Big money! Big prizes! I love it!

No music, but nice detailed title graphics!

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 1/2/19 – 1/4/19
Difficulty: 8/10
My Difficulty: 5/10
My Video: Smash TV Longplay

I had Super Smash TV on the SNES growing up. I probably got it from a yard sale or something, but I remember spending a lot of time playing the game. I wasn’t really that good at the game though. Maybe that version is really tough to beat. I didn’t know the NES had a port of the game until I started digging deeper into the library. With as frantic and sprite heavy as the SNES version is, it blows my mind that they even tried to replicate this style of game on the NES, let alone pull it off. Even though I still can’t believe this game exists on the NES, I’m glad it does.

Smash TV is a 1990 arcade game both developed and published by Williams. The game creators are Eugene Jarvis and Mark Turmell. The game was ported to several home consoles under the title Super Smash TV. The home computer versions, as well as the NES version, retained the Smash TV name. The NES version was released in September 1991. It was developed by Beam Software and published by Acclaim Entertainment. The game also had a PAL release in 1991.

Smash TV takes place in 1999. Thankfully, we didn’t get this timeline where TV has become ultra-violent. Game shows have turned into life-or-death competitions with huge prizes at stake for the survivors. Smash TV is the biggest hit show at the time where one or two contestants fend off hundreds of opponents in the arena in hopes of becoming grand champions. You play the role of one of these contestants as you try to survive over four levels.

Defeat enemies from all sides.

This game is a top-down twin-stick shooter game. Hordes of enemies appear from the four doors on each side of the room. Your job is to shoot down all of the threats that appear before you can move on to the next room. Of course, since it’s a game show, you also want to pick up as much cash or prizes as you can carry. Clearing each room opens at least one exit to an adjacent room. There is a map that shows which rooms connect so that you can plan your way to the boss room at the other end of the stage.

The basic controls are simple enough but tricky to use. Use the D-pad to move in all eight directions. The A button fires your weapons in the direction you are moving. The B button lets you focus your firepower in the last direction you shot so that you can shoot and move in different directions at the same time. This is a far cry from the arcade version where you had two joysticks for independent walking and firing at all times. The SNES version with the four face buttons on the controller worked well for a twin-stick setup. Fortunately, there’s a much better way. Smash TV on NES features a two-controller setup. Plug two controllers in and hold one in each hand with the D-pad at the top. The controller 1 D-pad moves the player while the controller 2 D-pad controls shooting. Smash TV has a two-player mode and supports four controllers so that both players can enjoy the two-controller setup. I highly recommend playing this game with the dual-controller option.

Your standard weapon is a pea shooter with unlimited ammo. While sufficient, you will do better with different weapons. Pickups appear on the ground as square icons while you fight. There are three special weapons. First is the scatter gun. This gives you three-way shooting which clears up a lot of space. Next are the missiles. These are powerful, piercing shots that can take out a row of enemies or even some stronger ones in just one hit. The spew weapon looks like a grenade and fires a swarm of short-range projectiles out in front of you. Each of these three weapons has limited ammo. Underneath your score is a green bar that indicates how much ammo you have. Grab a new weapon to change weapons or grab the same one to top off your ammo.

You need to be a real weapons powerhouse.

There are other helpful pickups too. Cash, gold bars, and presents are just for points, so while not necessary for survival, this is kind of your goal and you might as well grab some. The shoes increase your walking speed, but it seems to last just for your current screen and you lose it if you die. A circular ring icon is the shield, which makes you invincible so you can defeat enemies by running into them. This is given to you by default when you begin a new life. The icon with triangles gives you ninja blades. These are five blades that circle around you and wipe out enemies. Individual blades eventually go away after hitting so many targets. This powerup stops you from moving all the way to the edge of the screen, so that’s something to keep in mind. A little person icon gives you an extra life.

There are several types of enemies to deal with. Most of the enemies are standard grunts that always move toward you. Others take more effort to defeat. Orbs bounce around the playfield and shoot lasers. Shrapnel bombs walk the perimeter before exploding into shards that kill you. Tanks absorb a lot of firepower before going down. Wall gunners are very resistant to firepower and repeatedly shoot at you. Huge robot snakes slide around the screen and you have to destroy each piece of it to put it down. Red swarmers are many little red dots that clump together and fly around the screen. There are also stationary mines that kill you if you take a wrong step.

After the first screen of each stage is completed, a map is displayed. This shows the end level boss room as well as any treasure rooms. These rooms provide you with a bunch of cash and prizes from the moment you step inside. The rooms then get filled with enemies and tend to be more difficult than other rooms. These are good places to go if you want a high score.

Each stage ends in a boss battle. The arcade version has huge bosses that weren’t possible on the NES hardware. On the NES, they are smaller in size and seem to be easier fights than on other platforms. The cobra boss takes on a different form than the arcade version so that fight is the most different from the others. No matter what, you have to use a lot of firepower to put them out of their misery.

Mutoid Man is still recognizable here.

You begin each stage with five lives. Extra life pickups appear at random, but they tend to show up often. Due to the nature of the game and all the constant enemies, death is common. This is a problem for a few reasons. There are no continues in the game so you have to start all over if you run out of lives. You are capped at nine lives and can’t pick up any more beyond that. Also, each new stage after the boss puts you back at the default number of lives, so there’s no benefit to stockpiling lives in early levels since they don’t carry over to later stages.

I beat Smash TV once before back in 2014 as part of the NA weekly contest. I got 4th place that week with a score over 12 million points. I don’t remember where I picked this game up. It’s not very common but not too expensive when you do find a copy. Carts cost around $10. An interesting side note on collectibility is that Acclaim at one point manufactured their own carts. This matters because their carts have poorer quality labels where the glue bleeds through the white part of the label and the label fold starts to chip a little bit. My copy of Smash TV looks really good all things considered, but some of my other Acclaim games are not so hot.

While Super Smash TV is challenging enough that I haven’t yet finished it on my own, the NES port of Smash TV is easier. That’s not to say the game is easy at all. I didn’t have a lot of trouble with the game playing it for myself. There’s a bit of luck involved if you happen to run into more extra lives than usual, but skill is king and what will push you through. To that end, using the two-controller setup is essential for succeeding in this game. I tried out the normal control setup for a level or so and managed okay, but that would become a problem in the later levels where the enemies get tougher and the screens take longer. There’s no substitute for having separate movement and shooting controls in all directions.

Twin-stick shooting is so helpful when surrounded.

This game was tough to pin a difficulty on. I’m not so sure my past experience beating the game helped me that much. It was more my skill with this style of game. I don’t hear about people playing and beating this game very much. In the contest I played in 2014, only four people beat the game, and there were a lot of skilled gamers playing then. I don’t think this is an undesirable game that people are avoiding because they don’t think it’s fun to play. My gut tells me that this is an above-average game in difficulty that I happen to be good at. Having no continues bumps it up a notch too.

One thing I noticed playing this time was that my ending score was significantly lower than what I scored back in 2014. I played through all levels taking the top route just because I like consistency. The first stage has only one treasure room that is located on the top route so I just stuck with that path in the other levels too. Based on my 2014 score and forum posts from that week, I am pretty sure the lower routes in the other two stages are more lucrative for scoring. Points in this game are highly correlated with the number of enemies defeated. This leads me to believe that in general the upper routes have fewer enemies and therefore are easier than the lower routes. The ending doesn’t change on score or route or anything like that, and there’s no difficulty setting, so just pick whichever way you want.

There’s one more interesting tidbit about this game. The arcade version and at least the SNES version from my experience feature keys as item pickups. After the third stage boss, there are key rooms that unlock depending on if you hold enough keys. The manual for the NES game briefly mentions both key rooms and keys. However, there are no keys to pick up in the NES version at all. You still get to play the key rooms anyway between the third boss and the final boss which is often considered the fourth and final level of the game. It’s just a small, weird oversight of the NES port.

Smash TV is a really fun action game and the NES port is a great one to play. The gameplay and controls are both excellent. Movement is responsive and enemies get blasted constantly. The graphics are on the simplistic side, but the sheer number of enemies and bullets rendered on screen at the same time is awfully impressive for the NES. There is some sprite flickering which is to be expected, but there is either infrequent or no slowdown. The music is okay but gets repetitive and takes a backseat to the action anyway. The game is also repetitive and lengthy and will wear out your thumbs after some time. Smash TV on NES is an admirable port and worth playing for NES fans, even though I like the SNES version much better.

#111 – Smash TV

Whatcha gonna do brother when Hulkamania runs wild on you?

Shiny colors!

To Beat: Win the Tournament
Played: 8/6/18 – 8/8/18
Difficulty: 6/10
My Difficulty: 6/10
My Video: WWF WrestleMania Longplay

I was a teenage boy and for a season I was really into professional wrestling. I happened to get interested in WCW during the time when it overtook WWF in popularity, and then I unceremoniously got out of it sometime before WWF acquired it. The NES wrestling games vastly favored the WWF license over WCW with four NES titles to one. I am familiar with many of the WWF stars from this period as they eventually crossed over into WCW. Hulk Hogan on the cover of NES WWF WrestleMania, for instance, was a huge part of the nWo and his entry into that group was very shocking for me as a young fan. Playing this NES game rekindled a lot of nostalgia for that period in my life. Of course what matters now, nostalgia aside, is if the game is any good.

The current WWE began in 1952 as Capitol Wrestling Corporation and was created by Jess McMahon and Toots Mondt. It was part of the broader National Wrestling Alliance, or NWA. The owners at that time, Mondt and Jess’s son Vincent, withdrew from NWA in 1963 over a dispute and created the WWWF, which eventually rejoined in NWA in 1971 and was renamed to the World Wrestling Federation, or WWF, in 1979. Vincent McMahon Jr. created Titan Sports in 1980 and bought Capitol from his father in 1982. Vince Jr. helped usher in the WWF Golden Age in the 1980s. WWF acquired its main competitor, WCW, in 2001. In 2002, WWF was renamed to World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE, after a dispute with the World Wildlife Fund. WWE is currently the biggest professional wrestling promotion in the world.

WWF WrestleMania is the first of four WWF licensed NES games. The other three games are WWF WrestleMania Challenge, WWF WrestleMania: Steel Cage Challenge, and WWF King of the Ring. WWF WrestleMania was developed by Rare and published by Acclaim Entertainment. It was released in January 1989 on the NES in North America only.

Awww yeah, wrasslin’!

WWF Wrestlemania is a straightforward professional wrestling game. There are six characters to choose from: “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase, Bam Bam Bigelow, The Honky Tonk Man, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, Andre the Giant, and Hulk Hogan. Matches take place between two wrestlers in the ring until one of them wins by pinfall. The game supports up to six players though only two may play at one time. One or two players can play a standard match, or one to six players may compete in a Tournament format. To beat the game, you have to win the Tournament mode in single player.

At the start of the game you will choose the number of players and the corresponding mode. A name entry screen appears for each player after the mode is chosen. Use the D-pad to move the cursor and press A to make selections. Names are up to six characters long. For multiple players, odd numbered players use the first controller and even numbered players use the second controller. After name entry, choose from one of the six wrestlers. Press Up or Down to choose. You will see his profile picture and some short stats. Press A on the one you want. After all selections are made, you will see the Pre-Bout screen with the participants of the next match. Now the fun begins!

Fights take place on a single screen with the stats on top and the match on the bottom. On each side of the top of the screen are the character portraits and the vertical energy bars for each player. In the center is the match timer and the bell that rings at the end of the match.

Bam bam on Bam Bam.

The controls are a little more complex than they first appear. You walk around the ring with the D-pad and you can walk in all directions. You can press either A or B to do some basic strikes against your opponent. From here it gets more complicated as some wrestlers can’t perform certain moves. I won’t go into all these details, but the manual has a couple of charts detailing all this and I suggest you look that up before trying this game. One more thing all wrestlers have in common is running mode. Press and hold either Left or Right, and then hold A to engage running mode. You can let go of the D-pad, and then let go of the A button to stay locked into running mode without touching any of the buttons. You will rebound back and forth between the ropes until you press a button to get out of the mode or your opponent gets in the way.

The remaining moves can only be performed by some wrestlers. While in running mode, you can press A or B to do a running attack. You can do a different move by pressing either A or B while holding Up or Down. One of these, usually with the B button, is how you pin your opponent when they are laid out on the mat. If you have your back to the opponent and press A and B at the same time, you will do a strong back move. If you are facing your opponent and press A and B together, you can do a bodyslam. However, you need to have more energy than your opponent to pull off the bodyslam, otherwise you will default to the back move. Finally, some wrestlers can do a move off the turnbuckle. To climb up on the turnbuckle, you need to engage running mode while all the way at the bottom of the screen. Just as your approach the corner, press B. If your timing is good, you will climb onto the turnbuckle and then dive off all in one move. Even though there are turnbuckles at the top of the screen, you can’t climb on those. Weird, I know.

To win a match, first you need to drain all of the energy from your opponent. When he’s down, you need to pin him. Stand next to him and press either Up or Down combined with either A or B depending on your wrestler to pin. A three-count will start, and if your opponent is still down at three, the bell rings and you win the match. Often, just getting the energy bar emptied is not quite enough to keep him pinned down. Sometimes he will get up right away and other times he will stay down for quite some time. You can get a feel for when he will stay down longer than usual with some experience. On the flip side, your opponent is also trying to drain your energy and pin you too. You will rise automatically if you are knocked down with energy remaining, but if you don’t, mash the Up button on the D-pad to get up as quickly as you can.

High octane pinning action!

There are a few additional mechanics and things to look out for in the game. Energy meters slowly grow over time. You have to keep up the offensive or your opponent can get back into the game. There is an additional way to earn back some energy in the form of a powerup. That’s right, this game has a powerup called the energizer. Each wrestler has his own energizer listed in the game manual. Energizers appear from the top left of the screen, go across the top of the ring, and then exit on the right side. You want to collect your energizer if you are near it, and likewise you want to keep your opponent away from his. There is also an anger mechanic. If someone gets hit a bunch, his skin will change color from pink to red. Moves do more damage while in this angered state.

The timer is of some importance as well. There is no timer in a standard match, either single player or two-player. In fact, a two-player match with one person is a great environment for practicing moves and timing, all without worrying about the timer. The timer runs in tournament mode only. It counts up to three minutes, and if there isn’t a winner to that point, the match is considered a draw. You will get an instant rematch, and these will continue until there is a clear winner.

To win single-player Tournament mode, you pick a wrestler and then you have to win against all other wrestlers in order. You can tie via the timer as many times as necessary, but lose once and you’re out. A multi-player tournament functions more like an actual tournament. The computer controls the remaining wrestlers and everyone plays each other once for a total of fifteen matches. Whoever wins the most matches wins the tournament, and the tiebreaker is whoever has the quickest average match time over matches won.

Ooooh, that’s gonna leave a mark.

This was my first time playing WWF Wrestlemania. This game was originally on my deferred list, but I can’t remember why I put it there other than my general disinterest in sports games. This is one of the most common NES games out there. Right now, I have four extra copies I haven’t bothered to sell yet. It only costs a few dollars if you want a cart.

I did not have the easiest time beating this game. I decided to go with “Macho Man” Randy Savage (RIP) as he was one of my favorite wrestlers growing up. Taking the wrestlers in order means The Million Dollar Man is the first wrestler, and he really is a pushover for the most part. For a while I couldn’t beat anybody else. I found trying to beat anyone else in a fist fight is useless. Those guys can rifle off back moves quickly before I could barely get out one. Running attacks are more useful especially if you can knock the guy down with them. You can go right into another running attack and knock him down as soon as he gets up. This strategy doesn’t work on the heavier wrestlers. My path to victory was abusing turnbuckle moves. The problem then is getting the opponent into the corner with you to get in range for the move. I try to get the opponent to run after me into the corner so I can climb the turnbuckle. Knocking him down gives me enough room to back up and run again. I tried to time it so that I was climbing up when he got up. That way he will chase me into the corner, trying to take advantage of having my back to him. I can get into a loop, but it doesn’t always last. Your timing has to be really good too so that you don’t miss the turnbuckle climb. I think the presence of the timer, combined with energy regeneration, encourages repeating powerful moves over and over to win. It might be a cheap way to win but it worked for me. I can win most of the time with this strategy, but even then, winning all five matches was a little harder than it seemed.

Take this opinion with a grain of salt because I haven’t played any other wrestling games on NES, but I don’t think WWF Wrestlemania is all that good. Rare usually makes fun games but not this time. The level of presentation and polish from a Rare game is still there. There are some nice graphical effects on display. The character portraits look pretty good on the NES. Everything up to the gameplay is solid, and then the annoyances begin. I had a tough time lining up properly with the other wrestler, and when I did I would get beat down before I could get enough hits in. Movement around the ring is cumbersome and slow. It’s easy to get trapped in the corner and hard to get back out. The act of pinning a wrestler is a lot harder to perform than it should be. The timer gets in the way of a more thoughtful match, resulting in exploiting moves just to win in time. These control and balancing issues add up to a more frustrating experience than a fun one. I hope later games are better than this one.

#96 – WWF Wrestlemania

You’ll get to blow up a lot of bricks and things over all these stages!

It’s Bomberman, not Bomber Man.

To Beat: Reach the ending
What I Did: Beat the game without dying
Played: 7/30/18 – 8/1/18
Difficulty: 2/10
My Difficulty: 2/10
My Video: Bomberman Longplay

The Bomberman franchise is one with a long history and a loyal fanbase. I think Bomberman really grew in popularity on the Super Nintendo with the Super Bomberman games. The simple nature of the game, combined with the SNES Multitap, made it a perfect party game for multiple people. He would have his solo adventures, and those games have their fans too, but the multiplayer is what most people remember and what they would prefer to play. I’m more a fan of the solo outings, and that’s what I got here with the NES version. Bomberman comes from a humble beginning, as this early title is a bare-bones adventure.

Bomberman got his start on home computers in Japan and Europe in 1983. The game was remade for the Famicom, releasing in December 1985. It was developed and published by Hudson Soft. The NES version would wait until January 1989. Since then, there have been dozens of Bomberman games spanning various consoles and computers. There wouldn’t be another Bomberman game after the Famicom/NES release until 1990, but then there were multiple games released every year all the way through 2010. There was another long hiatus until Super Bomberman R came out on the Nintendo Switch in 2017.

Bomberman is a top-down action game with kind of a sad story. Bomberman is named appropriately as he makes bombs all day in an underground compound and he doesn’t like his situation at all. He hears a rumor that if a robot like himself leaves the compound for the surface then he will become human. He leaps at the opportunity but other robots pursue him. Luckily, he has unlimited bombs of his own making which will help him. You beat the game by clearing all 50 stages.

Make way for Bomberman!

The game has simple controls. Bomberman can walk in four directions with the D-pad. The A button places a bomb which is locked to one of the tiles on the playfield. Eventually it blows up leaving a brief trail of fire on the playfield. Later in the game, Bomberman can detonate his own bombs with the B button. The Start button pauses the game. That’s all there is to it.

Bomberman is a really simple game too. Each stage is two screens wide and free scrolls left or right to follow the action. The playfield consists of indestructible columns spaced evenly apart. Sprinkled among the level are bricks that can be destroyed with a bomb blast. Usually you are blocked from parts of the stage and you have to bomb your way through. The goal of the game is to defeat all enemies in each stage, then locate the exit door and leave. You have to drop bombs in spots where the enemies will walk into the blast and get themselves killed, or you can trap them with your bombs near an explosion. All enemies plus Bomberman are killed by a single bomb blast, so there is a strategy element as you also need to keep yourself out of harm’s way. A chime will play when all enemies have been defeated. The exit door is hidden behind one of the destructible walls. It’s completely random so sometimes you’ll find it without trying and other times it’s one of the last bricks in the whole level.

There is a little information on the top of the screen during game play. The level timer begins at 200. Now usually you would lose a life when time expires, but here a bunch of strong enemies are introduced when the timer hits zero. In the early game, that’s just as bad as death. In the middle is your score. You earn points through defeated enemies and you can score more points per kill if you defeat multiple enemies with a single explosion. On the right side, labeled Left, is the number of remaining lives. You start with three lives and you earn one after beating each stage. That’s very generous!

Setting up chain reactions is both fun and dangerous.

The primary mechanic in Bomberman is the bomb blast. When a bomb is placed it stays dormant briefly before exploding. The blast extends outward in the four cardinal directions. It won’t travel through the solid columns or the destructible bricks, but it will rip right through enemies and Bomberman himself. If an explosion hits another bomb, that bomb also explodes immediately. Naturally, you can set up multiple bombs and set off a huge chain reaction. It’s all very intuitive and satisfying to rain fire on large portions of the stage. The catch of course is that you should be thoughtful in your placement so that you don’t get yourself caught up in the blast, whether you get greedy with bomb chaining or trap yourself in an unescapable spot.

Bomberman can find powerups. Each level has exactly one powerup hidden somewhere within a breakable block, just like the exit door. Collecting the powerup causes the music to change, which is an interesting and unusual way of reminding you that you don’t need to hunt for the powerup anymore. Here are the powerups you can find. The bomb powerup lets you lay one extra bomb on screen at a time. The smiling flame powerup extends the bomb blast one tile in each direction. At the start of the game, Bomberman can only lay one bomb at a time with a tiny blast radius. By collecting multiple bomb and flame powerups throughout the game, your bombing ability grows fast. The speed skates let Bomberman walk faster. The wall walk powerup lets you walk through the breakable walls, and the bomb walk powerup lets you walk through your own bombs. The detonator powerup is a heart with a small bomb on it. This lets you blow up the oldest bomb with the B button, and also causes bombs to stay dormant until you blow them up yourself. The flame proof powerup looks like a little person engulfed in flames. This keeps you from being hurt by your bomb blasts. The mystery powerup looks like a question mark and gives you temporary invincibility from enemies and bombs. All powerups except for the mystery powerup last until you die, while the bombs, flames, and speed skates are permanent upgrades.

It does make sense that you could also blow up both the powerups and the exit door. You might not want to do that. Blasting either one spawns several enemies which are typically more challenging ones than the initial enemies in that stage. Not only that, but if you blow up the powerup you lose it, putting you at a double disadvantage. The lesson here is that you want to be careful with explosives.

Blow up enemies in the bonus level without concern.

There are bonus stages sprinkled between some levels. The standard unbreakable columns are still there but there are no bricks to deal with. Each bonus level features only one enemy type but there are a lot of them and they keep coming. Bomberman is completely invincible from both enemies and explosions here, so this is a great place to go wild and set up huge chain reactions. This is simply a point-scoring affair, but it’s a fun break while it lasts. The bonus levels occur after every five levels for most of the game. For some reason they put the bonus areas after levels 39, 44, and 49 instead of multiples of five like it started out. I get that they didn’t want the game to end on a bonus stage, but I think they could have just adjusted only the final bonus level instead. I’m all about the minutia here on the site, so I just had to let you know about this.

Bomberman also features some special, hidden items. These are nothing to get excited about and are just for points, but they might appear in a playthrough when you don’t expect them. There are six of them. Each stage has one and there is a specific method to get it to appear in the stage. I’ll spare you the details on this one. Most players will not come across them at all because the requirements are kind of ridiculous. I didn’t in my playthrough, though I believe I found one in a past playthrough.

Lastly, there is a password system. Lose all your lives to get the password. These are 20-character passwords consisting of the letters A through P only. Passwords save the stage you are on, the number of bombs you can deploy, the blast radius, and even your score. Nice!

Strong powerups like this give you great versatility.

Though I have played Bomberman before, I haven’t played it all that much. I am pretty sure I played the SNES Bomberman games before playing this one, and it feels primitive in comparison. At least I had the basic idea down for how the game works. I beat the game for the first time a few years ago as part of the NintendoAge contests. Bomberman is a common game but it’s one of the more expensive commons, selling for over $15 for a loose cart today.

I think Bomberman is a really easy game. I was able to beat the entire game on one life on my second try. While the difficulty of the levels increases as you play, I believe the first level is the hardest one. You have little explosive range so you have to get a little too close to the enemies and they are tough to reach with bombs. You start off with a flame powerup in Stage 1 which helps out greatly. In Stage 2 you can get an additional bomb, and in Stage 3 you can get the detonator, putting the game into easy mode. With the detonator and cautious play, you probably shouldn’t die anymore the rest of the way. The flame proof powerup comes late in the game and pairing it with the detonator is ultra-powerful. Then you can drop bombs and immediately detonate them at your feet, essentially surrounding yourself with a fire shield for as long as you keep pressing the buttons. Even without the best powerups, you can still password creep through the game the long way.

Bomberman is a basic, but fun game. The core gameplay is solid, laying the groundwork for future titles. Aside from that hook, the game was primitive by the time it released on the NES in 1989. From a 1985 perspective, I can see why this was well regarded. It’s a fun game with a bunch of levels, randomly generated obstacles, and some neat powerups that make you feel very powerful by the end of it all. The music is catchy enough in its simplicity. The graphics do well enough to carry the idea of the game, but don’t offer anything further. I’m glad to have played it, but I don’t plan to go back to it.

#95 – Bomberman

A game with surfboarding animals can’t be all that bad, right?

Hear the calming waves and feel the ocean breeze.

To Beat: Finish Round 5 in Street Skate Encounter and Round 1 in Big Wave Encounter
To Complete: Finish Round 12 in both modes
My Goal: Complete the game
What I Did: Reached Round 13 in both modes
Played: 11/29/16 – 11/30/16
Difficulty: 4/10
My Difficulty: 4/10
Video: T&C Surf Designs Longplay

Town and Country Surf Designs: Wood and Water Rage is an NES game notorious for not being very good. Certainly that was my impression of the game ever since childhood. Now that I have beaten the game, I realize that the game is misunderstood. I wouldn’t go as far to say that it is a good game, but once you break through the shell of bad impressions, there is a playable game here that has a few neat ideas.

T&C Surf Designs is a company that specializes in surfboards, clothing, and accessories. They first opened a store in Hawaii in 1971 and expanded to clothing in 1976. Sometime in the 1980s the company adopted cartoon characters named Da Boys for a line of shirts that became very popular. These characters created by Steve Nazar would form the basis of the NES game. Da Boys would disappear for many years before being revived in 2016 under the name Thrilla Krew. T&C Surf Designs is still in business today.

T&C Surf Designs: Wood and Water Rage was released on the NES in February 1988. The game was developed by Atlus and published by LJN. It was only released in North America. There was a sequel to the game named Town and Country II: Thrilla’s Surfari, released in 1992. These two games are the only games bearing the company name or characters.

Just look at that character lineup!

Wood and Water Rage has two distinct modes named Street Skate Encounter and Big Wave Encounter. As you can probably tell by the names, the first is a skateboarding game and the second is a surfing game. There is also a third mode named Wood and Water Rage that combines the two by cycling between levels in both games. To beat the game, you must meet the conditions for both modes either separately or together in the combined mode.

When you begin the game you choose one of the modes with the option of either 1-player or 2-player. Multiplayer is alternating play and otherwise identical to the single player mode. After you choose the game mode you choose which characters you want. There is Tiki Man for skateboarding and he pairs with the surfer Kool Kat. You can also choose Joe Cool for your skateboarder and he teams with Thrilla Gorilla on the surfing side. The characters are purely cosmetic. My favorite is Kool Kat just because he surfs while wearing a tuxedo, which is beyond cool.

In Street Skate Encounter, your goal is to reach the end of the course. Play takes a side-scrolling perspective starting on the left and moving right. You must dodge hazards and obstacles in order to reach the finish line before time runs out. You only get one minute to clear the course but it is a short stage. If you either run out of time or run out of health, it’s Game Over and back to the title screen.

To control your skateboarder, use the D-Pad to move in all eight directions. The game autoscrolls but you can speed it up by moving right or slow down by moving left. You can also tap the B button to push yourself forward. I don’t know if it’s necessary, but I always tap the button repeatedly to maintain speed. You can jump with the A button, but when you do this you jump in the air and your skateboard stays on the ground rolling beneath you. If you want to jump and bring the skateboard with you, hold Left while jumping.

There’s not enough tax money to fix these roads.

This mode has a few interesting mechanics to it. There is a life meter in the bottom right corner of the screen consisting of some round symbols. You earn life points periodically as long as you skate quickly, and you lose some if you crash. Depending on how you crash you either lose two or three life points. If you max out at eight life points the timer freezes, so skating perfectly means you cannot run out of time.

There are ways to earn extra points while skating. There are four different colors of coins that appear at regular intervals in the stage, and collecting them will give you points. Red coins give you the most points and blue give you the least, with pink and green ones in between. If you only collect coins of the same color, then each successive coin gives you double points up to eight times the base value. There are some moving objects in the way such as a toy car or a ball and you get points if you jump on top of them with your skateboard. There are also barriers that give you points if you jump over them and let your skateboard roll underneath. You can also grind on the guardrail at the very top of the playfield and you get points for doing that.

After you clear a round, the next time through is the same level except you begin farther to the left. This means that you gradually expand the beginning of the level and the course gets longer the more times you play it. The fifth time through the course is the first instance of playing the entire level. Hopefully by now you have learned the course well enough to keep going without crashing so that the timer will freeze.

The time both halts and blinks green when you are doing well.

In the other mode, Big Wave Encounter, your goal is to surf long enough to reach the pier on the beach. Just like in skateboarding, play is side-scrolling and moving to the right. You want to surf both to the right far enough to avoid crashing within the big wave tailing you and high enough to avoid crashing on the bottom of the screen. There is no timer in this mode; it is all about surviving to the end. You also have health points in this mode and if you run out it is Game Over.

The surfing controls seem straightforward but they are the cause of all the confusion and misunderstanding of the game. You use the D-Pad to move in all eight directions. If you hold the A button it shifts your balance forward, and holding the B button shifts the balance toward the back of the surfboard. That’s all there is to it, but in practice it seems that no matter what you do you always end up losing ground and getting knocked off your board into the water.

Aside from just trying to stay on top of the water, there are obstacles that can also knock you down. There are people on inner tubes, jumping fish, and birds that you should avoid. You will also come across bananas that you can collect for points. I never bother with them since I am so focused on keeping afloat.

This jerk bird goes out of its way to mess with you.

Your surfing style can also net you some additional points. You earn a tiny amount of points just for staying alive, but if you surf inside the pipeline you get a larger amount of points periodically for as long as you stay on your board. If you surf up off the very top of the wave, you will catch some air and land toward the bottom of the screen and earn even more points. The best way to earn score is to do a turn at the top of the wave. The easiest way to do this is to surf straight up and then turn downward as you touch the top of the wave. If you can pull this off at the very top of the wave you get points as well as an additional life point. You can do this many times in a row to boost your health to the maximum very quickly, so this is the best strategy for survival.

Wood and Water Rage has no ending in any of the modes, and so I get to figure out what it means for me to beat the game. The Street Skate Encounter mode lets you play the full level on Round 5, so clearing that round qualifies as beating that mode. The only difference in the later rounds is that your starting health is reduced. I believe on Round 12 you only get one point of health to start so that is the most challenging round. The Big Wave Encounter has a more unclear ending condition. The level seems to get longer in later rounds but there is no definitive way to tell. It may cap out at five rounds like the other mode, but if you clear at least one level that should be good enough. Just like in skateboarding, the starting health is the lowest at Round 12. To master the game, you should probably complete twelve rounds in both modes.

Wood and Water Rage was a game I had in my childhood collection. I am sure it was a garage sale pickup for cheap since I wouldn’t have been interested in this game on my own. With that in mind, this game did not get much play time. The skateboarding was fine but not all that gripping, and I did not understand the surfing at all. I would occasionally mess with it and then go on to something different.

This is the sweet spot!

Now that I am going through all the NES games, I have finally given it a fair shake and I see that it’s not all bad. The Street Skate Encounter took a few practice runs to learn the controls and layout. Timing jumps off ramps is still something I flub up occasionally, and I will get nailed by one of the moving obstacles sometimes. Otherwise, I didn’t have too much trouble with this mode. The Big Wave Encounter still was as confusing as ever until I had the aha moment of earning life points by turning downward at the top of the wave. Once I did it a couple of times, I saw how easy it was to pull off and I could keep doing it as much as I needed. This little trick makes the surfing easier than the skateboarding, which is something I could have never envisioned. This also led to reducing the difficulty assessment for the game to below average.

I met my goal in both Street Skate Encounter and Big Wave Encounter separately, but I also decided to play the combined Wood and Water Rage mode for my video longplay. Since Round 12 in each mode is where the difficulty is the highest, then clearing Round 24 was my goal here. I only make one attempt at it and I came up short. In Round 21, I crashed right in the beginning of the level and that was that. Mistakes sure are costly in this game. Nevertheless, I am still pleased with how I played.

My big takeaway from playing this game is that it is far too easy to overcomplicate something in my mind. I figured that the surfing would be very difficult to figure out when all along the solution turned out to be both simple and repeatable. The skateboarding by contrast was almost the opposite, requiring a more traditional approach. The game overall is not too complicated with some understanding of the mechanics, and it turned out to be more enjoyable than I expected. However, don’t be fooled. The game is very lean in terms of content, and what’s here is nothing to be excited about. I prefer to lean on the positives, and it’s always nice when a game can surpass my expectations at least a little bit.

#41 – Town and Country Surf Designs: Wood and Water Rage
(Street Skate Encounter)

#41 – Town and Country Surf Designs: Wood and Water Rage
(Big Wave Encounter)

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

Simple and quiet!

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.

You decide!

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.

Noooo not my extra head!

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.

I’m not sure scissors will be all that effective here.

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.

I get knocked down, but I get up again…

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.

This almost seems unfair!

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.

Wow so many projectiles!

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.

Fight fire with ice! Makes sense!

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.

Is he throwing a bomb or jump kicking?

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.

This part is seriously hard and then they add flying penguins!

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!

#4 – Mega Man