Take on the NES Library

This classic arcade game is right at home on the NES.

To Beat: Finish Level 6
My Goal: Beat the game without dying
What I Did: Beat the game with 2 deaths
Played: 5/6/19
Difficulty: 6/10
My Difficulty: 2/10
My Video: Marble Madness Longplay

There are some games on the NES where there is a large gulf in perception of difficulty. Marble Madness is one of these games. I’ve played this game a lot and have gotten pretty good at it. I know a few people that have put in a lot of time to get high scores and know this game like the back of their hand. I have also had a few people tell me that this game is too hard and they haven’t gotten very far. One thing I do know is that from either crowd, this game is always a popular pick.

The original arcade release of Marble Madness was in late 1984. It was developed and published by Atari Games. Mark Cerny was the lead designer and Bob Flanagan was the primary developer. The original run of 4,000 arcade machines was deemed a success, though interest tapered off a few weeks after release. Marble Madness would be widely ported after that to many home computers and game consoles. The NES port of Marble Madness was released in North America in March 1989 and in PAL regions also in 1989. It was developed by Rare and published by Milton Bradley.

Marble Madness is a simple game to pick up and play. The object of the game is to guide your marble through each of six courses to the goal line at the end. The entire game is played from an isometric perspective. Use the D-pad to move your marble in any direction. Press and hold A to move faster. You can pause the game by pressing Start. You will have to pass through all kinds of obstacles, traps, and enemies along the way, but your biggest enemy is the timer. The game ends when the timer hits 0. If you can clear all six courses before running out of time, you win the game.

You begin the game by selecting one or two players. Marble Madness features two-player simultaneous play with one player controlling the blue marble and the second player moving the red one. Then each player enters his name up to six characters long. Next, choose with directional option you want. The 90-degree option is the standard control scheme where you move in the direction you press. For the 45-degree option, you will rotate your controller clockwise at an angle so that the primary D-pad directions point diagonally. While the 45-degree option makes sense given the perspective, I have always used the 90-degree setup.

Death is a very common occurrence in this game. There are several enemies that will get rid of your marble or knock you around. There are many pits for you to fall into. Your marble is also fragile and breaks if it falls from too high. The good thing is that you have unlimited lives. The bad part is that each death and restoral takes precious time away. Some deaths are worse than others in the time department. Falling off the side, for instance, is a brief setback and you get back to the action quickly. If your marble gets crushed from falling too far, you must sit through a short animation of a broom sweeping up the marble dust left behind. You can survive shorter falls but your marble will spin out a little and it becomes difficult to control for a second. Some death animations from being killed by enemies are longer than others. Obviously, you want to avoid dying if you want to get through this game, but you can suffer many deaths and still win.

The clock may be the major enemy in the game but there are some ways to add precious seconds to the timer. At the start of Level 2, you are given a bunch of time to start off with. You are awarded added time at the start of each subsequent course. Every now and again, a magic wand will appear. Your marble will stop dead in its tracks and the wand bestows you with 10 added seconds. It is a welcome sight that seems to be completely random. For experienced players, you might see your timer capped at 99 seconds.

Marble Madness is a brief experience from start to finish, so it is quite popular as a score attack game. You can earn some points from obstacles on the course. There is a black marble enemy that you can get 1000 points from if you knock if off the side of the ledge. Chutes suck in your ball to transport them, giving you points for doing so. Most of your score is earned from the time bonus at the end of each level. If you beat the game, you also earn a bunch of points depending on how much time is remaining on the clock and how many marbles you lost along the way.

Each course in the game has a name and some features specific to that course. The first course is called the Practice Race. You start with 60 seconds but this is a very short level. I normally clear it in 6 seconds. It’s just meant to give you a little time to play and get accustomed to the controls, movement, and physics. Even so, this level has an additional bonus. There is a half-pipe-like structure at the bottom and if you speed your marble into it and cross the pit to the other side, you can hit what looks like a tic-tac-toe puzzle on the ground and earn some points.

Level 2 is the Beginner Race. Your time from the first level does not carry over. You start off with a fresh 65 seconds. There are a couple of enemies at the first part of this level. The infamous black marble appears right off the bat. I don’t think it is too difficult to get past. After that are these green worms that hop and suck your marble up if they land on it. Near them is a panel that pops up and prevents you from crossing until it goes down. Past that, you have a branching path. The left side is longer but easy to clear. The right side you have to take a chute down and then cross some narrow hilly ledges. It’s significantly tougher this way, but you get points for the chute and it is faster. The final obstacle is this deep net with a hole on the other side. I go along the very edge so I don’t fall in.

The third course is the Intermediate Race. You get 35 seconds of time added to your clock that carries over from the previous stage. A new acid puddle enemy appears here. They appear to move randomly but I always seem to pass by them the same way every time. Don’t touch them at all or you lose your marble and some time. Near the end of the stage is another branching path. The quick way is across a conveyor belt that has a wave in it that shoves you off.

Course 4 is the Aerial Race. You have 30 more seconds added on. This level has several new traps and gadgets. First up are the vacuums that appear along a straight stretch early on. You have to go fast to get by them. There is another branching path after the catapult. The way I go takes you through these pistons that pop up out of the ground and throw you in the air. As always, the fast way is the trickier way. The final obstacles are these hammers that pop up along a narrow stretch of track just before the goal line. There is a pattern to them that is hard to discern early on. This level was my first roadblock when I was learning the game years ago.

Level 5 is the Silly Race. This time you only get 20 additional seconds. This is the only level in the game where you go from the bottom up to the top. It takes some getting used to. Up the initial slopes takes you to a section that looks like a miniature version of the game, complete with tiny little enemies that you can crush and get a few seconds of time added. Up the branching chute always pushes you to the left side in a single player game. This section is nasty because the gravity is weird here and it is hard to parse how you need to navigate the slopes. Past that are these endless flying birds that destroy your marble.

The final course is the Ultimate Race. You only get 20 more seconds here for the end. This level features an ice surface that causes your marble to slide and a grooved surface that causes you to move slowly against the grain. Some familiar traps make a reappearance here. The final section is a brutal gauntlet of appearing and disappearing ledges that puts your skills to the test. It is the Ultimate Race after all!

I have played a lot of Marble Madness before but I didn’t start on NES. I grew up owning the Game Boy version and that was what I was familiar with. Probably due to space limitations, the Game Boy port only has the first five levels in the game. I was always interested in playing that mysterious final level. I am not sure if I ever beat the NES version before 2014 when I first played it in the Nintendo Age contests. Since then I have beaten the game many times over.

For this playthrough, I wanted to see if I could beat the game without dying. It is not an easy task. I set aside about an hour to play and took the best attempt out of that hour of recording. I usually end up dying 15-20 times, so I figured, if I’m careful, I should at worst come up with a run around 5 deaths. Pretty early on, around the 5th try or so, I managed a two-death run with a nice score of 156K. To get the big scores, you need to go quickly but also get lucky with some wands so that you have a bunch of time remaining at the end. You can get up to three wands if the luck falls your way. I had two of them in my run, so combined with only two deaths I came away with my personal best high score. I could have had 160K if I had tried for the bonus points in the Practice Race. I kept on playing and had a couple more two-death runs but with lower scores because of no wands. It probably wouldn’t take much longer for me to get that no-death run, but this is good enough for now.

Marble Madness is a classic arcade game that I think should be in every NES collection. It is a very short game but with good action and it is fun to replay over and over. The controls are not ideal without the trackball from the arcade version, but they are good enough. It is nice to have two control options. The graphics are kind of plain but in a good way. The tracks are clear and the slopes are shaded differently to help you see them better. The game casts a lot of shadows too which gives it a more realistic look. The music is very good as well. This is a cheap cart to own that is very common, which is always appreciated for good games. This is a game that has wide appeal to all demographics, so if you haven’t played it before, you owe it to yourself to give it a try.

The next in the series both added and removed challenge.

To Beat: Win the eight-man tournament
Played: 5/2/19 – 5/3/19
Difficulty: 4/10
My Difficulty: 4/10
My Video: WWF Wrestlemania Challenge Longplay

I seem to have hit a steady stream of NES wrestling games. It took almost 100 games to get to the first one, and now I seem to get one every 10-20 games. I am pretty sure this pace won’t keep up and that this will be the last NES wrestling game for a while. I guess I’ll have to wait and see! This was the easiest one of the genre I’ve played so far, which is something I’m always grateful for. Let’s take a look.

WWF Wrestlemania Challenge was developed by Rare and published by LJN. It was released on the NES only in November 1990. The game also saw a PAL release in 1991. This is the second of four WWF Wrestlemania games on the NES. This game, like the first, was developed by Rare. However, different developers would work on the other two games.

There is no story to this game. This is just a good old fashioned wrestling game between several characters featuring several different modes of play. The primary mode is the single-player eight-man tournament. The wrestlers you will face in this mode, in order, are Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake, Ravishing Rick Rude, Big Boss Man, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Andre the Giant, “Macho King” Randy Savage, Hulk Hogan, and Ultimate Warrior. When I say you will face them, I do mean you. You will play the role of the wrestler You, taking on each opponent one at a time. It’s too bad that there’s no customization at all, so the role of You is just a generic white guy. Anyway, if you defeat all wrestlers in all matches, you win the tournament and beat the game.

The controls are more simplified in this version of the game. Use the D-pad to walk around in all eight directions. The ring is oriented like a diamond here so there will be quite a bit of diagonal movement. The A button is used for basic strikes. Tap the A button to do a punch. Press and hold the A button to do a secondary move, such as a kick or headbutt. The B button performs a stronger move. The move depends on which direction the opponent is facing. If you are facing each other, B does a bodyslam. If you approach the opponent from behind, then B does a different move. Most wrestlers have a power move that is performed by pressing both A and B together. This can burn your energy faster, so don’t overdo it. If the opponent is laying on the mat, you can press A to attack. You can also press B here to do a pin, but you have to be lined up with the bottom of the fallen opponent to pin. The different moves will vary depending on the wrestler, but these are the basic controls for all moves.

You have some other move options as well. You can climb up on the turnbuckle in any ring corner by walking up to the turnbuckle and pressing A and B together as you press against it. Once you climb up, you can do an attack by pressing A. While airborne, use the D-pad to aim your attack. You can leave the ring the same way you climb on the turnbuckle by walking into the ropes and pressing A and B together. Be careful not to stay out of the ring past the countout or you will be disqualified. You can dodge an opponent’s power move by pressing both A and B together. If you are being pinned or are caught in a submission move, toggle between Left and Right on the D-pad to break out of it.

To win the match, you will have to pay attention to the energy meters of each wrestler. They are displayed on either side of the ring apron, which I think is a nice touch. Each successful move decreases the opponent’s energy meter. Using power moves will deduct a small amount of energy for each attempt. Avoiding attacks for awhile will also slowly increase your energy. To pin your opponent successfully, you have to run him almost completely out of energy. I believe you can force your opponent into submission with certain moves when low on health, but I didn’t see that happen.

That’s about it for the core gameplay, but there are some different modes to choose from. One is the tag team match. You can control two wrestlers one at a time against a pair of opponents. Here you can switch between the two by going all the way into your corner of the ring and pressing Select. Each wrestler has a separate health meter and the man in reserve slowly gains stamina while inactive. Tag team matches are won when one of the wrestlers in the opposing tag team is pinned or disqualified. It is possible for teammates to both be in the ring together, but one of the two is subject to a countout if he doesn’t return to his corner. There are a couple of special controls here that occur when on top of the turnbuckle. If you are on the turnbuckle of the opposing team, you can kick the opposing, inactive wrestler by pressing B. Similarly, you can attack your own inactive teammate from the turnbuckle by pressing both A and B together. Another similar mode to the tag team match is the Survivor Series. There are two teams of three wrestlers each with only one active at a time. You can tag other teammates into the match. This time, each wrestler must be eliminated from the match individually. When all wrestlers on one team are eliminated, the other team wins.

There are quite a few variations between these different modes. They are broken down in the menu by either One player vs. Computer, Player vs. Player, or Two Players vs. Computer. There are four single player modes. The eight-man tournament is the main mode but you can also play a single exhibition match, you can control both members of a tag team in a match, and you can form a team in a Survivor Series. For two players competitively, you can engage in a one-on-one match, a tag team match, or a Survivor Series. There is only one two-player cooperative mode which is a tag team tournament against four computer-controlled tag teams.

You do get an ending screen for each mode. The text varies depending on what kind of match you won. In a way, you could consider any of them an ending, but most people would agree that winning what amounts to a single player campaign is the real criteria for beating the game. To that end, the game makes it a bit easier in this mode by giving you a couple of continues if you lose a match. You get an instant rematch should you lose, but if you lose three matches then you have to start all over.

This was my first time playing WWF Wrestlemania Challenge. This is a game I pulled off the bottom of my list that I wasn’t originally going to play so soon. I don’t recall when I picked this game up. The WWF games were reasonably popular, but only the first game is the one that is most commonly found. Still, I don’t think WWF Wrestlemania Challenge is too tough to track down. It should be easy to find for around $5-$10.

I didn’t have too much trouble with this game, beating it on my third attempt. I figured out somewhat of an exploit on this game. I wasn’t able to do this every time, but it was consistent enough to beat the game. I noticed the opponents either actively chase you or run away from you. If they run away, go get them! I would hit them with my B button move and then slam them when on the mat. If they come after me, I would retreat to either the top or bottom corner. Once in the corner, face toward the oncoming wrestler and mash the B button. It’s something about that corner where the opponent doesn’t line up with you soon enough to attack and you can get your move in first. The opponent then runs away and you repeat the cycle until you pin him with less than one health bar left. Using that method, I beat the game without using any continues pretty quickly.

As an aside, this game provides a turning point for my master game list for this project. I’ve mentioned my master list setup a few times but I’ll recap here. I initially removed a large chunk of games from my randomized game list and placed them at the very end. Lots of sports games, these wrestling games, and others were handled this way. About a year into the project I had a change of heart and decided to pull some of those games forward periodically. I’ve been aggressively promoting games lately and I have reached the inflection point where if I keep this pace up, I will have all those back-of-the-list games finished way earlier than the rest. Also, it has been troublesome and time-consuming managing what amounts to two lists. Finally, I have reconsolidated. Those less-desirable games have been spread out through the rest of the list and will appear more organically instead of me deciding on a whim to play one. I am now pleased with the structure of the overall game list, while still managing, for the most part, to keep the remaining games and their order a big secret even from myself.

Back to WWF Wrestlemania Challenge, I think this is a pretty decent wrestling game. It’s not quite as good as Tecmo World Wrestling, but it’s easier to play and much less demanding on my forearm strength and trigger finger. There are several different wrestlers with many modes and variations on game play, including a few different multiplayer modes. Controls are simple for a wrestling game and don’t require memorizing different moves. You still have to remember a lot of controls, but it comes easy in my experience. The graphics are nicely drawn and animated, and the music is decent as well. It is a touch on the easy side, but that is okay with me. It doesn’t quite live up to the name of WWF Wrestlemania Challenge in the difficulty department. That’s really the only complaint I have from this otherwise solid game.

It’s true, video games are art.

To Beat: Create a Videomation
Played: 5/1/19
Difficulty: 1/10
My Difficulty: 1/10
My Video: Videomation Longplay

It is another milestone for Take On The NES Library. The NES has some truly great games, but it also includes a small handful of applications and things that are not games. Some of them I could construct some kind of goal for. You could “beat” Color A Dinosaur by coloring in every dinosaur available, for example. Videomation is the rare example of an NES cartridge that doesn’t have any ending or any sort of goal at all. The only thing I can come up with here is just to create something, so that’s what I did. Let’s take a look and see what Videomation is all about.

Videomation was released on the NES in June 1991. It was published by THQ and developed by FarSight Studios. The title screen credits Western Technologies as the developer, but multiple places online state that it is FarSight Studios. You get the full credits on the title screen if you are interested. This was a North American exclusive title.

All of your drawing will have to be done with the NES controller, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. The D-pad lets you move a cursor around the screen. This lets you point to anywhere on the screen to draw and also at the buttons on the top menu to select different options. The A button is your primary drawing and action button. Conversely, the B button acts as a cancel button or a way to let you move the cursor around without drawing. Press Select to bring up the menu. When you have made your menu selections, press Select again to get back to drawing. The Start button toggles how fast your cursor moves around the screen.

Let’s check out the menu from left to right. First up is the color palette. There are ten different colors you can choose from. Simply hover over the color you want and press A. This color applies to whatever type of operation you want to do. Some of the colors are solid, while others are dithered blends of other colors to make some in-between shades. This is the best the NES can do under its limitations. The next icon with the letter A in it lets you change the color palette. This affects both the color palette from the menu and the color palette of the entire drawing. Sometimes it is neat to change the colors of the entire drawing just to see what it looks like. Some of the color palettes have animated colors. The icon above the palette change is the line width selection. You can toggle between a thin line or a thick line when drawing with the tools.

The next group of eight icons are your drawing tools. Hover over and press A to select the active tool. The most interesting one is the arrow tool in the upper-left. This is as close as you can get to a free hand drawing tool in the game. Use the D-pad to point the arrow in the direction you want. The arrow rotates around in all directions. The dot past the tip of the arrow is where lines will start from. Press and hold the A button to move the arrow in the desired direction and start drawing. While the arrow is moving, you can change direction while still holding A, allowing you to draw curves. You can go all the way around and draw a circle if you want. Letting go of A stops the arrow and stops drawing. You can also move the arrow around without drawing by holding down the B button instead. What’s interesting is that the arrow’s movement is a bit different depending on if you are drawing or not. If you draw a curve by changing arrow direction, the arrow will completely circle around without you having to change D-pad direction. While just moving the arrow with B, the arrow stops turning as soon as it is moving the same direction you are pressing with the D-pad. It’s hard to explain, it’s just something interesting I noticed while toying around.

The rest of the top row are the pencil, line, and bucket fill tools. You probably know what these do already. The pencil is another simple free hand tool. Move the pencil anywhere with the D-pad and draw by holding down the A button. The line tool lets you draw straight lines, including at an angle. First, position the cursor at the start of the line. Then press and hold A and move the D-pad to where you want the end of the line. If you stop moving the cursor with A still held, it will show you a sample line without actually drawing anything. Once you let go of A, then it draws the line between the two endpoints. The bucket fill tool lets you color in an enclosed shape. The lowest tip of the paint out of the bucket icon is where filling starts. Press and hold A to fill with color. The painting algorithm colors in horizontal stripes. You can color by just briefly pressing A long enough to color just one stripe, then move the cursor around and repeat to draw as many stripes as you want. To completely fill in the space, you have to hold down A for the whole time.

The next tool on the bottom row is the circle tool. It has the same controls as the line tool. The starting position is the center of the circle. Then you can control how long and wide it is depending on how far away each cardinal direction is from the center. You can draw ovals in either direction with this tool. The rectangle tool is also the same thing as the line tool with both endpoints being opposite corners of the rectangle. The eraser tool is like the pencil tool but it erases anything drawn underneath.

The last icon in that section is the stamp tool. Selecting the stamp tool displays a new menu on top of the main menu. There you will see a row of four stamps. To use a stamp, cursor over the one you want and press A. Then press Select to get out of the menu. Use the D-pad to position the stamp and press A to stamp it down. You can continue stamping with the same one as much as you want. Back on the stamp menu, there are two buttons. More lets you see more available stamps, and the right arrow changes the colors of the stamps. The last page of stamps are letters and numbers. Place these stamps the same way as the others. To help facilitate writing text, there are additional controls. While placing letters on the screen, you can press the B button to advance to the next letter right there so you don’t have to go back to the menu to choose a new letter. If you hold the B button, then you can use Up or Down on the D-pad to cycle through all the characters. Let go of B to select that letter and then you can press A to stamp it.

The icon with the stick figure person is the animation icon. This brings up a separate menu that functions just like the stamp menu. Cursor over the animation you want and press A to select it. When you press Select to exit the animation menu, it brings up another menu called the motion menu. Here there are five options for how you want the animation to move across your drawing. Highlight what you want and press either A or Select to play the selected animation with the selected motion. The first motion labeled Follow lets you move the animation with the D-pad. Next is the random path, and the other three are preset paths. You can walk back and forth in a straight line, around the screen in an oval, or in a wave pattern back and forth. Press either A or Select to stop the animation and go back to drawing.

Here are the remaining options. Clear lets you erase everything and start over. You will have to confirm Yes or No on clearing the screen. No Menu lets you remove the menu temporarily so that you see your completed drawing without cursors in the way. Either Select or A brings the menu back. The music note toggles the sounds on or off. Drawing operations and animations have music and sound effects that go with it and you can turn them off if you want. The final icon lets you change the cursor speed of the drawing tools. You can press Start at any time to do the same thing. There are five speeds. At the lowest speed with no bars showing, the cursor moves one pixel at a time so you can do some very fine detail drawing.

I’m going to say this is my first time playing Videomation. I bet I have “played” it before at least a little bit when I tested my cart. It is not all that common, but when you do see one it is not expensive. This is about a $6 cart. I have had a couple of copies of this cart before. The first one I had for several years had a bad label. My current copy isn’t the best but certainly in better shape than what I had before.

This sounds silly to say, but I am not an artist and I had a little bit of anxiety figuring out how I was going to demonstrate Videomation. I settled on drawing a picture of the NES. I figured that was simple enough to draw, was something I know well, and would make use of most of the tools. I created a sample drawing that turned out okay, and I replicated that a little bit better in my recording. I was happy for the text stamps so I could label it as a Nintendo, and it was a nice bonus that Take On The NES Library fit the width of the screen. The worst part was trying to draw tiny circles for the controller ports. That turned out terrible. It’s recognizable, at least. I also forgot to shade in the lower half of the console. It’s not like it was going to be incredibly realistic anyway. I’m sure a real artist could do some amazing drawings with this tool, but for me I’m satisfied.

So there you have it. Videomation is an art, drawing, and animation tool. Anything that is not tile based on the NES I find impressive from a technical standpoint. Tools like this suffer from not having mouse or touch screen controls, but for what it is, I think the developers did a good job of providing enough features and options to give you the best control you could get out of an NES controller. Personally, I am happy I followed up a 10/10 in difficulty with a 1/10. Otherwise, I could do without Videomation and I am looking forward to playing some actual video games next.

Get your trigger finger ready, you are gonna need it!

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 4/7/19 – 4/27/19
Difficulty: 10/10
My Difficulty: 10/10
My Video: To The Earth Longplay

Before starting this project, I had a pretty good idea of what the hardest NES games were going to be. I already had 10-20 games earmarked as potential 10/10s. To The Earth was on my radar but I was certain it would end up a 9/10 for me. As I struggled to make progress and the attempts piled up, I was won over to the idea of rating this a 10/10. It stands up as one of the hardest NES games and likely the most difficult Zapper game to beat.

To the Earth released in November 1989 in North America and in February 1990 in Europe. This NES-exclusive game was published by Nintendo and developed by Cirque Verte. There is very little known about the developer of this game. Evidently Cirque Verte was discovered in copyright records as the author of To The Earth. This is the only game credited to them. I can’t figure out if Cirque Verte is a company or if it is a pseudonym for the actual developer. Very strange.

The story for To The Earth takes place in the year 2050. Earth is under a biological attack from the Raggosians. You are in the cockpit of a spaceship called The Tempest. Your mission is to collect resources from Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, and the Moon so that you can create an antibacterial agent to defend society from the Raggosian attack. The enemy is relentlessly trying to stop The Tempest from its journey, so you must use your Zapper to fend off the enemy. There are four levels in the game that you must clear to beat the game.

This is a very simple game to control and play. To start, plug the Zapper into the second controller port and optionally plug a normal controller into the first port. You can control the game entirely with the Zapper. You fire to start the game and fire to begin each mission. The only thing the controller is used for is to pause the game by pressing Start. When enemies appear on screen, shoot them with your Zapper. You can let most enemies go by harmlessly. Many enemies fire missiles that you can destroy with your Zapper.

The game takes place from the perspective of the cockpit of The Tempest. Therefore, the lower part of the screen contains your ship’s data. You can see the score, destination, and how many minerals you have collected. The most important thing to pay attention to is the yellow energy bar in the center of the dashboard. This is your lifeline and primary mechanic in the game. You lose some energy if you get hit by an enemy or a missile. You gain energy back if you shoot an enemy ship. You lose a little bit of energy if you shoot and miss. You don’t gain or lose any energy whenever you shoot and destroy an enemy missile. You are beaten when you run out of energy, so with the way the system is structured your best chance for success is to shoot as many things as possible as accurately as possible.

There are some pickups that will help. Periodically, a friendly ship will fly across the screen from right to left. There is an E icon in the lower left that appears here. Shoot the E to restore half of your energy. Do not shoot the friendly ship! If you do, you lose a ton of energy. Sometimes a comet will appear on the right side of the screen. Shoot the comet to earn a barrier shield. This lets you take several enemy missile hits without losing any energy. The dashboard changes colors as you suffer damage and when it is red it means you have one hit remaining before the shield is gone. The final item is the smart bomb. You earn this after defeating so many enemies when you are at full energy. The bomb appears blinking in the lower right corner when you have one. Simply shoot the smart bomb to destroy all enemies and missiles on screen. You also earn energy for each enemy defeated just like normal, so the smart bomb is best utilized whenever multiple enemies are on screen.

The game starts off gently. The first stage isn’t that difficult. Some enemies here move pretty quickly but many of them don’t attack you. You will get your first taste of enemy missiles and shooting them down to defend yourself. You get some opportunities to refill your energy and get your barrier shield. At certain times, the screen will flash an alarm and display either Condition Yellow or Condition Red. This is the game’s way of giving you a natural pause. You can sit on this screen for as long as you want, then shoot the Zapper to continue playing. Each level ends in a boss fight. These are the only encounters in the game that take multiple hits to destroy. The first boss is Tri-Opticon, which naturally has three segments you have to destroy.

The second level ramps things up a bit. Most enemies shoot missiles, and some enemies fire more than one missile. I found this level provided the best chance of defeating enemies just as they show up but before they fire at you. This level also introduces the asteroid field. These parts generate a series of asteroids. The lower ones will hit and damage your ship, so make sure to identify and shoot those down. The end-level boss is Zambuka, a long space snake. This level can be tricky but I handled it well.

The third level is where the game gets hard. You start off with a lengthy series of ships that all fire missiles. This part can down you in a hurry if you start missing shots. This level introduces the hyper missile, which is hands down the most difficult thing to deal with in the entire game. These missiles look like spiky balls and move about twice as fast as the normal missiles. You can shoot them down but the timing is very difficult and you need to anticipate where they originate from on the screen to have a real chance of defending yourself. The boss here is Gyron that is surrounded by mini-satellites. I’ll say more about the final level a little later but suffice it to say it is incredibly difficult. The final boss and last line of Raggosian defense is Nemesis.

After each stage, you see a screen that contains for each stage your score, number of shots taken, number of hits, and your accuracy percentage. You also get a total of those columns for the entire game and you get your overall high score at the top. You get the same screen if you lose a level by running out of energy. You are allowed to continue two times at the start of the level where you died.

To The Earth was a game I had in my childhood collection. We might have bought this game brand new for cheap, but I can’t remember. I played a few levels of it casually. A couple of years ago, in the Nintendo Age forum thread where everyone collectively beats every NES game, this was the last game remaining. I worked on it for a few days until someone else finished it up. My best progress at that time was near the end of Level 3. This is a cheap, common cart that should cost no more than $5.

The difficulty curve in this game is very severe. It is a gentle curve up until the start of the third level. That first onslaught can be tough but I rarely had issues with it. The introduction of the hyper missiles is what bumps this game up to 10/10. There are a few in the middle of the level but you can just take the hit and be alright. Before the boss there are multiple enemies that all fire hyper missiles. Here there are too many to absorb so you have to fire away and hope for the best. If you can make it past that, the final level is the ultimate test. Nearly every enemy fires hyper missiles. If you can’t defend yourself, you will lose energy very quickly and that’s that. That last level is one of the nastiest single levels I’ve ever played in a game.

My past experience gave me a good start this time. In fact, I don’t think I failed out once in either of the first two levels. The final part of Mission 3 was the first place I got stuck. I needed somewhere around five to ten tries from the start to finally clear Level 3. Keep in mind that since you get two continues, that could have meant I took as many as 30 attempts just at that one part. The final level was even worse. Much worse. I had trouble getting through the first part of the stage with just the normal missiles. After that, everything shoots the hyper missiles for the rest of the time. My accuracy in the first three missions was close to 90%, but with the hyper missiles that dropped to about 75% for that final mission. It is a lengthy stage too just like the others. I spent about two weeks making attempts on that final stage. I could consistently reach Mission 4 with all continues intact. I estimate I played that final level 60-80 times before finally winning. This is another case where I wish I kept better track of my attempts. Either way, that is a significant amount of time. My winning run came on my last attempt that session and on my last continue. I had went to sleep early and woke up wide awake in the middle of the night after about four hours of sleep. So, like any responsible person would do, I got up and played some To The Earth. I beat the game at 3:30am and it was tough to fall asleep after riding that victory high.

The thing that makes To The Earth beatable is that the game is almost completely predictable. Enemies approach from the same direction, make the same movements, and fire missiles at the same time. Missiles always move at the same trajectory, and subsequent waves of enemies always come in the same order with the same timing. It’s entirely scripted, is what I’m trying to say. You can use that to your advantage to predict when and where enemies appear. A lot of times you can take out enemies when they are just specks in the distance before they get close enough to fire missiles. In some cases that was mandatory to keep from dying. I found that the game was very rhythmic. I would match my movements and trigger timing to the enemy’s approach. That was particularly helpful when trying to defend against a series of hyper missiles. The only thing I found in the game that was not predicable was that sometimes the game would not pause on the final Condition Red in the fourth stage. It was too easy to let my guard down there and that got me in trouble more than a few times.

When I was struggling to figure out the final level, I got some advice from another player who had beaten the game. He recommended I mess around with the settings on my TV. The claim was you can put the settings in a way that makes it much easier to hit the targets. The manuals for Zapper games do recommend adjusting the brightness and contrast on the TV so that the two can work together as intended. The wrong settings can cause the light gun not to pick up on direct hits, which obviously would be frustrating. On my TV, I already had the brightness turned all the way up and there was no contrast setting. I was hoping to introduce some blur to the image that might give the enemies a larger hitbox. After messing with the TV settings for a while, my results were inconclusive. This is a dark game, so it does make sense to turn the brightness all the way up on the TV. Maybe my settings were already optimal from the start since the hitboxes seemed to be generous enough. It’s just something to keep in mind in case you want to play.

Now it’s time to see how this game stacks up against the other 10/10s. This one is tough for me to decide because all games are very different from each other. I have chosen to put To The Earth as #3 on my current list. My first two are set and are probably going to be at the top together for a long time. I am really trying to compare To The Earth and High Speed and these two games aren’t alike in any way. To The Earth is a 20 minute game and High Speed took me over two hours, but To The Earth took so many more attempts at just one singular level. I think that’s the determining factor to me. You have a lot more leeway with High Speed and all the extra balls you can earn, permitting you to make more mistakes and retry some of the boards multiple times to get the win. You don’t get that breathing room with To The Earth. It’s a close call, but I’d say To The Earth is the more difficult game. Here is my current 10/10 ranking board:

Ikari Warriors
Q*bert
To The Earth
High Speed

To The Earth is a very difficult game, but it is a pretty good Zapper game. The graphics are average I would say. The enemy sprites look detailed and there are several frames of size of each one when you see them from the distance. Backgrounds are usually just stars but you do get to see the planets as you approach the bosses. The music is simple and mostly quiet, but it is fine. You really need a good Zapper with a strong trigger to play this game. That is especially evident during the bosses where you have to drain dozens of shots into them. The main drawback to the game is the high level of difficulty, and also have the proper setup of CRT TV and a Zapper. Even casually it is enjoyable for at least the first couple of levels as a pure target shooter. There is enough depth and strategy to it if you really want to dive in. This was a good accomplishment for me. I just hope there aren’t any harder light gun games after this one.

Skinny, regular, or fat, they are all great players!

To Beat: Win a game
To Complete: Win against all teams
What I Did: Completed the game
Played: 4/6/19
Difficulty: 3/10
My Difficulty: 4/10
My Video: Ice Hockey Longplay

I am surprised at how few hockey games there are on the NES. There are only four of them. Hockey may not be one of the more dominant professional sports in the US, but there are many NHL teams and tons of fans all over. I’m surprised that there are more wrestling games than hockey games, for instance. I am not huge on hockey, but I have spent a lot more time playing a couple of the NES hockey games than many other sports games. Ice Hockey is in the conversation for the most popular NES game of the sport.

Ice Hockey was developed and published by Nintendo. I couldn’t figure out if it was made by either their R&D2 or R&D4 divisions at Nintendo. It was first released in January 1988 in Japan on the Famicom Disk System. The NES release launched first in North America in March 1988 and in PAL regions in April 1988. That’s a pretty quick turnaround for converting an FDS game to an NES cart and launching worldwide within months of each other.

Ice Hockey on NES is a simple game. This is a five-on-five game with four players on the ice for each team and a fifth player serving as goalie. The action all takes place on one screen that pans side to side to follow the puck. Games are three periods long. To beat the game, all you have to do is win a single match.

At the start of the game, you can choose options for your match. There are six teams to pick from: The United States, Sweden, Poland, Canada, The Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia. Choose your team and your opponent. Each team is a different difficulty level, but it’s hard to tell which teams are easier or harder aside from experience. In a two-player game, each player picks his or her team. Next, choose the game speed from one to five, which is from slowest to fastest. You can also choose the length of each period. They can be either seven, ten, or fifteen-minute periods. Press Start to move to the next screen. Now each player can select the lineup of the starting four. Use the D-pad to move the cursor between players and press A to change the player type. The three player types are skinny, regular, and fat players. At least that’s what most players I’ve heard call them. The players are also numbered on this screen. Players 1 and 3 are supposed to be defensive players while 2 and 4 are offensive players. To finish up here and get started with a game, move the cursor to END and press A.

Each period begins with a faceoff. You can set up your players in the formation you want. Use the D-pad and the A and B buttons to swap players around before the puck is put in play. The referee will blow a whistle to signal the end of setting up the formation. The two players nearest the referee will wait for the puck to drop. Mash the A button to hopefully pass the puck to a teammate before the opponent gets a hold of it.

I found the controls to be a little tricky but not too bad. The D-pad moves you in all directions on the ice. You only control one player at a time. The buttons do different things depending on if you are on offense or defense. On offense, the A button passes the puck to a teammate. Control moves to the closest player in the direction of the pass. The B button is used for shooting. You can hold down B before releasing to perform a more powerful shot. On defense, the B button changes which player you control. The flashing player is the one you move. You can also move the goalie to protect the goal. At all times, the A button is used for battling for the puck. Get near the puck and press A to fight for it. This can help you steal the puck away from an opponent or knock away a defender trying to steal from you.

There are some advanced techniques that are handled by the B button. On shooting, the longer you hold down B, the more powerful shot you will take. Keep in mind this leaves you open the longer you prepare for your shot. Instead of holding B, if you quickly tap the B button while holding the puck, you will pose for a shot but not actually shoot. Sometimes faking out your opponent like that is helpful. The manual mentions that you can do “flip shooting” by storing enough power in a shot by holding B. This lets you shoot through an opponent. I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand how or if this works or how to pull it off. The final B button control is a defensive one. If you are actively defending the goal, rapidly tapping the B button causes all the players to move in near the goal, helping you in defense and probably recovering the puck after a missed shot.

Much of the strategy in this game depends on the mix of players on your team. The three player types have different characteristics. The regular-size player is the typical average player that has no real strengths or weaknesses. The skinny player is a weak shooter and he does not hold up well in a puck battle. However, he is the fastest player on the ice and he is really good at winning a face-off. The fat player is just the opposite. He is very slow and is poor at the face-off, but he has a very powerful shot and he is good at body checking opponents in the fight for the puck. You can choose whichever mix of players you want that either fits your playing style or provides balance.

There are some penalties in the game. The main one is icing. I’m not going to pretend to understand how icing works. I’ve read the explanation several times and have even watched videos on it, and I still don’t quite get it. What you need to know is that icing stops play and results in a face-off. You can also be penalized for getting into a fight. If a puck battle goes on long enough, other players will join the fray. Eventually the referee will come in, break up the fight, and send one player into the penalty box for a couple of minutes. The harder you mash the A button during a fight, the less likely you are to be penalized. With one player out of the game temporarily, obviously one team has more men on the ice. This is called a power play. You want to take advantage of the power play to help score as much as possible.

The game mixes things up a little bit between each period. Teams switch sides at the start of a new period. After the second period, you’ll see a brief cutscene of the Zamboni machines smoothing out the ice. There is overtime if both teams are tied up after regulation. Overtime periods are two minutes long. If both teams are still tied after that, they go into a shootout. Each player goes one-on-one against the goalie of the opposite team, and any goals scored are tallied. If the game is still tied after the shootout, it loops back to another two-minute overtime period. The game will cycle back and forth between overtime periods and shootouts until a winner is crowned.

Ice Hockey seems to be one of the most popular two-player games on the NES. While I have never actually played multiplayer, I have played the game solo once before as part of the Nintendo Age contest. I was happy enough just to win a game. I’m not skilled enough for any huge blowout scores like would be expected in a contest setting. This is a very common game. I’ve acquired many extra copies and still have several spare carts currently.

I’ll be the first to admit that I am not very good at this game, even though that would be expected for not having much experience with the game. I started playing by picking USA every time and playing the remaining teams from left to right on the highest speed. My lineup was two fat players and two skinny players. I was able to win just barely on the first try against Sweden and Poland, and I won with a sizeable lead against Canada. I first lost big then won easily against the Soviets. The Czechoslovakian team was far and away the most difficult team for me to beat. Their team has three heavy guys and they just wrecked me all over the ice. I had a lot of trouble scoring goals because I couldn’t get good position and didn’t really figure out any consistent strategy to scoring. I had the best luck scoring with a skinny player and “passing” the puck into the net. After a few tries, I played well enough to squeeze out a win.

After reading through the manual, I decided that my goal was to beat all of the other teams. If you defeat all the countries on speed level 5, then you get to change the lineup of the opposing team before a match. Ultimately, I was not able to unlock that feature. I had a couple of really bad matches that went off the rails so early that I reset the game. I figured resetting was why I couldn’t do anything extra after finishing off the last team. It wasn’t until several days later that I realized I never actually beat the USA team and that was probably my issue. Oops! I went back and beat USA in a single game, so now I have beaten all teams.

There are a couple of bonus features that you can enable by entering in a code. On the title screen, press and hold the A and B buttons on both controllers, then press Start on Controller 1. This removes goalies from the game. If you do the same button inputs on the team selection screen, this disables puck friction. When the puck gets loose, it will fly about and ricochet until either a player collects the puck or it enters a goal.

I can definitely see the appeal of Ice Hockey on NES and why it is highly regarded as a fun game to play. It is a simple game with a good amount of depth. The graphics are simple but charming. It is clear what is going on all the time. It has good music. The controls are straightforward, yet it has some complexity with some additional features that only use the two buttons. The gameplay is solid and it is an ideal two-player game. It certainly checks all the boxes for what you want in an NES game. For so few hockey games on the NES, this is definitely one you want.

This action-puzzler gives you more than you bargain for.

To Beat: Beat World 24 to reach the ending
Played: 3/16/19 – 4/3/19
Difficulty: 9/10
My Difficulty: 9/10
My Video: Boulder Dash Longplay

Boulder Dash and I go way back. All the way back to high school, that is. I was very mathematically minded and so I joined the math team. As part of the deal, all of us on the team were loaned a TI-85 graphing calculator. It had some capabilities, including being programmable, so naturally I started tinkering around making small games on it. Things really blew open when we found that some smart people had hacked into the calculator and wrote programs in assembly language that took full advantage of the hardware. I purchased a computer-to-calculator cable, hacked it myself, and started downloading fun games. One of those was Boulder Dash and I spent a lot of time playing it. Now, years later, I finally beat the game on the NES.

Boulder Dash was originally released for Atari 8-bit home computers in 1984. It was originally developed by Peter Liepa and Chris Gray and the game was acquired by First Star Software in 1983. The company is still around and continues to hold the license to Boulder Dash. The game has been widely ported to various home computers, consoles, handhelds, and mobile phones. The NES version of Boulder Dash was released first on Famicom in March 1990. The NES release followed in North America in June 1990 and in Europe sometime in 1990. This port was licensed by First Star Software but was developed by Data East, specifically Sakata SAS. The Japanese version was published by Data East, the North American version by JVC, and the European version by Nintendo.

The story for the game is a simple one. An old explorer named Stoneford is on his death bed. Before he passed away, he called over his son Rockford and handed him a map. He tells his son to do the adventure he couldn’t complete and find the secret jewels among the six worlds. You play the role of Rockford as he plans to fulfill his father’s wishes. Each of the six worlds contains four levels that the game manual calls towns. Within each world, you can play each level in any order you choose. When all levels are completed, you proceed to the next world. Your task is to complete all the worlds.

Boulder Dash is an action game, occasionally containing puzzle elements. The object is straightforward. Each level contains gems and there is a counter of how many remaining you need to collect. Once the minimum is gathered, a door will open up somewhere in the level and you need to enter it to complete the level. As you move through the levels, you will clear out dirt that is in your path. There are solid boulders that will fall if they are unobstructed by dirt or other objects. You must take care not to get hit in the head with a falling boulder or you will lose a life. Gems fall by the same rules as boulders and you can be killed by a falling one too.

The controls are easy. This is a top-down game with levels that scroll in all directions. Simply press and hold the D-pad to move around. You can only move in the four cardinal directions and the game is grid based. You move from space to space and you can hold a direction down to move multiple spaces consecutively. You move plenty fast. Everything else in the game plays by the same rules moving one space at a time but with much more rigid movement. You can move through dirt freely as well as into spaces occupied by gems. If you press up against a boulder from the side, as long as there is space on the other side, you will push the boulder one space at a time. Holding down either the A or B button combined with pressing a direction allows you to interact with an adjacent space. You can collect gems, dig dirt, or push rocks the next tile over without moving using this technique. Sometimes you will get trapped where you cannot move at all. You can let the timer run out, or you can hold down A and B to suicide.

There are two primary types of enemies in this game. In the original game, they are fireflies and butterflies, but here they take the form of enemies graphically depending on what world you are in. I’ll refer to them by fireflies and butterflies because even if that’s not what they look like, you can tell them apart by their behavior. Both enemies move around the level by hugging the walls. Fireflies move clockwise while butterflies move counter-clockwise around the walls. You can defeat these enemies by dropping either a boulder or a gem on top of them. They explode and clear out all spaces around them in a 3×3 area. Defeated butterflies generate a 3×3 area of gems instead. You need to take advantage of this right away in the first world where you can only harvest gems from the butterflies. The enemies will defeat you not only if you touch them, but also if they occupy the space next to you. You really have to be careful around the enemies.

There is another special enemy type called an amoeba. This one does not hurt you at all, but instead it tries to take over the entire level once space at a time. It begins as a single tile and expands to an adjacent open space or dirt tile. It has some special properties. Fireflies or butterflies are defeated when they touch the amoeba, exploding into either empty space or gems as if you defeated them with a boulder. If the amoeba gets too big, it will transform into all boulders which is disastrous. However, if you can enclose the amoeba to where it is unable to expand, it will transform into gems. Levels featuring amoebas usually require you to turn them into a large pile of diamonds.

Some other levels appear impossible to clear at first look. There aren’t enough gems within the level, there is no amoeba, nor enough butterflies. That means the level probably contains a magic wall. The manual for the NES version calls this a Special Stone Wall. The magic wall takes falling rocks and transforms them to gems on the other side of the wall. The first rock to fall into the wall activates the magic wall and then it wears off automatically after some time. You need to make sure there is enough space underneath the wall for the transformed gems, and boulders must fall at least one space into the wall before it will transform. Otherwise rocks will sit there and potentially block other rocks from falling through.

As levels get more complicated, some techniques begin to emerge. Though the enemy movements may seem erratic at first, they are very predictable. Since they hug the walls, by cleverly digging dirt as they pass, you can get them to loop around constantly within a small area. You can blow holes in the wall by defeating an enemy next to the wall. There can be gems in blocked off areas that you can now access. A little trick I picked up is that you can use Rockford himself in place of a boulder to help block off an amoeba. This also provides you an entry point into the new pile of gems once it transforms. On that note, using your “grab” technique with the A button gives you the ability to harvest gems out of a large pile while helping you stay just out of harm’s way. Some parts of the game require meticulous digging through the middle of a large pile of gems and boulders. These are puzzles that you have to reason your way through in order to collect as many jewels as possible without getting trapped or killed.

Boulder Dash has a dirty trick up its sleeve. When you clear all levels in the six worlds, you get a pseudo ending but not a complete one. Then the game continues with Worlds 7-12. This is a second loop of the game with all the same levels but with higher gem requirements to reveal the exit. There is also a third and fourth loop of the game that you must complete before getting the actual ending to the game. Altogether there are 24 worlds. The third loop is particularly devious in that some of the level layouts have been slightly tweaked to make them much harder. The very first level in that third loop is a good indicator of what’s to come. That level is normally a quick clear, but this time the walls go all the way across, sealing off the bottom. You have to dig out a firefly and quickly try to defeat it along the floor so that you can blast a hole to the middle section, then you have to do that again to reach the lower section. Aside from layout changes, some of the gem requirements are even more strict. The fourth loop introduces more changes. Sometimes you have to harvest every possible gem in the level to move on. It gets very challenging.

At the start of the game, you get three spare lives. You get to change the color of your character to just about any color the NES offers. You get a map where you can choose which level in the world you want to try. If you die, you go back to the map and you can choose a different level if you want. Rockford earns a new life every 2000 points, which are a little tough to come by until the later levels. You have unlimited continues but you have to replay all already-completed levels within the world. Boulder Dash has a password system and you can get the password for any world, all the way up to World 24. That’s essential for beating this game. Passwords are simple six-digit codes that are easy to jot down.

I have played a lot of Boulder Dash casually, but never made a true effort to clear every level in the game until now. I picked up my cart copy of Boulder Dash many years ago. It was a game I knew I had to have. I played a fair amount of it back then but never really got very far. The last time I played Boulder Dash was in 2014 for the Nintendo Age contest. That time I reached World 13 with a strong score from replaying levels and earning enough points to keep up with lives. That was way farther than I ever made it before.

My complete run of the game took a few weeks to complete. I got through the first two loops fairly quickly and then stalled out on the other two loops. I don’t think I spent more than a couple of hours on any single world in the game, even the difficult ones at the end. I just had to keep at it and chip away. Due to my schedule, I cleared about a world a day toward the end, so that’s why it took so long. The whole game was probably a 20-hour completion. For my longplay video, I recorded just Worlds 19-24. It was too much to do the entire loop at once, so I recorded each world individually and just stitched them together into one video. There is plenty of failure there even without seeing any Game Over screen.

After all I went through to beat the game, I would still say Boulder Dash is a great game. I don’t necessarily think it is a great NES game. The graphics are pretty nice with different settings for each world. It is evident what each element is just from looking at it even though they can vary graphically. The music is good. The controls are simple but work just like Boulder Dash is supposed to work. The level design is good and provides you with varied challenges from pure action to puzzle solving. The problem with Boulder Dash on NES is that the game design is from an earlier time and it doesn’t really fit what an NES game should be like. The action is completely tile based with only the player character moving smoothly. There is some stiffness in the controls as well to match the gameplay. You can put a fresh coat of paint on it, but you can’t change the fundamentals of the gameplay and have it work right. This is the way Boulder Dash has to be to succeed as a concept. It’s not your typical NES game, but it is a good one if you can live with its limitations.

Where there’s lightning, there’s Thundercade.

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 3/10/19 – 3/16/19
Difficulty: 7/10
My Difficulty: 7/10
My Video: Thundercade Longplay

Thundercade appears to be an unassuming game. It’s a scrolling shoot-em-up and an arcade port. These are things we’ve seen come up time and time again, and there will be plenty more like this. There’s just one thing that sets Thundercade apart from the rest. This game is hiding a deep, dark secret. Not a malicious one this time, but it’s something quite extreme that I haven’t seen before on the NES. But before we get there, let’s take a look at this game.

Thundercade was released in arcades in 1987. It was developed by SETA and published by Romstar. The game is also known as Twin Formation in some regions. The only other platform the game appeared on was the NES in July 1989. The NES port was developed by Micronics, published by American Sammy, and released only in North America. This is the first American Sammy published game I have played for this project.

Unlike the arcade version, the NES version included a brief story in the manual. The AATOM, Atomic Age Terrorist Organization of Miracali, has built a nuclear power plant and are threatening to destroy the world with it. You play the role of a combat motorcycle driver under Operation Thundercade with the goal of stopping the terrorist threat. The mission takes place over four areas, culminating in a final battle at the nuclear plant. Destroy the power plant to complete your mission and beat the game.

This is a relatively simple game with simple controls. Use the D-pad to move your motorcycle in all directions. Press B to fire your cannons. You have unlimited shots but no autofire. Press the A button to deploy bombs via your air support. Bombs typically remove all enemy shots from the screen while dealing heavy damage to parts of the screen. If you deploy another bomb right after the first, then the bomb pattern for the second bomb covers more of the screen. You start the game with three bombs as indicated by the B in the lower left of the screen. You also see the number of lives remaining at the bottom and your score on top. This game has two player simultaneous play with the second player’s information on the right side.

Your normal cannon fires single bullets straight ahead, which are weak in the thick of the fight. Supplement your firepower by attaching side cars. This setup is reminiscent of Tiger-Heli (another Micronics-developed NES port) and its support helicopters. You can find side cars out in the open or within destructible objects like buildings. Simply drive into them to attach them to your motorcycle. They attach to whichever side of the motorcycle you touch and you can have one on both sides at the same time. Collecting a new side car replaces the old one on that side. Some side cars fire shots horizontally while others supplement your vertical shots. You can mix and match to your heart’s desire. Side cars are destroyed when shot, acting as defensive tools since they shield you from taking damage. Your motorcycle is otherwise destroyed in a single hit. There are several different kinds of side cars and you can find more powerful ones later in the game.

There are other pickups to find besides side cars. Red bomb icons add a bomb to your reserves. You can also find 1up icons for those precious extra motorcycles. The V-shaped icon is a Vulcan cannon which is a very powerful weapon. You automatically get two side cars with cannons that fire large bullets in a V-formation. This is hands down my favorite weapon in the game. You get to keep it until you die, lose a side car, or collect a different side car. These items are all hidden in the environment and you need to blow up various objects to reveal them.

There’s one more item that sends you off to a bonus game. At the end of the first two stages is a boss battle with a huge gunship. It has multiple turrets that you must destroy. If you take too long to defeat it, enemy support helicopters start appearing and the fight is much more difficult. If you can manage to defeat the gunship before that happens, then the bonus stage item appears behind it. The bonus game is an opportunity to grab a bunch of items. The view changes to side scrolling and a plane will fly overhead, dropping the goods. Steer left and right to collect them as they fall. Most of the items are parachutes that contain four missiles each. At the start of the next stage, you will automatically fire these powerful missiles when you shoot your normal cannons. Too bad they only last at the start of the following stage because they are quite powerful. You can also collect bombs, 1ups, and Vulcan cannons from the bonus stage. You also enter the bonus stage for free just for completing the third stage.

There’s an interesting game mechanic that comes up from time to time. There are sometimes inclines or other hazards such as pools of water that you can jump over. Simply drive into the obstacle to fly high. While airborne, your movement is slowed considerably, but you fly over all enemies’ shots and so you can’t be hurt during this time. Just make sure to steer to a safe landing spot.

While you don’t have too many lives to spare in Thundercade, there’s only a few ways you can be killed. You can touch most solid objects freely without being damaged. You will die however if you get squished against the bottom of the screen due to scrolling. Enemy bullets and the enemies themselves will beat you when you touch them. You are able to defeat basic enemy soldiers by driving into them. Given your advantage over them it makes sense, but not too many games implement a feature like that.

You start the game with three lives. You don’t earn lives from points in this game, only from 1up items. There are several of them in the game if you know where to look. Dying gives you a new motorcycle as play continues, as well as a fresh set of three bombs. Lose all of your motorcycles and it is Game Over. You then see a screen showing a map of your overall progress, the total number of shots fired, number of enemy hits, and your hit rate as a percentage. It’s curious to see your hit rate in a game that encourages you to shoot everything, thereby decreasing your rate. You get the same screen after completing each stage too. You can continue your game twice and the game will place you at a nearby checkpoint within the current stage. If you can clear the third stage, you earn a third continue.

This was my first time playing Thundercade. This is a game I know I’ve seen before in old gaming magazines that I never got a chance to play until now. It looked interesting but not interesting enough to rent or find cheaply. It turns out it is a cheap, common game that can be had for about $5.

Playing this game can be a bit slow going at first, but most of the game isn’t really that difficult. Bombs and side cars are plentiful and they helped me make rapid progress. After a few tries, I reached the final stage. I found that the last half of the final stage was a steep upturn in difficulty. There’s a big section with these huge turrets that emerge from the ground. Not long after they pop up they fire a string of missiles in your direction. Having good side cars is crucial here, otherwise your normal shot can’t really keep up and there’s not a lot of wiggle room to get around. The final showdown at the nuclear plant is also really difficult. There are ten snipers that briefly appear at each of ten windows. All of them aim at you but at different intervals, so you have to weave around all the bullets carefully over just the lower part of the screen. Worst of all is that your bombs here don’t remove enemy bullets. It can be a long, grueling fight. Each sniper takes several hits to defeat, but eventually you’ll defeat a few making the fight easier the longer it goes on. My run for my longplay video was just okay. I used a continue in Level 2 and another in the last stage. I’ve made it to the last part on the first credit before.

Now it’s time for the big reveal of this game’s deep, dark secret. This isn’t exactly a spoiler since it’s easy to miss. Thundercade has a special ending. If you beat the game, you might notice that this game doesn’t loop again like many shooters do. You have to let the game sit on the ending screen for roughly one hour of real time before the special ending appears. There will be a procession of tanks and soldiers, followed by a developer message written in Japanese. I suppose the localizers missed this entirely, but can you blame them? Thanks to The Cutting Room Floor, you can read the translation of the special message. After all that wait, it doesn’t stay on the screen very long before going back to the title screen. I left my recording running so I captured the special ending. I left the room with the game running but managed to walk back in the room in time to watch most of this ending live.

Even though Micronics has a poor reputation as far as their game output on NES, Thundercade is a pretty decent shooter that I enjoyed. The whole package is not incredibly special. The graphics are okay. They did a good job with all the destructible buildings and things. The music is repetitive – there’s only one main song throughout most of the game – but I found it catchy enough and didn’t get tired of it. The controls were responsive. The game mechanics have mostly been found elsewhere, which is a little disappointing. Overall, I consider it an average, run-of-the-mill type game. There are plenty of better NES shooters, but Thundercade isn’t all that bad and it is worth trying out if you like shoot-em-ups.

Now Get Ready To Catch The Magic!

To Beat: Win a game
Played: 3/10/19
Difficulty: 2/10
My Difficulty: 2/10
My Video: Magic Johnson’s Fast Break Longplay

I realize that many of these reviews I write are too wordy and descriptive. It’s kind of my thing and I’m not going to stop doing it this way. Deep dives can be interesting and fun! Magic Johnson’s Fast Break is testing my ability here. So far, I have been able to find enough to write about for all the sports games I’ve done so far, but Magic Johnson’s Fast Break is such a bare bones game that this is destined to be one of my shortest reviews. Sorry if that will disappoint you! I’ll see what I can do.

Magic Johnson’s Fast Break was originally released in arcades in 1988. It was developed by Arcadia Systems. The game was also called Magic Johnson’s Basketball in some cases. It was released on several home computers as well as the NES. Software Creations developed and Tradewest published the NES version of the game. It released in March 1990 and was a US-only release.

Since it’s called Magic Johnson’s Fast Break, Magic Johnson’s likeness is featured in this two-on-two basketball game. This game was also sponsored by Pepsi and you can see the old Pepsi logo in the game. Leaving some of that graphical flair aside, this is a simple basketball game. You can only play single games and you just need to win one game to consider this one beaten.

When you start up the game, you’ll see a nice-looking title screen. Leave it on the screen for awhile and you’ll see a profile for Magic Johnson next to a picture of his face. Then you’ll see some developer credits. You’ll also see an attract mode of the game play. Press Start to bring up the menu. You can choose from either one-player, two-player, or four-player game. Yes, Magic Johnson’s Fast Break supports the NES Four Score accessory. After this selection, for a single player game only, choose the computer’s difficulty setting from A-E. A is Rookie, B is Average, C is Advanced, D is Expert, and E is Professional. Then you start the game!

This is a two-on-two full court basketball game. You control the blue team with your basket on the left. The opponent is the red team shooting for the opposite basket on the right. Two-player games have the first player playing the blue team and the second player using the red team. In a four-player game, the first two controllers are for the blue team and Controllers 3 and 4 are used to move the red team. Each game of basketball consists of four, three-minute quarters. Every quarter begins with a jumpball to see which team gets control. Press either A or B to jump for the ball and pass it to a teammate. During play, the view scrolls left and right to follow the ball-carrier.

Controls in the game are easy. Use the D-pad to move around. You only control one player at a time as indicated by an arrow. Switch control to the other player by pressing B. When holding the ball, B passes the ball to the other player while also switching control. Press A to shoot the ball or press A to try and steal the ball from the opposing team. You also steal the ball if you are in the middle of a pass attempt between players. You can press A to jump and try to recover a rebound.

The referee will blow the whistle to signal the end of the quarter. You transition over to a statistics screen. You see the score for both teams. You can view the attempts, shots made, and percentages for both free throws and field goals. For three-point shots, you only see the number made. You also see the number of rebounds and steals. Press A to move on. You get to see Magic’s face again along with some advice for the next quarter based on how you played.

You can get fouled in the game or commit fouls. The most common violation you will likely see is the back court violation. Once you bring the basketball to your half of the court, you can’t step back over the line again or you cause the violation and have to give up the ball. This is not actually considered a foul, however. Each team can commit up to five fouls each quarter and turn the ball over to the other team. Any fouls after that award free throws. There was only one foul in the entire match that I committed, so I didn’t see anyone shoot any free throws and I don’t know how it works. If back court violations had counted I might have seen some free throws.

Magic Johnson’s Fast Break also has a salary system. Depending on the difficulty of the opponent and how well you play against them, at the end of a game you will be given a salary. You don’t get to spend the money on anything; you just see what you earned. If you think that sounds like a high score table, you would be correct. You can enter in your initials and everything. There’s no visibility into the scoring system at all, just the final tally at the end.

This was my first time playing Magic Johnson’s Fast Break. This is the third of ten NES basketball games I’ve played so far. It’s a common cart that is dirt cheap. If you collect NES, you probably have this one already without even trying. I have only owned a few copies of this game though. One copy I sold had checkerboard lines cutting through the entire label down to the plastic. I guess someone thought so highly of this game that they decided it would be more fun mutilating the game than playing it.

When I booted up the game for the first time, I decided to try playing on a lighter difficulty just to get a feel for the game. My goal is always to find some kind of exploit in the AI or a way to consistently hit three-pointers. I played through a quarter on Average difficulty, and though I didn’t find a good technique, I was leading by 10 points already. I reset the game, started the recording, and set the game to Professional difficulty. After the first quarter this time, I was losing by a score of 38-24. I figured it out partway through the second quarter, cruising to a final score of 139-101. The best place I found to shoot threes is from the top of the key. (I think that’s the right terminology.) On an inbound, position your other player at either sideline at midcourt. Then pass the ball to him and you will be in good position to go right to the spot and shoot. Any misses are compensated by the times you will steal the ball back from the opposing team. I didn’t have any trouble taking and keeping the lead once I got consistent at getting to the right spot to shoot. I finished with a salary of $2.4M which was good for 2nd place. A better first quarter should have put me at the top spot but reaching the top of the chart was not important to me for this game.

I guess that’s pretty much everything to say about this game. It’s not an awful game, just trimmed down to the bone. The music was written by Tim Follin, my favorite NES composer, so it’s got great tunes that are a bright spot here. The graphics, controls, and gameplay are all at least average. It’s a very easy game to beat and the quickest one to finish so far. Compared to the other two basketball games I’ve played, Roundball and Jordan Vs. Bird, I would put this one at the bottom of the list. There’s just no substance to this game at all, especially for a 1990 release. The game kind of reminds me of NBA Jam without any of the things that made that game interesting and fun. There’s no player selection, no dunks, none of that good stuff, just the same visual perspective, the two-on-two action, and lots of stealing the ball. Happy to have another game quickly checked off the list!

I have a confession to make. I nearly forgot about writing this Year In Review. I had a problem for awhile where I would be too many games ahead of my writing and struggled to catch up. I have become much better at this, which in turn means the Year In Review should appear much earlier. My last 2018 review went up at the end of February, but it was only a couple of weeks ago that I realized I was overdue for the review. To make up for my mistake, I’m trying to make this the best Year In Review yet!

I’d say 2018 was my best project year so far. This year was all about agility and trying to clear games more often, and I was able to meet that goal. I finished 42 games in 2018, starting with Desert Commander at #69 and finishing with Pipe Dream at #110, all with written reviews and completions recorded on video. I had hoped I would be able to clear 50 games a year when I first started this project, and now I think I’ll be fortunate if I have a single year when I reach 50 completions. As always, I have many things competing for my time. I work a full time job, and when I’m not working, my wife and daughter keep me plenty busy. I’d say I’m probably smack in the middle of the busiest period of work of my whole career. I’ve done a lot of Switch gaming. I finished up my 275+ hour playthrough of Breath of the Wild, as well as completed both Hollow Knight and Undertale for the first time. I highly anticipated the release of La-Mulana 2 on PC and played through the whole game twice, and I also completed Iconoclasts which was another long-awaited game. I’m also a big fan of game randomizers and I’ve carved out time to play a few Dragon Warrior and Super Metroid randomizer runs among others. On top of all that, I competed once again in the Nintendo Age weekly contest and tournament where I placed third. It’s a miracle I had time for any of this at all, and there’s no way I can keep this up. I have already given up the Nintendo Age contest, and I don’t see any PC games coming up that require immediate attention. I’m at a good pace so far in 2019, but I also know things can change on a dime and there are plenty of highly difficult games and long games still to come.

This year’s installment will cover 42 NES games as mentioned above. I pick two, sometimes three games in each of several categories along with a brief write up of why I chose the game for the category. I added a few new categories as well that seemed fitting: Best/Worst Controls and Best/Worst Playthrough. There’s a mix of good and bad here and all are worth reflecting on. Any game not mentioned against a category will have a final word at the very end. There’s a ton of ground to cover so let’s not waste any more time!

The 2018 Take On The NES Library Year In Review

Hardest Game

Q*bert:

As the only 10/10 game in difficulty on this list, it was a no brainer as the hardest game. The really hard games always come along with at least some sense of dread. I had a bit of a leg up on this game since I was familiar enough to get a good start on progress. That’s when the difficulty spiked even further and the dread really set in. I was fortunate enough to keep chipping away and get a solid completion.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom:

With only one possible exception in mind, this is about as hard as an NES game gets while having unlimited continues. I still can’t get over how much they ask of you in the endgame with crossing the fire lake, navigating the giant maze with only a partial map, almost requiring an optional, hidden item to clear a stage, and all that good stuff. The core gameplay is also quite difficult with so many ways to die. I’m happy this game is done and over with.

Sky Kid:

I have to include this game just for how it blindsided me with its difficulty. 26 levels with only a few lives and no continues is quite a hardy challenge, not to mention some of the obstacles you have to deal with are downright brutal. It’s such a cutesy game too and I never knew it had such a painful difficulty hidden underneath the facade.

Easiest Game

Danny Sullivan’s Indy Heat:

This type of game would normally come with a little more challenge, but I found out that you have enough lives and continues to see all the levels without even trying. There’s no real ending and no incentive to winning unless you like high score chasing. I can’t imagine there are too many games that just hand you a completion for free.

Baseball Simulator 1.000:

Then Baseball Simulator 1.000 comes along, which is another game that you can beat without playing! Simply set up a league with all computer opponents and simulate all the games. This one takes more of a time commitment. The ending you get is the same as if you played and beat it yourself. I bet you see the same ending even if you play and lose the season to another team. No one really has to know what exactly you accomplished! Of course, I did beat the game fair and square. Even though Danny Sullivan becomes a dirty cheater later on, winning a season of this was harder than winning a loop of Indy Heat.

Shortest Game

Puss ‘N Boots: Pero’s Great Adventure:

Before playing this game, I knew that it was a short and easy experience. I booted it up for the first time with my recording stuff set up, and then promptly reached the ending in just over 20 minutes. The only thing difficult or lengthy about the game is the final boss encounter. It was a tough fight that sucked up a decent amount of time in an otherwise short run.

Defender of the Crown:

My run of the game took about 25 minutes, which for this game seems to be a fairly long time. I also had numerous resets and attempts in which to figure it all out. Not exactly Shortest Game material. The reason for inclusion is that someone has figured out and publicized a method call the Centerboard Strategy to quickly beat the game. The world record speedrun takes a little over two minutes. That’s pretty darn short.

Longest Game

Dragon Warrior II:

Leave it to an RPG to be the longest game of the year. I estimated this as a 30-40 hour completion, with much of it spent in late game level grinding so that I could tackle the final boss and barely squeak by with a victory. It’s still a fun game that I like a lot, although some of that can be chalked up to nostalgia.

Q*bert:

The hardest game and longest game categories will usually have some overlap. I counted 67 attempts at Q*bert over a span of 18 days, with an estimate of 30 hours played total. That’s close to Dragon Warrior II, but the grind of RPG battles certainly feels longer than quick puzzle-action stages.

Oldest Game

Chubby Cherub:

I was a little surprised to find out that Chubby Cherub was the earliest NES release. I also believe it was the earliest Japanese release of the year. Chubby Cherub first released on Famicom in December 1985, and the NES game appeared in October 1986. It was the only 1986 release I played in 2018.

Volleyball:

This was a close call here for second place. Sqoon just barely edged out Volleyball by release date in Japan, in part because Volleyball was an early Famicom Disk System title. On the NES, Volleyball is the clear winner, debuting in March 1987.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure:

Here’s a special shoutout to Bill & Ted. This was a 1991 NES release, but you do play portions of the game in ancient times which clearly predates any video game technologies of any kind.

Newest Game

Bonk’s Adventure:

It took until Game #90 before I finally got to play an NES release from 1994. There were only 12 licensed NES games released in North America in 1994 so I could have had to wait a lot longer than this. Bonk’s Adventure was released in January 1994, so even among 1994 releases it is an early one. It’s a very expensive game due to the release date, but it is a good one.

Duck Tales 2:

The year 1993 wasn’t exactly overflowing with NES releases either, although there were quite a few considering the SNES was in full swing by then. Duck Tales 2, released in June 1993, was the only 1993 released NES game I played last year. Another expensive title that was a lot of fun to play.

Best Character

A Boy and His Blob:

The friendly alien Blobert was clearly the best character of the games I played last year and may well be one of the best characters on the console. As the boy, you are trailed by the usually jovial blob, who for the price of one jellybean, can transform into one of several tools used to explore the caverns below the city. The game itself is interesting and good, but Blobert steals the show every time.

Felix the Cat:

The classic cartoon character feels right at home on the NES. Transforming characters must always hold a special place in my heart, I suppose. Felix uses his Magic Bag to produce all sorts of vehicles and attacks that are useful over the numerous stages in the game. While many of the abilities feel about the game, the animations are good and it allowed the game to have fun flying and swimming levels.

Worst Character

Whomp ‘Em:

The game itself is fun, but the racist characterizations are just awful. The name of the game is a terrible pun. The story, if you can call it a story, only concerns the hero Soaring Eagle looking for trinkets to add to his pouch. I get that this was a tough game to try and localize from the Japanese version, but centering it around Native American stereotypes was a poor decision in hindsight. We as a society are a lot more sensitive and less tolerant to these kinds of caricatures now, and for good reason. Native Americans deserve better than being portrayed this way.

Bill Elliott’s NASCAR Challenge:

Now I can get to some more carefree criticism of video game characters. I’m sure the real Bill Elliott is a nice man, but I hate him on the NES. He is always in the lead, always a little bit faster, always a little bit ahead of you. When he wins, you have to see his smug face accepting the trophy with an attitude of “well of course I was going to win this race, I’m Bill Elliott!” For as unfair as Danny Sullivan can be, I had a much harder time beating Bill Elliott as his own game.

Best Ending

Gemfire:

NES endings, by and large, are sparse in content and length. Gemfire has one of the more impressive endings I’ve seen. I really like how they made the gems animate and fly around during a few different sections of the ending. There’s a nice scene of the hero riding on horseback with some parallax scrolling, some ending dialogue, and some good music to go along with it. It’s very impressive overall.

Isolated Warrior:

The next best thing to a well thought out ending is having multiple endings. Isolated Warrior features a simple ending with a teaser of getting a different final stage if you can get that far without using a continue. The better ending features a longer prologue culminating in a single screen of a book titled Isolated Warrior, the idea being someone wrote an entire book of his journey. Great music too.

Duck Tales 2:

The Duck Tales 2 ending is right up there with some of the other great NES endings. There are several screens of images and text that tell the end of the story. The separator here is that there are three different endings depending on how much money you have earned by the end of the adventure, just like in the first Duck Tales. The differences are only in a single screen but it was worth it for me to seek them out. The bad ending where you have no money is not as difficult to get here than in the first game.

Worst Ending

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure:

This might not be an entirely awful ending, but it did not sit right with me at all. Upon completing each level, you are given a Wyld Stallyns concert that gets progressively longer and with more complete music each time. By completing the final stage, however, the music is just obnoxious, grating guitar solos with no melody anymore. After that train wreck, you get a single Game Over screen with Congratulations from Rocket Science written on top. Bleh.

Bonk’s Adventure:

The ending itself is pretty good, completing the story well and including a full credits roll that fades in and out. The worst part for me though is the creepy ending music. I just can’t stand it. It brought me back to my childhood, playing video games by myself late and night mostly in the dark and getting creeped out by different things. That kind of music would have given me nightmares for sure. Also, one of the Graphics credits is “???”, like they don’t know who made the graphics?

Chubby Cherub, Danny Sullivan’s Indy Heat, Pipe Dream:

The final bad ending shoutouts are the ones that don’t have an ending at all. These games all keep looping when you finish the last level. At least they provide you with an opportunity to snap a photo demonstrating that you completed the last level. I’ll accept that at the very least.

Best Box Art

Laser Invasion:

I had a tough time deciding on the Box Art awards this year, but this cover stood out as a clear winner to me. The worst part of it is the Laserscope offer that covers a good chunk of the box. Everything else on the cover is after you, and I think that’s awesome. Staring down the barrel of the cannon on the tank is my favorite. It’s a great cover.

A Boy and His Blob:

I really like this cover because it is a nicely drawn comic, but it goes a step further and pretty much explains exactly what you will be doing in the game. This had to have been helpful when you would buy this game retail with only the box art as your guide for what game to buy. Not many games do this and I dig the approach.

Worst Box Art

Roundball: 2-on-2 Challenge:

I don’t think any of the boxes are inherently bad or misleading. But I had to pick one, so I went with Roundball, and here’s why. The offensive player is set up for a big dunk, but only because the two defenders on either side are basically useless. The left defender at least tried to stop the drive, but he’s in an awkward position and facing the wrong way. I have no idea if the right player even knows how to play basketball.

Chubby Cherub:

Again, this one is not a bad box either. It is an extremely basic cover, but this was an early NES game and one of the first third-party titles. Companies were just getting their feet wet at this stage. I chose this box cover as one of the worst solely because of the angel on the front. The drawing is kind of goofy looking and there’s nothing chubby about the character at all. If you are going to name a game Chubby Cherub, at least look the part.

Best Graphics

Super C:

This is a beautiful looking game right out of the gate. Everything is drawn well and highly detailed, from the initial helicopter to the final boss encounter. There’s a lot of variety in styles and colors too. I am not much of a graphics snob, but this game made me take notice right away.

The Rocketeer:

This game took me by surprise in the graphics department. In-game, it’s okay, but nothing to sneeze at. Bandai really did an excellent job detailing the cutscenes that play between levels. There are great uses of colors and effects, and the characters are highly detailed and look great. It’s tough to tell that this is an NES game at times, which is a hallmark of good graphics.

Prince of Persia:

The graphics in Prince of Persia are not that outstanding, with only a few graphic backdrops that don’t contain much detail. Of course, I am featuring Prince of Persia due to its rotoscoped animations which look awesome even today. This is still some of the best animation on the NES.

Worst Graphics

The Terminator:

Poor graphics don’t necessarily make or break a game for me. The Terminator was a decent game to play, but I can’t deny the graphics are pretty bad. The graphics somewhat obscure the action and are either too sparse or too cluttered and ugly. The driving portions are particularly bad. I think they tried to hide it a bit with getting you to move so fast.

Bomberman:

It’s not so much that the graphics are bad, but there’s just not that much to look at here. The stages all contain the same plain green background, with the same style of bricks and solid columns over all 50 levels. It’s just boring. Sure, the explosions aren’t too bad, but if that’s all you have to go on, that’s not saying much.

Best Soundtrack

Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers:

I love a good upbeat soundtrack, and for my money there’s a lot of good tunes here that keep me energized and going. I don’t think there’s a bad song in the whole bunch, even the gloomy tunes of the later levels are still catchy. Any one of these songs can get stuck in my head pretty quickly, so this is an easy choice for best soundtrack.

Dragon Warrior II:

It’s a testament to the music here that it doesn’t get old even though you have to play this game for dozens of hours and hear the music on repeat. This is also a personal pick for me. Something about this game and the music puts me right back into my childhood and sitting for hours playing these games. I know it sounds lonely, but these are good memories and I’m thankful to relive them just a little bit.

Worst Soundtrack

F-117A Stealth Fighter:

To be fair, this game does get a bit of a pass here, even though I don’t like the music much. This is a complicated game with its open structure and all the flight angles that have to be calculated. It might be a bit much for the NES to handle, but it did. The tradeoff is that the framerate takes a hit and the music has to be simplistic to free up valuable processing time. That might be okay if the sound was good, but that’s not the case here. There’s a lot of low, quiet notes for when there is music, and just sound effects for most of the action.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom:

This is kind of a weird choice for worst soundtrack. The game features the iconic Indiana Jones theme and it is pretty good! The ranking here is twofold. First of all, most of the music in this game is a low, quiet soundtrack that I didn’t much care for and doesn’t add much to the game. The other reason has to do with that iconic theme. When I uploaded my longplay of this game to YouTube, it got flagged for using the Indiana Jones theme. The easiest way to fix it was to upload the video with no sound. Boo!

Best Gameplay

Whomp ‘Em:

I know I already said my piece about the localization of this game, but if I’m being honest, I think the gameplay is really good. Your character jumps and controls well. You have a high and low attack with your staff, not to mention both an upstab and downstab at your convenience. You also get new weapons from defeating bosses a la Mega Man, and the levels move in different directions to utilize all of your abilities.

Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers:

This is another game with excellent gameplay. The main mechanic of lifting and throwing boxes is fun and used to great effect often in the game. Boxes can be one-hit shields or can be thrown high, low, or straight up. The levels wind around in multiple directions, and there are some interesting gimmicks like shutting off switches and turning faucets. It’s fast paced too but never too difficult until perhaps right at the end.

Worst Gameplay

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure:

The core gameplay here is something that turns off a lot of people. You have to explore these expansive levels that take several minutes to cross. The goal is to find random items and match them up to a person at a random location on the map. Searching for the items and clues is slow and plodding, and straying off path means you usually get slowed down much more. Get caught by an angry local, and you get thrown in jail, setting you back in terms of distance across the map. Then you have to sit through six progressively longer stages of the same stuff.

Volleyball:

I will give Nintendo credit here for trying to make a competent, early volleyball game. There’s some nuance to controlling all the team members at once, which sometimes made sense and sometimes was frustrating when I controlled the wrong character. I don’t know if it’s random, but it seems that spiking or defending a spike launches the ball in a random direction that usually goes against me. I never could get the hang of it and didn’t fare all that well even against the easiest team.

Best Controls

Super C:

This game offers controls that are both responsive and comprehensive. You have perfect control of your character, even after committing to a jump. You can also fire in all eight directions and can do so with ease and grace. I like that your firepower aligns to a slope you are standing on one. This is one of those games where when you die, it’s your own fault. That is often the hallmark of good controls.

Bomberman:

Bear with me on this one. I know I already ripped the game a bit on graphics and repetitiveness. For a simple enough game like this, the controls are exactly right. Bombs are easy to place, locking to the nearest square on the board, and they are equally easy to detonate on demand with the right powerup. I appreciate that Bomberman sort of auto slides into a row when you change direction perpendicularly but aren’t quite lined up properly so that you don’t get stuck. It’s a minor touch that you may not notice, but that’s because it works seamlessly.

Worst Controls

Defender of the Crown:

This is a game with a lot of modes with mostly poor feel and controls around them. There’s a sluggishness the creeps over the whole game. Swordfighting is slow and jousting is equally frustrating. Even the menu during combat doesn’t respond to commands right away. The crossbow defense is a little better but not great. Menuing and cursor movements are just about perfect, but those are not reaction based at all and don’t help much for some of the trickier actions.

Kung-Fu Heroes:

The controls here are mostly good. Punching, kicking, and moving around are responsive and easy to pull off. Good luck though trying an action that requires pressing A and B together. Some other games provide a little bit of a buffer for simultaneous presses so they are easier to execute, but not Kung-Fu Heroes. I don’t know if you have to press A and B on the same frame but it feels like it. When you need the bomb or the sword, it often takes several tries to get what you need.

Isolated Warrior:

I’m highlighting this game for one bad control choice. The motorcycle in Stage 4 has a feature where you do a wheelie by pressing Down and A. This makes you invulnerable to bullets briefly because you drive over them apparently. This becomes a problem when the road has holes in it and your instinct is to move down before jumping to give you more time. Then you do a wheelie and can’t jump so you fall to your doom.

Best Playthrough

Q*bert:

My winning run was not perfect by any means, but for a game that is as hard as Q*bert, I’d say it was impressive for a first-time completion. I got all the way to Level 8 with all continues intact, used all of them in Level 8, and then had a great run through Level 9 to the end, some parts of which I played for the first time. I ended up with the 3rd fastest completion of the game according to speedrun.com.

RoadBlasters:

I’ve owned and played RoadBlasters for a long time, so it’s not a shock that I would do well at the game. I only took one attempt at it but managed to clear all stages without needing to continue once. Sure, I crashed a lot, that is to be expected in this game where you can manage several crashes and be fine. I like being able to try a game once and be happy with the result.

Milon’s Secret Castle:

I am thankful that the continue code for this game is listed in the manual. It is the only way I was able to beat this game many years ago, and this time too. I knew I wanted to try and beat the game without needing the code, and after a few tries I was able to complete a decent enough run without dying. The second loop did not go that well, it is harder and faster after all, but the continue code bailed me out again and I’m happy with how the second loop went for my first time anyway.

Worst Playthrough

Volleyball:

Maybe I should have given this game some more time. My playthrough was right before vacation so I settled with whatever I could get. I know this game is sneaky hard, and I have learned that’s true. I could not get the hang of playing against most of the teams in this game. My playthrough was against the second-easiest team and it still took five sets to pull out the victory. It’s not good, just adequate.

F-117A Stealth Fighter:

Beating this game was slow and took a long time. Any time you fail, you make no progress, even if you’ve been working at a mission for a long time. Unfortunately, I failed quite a lot. I also figured out a little trick late in my playthrough that would have made things much easier and saved me a lot of time. I will get to that a little later!

Best Moment

Q*bert:

I think I need to pay attention better to some less heralded moments where I did something neat or unexpected in the game. As it is, there is often overlap between Best Moment and some other accomplishment. This time, the thrill of beating Q*bert was a great moment for me, even though it was entirely expected to happen at some point.

Bill Elliott’s NASCAR Challenge:

I really struggled to get the hang of this game and racing here. Even though I was able to run short races, one small mistake is all it takes to crash and end up in last place. A great moment is that moment of enlightenment, or in this case finding an exploit and exercising it. I learned that on the Watkins Glen course, you can drive full speed all the way on the outside of a turn and the game pushes you along the curve without crashing. Your car will get damaged but not enough to have to pit in a short race. The trick works on Sears point too but there are fewer places where it is useful. Anyway, any time I can avoid seeing Bill on the winner’s podium, I’ll take it.

Worst Moment

Sky Kid:

You know a game will take the top spot when you have multiple worst moment candidates. I have two bad moments that came to mind when playing in the late levels of Sky Kid. The first was a very promising run lost to technological problems. I reached the final stage with several lives in stock, only for the TV to spontaneously lose power, which also cut off the AVS that was powered through the TV’s USB port. In the second bad moment, I reached the very end of the game. To win, you have to drop a bomb on the spaceship at the end. I lost the bomb early, watched the spaceship go by, and then force-crashed into the water past the end on my last life. I was stunned.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom:

The close, but not quite beaten, runs of any game are always a good topic for Worst Moment, and I sure had that here. Level 10 is an awfully hard level that sometimes can be completed quickly with good luck. I got through it and made it to the final level only to run out of equipment, preventing me from reaching the end. Losing there meant I would have to replay Level 10 all over again if I wanted victory.

Jordan vs. Bird: One on One:

I suppose we have hit the trifecta of bad moments in 2018. First is the issue external to the game, second is the close call runs that weren’t meant to be, and the third is the soft lock. Near the end of a match in Jordan vs. Bird, I made a shot and the ball bounced up and down on the rim into perpetuity. I couldn’t knock the ball down or make it fall in any way. It’s a soft lock because the game didn’t freeze, but I couldn’t proceed and was forced to reset and try again. Not a huge loss here but it’s annoying (though sometimes comical) when it happens.

Best Surprise

Gemfire:

I have long dreaded playing the Koei-developed strategy titles on the NES. They have thick manuals, tons of options, and seem to be very long games to complete. I knew that Gemfire was the best option as a starter game for the series, but little did I know that I would come to genuinely enjoy playing the game. There are plenty of options, sure, but it didn’t take long to figure out what to do. Combat was streamlined a bit with simple square grids and cool extra abilities. Now I don’t feel so bad about trying one of the more complicated games later.

Baseball Simulator 1.000:

I assumed that nothing would top R.B.I. Baseball for me as the essential NES baseball experience. Baseball Simulator 1.000 has a similar feel but has way more customization. It also introduces the Ultra League where you can assign special powers to pitchers, hitters, and fielders. That adds an additional strategy element to the game while also being wacky, unpredictable, and fun, and that was one of the best surprises in 2018. I’ll always have a soft spot for R.B.I. even though Baseball Simulator 1.000 is probably the better game.

Worst Surprise

Pipe Dream:

In this project, there aren’t that many things worse than turning the game on and realizing it doesn’t work. Pipe Dream would not load past a garbled title screen on my AVS, but it ran just fine on my top loading console. I test all my carts but I must have tested Pipe Dream before I bought the AVS. I ended up buying another copy of the game that worked and I skipped ahead a game on my list so I wouldn’t be left without anything to play.

F-117A Stealth Fighter:

This is actually a good surprise that I perceive as bad. To get medals in this game, you have to complete missions scoring a certain number of points. I figured out how to fly through most levels and clear out everything in one go to earn enough points, but it was a huge challenge to do so. Just before the last mission, I learned a trick where you can land and fix up your plane as many times as you want as long as you don’t destroy the primary target in a mission. This helped greatly in meeting the medal requirements, but I was so annoyed that I wasted a lot of time trying to clear missions the hard way.

Best Familiar Game

Super C:

Contra is always one of the highest regarded games on the NES. Super C is less heralded but is just as good if not a little better. Everything about this game is great. The music, graphics, controls, and gameplay are all top notch. There’s great level design and boss battles and a bunch of great weapons. I’ll always have a good time playing through Super C.

Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers:

I’ve probably spent more time playing through Chip ‘n Dale than I have Super C. I love the cheery, upbeat music here. It really gets me going and makes me happy. I enjoy throwing boxes all over the place and fighting the level bosses. I just wish it were a tiny bit harder, but then again I don’t mind romping through this one at any time.

Best New Game

Laser Invasion:

Color me surprised for sure. Zapper games aren’t especially my forte, and neither are flight combat games. Laser Invasion kind of came out of nowhere and combined genres I don’t terribly care for into an excellent overall package. The flight sections play well and have some cool boss fights. Some of the dodging flight segments are well done and exciting looking. The zapper sections are done well, and the mazes are a lot more fun to go through than I would have thought. The graphics, music, and presentation are all in that well-done Konami style. It’s a tough game, but a fun one to play that many people don’t know about.

Baseball Simulator 1.000:

This might end up being the only sports game to make this category. Baseball Simulator 1.000 took the familiar style of R.B.I. Baseball and added in a ton of extra content. You can run a league, build and customize a team, view various statistics collected over many sessions, watch or simulate full games, and participate in the wacky Ultra League. All those things made the game a ton of fun to play.

Worst Game

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure:

While not bad on technical terms, this game was such a drag to play. Making hand drawn maps are required for this game and they are more difficult to create due to the perspective. You have to check every door, every bush, every fence, every little detail in the stages in hopes of finding something useful. The levels are huge and it’s easy to suffer setbacks such as getting thrown in jail. It’s repetitive, long, and boring.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom:

This game is better with some good action parts. The enemies and traps are really annoying in this game. You are always under threat, getting knocked around into lava, into traps, or off ledges. The jumping perspective is tricky when traversing complicated ledges. Switching weapons is so frequent you are prone to mistakes. There’s also hidden items appearing in random places that aren’t required but make things easier. Even then, the end game is still one of the hardest parts of any game I’ve played in recent memory. Bill & Ted will put you to sleep, and this game will make you rage.

F-117A Stealth Fighter:

This game annoyed me, in part because of the trick to completing long missions, and also because there are a bunch of missions that are long in the first place. The action is okay but it’s mostly too slow. It’s too easy to get turned around when you have to shake off an enemy fighter. The music isn’t that great. I thought it was harder than it really is, which didn’t help sell the game to me either.

Ignored But Not Forgotten

The Black Bass:

I am not a fishing fan and I figured this game would be a drag. It was a long game, but I had a lot more fun with it than I expected. Explore a few different lakes to find the best spots for fishing, then choose bait, throw out your line, and get into some tricky battles between the fish and your gear. The music was surprisingly good too.

Desert Commander:

This was really my first foray into NES strategy games and it was pretty enjoyable. Nice graphics, good music, and even some cutscenes are featured in this game. What I didn’t like was being severely outnumbered in the later missions, but somehow I found a way.

James Bond Jr.:

Here’s another surprisingly good game on the list that didn’t get any other recognition. THQ has a bad reputation for their NES games but this one is better than that would suggest. I actually submitted my playthrough as a world record on speedrun.com, only to have a much better time uploaded just before mine went through.

Robocop:

Both the movie and the game are pretty good. The NES game is a fairly straightforward game. It controls a bit sluggish for a game where you are forced to proceed quickly if you don’t want to run out of energy. This was my first time beating this game since I was 9 or 10 years old.

Snoopy’s Silly Sports Spectacular:

Snoopy and his friends are here for some quirky minigames. To get the gold medal, you have to master all six events and perform well enough at them three times. It is an easy game for the most part, but it may take several attempts to bring it all together. It’s a nice game that didn’t fit any of the categories.

Sqoon:

This is an early shoot-em-up game that just barely missed the list for Oldest Game. It has some neat ideas, such as rescuing people in exchange for fuel or weapon upgrades. Unfortunately, the game drags on too long for it to have been better remembered.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:

I’m surprised I didn’t find a way to sneak this game in earlier. Almost every 90’s kid interested in TMNT also played the NES game. It is a tough game with many issues but one that is well regarded for the most part. I really enjoy this game and it has some good music to go along with the turtle swapping and scroll weapon throwing.

Wacky Races:

This game is best known for being very expensive, with loose carts selling near $200. It is not a racing game, but an easy platformer where you can rack up a bunch of lives and refill your health on demand. Still, it is a fun romp. It was close to making the list for Best Soundtrack just for the title screen theme alone.

WWF Wrestlemania:

I find wrestling games to be tedious to play and not that much fun, with the caveat that my experiences do not go beyond the N64 era. I remember being really frustrated playing through this game and having issues on just the second fight. I ended up learning an exploit that helped me win the game. At least I got to play as The Macho Man!

Another one of Namco’s iconic characters gets his own land!

To Beat: Finish Level 4-8
Played: 3/8/19 – 3/9/19
Difficulty: 3/10
My Difficulty: 3/10
My Video: Mappy-Land Longplay

Mappy was a popular arcade game by Namco that released in 1983. The NES received many arcade ports during its lifespan, including many other Namco classics such as Galaga and Pac-Man. Mappy did get a Famicom port but never saw an NES release. Instead, what we got was Mappy-Land, a console-only sequel that extends the formula from a score-based arcade game to an adventure game. Let’s dive in and see how that panned out.

Mappy-Land was developed by Tose. It was first released on the Famicom in November 1986. There it was published by Namco. The NES version in North America came out way later in April 1989, published by Taxan. It was also included on Wii U Virtual Console worldwide in 2015. This game and the arcade original were the only two Mappy games released in the US. Japan had the arcade sequel Hopping Mappy in 1986 and a Famicom platformer in 1989 called Mappy Kids.

In Mappy-Land, you play the role of Mappy over four different stories, most of which center around Mapico, Mappy’s girlfriend. In the first story, you are collecting cheese as a present for Mapico’s birthday. In Story 2, you gather wedding rings because Mappy wants to marry Mapico. The third story has you collecting Christmas trees for a party. In the final story, you find baseballs for Mappy Jr.’s birthday party. Each of these stories consist of eight areas, so in all there are 32 areas to clear in Mappy-Land to consider the game beaten.

This is a simple maze-chase style game with equally simple controls. The D-pad controls Mappy. You can walk left and right. Press Up or Down to use ladders. The B button lets Mappy perform a small jump. Most items are in the air and Mappy jumps to grab them, and even though B-button jumping is normally something I hate, it didn’t bother me this time. The A button is used for deploying weapons. That’s all there is to it.

The ground rules for this game are also simple, mostly following from the original Mappy arcade game. You start on the bottom left and the enemies, the cat Nyamco and his crew of Mukies, begin pursuing Mappy from the upper right. This is a scrolling game that expands several screens horizontally. The structure of each level is four floors high that are sometimes connected by ladders. Empty vertical columns often contain a trampoline at the bottom that Mappy and the enemies can use to switch between the floors. Mappy passes through all enemies unharmed while on the trampoline. You can only get off the trampoline while moving upward, and after a few consecutive bounces the trampoline will vanish until you either get off or fall through to your death. Mappy loses a life if he collides with an enemy or if he falls, except when he is either on or leaving a trampoline. You can also fall on top of a partial ladder and be okay. The goal of each level is to collect the six items from the story, then exit to the right.

Since you can’t always navigate your way around all the pursuing enemies, you have some defensive weapons at your disposal. These are displayed in a row at the top of the screen and you can collect more as you find them. Press A to use them, however you can only the item positioned at the end of the list, so the last item collected is the first one used. You start off with three cat toys. Mukies will get distracted by them allowing you to pass through them, but Nyamco is unaffected. Coins do just the opposite; they distract Nyamco but the Mukies don’t bother with them. Pots cause Mukies to faint, letting you pass by safely. Fish are thrown forward and bounce ahead, which causes all enemies to chase them.

Each of the eight areas has a different visual theme, a different costume that Nyamco wears, and a unique attacking weapon that shows up at fixed locations in the stages. The first area is Railroad Town and it contains pulleys. Grab one and Mappy will slide to the left, knocking out any enemies in the way. The second area is Western World and there are punching bags. Jumping into one cause it to rock back and forth for a while which knocks out passing enemies. The next area is Tropical World with fireworks. These are like bombs. Set them up with a jump and they will sit there until an enemy passes and it explodes. The fourth area is Jungle World. This area has a different structure from the others. There are no weapons here, but the level layout is a wide open space with no floors and no enemies that actively pursue you. There are trampolines strewn about, many of which are high up off the ground and slide left and right. Use these trampolines to catch and cling to vines that help you cross pools of water. You can fall safely after bouncing and you can control Mappy with Left and Right as you fall, but you must land on a trampoline after leaping from a vine or you will lose a life.

The fifth area is Pirate World. This one has horizontal bars and Mappy will swing around them for a time, hitting any enemies that pass by. The sixth area is Ghost Town which also has a different play style than the other stages. This is another open area where Mappy uses a balloon to fly around. Use the D-pad to fly in any direction. Mappy is armed with an infinite use flashlight that he shines when you press A. The cats fly around as ghosts and you can vanish them with the flashlight. Here you collect keys to open a door leading to a side area. You have to find an item here that lets you pass through to the end of the stage. The next area is Seventh Avenue and it contains sticks that you bop from underneath to hurt enemies above you. I never was able to utilize these when I played. The final area is Muky Town. There are bowling balls that roll along the ground when you release them, taking out enemies along the way. Instead of going off to the right when you collect all the items, you must enter the castle door in the center. This takes you to another side area with no enemies and a new set of items. You must collect all the items here and reach Mapico at the end of the area before the level song completes. If you fail, you are awarded no bonus points but you get to repeat that part again as many times as needed without losing any lives. Complete it to earn a point bonus, then you go to the first area of the next story.

As you proceed through the stories, the enemies start chasing you faster and thus are harder to avoid. Some areas also have the exit blocked, just like how I described above about Ghost Town. In that case, you need to locate the sub area that opens once all items are gathered. Inside the sub area, you have to collect another item that lets you pass through to the end of the main area outside. The entrance to the sub area is often telegraphed by a doorway in the background that you wouldn’t have otherwise noticed.

Now I’ll cover a few miscellaneous features and tips about Mappy-Land. Sometimes, the necessary sub area is made a little bit harder to find because you need to jump into the entrance. This tripped me up on one specific level. You can use both kinds of weapons together. For instance, you can distract a bunch of Mukies with the cat toy and then run them all over with the pulley in the first stage. Combo attacks like this also earn you a bunch of points. It is also possible to jump over a single enemy if you get trapped. I wasn’t aware this was possible until I re-read the manual after beating the game. Even though it’s not necessary for beating the game, I know it would have been handy to know that.

Mappy begins with two extra lives. There are no extra life pickups but you do earn a free life at 40,000 points. I didn’t score much higher than that so I don’t know if you can earn more lives or not. Dying in a level maintains the items collected, and that’s helpful for clearing some of the more difficult areas. You have unlimited continues to use when you run out of lives. You go back to the title screen but you can choose the Continue option on the main menu to restart the latest level. Be careful to manually select the Continue option so that you don’t accidentally start from the beginning and lose your progress. Mappy-Land has your back anyway in case that happens. The game features a built-in Stage Select option. You can choose to play any story and any odd-numbered area in that story. This means you can skip straight to 4-7 from the start and only have to play two areas to get the proper ending!

This was my first time playing through Mappy-Land. I only played one area during my initial cart testing. I remember reading about this game in my old gaming magazines. I didn’t get a chance to try it until I collected the game as an adult. I haven’t personally come across many copies of this game, but it is reasonably common. A loose cart sells for around $8 or so. My copy has some label peeling, so I wouldn’t mind running into a condition upgrade in the future.

I didn’t have much trouble beating this game for the first time. This is a straightforward game that you can just keep trying until you get through. There are a few tricky spots to cope with. Jungle World is cumbersome at first with the floating trampolines and unintuitive physics. If you don’t catch the vines in the right way, it is possible to fall to your doom between them. It reminds me of Spelunker but not in a good way. Some of the later levels are laid out where one of the objects you need is located on a one-way path. It can be tricky to get the enemies to cooperate so you can get through, but that’s why you have your weapons. I would take an intentional death just to ensure I could get an item in an out of the way location. This is a minor spoiler, but there’s a level where the floors are invisible unless you have a torch that you found in the previous area. If you have to continue on that stage then you are locked out of the torch altogether. While possible to navigate blind, it is really helpful to see the layout at least once before. I didn’t have to go back a level via the stage select or anything, but that was an option I might have considered if I were stuck for a long time. My longplay video was my second attempt and it went well enough. I got stuck for several minutes on 4-1, which was the only major blemish in an otherwise average run.

I had a fun time playing Mappy-Land, though it’s not without its issues. The graphics are simplistic but detailed enough with the different backgrounds and costumes for Nyamco. They might be nice for 1986 standards but not as great by 1989 when it reached the NES. I liked the music and how there was a different song for every area. They even brought back the original Mappy song for one of the sub-areas. The controls are easy to learn and use. The gameplay is okay but it gets repetitive. It’s not a terribly long game, but 32 levels of being chased around simple mazes is quite enough. The mechanics drag this game down a little bit. Mappy can fall from any height after bouncing off a trampoline and be fine, yet if he takes a tiny fall of a ledge he dies. But you can fall onto a half-ladder with no trouble. The rules don’t really make sense, but to be fair, neither does passing through deadly enemies on the trampoline. The Jungle World is the worst offender here, trying to flesh out some platforming that doesn’t fit the style of this game. Ghost Town with the floating balloon does it much better. The game is a little bit janky overall. I haven’t sold the game well here, but I had fun playing it and I appreciate its modest difficulty and some nice touches along the way.