I’ve already played two-on-two basketball, now it’s time for one-on-one!

They look a little too kind on the rebound here.

To Beat: Win a single match
To Complete: Win all game modes
What I Did: Completed the game
Played: 6/23/18, 7/1/18
Difficulty: 3/10
My Difficulty: 3/10
My Video: Jordan vs. Bird: One on One Longplay

I like watching sports but I don’t follow them too closely. The one exception is the Chicago Cubs. I became a baseball fan and Cubs fan somewhere between the 1994 baseball strike and the 1998 home run chase, and I’ll for sure be a dedicated fan for the rest of my life. Being tuned into the Cubs back then led me into recognizing what the Chicago Bulls were doing at that same time. Now the Chicago Bulls dynasty in the 90s would have been hard to miss anyway, and I’d like to believe I was aware of how special that run was, but I may have been too naïve to truly appreciate it. However, there’s no denying how special Michael Jordan is as an all-time great basketball player. I don’t have a similar connection with fellow hall of famer Larry Bird as I missed seeing him play in his prime. Those two were among the biggest names in basketball of the time, so I can see why they made a game featuring the two of them.

Jordan vs. Bird: One on One originally released for the PC and Commodore 64 in 1988 and was developed and published by Electronic Arts. This game is a sequel of sorts to the 1983 computer game One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird. The NES version of Jordan vs. Bird released in August 1989. The port was developed by Rare and published by Milton Bradley. This was a US release only. In 1992, the game was ported to both Game Boy and Sega Genesis.

Jordan vs. Bird, for the most part, is a simple basketball game. You get to choose either Michael Jordan or Larry Bird and square off against the other. There are several options for customizing your game and you can play against the computer in single player or play against a friend in simultaneous two-player mode. In addition to a standard basketball game, you can play a couple of mini games. You can play as Michael Jordan in a slam dunk contest or as Larry Bird in a three-point shooting contest. To beat the game, you simply need to win a single game. If you want to do more, you could also aim to win both the slam dunk and three-point shooting contests.

Power past Bird and go for the dunk.

In this game, the controls on offense and defense are similar so I will cover them here together. You move around in all directions by using the D-pad. On offense, you will always face toward the basket, whereas on defense you will face either up toward the basket or down toward the screen, depending on where the ball handler is in relation to you. If you hold the B button down while moving, you will turn your body in that direction and move. On offense, you can lock yourself into facing away from the basket by holding B, pressing Down, and letting go of B. The A button shoots the ball. Press and hold A to jump, then let go of A to release the ball. Jordan can dunk by shooting with A as you move near the basket. You can also press A on defense to jump if the opponent is shooting. Press B while on defense to attempt a steal. You can hold the B button down and continuously try stealing so long as you are standing still. If the offensive player has not yet moved once he has gotten possession of the ball, you can press Select to take a timeout and pause the game. Pressing Start exits the game and takes you back to the Options screen.

The Options Screen is the main menu of this game. For a one-on-one game, you can select from a full game, a game to either 15 or 11 points, and a warm up for practicing. For the slam dunk contest, you can select from the main contest, warm up, or a follow the leader game to help you learn the dunks. For the three-point contest, you can select either the main event or a warm up.

Starting a one-on-one match brings up another options screen. First, select who you want to be. Press B to toggle Larry Bird’s setting and press A to toggle Michael Jordan’s setting. For each player, you can cycle through first player, second player, or computer player. The Play to 11 option lets you choose from either an 11-point game or 15-point game, provided you chose that option from the main menu. You can set the computer’s skill level anywhere from one to four. Winner’s outs determines who gets the ball after scoring. The default of no gives the ball to the defensive side. Fouls can be toggled on or off. Finally, for a full game, you can select the length of the four periods. Selections are two, five, eight, and twelve minutes.

You can play tough defense.

Now you can start shooting some hoops! The basket is in the middle with details written on the scoreboards on either side. The left side shows Bird’s score, followed by the period number, and the 24-second shot clock. The right side shows Jordan’s score, followed by the time remaining in the period, and a repeat of the shot clock. The view pans side to side as you move toward the edges of the screen, leaving part of one scoreboard off screen if you move all the way to the opposite side.

There are only a few differences between the two types of one-on-one modes. We already know the full game is a timed game with four periods, while the other mode is a race to either 11 or 15 points with no time limit. The only other difference is in the scoring. The full game follows standard basketball scoring, with two points for a field goal and three points from beyond the three-point line. In the 11 or 15 game, field goals are worth one point and three-pointers are worth two points.

Both modes display a results screen at the end of each period. This is the same screen that appears when you take a time-out with Select during the game. For each player and period, you get stats like total points scored, shot attempts and percentages, steals, and blocks. You also get some nifty profile pictures of our two stars.

In the Slam Dunk Contest, you can show off Jordan’s dunking ability. You can play this mode with one to four players. In a single player game, the first player is computer controlled and you play second player. For multiplayer, only controller one is used and shared by all the players. At the start, you get a screen where you can choose from one of ten dunks to perform. Move the cursor and select the one you want. Here’s a tip. The dunks on the left side of the list are initiated from the left side of the basket. Same thing for the dunks in the center column and right side of the list. Now you control Jordan alone on the court. Approach the basket from the appropriate direction and hold A to start the dunk. If you hold A the entire time, you will make the basket but not score very high with the judges. A panel of five judges replaces the right scoreboard and your dunk is scored from zero to ten from each judge. The slam dunk contest is secretly a timing game. You want to release the A button as far away from the basket as you can while still successfully dunking. Let go too early and you miss the dunk, but let go too late and you lose points. This mode just takes repetition to learn. Each player gets three dunks and the highest cumulative score wins.

Everyone wants to dunk like Mike.

The other two slam dunk modes are just for practice. Warm up plays just like the normal contest, only you play solo. In Follow the Leader mode, first the computer player selects a dunk at random and shows you how it works. Then, you get a chance to perform the same dunk. This is a useful mode to see what the dunks look like and how to perform them, but it is annoying that you don’t get to pick the dunk you want to follow in this mode.

The three-point contest puts you in Larry Bird’s shoes as you try and score as many shots as you can. In this format, you get 60 seconds to shoot up to 25 basketballs. There are five racks of five basketballs each positioned around the three-point line. You first shoot all five balls in the rack to make the next one appear, and then you walk over to it and start shooting. The judges’ scoring is used to show how many basketballs remain in each rack. The left scoreboard shows the total score and the time remaining. The shooting controls are different in this mode for some reason. You press A to grab a basketball and start your jump, then press B to release and shoot the ball. You get one point for each basket made, while the last basketball in each rack is worth two points. You can play this mode with multiple players or single player against the computer over three rounds. A quirk about this mode is that once you grab a basketball from the rack, the one you previously shot disappears even if it is in midair on the way to the basket. Just make sure you know the outcome of your last shot before you start the next one.

This was my first time playing through Jordan vs. Bird. I know I’ll say this for just about all sports games, but I enjoy watching sports more than playing video games about sports. This is a cheap, affordable game, although it’s one I’ve only owned once out of the many games I’ve had in my house.

Shoot as quickly and accurately as possible.

This turned out to be a game that I figured out on the first day of trying. Unfortunately, I wasn’t recording my trial run and it took me a week before I was able to get some free time and play again. Normally in a basketball game I will look to shoot as many threes as possible, but this time I figured out an exploit right away that goes a little differently. I started off with the main game as Jordan, two-minute periods, and computer level 1, which is said in the manual to be the hardest setting. On offense, I immediately go around Bird and dunk for an easy two points every time. On defense, Bird will start sliding in one direction. If you follow him to the back corner, you can get him trapped there. I hold the B button to steal and make small positional adjustments until I steal the ball, then take it to the basket and dunk. In the worst-case scenario, he will make the three-pointer from the back corner with 3 seconds left on the shot clock. If he misses it, you can hold him back until the ball lands and then recover the rebound easily. I won my game with no trouble. I also played to 11 using Larry Bird. The defensive technique remains the same. On offense, I moved toward the top-right corner and shot the three for two points. Another easy win. Between modes, I switched the computer player level from one to four and I didn’t see any noticeable difference in difficulty.

I found the two mini games harder than the main game. Neither one is particularly easy to win, however attempts are short so eventually one will come through in your favor. In the slam dunk contest, the computer player often seems to score around 35-40 points out of 50 per dunk, while I am usually good for 25-30 points. In my longplay video, after several failed attempts, I won with an above average round for me and a below average round for the computer. On my initial, unrecorded playthrough, I saw the computer outright miss dunks, so it does happen and that can lead to an easy win. The three-point shooting contest goes much the same way. The only advantage you have against the computer is in your shooting speed. The computer player does not finish the final rack, while if you play as fast as possible, you should be able to shoot every single ball. With some of these games, you just have to take every edge you can get!

Jordan vs. Bird is another mediocre basketball game. I don’t mean that in a bad way. On a technical level, it plays well. There isn’t any noticeable flickering or slowdown and the gameplay is clear. The graphics are music are fine but don’t stand out in a meaningful way. It’s the slam dunk contest and three-point contest that make this game stand out. While not enough to base an entire game on, they fit pretty well within the confines of a simple one-on-one basketball game. I would rather play Jordan vs. Bird again than I would want to play Roundball again, but I am also happy enough keeping them both on the shelf. I’m starting to wonder now if there is a truly good basketball game on the NES. It seems that Jordan vs. Bird was ported over because the NES could support one-on-one basketball better than with full teams on either side, which could easily devolve into a flickery, unplayable mess. I suppose we will find out after I play more basketball games.

#91 – Jordan vs. Bird: One on One

#91 – Jordan vs. Bird: One on One (Game to 11)

#91 – Jordan vs. Bird: One on One (Slam Dunk Contest)

#91 – Jordan vs. Bird: One on One (Three-Point Contest)

Let’s kick the board game format up a notch with Archon.

Dueling dragons!

To Beat: Win a match
To Complete: Win as both the Light team and Dark team
What I Did: Completed the game
Played: 9/21/16 – 9/23/16
Difficulty: 3/10
My Difficulty: 3/10
Video: Archon Longplay

Today is a big day for Take On The NES Library! I am finally incorporating game play videos for some games going forward, and we are kicking off this momentous occasion by talking about the first strategy game covered on this site.

Archon: The Light and the Dark was originally released in 1983 for Atari 8-bit computers. It was developed by Free Fall Associates and published by Electronic Arts. The game is notable both for being among the first titles published by EA and a huge hit for Free Fall Associates. The game was so popular that EA wanted a sequel quickly, so the developers released Archon II: Adept the following year in 1984. The original Archon was ported to many home computer systems and was a success on pretty much every one. The NES would receive a port of this game all the way in December 1989 published by Activision and Bullet-Proof Software.

Archon can be adequately summarized as an action chess game. There are two sides, light and dark, composed of fantasy creatures that duke it out for control of a 9×9 grid. Each side takes turns moving a creature from one space to another. If a character is placed on a square occupied by a member of the opposite team, the gameplay switches to the combat arena. Here you take direct control of your creature as you attempt to defeat the opponent by thumping or shooting them enough to deplete their life bar. Defeated creatures are removed from the board and the winner occupies the square. There are also five power spots on the board: One in the middle of each of the four edges of the board and one in the center. You can win by either destroying all of the enemy creatures on the other team or by occupying all five power spots at the same time.

One strategy is to try and hold the power points.

The game board consists of light squares, dark squares, and shifting squares called Lumina squares. Light squares and dark squares always stay the same, but the Lumina squares change color throughout the game after every other turn. There are five different shades of Lumina square: light, light blue, blue, dark blue, and dark. All the Lumina squares start off blue and shift toward dark, then reverse and shift toward light. This cycle repeats through the course of the game. The color of these squares is important because light characters are stronger on lighter squares and dark characters are stronger on darker squares. It is to your advantage to engage in combat on those squares when they match your color.

There are several types of creatures in the game and they can be separated into two groups. There are ground creatures and flying creatures. Ground creatures cannot move through squares occupied by other characters and must have a direct walking path to the desired square. Flying creatures can go over units and land on any square within flying range. Each character has a range of squares they are allowed to travel during a move ranging from three squares to five. If a ground character can walk four squares, then it gets a combination of four horizontal or vertical steps and that’s all for that turn. If a flying character can move four squares, then it gets up to four squares of horizontal movement and up to four squares of vertical movement. As a result, flying creatures can cover significantly more ground per turn than ground creatures.

Ground characters on each side match up against each other on the board for the most part. The leaders are the light Wizard and dark Sorceress. They are the only characters capable of spell casting which I will get to in a little bit, and they also move via teleporting which evidently is exactly the same as flying but with a different animation. The light Knights and dark Goblins are the pawns of this game with short range attacks and weak stamina. The light Unicorns and dark Basilisks are quick and reasonably strong. The light Archers and dark Manticores are a tad on the weaker side but have long range attacks. The light Golems and dark Trolls are very slow but very strong.

The starting lineup!

The remaining matchups demonstrate the differences between the two teams. The light Valkyrie is a bit stronger than the similar Archer. On the other side, the dark Banshee has a scream attack that drains the enemy health when in close range, and it is the only attack in the game that allows the character to move while the attack is in action. The light Djinni is the best light attacker though only a little better than the Valkyrie. Opposite it, the dark Shapeshifter turns into whichever enemy opposes it in combat, matching its stats exactly. The light Phoenix can explode dealing massive damage when touching an opponent while doubling as a defensive move that nulls any attack during the move’s duration. The dark Dragon has both the strongest long-range attack in the game as well as the most health.

Combat is pretty straightforward. The arena contains the two combatants and a seemingly random arrangement of objects. You can move in eight directions and attack with the A button. When you or an opponent fires off an attack, there is a delay before the next attack is allowed. This recharge time varies per character. A noise will sound whenever the next attack is ready to go. The tone is a higher pitch for the light character and a lower pitch for the dark character so you can easily distinguish the two. The objects in the arena are stationary but shift state frequently enough that there’s no real way to determine how those spaces will behave. Sometimes attacks will go right through them and sometimes they get blocked. Character movement through these obstacles may or may not be permitted or it might be allowed at a slow, plodding pace. It adds enough randomness to the battles so that combat is tense and exciting.

Both the Wizard and Sorceress have access to the same complement of spells. Each spell may only be used once per game, and the spell may not target a character stationed on one of the power spots. If the Wizard or Sorceress is defeated then no spells may be cast by that side. Another interesting wrinkle is that using a spell drains a bit of health from the spellcaster. To use a spell, press A when selecting the caster and a spell dialog will appear at the bottom of the screen. You may cycle through the spells with Up and Down and cast the spell by pressing A. You can also select the Cancel option if you don’t want to use a spell.

Attack from afar with an elemental if you want!

There are seven spells in Archon. The Teleport spell moves any character on your team to any square not already occupied by another team member. You can move a character onto an opponent to engage them in battle directly. The Heal spell restores the health of any one of your characters. The Shift Time spell reverses the flow of the Lumina squares. The Exchange spell swaps any two creatures on the board no matter which team they belong. The Summon Elemental spell calls a temporary elemental to attack any opponent on the board. It could be an earth, air, water, or fire elemental that is chosen at random and each has different characteristics in combat. Either win or lose, the elemental is removed from play after the battle is over. The Revive spell brings a defeated creature back into play. The revived character must be placed on a square adjacent to the spellcaster. The Imprison spell can be cast on any creature locking them to the board. The affected creature is not able to move on the board until the Lumina squares match the team color, though opponents may engage an imprisoned creature in battle at any time.

One more interesting thing to mention is that there is the possibility of a tie game. If there are few characters remaining on each side and no combat or spellcasting occurs in a set number of turns, the game will be called a draw. This was implemented to encourage combat. The other more straightforward stalemate happens when the last two characters on the board kill each other at the same time.

Combat is a balance of staying out of danger while finding an open line of fire when you can.

This was my first time playing Archon but I had great success for a beginner. I started playing as the Light team and I got beat down pretty quickly. I was losing characters left and right as I got used to the combat and characters. About halfway through the match the game clicked with me and I started mounting a comeback, but despite that it started to look like it was too little to late. The best character I had remaining was my Wizard and I decide to go for broke and try to take out the Sorceress. She had not moved the entire game and her square is always dark, but despite the disadvantage I managed to win that fight. After that I picked off all the remaining enemies for a win by brute force.

Since it didn’t take me very long to win the game and the dark team plays differently from the light team, I wanted to get a win from the other side. This was the run I recorded for YouTube. It did not start out particularly well but I ended up winning in half the moves required for my first victory. I also won the match by occupying all five of the power spots instead of defeating all the enemies.

Archon is a fun, short game that might be worth a look if you are interested in chess or light strategy games. The graphics and music are adequate and don’t get in the way of the action at all, but the gameplay is solid and that’s what’s important in a game like this. I didn’t even mention yet that the game has a 2-player mode that is sure to be a lot of fun once both players get a few matches under their belt. For myself, I enjoyed playing the game but unless I get another player involved I don’t see myself playing very much more Archon in the future.

#31 – Archon

For being named The Immortal there certainly is a lot of dying!

Missing is the wizard walking across the screen

To Beat: Beat all the levels
What I Did: Beat the game
Played: 1/14/16 – 1/21/16
Difficulty: 8/10
My Difficulty: 8/10

What a way to kick off the random portion of Take On The NES Library! I’m comfortable saying that I am good at video games and in particular NES games, but if I have one real weakness it is adventure games. I have no real interest in them and when I have played them trying to figure obscure uses of items leaves me frustrated and not having much fun. The Immortal was a new game for me and now that I am looking back at it I think this may have been good game to kind of ease into how to handle adventure games. It’s either that or I was just really excited about playing something new that I looked beyond my past struggles and actually sort of had a good time with this game.

The Immortal was released in 1990 on a variety of PC platforms, the Sega Genesis, and of course the NES. It was published by Electronic Arts now much better known as EA. For as ubiquitous as EA is in modern gaming the company was not as well known back then. They only published two games on the NES: The Immortal and Skate or Die 2. The developer for the game, Sandcastle, only made two games themselves. The first was Will Harvey’s Zany Golf in 1988 for various PC platforms. Will Harvey is the lead developer on The Immortal and figurehead for the game. I mean, his name is listed all over this game! Will Harvey didn’t make another game after this that I found. He would go on to form his own company and focus his efforts more on gaming architecture and networking from the technical side instead of game design. The Immortal is kind of a one-off looking at it this way.

You can die on the very first screen. The Immortal doesn’t care.

The Immortal is an isometric adventure game broken up into levels. The player character – a wizard – must descend through a large dungeon in search of his mentor Mordamir. Along the way, he must avoid traps, fight monsters, and collect various items that are needed to get by hazards and obstacles along the way as he makes his journey. Every item has a use somewhere in the game so the wizard will have a nice collection of devices and spells at his disposal. There are 7 levels in the Immortal (some other versions have 8 levels) and you get three lives. You have to start the level over if you lose all three lives. Passwords are given after each level which is nice because the game would nearly be unbeatable otherwise!

One of the main features in this game is the combat. There are two main types of enemies that appears within the dungeon: Goblins and Trolls. They are at war with each other but both see you as a threat and they will either seek you out or attack when you approach. When engaging with the enemy, the perspective shifts from exploration to a dedicated combat screen. The combat is very basic. You can dodge left or right, stab, and slash left or right. Both combatants have a health bar and a fatigue meter. Every attack increases the fatigue meter which causes attack to take longer. Resting by dodging attacks decreases the meter. The enemies strike very quickly so combat is a test of reflexes more than anything. It’s really important to recognize which direction the enemy is going to attack so that you can dodge it quickly, otherwise combat will be very challenging. Of course in this game combat is only half of the equation.

Dodge to the left, dodge to the right.

There are many action elements within the normal gameplay as well. Fire plums, poison darts, acid slimes, trap doors, and giant wizard-eating worms are just some of the obstacles that must be overcome. Some enemies will chase you around requiring quick intentional movement to reach the next room. One of the most frustrating elements of this game is the bat enemy. These bats spawn in every room just flying around and they will deal damage to you whenever they come in contact. You have a fireball spell used in the exploration scenes that lets you shoot fireballs which kill the bats, although if they get near sometimes they just stay on top of you and keep dealing damage. The worst of all is when you are trying to focus on figuring out a puzzle and a bat appears to take the focus right back. The bats will kill you if you don’t deal with them. This happens way too often and just frustrates the puzzles even more.

As I mentioned before The Immortal was new to me. I have the Top Secret Passwords NES player’s guide from the early 90’s and I remember seeing the game in that book. For some reason I always thought the game had 10-12 levels so I was glad to see the game was shorter than I thought. I have no idea why I always remembered more levels. The other lingering memory of the game was seeing the screenshot of a huge dragon which shows up during the attract mode after the title screen. I knew I would be facing that dragon at some point!

Bats will surely attack as you decide what to do!

I was excited to get this game going and in preparation I found a PDF online of the game manual and read through it prior to starting. I’ve decided I am going to look up and read the manual before every game I play from now on. The manual for The Immortal was a godsend because not only does it have a complete walkthrough for Level 1 but it also has hints for nearly every puzzle in the game. When first playing I ignored it to see if I could get through on my own. On my first night of playing I couldn’t figure out how to clear the first stage. I could get pretty far but I got stuck at a dead end and couldn’t see how to proceed. The next day after reflecting on the game I went ahead and peeked in the manual to see what I was missing. I had made it to the end of the level but I didn’t quite understand the trick to opening up the path at the end. You pick up an amulet and when you try to use it the game asks if you want to hold it up to the light. I said yes. Next the game asks if you want to read an incantation on the amulet, so I also said yes. That caused the screen to flash white killing me. You are supposed to stand on a beam of light, hold the amulet up to the light, but not read the incantation. I was close but I didn’t fully understand. Anyway I don’t feel that bad about using the manual here to guide me in the right direction.

Level 2 was what nearly broke me. There were a few pretty clever puzzles that I was able to reason out on my own, but that wasn’t the real issue. The slimes that show up in this level really made my blood boil. They are deadly to the touch and will occasionally corner you with no hope of escape. There are two in the level and neither one can be skipped. A merchant sells some kind of slime oil that helps you either evade them or resist them but I wasn’t able to afford it. There was a trick to getting the oil that I completely missed which would have made the level so much easier and instead I did it the hard way. I guess it’s nice that there is more than one way to solve a level sometimes! I spent a lot of time replaying the level simply because of slime deaths. That led to more enemy fights and as a result I got pretty good at the combat which prepared me for the rest of the game. I also have a confession. I peeked at an online walkthrough for one of the minor puzzle solutions. I got the in-game clue for how to solve it but I misinterpreted the hint and I couldn’t quite figure out on my own. The manual wasn’t much help here as it didn’t have the specific hint I needed for that particular puzzle. So this wasn’t a purely blind beat, and I know someone in the comments will make me feel bad about it, but eh, it’s fine by me.

Certainly this is the most iconic scene of the game.

This could go on for a long time and I’m not going to write a paragraph on every single level. The first two levels were formative for this playthrough as I experienced the getting my feet wet phase followed by the frustration phase so they deserved exposition. Once I got to Level 3, I started to really “get” the game for the first time and as a result I enjoyed playing it a lot more. I didn’t need any hints to solve Level 3 even though I did not complete it in the optimal way. I did Level 4 without help except for another small online hint due to another clue misinterpretation that I would have probably stumbled into accidentally if I just kept messing around with it. Level 5 only required a peek at the manual for confirmation that I was triggering a puzzle correctly, and from then on I figured out the rest of the game myself. The encounter with the dragon was a pretty cool moment of the game, but it was one of those situations where I solved it but I am surprised that I figured it out, if that makes any sense. If I had been in a different frame of mine I may have not solved it alone, but fortunately I got it. The ending was kind of a letdown but I left the game feeling satisfied of my accomplishment.

I dare say once I got over the hurdle of understanding the game I kind of enjoyed playing it a little bit. It has a good amount of action over what I was expecting which plays more to my strengths, and the puzzles were pretty good even though some went over my head. The game has pretty good graphics too. However the combat was tedious and repetitive, and those darn bats really soured a lot of my experience. Some of the action scenes require very specific movements which can be quite frustrating, and when it’s combined with constantly restarting the level and needing to repeat combat scenes it really wears on you after awhile. The Immortal has a reputation for being a difficult game and those are just some of the reasons why. I personally wouldn’t call it a hidden gem, but The Immortal is a pretty decent game. If any of what I described sounds interesting then it’s worth giving it a try. Just make sure you have the manual!

#11 – The Immortal