Now Get Ready To Catch The Magic!

Pink on gray isn’t usually the best color choice.

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.

While nicely detailed, you see this way too often.

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.

Faceless wonders, these guys.

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 the best place to shoot from.

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!

#117 – Magic Johnson’s Fast Break

Punch, kick, and flip your way through this challenging action game.

The title logo palette changes, I think this color looks best.

To Beat: Reach the ending
To Complete: Reach the ending without warping
What I Did: Completed the game
Played: 5/19/18 – 5/26/18
Difficulty: 9/10
My Difficulty: 9/10
My Video: Kung-Fu Heroes Longplay

As you may know, before I started Take On The NES Library, I generated a randomized list of games and I am clearing games in that order. Once that list was set, I have completely ignored it aside from revealing only the next game in the list as I finish new games. I love the mystery of it all and I’m glad I’m doing it this way. Still, there are a few games that I remember where they fall on that list. For no particular reason, I remembered that Kung-Fu Heroes appeared somewhere in the 80s. Well, here we are! Perhaps this game stuck out to me because I knew that it was a sneaky difficult game. Let’s jump in and see what I was up against.

Kung-Fu Heroes began as an arcade title named Chinese Hero. It was developed by Nihon Game and published by Taiyo System in Japan and Kitcorp in North America. It released in 1984. A Famicom port of the game released in 1986 under the name Super Chinese. That version was published by Namco under the Namcot label. The NES version wouldn’t come out until March 1989. The NES version was also developed by Nihon Game, but by then they had renamed the company to Culture Brain. They also published the game on NES. Kung-Fu Heroes is the first game in the Super Chinese series. There were three Famicom games in the series. Super Chinese 2 would release on the NES as Little Ninja Brothers, and Super Chinese 3 is exclusive to the Famicom.

Kung-Fu Heroes is a top-down action game. You’ve heard this kind of story before. Monsters come and capture Princess Min-Min while also taking away ten treasures. You control either Jacky or Lee to battle the monsters and restore peace. (I wonder where their names came from?) Kung-Fu Heroes has a two-player mode with simultaneous gameplay if you want to tackle the game with a friend. The game takes places over eight castles with four areas each. Your task is to defeat enough monsters in each area so that the door opens to the next area. Once you complete all 32 areas, you save the princess and beat the game.

A nice courtyard becomes a battleground.

The controls to this game are more complicated than they first appear. You walk with the D-pad, moving in the four cardinal directions. Press A to punch. You reach forward by stepping quickly ahead and back when you punch and enemies break apart completely when you defeat them. You can perform the moon sault kick by pressing the B button. This also acts as a jump button. Hold down a direction and press B to jump kick into the air. You can defeat some enemies while airborne, and others you can defeat when you land on top of them with the kick. If you press B while standing still, you will perform a special move called the miracle kick. During the miracle kick, you move really fast and can jump much further than with the moon sault kick. There are a few other things you can do under special circumstances that I’ll cover later.

It’s a little unclear what you have to do in this game when you first start playing the game, so I’ll clear that up first. All the action takes place on a single screen. Enemies will appear one at a time periodically from the sides of the screen. There will be no more than four enemies on the screen at one time. After defeating twelve enemies, the door at the top of the screen will open, accompanied by a loud beeping noise. Unfortunately, there is no indicator for how far you have progressed within a level. Sometimes you don’t need to defeat all twelve enemies. Either way, as soon as the door opens the enemies speed up significantly. You can continue to beat them up if you want. To end the level, walk through the open door.

The top of the screen contains most of the information you need during game play. The first row has a bunch of icons and counters. The first one is of a little face that displays how many lives you have remaining. The next one is a letter K which indicates how many miracle kicks you can use. The second player also has these indicators on the right side of the screen. There are three more counters in the middle that are shared between both players. E indicates the number of E-balls you have, the fist icon indicates your punching power, and the money bag displays how much money you have. The second row on the menu bar contains the score for each player. In the middle of the row is a space reserved for any permanent treasures you acquire.

Punch to collect treasures, for nothing is fist-safe.

As you can see, there are a lot of items and abilities in this game. Most of them are acquired through collecting items within each area. Many levels will contain several rocks or blocks. You can punch these blocks to reveal an item that emerges from the block as a bubble. Then punch the item to collect it. The most common item you will see is a treasure box. This will hold one of many different items or upgrades that may not be immediately apparent. It may upgrade your punching power one level, which caps out at three, and you need certain power levels to defeat certain enemies. It may give you five miracle kicks. It might give you a money bag, which you can hold up to six. It might also contain one of the ten treasures. A new treasure will appear blinking at the top of the screen when you get a new one.

Another item you can find is a key. Collecting this opens up a staircase on the block where the key came from. It will close up after some time, but you can enter the stairs before then to go to one of two areas. The more common area is the bonus room. This is a timed room that generates items for you to collect. Red apples just give you points. The E balls are better in that collecting five of them gives you an extra life. This is also what E balls do in the main levels, however collecting them in the bonus area is separate from collecting them during levels. Also, in the bonus areas are a stream of bullets that you should dodge. Dying in the bonus area just ends it early without losing a life. Besides the bonus room, stairs may also lead to a warp room. In this room there are two holes and you can jump in the one you want to advance either a few levels or several levels ahead.

Some levels contain a gun ball item. This is a ball with the letter G on it. When you collect it, you can fire gun balls when you punch for a short time. Firing horizontally causes the gun balls to bounce on the ground as they move ahead. Firing vertically throws them in a straight line very quickly. There are a few upsides to the gun ball. You can use this to kill enemies that usually require more difficult techniques to defeat. Enemies will run away from you while the gun ball is active, and they are unable to shoot projectiles of their own. A few enemies take several gun balls to defeat, so fighting them may not always be worth it.

Bonus rooms are full of items and bullets.

The final items you can collect are question balls and 1ups. Blocks that do not hold items any more, or blocks that don’t hold items at all, can still be interacted with in a couple of ways. Some blocks go flying when you punch them. You can shove the blocks into other enemies and defeat them for more points than with standard attacks. Otherwise, you can keep punching an empty, stationary block to eventually generate a question ball. This will either contain a money bag or an X ball. The X ball resets your money bag count to zero. These blocks are the easiest ways to collect money bags but it is risky. 1ups are uncommon items that tend to appear on empty spaces and you reveal them by punching the air. Makes sure to take note of these special locations if you happen to find one. Finally, the last thing you can find in the levels is another bonus area called Break Time. This takes you to a separate screen where you gain half a million points and can take a free 30-second break if you desire. You can’t control your character or do anything aside from leave early.

Money bags are used to trigger two special items. Simply collecting five money bags generates an E ball somewhere on screen, and remember, five E balls equals an extra life. If you have six money bags, you can redeem them for a P ball. Press A and B together while standing still to make the P ball appear. Be patient because the controls for this are very rigid and I think you have to press both A and B together on the exact same frame to get the P ball to appear. Collect the P ball to turn invincible to enemies for a little while. Enemies turn blue and will run away from you. You can defeat them by simply running into them. It’s a great way to help when clearing difficult rooms.

The ten treasures you find throughout the game all have various effects. Most of them boil down to making it easier either to defeat or to avoid certain enemies. A couple of them reveal hidden dangers in later levels. If you mysteriously die in some of the later levels, you might be missing a treasure that could help. One treasure is a sword. You unsheathe the sword by pressing both A and B at the same time while you are walking, and you put it away the same way. The trigger is similar to the P ball and it’s important to remember the difference so that you don’t accidentally reveal the P ball when you don’t need it. Our hero will hold the sword out while it is in use. There are a couple of enemies that are only vulnerable to the sword.

Uni-Gon is the closest thing to a boss in the game.

There is a wide variety of enemies in this game. Most of them have different attacks, too. The standard commando enemies can punch and kick just like you. There are spear men and gun men. There’s a coffin enemy that will hold you inside of him briefly. A couple enemies fire medusa beams that freeze you for a bit and leave you vulnerable. One enemy just pushes you around. There are two large enemies that you need to watch out for. Uni-Gon is a huge, mummy-like monster that pursues you alone. All other enemies leave when he shows up. He can also breath fire. You can defeat him by punching him five times, but it is extremely risky. I’ve only done it once and usually I just avoid him until he goes away. If you can defeat him, he will leave an E ball behind. The other large enemy is a dragon. He is only vulnerable to the sword and you also have to hit him five times.

There are other features to some levels. One useful feature is the quick passage. These are doors on the left and right edges of the screen and most levels have them. If you walk through the door you will wrap around to the other side of the screen. Some levels have two pairs of quick passage doors. These are most helpful in evading Uni-Gon, but enemies can use them too so that’s another thing to keep in mind. Some levels have wells in them. These are just like the holes you enter in the warp room, only these kill you if you fall in. Some levels have fireballs streaming out of these wells. They are deadly to the touch, even if you are jumping in the air or are invincible with the P ball. Stay away. Some levels have pools of water or lava, and those kill you too. Finally, a few of the later levels have moving or disappearing blocks within the water or lava. If you can get on top of those blocks for just a brief time you will earn a bunch of points as well as some E balls.

You start the game with five lives. You can earn up to nine through the various methods already described. It’s a little frustrating to get good enough at the game to go beyond nine lives only for them not to count. There are no continues to the game either. There is a continue code I found by holding A and pressing Start at the title screen. It will take you back to the first area of the castle you were on. However, it is not listed in the manual so it is off-limits for me. The only nice thing Kung-Fu Heroes does for you is that you will always start each new level with at least three lives. If you finish a level with one or two lives remaining, you will get three lives to start the next area. I believe this is a holdover from the arcade game. It’s very generous, but it also speaks to the difficulty of the game in that death is so swift and frequent that those extra lives don’t always help.

If you’re playing for score, don’t miss Break Time.

This was my first time beating Kung-Fu Heroes. This is a game I have tinkered with a little bit off and on. Mostly I didn’t get through the first castle before turning off the game, but it was fun to pick up and try out a few times. I also played this game for the NintendoAge contest a few years back, but I didn’t get much beyond the third castle. I remember buying my copy of the game at my local game store several years ago when prices were still cheap. This game is still cheap today if you are looking to buy a copy.

I was able to beat the game in about a week. I sure played the game a lot in that one week, however. I think it took me over thirty attempts to beat the game. I took detailed notes on item locations which I found helpful for learning the game. By the end, I had all the item locations memorized that I needed. The first couple days of attempts didn’t get me very far. This was because I was spending all the time combing levels for items while also properly learning how to fight the enemies. Soon enough I was getting to the 6th, 7th, and final castle somewhat regularly when I hit another wall. Many of the final areas have no items along with difficult sets of enemies. A few areas include enemies that cannot be defeated, so you have to wait for them to leave so they can be replaced with enemies you can attack. I could do the early game really well only for it all to be wiped out in a flash at the end. I resorted to warping just so I could quickly get to the end of the game to practice. I beat the game that way once, and then the next day I beat it again without warping. The game loops continuously after you beat it, but the difficulty does not seem to change and there’s no special ending beyond the first loop.

It gets tough when there are no items late in the game.

Beating this game requires good technique and strategy. I found each enemy has either a specific way to beat them or a preferred way to beat them. Mastering the moon sault kick is important since you can dodge enemy projectiles and even get a nice point bonus for jumping over attacks. Then you land on top of the enemy to defeat it. It’s dangerous to jump on enemies that can also jump since they will evade your attack. For them, I approach them from the side and punch them or slice them with the sword before they go airborne. Defensively, I always keep my finger on the B button to moon sault kick my way out of danger, such as when the lightning obstacle quickly appears. I didn’t have much use for miracle kicks offensively, but they are very helpful as an evasive maneuver since you move so fast. It might not be best practice, but I use miracle kicks sometimes to go straight at the open door when it’s surrounded by enemies. Miracle kicks are also useful in the bonus room and they are unlimited for that room only. I just avoid both Uni-Gon and the Dragon. Shuffling back and forth through the quick passage keeps Uni-Gon away pretty easily. I also came up with a nice strategy for the final area. I saved four E-balls and six money bags for that stage since it’s the hardest one. I spent the money bags on a P ball when there were four enemies on screen, and then I went to town wiping out as many enemies as possible using the quick passages. Uni-Gon appears here and I can beat him with the invincibility, and then he drops the fifth E ball I need for an extra life. This level is still awfully tough after that, but every little bit helps.

I enjoyed my time with Kung-Fu Heroes. It does feel a little out of place for a 1989 NES release. The graphics and aesthetic are nice. The music is catchy at its best, and a bit dull at its worst. The controls are fine aside from trying to press A and B together. The action is very quick. This is an easy game to pick up and play for a few minutes or to sit down and try to dig into it. This game is also part of a trend among early NES games I’ve noticed where there is more internal complexity to the game systems than it first lets on. All the treasures with different effects and all the other things to keep track of like miracle kicks and money bags seem so overwhelming for what looks like a simple action game at first glance. Therefore, this game is easy to start playing but tough to master. This is a game for people who like quick action games and don’t mind a challenge in the endgame, but I think it’s also a great NES game if you don’t take it too seriously and just want to carve up some enemies for a little while.

#86 – Kung-Fu Heroes

The title of the game is a pretty fair assessment of what to expect here.

It’s not really a breakthrough of title screen design (sorry!)

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 1/30/16
Difficulty: 4/10
My Difficulty: 3/10

For as many classic NES titles as there are, there have to be others that fall on the other side of the coin. I’m sure there are many poor NES games that I will get to, but then there are others that are just kind of okay and don’t really stand out in any significant way. BreakThru seems to be exactly that kind of middling game that is buried deep within the NES library.

BreakThru was developed and published by Data East in 1986 as an arcade game. It was released on the Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, and Commodore 64 before making its way to the NES in November 1987. Data East was responsible for publishing over 20 NES games between 1986 and 1992 covering most of the NES lifespan. There really aren’t exact dates for NES game releases but from what I found BreakThru was released in the same month as Kid Niki: Radical Ninja and Side Pocket.

BreakThru is a side-scrolling shooting game where you take control of some kind of armored car. Your mission is to plow through enemy territory in order to recover a stolen aircraft. Your vehicle is equipped with a cannon that lets you shoot forward, and I guess it also has some sort of advanced hydraulic system that lets you jump. You can also speed up and slow down by moving backward or forward. Adjusting the speed more or less affects the scrolling speed of the game but you do need to speed up fast to make some jumps across obstacles. The jumping is also useful as a dodging mechanic since you can’t take any damage from enemy fire whenever the car is in the air.

Shoot the crates!

There are five stages in total: Mountain, Bridges, Prairie, City, and Airfield. There are various enemy tanks, soldiers, and other hazards that stand in your way. There are no bosses in this game so levels end whenever you reach the end. The closest thing this game has to a boss is a giant helicopter that appears a few times through the course of the game. There are a few powerups that drop down on parachutes occasionally but there’s not much variety here. There are three powerups that all give you a three-way spread shot with the only difference being how long you have the weapon. There is also an extra life to grab. I found the powerups to look just about the same so I couldn’t really tell what the differences were without the manual, and they are also kind of tricky to grab in the first place. I think I had to jump to pick them up because they floated too far away if I stayed on the ground.

I picked up my copy of BreakThru a long time ago from a used game store. I bought it solely on the name. What I was really after was a breakout-style game and Arkanoid was too expensive for me. At that store the NES games were in a case with only the end labels showing so I didn’t actually get to see the game cart until after I paid. I think it was only $5 so it wasn’t that much, but unfortunately the cart had a huge crack in the back covered with tape. It’s the only copy I’ve ever had so it’s still in my collection. I took it home, played it once, and put it away for years. I wouldn’t pick it up again until it showed up in the NA weekly contest last year.

Did they blow up the lines on the road too?

My run of BreakThru was really simple. In the prior contest, the object was to score as many points as you can before you start your last life. You only get three lives to start and they don’t show up in the levels that often, but you can also earn additional lives by reaching certain scores. I know you get one life for getting 20,000 points but that’s all I could reach. Under those conditions, I got roughly halfway through the second level. When I played this time obviously I could play however I wanted and it was much easier to get through. There are unlimited continues and each level has a pretty generous amount of checkpoints. You get to restart at those checkpoints after each death, even when continuing after Game Over. The game must be beaten in one sitting but you can just keep chipping away at it until you beat it. When I sat down to play I only intended to play for a little while just to get used to the early part of the game. I ended up finishing the game in a little over 30 minutes.

After the ending scene plays out, the game starts over from the beginning. I played the first level again just to see if it is more difficult the second time but it looked exactly the same to me. Because of that I didn’t bother completing the second loop. Now in the arcade version, I read that after beating all five levels you get to choose which level to start on the second time through. The game ends after the second loop. On the NES version, I couldn’t find any evidence of anything different after winning the second loop and there was no level select after the ending like in the arcade version. I didn’t want to spend any more time playing the game just on the chance of there being something more. If there actually is a true ending, then I guess I’ll have to go back to it sometime later!

Stay above 50!

The game may be on the short side with unlimited continues and checkpoints, but it does pose a moderate challenge. I could see there being several sections of the game that would take some practice to pass even though I got through it quickly without much trouble when I played. For instance, there are some large jumps from one bridge to another in the second level and they roll right into a first helicopter attack that catches you off guard the first time. It’s these kind of sections that put the difficulty near average. Now, if you are a purist that believes these games must be beaten on a single credit, then that bumps the difficulty quite a few notches higher. For my purposes, I think my difficulty assessment is appropriate based on what I’ve played, but of course that’s always true for these rankings!

BreakThru isn’t that bad of a game, especially as an early NES title. By today’s standards, the game doesn’t really stand out all that much and it shows its age. I haven’t played the arcade version but I’m betting it’s the superior experience of BreakThru. Either way, it’s a nice little game to check off of my list!

#15 – BreakThru