Here we go ‘round the race driving track so early in the morning.

One of the few songs in the game is here!

To Beat: Finish 8 Races
To Complete: Win the Championship
What I Did: Completed the game
Played: 8/16/20 – 9/27/20
Difficulty: 9/10
My Difficulty: 9/10
My Video: Days of Thunder Longplay

I can’t say if this is true of all NES racing games, but the ones I have played and beaten so far have been awfully hard.  Bill Elliott’s NASCAR Challenge was surprisingly puzzle-like in configuring the car properly for top speed, and it also had a low threshold for failure that made the game very challenging.  Nigel Mansell’s World Championship Racing had more arcade style racing but required near perfection to post top times and win races.  That game also had randomness in the pit stops that often made good finishes next to impossible.  Days of Thunder has a pretty strong claim for being the hardest of these three games and was very close to earning a surprise 10/10 difficulty rating.  Read on to discover why this game is so hard and I had to do to clear it.

Days of Thunder was a Summer 1990 racing film.  It stars Tom Cruise, was directed by Tony Scott, and produced by both Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer.  Production on the film seemed troubled with many reported arguments between the director and producers on how certain scenes were shot.  As a result, the film went way over budget, coming it at around $55 million.  Despite all the issue involved, the movie ended up a financial success, grossing over $150 million worldwide, plus tens of millions more in rentals.  The film was received by mixed reviews critically.

Days of Thunder was adapted into a couple of video games.  The initial version was a PC release in 1990, developed by Argonaut Software and published by Mindscape.  This version was ported to many other computers, as well as the NES.  The NES version of Days of Thunder was released in October 1990.  This port was also published by Mindscape but was developed by Beam Software.  PAL versions were released in April 1991.  A Game Boy version also followed in 1992.  The 2nd Days of Thunder game was a PS3 and Xbox 360 release in 2011 for the 20th anniversary of the film.  This game had very few critical reviews, but of those it had it was received poorly.

You can pull right up to the front of the place.

The story of this game follows in line fairly well with the source material.  You play the role of Cole Trickle, a rookie driver who has never driven in stock car racing before.  Even still, he has his eyes on winning and winning big.  To win the championship, he will need to win many races including beating his rivals Rowdy Burns and Russ Wheeler, both characters from the film.  This game features an eight-race series with a leaderboard and you will need to perform very well if you expect to win.

The racing controls are very straightforward.  All races in this game are run on circular tracks driving counter-clockwise around the track.  You use the A button to accelerate and the B button to brake.  After accelerating you can let go of the A button and maintain speed without pressing anything.  Tap the B button to brake.  Once you initiate the brake, you will continue to slow down until you press A again.  Naturally, you will use Left and Right to turn.  The Select button pauses the game.  

While racing in this game takes place from behind the car, you still see different indicators about the car along the edges of the screen.  The top left shows your fuel gauge, nice and big.  The top right side shows which lap you are on, as well as either timings for qualifying or your position in the current race.  The two round meters are your speedometer and tachometer respectively.  The speedometer indicates how fast you are going, while the tachometer shows how many RPMs your engine is running.  You may notice during driving that your acceleration and braking most directly affect your tachometer.  The lower right shows a top down image of your car, with color coded damage and wear indicators.  You can see the condition of your tires, engine, and fuel tank.  Green is good, yellow means some wear, purple means significant wear, and red is extreme wear.  Condition is affected both by normal driving over time, as well as collisions with other drivers or the sides of the tracks.  Your driving performance is reduced once components begin to wear.

Before competing in each race, you must run qualifying laps first.  The first thing you’ll see is a top down overview of the racetrack along with a text scrawl at the bottom of the screen.  Move past this screen and you go directly into the action.  Each course requires you to drive four qualifying laps first.  The bottom text as the laps begin show you the target time you are trying to beat in any one lap of the four.  On the right side you will see your current lap timer as well as your best completed lap, which starts off at 0.  It turns out the lap you want to focus on the most is the second lap because the first lap begins with you not at top speed, and by the third lap you will start having tire wear which reduces your performance just enough to make a difference.  Your best lap determines where you begin the race.  Beat the target time to start in pole position, tie the target time to start second, and then you lose a place for every tenth of a second slower than that.  At worst, you’ll start the race in eighth place.

Just you and the track. Go fast!

Now that qualifying is finished, it’s time to race.  You will first see the same top down view as before, but also you see your starting position.  If you pay attention to the text on this screen, it will tell you how many laps the race is, which is very important to know.  Press Start to immediately begin the race.  Now the real fun begins as you try to handle the turns, weave around other drivers, and avoid collisions to keep your car in tip-top shape.  You earn points for completing each race that are reflected on the overall leaderboard.  The scores from 1st through 8th place are 175, 170, 165, 160, 155, 150, 146, and 142.  No matter how many cars are in the race, it seems you cannot do worse than 8th place if you finish the race.  If you are unable to finish the race, you get no points, which is disastrous.  There is also a 5 point bonus for leading any individual lap, as well as another 5 point bonus to the driver who led the most laps in the race.  The leaderboard is cumulative over all races.

Racing is tough, and sometimes you don’t drive all that well and finish poorly.  Eventually, your team and sponsors have had enough of bad driving and demand that you run additional time trials to prove your mettle.  If this happens, after a race you will receive a telegram expressing disappointment along with a goal time they want you to meet.  This part functions the same as qualifying, only the goal time is an average of your laps, not just the best lap.  If you average ahead of the goal time, they allow you to continue racing, but if you fail, it is Game Over and you must restart from the beginning.  This sequence can happen up to three times in the game with stricter goal times each time.  Poor enough racing to trigger this for a fourth time is automatic Game Over as well, though I never saw this scenario.

A unique, and frustrating feature of this game are what happens in the pit stops.  Pit lane appears on the left side just before the lap finishes.  You must slow down and drive left into pit lane.  Go too fast and you will drive right through, wasting time and putting you at risk if you are in a dire situation with the car.  In the pits, you can refuel, replace your tires, and repair your engine, but you must do so manually.  Upon entering, fresh tires and jacks are in position, as well as your crew members.  There are three roving crew members that handle tires, one dedicated refueler, and one dedicated engine mechanic.  One at a time you control the pit crew members, putting them into place and performing actions.  Press the B button to cycle between the pit crew members.  You control the flashing person directly with the D-pad.  Press the A button to perform a context-specific action.

Pit stop management can be super tedious.

Juggling all the pit crew members around to perform the actions you need while under the clock can absolutely make or break your race, so you need to have a plan and execute quickly.  Replacing the tires is the most complicated, time consuming, and necessary procedure.  First off, you need a person in front of the jack, then press A to lift up that side of the car.  Next, switch to another roving member, put them in front of the old tire, and press A to start replacing it.  You will do the same thing with the other tire while this is taking place.  The tire replacement happens completely without any further interaction, and the pit crew member automatically backs away when finished.  To complete this, you need the center person to unjack the car and set it back down.  Now if you need to replace the right side tires, which you most likely will do, you need to run those same members one at a time around the car to the opposite side and perform the same procedure as above.  The positioning in front of the jack and tires is very precise and they won’t do the work unless they are just in the right spot.  Crew members can also get stuck on the sides of the car while running around, adding to the frustration.  Refueling is more simple, just move the refueler to the right and press A to start fueling.  However, the car must be lowered on that side.  Similarly, move the mechanic to the left to start fixing the engine, however in this case the car must be raised on the right side to perform the repairs.  You will often want to do everything in the pits, and there is a flow to it once you do it enough.  You have to do it fast as the race keeps happening and you lose position the longer you spend in the pits.  The most effective pit stops with all repairs take between 18-22 seconds, often it ends up longer than that due to the controls.

Something special happens at the end of the game that lines up well with the events of the movie.  Before the final race, you receive a telegram that says Rowdy, the leaderboard champion, has suffered some serious injuries and cannot compete in the final race.  You have been asked to drive his car in his stead, presumably to allow him to remain sponsored or something like that.  For this final race, you will be driving his Mello Yello car.  This helps a lot because he won’t receive any points for the race, allowing you to come from behind and become the champion if you are also able to fend off Russ.  This also means for the duration of the game you only need to worry about maintaining second place overall.

Feels good to pull out in front!

Beating this game is one of those nebulous situations.  Just completing all the races is difficult enough, with the threat of getting kicked out for driving too poorly looming all the time.  But with a little practice, you can finish all the races and get an ending screen.  It turns out it is the same ending screen you get if you win the championship.  Does that make it a bad ending or a normal ending?  I suppose that is up for debate, though it is clear in my mind.  Considering it is a racing game, and that most of the other racers I’ve played on the NES require winning the title, that’s what I settled on here as well.  It doesn’t feel right to simply finish without being the best, plus there is a congratulations sequence for getting first place, an actual good ending.  Making this difficult is that this game has no continues or passwords whatsoever.  It is only 8 races, but there is little room for error over a full season.

This was my first time playing Days of Thunder.  I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but I don’t care for racing games at all, and also I never saw this movie.  This is one of those cheap, filler NES games that is not super common but easy to come across eventually in a game lot, for instance.  The one thing I did remember about my time from testing my cart was that the track animation as you are driving looks really nice.  That was my only memory of this game.

This game works against the player in several ways.  The driving mechanics seem straightforward enough.  You don’t have to hold A the entire time and slowing down in the curves is a matter of tapping B to slow down a bit and tapping A to maintain speed.  If you do it correctly, by holding left throughout the turn and starting low, you should move slightly toward the outside and finish the curve near the edge without touching the outside wall.  This is the standard technique that you will do over and over.  Navigating around the cars while doing this isn’t too bad, until you get to Rowdy in 1st and Russ in 2nd.  Their AI is different than all the other drivers.  Russ in particular is really a jerk as he always moves to get in front of you.  Rowdy tries to do the same but always holds the line in the curves, giving you a little more room to get around him.  There isn’t much room to squeak by them, so you need to get in close and sort of slingshot around them without touching them.  Any kind of bumping will add extra wear to your tires, and what’s worse is that if your fuel tank or engine gets degraded at all, there’s really nothing you can do to advance until you pit.  Pitting pretty much always loses you position even if you are on top of your game.  And that’s another thing, planning out when you should pit is also important.  Usually you will need to pit twice per race and you need to space them out as much as possible so as to keep in good running shape while also properly managing fuel usage.  Running out of fuel is a lost race and an automatic reset if you are set on winning the title.

It can feel hopeless attempting to pass your rivals.

My trajectory through this game to completion was about what you might expect.  I didn’t get very far for the first couple nights, struggling through pit stops and ending with poor results.  You can get decently far into the game even when you drive badly; the third time trial is really tough without proper seasoning but it takes several races to trigger that.  Within a few days I was able to finish 3rd in a lot of the races, enough to get through the game 2nd overall due to Rowdy dropping out.  This is where I stalled out for a long time.  I was always losing ground in the turns but couldn’t get the hang of taking them properly.  I spent one entire night grinding the first track just to see what kind of edge I could find, ultimately finding nothing.  After 10 hours total and over half of that with no progress, I decided to research proper strategies, and the answer was pretty simple.  I needed to start braking before the turn, not into the turn.  You don’t need to brake that much, just a little bit slower going into the turn and I took the whole thing at a higher speed than I was before.  Before I could do turns with the tachometer pointed between 3 and 4, now I could have it pointed at the 5 and still handle the turns perfectly.  This was the edge I needed.  Now I can get right behind the lead car just before the turn starts, and then whip around the outside and get in front.  On my winning attempt, I was able to win both of the first two races, setting the pace.  I didn’t do nearly as well from then on, even a 5th place finish in there, but by the end I edged out Russ by only five points on the board.  It was a hard fought victory for sure.

In early to mid-2020, the Video Game History Foundation acquired development materials from the late Chris Oberth, such as old computers and floppy disks.  Among these items was the source code for a completely different NES version of Days of Thunder that had never saw that light of day.  Thanks to the tireless efforts of these video game preservationists, the source code was compiled, and they managed to create a working build of this long lost title.  You can watch a gameplay video right here, the source code has been made public, and you can find a downloadable ROM floating around the Internet.  This version of the game features qualifying laps in the first-person perspective, with races taking place in a side view.  The pit stop mechanics are also different but do carry over the “do it yourself” feel from the released version.  I am so glad that things like this are still being found today.

While it’s no surprise that I was less than thrilled about playing this game, I can definitely respect the work that went into making it.  The graphics in this game are well done.  The way the track redraws as you approach curves really gives the game a sense of depth, done in a different way than other racers.  The music, like many racing games, is all sound effects during the races, but the smaller tunes in between parts sound good.  The game controls well during the actual racing and the driving feels right.  The controls during the pit stops are both finicky and challenging, not in a good way.  This is what sets this game apart, but also what leads to frustration and guaranteed time loss no matter how efficient you are.  That part could have been improved for certain.  Having no password or retry system really pushes the difficulty near the max.  As far as movie adaptations goes, this one is just fine.  I think it has some good qualities as a racing game.  I am happy this one is in my rearview mirror.

#164 – Days of Thunder

The game with the hair whip.

Nice bold heading!

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 8/5/19
Difficulty: 5/10
My Difficulty: 2/10
My Video: Kabuki Quantum Fighter Longplay

There aren’t many NES games that have a more interesting title than Kabuki Quantum Fighter. Once you know a little more about the background of the game and a bit of history, the title makes perfect sense. Your main character resembles an ancient Kabuki dancer, complete with elaborate makeup and clothing. The game takes places inside of a large, probably quantum computer. And, of course, in a game you will be doing some fighting. There you have it: Kabuki Quantum Fighter. Beyond the surprisingly accurate name, this is a real gem of a game that I enjoy playing quite a lot.

Kabuki Quantum Fighter was first released on the Famicom under the title Jigoku Gokurakumaru. The game was developed by Human Entertainment. The Japanese release was published by Pack-In Video and came out in December 1990. The NES release shortly followed in North America in January 1991, published by HAL America. The European NES release was in February 1992, published by HAL Laboratory. Sadly, this game has not been re-released digitally and is only available on these older platforms.

The game’s story takes place in a futuristic Earth. The planet has a main defense computer that has been affected by a nasty virus. The only way to combat the virus is to go inside the computer and take it out from within. You play the role of the brave Colonel Scott O’Connor who has volunteered to neutralize the threat. To do this, he has to be converted into raw binary data through the untested Image Transfer System in order to fight the virus. The transfer works, but his appearance is altered to that of one of his ancestors who was a Kabuki dancer. To beat the game, just clear the game’s six stages.

A powerful head of hair.

Kabuki Quantum Fighter is a platformer with a standard control scheme. You use the D-pad to walk around left or right. The A button jumps and you can control the height of your jump with how long the button is held. The B button attacks, only this game uses Scott’s flowing red locks as a whip to damage enemies. You can crouch down by holding Down. Your attack in the crouched position is a short-range punch. There are hooks scattered throughout the stages than you can hang from by jumping into them from below. While hanging, the B button performs a sweeping kick. You can drop down from hanging by pressing Down or you can jump with A, allowing you to flip up to a higher ledge or to another nearby hook. You can attach to some walls and you can climb them by pressing Up or Down. The Select button switches your weapon, and the Start button pauses the action. You can switch weapons while paused.

Your status bar is at the bottom of the screen. On the left, you see your life bar, your chip meter, and the boss’s health bar. Below that is your score, the number of lives remaining, and the stage timer. The far right contains an icon indicating your currently equipped weapon. Nice and straightforward.

Normal attacks are all short range, so to compensate you can use special weapons. (Of random note: The names in game don’t line up with the ones in the manual, so I’m going with the in-game descriptions for these.) You begin the game with one special weapon and earn others by completing stages, using memory chips for ammo. The first attack is the energy gun, which is a tiny projectile attack. In level 2, you get a larger, upgraded version of the energy gun. In level 3, you get the fusion gun which is a three-way spread attack. Starting in level 4 you can use quantum bombs. These are sticks of dynamite thrown forward in an arc and they have a wide attack splash. Finally, in level 5 you earn the remote control bolo. This is a set of three star-shaped weapons that home in on and wrap around enemies, dealing small damage for as long as they last. Naturally, the better weapons use up more of your chip stash.

This game contains many swinging challenges.

Enemies in this game sometimes drop basic items. Hearts refill a segment of your health meter, and flashing hearts refill several segments at once. You can also grab chips as ammo for your special weapons. Flashing chips give you several rounds of ammo. Occasionally, enemies will drop clearly labeled 1up items. There’s enough versatility in the move set that these pickups are enough for this game.

Kabuki Quantum Fighter plays out similarly to Ninja Gaiden but has a few significant differences. Each level is a long scrolling stage. Some levels have more than one of these segments. At the end of each one, you get some bonus points for each bar of health and each chip you have remaining. Then the bars refill back out along with some extra health and ammo. Every level ends in a boss fight. There is a neat mechanic that appears only during these boss encounters. When you pause the game and press either Up or Down, you can exchange your health for chips and vice versa. This gives you some choice during fights. Do you want to sacrifice health so that you can do more long range attacks with your special weapons, or you do you want to give up your special weapons and try to fight close quarters with extra health points? You can mix and match as much as you want as long as you have enough health and ammo to swap. After beating the bosses, you can view cutscenes that progress the story and show you which new weapon you have acquired.

The enemies are quite varied from what you would expect fighting inside of a computer. Sure, there are tiny tanks and some robot-esque enemies. There are also flamethrowing heads, jumping dogs, hovering mouths, and gremlins that throw boomerangs, among others. The designs definitely make the game more interesting. There are also different kinds of traps you contend with. These are things like spike pits, conveyor belts, flowing water, and spike balls. A devious little device you’ll see sometimes is a hanging hook with a tiny conveyor belt on top. I give the designers credit for combining things in interesting ways, even if it’s a little mean in that case.

I wouldn’t deal with a floating mouth either.

Kabuki Quantum Fighter is a game I have owned since childhood and have plenty of experience in playing. I’m pretty sure this game was a bargain pickup for brand new back in the 90s. Unfortunately, I don’t think I kept the box and manual for this one unless it somehow turns up at my mom’s house. This is a reasonably affordable game, so I’m not too upset about it. Carts copies sell for around $15 today.

This is a game I have gone back and played many times over the years, so I breezed through it again for this playthrough. I completed the game without dying and I only used special weapons once or twice. I always use weapons on the final boss, but with a little practice I’m sure I could beat it without. (That’s an idea for a future challenge run, deathless and no special weapons!) My longplay video of the game was solid, however there was one omission I’m minorly annoyed about. After you beat the game and get through the credits, you can press B to see the sound test. You see a unique animation of our hero along with some text indicating another future adventure that never came to be. I cut the video before that only to see it come up when I was messing with the controller afterward. Oh well.

It is tough for me to pin a difficulty on a game like this that I know so well, but I decided on average difficulty. For the most part, the action is straightforward enough. There are plenty of item drops and even some places to grind them if necessary. Special weapons help for tricky spots. Being able to trade up for more health on the bosses also makes battling them easier. You also get two continues for when you run out of lives. That’s all the good stuff. Now what really makes this game difficult are the vertical levels. There are a couple of these in the game that you have to climb all the way to the top. By this point, you should have experience with the hanging hooks, and now your skills are put to the test. It is really easy to fall down. So not only do you have to manage your health for longer if you fall and enemies respawn, but also the timer becomes your biggest enemy. You do have plenty of time to complete the level since I can do it with a lot of time left over. These stages are difficulty spikes the first time through.

Vertical stages are the main pain point in the game.

I played Kabuki Quantum Fighter for high score as part of a weekly contest several years ago, and that gave me with a new way to play the game that I appreciated. The rules were one life only, scoring as many points as possible. It turned the game into a bit of a puzzle. I paid attention to the enemies and how many points I could earn from each one. Then I needed to grind the most lucrative enemies by scrolling back and forth to keep spawning them. I needed to know how much time it took to get from the grind point to the end of the level so that I had as much time to grind points as possible. The other thing I strived for was beating the bosses with normal moves. After I beat the boss, I would swap for as many chips as possible, hopefully up to the max. You trade chips for health at a two for one rate, so more chips mean more bonus points at the end of the level. That also means you might not have that much health for the next stage. I also wanted every extra life I could find since those go for big points at the end of the game. I must have enjoyed doing all that because I know I won the contest that week.

I really like Kabuki Quantum Fighter and I think it is a great platformer on the system. The graphics are well drawn with some good animation, particularly on the player character and the bosses. I think the music in the game is great with several good tunes. The controls work well, giving you many options with the short range standard attacks, long range special weapons, hanging from hooks, and climbing walls. Swinging around is a lot of fun and you have pretty good precision to jump from one hook to the next. The boss encounters are all varied and are pretty good fights in general. Personally, I wish the game were a little bit longer. I think they could have done more with the mechanics to make some additional challenges in the stages. I am a big fan of Kabuki Quantum Fighter and I encourage you to check this game out if you haven’t tried it.

#132 – Kabuki Quantum Fighter

This fun, golden platformer isn’t kidding around!

This screen doubles as a little playground to move around in.

To Beat: Reach the ending
To Complete: Beat all stages and collect all puzzle cards
What I Did: Completed the game
Played: 8/27/17 – 8/29/17
Difficulty: 6/10
My Difficulty: 6/10
Video: M.C. Kids 100% Longplay

McDonald’s is one of the most iconic and ubiquitous brands in the world. Ronald McDonald is a household name, and just about everyone recognizes the golden arches. It’s no surprise that there are licensed video games based on their cast of characters. What may be surprising is that the NES game is quite good. M.C. Kids channels the spirit of Super Mario Bros. 3 with some clever twists that makes it a great NES platformer.

McDonald’s is an American fast food restaurant that was first founded in 1940 by Richard and Maurice McDonald as a barbecue restaurant. In 1948, they changed over to a hamburger stand and subsequently expanded to other locations. Ray Kroc purchased the chain from the McDonald brothers in 1955 and established McDonald’s Corporation. Today, McDonald’s has vastly expanded worldwide approaching 40,000 total restaurants in over 100 countries.

The character Ronald McDonald may have been created by Willard Scott. The former NBC Today Show’s weatherman was the original Ronald McDonald in three television ads in 1963, and he claims to have created the clown character himself. McDonald’s expanded their advertising by introducing McDonaldland in 1970-1971. Many new characters came and went over the years to accompany Ronald. McDonaldland was officially phased out of advertising in 2003.

Something tells me the kids weren’t part of McDonaldland.

A few video games were created using the McDonaldland characters. The Famicom exclusive Donald Land was released in Japan in 1988, and was both developed and published by Data East. The NES game M.C. Kids was released in North America in January 1992. It was both published and developed by Virgin Games. The European version was renamed McDonaldland and was published by Ocean Software in 1993. In a strange twist, the Game Boy port of this game was released as McDonaldland in Europe and rebranded as Spot: The Cool Adventure for North America. A Sega Genesis follow up named Global Gladiators was also released in 1992. Another Genesis game, McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure, was released worldwide in 1993 by the developer Treasure.

M.C. Kids (pronounced “Em-Cee” Kids) is a side-scrolling action platformer. The Hamburgler has stolen Ronald’s magic bag, and Ronald asks the kids Mick and Mack to help him track it down. To do this, the kids must locate some of Ronald’s puzzle cards from the levels in the world. When you collect enough puzzle cards, the path to the next world is open. This cycle repeats until you track down the Hamburgler and recover the magic bag.

On the title screen, you take control of Mick. This is a great place to get a basic feel for movement and jumping in a safe environment. There is a signpost pointing to the left labeled 1up, and another pointing to the right labeled 2up. Walk off the appropriate side of the screen to activate either one-player or two-player mode. Above the signposts are moon blocks. Bumping your head into the block changes you between Mick and Mack. They control the same, so simply pick the one you prefer. For two-player mode, the second player gets the other character. Two-player mode is alternating play.

This map style reminds me of some other game…

After the introductory story, you are taken to the world map. Use the D-pad to walk on the predefined paths between stages. Press A to enter a stage or house. Each stage is noted with a flashing M with a signpost next to it indicating the level number. At the top of the screen, you see the name of the world you’re in, as well as the level name if you are standing on a stage tile. You also see how many puzzle cards you need for this stage, the number of lives remaining, and how many arches you have collected. The puzzle is on the top right of the screen in a rectangle of six tiles. The cards not yet collected are displayed as M tiles. For each puzzle card you find in the levels, a tile is flipped over revealing part of the puzzle for this world.

The levels themselves are large side-scrolling levels where you control the kid directly. The controls are easy to understand but movement takes time to master. You move with the D-pad and use A to jump. You can duck by holding Down. You get a higher jump by jumping while ducking. You run automatically by walking on the ground in one direction for a while. Movement is momentum based and you maintain your speed well while jumping around. There are slopes that can either boost or reduce your speed accordingly. Running at full speed or close to it produces the highest jumps.

The B button is used to pick things up. The most common thing to grab are blocks that you hold above your head and use as weapons. Walk into a block and press B to lift it, or you can stand on a block, duck, and press B to grab them that way. You then throw the block with B. You can throw the block up or down, or press B without a vertical direction to throw the block forward. Thrown blocks will bounce once or twice before dropping off the screen, and sometimes you can hit more than one enemy with the same block.

Well, I need health, so this little bird has got to go!

At the top of the screen in a level you see a few indicators. The M stands for how many arches you have. These are floating M’s within the levels that you collect just by touching them. The L shows how many lives you have. Underneath that are hearts that represent your health. You begin each new life with three hearts. You lose single hearts when colliding with enemies, and you die when all hearts are depleted. There are no item drops or health pickups in M.C. Kids, but you can restore hearts in a couple of ways. Defeating ten enemies will restore one heart, and if you defeat two enemies with the same block you also recover a heart. You start with three hearts but can go up to four. Health also carries over between stages which is something to keep in mind.

The most important item in M.C. Kids is the puzzle card. They are solid blocks with an M on them and you collect the card by picking up the block. To keep the card permanently, you need to finish the level after grabbing it. You end a level by touching the goal line situated between two goal posts. There is a floating M across the line that will give you some arches if you touch it while breaking the string. When the level ends, you will high five your friend and see a message indicating which puzzle card you acquired, if any. Some cards in a world are for a puzzle in a different world, and some levels have two cards instead of one. The cards can be well hidden or stashed in hard to reach places, so it’s crucial to explore the levels thoroughly.

Most puzzle cards are a little harder to find.

There are several types of blocks in M.C. Kids. Blocks with a 1 on them are extra lives, and you will see many of them in the game. The reverser is a left-facing arrow block that sends you flying and flipping all the way back to the start of the level. Sometimes you will see a block outline moving around in a level. If you find a similarly shaped fill-in block and touch it to the outline, it will make the block solid and you can use it as a platform. A boat lets you float on water and you can climb in it and use the D-Pad to move the boat across water left and right. You can even grab this boat like a block and throw it into a different body of water. There are also porous blocks that float in the water and drift forward on their own. There are sand tiles that you can dig through like in Super Mario Bros. 2.

One of the neatest elements in M.C. Kids is the spinner block. It is a solid, fixed block that is located at the end of a long platform. You want to get a running start and run right over the spinner block. Do this and you will run around to the underside of the block, letting you walk on the ceiling with reversed gravity. You can reach high areas this way. One thing to note with reversed gravity is if you fall off the top of the screen, you lose a life just as if you fell down a pit.

There are also several different springboards and lifts found in stages. Small springboards let you jump high. These are usually found in the open but sometimes are hidden behind grabbable blocks. Super springboards require you to carry a block with you to spring very high. The travel lift is a platform that begins stationary and starts moving when you jump on it. The continuous lift winds around in a predefined pattern and you have to watch it for a while to see its path so you can reach it safely. The conveyor lift shows up near the end of the game. It travels along a guidewire and you move it yourself by standing in the center of it and walking either left or right. Walking left moves it forward and walking right moves it backward. This lift is particularly tricky to learn. The zipper is neither a springboard or lift, but it comes up often. Press B while standing in front of it to transition to either a new room or different location within the level.

This path for this lift winds around a lot.

As you play, you will accumulate arches. You will lose some whenever you collide with an enemy. If you manage to collect over 100, the arch counter rolls over and starts blinking. If you finish the level from here without dying, then you get to play a bonus game. This is a small level containing four blocks on upward rails. One of the four will light with an up arrow, and then shortly after the rest will display downward arrows. You want to jump quickly to the one with the up arrow to slide it upward a little bit before the down arrows activate and lower the block you are standing on. The idea is to lift at least one block high enough to reach a ledge at the top with a couple of zippers. Use the zipper to go to a 1up room with several 1up blocks suspended over a pit. Grab as many as you can! If you fall off the blocks in the bonus game, there’s a moon block on the floor you can use to switch characters if you want.

When you collect enough puzzle cards, you can go to the house in that world and speak with its owner. He or she will then provide you a path to the next world. If you are missing cards for a particular puzzle, you can drop by the house for a hint. Collecting all the cards for a world and visiting the house may provide some other benefits. There is nothing on the map to indicate if a completed level still holds a card, which makes it more difficult to track down missing cards. However, you don’t need every card to beat the game. You may also find secret cards. There is an optional secret world in the game that you can find that only opens if all secret cards are collected.

This was my first time playing through M.C. Kids, though I have owned the game for quite a while. I bought it during a brief collecting phase I had around 2009 or so. There was a deal on eBay where you could pick 10 games for either $20 or $30, and M.C. Kids was one of the games I chose. Those kinds of deals make me wonder if I had missed out on another game that would eventually become more expensive. M.C. Kids sells in the $10-$15 range these days, so it ended up being a good purchase.

This bonus level features multiple fake goal markers.

It took me a couple of days to beat M.C. Kids. The first night I streamed gameplay on Twitch, and I was doing decently until the end of the third world. I was really struggling to figure out a few different sections, and after 90 minutes or so I called it a night. The next night I pushed my way through to the end of the game in a near three-hour session. It wasn’t pretty but I got the job done. However, I wasn’t recording my attempt, and I also beat the game without visiting the special world at all. Once you get to the ending, there’s no way to go back. I also missed two puzzle cards that weren’t necessary to play all the levels and I looked online to find out where they were hiding. I had ideas on where both cards were located, but I don’t think I would have found them on my own unless I grinded out a few more hours of playing. With all that in mind, I beat the whole game again on my third attempt and captured video this time. I had to play the special world blind, but it went relatively well for the toughest stages in the game.

The deeper I get into this project, the harder time I have figuring out how to rate games on difficulty. If you can keep your NES running for a long time, then you could probably beat M.C. Kids. There are unlimited continues, and beyond that there are several places where you can grind out extra lives to not even need to continue. There is at least one level that has two extra lives right at the beginning, so by grabbing both and dying right away, you can slowly build up a stock at any time. I also found a cache of eight lives or so in a level in the first world, which is even better for grinding. Therefore, lives are not much of an issue in beating the game. The two things that make the game challenging are the momentum-based physics and locating some of the trickier-to-find puzzle cards. This seems like an average difficulty game to me, but I decided to tick up the rating to a 6 since I had trouble the first night I played.

M.C. Kids is a fun NES game that I recommend playing. The levels are often sprawling with many things to do, and the game introduces many different elements along the way that keep the experience fresh. The reverse gravity gimmick works well and it is used in clever ways. The graphics are very clean with some nice animation, and the music is equally great. I had this track stuck in my head for several days after playing. It’s no Mario 3, but it resembles it enough that it’s an easy game to recommend. The AVGN video on M.C. Kids has raised awareness of the game, but it’s been long enough since that review that the game has backed up a bit into mild obscurity. Now that I’m shining some light on the game, make sure you don’t skip this one.

#57 – M.C. Kids