slow play the level just a bit and get through it without losing too many lives.

While the first two levels are similar in structure, the third level introduces some new wrinkles that ramp up the challenge even further. The general strategy of learning where things are in the level is still the same, but the new elements take some getting used to. It’s no different than what it was like starting from the beginning. Hopefully progress can continue to remain steady, but in case it does not this can be part of the reason why.

I am starting to get far enough into the game now where I am only able to get one or two attempts in per day. I play roughly one hour a day on average and it takes me 30 to 40 minutes to reach part way into Level 3. Time management has always been an issue for me and my project and that is going to be amplified in the coming weeks as runs start taking up to an hour each. There are days when I am pretty sharp and I wish I could spend more time playing on those days as I am more likely to break new ground when I’m playing better. Some days are a step forward and other days are a step back. I have to take the hand that I have been dealt, so to speak.

I have mentioned before that my policy for beating games more or less boils down to treating the game as if I bought it brand new on launch day. I try to adhere to this as much as possible on games I have no experience with. For Ikari Warriors, I want to admit here that I bent my rule just a little bit. I did a little research online in order to find the location of a Super Speed powerup in the first stage, and I was able to find one that I wasn’t able to locate on my own. Ikari Warriors has a selection of special powerups that only appear by shooting at specific locations. Walking in this game is slow and the Super Speed doubles my walking speed into a much more manageable pace. I have beaten the first level numerous times without having the speed boost but I wanted to have it if possible to clear the first stage faster. If I can shave even thirty seconds off of my Level 1 time, that will add up to significant time savings over possibly hundreds of future attempts. It is really only helpful for Level 1 because there is another Super Speed right at the beginning of Level 2, and it certainly does not increase my chances of making it through the stage unharmed as I seem to die just as often with Super Speed as I do without!

With the way things are going, I am guessing I will be playing Ikari Warriors for another couple of months. I am afraid of running out of secondary material to write about in the long term. I just don’t have a lot of experience with many other NES and Game Boy games that I want to cover, and I insist on putting in the time to beat the game before writing it up. I estimate that I will have fewer additional games in total than licensed NES games for this project. I have to consider that there will be large gaps just like this with other difficult or lengthy games and I want to have the right amount of new content no matter what the circumstances. I am thinking about either going back to posting every other week or spreading out the secondary content even further apart. I know that I want to keep this site active no matter what, but exactly what I will post about next is very much up in the air at this time. Let’s say that next week’s update will be a surprise for now! In the meantime I will keep chugging away at the game so we can move on to better and brighter things!

One kid, one fortress, and one big adventure awaits!

Let the peril begin!

To Beat: Reach the ending
To Complete: Beat the game on Unfair difficulty
My Goal: Beat the game on Normal difficulty
What I Did: Beat the game on Normal difficulty
Played: 6/11/16 – 6/13/16
Difficulty: 8/10
My Difficulty: 6/10

The homebrew scene for the NES seems to be one of the largest and most active of all older consoles. The NES is an intriguing intersection of both complexity and simplicity, representing a relatively low barrier of entry for anyone willing to learn the ins and outs of assembly language, limited pixel graphics, and the NES sound chip. There are dozens of existing game releases and a large number of projects in various states of completion. It’s exciting to see new releases on a console that I enjoy. Picking a game to start off this section was pretty straightforward. Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril was the first homebrew game that grabbed my attention enough to buy a cart, and it remains one of the quintessential experiences on the NES.

Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril was released in early 2010. The game was almost entirely created by a single developer known as Sivak. He tells the story on his website, but I’ll note a few highlights. Development started in 2008 after Sivak created three smaller NES games. This was the first major platformer game released on the NES in almost 15 years, and it is quite a lengthy game with a lot of content. Sivak would go on to make a sequel that came out in late 2012. I own and have beaten that game as well so I will be covering it sometime in the future.

This is one of the more challenging rooms early on.

Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril is an action platformer game. You play the role of Timmy as he invades a huge fortress in order to stop the creation of a Supermech weapon. I have heard the game compared to a mix of both Mega Man and Metroid, and I think that is a pretty good way to start the conversation. Timmy is equipped with a basic forward shot that is reminiscent of Mega Man’s normal weapon, and he also has little to no inertia in his movement which is another quality of Mega Man. Timmy does not gain the abilities of the bosses he defeats, but he will collect various items that will enhance his skills in order to navigate the fortress. This is where the game resembles a Metroid-style adventure. Each collected item gives you more skills in which to battle and avoid enemies, but it also lets you reach certain areas otherwise inaccessible. The fortress is open-ended and you can explore as much as you are allowed to do with your current equipment.

The controls are very simple. You can move left and right, shoot with the B button, and jump with the A button. The game is very easy to control and you can move Timmy exactly how you want. There are also unlimited shots but only three of them can be on the screen at one time.

The game plays out through this large fortress of many interconnected rooms. There is no scrolling in this game but Timmy moves seamlessly from one screen to the next. Each screen is its own tiny self contained challenge. There are only one or two enemy types per room, but they are introduced gradually and they are often combined in interesting ways that present a good challenge. Some rooms have no enemies and act as platforming challenges.

Another Mega Man mechanic at work are the disappearing blocks.

Battle Kid has a flow to it that is worked throughout the entire game. Timmy will need to cross through roughly 10 to 15 screens at a time with checkpoints in between. You can save your progress here if you choose to activate the continue point. After clearing several sections, there will be a boss encounter. These are typically large characters that have several different attack patterns that you will need to learn well enough to win the fight. These boss battles either open up a new path forward or they lead to a new ability for Timmy. There are six bosses scattered throughout the fortress that must be beaten to unlock the final area. Sometimes the path to the next boss is not always clear, so you must search out a way forward with your current equipment.

There are a total of six upgrades to find in the fortress. The Coordinate Display item shows the coordinates of your current position in the game. There is no map feature in Battle Kid but this item helps identify where you are located in the fortress. The Feather Fall item slows down your falling speed by holding Up while in the air. The Infinite O2 upgrade gives you unlimited breathing capability while underwater. There is a High Jump and a Double Jump to find. Finally there is the Damage Amplifier which lets shots deal double damage. This item is available from the beginning on Easy difficulty but can also be optionally found in the fortress in all other difficulties.

The first boss fight is rather prickly!

In addition to the upgrades, there are keys to collect. Keys are permanent collectibles that let you destroy key blocks matching the type of key. Most often, the key blocks are barriers that block off various areas of the game map. Sometimes the key blocks are used in clever ways to add to the challenge of some of the rooms.

There are five different difficulty settings in Battle Kid. Easy starts you off with the Damage Amplifier while Normal difficulty does not. Both settings allow for unlimited continues as well as a password system so you can continue your adventure later. The other three settings give you a limited number of continues and no passwords, so you must clear the whole game at one time. Hard difficulty gives 50 continues, Very Hard gives 20 continues, and Unfair has no continues at all.

The number of continues may sound generous, but in reality it is quite limiting. That is because Timmy only has one life and he dies immediately when damaged by anything. So really fifty continues is just fifty lives. Those long stretches between checkpoints become pretty challenging when you need to get through completely unscathed, and the bosses are bullet sponges which make for long, grueling battles. The game map itself is quite large spanning over 550 total rooms, so there is a lot of ground to cover in the game and every continue matters in the higher difficulties.

Reaching the save point is such a relief.

As mentioned in the introduction, Battle Kid was the first homebrew NES game I bought, and it would be the only one I would own for a couple of years. I was enamored with the game from the moment I started playing it. Back in 2010, I had a lot more time for gaming so I decided to beat the game for the first time on the Hard setting. That meant restarting the game all over after the 50 continue allotment and making incremental progress every new attempt. Now that I think about it, I am not actually sure I accomplished that. I think I stalled out toward progress at the end of the game and ended up clearing it on Normal difficulty first after working at it for a few weeks. I did keep playing and beat the game on Hard not long after that. The neat thing about the difficulty settings is that there are passwords given after the ending for bonus content depending on the chosen difficulty, so there is reason to keep trying for lower death runs after beating the game.

Now in 2016, it has been roughly five years since I last put serious time into playing Battle Kid, and if my current run was any indication, then I have some work to do if I ever want to get back to the level of play I was at back then. The levels and challenges were very familiar and I picked back up on it much more quickly than if I were playing it completely blind, but I feel I died way too many times considering all that. There is no tracking on Normal difficulty, but I estimate I died somewhere around 150 to 200 times trying to clear the game again. It also took me three straight nights to beat the game, so I am thankful for the password system! I know I have so many other games in front of me, but I would love to put in the time to clear it on Hard and Very Hard. It’s the kind of game you want to go back and play again just to speed through it in style.

This may look impossible, but instead it’s just really hard!

Battle Kid is still on sale at RetroUSB and it is worth every penny. I own the original 1.0 release but the version for sale is the updated 1.1 version and that appears to be the final version of the game. It includes a few tweaks and bug fixes as well as an additional 10-room demo not available in the previous version. Once you have purchased the game and played it to your satisfaction, then you can check out the developer commentary and full walkthrough. Then play the game again and try to improve!

I know that I am gushing just a little bit, but Battle Kid is truly a well made platformer game and I maintain it is one of the best experiences on the NES. The game is a stiff but fair challenge and the level design is top-notch. I didn’t even mention the music, but there are bunch of great songs and sound effects to accompany you on your adventure. I am glad there are games that continue to be made on the NES and I can only hope that the homebrew scene is going to keep getting better and better so that we can play more games like Battle Kid.

Homebrew #1 – Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril

Progress on Ikari Warriors is creeping forward. There are no huge milestones to report but there are some tiny pebbles of progress at least! I reached my personal best just last night which is some point deep into Level 2. My hunch is that I got to the final segment of that stage, but until I actually clear the stage I can’t say for sure if I am really close or not. I had two other attempts yesterday that were just about as far as my best. Hopefully that means I am better handling the more random aspects of the game. That should turn into advancing my progress more quickly as I will have more opportunities to memorize the fixed enemy positions. However, Ikari Warriors has a tendency to beat me down so the next attempts may very well be worse!

I am continuing to evolve my strategy on the first level and I am at the point now where I can clear it just about every time. I am finishing it without deaths a whole lot more often too. There are still some attempts where I make horrible mistakes that contain me to the first level, and there are a few points in the stage toward the end where I am not yet consistent. Some of that is on me and some of that is on the game being mean.

Progress in a given run is tied very closely to keeping a tank. The tank gives better firepower, absorbs small bullets, and gives you an extra hit against stronger attacks. Lose the tank and the difficulty leaps up considerably. Some spots are mandatory on foot and those are the exact portions that give me problems. What’s worse is that a good chunk of the beginning of Level 2 must be done without the tank, and whenever I do reach the first tank in the level there is a decent probability of losing it right away. This initial segment currently demands the most practice.

Before my next progress report, my goal is to start learning Level 3. I think I am a few days away from beating Stage 2 for the first time. With enough repetition I should be able to begin clearing the entire first half of the game with some consistency. We shall see if my prediction comes true!

In other news, I did have a bit of distraction last week that limited my time with Ikari Warriors. Last week’s game in the NintendoAge weekly contest was Battletoads and I spent a significant amount of time playing it. Even though it is highly regarded as one of the most difficult NES games, I know the game inside and out and I can beat the game pretty easily. The contest was scored on furthest progression without warping with the tiebreaker of lowest score wins. Battletoads is difficult enough to play normally, but beating the game while keeping the score low provides a very interesting challenge. I won the exact same contest a year ago and I successfully defended my title this time around! My final score was 673,150 and as far as I know that is the lowest final score ever recorded in a warpless run of Battletoads. I’ll confidently lay claim to this unofficial world record!

Next week I will be reviewing another game! I know which one I would like to cover but I will need to set aside some time to play it. In case that falls through I have a backup already in mind. Until then, happy gaming!

Let’s begin this spinoff series with the first handheld Mario adventure!

Mario sure looks ready to get going!

To Beat: Reach the end credits
To Complete: Beat both difficulty loops
My Goal: Complete the game
What I Did: Completed the game

Take On The NES Library is bringing Game Boy games into the fold! This is the first of many games I will be covering that fall outside my overall goal for the site. Now there are plenty of NES games to choose outside of just the US licensed set, and I have many unlicensed, homebrew, PAL exclusives, and Famicom games to pick from. Game Boy games may seem like an odd choice at first blush, but they are true 8-bit games that often run alongside NES counterparts. They are also much easier for me to pick up and play in between other games. Lately, I have been working on my Game Boy cart collection and so I have some momentum to try out and play through some of my recently acquired finds.

My plan for secondary content such as this runs similar to my posts on NES licensed games in content, though the aim is to make these shorter entries. (Though I tend to ramble on when I get writing, so maybe not!) I will still be beating the games before writing about them. The big difference here is instead of going off of a preset, random list, I am picking whatever I want to play! I will however play game series in order and I will hold off on selecting games that have NES versions until after I cover the NES game. For instance, I won’t be playing through the Famicom exclusive Gradius II until after I write about Gradius on NES. There are plenty of exclusive games that aren’t bound by that restriction so I won’t be short of options.

For playing Game Boy games, my handheld of choice is the Game Boy Advance SP. In particular, I have the later version model AGS-101 that has a backlit screen instead of the early version front light model. The screen is very bright and clear and I find it hard to play Game Boy games on any other model after using it. From the Game Boy Color system on up, you can select a color palette to use for older Game Boy games by way of a button combination on system startup. There are 12 pre-defined palettes. My preference is the grayscale palette and that is selected by holding Left and B before the game starts. These are the same colors that the Game Boy Pocket screen displays and I find it to be the most natural look.

I think that covers what my plan is. With all that out of the way, it’s time to dive into Super Mario Land!

A tiny world and a tiny adventure awaits!

Super Mario Land was a launch title for the Game Boy worldwide. It was released in April 1989 in Japan, August 1989 in North America, and September 1990 in Europe. The game was developed by Nintendo’s R&D1 department and was the first Mario game not developed by its creator Shigeru Miyamoto. The game was originally slated to be the pack-in game with the original Game Boy system, but Nintendo changed direction and included Tetris instead. Super Mario Land sold incredibly well with over 18 million copies purchased in spite of the fact that Tetris seems to be the main reason for moving Game Boy hardware.

Super Mario Land is set in the world of Sarasaland where Mario sets off to save Princess Daisy from the evil Tatanga. The game plays very much like Super Mario Bros but quite literally on a smaller scale. Several early Game Boy games used very tiny character sprites to maximize the miniscule Game Boy screen’s real estate, and that is the case in Super Mario Land. There’s plenty of room to see what’s ahead and you never feel crowded. There are many familiar mechanics here that fall in line with the NES games. Pipes will occasionally hide coin rooms. There are mushrooms to make Mario big and fire flowers to provide additional attack power. Invincibility stars are here and they work the same as in the NES games. It looks and feels just like a console Mario game.

Nintendo’s R&D1 team implemented a number of tweaks to the core gameplay that differentiate Super Mario Land from the other Mario platformers. For instance, there are Koopa Troopas in the game but when you jump on them you cannot kick the shell. Instead, it explodes like a bomb causing damage to Mario. His bouncing fireball attack is replaced with a Super Ball. It reflects off surfaces at a 45-degree angle and flies around without being affected by gravity. It also collects coins on contact which is useful for grabbing coins far out of Mario’s reach. The end-of-level flagpole is replaced with a pair of exits. The top exit is harder to reach but the reward is a bonus game where you can collect extra lives or a fire flower upgrade.

Every Mario game needs an underground level.

There are 12 levels in the game with three levels in each of the four worlds. Just about every level is in a unique location which keeps the game fresh. There is an Egyptian themed tomb level, a Moai-head level, a spider-infested cave, and even a Japanese themed level. The most unique levels are the final levels in Worlds 2 and 4 where the game switches from a platformer to a side-scrolling shooter. In 2-3 Mario guides a submarine underwater and in 4-3 Mario takes to the skies in an airplane. They play quite well and the levels are an interesting change of pace from the typical action.

The last level of each world contains a boss battle at the end. Each of the bosses are unique, however the four of them fall into two basic types. The World 1 and World 3 bosses are the Bowser-style fights where you just have to get behind them and hit a switch. The World 2 and World 4 bosses are in the shooter stages and there you get to gun them down and dodge shots. There is a final boss fight with Tatanga as well.

Super Mario Bros may be the quintessential Game Boy game but it was one that I did not own for quite a long time after getting a Game Boy. I was able to borrow it from friends often enough that I got very familiar with the game without owning it. With so many copies out there it is one of the easiest Game Boy games to find so I did eventually get one of my own.

The shooter segments are pretty neat!

I haven’t played Super Mario Land in many years, but as the old adage goes it is just like riding a bike. The game isn’t all that challenging and I was able to clear the game in 20-30 minutes. I did make a lot of mistakes leading to deaths which probably shouldn’t have happened, but even then I ended the game with double-digit lives remaining. Once the game is beaten, you can restart the game and play it at a higher difficulty. The level layout is the same but the enemy placements have changed with more monsters to deal with overall. I think some of the moving platforms were shrunk down too but I’m not completely sure. The second playthrough is only just a bit harder than the first in my opinion. After the second time through the game, there is a stage select option on the title screen. I’m not sure why you would want to play the stage of your choice after playing through the game twice in one sitting, but the option is there! I always used it to play the airplane stage over and over.

One notable quality of Super Mario Land is the music. Each song is just great and even more impressive coming from one of the earliest games on the Game Boy. Here is a video that covers the entire soundtrack and it’s worth a listen for sure.

Super Mario Land is an excellent Game Boy game and one of the essentials to any Game Boy collection. The game is a lot of fun to play and it holds up very well all while maintaining its own identity with mechanics and such not seen in many other Mario games. It’s too bad the game is on the short side and fairly easy to beat, but that makes it a great choice for a game to pick and up play once in awhile.

Game Boy #1 – Super Mario Land

One advantage of having the blog format is that it is very easy to make updates to both correct information and add new content where appropriate. I have been focusing so much on writing up my recent game finishes as well as actually playing the games that I have been neglecting several updates to correct and clarify some things. I will always be picking up new and interesting information on NES games and some of that will make its way back to the blog. Now is a good time to post all the updates that I finally got around to writing!

These are the changes I made:

• Dates played have been added to all completed NES games.
• Difficulty rankings have been added to all completed NES games. I added them to the posts for Super Mario Bros, Contra, and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! In addition, I added a small paragraph to the end of each of those posts explaining my difficulty assessment a bit. Definitely go back and check them out!
• The Tetris post has a new paragraph about the documentary Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters. I also included a new paragraph about my decision for the difficulty rating.
• The Castlevania post has a new paragraph about the difficulty loops.
• The Lemmings post has a new paragraph about the developer.

 
I am still working every day on Ikari Warriors. I have been getting much better at repeating Level 1 and I am starting to make headway in Level 2. If Level 2 is roughly the same length as Level 1, then I estimate that I have reached the midpoint of the second stage on my best attempt. It’s a little bit sad that I have been playing for a little over a month and I haven’t even beaten the first half of the game yet, but it just goes to show how difficult and unrelenting this NES port really is. Since I started playing I have only skipped one day of making attempts and I am going to try my best to keep at it every day until I beat it.

Next week I will have an all new full length blog post about a new topic. I have decided what the next post will be written about and I think it will be a nice diversion while I keep working on my main goal. In two weeks I will have another progress report on Ikari Warriors with hopefully some good news!

I don’t normally like to give away the games I’m playing for this blog while in progress, but I’ve finally reached a game that is going to take me so long to finish that I think it’s worth mentioning and discussing.

The next game for Take On The NES Library is Ikari Warriors. I believe this is the hardest NES game I have ever attempted to beat, and it’s looking like a solid contender for the hardest NES game period. The game is pretty lengthy and challenging, but the real bottleneck here is there are no continues outside of using a cheat code. When all lives are lost, it’s Game Over and all the way back to the beginning of the game. My personal policy is to beat NES games on console without any cheat devices or codes that aren’t specifically called out in the game manual. I don’t want to do practice runs on an emulator either. I’m sticking with just the base amount of information as if the game was purchased on launch day. Some will call me crazy trying to beat Ikari Warriors this way, and that’s fine, but I believe it’s the purest way to consider a game beaten and that is what I am planning to stick with at all costs.

I have been playing Ikari Warriors for over three weeks and the furthest point I have reached is probably a quarter of the way through the second level. There are four levels in this game and the stages seem to go on for quite a long time. I am still trying to hone in my technique for consistently clearing level one since it keeps giving me trouble on many of my attempts. Success at this game boils down to memorizing the stage layouts and the only real way to do that is to repeat them over and over again. It is a very slow grind, but I am confident that I will beat this game even if it takes me many more weeks or even months to do it.

At this time I am not going to skip ahead to the next game while working concurrently on Ikari Warriors. I feel if I decide to skip ahead then I won’t be keeping up on my skills and that makes it more likely for me to just skip the game altogether. Passing on a difficult, long game even temporarily sets a bad precedent. If I am really attempting to beat every NES game then I am going to eventually need to cross paths with a tough game so I might as well take it in stride. Plus, I really enjoy having each new game revealed to me as I complete games and I’m not about to give that up just because I ran into a real nasty game to finish. I’ve beaten games in this manner before by just grinding out attempt after attempt, and I’m still motivated to put in the time on Ikari Warriors.

Now having said all of that, I don’t want to leave the blog dormant while I continue to whittle away at Ikari Warriors. I think it’s best for both myself and the project to keep it active in some capacity. Therefore, I am planning on posting some secondary content to bridge the gap. Most of these posts will be progress updates such as this one, but I also have some ideas for other features that will be more substantial. Mixing up the post types will give me more time to put together new content while also allowing me time needed to work on my main game. I have also decided to post an update every Friday from now on. That has worked pretty well for me in my main posts and I think some consistency is healthy. Hopefully you will agree and enjoy some more regular content on the site!

Here’s a small look at what’s ahead. Next week I will have another progress update. I have been long overdue for making some miscellaneous updates in past posts, so I will be working on that and I will have a summary of changes in the next post. Two weeks from now I will have a new feature to read! I have a few ideas to pick from and I’m not sure what I’ll do yet.

I created a thread on NintendoAge about my experience with Ikari Warriors if you are craving more detail than what I have provided here. If you want to play along with me and suffer through it, then by all means have at it!

I’m willing to bet the name of the game was thought of first.

A nicely detailed title screen!

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 4/16/16 – 4/22/16
Difficulty: 4/10
My Difficulty: 4/10

With a game library as big as the NES has there are sure to be several interesting games hidden away. Well, interesting is a word that can certainly be used to describe Ghoul School but I’m not sure it’s the best one. There is absolutely an intriguing game here that is pretty creative but ultimately it falls flat in a number of ways. However, just like several other games I’ve covered, it has grown on me and I’m glad to get to share it with you.

Ghoul School was released on the NES in March 1992 and it is exclusive to North America. It was developed by Imagineering and published by Electro Brain. I was surprised to learn that Imagineering developed several games for the NES but having looked at various lists online most if not all of their games are not regarded very well. Their best known games are the three Bart Simpson games on the NES. Electro Brain published six games on the NES and all of them are ones that could be consider obscure.

Ghoul School is a side-scrolling platformer. You play as a high school student Spike who finds a mysterious skull and brings it to school which ends up causing all sorts of nefarious creatures to take over the place. It’s up to you to both rid the school of evil and save the head cheerleader. You start off in the main hallway of the school armed with only a baseball bat, but you can explore the school freely searching for more weapons and items that will help you explore the school. It is very reminiscent of Metroid in this way. Each room is individually numbered and displayed at the top of the screen to help keep track of where you are in the school.

The ghouls look much more terrifying than they actually are.

There are several weapons to find in the school and you can switch to any collected weapon you want. Everything has unlimited use so fire away. One of the first weapons you will find is the towel which has better range and is also somehow more powerful than the bat. There are also a number of guns that let you attack from a distance though they generally deal less damage. Some weapons fire downward to help you attack enemies on the ground. There is usually one weapon best suited for a particular situation so there will be lots of switching weapons around.

There are also a couple of different pairs of shoes you can equip. You start off with basic sneakers but you will also need to find the spring shoes and suction cup shoes. The spring shoes cause you to jump higher and they also make you taller. These are needed to pass by tall obstacles in order to explore further in the school. The suction cup shoes let you walk along the ceiling provided the ceiling is low enough to reach with a jump.

You will also find apples that restore your health. Green apples restore a quarter of your health and red apples fully restore your health. The best of all is the golden apple. There’s only one of these in the game but it is a permanent upgrade that cuts your damage received by half. Enemies don’t drop any health pickups so you will have to seek out these items as you explore the school. If you play the game for a little while you’ll figure out where you can generally find the healing items.

The school map contains a lot of areas that you would expect to find in a school. There’s a gymnasium, cafeteria, office, library, and so on. These one-off locations are the areas you want to search out because they contain the weapons and shoes you need to progress onward. These areas also feature unique ghouls that are tougher than the standard enemies and they often require specific weapons to take them out. Think of them like bosses. There are several of these unique enemies which is a nice touch.

Other than the deep void of darkness in the background, this does resemble a weight room.

Now all of this so far may sound pretty good, but there are a number of things that really hurt the game and make it hard to play. The biggest sticking point is the physics of the character. Spike feels very heavy to control. He takes some time to build momentum and takes even more time to slide to a stop. The jumping is very stiff and doesn’t seem to respect gravity. He falls down just as fast as he jumps, and this makes it very hard to make long-distance jumps. These movement problems are really evident early in the game when you have barely any attack range with the bat. You have to get really close to deal damage and more often than not you will run right into the enemy until you get used to the controls. Some of the early enemies attack really quickly as well leaving you with a small window to get in and hurt them.

The other physics related complication is that colliding with the enemy gives you really severe knockback. Trying to fight enemies with short range attacks is so frustrating in Ghoul School. Either you don’t get close enough to deal any damage or you get too close and get thrown backwards. Now for some reason the developers decided to place enemies right at the entrance to some of the hallways. What happens is that you try to get close enough to attack and if you accidentally touch the enemy then you get thrown back into the previous hallway. Now you have to start all over and try fighting the enemy again. This happens in several locations and it only provides unnecessary frustration. The only solace here is that once an enemy is killed it remains dead. It will only respawn after you travel many rooms away.

I’m pretty sure most of the classrooms are for teaching history.

Along the same lines, there are some enemies that are too low for you to properly attack. One little recurring nuisance of an enemy is called Blinky. They scurry around at ankle level and they run super fast. You can’t duck in this game and the majority of the weapons attack too high for you to deal with these critters. The weapons that do reach down don’t shoot downward quickly enough to be effective. For example, the first weapon you will come across that can reach tiny ground enemies is called the Digestaray. It shoots a straight shot that curves toward the ground. To use it against Blinky, you need to have it already equipped and start firing off shots the moment you see it running on screen. If you wait too long you will shoot right over its head and now you have no chance of killing it. Blinky will never leave the screen instead opting to run around you just outside of attack range and it will bounce you all over the place with the knockback. They don’t do much damage at all, but they make it really tough to make any kind of forward progress in the room.

The whole game really boils down to exploring one giant maze. A large portion of the game map consists of similar looking hallways and similar looking classrooms that for the most part don’t hold anything of interest in advancing your quest. The hallways often have doors that lead to isolated classrooms, and the hallways link together via walkways and stairways at the end of the hall. Each end of the hallway can have up to three exits: Forwards, upstairs, or downstairs. Many of the hallways are just empty dead ends. It is very confusing to make sense of the layout. Having every single room in the game numbered is about the only thing that makes rooms distinguishable.

You will see your health bar on the top of the screen as well as the health bar of the enemy you are fighting. There’s also a scoring system that doesn’t really mean anything since there’s no high score keeping. It doesn’t show up during game play, but Spike has five lives in all and you see how many lives are remaining in between lives. There are no extra lives in this game. It’s not obvious but you do continue when you start over. You start back at the school entrance with all of your collected items intact. There’s no saving in this game and no passwords so you will have to beat it all in one shot.

As expected, the science experiment went wrong!

The graphics in this game are more than adequate. It very clearly looks like a school. There are several interesting setpieces that are unique to the areas they are found in. For instance, the weight room has a huge, detailed exercise machine right in the middle. You can walk behind the bookshelves in the library and see yourself peeking behind the gaps in the books. The graphics may not be super great but they are interesting to look at. The character designs are really strange and creepy. Many of the enemy types look like people and they are generally drawn very tall and lanky. Spike changes visibly when switching weapons and shoes for a nice touch. The music isn’t too bad. Perhaps it might be grating to some but I didn’t really mind it.

I bought my copy of Ghoul School on eBay for $10 a couple of years ago. It was selling for around $15 at the time so it was a nice deal, but I missed that the fold on the label was completely torn off so that the end label and front label are split in two. It’s not awful but I’ll want to upgrade it at some point if I ever run into another copy. My local store had one for $10 for a long time but the end label was faded really badly so I kept passing on it. It eventually got bumped up to $18 and since then someone bought it. It’s not a game I’ve seen around much so I’m not surprised someone else snagged it.

Certainly this is punishment for severe misconduct!

This was my first time beating Ghoul School. I had only tried it when I got the cart and I pretty much dismissed the game as weird right away. When I started out this time, I wandered around and almost instantly got lost. I have a good sense of direction overall but this game made me at least question it a little bit! I realized the only way I was going to make sense of this school was to go old school and draw a map. The art of video game map making goes back a very long way but I believe this is the first time I have ever drawn a map for a game. It turned out to be a very good decision since I only had to hit the unnecessary portions of the map once. Each time I played I got a little bit further and it didn’t take that many attempts to complete the game.

Without spoiling a lot of the game, there’s not much more for me to say about Ghoul School. What I will say is that I found the game got more interesting the farther I went. The last quarter of the game in particular did a few things that I thought were really kind of neat. I believe I have almost all of the game mapped out in my notes. After I finished the game I combed over my map and tried to find all the rooms by number and there were some I did not account for. I’m not sure if these are rooms that I missed or rooms that were not used in the game at all. I think I developed a pretty good route through the school and now I can finish the game relatively quickly. I’m toying with the idea of writing up a more thorough walkthrough. If I ever do that, I’ll host it on the blog and link it here. I’ve peeked at a few walkthroughs online and I’m sure I could do a better job.

UPDATE 7/18/16: Indeed, I did create a Ghoul School Walkthrough. Check it out!

It’s hard for me to recommend playing Ghoul School, but after wading through the control difficulties and getting a handle on the map I really enjoyed this game. Metroid-styled platformers are one of my favorite types of games and so now I have a soft spot for this weird little NES adventure. One final thought: It’s too bad that this game didn’t emerge on my list around Halloween as that would have been most fitting.

#23 – Ghoul School