Take on the NES Library

Magic Johnson’s Fast Break:

Any time you have a non-game, that immediately is the default for easiest game. Videomation is a drawing and animation tool for just messing around with. Still, there is quite a lot you can do with it with stamps, animation paths, letters, shape tools, and a pretty neat arrow cursor. It seems pretty advanced by NES standards as well. Even I, a non-artist, was able to draw something with it and it turned out okay.

As far as actual games go, this one was the next easiest game from 2019. It was the only 2/10 game in difficulty rank for the year, and that was pretty much because I won a game on the hardest difficulty on my first try. My default gameplay in basketball is to shoot threes, so I picked the best player for it and figured out that shooting from the top of the key was my best bet to sink one. I won handily after digging out from an early deficit.

This was the “Magic” spot.

Shortest Game

Marble Madness:

This is the quintessential pick-up-and-play title on the NES. If you only have a few minutes to spare, you can do no wrong with a quick attempt at Marble Madness. The game’s six stages are all short, and since it is a race against the timer you are either going to win quickly or fail quickly. Full playthroughs of the game only last 3-4 minutes. I wanted to go for a deathless run but my best after an hour of attempts was a two-death run.

This is a bit of a cop-out answer, but it makes perfect sense in this category. This game has no goal whatsoever. If you just draw a circle on the screen or something else simple, that’s enough to say you drew something. My doodling took longer than Marble Madness at least, since I felt like I needed to put in a tiny bit of effort.

Longest Game

Genghis Khan:

Koei games are likely to dominate this category when they are played. These can be very long, drawn out campaigns even when you know what to do. The learning curve is very steep for someone like me as well. Once I got going, I ran into either some bad luck or poor planning and ended up having to reconquer several territories, wasting even more time. Menuing became a real chore at the end. I played this a lot just after my son was born, which meant I could only play in 15 minute bursts here and there while taking care of my baby. It may not have been the longest game played in pure hours, but it sure felt like the longest one.

So. Much. Menuing.

Bases Loaded II: Second Season:

This is probably the true longest game of the year. I clocked in at over 35 hours with much better timekeeping than any other game I played this year. I estimate about 30 hours at most for Genghis Khan. I spent the exact same number of days playing both. Dragon Warrior III was much more fun to play and therefore felt like a shorter game.

I would be remiss without mentioning the latest installment in the Bases Loaded series. Normally this would be the longest game of the year, but I got a couple of RPGs come up that took just a bit longer. The first Bases Loaded was roughly a 40-hour affair while the second game was much swifter at a 25-30 hour estimate. Still, it was an 84-game season ending in a 79-5 record, and that is going to take a long time no matter how quickly the games are played.

Oldest Game

Wild Gunman:

Ah, a good old Black Box game. Wild Gunman was one of the NES launch titles releasing in October 1985, making it the earliest NES release I played in 2019. The arcade version was a full decade earlier, releasing in 1974. This is easily the oldest game I’ve played in a long time.

Last year I played one NES game from 1985 and one game from 1986. Tag Team Wrestling released in October 1986. Release dates of NES games are notoriously hard to track down, usually only found to the month, which in and of itself may not be completely accurate. The trio of Chubby Cherub, M.U.S.C.L.E, and Ninja Kid all released at the end of October 1986, while Tag Team Wrestling has no specific date I could find within the month. That leads me to believe that Tag Team Wrestling was the first third-party NES release. Either way, it was still the second earliest game I played in the year.

It sure looks like an early game.

Genghis Khan:

This game came out in 1990, but the real Genghis Khan lived from 1162-1227. That’s pretty old if you ask me.

Newest Game

There were no 1993 or 1994 releases played in this review period. You have to go down to March 1992 to get the first hit in Dragon Warrior III. It was the only 1992 release I played too. Making this even weirder is that Dragon Quest III in Japan came out way back in 1988. It is such a bizarre selection for Newest Game, but that’s how it goes.

Space Shuttle Project:

Here we have the true Newest Game. Space technology sure feels new and futuristic, right? Well, maybe not now. Space Shuttle Project released in November 1991. I have to imagine this will be the only 1991 release I’ll play to be declared Newest Game. However, we can only look so far to the future, and stranger things are bound to happen.

Best Character

Now that we are into the more subjective categories, this one was an easy choice to get started. This game follows the story of soldier Scott O’Connor who is input digitally into the computer world taking on a completely different form than an ordinary soldier. Obviously, his hair attack is unique for its time and is the game’s defining feature. There is also a lot of grabbing, climbing, and hook swinging, and it all feels great. He is the best character is terms of both aesthetic and moveset.

Mappy-Land:

Mappy as a character is in kind of a weird place. He is not such a recognizable character, and trying to control him in-game feels limited. That works fine in the contest of the classic Mappy arcade game, but not so much in Mappy-Land where the developers tried to introduce moving obstacles and platforms. In fact, it would be fair for Mappy to be upstaged completely by his enemies. But I don’t care about any of that. Mappy is cute and is a much more interesting character than just anyone from a game I played last year.

Ain’t he cute?

Ice Hockey:

I have to pick this game entirely for the fat skater. The normal one is kind of boring, and the skinny one looks good but wasn’t as effective a player. The heavy one to me is the iconic character from this NES game and he was the best scorer, knocking around everyone in his path.

Worst Character

Bad Street Brawler:

This game is kind of a mess, and in part it has to do with the limited nature of Duke Davis. He can only walk left and right with limited, clunky jumping, and for whatever reason he is forced into using specific attacks per level. A few of these attacks are really good and you wish you could use them in all levels, but it just cannot be. His sense of style is very early ‘90s, but it’s just too gaudy for my tastes. Put it all together and it’s pretty clear what the worst character of the year is.

Wall Street Kid:

For as poor a character as Duke Davis is, the Wall Street Kid is just as boring. He is completely driven by greed and just goes with the flow of whoever is around him. He does the same things day in and day out. He and his girlfriend Priscilla have no personality whatsoever. Whatever. I guess I hope he decides to do things for the betterment of mankind with his vast fortune.

Best Ending

If you are going to spend a long time playing one game, you really hope the ending you get for all your work delivers. This game features an interactive ending, which are often the best kind. You get to make your escape, make you way back to the home castle, and be applauded by everyone you talk you. The ending completely clears up who you are before heading to some nicely done end credits where you take one final tour of landmarks of your journey. Good stuff.

I like how it’s called Dragon Quest III here.

This game has quite the surprise ending, for as rough as the game is up to that point. The final end screen where you go head to head against Anaconda is pretty basic on its own. You get treated by a very lengthy audio clip of Dirty Harry giving his well-known speech from the movie. There hadn’t been any sampled voices in the game, but they put a really long one in at the end completely out of nowhere. It’s totally unexpected and pretty cool.

Thundercade:

The ending to this game is decent enough, but what really sets this game apart is the bonus ending. To see it, you need to leave your NES on for almost an hour after getting the normal ending. You’ll see a procession of tanks and soldiers proceed down the screen, followed by some Japanese text that clearly wasn’t known about during transition to the NES.

Worst Ending

Amagon:

This year didn’t really have endings that were truly bad. Amagon’s ending is fairly basic but it’s not all that bad. What puts it in this category is the awful ending music. The rest of the game has pretty decent tunes, so to be rewarded with something so grating at the end is pretty weird and out of place.

Werewolf: The Last Warrior:

Again, this is not a bad ending; it’s actually a pretty good one. What stands out to me about this one is how you don’t really get the time to enjoy it. I take pictures of the end screens of games, but the one I wanted at the end of the ending only stays visible long enough to draw the text before fading out back to the title screen. I really don’t understand why there isn’t any kind of delay there. Perhaps I should have seen this coming, as the title screen barely stays visible before heading to the attract mode.

Videomation, Xenophobe, Wild Gunman:

This category would not be complete without mentioning the games that had no ending. All of these are a little different. Videomation isn’t even a game so of course it ends when you decide it ends. Xenophobe has a level ending but that doesn’t change upon beating the final level aside from bonuses awarded. Wild Gunman has the closest thing to an ending with the “Master” text after beating Game C. The other two modes have no ending at all and I had to settle with the Game Over screen on those.

Best Box Art

I called this one back in the review for this game and it held up over the rest of the year. I love the visual of the werewolf literally ripping out of an NES cart where you can see the circuit board and chips inside. I like his giant claws and I dig the yellow and red color scheme. It is a pretty simple cover really, but I like every aspect of it.

There is something about this cover that is just striking to me. The art of Solid Snake is incredibly detailed, complete with his full gear and items along his belt. The split white and black sections are distinct and set the title apart while giving full height of the box to Solid Snake. There’s even a glimpse of Metal Gear itself, which you don’t fully grasp until you get far enough into the game. Very solid box art.

Street Cop:

This is kind of an unassuming game and graphically in game is pretty dopey looking. Despite that, the cover grabbed me in two ways. There is something so goofy about a cop flying upward on top of a giant floating badge, I love it. I also appreciate the subtle fingerprint graphics along the edges of the art.

Worst Box Art

Casino Kid:

There weren’t many bad covers this year, at least not any I found to make fun of. Casino Kid’s box isn’t so much bad as it is dull and lifeless. The playing cards are fine, but they are flanked by some dumb looking dollar signs and text and a boring background. Unless you already like card games, this will not attract your attention.

Xenophobe:

I decided to mention this cover because it is so disparate between the look of the cover and the actual game. The alien on the cover is vicious looking and highly detailed, while the aliens in game aren’t really scary aside from their relative size to the player and respawning capability. The rest of the box is ordinary anyway.

Best Graphics

Tiny Toon Adventures:

The best looking NES games make you forget you are playing an NES game. Tiny Toon Adventures graphically looks and feels a little bit like Super Mario Bros. 3, which is a fine pedigree in itself. Konami did a very good job adapting the characters to sprites as all of them are highly detailed with great animation and coloring.

Tecmo World Wrestling:

I picked this game mostly because it surprised me on how good it looked. The animations during super moves are very well done and set this game apart from the other wrestling games. Normal moves and animations work well too. I also like the font used.

The animation is top-notch.

Worst Graphics

True to form, this is a dirty looking game. This game is full of rundown buildings that I guess fit the mood of this game, I just don’t think it looks very good. The worst offender graphically is the mountain climbing section in the last stage. It’s a muddy looking background with random looking footholds where you can’t tell what is safe to stand on.

Magic Johnson’s Fast Break:

It is perhaps a little unfair to go after one of the earliest third-party NES games, but this one didn’t really have much character. The players and opponents are really dull looking with almost non-existent animation. I’m not sure what the object you pick up outside the ring is supposed to resemble. Good thing looks eventually got better once the NES picked up steam.

Best Soundtrack

Shadowgate:

The original MacVenture games do not have any music during gameplay. The soundtrack was added specifically to the NES version and it became one of the defining features of the port. It is a moody, atmospheric soundtrack with good tunes pretty much all across the board. The whiny low-on-torch music is really bad, encouraging you to put up with the torch system just to get it to go back to the good stuff.

You can really feel the heat!

Tecmo World Wrestling:

I had to put this one on the list solely for the title screen music. It is so good! It is a real shame that it only exists on the title screen because the screen typically isn’t left up long enough for the song to kick in. The rest of the music is no slouch either. I found it helped put me in the mood to grind out many wrestling matches.

This game is more or less a throwaway title in terms of gameplay, but luckily the music was composed by Tim Follin, who will always get a shoutout from me whenever his music comes up. The title screen and menu music has some real nice depth to it.

Worst Soundtrack

The music in this game suffers in a couple of ways. The melodies themselves are kind of “bleep bloop” fare from what I remember, so already that is poor. The other thing is that the volume is incredibly low and it is very hard to hear the baselines, which is where a lot of the music sits for this game. I didn’t really hear that much of it when playing on TV. It wasn’t until I watched back my recording that I got to hear a lot of what I was missing. Alas, it’s not enough to save this one.

Xenophobe:

I am probably being unfair to Xenophobe here. The title screen jingle, while brief, is quite good. What really puts this one down is that there is hardly any music during gameplay. Most of what you hear is during level clearing, and in this case there are a couple of different tunes that are pretty much the same with slight differences. I only picked up on that when listening to the music later on. For a game having little music, variety would have helped. Late Sunsoft NES games were a master class in NES music, so it is disappointing that this title has so little to offer.

Best Gameplay

This is such a fun game and one that I have played and gone back to many times over the years. The climbing and swinging around holds a lot of the appeal to me in the game. There are plenty of places to get a grasp of the hooking mechanic with a mostly gentle learning curve. The bosses are varied and fun to fight, and you acquire more special weapons the longer you play.

Get into the swing of things.

Smash T.V.:

This is a pretty simple game that I think they did a lot with. Now the gameplay is kind of samey, and some of the screens really drag on a long time. These are valid criticisms. What I like is that there is a good variety of enemies and weapons just about all the time. The randomness means that you approach challenges differently depending on what you happen to have at the time. Best of all is that even though there are tons of things moving all that time, there isn’t slowdown and virtually no noticeable flicker.

Worst Gameplay

This game suffers both from its control scheme and its length. To do moves, you initiate a grapple which gives you an exclusive timer where you tap A to scroll through a list of moves to pick the one you want with B. It is kind of a clever way to incorporate so many moves, but in practice it becomes pre-planned button mashing, and you have to do it so, so much. That may be acceptable in a shorter game, but you need to win 35 matches to beat the game, plus replays if you lose once along the way. It’s such a drag.

Bases Loaded II: Second Season:

This should probably be expected here in this category. Logically it makes sense. It isn’t a game; therefore, it has no gameplay. Bad gameplay should always trump no gameplay, so that means I had to put Videomation here. It’s still a good tool as far as the NES is concerned though.

Best Controls

Smash T.V.:

Dual stick shooters like Smash T.V. do not play well with the limited inputs on the NES controller, and trying to play this game becomes more frustrating than fun. The developers had the idea to incorporate a two-controller scheme for a single player where one D-pad moves your character and the other D-pad lets you shoot in any direction. This is the ideal way to play Smash T.V. by far. This game even supports the Four Score so that you can play two-player simultaneous each with the two-controller setup.

Dual stick is perfect for when you’re surrounded.

Shadowgate:

It might seem a little weird to put this point-and-click style adventure in the category of best controls, but it fits. The controls are so intuitive and work exactly like you would hope they do. Your pointer shifts seamlessly from the free pointing in the main window to locking down to checkboxes in the side menus, attaching to the one in closest proximity. It frees you up to focus on puzzle solving without getting bogged down in the details.

Worst Controls

Bad Street Brawler:

Here’s where I can beat down on the Power Glove. I don’t care that it is iconic and memorable, the controls are so poor that it barely works. I tried everything, multiple times, and sometimes it works okay and sometimes you can do nothing with it. If I could get it to work optimally all the time, I’d probably have a shot at beating the game with it, but otherwise I couldn’t stand trying anymore after a few weeks of trial and error. Using the normal controller is much better, but not great either with the weird jumping and hitboxes with the various attacks.

This one is a bit of a stretch. The game does control pretty well. My main gripe, still, is that the baserunning controls are not good. It is just so ingrained in me to use B toward where you want to go forward and A toward where you want to go back. Many NES baseball games do this, so it is still odd to have one that doesn’t. To my credit, I did finally get used to it in this game.

Street Cop:

I don’t mean to be so negative on games with seldom used peripherals, honest. I don’t think most games from last year had bad controls. Therefore, ones like this stand out. It is a little rough to make progress in this game as it is just as much a thought exercise as a physical one. This is the clumsiest cop ever. At least this game has responsive controls, and I enjoyed getting used to something very different from the normal.

More like Feet Cop if you ask me.

Best Playthrough

Shooting Range:

This still feels like an odd choice for me at the top of this category, but when I went back over everything, this one took the top spot. I wanted the Gold Medal for scoring at least 40,000 points, and unless you get a perfect bonus game, this is hardly obtainable. I fell well short several times. When I did finally get the perfect bonus, I ended up scoring over 50,000 points. That gulf between best score and second best score made this my best playthrough.

This is a game I am very familiar with playing, so it would have been hard for me to do badly at this game. If I did, I would have replayed anyway. I spent some time with the game several years back and got very consistent at no-death runs. I accomplished that here on my first attempt. I rate this at about medium difficulty, so a deathless run is moderately impressive.

Marble Madness:

I went into playing this game with the mindset of a deathless run. Again, it’s a game I know well, plus it is very short which lends itself to multiple tries in one sitting. I gave myself an hour of time for the best run I could get, and I came away with a run where I died twice. A no-death playthrough of Marble Madness is quite an accomplishment, so I feel really good about what I achieved. Maybe someday I will put in the time to go deathless.

Worst Playthrough

Tecmo World Wrestling:

I am not a fan of wrestling games, but I can give this one a lot of praise for its music and graphics. However, beating this game was painful, physically for sure. There was so much hyper button mashing taking place that I got fatigued. Making things more challenging is that losses in this game set you back to the previous wrestler on the ladder, and also the strength training between levels features even more button mashing. I thought this game got hard at the end and it was made worse with the progression setbacks and muscle fatigue. I scratched and clawed my way to victory, but it wasn’t pretty at all.

Genghis Khan:

I don’t feel too bad about struggling in this game, as it is far away from my wheelhouse. There were two things that happened in my long playthrough that made it one of my worst. First off, sometime in the midgame I lost several territories due to revolts from the leader I put in place. By then, the bulk of my army was heading toward the other side of the map, so it took me several hours to reverse course to reclaim my losses. The solution I came up with was to put all distant territories under direct control. This led to my second issue of all the excess menuing needed as each territory you control requires you to make a turn every month in game time. Conquering the last few territories took a long time. It was ugly, but effective.

Best Moment

Casino Kid:

While you benefit from skill in both blackjack and poker, you do need luck to stand a chance. In the final poker match of the game, I was given the best possible luck you can get. Poker is five card draw, but for one hand I was dealt a royal flush, straight up. You can’t do better than that, and I was able to take advantage by betting the max bet and having it called by my opponent. It was such a cool moment and I doubt will ever happen again.

I still don’t believe this happened.

High Speed:

This game offered a steep challenge, particularly in the pachinko mini-games. Under a time limit, you fire balls upward from a cannon at the bottom trying to get them to fall into cups strewn along the playfield. Later rounds put some of these cups in super difficult places to reach, requiring either perfect frame precision or fortuitous collisions with other shots. My winning run was full of great moments on both the pinball side and the pachinko side, but what got me mega hyped was hitting the final cup on a pachinko board on my very last ball just as time expired. I had it happen to me twice, and those were some of the most relief-filled moments I’ve had in the entire project.

Worst Moment

Bases Loaded II: Second Season:

This game is such a slog. Since you have to play so many matches, I was able to develop a good quick winning strategy. Throw your opponent outside the ring, get him trapped in the corner, and time your moves so that you can get back in the ring in time before the 20 count that disqualifies your opponent. Finding my rhythm was the key to success, but I seemed to lose it at the most inopportune time. In one run, on the final match, I got disqualified on the outside by fractions of a second, which triggered a mild controller toss and a power down of my NES.

The full story of this is pretty good I think, so you’ll have to read the review if you want to see the details. In the first Bases Loaded, I won my final 79 games in a row after discovering the super pitches. In this game, I almost pulled off a similar streak after a slow start, suffering a single loss near the end of the season that was entirely preventable. It is minor in the grand scheme of things, but at the time it was immensely annoying and depressing.

I’d rather win every game like this.

Everything about my playthrough was solid, but I completely forgot about one thing at the very end. Kabuki Quantum Fighter has a sound test after the credits, but I cut my video recording off right before I touched a button the started up the sound test. Oops! I was annoyed for missing that in my video for sure. Moreover, that screen teases a sequel to the game that never happened, which in itself can be perceived as a bad moment.

Best Surprise

Street Cop:

Power Pad games are often overlooked due to the hardware requirements required for play. This worked out to my advantage. I put together a decent run of the game for video, then I checked out speedrun.com and found out that would be the fastest time submitted. Granted, there was only one other time submitted, but I have claimed it as a world record run! I imagine there are faster playthroughs out there, so I may have to defend it someday, but for now I am once again a world record holder! (I lost the one I had claimed for AD&D: Heroes of the Lance … by quite a lot.)

Space Shuttle Project:

This game was such a joy to discover. It is hard to know what kind of game this is only looking at the cart. What I discovered was that it is a mini-game compilation where you prepare a shuttle, launch it, and perform basic space missions. The game lost its shine for being too drawn out and repetitive, but the first few passes were so unexpected and fun. I hope I find more surprises like this in the NES library.

Worst Surprise

Bad Street Brawler:

More bad mouthing the Power Glove! Knowing the history, I should not have expected much. The Power Glove was a little bit rushed to market with Bad Street Brawler sort of shoehorned in as part of the Power Glove Gaming Series. The only other title bearing that moniker is Super Glove Ball launching a year later, which I hope means it is a better Power Glove experience. That said, I came in with the expectation that the Power Glove should work fairly well with Bad Street Brawler and I came away angry and confused. History may rewrite itself once I play Super Glove Ball but suffice it to say I have higher expectations for it.

How would I do this with the Power Glove?

The first stage of Dirty Harry is a very complicated building maze. Going down alleyways sort of turns you 90 degrees so that the streets and alleyways are connected in 3D space. Understanding that helped make a little sense out of the structure, but it is still tricky to navigate without a map. I got pretty far into the stage and started exploring buildings in a remote corner of the streets looking for surprise. In the deepest room of the deepest building in the deepest street is what is called the Ha Ha Ha room. It is a room with no exit, effectively a soft lock, and you are forced to reset and try again. It is pure evil in video game form.

WWF Wrestlemania Challenge:

There were multiple mini-surprises here, aspects of the game that detracted from my experience. The card key system forces you to equip the exact key you need to open a door, and you don’t know what key works unless you memorize it or choose the proper one randomly. Some building rooms form giant holes once you step within range, leaving you with virtually no time to back up and escape death. Navigating the maze rooms are a requirement to beat the game, but you both have to recognize what they are and figure out how to get through them with no in-game knowledge given on how to proceed.

Best WWF Game

So here is where I include all of the games that haven’t already been mentioned! WWF Wrestlemania Challenge was one of three wrestling games on this list and it sits firmly in the middle. It’s not a good or memorable as Tecmo World Wrestling yet was infinitely better than Tag Team Wrestling. It wasn’t that memorable for me really, simply a decent game that wasn’t too hard to clear. And clearly it was the best wrestling game bearing the WWF license.

Best Destruction

Cabal:

This is a pretty good port of the arcade game. There’s so much shooting and plenty of things to shoot. I would say its defining feature, aside from the gameplay perspective, is that the backgrounds are destroyable. They come crumbling down after much firepower, opening up clear space so that enemies can’t hide from you. Very satisfying.

Sometimes you can blow up even bigger things.

Best Familiar Game

This was an easy pick for me. Kabuki Quantum Fighter is one of those games I will go back to if I have a little bit of free time to kill. I always have a good time breezing through it with its strong controls and great graphics and music.

I have sort of a love/hate relationship with this game, for technical reasons. I owned this game as a teenager and tried to play it several times, only for my dirty NES console to get bumped, resetting the game and destroying my save. I gave up on it for a long time before finally beating it through emulation in my 20’s. This game absolutely holds up as one of the best NES RPG’s, and though it took a long time to clear, the mix of familiar and somewhat unfamiliar on this second-ever playthrough kept me going.

Best New Game

For all of the warts and issues this game has, I still think it was one of the best NES games I played last year. The graphics and music are pretty good. This game had a dungeon crawl feel for me throughout the first half of the game, and I found it exciting to get just a little bit further through the buildings and find new stuff. There are some cool boss battles here and plenty of weapons to fight them with.

Man vs. Tank

Shadowgate:

This was one of those games that passed me by when I was younger, partly by chance and partly by choice. I am trying to be open minded about NES games now and I was intrigued by trying to figure out this game. I came away mostly impressed at the quality of the game with its near-perfect controls and music, and also slightly annoyed from menuing through old items and struggling with puzzle solutions.

Space Shuttle Project:

I only mention this game here because it was such a pleasant surprise to see what this game was and that it was of good quality to boot. I remember smiling big my first time through a mission, slightly frowning more and more the longer it took to get to the end of everything. This game suffers from repetitiveness big time, but the first few times playing were quite enjoyable.

Worst Game

This game was a real mess. The controls are clunky, the graphics are muddy and murky, the music is way too low, and the navigation of the first stage alone is maddening. The whole game could have been the first level and it would have been plenty tough with just that. The game gets a little better later on, but still not great. The final level’s mountain sequence is really rough, and sometimes you get stuck backtracking through it if you make a wrong move past there. Not so much fun at all. I will say, the ending to this game is pretty special considering what you have to put up with to see it. It’s a shame that most players won’t see it.

We are capping off this year’s review with, you guessed it, the non-game Videomation. I mean, what else could it be? Thanks very much for reading, we’ll do this again next year!

tag : 2019, in, review, year

by : arnpoly

comment : 0

APR

2019

2018 Year In Review

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

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

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

The 2018 Take On The NES Library Year In Review

Hardest Game

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

This game is ridiculous to beat.

Danny Sullivan’s Indy Heat:

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

Sky Kid:

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

Easiest Game

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

Baseball Simulator 1.000:

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

Shortest Game

Puss ‘N Boots: Pero’s Great Adventure:

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

It’s easy because there isn’t that much to do usually.

Defender of the Crown:

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

Longest Game

Dragon Warrior II:

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

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

Oldest Game

Chubby Cherub:

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

I get the name cause there’s so much to eat everywhere.

Volleyball:

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

Bill Elliott’s NASCAR Challenge:

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

Newest Game

Bonk’s Adventure:

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

Duck Tales 2:

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

Best Character

A Boy and His Blob:

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

He’s so happy to help!

Felix the Cat:

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

Worst Character

Whomp ‘Em:

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

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

Best Ending

Gemfire:

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

They used a lot of colors during this ending

Isolated Warrior:

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

Duck Tales 2:

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

Worst Ending

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

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

It looks okay, but it’s a bad ending

Bonk’s Adventure:

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

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

Best Box Art

Laser Invasion:

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

A Boy and His Blob:

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

Worst Box Art

Roundball: 2-on-2 Challenge:

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

Chubby Cherub:

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

Best Graphics

Super C:

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

The Rocketeer:

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

Prince of Persia:

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

Worst Graphics

The Terminator:

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

What’s in the water exactly?

Bomberman:

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

Best Soundtrack

Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers:

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

Dragon Warrior II:

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

Worst Soundtrack

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

There’s a lot for this game to handle.

Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers:

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

Best Gameplay

Whomp ‘Em:

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

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

Worst Gameplay

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

Volleyball:

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

Oh no, the ball hit off my head so it’s gone.

Best Controls

Super C:

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

Bomberman:

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

Worst Controls

Defender of the Crown:

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

Lining this up is maddening.

Kung-Fu Heroes:

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

Isolated Warrior:

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

Best Playthrough

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

RoadBlasters:

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

A sweet sigh of relief.

Milon’s Secret Castle:

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

Worst Playthrough

Volleyball:

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

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

Best Moment

Bill Elliott’s NASCAR Challenge:

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

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

Just drive directly into wide turns and you’ll be okay.

Worst Moment

Sky Kid:

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

Jordan vs. Bird: One on One:

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

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

Imagine this with the ball just bouncing forever.

Best Surprise

Gemfire:

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

Baseball Simulator 1.000:

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

Worst Surprise

Pipe Dream:

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

The pipeline might not look great, but at least it’s not glitchy.

Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers:

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

Best Familiar Game

Super C:

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

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

Best New Game

Laser Invasion:

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

Brief bouts of lightning sure are pretty.

Baseball Simulator 1.000:

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

Worst Game

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

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

I can’t believe I didn’t mention these awful conveyors.

Snoopy’s Silly Sports Spectacular:

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

Ignored But Not Forgotten

The Black Bass:

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

Desert Commander:

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

James Bond Jr.:

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

There’s lots to do in the game and it looks pretty good.

Robocop:

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

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

Sqoon:

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

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:

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

Always stop for the scroll weapon.

Wacky Races:

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

WWF Wrestlemania:

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

tag : 2018, in, review, year

by : arnpoly

comment : 2

MAR

2018

2017 Year In Review

The last blog for games finished in 2017 has been posted, so that means the Year In Review is back! Last year I published this post in June, and now I’ve gotten it pushed up to March. Maybe next year’s entry will come even sooner.

My project and website are still chugging along after my second full year, but things did slow down quite a lot in 2017. At the start of the year, I was feeling convicted of my approach to ignore a bunch of NES games from the library. I have decided to work two lists and slowly incorporate all those neglected games. The first from my so-called snub list was Bases Loaded. That required a full season of games and took me two months of real time to beat. Almost immediately after that, the Nintendo Switch came out. Breath of the Wild has been an enormous time sink to say the least. It’s been a full year since release and I still haven’t beaten the game, and I’ve been playing it several nights a week for most of the year. A large chunk of time went into Super Mario Odyssey too. Those two games have sucked away over 250 hours since launch, though admittedly some of those hours would not have went toward the project just because playing the Switch in bed is so darn convenient. If all that wasn’t enough, I also took a month break to participate in, and win, the NintendoAge 2017 NES contest. I really wanted to be farther along than I am, but then I also wanted to do all this other stuff. I have focused on beating more games in 2018. Maybe I can make up this year for a slower last year.

Even in a lean year, I still managed to finish 24 games for the project in 2017. From Rollergames at #45 to Super Team Games at #68, there’s plenty of good and bad things within those games to build up a decent review. For the Year in Review I am taking the same approach as last year. I have several categories and I will try and pick two games for each one. Every game will get a final word, even if it doesn’t fit in any of these categories.

The 2017 Take On The NES Library Year In Review

Hardest Game

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Right off the bat, I’m starting up some controversy with this pick. I didn’t have any 10/10 rated games in 2017 and Ninja Gaiden was the only one I scored a 9, so it’s the hardest game by my standards. Now I didn’t have any trouble beating the game because I’m so familiar with it, but I stand by my statement that the last area is very difficult to complete blind.

Super Team Games

There were a few games I rated an 8 that could have gone here, but I’m going to say Super Team Games because at first I thought I might not physically be able to beat this game. This was the most exhausting game on my list, and I would rather go back and play any of those other games than to put up with Super Team Games again.

Easiest Game

Dragon Warrior

This was a pretty clear choice for easiest game. Dragon Warrior doesn’t require any dexterity to play well and you can always make progress in experience by fighting. Some of the puzzles are obtuse but that’s the only source of difficulty I could find.

Just mash A.

Bases Loaded

This game did not start out easy, but once I got the hang of it and figured out the pitching exploit, I couldn’t lose. Seems like easiest game material to me.

Shortest Game

Championship Bowling

Ten frames of bowling sure go by fast, especially when you just push buttons and don’t have to wait long for the pins to be set back up. Bowling a perfect game is even faster.

This game gets the secondary honor just because it was far shorter than I would have expected. There aren’t too many NES platformers that can be casually completed in around 15 minutes for the full game.

Longest Game

Bases Loaded

This baseball game took me around 40 hours to complete, making it by far the longest game of 2017. Winning 80 games when each game lasts 25-30 minutes seems even longer.

I saw this screen for hours and hours.

Dragon Warrior

RPGs will likely dominate this category for years to come. Dragon Warrior is one of the shorter RPGs on the console, but it still took many hours to complete. In a lean year for completions it didn’t have much competition.

Oldest Game

Burgertime

The arcade version of Burgertime was released in 1982 which is the earliest game on this list. The NES version came out in May 1987, so Burgertime is also the earliest NES release I played last year. (Somehow I left the NES release date out of my review, so it’s a good thing I can clear it up here.)

Section Z

Here is another separation of arcade version to NES game, though there is less of a time gap. Section Z hit the arcades in late 1985 and the NES reimagining came out in July 1987, two months after NES Burgertime.

Newest Game

There was a revision to the back label that occurred sometime in June 1992. It’s a curious decision given the Super Nintendo was in full swing. Gargoyle’s Quest II, released in October 1992, was both the latest NES release and the only game with the new back label on this list.

M.C. Kids

I’m surprised I didn’t beat any NES games from 1993 or 1994 last year. There are 55 North American NES releases in those two years, so I might expect to beat a couple of them a year. M.C. Kids was a February 1992 release and is the runner-up. There were a couple of January 1992 releases that just missed the mark.

Best Character

AD&D: Heroes of the Lance

I’m a big fan of Firebrand and this series. He is not incredibly nimble or anything, but he has a lot of versatility. He can hover with his wings for awhile and cling to walls, so he can travel just about anywhere he wants. Later, he can make platforms in mid-air or cover spiked walls. These are great abilities. Perhaps his best quality is his blazing speed on the overworld, keeping those sections as brief as possible to better emphasize the action sequences.

Firebrand can go just about anywhere.

Dragon Fighter

Like Firebrand, on the surface our hero isn’t all that exciting. He has a short sword and a limited charge attack. The ability to turn into a flying dragon at nearly any time is really fun to use and helps out a lot in a jam. That alone earns him a spot here.

Golgo 13

I have to give a special nod here to our pal Duke Togo. He is a master at hand-to-hand combat, uses a sniper rifle professionally, can scuba dive, and pilot a helicopter. He also gets to stop for a quick smoke break and gets laid a couple of times. What’s not to love?

Worst Character

This award doesn’t go to just one character, but half of the entire party in this game. Once I got into it, I realized I only needed three of the eight characters to beat this game. The spell casters Raistlin and Goldmoon are essential, while Caramon handles the fighting. Sturm is at least good for absorbing some damage in the front row. The rest were completely unnecessary. That means that Tanis, Tasslehoff, Riverwind, and Flint were the worst characters of the year.

You get to see all the useless characters for the whole game.

I have nothing against the character of Rambo or any of the movies or anything like that. I even liked the NES game. It’s just playing as Rambo feels very clumsy and slippery. He’s also a known name and can’t hide behind obscurity. That makes him a good fit as one of the worst characters.

Best Ending

This game has it all. The great cutscenes from the rest of the game carried through to the ending. Ryu saves the day, there’s a beautiful sunset, and there are some great tunes to go along with it. Easily the best ending of the year.

Rambo gets some credit here too because of the interactive ending. Talking to the characters again and walking around gives it ending more meaning. Dragon Warrior does this too, but you can’t turn a character into a frog there, so Rambo gets the nod.

Worst Ending

Bases Loaded

After all of those games and all of those hours, all you get is a crummy parade. At least it’s an actual ending, and honestly I’m not sure I should have expected anything more grandiose as a reward. The return on investment is very poor, so that’s why it goes here.

Burgertime, Sky Shark, Tiger-Heli

The worst ending in an NES game might be no ending at all. That’s a good philosophy to have because I like to document actual ending screens. Otherwise, I have to fake it, and that can sometimes be problematic. I played three games last year with no ending, so they all share this dubious distinction.

Best Box Art

AD&D: Heroes of the Lance

Sometimes the box art doesn’t properly capture the spirit of the game it’s advertising, and less often they can get away with it if the game is good enough. Ninja Gaiden is a great example. Why is Ryu so high above the ground, and why is the city below him engulfed in flames? Neither is indicative of gameplay, but the visual idea sure is awesome. I like it!

Burgertime

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but this box art is really cool. I love how Peter Pepper is holding this burger that is still being built, and running away with this look of fear as he is pursued by angry anthropomorphic food items. I guess it just all comes together in a neat way.

Worst Box Art

Championship Bowling

I realize there’s only so much you can do for art of a bowling game, but this one is pretty lackluster. The flying pins are scattered way too much for that kind of throw. I doubt the bowler would be in that exact position after the ball reaches the pins. The large bowling pin is just there to take up space against the plain black background. It’s a boring cover.

Most of the box art from this past year isn’t outright awful. The box art for Heroes of the Lance isn’t that terrible either. This is a case where the art is so misleading that it’s bad, especially since the game isn’t that interesting. Warriors with lances riding dragons is awesome in concept but there’s none of that in the game. I get that it’s there because it’s from the Dragonlance series, but I bet this box misled a bunch of people.

Best Graphics

Dragon Fighter

The main reason I chose Dragon Fighter is for a neat graphical effect in the first stage. The snow falling in the background is multilayered because of two different sets of repeating snowfall tiles in columns next to each other. It’s a simple effect but it looks nice. The rest of the game is well drawn and animated as well, so Dragon Fighter isn’t just a one-trick pony in the graphics department.

Such beautiful falling snow!

M.C. Kids

I had a few candidates here but I decided on M.C. Kids. It has a very clean look with some smooth animation. The McDonalds characters look better than I would have expected. I don’t remember any graphical glitches or flickering either. Solid game!

Worst Graphics

Tiger-Heli

None of the games on this list have terrible graphics. The only things that stood out last year where graphical glitches. Tiger-Heli is full of them. The whirling blades of the Tiger-Heli take up enough sprite slots that a couple of enemies next to them will have missing tiles. The game flickers a lot to try and spread out the sprite tile gaps and it’s just a mess. I think it’s a little unfair to Tiger-Heli because the developers were trying the best they could under the limitations of a new system at the time.

This was easily the best image I got from this part.

Section Z

Speaking of graphical glitches, Section Z has them too. The NES can only display eight sprite tiles in a row. Any additional tiles are left blank. Unlike Tiger-Heli, this game does not have a sprite cycling routine to manage missing tiles. The game mostly stays away from situations where this would be an issue, but there are a few sections with a row of enemies that can have a couple not drawn on screen at all. I know I got killed by an invisible enemy once and that should never have happened.

Best Soundtrack

Rollergames

The composers of Konami always seem to make rockin’ music, and they nailed it with Rollergames. I believe the developers used the oft-ignored sampling channel to drive the bass line, so the game has a rich sound to it. The music is usually upbeat and meant to get you moving, so it’s a great fit for the game too.

The soundtrack to Ninja Gaiden has several songs that are instantly recognizable and well-known. It’s a great soundtrack to fit the action and it’s an excellent fit on this list.

Worst Soundtrack

World Class Track Meet

There’s not much music in the game, and what’s here isn’t great. At least it’s not ear-grating, but I would normally expect better from an original NES game.

Burgertime

I get that it is an early NES game based on an early arcade port, so the music wasn’t as high a consideration. I don’t even know what music the arcade game had, if any. What we get here are a couple of short loops of music that aren’t anything special.

Best Gameplay

The reasons why Firebrand is such a great character are mostly the same reasons the gameplay is so fun. Firebrand covers vertical movement with climbing and horizontal movement with hovering. This makes the levels large enough to incorporate some alternate paths. His abilities scale nicely and give a good difficulty curve for the game. The bosses are fun to fight too, and the fetch questing isn’t so bad.

Kiwi Kraze

I like the movement Kiwi Kraze offers. The platforming is basic, sure, but hijacking balloons and flying them around is quite fun. This opens up the levels quite a bit and there’s plenty of room to explore and search out the right path through the level. Bosses are neat too, especially the first one.

Stealing balloons at its finest.

Worst Gameplay

Super Team Games

Power Pad games should be simple enough to do what they set out to do. World Class Track Meet handles things okay, but Super Team Games feels like it takes a step backward. You can run fast on the Power Pad and not actually run fast in game. Most of the events are run and jump, or run in a different way. It’s not fun and it’s exhausting on top of it. The skateboard race is better, and I’m sure the multiplayer is even more fun, but the single player drags things down too much.

American Gladiators

Variety can often make for good gameplay, and most of American Gladiators is fun to play. The real offender here is the Human Cannonball event. It should just be a matter of timing, but the later levels will automatically knock you out even with perfect timing. Rather, you have to wait an arbitrary amount of swings before the gladiator lets his guard down. That’s poor, non-intuitive design.

No, don’t go yet.

Best Moment

American Gladiators

Even though the game has one unfair event, the last part of my run was my best moment of the year. I played through the whole game and reached the Eliminator with plenty of lives. I got to the last part easy enough and then proceeded to completely blow it, almost. On the second to last try, I beat the game for the very first time. I was relieved!

Championship Bowling

Figuring out the perfect 300 game started to seem like it would take a miracle after the first couple days of attempts. The first three or four frames would go well and then I couldn’t throw a strike. Once I found my second shot to pick up the remaining strikes, it was an incremental process of going perfect further and further into the round. I’m pretty sure this was the first time I bowled a perfect game either in real life or in a game, so I found it exciting to figure out a repeatable strategy.

Worst Moment

AD&D: Heroes of the Lance

I casually played through Rambo the first time. I knew I could beat the game quite a bit faster once I knew what to do, so I decided to do a longplay the second time around. Unfortunately, my computer crashed partway through recording and I lost the entire first half of the game.

Golgo 13

In Act 3, you dive through the water and explore a base in the first-person mode. I wandered around for a long time and wasn’t getting anywhere, finally deciding to quit for the night. That was when I read the manual and discovered it contained maps. One of those maps was for a fake base, and it matched up perfectly with the area I stumbled around in. Oops! The next time went much better.

Best Surprise

You might think I’m mentioning this game here because I had a better time with it than I expected, but I’m going in a different direction. I discovered a little while back that speedrun.com didn’t have any recorded runs of Heroes of the Lance on NES. I looked up some longplays on YouTube and no one beat the game any faster than I did. I submitted my recording and I am currently the world record holder for the NES version!

Snow Brothers

I wanted to try beating the game without continuing just because it’s a game that I enjoy playing. I should be good enough to beat it this way, and I did just that. That’s when I discovered the ending has a few extra scenes if you beat the game without continuing. I found no evidence of this online from what I could find either, so it was a pleasant surprise to stumble on a best ending I didn’t know existed.

Worst Surprise

When playing a game for the first time, you just kind of roll with it. I reached a part far off the beaten path that I thought was required, only to have to turn around after gaining nothing. I had to wander for a while but I eventually figured out what to do. I looked up an FAQ after I beat the game and realized I had somehow missed an entire side section of the game. Supposedly, I was late reaching a certain part of the game that locked me out without me knowing.

Mendel Palace

This is a game where the action gets crazy and anything can happen. The sun tile is usually a gift when it appears, flipping all the tiles on the board and killing most enemies in its wake. Some late levels in the game give you an early sun tile that ends up revealing a screen full of enemy warp tiles. Now you have to deal with the max number of enemies with more to come when you knock them out. Not cool!

This level still gives me nightmares.

Best Familiar Game

Snow Brothers

It might be a surprise to see this here just because it wasn’t mentioned so much in the above categories. I find this one of the most fun games to play on the NES. I like screen clearing games like this along with the bonuses and boss fights. It’s a great pick up and play game and one I go back to repeatedly.

I sought out Gargoyle’s Quest II in college after stumbling upon it in emulation. I knew I had to have a copy of it, and I ended up playing through it a few times. I know I’ll play it again someday because it’s fun and has a good challenge in the later stages.