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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

Jump, hop, and bounce your way all over the world, and make a fortune in the process!

To Beat: Reach the end credits
To Complete: Beat the game on Difficult setting with the best ending
My Goal: Complete the game
What I Did: Completed the game
Played: 1/10/16 – 1/13/16
Difficulty: 4/10
My Difficulty: 3/10

The world of Disney and its many franchise characters have held a place in the public consciousness for nearly 100 years. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Disney would have a prolonged period of success in both feature films and animated TV series which just so happens to coincide nicely with the NES era. It’s no surprise then that Disney and Nintendo would converge into something special, and perhaps there is no better proof of that than DuckTales on NES.

DuckTales, the animated TV series, ran from 1987-1990 and spanned 100 episodes over either three or four seasons depending on how you want to slice it. The series centers on Scrooge McDuck, the richest duck in the world, and his three grandnephews Huey, Dewey, and Louis in their various adventures which often revolve around either obtaining more treasure or protecting his wealth from the bad guys. The series was the first Disney cartoon produced solely for syndication and that approach paved the way for other Disney daytime cartoon series to follow suit in the following years.

DuckTales on NES, however, was not the first Disney property to appear on the console. That honor belongs to Mickey Mousecapade. Capcom published Mickey Mousecapade but the game was actually developed by Hudson. Starting with DuckTales, Capcom developed the rest of their Disney-published games themselves, and all of these titles are widely recognized as fun games for the console. Many members of the team that created Mega Man would go on to work on DuckTales.

DuckTales is a side-scrolling platformer game where you take on the role of Scrooge McDuck as he goes off on a worldwide (and briefly interstellar) treasure hunt. The main feature of the game is Scrooge’s cane which is primarily used as a pogo stick. Holding down and B while in the air deploys the pogo stick allowing Scrooge to bounce higher than a standard jump, defeat enemies, and traverse hazards that would damage Scrooge when touched directly. There are five levels to start with and each level can be chosen to play in almost any order. Each level is open ended and contains branching paths, hidden secrets, and a boss fight at the end. The object of the game is to complete the levels while amassing as much treasure as you can find.

Let’s look at each level in a bit more detail:

The Amazon: This is a pretty straightforward level. Cross through the jungle, optionally go underground, and then climb up through some ruins. The middle portion of the level can be bothersome as there are bees that fly in a sine wave that spawn where they are likely to knock you right into a pit. Toward the end of the level there is a requirement to pay money to spawn a platform needed to proceed, but if you are an intrepid adventurer you can skip it without needing to pay, as I did when I played!

Transylvania: This is the most maze-like level in the game. There are a few branching paths as well as mirrors that teleport you around the level. There is also a hint that points out an “illusion” wall, and all that means is there is a fake wall you can walk through to proceed forward. There is also a mine-cart section hidden away in this level where you just ride along and jump out right before you hurdle into a pit!

African Mines: The first time you enter this level you get booted out pretty quickly because you need a key from Transylvania to proceed, so the game sends you back there to search out the key. Once you get that, you’ll find a level that is mostly linear. Hidden in this level is one of two hidden treasures that really boosts Scrooge’s money count, and there is also a huge shortcut that will allow you to skip most of the stage. Otherwise, there are a couple of tricky portions you will have to contend with.

Himalayas: This level starts out above ground under complete snow cover and if you try to pogo into the snow you will briefly get stuck. Pretty clever! The middle part of the level takes place underground with lots of spiders that zip down to hit you when you attempt to pass. This level has a lot of places where you could fall and die which makes this level a bit more difficult than the rest.

The Moon: This level starts off on the surface and there is an alien spaceship that you must explore to find a couple of items that more or less amount to keys needed to reach the ending stretch. Okay, one of the items is literally a key, and the other is a remote control. It’s more interesting than I’m making it out to be. I would be completely remiss if I didn’t mention the iconic music track that plays throughout the stage. This song always seems to come up in any discussion around the best NES music and I can’t argue with that as it’s one of my favorite game tunes as well. I particularly like this arrangement of the song!

When all five stages are finished, the last stage opens up which unfortunately is yet another trip to Transylvania with a different boss at the end. This is the biggest letdown in the game but it’s really the only glaring negative thing about it either.

I have to admit that I have never really watched DuckTales much on TV and I also do not have much history with the game either. This is one of those games that I was aware of but never owned and I didn’t bother going out of my way to get it. When I really started collecting NES again for good, DuckTales may have been the most significant omission in my collection at that time considering the quality and recognition of the game as well as the relatively cheap price. I ended up buying my copy at my local game store for $10 which was a price I couldn’t pass up. The game would later come up as part of the Nintendo Age weekly contest that I participate in and that’s when I really spent some time getting acquainted with the game.

Even though I haven’t played that much of DuckTales compared to the other games I’ve played so far, I do have a personal story about it. Back in 2009, my best friend lived a few hours away and I would go up with some friends to spend the weekend at his duplex every now and then. One of the activities we came up with was racing random NES games on our laptops to see who could beat the game the fastest. We did this maybe three or four times and one of the games we did was DuckTales. From what I remember I won every race we did except for DuckTales. I chalk that up to my inexperience with the game relative to my friends. I think now I could perform way better!

At this point DuckTales is a pretty straightforward game for me, even on the Difficult setting. The only difference I see between difficulties are the types of item drops you get from the chests. The endings are not dependent on the difficulty settings anyway. The endings are determined by the amount of money you have at the end of the game and you need $10 million to achieve the best ending. I took my time and explored everything I could remember but I only ended up with $9.5 million. There is a bit of a trick to getting more money that I ignored. In most levels you can find Launchpad and if you talk to him you have the option of leaving the level to choose a different stage. If you do that, you get to keep all the treasure you found and the level resets completely so that next time you can collect all of the money again. Doing this at every opportunity makes it easy to reach the $10 million mark.

So, back to the drawing board. My second attempt went much smoother but it ultimately ended in disaster. I fell victim to an undocumented feature. Huh? It’s not listed in the manual but there is a way to refill your health in case it is running low. When the game is paused, pressing Select refills your health but it costs $3 million. I accidentally pressed Select when trying to unpause the game and I spent that precious money. I was on The Moon which was the 5th level I was playing and I had no opportunity to grind out enough money after that to eclipse the $10 million mark. Another attempt gone to waste!

My third attempt was more or less the ideal run. There are some other ways to squeeze even more money out of a run, but I ended up with more than enough money to get the best ending. I was feeling pretty good so I decided just for fun to make one attempt at getting the bad ending. Yes, DuckTales has a bad ending and it is quite difficult to pull off. You need to finish the game with no money at all. This seems impossible since beating each boss gives you an unskippable treasure that adds $1 million to your score. However, with some creative money collecting and spending all of it on health refills, the game can be finished with Scrooge completely broke. Now the typical way to do it is to not grab any money at all except for the boss treasures and one of the two large hidden treasures. That leaves Scrooge with $6 million that can be spent on two health refills. The downside is that each level needs to be played perfectly and each level must end with less than 10 seconds remaining on the clock because every 10 seconds turns into $1000 at the end of the stage. With that method there is perfect playing combined with a lot of waiting, so I chose a different strategy. I played the game normally and had my money set up to be close to $6 million right before the boss of the last regular stage. From there I would time the treasure grab after the boss is defeated so that I would end with the exact amount I need. I had it all set up and it would have worked out, except that I died at The Moon boss on my last life. I guess I should have paid more attention to grabbing extra lives along the way!

DuckTales was remade in 2013 by Wayforward as DuckTales Remastered. Now I have no experience with the remake at all, but it came out on a bunch of platforms and I’m sure I will spend some time with eventually. I bring it up because it has an interesting tie back to the NES. Capcom sent out some promotional material for the release of DuckTales Remastered consisting of a lunchbox with promotional paperwork inside along with a gold DuckTales NES cartridge. It’s not just some kind of showpiece but rather an actual working copy of the game. There were only 150 made so they are hard to come by and expensive, and it makes for some interesting discussion among NES collectors whether or not this game is an official release.

DuckTales on NES is really a charming, fun game that looks to be relevant to the source material. It was a great cartoon series and an equally great game. It is also coming back to relevancy. Not only did it receive a recent remake, but also there is a new DuckTales animated series in production slated for a debut sometime in 2017. I suppose the saying is true that everyday they’re out there making DuckTales!

With DuckTales completed, I have now finished the first ten games of Take On The NES Library! Hooray! Now the real fun will begin as the project shifts from games I specifically chose to games that are chosen at random. If you want to know more about how I designed my master list, check out my Methodology page that explains the overall selection in far too great of detail. My list has been set for many months but by now I have mostly forgotten where certain games reside in the list. I’m excited to start jumping into the unknown. The blog posts may take a different tone for games I haven’t played. This is always a work in progress and I hope you’ll stick around to see where we go from here!

Curl up on the couch and get rolling with the game that launched an entire sub-genre.

To Beat: Reach the ending credits
To Complete: Get the best ending
My Goal: Beat the game with 100% completion and/or get the best ending
What I Did: Beat the game just short of 100% completion and beat the game with the best ending
Played: 1/4/16 – 1/13/16
Difficulty: 6/10
My Difficulty: 4/10

Metroid is yet another classic game franchise that launched on the NES, but it wouldn’t have made waves if it weren’t for the trailblazers Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda ahead of it. Take the side scrolling style of Mario and pair it with the exploration and character development of Zelda and you pretty much have the recipe for Metroid. This style of gameplay has been iterated on many times over the years and is still quite popular today in large part due to the indie games’ sea of Metroid clones — many of which are excellent games in their own right. It may be unfair to refer to modern takes on the formula as a clone, but they certainly owe their heritage to this NES classic.

Metroid was developed by Nintendo, specifically the R&D1 division, and Intelligent Systems. Generally speaking, R&D1 was responsible for creating more experimental games. The R&D4 division, later known as EAD and which had famous director Shigeru Miyamoto as a team member, was responsible for more mainstream popular titles. Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda were developed by R&D4 and I am sure R&D1 decided somewhere along the way to merge these two styles into one game.

The NES Metroid was just the start to what has been one of Nintendo’s marquee game franchises. Metroid II: Return of Samus would curiously appear on Game Boy instead of a home console. It’s a bit of a strange game but it would introduce some key elements to the series such as the spazer and plasma beam weapons. The series would come back to console form in Super Metroid on SNES, which is lauded as one of the best games ever made and my personal favorite game of all time. The series would go stagnant for eight years before having two new titles released in the same year: Metroid Fusion on GBA and Metroid Prime on Gamecube. Metroid Prime eventually became a trilogy spanning Gamecube and Wii, and the NES Metroid was remade as Metroid Zero Mission on GBA. A few spinoffs later, unfortunately, Metroid: Other M on Wii was a very divisive title among fans and now the series is back into a drought again. The foundation is strong so hopefully the series will find a way to make a triumphant return once more.

Metroid, as eluded to above, is a side-scrolling action game with a heavy focus on exploration and discovery. You play as Samus Aran, a bounty hunter set with the task of retrieving stolen Metroid organisms before they are reproduced and used as bioweapons by the Space Pirates who stole them. Samus starts off with only a short range pea-shooter but she can pick up several upgrades that give her new capabilities to explore the planet Zebes. The very first ability named Maru Mari or Morphing Ball is found just to the left of the starting screen and is needed to navigate through short passages that Samus is unable to squeeze into without it. This was contrary to typical early platformer games that primarily focus on left-to-right progression and this simple item placement emphasizes the need for exploration right away. Just as in The Legend of Zelda, nearly all the upgrades enhance Samus offensively while simultaneously doubling as tools used to progress further into the game world. For instance, bombs give Samus an attack in ball form but also break blocks that uncover secret passages to new areas. Missiles give Samus a more powerful long-range attack but also unlock doors to item rooms. By virtue of exploration and progress, Samus becomes a one-woman wrecking crew capable of handling any challenge the game throws at her. The goal of the game is to destroy Mother Brain, the core of the Space Pirate lair. To reach Mother Brain, Samus must first find and destroy two Space Pirate bosses named Kraid and Ridley. Each boss has his own lair hidden within Zebes. Samus must explore not only to find them and defeat them, but power up enough to have enough weaponry to beat them in a straight fight. Once both are defeated the path to Mother Brain is open. After penetrating the defenses and destroying Mother Brain, Samus will make her escape quickly before the base self destructs.

Metroid is a game that I have played many times over the years and I have had the cart in my collection for a very long time. My original cart has a lot of character, and by that I mean it has the label half torn off. We got it second hand and it was that way when we got it. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I got a double in much better shape. Like Punch-Out!! before it, Metroid was also re-released with an alternate yellow label that is harder to come across than the standard gray label. I have both but the yellow label version was tricky to come by without paying full price for it online.

As far as the game goes, it doesn’t have a particularly large map by today’s standards but the game seems so much bigger than it actually is due to the lack of in-game map that would become standard after Super Metroid. I have a general idea of where the main items are, but it is still pretty easy to get lost in the depths of the world trying to hit every nook and cranny for missile upgrades. I decided to take it slow and explore everything trying to find every item for 100% completion. Doing it this way gives Samus a lot more health and missiles which make the rest of the game easier as well. The game did not give me much trouble, but when it was all said and done I came up a whopping one missile pack short. I was sure I had explored everything, but I missed a side passage in Ridley’s lair that held the last missile expansion. I had to look it up after I completed the game for my sake. I didn’t get 100% as I was shooting for but I got close and it was a good enough run after having not played Metroid for many years.

Now, the Metroid story doesn’t end here! I happily went ahead playing the next game on my list while I was two blog posts behind. I soon started writing up Castlevania when conviction started to set in. Let me explain. I had just finished writing on why I did not complete hard mode in Castlevania in part due to there being no better ending or reward for finishing up hard mode. I re-read what I wrote and it hit me – Metroid has a best ending! Furthermore, it has nothing to do with item completion at all, but rather how long it takes to beat the game from start to finish. Getting the best ending in Metroid means I have to beat the game from scratch in under an hour. Now I had already finished what most reasonable people would think was good enough, but it bothered me and I didn’t want to have to explain myself again for skipping the best ending in the very next game I played! I decided if I got the time that I would take a stab at a speedrun and hope for the best. In my head I picked out a decent route that should get me close to the time I needed.

The next day, a fortuitous confluence of events happened at home that gave me a couple of free hours I could dedicate to gaming. This was one shot at attempting the best ending. I ended up making two attempts. During the first attempt about 10 minutes in I realized I skipped the ice beam when I really needed it and I didn’t want to waste time backtracking to get it. It turns out I could have doubled back a bit after picking up the high-jump boots and nabbed an alternate ice beam upgrade. I probably could have completed that run with a decent enough time but whatever.

I started over. The next run I picked up the ice beam in its normal spot and trudged forward. The first hang-up of this attempt was the Ridley fight. Ridley is ridiculously easy if you stand right next to him because he can’t move forward to run into you and his fireballs arc over your head so you can just fire away. However, he has one fireball pattern where that doesn’t work and that was the one I got. You can freeze the fireballs with the ice beam to give yourself an opening and with that technique I was able to win just barely. A little later I had all kinds of trouble with Kraid. I fought him with less health than I was used to and I ended up getting killed and had to retread through his lair. I picked up a backup energy tank for full health that I ended up spoiling on the way back to the boss. Kraid’s room has an energy tank hidden inside but it is risky to reach. I decided to go for broke and try to pick it up mid-fight and much to my surprise I was successful leading me to victory. The rest of the run was pretty smooth and I was fast enough to achieve the best ending for the first time! By my clock I beat the game in 50 minutes, and even if in-game time is kept differently I still made it under the threshold. It was fun trying a speedrun and I feel so much better about my outcome now!

Metroid was first released in Japan on the Famicom Disk System which featured additional sound channels for richer sound as well as a save system instead of the password feature on the NES cart. The Legend of Zelda was released in the US around the same time but for that game Nintendo opted to implement the save battery system, while Metroid made the switch to passwords. It’s a curious outcome that I don’t fully understand since the developers had to spend extra work coding in the password system for the NES release. After finishing up Metroid, the same development team would go right into making Kid Icarus. I won’t be covering that game for awhile but it has quite a few similarities to Metroid. Both games share the password system, they both have exploration segments, they both have long stretches of vertical areas, and so on. I have heard that both games run on the same game engine but I wasn’t able to find any hard proof of that, though with the similarities it seems likely.

For as iconic as the Metroid series is, the first installment has not aged particularly well. Many of the map screens are repeated over and over creating large expanses of dull, tedious design. It’s difficult to gauge progress with no in-game map. The passwords are long and difficult to get right as some pairs of characters in the passwords are very similar. The series would go on to fix all of these problems and deliver some of the best games ever made, and it’s easy to forget that a game of this scope and scale had never really been done before. The core design of Samus and her arsenal was so well done right from the start that nearly all of these upgrades continue to be part of her progression, and this alone is the main reason why Metroid is such a great game in spite of its flaws.

Whipping your way through a horror movie is certainly no picnic!

To Beat: Reach the end credits
To Complete: Beat both loops
My Goal: Beat the game without continuing and see how far I can get in the second quest
What I Did: Beat the game with continues and made it halfway through the second quest
Played: 1/2/16 – 1/3/16
Difficulty: 8/10
My Difficulty: 6/10

Castlevania is yet another classic game series that got its start on NES, though technically I should say it really made its debut on Famicom under the title Akumajou Dracula. It was released in Japan in 1986 on the Famicom Disk System and the game made it on a NES cartridge for US release in 1987. It is the 4th NES release from Konami following Gradius, Rush ‘N Attack, and Track & Field.

I couldn’t really track down much history on the development of the game or the series, although some information can be gleaned based on a sort of companion release to Castlevania just a month after its Famicom debut. Bearing the same title Akumajou Dracula, a different take on this game was released on the MSX2 computer in Japan and it was also released in Europe renamed as Vampire Killer. Castlevania is a very linear game and Vampire Killer took a more open-ended approach. In Vampire Killer, the player must find keys to progress to the later levels which I believe are hidden in alternate paths in the levels. Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest refined upon the open-ended concept that Vampire Killer started. The series as a whole after that had more or less two separate phases. Beginning with Castlevania III, the games were mostly linear stage-based affairs, and then Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in 1997 for Playstation firmly pointed the series into the open-ended platformer style again. It’s really interesting that the series started off not really knowing which way to go before ultimately going both ways over a long period of time.

Castlevania on NES is a stage-based platformer game. You play Simon Belmont traveling through the different areas of Dracula’s Castle as he fights his way toward a battle with Count Dracula himself. He is armed with his trusty whip that can be upgraded twice along the way. He also acquires subweapons through item-bearing candles or as an occasional enemy drop. The subweapons available to Simon are the dagger, axe, cross, holy water, and stopwatch. Subweapons have limited ammo and this is represented by hearts that can be picked up along the way. Simon can only equip one subweapon at a time –- grabbing a second one causes him to lose the one held previously — and having the right subweapon in his inventory at the right time can really sway the difficulty of the game. The game has 18 levels in total and they are broken up nicely into six areas of three levels each. Each level serves as a checkpoint and each area ends with a boss encounter. Dying puts Simon at the start of the level, but if all lives are lost Simon can use a continue though he has to start back at the beginning of the area. Fortunately there are unlimited continues and it’s a good thing because this game is quite difficult. The game is not all that long so the difficulty is ramped up to make up for it. So typical of NES!

Similar to the Mega Man series, the Castlevania games have been a fixture of my NES collection for as long as I can remember. I was fortunate to have acquired most of the major NES game series very early on before NES collecting got crazy popular and expensive. Even though I have owned all three NES Castlevania titles for a long time, the first one is the one that I have played the most over the years. It’s been awhile since I have played it but I more or less remember the game well enough that I figured I could make it through without too much trouble.

Now having said that, Castlevania beat me up way more than I expected going in. I’m not sure if I have ever done this before, but I thought after a try or two I should be able to 1CC the game. In two different attempts I knew I had virtually no chance without a lot of extra practice. The first night I played I had to continue in Level 6, and I stalled out in Level 15 and decided to drop it and come back fresh later. I got as far as the Grim Reaper fight but I wasn’t able to get past it. It may be a little unfair, but a good strategy is to spam holy water right on top of where Grim Reaper first spawns so that he never has a chance to attack if you have enough holy water. Otherwise, the fight to me is the hardest in the game. For the life of me, I couldn’t get there with holy water. I would either lose it to another weapon drop or die before I could get to the boss. My best chance came with about 3/4 health and double crosses. In a straight fight, the crosses are very useful for taking out the sickles that float around the screen, but even then it is so hard to move consistently in a way to avoid everything while still damaging the boss. I believe I took out half his health bar on that shot and I never got particularly close in this session otherwise.

The next night of playing was when I was able to beat the game. I ran out of lives and had to continue in Level 9, but this time I got holy water all the way to the Grim Reaper and beat him with the stun lock strategy. It’s shameful, yes, but it’s not against the rules! It took me a few attempts to get to Dracula, and then I completely forgot the strategy for beating him once I got that far. I did end up figuring it out again and beat the game. Even that wasn’t without some fault as I failed to capture a proper picture of the ending screen. After the credits roll and you see the message “Thank You For Playing,” the game drops you off right back at the beginning pretty quickly with no way of stopping or delaying it. I figured this had to happen at some point, but in this case I snapped a picture of the victory stance at the end of the Dracula fight so that is proof enough to me that I did indeed beat the game. I messed that up too because I forgot my name tag in the picture. It’s been rough going for me lately! 🙂

Now not many people realize this, but Castlevania has a sort of a second quest or hard mode that amps up the difficulty even further. The only way to get to it is to beat the game and keep on playing afterwards. The level layouts are unchanged, but enemies do more damage and there are generally more enemies thrown at you. I noticed in the first area that the zombies appear more often, and there are sections of the game that spawn infinite medusa heads that do not appear in the same locations the first time through. Furthermore I don’t think anything special happens when the game is beaten the second time. I still think a complete run of the game would include beating both quests. I am sure I could have beaten it if I had enough time to play, but since I have never done it before I decided instead to see just how far I could make it. I played until midnight which on that night gave me about 40 minutes or so to play the hard mode. I got to Level 29, or about halfway through the 4th area before I stopped. I only got through Level 28 one time though. The enemy spawns were tweaked and I kept getting knocked into the water by a specific enemy and I only made it through that part once somehow.

So you may have already picked up on this, and I kind of alluded to it above, but this is the first game for my project where I failed to meet the goal I set for myself. I guess this is a good of a time as any to clarify my intentions on my project. Ultimately, my goal is to beat as many NES games as I can, so the “to beat” criteria at the top of each post is the absolute minimum to consider the game done. However, I want to get the most out of these games and so I will try to meet the “to complete” criteria where it makes sense. This is very much on a game-by-game basis, but this will generally include getting the proper ending or best ending, winning on the highest difficulty level, and playing every level and mode in the game as is reasonable. The real end though is to beat the game – the rest of it is icing on the cake.

For Castlevania, I decided that beating the game once is good enough. Hard mode has no apparent different ending and there is no way to reach it other than beating the game first, so I would have to start from scratch every time just to maybe make some progress if I am struggling. This is where I decided to draw the line for this game. If there was a hard mode code or a unique ending, I would have worked through it. I don’t intend to be lazy here, but I am working with a limited time budget and I have hundreds of games left to play, so I think this is a good way to go about things. Trimming just a little bit for the sake of overall forward progress is something I will value here and in the life of this blog.

Update 5/27/16: I had a discussion with NES master Tom Votava and he told me that Castlevania actually has three distinct difficulty loops instead of just two. He said most Konami games that let you restart upon completion loop three times before the difficulty stop increasing, and Castlevania is one of those games. It’s hard enough just beating it once, but three times through is something I could accomplish with enough practice.

Castlevania is a great game and worthy of its status as an NES classic. It has that “Nintendo hard” difficulty, great atmosphere, a nice assortment of weapons and enemies, great boss battles, and just the right amount of length. It’s a quality game particularly for an early title in the NES catalog. It’s not a perfect game, but it has a lot going for it and I’m glad I played through it again and at least started to play the game a little bit differently than I have ever done before.

Pick up your sword, young man, it’s time for adventure!

To Beat: Reach the end credits
To Complete: Beat both quests
My Goal: Complete the game with all items
What I Did: Completed the game with all items (11 deaths)
Played: 12/21/15 – 12/31/15
Difficulty: 5/10
My Difficulty: 3/10

The back of the NES box has the written line “Experience the Challenge of Endless Adventure.” While this game certainly has an ending, the Legend of Zelda series as a whole has no end in sight. Dozens of adventures and spinoffs have been created as a result of the success from this classic NES title. The original title is one of the first great examples of an “open world” style of gameplay and it also launched a formula of game design that is still revered and refined upon today.

The Legend of Zelda is the brainchild of Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka and was developed alongside Super Mario Bros. Their aim was to make a game that was different from the linear Super Mario Bros, and so The Legend of Zelda took the opposite approach as an exploratory, open world game. The game was inspired by Miyamoto and his memories of exploring the fields, woods, and caves near his home, and all of these elements are present in the world of Hyrule. The game was released in 1986 as a launch title for the Famicom Disk System in Japan, which had higher game data storage compared to Famicom carts of the time and the capability to save progress directly to the disk instead of utilizing complex passwords, thus making for a large complex game compared to other console games. The Legend of Zelda was released on the NES in 1987 in a unique gold colored cartridge and was the first NES game to feature battery backed saving. The game’s popularity in the US was just as big as its reception in Japan, paving the way for the series to continue to the present day.

The Legend of Zelda is a top-down action-adventure game featuring Link in his quest to recover the eight pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom and banish the evil Ganon from the land of Hyrule in order to save the princess Zelda. The game features a large overworld map that players must explore to find treasures and items to aid in the quest, as well as discovering the nine underground dungeons that Link must clear along the way. Link begins the quest with a simple wooden sword (if you remember to pick it up on the first screen!) for short ranged attacking and Link augments this with other weapons and items to add to his arsenal. Several of the weapons double as tools that help Link explore more effectively. For example, Link finds bombs that can be used to hurt bunches of enemies, but these bombs can also reveal hidden alcoves in the overworld and destroy walls in the dungeons. Each underworld dungeon contains one or more of these items and often these are required to either find or navigate later dungeons, which provides a sense of progression but also makes Link much more versatile for the challenges ahead. Once the first eight dungeons are cleared, the ninth dungeon is opened up for Link to take Ganon head-on. After the game is completed and Zelda is saved, a second quest is revealed that is quite a bit more difficult. The locations of the dungeons and other rooms are rearranged and the dungeons are completely different. The game also introduces a few new mechanics that are unique to the second quest. I won’t spoil them here except for one in the next paragraph. 🙂

The Legend of Zelda was a game that I owned new when I was a kid. I think I got it for either my 7th or 8th birthday. I don’t remember much about playing it way back then but I do remember poring over guides to learn where all the pverworld secrets were located, and those memories have carried over to my current playthrough. Back then, those tips helped me out a lot but took away my opportunity to try and figure things out fully for myself. Even with Link at full strength the game isn’t all that easy, however. I do remember figuring out one particular secret in the second quest all by myself that I didn’t see in a guide. One of the new mechanics in the second quest is the ability for Link to walk through certain solid walls in the dungeons. The first time it is needed in the game, I deduced that there must be one path to get into a specific room but bombing the wall did nothing, so out of frustration I just charged in and lo and behold I passed right through to the next room. Well, that blew my young mind that’s for sure!

To truly finish The Legend of Zelda, both quests should be completed and so that was my intention from the very beginning. It took me some time playing in small chunks over a couple of weeks but I was able to complete everything from memory without a whole lot of trouble. Between both quests, I died a total of 11 times which is reflected in the ending screen. I’m not sure what my lowest death count is but it is probably in the single digits. In this case, it should have been that low because I had some really pointless deaths. For fun, I took note of each death and I’ll summarize them here:

• Three deaths during early game overworld grinding. These were the most pointless deaths of all. The overworld can be dangerous at times but I have enough experience and capability early on to handle all that with relative ease. Really I died because I was playing late at night and was so tired that I kept nodding off during the game! This is not a reflection on the quality of the game in any way, shape, or form. It just shows that I can fall asleep during just about anything. Not many people can say they fall asleep in the middle of playing a video game so I guess I have that going for me!


Also comes in three-headed and four-headed varieties.

• Two deaths in Level 6. This is the first dungeon to introduce Wizrobes which are the most difficult enemy for me to handle, specifically the blue ones. They fire magic across the screen if they have line of sight to Link, they can faze through solid blocks, and they change direction randomly at will. I believe the only way to damage them is with either the sword or bombs which both require close range, making them risky to attack, and there are always multiple of them when they show up in rooms. These deaths could have been prevented though because I could easily have utilized the healing potion but I didn’t bother to buy it until my third attempt through the dungeon.


I’m telling you, these blue guys are just awful.

• Two deaths during Level 1 Second Quest. These deaths were legit as it is tough to clear this dungeon just starting out. The blue ring (cuts damage in half) would help here immensely but it is equally difficult to farm enough money up front to afford it.
• Two deaths in overworld grinding in the second quest. After dying twice in Level 1 I decided to buy the blue ring before taking on Level 2, but with low starting health and the time it takes to farm money death will happen.


Hmmm what a suspicious bush!

• One death in Level 6 Second Quest. Another Wizrobe death here plus I ran out of potion before making it back out to get more. I could have done better but I could have done much worse.
• One death in Level 9 Second Quest. Same as the death above. I don’t know the second quest dungeons nearly as well as I do the first quest dungeons so I was doing a little bit too much wandering and risking death in the process. The fun thing about this dungeon was that I completed it during a New Year’s Eve party at my house. I didn’t want to get too wrapped up in some board gaming while hosting the party so when several people started a game I decided to play in the background and see if I could beat the game before the end of the year, which I did. My friends were getting into it so it was worth it!


PATRA HAS THE MAP

The Legend of Zelda has a lot of little interesting tidbits that are known to various degrees, but there is one that I find quite interesting. The dungeons maps have a variety of shapes but they were all designed in a way that they could all fit together like a puzzle. Internally to the game code, they are laid out in a large square similarly to how the overworld is laid out but they are chopped up to make the dungeons themselves have a more interesting shape. The designer, Tezuka, was so good at piecing the dungeons together he only utilized half the space he was given, so the team decided to utilize the other half of the dungeon space to make the Second Quest. The story of this was covered in a session of Iwata Asks, and also this article has some neat images showing how the dungeon maps are stored.

The Legend of Zelda may have left the framework for future Zelda titles to follow, but the first NES entry has an identity all of its own. Future Zelda titles would evolve the formula by making the complex dungeons the real centerpiece of the experience, but by doing so the dungeon order is mostly locked down to guide the player along the desired upgrade path. Aside from a few dependencies, the player can work out the game on his own and take on the challenges out of order, so to speak. It is an approach to game design that is largely abandoned in modern gaming, but it gives the first NES game a distinct flavor and it is very much worth playing today.

Pack ’em tight and clear ’em out in the most famous puzzle game of all time.

To Beat: Set the high score in A-Type and finish Level 9 Height 5 in B-Type
To Complete: Score at least 120,000 in A-Type for the best ending and finish all combinations in B-Type
My Goal: Complete the game while scoring at least 250,000 in A-Type
What I Did: Completed the game and scored 288,320 in A-Type
Played: 12/9/15 – 12/14/15
Difficulty: 3/10
My Difficulty: 2/10

I am reasonably confident in saying that most people that have ever played at least one video game have played Tetris. When people think of a puzzle video game Tetris is nearly always the first one that comes to mind. It’s the perfect example of a game that is simple to pick up and understand but that is tough to truly master, and it’s that accessibility that makes Tetris one of the best games ever conceived.

Tetris has a very long and complicated history and I can’t properly do it justice, so I’ll view it here from a very high level. Tetris was created by Alexey Pajitnov while he was working at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He made it just as a fun little game to test out the capabilities of new computer hardware and it became popular with his colleagues at work. A couple of co-workers ported the game to PC and it exploded in popularity almost from the start. The game was picked up and ported all over the place unoffically. The rights to the game were eventually given to the Soviet government for 10 years and during this time Nintendo was able to license Tetris and make versions for both the Game Boy and NES.

The other interesting bit of history of Tetris on NES is the legal dispute between Nintendo and Tengen. Atari Games had the license to make the arcade game while Nintendo held the licenses for their home consoles and handhelds. Tengen comes into play because they are the division of Atari Games responsible for home console games. Already holding the arcade license, they also decided to apply for a console license and went ahead and developed and released their version of Tetris on NES. Nintendo caught wind of this and argued that they held the rights instead. Atari Games sued, they went to court, and Nintendo was awarded rights by the courts. This forced Tengen Tetris off of store shelves after only four weeks. As I have read, in the early days of NES collecting Tengen Tetris was considered to be one of the rarest if not the rarest NES release. This has proven false as there are quite a number of copies out there for sale even though Tengen Tetris is uncommon and a bit on the pricey side these days.

So for those of you living under a rock, I will explain how Tetris is played. Tetris is a puzzle game where blocks made up of four tiles each fall from the top of the playfield. The player has control of the falling block and can rotate and shift the block and set it into place at the bottom of the playfield where it is locked down permanently. Whenever complete rows are put together on the board they are removed and the rest of hte stack is shifted down to make room for more blocks. The blocks are called tetrominoes because they consist of four small tiles, and there are seven types of blocks tetrominoes that cover all possible arrangements of those four individual tiles. The game ends when the playfield fills up and the new block is obstructed from entering play. The speed of the falling blocks increase as more lines are cleared and eventually the speed becomes too much to handle for all but the most advanced players. The falling speed is also tied to how many points are awarded from clearing lines and also you get more points for clearing multiple lines at once, so Tetris is just as much a scoring challenge as it is a survival challenge.

This version of the game contains two different modes called A-Type and B-Type. A-Type is exactly as described above. You choose a starting speed and plays until the stack fills up. There are a number of fun ending sequences with a rocket liftoff that play out depending on the final score. B-Type is a race to complete 25 lines. You not only set the starting speed but you can set the height of a set of junk blocks that are initialized on the board. The height can be set to 0 however removing all the junk blocks from the start. Removing 25 lines results in another set of fun ending sequence where different things fly or run across the screen depending on the speed level, and the higher the starting height the more of them show up. They don’t really add much to the game but they are neat to look at.

I’m pretty sure I still have the copy of Tetris that my parents bought for their NES. We had maybe a dozen games by that point but of course Tetris fever hit and it got a lot of play in our house. I remember having a high score sheet taped up somewhere in the house tracking our personal high scores and seeing who had the best score in the family. I seem to remember having the highest score but both my Mom and Dad got pretty good at it too.

For my run, I first played all of B-Type and decided to win all 60 combinations of speed level and height in order. With 25 lines each that’s 1500 lines so that took me awhile. I chipped away at it over the course of several days. I didn’t really have any trouble. Some of the levels at the end took a couple of tries each before I had a good enough layout to win and I even beat Level 9 Height 5 on my first try. After that I was ready to take on A-Type with a pretty lofty goal of scoring 250,000 points while starting from Level 0. This is over twice the number of points required to get the best ending sequence, and I would have been okay if after a few tries I made it reasonably close to my goal. As it turns out, I beat my goal score on my very first try. I got all the way to Level 19 where I think the game drops pieces one space every two frames or something crazy quick like that. At that speed I can’t recover from any mistakes and that’s where it all ended. I am really happy with how things unfolded and I’m satisfied to put Tetris to rest for awhile.

Last year I read an article called Applying Artificial Intelligence to Nintendo Tetris which is a highly technical but fascinating look at not only the design of an AI bot that plays perfect Tetris but also the inner workings of how the NES version of the game operates. One very interesting tidbit I gleaned from this article is that this version of the game contains a hidden, working 2-player mode that was left in the game code but is incomplete. Multiplayer is the one significant feature missing in Nintendo’s version of Tetris compared to Tengen’s game, so it is both neat to see that Nintendo was working on 2-player and also disappointing that it wasn’t finished.

This is not related to the NES version, but high level Tetris play is mind-boggling to watch. There are a series of arcade games released in Japan called Tetris: The Grand Master that feature rating systems and a complex set of requirements to reach the highest rank of Grand Master. There are three installments with a fourth on the way, and each successive game has stricter requirements to reach Grand Master rank. To get an idea of how ridiculous this is, the 3rd game was released in 2005 and as of this writing in 2015 there are only 6 people in the world to achieve Grand Master status in that game. One of the craziest gimmicks in this series is during the credits roll where the player must survive a new game while the playfield is invisible while visible blocks continue to fall at high speed. I saw a successful demonstration during Awesome Games Done Quick and there are hardly any words to describe how insane it is to see it done. Here is an article on the latest player to achieve Grand Master rating in Tetris: The Grand Master 3.

Update 5/27/16: It was brought to my attention that I completely omitted any reference to the documentary Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters. Released in 2011, it covers the search for the world’s greatest Tetris players to compete against each other in the 2010 Tetris World Championship. Now, I can’t do the film any justice since I haven’t seen it for myself, but I know I definitely need to make the time to watch players that are way better than I will ever be.

Update 5/27/16: I wanted to draw attention to my relatively low difficulty ranking I gave to Tetris. That score is based solely on the parameters I chose for beating the game, which is relatively simple to do. It requires some practice on B-Type 9-5 but there is the opportunity to play so many games in a row since each run can be very short. Some people have argued for much more strict parameters to consider the game beaten, such as maxing out the score or reaching Level 29 where the speed can’t go any higher. If that’s the condition for beating Tetris, then that is an easy choice for 10/10 difficulty as there are only a small handful of people in the world that have dedicated themselves to accomplishing that feat. Another thing I overlooked is that the Tetris manual outlines the method for choosing Levels 10-19 from the menu, and it’s not much of a stretch from there to suggest that it is necessary to beat B-Type 19-5 as well. I am perfectly fine with taking the easy way out in this case!

Tetris is probably most well known as the game to launch as a pack-in with the Game Boy, and the two paired together so perfectly. The NES version of the game is still a great game on the NES and a solid port of the ubiquitous classic puzzler.

One of the true gems of the NES library, Kirby’s Adventure is a satisfying journey for all ages.

To Beat: Reach the ending credits
To Complete: Beat the game with 100% completion and complete all bonus modes
My Goal: Complete the game without finishing bonus games
What I Did: Complete the game without finishing bonus games
Played: 12/4/15 – 12/6/15
Difficulty: 2/10
My Difficulty: 2/10

In 1993, the NES heyday was over and the system was slowly dwindling away in the public eye as the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo were busy duking it out for the top spot. However, Nintendo still had a few tricks up their sleeves for the NES and arguably the greatest game published by them in the late NES lifespan was Kirby’s Adventure, a sprawling, bright, and colorful platformer that pushed the NES to its limits. The game is great fun and very playable today even if it is a bit on the easy side.

Kirby’s Adventure is the second game in the Kirby series that would eventually go on to span dozens of fun and creative games. But in it’s humble beginnings, the series debuted with Kirby’s Dream Land released on the Game Boy in 1992. Even in the original, Kirby has a very interesting moveset. His main feature is the ability to suck up enemies temporarily and shoot them back out as a star to defeat other enemies. Kirby can also inhale air giving him the ability to fly anywhere, and even the air puff he breaths out can also hurt enemies. As a platformer, the ability of flight renders pits as vaguely minor threats instead of the instant death traps they are typically. In addition, the original game was very short containing only 5 levels, the last of which rehashes the previous 4 bosses and features a final showdown with King Dedede.

Kirby’s Adventure takes the base formula of the original and expands on it in an substantial way. The main enhancement here is that Kirby can swallow certain enemies and copy their abilities to use for himself, which would become the core tenet of the series. Kirby’s Adventure features 25 unique abilities in total and he can use these abilities to take out enemies and in some cases provide some additional mobility for navigating the levels. Some examples of these abilities include Fire which allows Kirby to blow fire on his enemies, Spark which surrounds Kirby with electric shocks, and Wheel which lets Kirby travel really quickly over rough terrain.

The game features seven different worlds and nearly 40 levels so there is a much larger amount of content here compared to the Game Boy game. Each world is basically a large room containing doors to the levels as well as access to additional bonuses opened up along the way, and each world ends in a boss fight. Each level ends with a little bonus game where Kirby must time his jump off a spring-loaded platform to reach bonuses that get better the higher you go. Some levels contain a large button that Kirby can hit to open up a new path to some of these extras, but these are optional and are there either for the completionist or some extra help. Many of them are cleverly hidden in alternate paths or behind hidden doors, and some require using a specific copy ability.

The extra doors on the world maps hold several different types of rooms to aid Kirby in his quest. Museums feature either one or two passive enemies that Kirby can swallow to gain the ability that enemy holds. Arenas contain a fight with one of the mini-boss enemies. You can lose a life here but if you win you can swallow the enemy to get the power and as a bonus you are awarded with a maximum tomato for full health. Warp Star Stations allow Kirby to skip to any world where the Warp Star Station is revealed, allowing Kirby to skip around the map much easier. There are also three types of bonus games. Crane Fever is just like the carnival game where you have to position a crane over a Kirby figure that awards extra lives if you can grab it properly. Egg Catcher features King Dedede tossing out a stream of both eggs and bombs. Kirby just sits there and can only open and close his mouth. The idea is to eat eggs and ignore bombs, letting them bounce of Kirby without effect. Quick Draw is just like the old Western showdown where you must draw your weapon quicker than your opponent to win and Kirby must take on 5 different opponents to get the best reward. Each of the bonus games also has three different difficulty levels. Whenever the game is done, the door is blocked off so each bonus can only be attempted once.

Kirby’s Adventure is one of the games I grew up owning and playing, so I can get through it easily and I didn’t really have that much trouble on my run. The game is pretty easy anyway considering Kirby’s flight ability, his large health bar, many opportunities for extra lives, and his wide array of powers. There are only a few spots that are just a bit tricky. The boss encounters can be difficult the first time through, and many of the secrets for 100% completion are tough to find, but just playing through the game to the end credits shouldn’t pose a problem for anyone familiar with NES games.

The game has a decent length from start to finish so I am thankful it has a save battery for recording progress along the way because this is the first game I’ve played for Take On The NES Library that took me longer than one day to work through. I am sure this will be the norm going forward! I was able to beat the game over the course of three days, and it could have been done in two but I stopped right at the end because I needed to go to bed. 🙂

Once the game is beaten, there are additional options available on the file select screen that aren’t required to beat the game but are necessary if you want to do everything. Each of the three bonus games can be played on each of the difficulty levels to get practice. Both Quick Draw and Egg Catcher are very timing sensitive and I find them unplayable on my LCD TV. I probably should have given them a try on my CRT but I didn’t bother to do it. I have always had trouble on Quick Draw and I’m inclined to believe that it isn’t possible to win on higher difficulties without cheating a little on the timing of your shot. I didn’t feel like trying to grind it out on what would be strictly luck and I think that’s fine.

The next additional option is Vs. Boss — a boss rush where you must defeat each of the main bosses in order on one life without any opportunity to heal up. This might be the hardest mode to clear in the game and I handled it extremely well, beating it on my first try. I only took two hits of damage on the Meta Knight fight and I have never been able to beat him without taking a hit anyway so that worked out well.

There is another option that only appears if you find all the hidden rooms for 100% completion in the main game and that is the Extra Game. It is a complete replay of Kirby’s Adventure with only three bars of max health instead of the normal six, all the bonus games are set to max difficulty, and there is no saving at all so you have to beat it all in one shot. Those are the only changes to the game that I noticed. I would not normally have had the time to attempt the Extra Game but I was able to have an evening of a couple hours of uninterrupted playtime, plus I stayed up a little bit late so I could make it all the way through. The hardest part for me on the Extra Game was the Meta Knight fight which took me 8-10 tries to make it through with the shortened health bar. I have the game almost completely figured out except for that one fight, but at least in this case I was able to grind my way through it with the surplus of extra lives I gathered. Winning the Extra Game unlocks the sound test so you can check out all the sweet songs and sound effects the game has to offer.

A neat little easter egg hidden in the game is called the HAL room. All it is is a room with the developer’s name HAL written out in blocks. Several Kirby games have a room like this hidden in the game and Kirby’s Adventure is the first game to have one of these rooms. It appears in World 1 Stage 2 just beyond the warp star that appears at the end of the first part of the level. Normally you must touch the star to jump to the rest of the stage and the screen quits scrolling at this point to indicate that you have to grab the star to move forward, but there is a way to get the warp star to disappear allowing Kirby to move further on to the HAL room. I tried getting into this room myself when I played the Extra Game but I wasn’t able to trigger it, but maybe someday I’ll find it out for myself!

Even if the game is on the easy side it is still worth playing just to see all the neat things the development team was able to stretch out of the NES. Figuring out all the bonus areas isn’t exactly a walk in the park either so there is something here for everyone. If Kirby’s Adventure can be considered a sendoff to the NES, then it was quite a way to bow out. You could even call it’s a shooting star, burning bright, although this star never really fades away.

Despite the iconic horrendous box art, Mega Man is a true classic even if it’s a little rough around the edges.

To Beat: Reach the ending credits
My Goal: Beat the game without Game Over
What I Did: Beat the game without Game Over
Played: 12/3/15
Difficulty: 7/10
My Difficulty: 3/10

Like many other popular long-running game series, Mega Man got its start on the NES. The series would become a behemoth spanning over 100 games across multiple consoles for almost 30 years, including six installments on the NES alone. Mega Man to date is just barely hanging on to life which is a huge shame, but for now we will look back to brighter days with the game that started it all.

Mega Man was born out of an effort from its developer, Capcom, to make a game specifically for the home console market. Capcom to this point was primarily developing arcade titles and their NES efforts were all ports of existing arcade games. Mega Man was the sixth NES release for Capcom so they were pretty busy churning out these ports to this point. By making an original game the development team was able to create a gameplay style that caters to home play. This led to the decision of having the first set of levels available to the player to play in any order they choose. Mega Man is believed to be the first game to utilize a non-linear level selection.

Mega Man is a run and gun style platformer. The game starts out with a choice of six different levels highlighted by the Robot Master boss at the end of the stage. Mega Man starts out with just a basic shot but upon defeating each boss Mega Man gains that robot master’s weapon and adds it to his arsenal. So Mega Man gets stronger as you go and he develops quite the repertoire. These additional weapons prove to be extra useful because each boss has a weakness to a particular weapon and it is up to you to figure out how to exploit that weakness and turn the tables to your advantage. Think paper-rock-scissors on a bigger scale. Once all the robot masters are taken out and Mega Man is fully powered up, you then take on a series of final stages as the ultimate test. This formula is very well known and spans all of the mainline Mega Man titles.

Mega Man also collects some powerups along the way to help out. His special weapons each have an individual gauge that indicates how much juice is left for the particular weapon. You can collect weapon energy refills to recharge the weapon of your choice simply by equipping the weapon before grabbing the refill. There are also health drops, tiny orbs for points, and extra lives in the shape of Mega Man’s head. A little morbid, perhaps, but that smiling severed head brings a lot of joy whenever you find one! There is also a bonus Magnet Beam upgrade that must be found and collected. This isn’t a weapon but it is equipped and used like a weapon. It allows Mega Man to shoot his own custom temporary platform that can be used to cross gaps or climb up larger walls that are unable to be scaled alone. This item is mandatory to complete the game but if you miss it you can go back to previously beaten stages to find it.

Let’s take a look at each robot master and his stage in a bit more detail.

Cut Man: The stage is pretty generic but briefly features some kind of machine that chucks out falling blades constantly. Cut Man throws a Rolling Cutter, which is a blade that is thrown straight and then arches upward before returning to Cut Man. When defeated, Mega Man earns the Rolling Cutter which behaves exactly the same way.

Guts Man: One annoying feature of this stage is a moving platform carried on a wire. The wire has breaks it in so when the platform runs over them it collapses until it moves back across the stable part of the wire again. You are required to time your jumps so you can land back on the platform when it becomes available again. This obstacle appears right at the beginning of the stage and it’s tough to navigate. At the boss fight, Guts Man hops around shaking the ground which stuns Mega Man. Occasionally a large block will fall from the ceiling that Guts Man will grab and immediately throw at Mega Man. When defeated, Mega Man receives the Super Arm which allows him to grab certain blocks off of the ground to then throw as a weapon and optionally clear the path forward.

Elec Man: This is mostly a vertical stage that features embedded turrets that fire off timed horizontal beams of electricity. There is also an enemy that fires electricity shots fitting the theme. This level also features the disappearing/reappearing block gimmick that is present in pretty much every single Mega Man game afterward. During the boss fight, Elec Man tosses out Thunder Beams which are huge arcs of electricity that are as tall as Mega Man. When defeated, Mega Man receives the Thunder Beam for himself, which not only launches forward but also splits off two shots vertically.

Ice Man: Well this is an ice level, which means slippery ground all over for Mega Man. Not only that, but it also has a couple screens of the reappearing/disappearing blocks, and it features an even worse gimmick than that. Toward the end of the level there is a huge gap that Mega Man must cross along the back of these floating platforms. The platforms are pure evil. They randomly ascend and descend as they move back and forth, but they also shoot bullets out of either side that will certainly knock Mega Man off to his untimely death. Generally the Magnet Beam is used here to skip it outright. Ice Man jumps and fires off his Ice Slasher that Mega Man must dodge through the small gaps between shots. When defeated, Mega Man receives the Ice Slasher that shoots straight but freezes enemies in his path.

Fire Man: This level has quite a few fire and flame related gimmicks in it. Most notably are the pillars of fire that slide up and down. Mega Man can freeze these with the Ice Slasher and jump on top of them to get by safely. There are also fire cannons akin to the electricity shooters in Elec Man’s stage and there is one screen with fireballs that zip along a path that Mega Man must time extremely well to get through unscathed. Fire Man launches the Fire Storm which is a tall fire shot that leaves a damaging flame behind right underneath where Mega Man is standing. When defeated, Mega Man earns the Fire Storm which features a smaller straight shot but also generates a fireball that briefly and quickly spins around Mega Man for extra damage to enemies in very close proximity.

Bomb Man: This is a generic and uninspiring stage compared to the others. The only bomb-related gimmick is an enemy that explodes when shot causing damage Mega Man if he is too close. This level does introduce the Sniper Joe enemy that will reoccur in many future titles. Bomb Man hops all around the screen and tosses out Hyper Bombs that leave that same wide explosion radius as the aforementioned enemy. When defeated, Mega Man gets the Hyper Bomb that when thrown bounces to a brief stop before it explodes.

To find out more about what happens after each of the robot masters are defeated, well, play it for yourself and find out! 🙂 I don’t want to give everything away!

The Mega Man series has always been a favorite of mine and I have owned all six NES releases since way before I started collecting NES. This was good for me since all the games now are highly sought after and will cost some money to acquire. Back in the 90s when NES games were cheap the first game was still a little bit difficult to find. I think my original copy was bought from a video store. This game may very well be the most difficult of the NES releases in part because of the lack of password option that is available in later releases. Even though there are fewer stages I believe they are harder individually to make up for it. This was a common tactic anyway to extend the time spent on the game until gaining the ability to finish it for yourself.

It has been quite awhile since I’ve played through Mega Man but it sure didn’t seem that way. I had an awesome run. The only times I got in trouble were during moving platform sections, namely in Guts Man’s stage, Ice Man’s stage, and the first Wily stage. Other than that I died a few times elsewhere, maybe 7 or 8 times altogether, but the game was very generous with extra lives and I kept pace with what I lost all throughout the game. This might be the first time I’ve beaten the game without continuing. I believe the game is quite a bit more difficult than I made it out to be.

There is a reason why Mega Man is blue that I just learned while researching this game. It has to do with the NES color palette. There are 64 pre-defined colors that can be used in any NES game. Now many of them are indistinguishable shades of black, but interestingly the most used color is blue. Nearly a quarter of the NES color palette is just different shades of blue. So for this reason, a blue Mega Man could have more detail and that was the direction the development team chose.

Each NES Mega Man game has some kind of tweak to it that sets it apart somewhat from all the others. Mega Man is the only game in the NES series to feature six robot masters instead of eight. The scoring system present here was never used again in the series, and as I mentioned above, it is the only game in the series without a password feature. The series takes quite a step forward in the second installment and it leaves the first game feeling just a bit unpolished and rough. Just my opinion!

Mega Man is a perfectly fine standalone game that paved the way for the series to take off in popularity just a few years later. You know a game does something right when other games copy it in some way so that makes Mega Man a groundbreaking game for its time. The series only gets better from here!

The hits just keep on coming here at Take on the NES Library with Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!

To Beat: Win all matches and reach the credits
My Goal: Beat the game without a single loss
What I Did: Beat the game with one loss
Played: 11/27/15
Difficulty: 9/10
My Difficulty: 5/10

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! is probably the most recognizable sports game on the NES. It’s my personal favorite but it’s not quite honest enough to call Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! a sports game. It’s more like a pattern-recognition brawler and even that description is a little bit disingenuous. It may be hard to qualify but nevertheless it is still a beloved classic and still incredibly fun and challenging today.

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! is actually the third game in the series. There were two prior arcade releases, Punch-Out!! and Super Punch-Out!!, that came out in 1983 and 1984 respectively. I have not seen either machine in person so I don’t know too much about those games. Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! came out in 1987 and was re-released in 1990 as simply Punch-Out!! without Mike Tyson. When Super-Punch-Out!! was released in 1994 the visuals very closely resembled the arcade versions. That means the NES version is a downgrade visually but even then the game still looks great by NES standards. To cap off the brief history, the Wii got its own version of Punch-Out!! in 2009 as well. I have played all three of the home versions and I am very well acquainted with them except for the Wii Punch-Out!! that I have only played through once when it was released.

I want to spin back around to the NES re-release. In 1990 Nintendo did not extend their licensing agreement with Mike Tyson to put his likeness into the game. That decision coincided with Tyson’s loss of the heavyweight title to James “Buster” Douglas. Evidently the game was still selling well for Nintendo so they re-tooled the game to remove Tyson. The box art was redone and the game replaced Mike Tyson with the character Mr. Dream. Gameplay-wise he is functionally equivalent to Tyson. This version of the game was the one I grew up with. My memory is a little bit fuzzy on this one but at some point I received a catalog from Nintendo Power and my mom ordered a couple of games for me. One was Startropics and the other was Punch-Out!! (Those turned out to be good choices!) It wasn’t until I started collecting NES games in earnest that I obtained a copy of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! Even though the games are the same and the re-release seems to be a bit harder to find, the 1990 variant is cheaper to buy.

Even though this game is pretty familiar to NES enthusiasts it’s worth covering the gameplay. You play as Little Mac, an up-and-coming diminutive boxer that starts from the bottom to work his way up to fame and fortune in the World Video Boxing Association. Along the way Little Mac squares off against a colorful cast of characters culminating in a showdown with Kid Dynamite himself. Little Mac can do jabs and bodyblows that do just a tiny bit of damage compared to the damage received when he takes a hit. If Little Mac can find an opening he will sometimes be rewarded with a star that can be used to throw an uppercut, his strongest punch by far. He also has stamina represented by a number of hearts and when Little Mac runs out of stamina he turns purple in color and can’t punch until he briefly rests up by avoiding contact.

There are three circuits: The Minor Circuit, Major Circuit, and World Circuit. The Tyson fight stands alone at the end as the ultimate test. Little Mac must work his way up the ranks to knock off the champion of each circuit before proceeding onward to the next fighter. The actual fights play more like puzzles. Little Mac can get basic hits in but this quickly becomes a bad strategy just a few boxers in when they can block nearly everything. The way to victory almost always is to dodge punches and counter with rapid fire punches. The boxers leave themselves vulnerable to quite a few hits after a miss and that is how Little Mac can make up ground in the fight despite his relatively weak strength. Each boxer has his own set of punches to avoid and some have their own special attacks that Little Mac must figure out to dodge or counter. Often it’s these specials that pave the way for Little Mac to take advantage quickly. For example, the first boxer Glass Joe will occasionally back up and give a little taunt before coming forward with a punch. When timed properly, Little Mac can sneak a punch in just as he approaches for an instant knockdown. The game allows these tricks to be exploited while also allowing the player to win just by playing it straight with the dodge-then-counter-attack approach. Victory requires either three knockdowns within the same round (a TKO) or a single knockdown where the opponent cannot stand back up by the end of a 10-count. Each match has three rounds of three minutes each so there is ample time to determine the outcome of the match, and if time expires the judges will decide the winner of the match.

I played the game just a few months ago and I learned something very important regarding this game. My primary television for playing games is an LCD flatscreen TV which introduces a tiny bit of lag when displaying the picture on screen as opposed to an older model CRT TV. Normally this is a non-issue but Punch-Out!! is very timing sensitive and those few frames of lag make all the difference. I was able to make it through the first half or so of the game without any trouble and then all of a sudden I was getting knocked down all over the place. Despite all that I was able to somehow defeat all of the boxers except Tyson and even then I got awfully close to winning the game a couple of times. It sounds weird but it’s something you have to experience in person to understand. I have had a CRT TV stored away in my house unused for a long time and I knew I needed to get it up and running. The first game I played was Punch-Out!! and I put in the password to put me straight into the fight with Tyson as a test of both the TV and my reflexes. I was able to beat Mike Tyson on the first try but he brought me all the way to the end of the third round. I was on the ropes for almost the entire third round but I just barely made it through and won. Armed with that knowledge and that tiny bit of practice I finally felt good enough to take the game on from the very beginning.

I was very close to going undefeated but I fell just short. I was pretty shaky on both Piston Honda fights and I have no idea why. There is a way to end both of those fights quickly and my timing was off and I missed it. Then both fights went on way longer than they should have but I pulled through. Other than that I was on my game for nearly the entire rest of the run. I beat Soda Popinski without taking a hit and I knocked out Super Macho Man in the first round. But as it could be expected, I didn’t quite make it past Mike Tyson on my first try even though I was awfully close. I was just a sliver of health away from getting a TKO at the end of the second round, and then in the third round I got a little over-eager with dodging and ended up getting knocked down twice and couldn’t recover. Losing to Tyson is an instant Game Over. However, when you go back to the title screen and continue it pre-loads the last password received. That brought me back to Super Macho Man. I beat him again and then in the second round of the Tyson rematch I took him out for the victory. Curiously, I ended up with a 15-0 record on the ending screen even though there are only 14 fights in the game. I figured out why. The password you get from beating Super Macho Man records the win even though it puts you back before that fight to begin with, so it did not count the Tyson loss and double-counted the Super Macho Man win. It looks nice, but don’t be fooled. I wasn’t better than perfect on this run!

I am so familiar with this game that I know a lot of little minor details that escape most other players. I mean stuff like whenever an opponent is knocked down and gets up at the count of 1 it means an uppercut will instantly knock him down again no matter what his health bar says. During the second Bald Bull fight, whenever he is knocked down he always gets up on 9. Every single time. There are some things though that are not so obvious or easy to find, and there is one particular secret that was revealed a few years ago that was not publicly known for over 20 years. Back to Bald Bull, his signature move is the Bull Charge where he backs up to the ropes, takes three hops forward, and throws an uppercut that means an instant knockdown. The move can be countered by landing a body blow right before he strikes which is an instant knockdown right back. The secret is that there is a member of the audience on the right side that takes a picture with the flash on and if you punch as soon as you see the flash you will have the perfect timing to knock Bald Bull down every time. It does make sense that a player would almost certainly never notice this as all the attention and focus are on making the perfectly timed hit, but it does make me wonder if there are any other secrets like this here or in any other games that are out there clearly in the open that no one has figured out or revealed yet. I really hope that there is!

In Japan, the Famicom version also had a release and subsequent re-release although they are backwards. A fancy gold-colored Punch-Out!! cart was given out to winners of a contest and it is quite collectible and expensive as far as Famicom carts go. The game did not include Mike Tyson, ending instead with Super Macho Man. Not long afterwards the standard release of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! was launched in Japan.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one of the neatest feats I have ever seen in gaming and that is Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! beaten completely blindfolded. It’s a long video but it has to be seen to be believed. The game is so well made that it can be mastered solely with audio cues. I first saw this done live on the stream of Awesome Games Done Quick 2014 but the runner was unable to beat Tyson at that time. Now it has been completely dominated blindfolded and even though I have watched it I still can’t completely wrap my brain around it.

Update 5/27/16: Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! is one of the more difficult games to beat on the NES. The game is both short enough to beat in a single sitting, and hard enough where it takes hours and hours of practice on each opponent to learn the patterns and how to effectively win. Then, when you finally get to Mike Tyson, all of your past skills and reflexes are put to the ultimate test and then some. Even a Punch-Out!! veteran can have some trouble in the final fight. I know it happens to me when I play and I’ve beaten Tyson dozens of times. I put it at a 9/10 difficulty rating but I think it’s not that hard to make a case of bumping it up to the elusive 10/10 difficulty.

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! is worthy of its spot high up on my list of games to beat. It has tight simple controls and it is a great exercise in hand-eye coordination and reflexes. It is certainly worthy of digging up a CRT TV just to have a fighting chance at playing effectively. I am also insistent on properly including both exclamation points every time I reference Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! because the game is that exciting to play!

One of the most popular games on the NES is regarded that way because it is still one of the best games around.

To Beat: Reach the ending
My Goal: Loop the game twice
What I Did: Reached Loop 3, Stage 7
Played: 11/24/15
Difficulty: 7/10
My Difficulty: 2/10

Konami was responsible for many of the best NES games made and Contra may very well be the cream of that crop. It is based on the arcade game of the same name that released in 1987 but the NES version of Contra is widely regarded as the better version at a time when arcade machines were at the bleeding edge of video game technology. I played through the arcade Contra earlier this year and I can personally attest that the NES version is much more fun to play. The main difference is in the physics and in particular the jumping. The jumps in the arcade have more float to them than the NES port and it is more difficult to dodge anything oncoming since the hangtime is longer. If I remember right the NES port has a bit more content as well.

One of the most famous things about Contra is the Konami Code. It did not make its first appearance in Contra but it is almost certainly used most often in this game to get started with 30 lives. This is nearly essential for the new player because with bullets flying all over and one hit kills it means death is all too common. The Konami Code definitely helped me when I was younger. I haven’t used the code in years in single player because I don’t really need it but it would have been a lot harder to get good at the game without using it early on.

Contra has 8 missions in total: Jungle, Base 1, Waterfall, Base 2, Snowfield, Energy Zone, Hangar, and Alien’s Lair. I recited that from memory! I would say that most players could get enough practice quickly to make it up to the Waterfall level, which is where the game bumps up in difficulty mostly because the screen only scrolls up and falling back down gets you killed. That happens a lot.

The base levels are played with a behind-the-shoulder perspective instead of the side view in all the other levels. It can be a bit tricky to dodge attacks from that perspective but fortunately the levels are short enough that it’s not too bad. Well, the first base is short. The second base feels at least twice as long as the first!

The latter half of the game features some sort of gimmick in each level. The snowfield mission’s background chucks these weird baton-shaped grenades all over the place. The Energy Zone has plumes of fire that blast out of the background pipes conveniently timed to when you are in the way. The Hangar has spikes that drop down and spike walls that pop up. Finally the Alien’s Lair features a fight against a huge alien head right off that bat. That one is especially intimidating and awesome the first time you see it.

Contra also has a pretty nice set of special weapons that usually fly in on these little pods. There’s a machine gun, a spinning fire shot, a laser, and a spread shot. There is also a bullet speed upgrade, temporary invincibility, and a smart bomb that kills all enemies on-screen. Surprisingly to me there is debate about which weapon is the best and frankly I don’t get that at all. Spread shot is my weapon of choice and the others don’t come close.

I have played this game dozens of times over the years and I expected it to be a cakewalk this time, and I was sorely mistaken. For the first 15-20 minutes I played downright awful by my standards. I got Game Over in the Waterfall stage TWICE! It was some kind of rust I had to shake off and I hope this is not a trend going forward. I simply don’t accept using continues on a game I am so familiar with so I chose to start all over. The third time was indeed the charm and I cruised through the game after that.

When you beat the game and go through the credits the game starts over with your lives and score intact (maybe your weapon too but I don’t recall what happened to me on that) and a corresponding bump in difficulty. I had not played through the game more than once at a time until this run. As I understand it it takes a few loops before the difficulty becomes evident. For me the second time through wasn’t that much different than the first, and the third time through I only noticed it getting harder a few times. I think the game pushes out more enemies each time through and the bosses require more damage. I noticed it for sure at the end of my run at the end of the Hangar level in the third loop. I got pinned between a turret gunner and enemies constantly spawning from behind and I wasn’t able to take advantage of a brief window in between attacks to finish off the gunner.

Contra was also released on the Famicom about the same time it was released on NES. The Famicom version is even better than the NES version if you can believe that. It has extra cutscenes between levels and some other visual effects not present in the NES version. The difference has to do with a custom chip on the Famicom cart not present on the NES cart that allowed for the extra content. I have yet to play it but I hope to own a cart of my own someday for the best possible experience.

Lastly, Contra was released in PAL regions in late 1990 but this is the weakest of the releases in my opinion. It was renamed as Probotector and the human sprites were replaced with robot sprites. The game is still the same fun but with different visuals. I guess it does make more sense for defeated robot enemies to explode instead of human enemies.

Update 5/27/16: Contra has a reputation as a difficult game, and while the game is challenging I don’t think it’s nearly as hard as the general perception says it is. With limited lives and limited continues, it does take some practice to learn how to deal with the enemy spawns and bosses. I believe many people, myself included, made themselves better at Contra by using the Konami Code to have enough lives to beat the game. It’s a good method of practice and after a few runs through it that way, I imagine many players are equipped to take on the game with the normal allotment of lives.

It’s really no secret why Contra is just as fun today as it was back in the NES heyday. It has a good amount of challenge, impressive visuals and effects, fun powerful weapons, and awesome boss battles. It’s also really fun in 2-player mode that I completely failed to mention until now. I had a blast going through the game again just like always.