Neither Street Fighter nor Final Fight.

The real 2010 wasn’t this exciting.

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 10/15/20 – 10/18/20
Difficulty: 7/10
My Difficulty: 7/10
My Video: Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight Longplay

Knowing what we know now about video games of the past, if you were to see the name Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight without knowing anything about it, you might get pretty excited.  Street Fighter II and Final Fight are both among the greatest arcade games of their generation, so even under NES limitations, you would be right to expect something great.  Plus, it’s made by Capcom, the same developer for all three!  Well, we didn’t get some glorious NES adaptation of Street Fighter or Final Fight.  What we did get is a futuristic, sci-fi action platformer that ends up one of the more interesting NES titles, for better or worse.

Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight was both developed and published by Capcom.  It first appeared on the Famicom in August 1990 under the slightly different name 2010 Street Fighter.  The game released on the NES just a month later in September 1990.  Of note, this game released after both Street Fighter and Final Fight in arcades, but before Street Fighter II, when the series exploded.  This game also released on 3DS Virtual Console in all regions in 2014 and also on Wii U Virtual Console in Japan and PAL regions in 2014, with an early 2015 release in North America.

In this game, you play the role of Ken, the greatest Street Fighter in the world.  Defeating all the best fighters in the world doesn’t leave Ken satisfied, so he pursues university studies in the field of Cybotics.  Along the way he befriends Troy, and the two of them invent something called cyboplasm.  In proper doses, this makes men very strong, even helping them stay alive long beyond their normal life span.  At the same time, others in society have perfected travel to distant worlds, though Ken has no interest in all that.  Except now he has to, for one day back at the lab, his cyboplasm was stolen and Troy was murdered.  Ken will avenge the death of his partner, having to defeat many super creatures along the way that have taken too much cyboplasm, which causes them to lose their minds.  This journey takes you across five planets with multiple levels each.  Clear all the levels to see the ending and beat this game.

This first fight is pretty tough just starting out.

This is a side-scrolling platformer game with rather complex movement and controls.  Ken can perform standard platformer movements.  Use the D-pad to walk around, jump with A, and attack with B.  Ken can cling to walls by moving into them while holding A, then he can press Up or Down to climb the walls.  Press away from the wall and jump to jump away.  He can jump down through certain floors by holding Down and pressing A.  When falling through a floor, if you hold Up you can grab onto the underside of the floor.  Continue to hold Up to pull yourself back up onto the ledge, or you may let go of the D-pad and just hang there.  Later you may press A to jump down from the hanging position.  Ken can perform all sorts of punches and kicks with the B button that throw out some sort of energy for a short distance.  Press B rapidly to do a flurry of quick punches, either facing left or right, or while holding Up.  If you hold either Left or Right, you can mash the B button to perform some longer distance attacks.  These always come in a combo, some of them curve downward or upward slightly.  Eventually they turn into kicks that attack at an upward diagonal before cycling back around to the punches again.  If you hold Down and mash B, you’ll perform the diagonal kick attacks first, then start throwing punches in the same cycle as above.  You definitely want to play around with it to get the feel for how it works and how the attacks move.  One more thing.  If you do a neutral jump straight up, then hold the opposite direction you’re facing, you’ll backflip.  When you are upside down in the backflip, you can attack to fire straight down, which is the only way to do so.

Each planet has multiple stages that are framed as one-on-one combat matches.  You’ll get a screen that say “Target vs. Ken” with an image of the enemy you need to take out in this stage.  The levels themselves can take many different forms.  There are single screen levels, scrolling levels, and autoscrolling levels.  Some areas are simply boss fights, some involve infinitely spawning enemies, and others are stages with a boss fight at the end.  Sometimes the target is just one enemy you need to defeat, and sometimes you have to defeat multiple target enemies to proceed.  The goal of each stage is to open up a portal to the next one.  Defeating the target produces some glowing energy that you touch to collect.  This fills up the Open bar at the bottom of the screen, and when it is completely filled up, the portal to the next level appears.  There is a normal stage timer during regular play that sets itself to 10 seconds whenever the portal is open, so you must move quickly to find the portal and enter in time to proceed.

Anticipate spending a lot of time climbing this.

There are items you can collect to help you power up.  Many stages have rocks that you can destroy, some of them hide powerups.  The most common one looks like a circle with a C in the middle.  This increases your power level half a segment.  Each segment of the power bar makes your attacks go a longer distance, but I’m not sure if attacks are more powerful or not.  I never got to full power at any time, but apparently your stronger shots look like spinning disks at full power.  There are some rare powerups that only appear in certain stages.   One is an orb that attaches to your back and deals damage to enemies that touch it.  Another gives you some sort of slash kick.  When you perform a backflip, your feet do damage to enemies on contact.  There are also some items that enemies drop.  Glowing orbs restore half a bar of health, and large glowing orbs restore two bars of health.  You can also get 1ups but they are uncommon.

Structurally, each planet has some sort of theme.  Planet 1 is mostly cityscapes, Planet 2 is jungle-like with lots of vines, Planet 3 is the desert planet, Planet 4 is the water planet, and Planet 5 is pretty much a space station.  Not all levels in each planet strictly follow the theme, but for the most part they make sense.  In between each planet are cutscenes that advance the story, showing where Ken is off to next, that sort of thing.

This is a pretty challenging game for a variety of reasons.  Most enemies and traps take one bar of damage out of the starting five.  Your health carries over from stage to stage, so you’ll often lose lives just from having low health to start a new area.  Health pickups from enemies seem to happen every four kills, which doesn’t help any in pure one-on-one fights.  When you die, you lose your entire power bar.  This is the main reason why I never was able to see what full power was like.  There are no mid-stage checkpoints in the game, and that includes the gauntlet in the final level.  The only aspects in your favor are that you get a health refill at the start of each planet, sub areas stay cleared when you move through the portals, and you get infinite continues.  

A … sanderfall?

This was my first time clearing this game, though I have played it before.  This was a rental way back in the day, and it is the only time I remember playing it up to now.  I seem to remember the final stage, though I’m probably getting my memories crossed up as that would be quite a feat for me as a rental.  I saw the AVGN review of the game a few years back, that’s probably the most of what I remember about this game.  I would consider this game a tad obscure, but it is relatively common from a collector perspective.  This was a $5-$10 game for quite a long time, and I see now it has crept up to around $15 for a loose cart.

This is the type of game that I can sit and grind out a victory in a few hours, depending on length and difficulty.  Street Fighter 2010 took me close to four hours to beat, over two nights.  The first night I worked on it for a couple of hours and got to the final planet before turning it off for the night.  I beat the game the next stream.  It took me about an hour to reach the final stage, then a full hour just to finish off the game.  That last area is no joke.  You have to clear three past bosses, one of those a double fight, and then the final boss, all on one life.  This is the only level where the timer is a major issue as well.  Thankfully I managed it.  As of this writing, it has been over 9 months since I beat the game for this blog.  I ended up replaying the game last week just to refresh myself, and I beat the game in about an hour and a half this time.  I’m honestly surprised I didn’t lose much skill on this.  It’s pretty hard to go back and beat old games that I haven’t touched in some time.  Maybe now I’ll be serious about getting caught up on these writings!

Street Fighter 2010 is a difficult, complex action game that’s not for everyone, but it is a technical showpiece for the console for sure.  The graphics in this game are really good looking.  There’s lots of detail in the backgrounds and enemy sprites, and good animations too.  There’s plenty of variety here as well.  Some levels scroll fluidly in all directions, and there is some split scrolling in some of the boss fights that can be tricky to pull off well on the console.  One autoscroller level drifts in an unorthodox pattern, similar to the airships in Super Mario Bros. 3.  The music is top notch, certainly with some of Capcom’s best composers hard at work.  The controls, while they let you accomplish a lot of moves, can get in the way of the action sometimes.  Clinging to walls, hanging off ledges, and swinging around pillars takes a fine touch, while those same obstacles can get in the way of you trying to avoid enemy attacks.  This is a game that is just as much about mastery of the player character as mastery of the levels and boss designs.  This game is often overlooked as far as Capcom games go, and I think in part that is because it is not as accessible as other games of this style.  And let’s be honest, naming it Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight was not the best choice.  This game is derided just off the name, but there’s a quality experience here if you can wrap your head around it.

#168 – Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight

Here’s another accurately named game.

He’s so bad.

To Beat: Reach the ending
My Goal: Beat the game with the Power Glove
What I Did: Beat the game
Played: 7/2/19 – 7/21/19
Difficulty: 8/10
My Difficulty: 8/10
My Video: Bad Street Brawler Longplay

This is another one of those milestone posts. There aren’t too many of them left, so let’s enjoy them while we can! Not only am I going to cover Bad Street Brawler, but we are also going to talk about the Power Glove. While maybe an odd choice for a compatible title, it does bear the label “Power Glove Gaming Series” on the cart. Sadly, it doesn’t play very well as one, leading me to believe this was just tacked on and not specifically designed to work with the peripheral. Still, I made it a point to play this game with the glove and try to make sense of it for you.

Bad Street Brawler was originally named Bop’n Rumble when it released on the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS in 1987. In Australia, the game was renamed Street Hassle. This game was developed by Beam Software and published by Mindscape. The NES version was renamed to Bad Street Brawler when it released as a Power Glove compatible title in September 1989. This port was also developed by Beam Software but published by Mattel, the manufacturer of the Power Glove accessory.

The Power Glove was an officially licensed peripheral for the NES that was made by Mattel, releasing in October 1989, a month after Bad Street Brawler. The Power Glove was heavily inspired by the Dataglove originally created by Thomas Zimmerman. VGL, Zimmerman and Jaron Lanier’s company, partnered with Abrams/Gentile Entertainment to possibly adapt the glove for video games. They pitched the idea to Mattel, who eventually pitched the idea to Nintendo, making it a reality for the holiday season in 1989. The Power Glove ended up selling well but didn’t work very well with Nintendo’s back catalog of games. There were only two NES games released for it before the glove was discontinued the following year. Still, it remains one of the most recognizable gaming peripherals of all time. You could say it laid the framework for motion controls in more modern gaming, such as the Wii and today’s VR headsets. There is a very good documentary from The Gaming Historian that will give you much more information about the glove’s history.

Imparting words of wisdom as you practice.

The Power Glove is a right-handed controller that you wear on your arm attached by Velcro. A wire from the Power Glove connects to a box that has a second wire going to the NES and the third to a set of three sensors that are positioned around the TV screen. The glove contains two ultrasonic speakers that interface with the three ultrasonic microphones on the sensors by the TV. This triangulates the glove’s position so that it can detect both roll and yaw. Conductive ink in the fingers allows the glove to detect finger bends from all fingers aside from the pinky. All these inputs translate into button presses on the NES. A set of lights on the corner TV sensor translates which directions and buttons are held down. The glove comes with 14 built-in programs that you can set with number buttons on the glove. These programs map movements and gestures to NES button presses. Bad Street Brawler comes with its own program along with some special programs that can be used in other NES games. First you initialize the program on Bad Street Brawler, then you turn the game off and quickly insert a new cartridge while the glove briefly “remembers” the program during power down. The Power Glove also has the same buttons as an NES controller so that you can use the glove as a controller itself or get direct inputs while using the glove. Finally, the Center button on the glove resets the positioning in relation to the sensors during a game. The Power Glove came with a couple of detailed manuals that show how the glove can be used and which programs might work best for some games.

Bad Street Brawler doesn’t have much of a story. You play as Duke Davis, a definitive 1980s Cool Guy. He wears big sunglasses with a yellow vest and green shorts. Basically, the streets are filled with criminals and Duke wants to clean up the streets. He will beat up the bad guys and take their weapons, throwing them away in the dumpster after each stage. In this game there are 15 levels and you must clear them all to beat the game.

Cleaning up the streets of short men and dogs.

The controls in this game are simple enough … with a controller that is. Use the D-pad to move around Left or Right. Press Down to duck and press Up to jump. You have three different attacks at your disposal in each stage called Force Moves. One is triggered with A, the second with B, and the third with both A and B pressed together. You can also press Start to pause the game. Controlling the game with the Power Glove is more cumbersome. Your steady arm movements control Duke’s movements. Move the glove up, down, left, or right to move Duke in that direction. The A button move is performed by rotating your wrist left or right. This action both moves Duke in the turned direction while rapidly pressing A. Bend your thumb to do the B button move. Bend the middle finger to perform the A and B button move. (I bend all my fingers aside from the thumb for this.) If you push the glove forward toward the screen, you do a special move once per stage called the Glove Zap. This automatically defeats one enemy. From watching the lights on the sensor, I learned the Glove Zap is actually performed by pressing both Left and Right together, which makes this move impossible to perform on a standard controller and making it ”exclusive” to the Power Glove.

Each level flows the same way. You begin on the left and need to make your way to the right. Enemies will appear two at a time on screen. You can fight them or you can simply run all the way to the right. Each level has three points where the scrolling stops and you are forced to fight a couple of bad guys before continuing. At the bottom of the screen you see your health bar, the active enemy’s health bar, your score, and lives remaining. The top of the screen displays some buildings that indicate how far along you are in the stage. Every three levels there is a stronger encounter, often with a unique enemy, at the end of the stage. The music changes to signal the event. Upon victory, you are rewarded with an extra scene of Duke celebrating his win or chatting with the local media.

At the beginning of each stage, you are placed on a special screen. You can read some encouraging words from Duke as well as practice your moves against a punching bag. The Force Moves change between levels and each stage has its own set of three moves. This gives the game some variety since you can’t get comfortable with any one move. It is helpful to see what moves you get in a safe space before tackling the level itself.

You leap during some attacks which lets you dodge too.

There are fifteen Force Moves in the game broken up in the manual into three groups. The first group is called the Fast-Footwork Force Moves. The Drop Kick is a standard kick. A Sweep Kick is a low kick that knocks the enemy into the air and stuns him briefly. Trip just knocks a guy down by pulling his legs out from under him. While attacking, you duck down and can avoid some attacks. The Roundhouse Kick is a powerful move with a very long windup that leaves you vulnerable. The High Kick is similar to the Drop Kick, only Duke does a tiny hop during this kick. I like this move a lot because the hop also dodges enemy bullets.

The next set of moves are the Fist-To-Fist Force Moves. Punch is just a standard attack. The Pile Driver lifts an enemy over your head before slamming him literally into the ground, stunning him briefly. The Stooge Hit is analogous to the Roundhouse Kick. It has a significant windup but is pretty strong. The Ear Twist is such a goofy move. You grab the guy by his ears and pull on them. You can hold the move down for a little while and increase the damage. The Arm Spin acts similar to the Ear Twist. You grab an attacker by the arm and spin them around. You can hold the move for more damage, then toss the enemy behind you. It’s a nice move for avoiding combat.

The final set is Fancy Force Moves. In the Aeroplane Spin, you lift an enemy overhead, spin him around a while, and then throw him to the ground. The Body Fling is another attack that doubles as a dodge. You jump into the air and slam on top of an enemy, sending him into the ground with a brief stun. The Gut Knee is an amazing move. You grab the enemy slamming your knee into his gut. This knocks the bad guy into the air, putting you in the best position to grab him again while on the way down to land another Gut Knee. The Head Butt causes the enemy to recoil a bit on attack. Lastly, the Bull Ram does a brief dash forward and you toss the enemy into the air.

The Gut Knee is positively overpowered.

There are a few items in the game. An orange spy often appears after forced encounters. Sometimes he will drop a bomb that hurts you if on screen when it blows up. You need to either move forward quickly or hit the bomb with a low attack to disable it. The spy also can drop a heart with wings. Grab it to restore all your health. Some fallen enemies also drop a weapon. You just collect these for points later. At the end of each stage, you see a cutscene where Duke throws each item into a dumpster and gets points for each one.

You start the game with two extra lives. You can earn more lives every 10,000 points. However, you cap off at five lives and any earned beyond that are forfeited. Every death starts the stage over. You can continue twice with a fresh set of lives from the same stage you died. Your score resets to 0, but you do get a chance to enter your initials on the high score list!

This was my first time beating Bad Street Brawler. I first played the game a few years ago for the Nintendo Age contests and reached the final level, only to fail pretty hard when I got there. This is a relatively common game though I do not know if it sold as well as the Power Glove did the first year. I have had a few copies of the game through buying lots. It will only cost you around $5-$7 if you are looking for one.

If you were paying attention, I sort of gave this away already. Unfortunately, I did not complete this game with the Power Glove. Not even close. I spent about three weeks with this game with the intent of beating it with the Power Glove but the results were too inconsistent. The furthest I reached was Stage 8, which is honestly an achievement in and of itself. Most of my runs ended in Stage 3. The mix of enemies, the available Force Moves, and no healing item until the 2/3 point of the level caused me to crumble up a lot. The first time I cleared Level 3, the game locked up on me and I was forced to reset. Perhaps I should have taken that as a sign to move on, but I kept at it. I had a few runs to Stage 5 and one or two to Stage 6 or 7. There wasn’t even any sign of continual improvement because good attempts were scattered among multiple Stage 3 failures. I do think if I kept at it for a long time, maybe things would have clicked and I would have figured it out. Ultimately, I did not want another Ikari Warriors situation where I spent four months on the same game. Settling on a controller clear for this game sounded just as good. I bought a Power Glove with the intent to use it for both this game and Super Glove Ball, so when I reach that game I will have to make good on clearing it with the glove.

Thank you trench coat man for this helpful healing heart.

This game is still difficult even on controller. Many of the enemies in this game are borderline unfair. A baseball bat wielding punk is a common enemy that normally isn’t hard to deal with. If I let him get close enough to hit me, I normally get whacked a few times before I can counter or escape. Skateboarders telegraph their attacks somewhat, but if you get hit it drops 40% of your health bar in one shot. Good luck if you have to fight two of them at once. Knife-wielding women are hard to approach when they start throwing blades. The worst enemy in the game is the break dancer guy. When he rolls around, he is invincible. You have to get close enough to get him to stand up but stay far enough away to hit him. Then you only get one hit in before his routine loops. Normally I try and jump over him but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I will say most stages are pretty easy. You can run past most of the level and get at least one health refill in the stage. Some Force Moves let you dodge attacks and some let you stun lock enemies where you hit them over and over before they can recover. The levels without these helpful moves are much harder to clear.

My winning run of the game was one of those magical, miracle runs. It started off well enough. Stage 12 is one of those tough levels that typically costs me several lives, but I coasted through everything else. I reached the final stage with 3 lives and both continues but then it all went downhill. The last stage is very hard. It starts off with two break dancers, and then the first forced fight is between a break dancer and a knife thrower. Most of the time I didn’t get past that part. Then you have to pass the next third of the level before you can get a health refill. On one life I scrolled away the health pickup and died shortly thereafter. It was starting to look like a failed run. On my last life of my last continue, I finally broke through. I just barely survived the first section with only two health points left, and I got down to one just before I got the health refill. I had a solid final boss fight to put this game in the books.

Avoidance is good strategy but doesn’t always work.

I would go as far to say that playing with the Power Glove worked out better than I expected. After all, I’ve heard plenty of tales over the years that the Power Glove is unplayable garbage and what have you. Some facets of the Glove worked out better than others. The directional movements were pretty much spot on. The first thing to figure out is how to position your arm in the sweet spot. For me, it was about 5-6 feet away from the TV screen in the center of the three sensors. You will have to center the glove a ton with the Center button, but Bad Street Brawler provides enough opportunities to do that without pausing. Twisting my wrist to the right worked out okay, but to twist left far enough I had to lift my elbow which was very uncomfortable. The finger bends were by far the most inconsistent, or at worst not working at all. The instructions say to make a fist a few times to calibrate the glove. Maybe I wasn’t doing it right, but I had wildly varying results that often changed mid-game. Grabbing with my four fingers worked much of the time, but bending my thumb rarely worked. Losing the thumb control cost me one entire move unless I used the B button on the glove. I only got it to work well once or twice.

I know I have not made a case for the Power Glove being feasible as a controller, but perhaps I am still optimistic. The trick seems to be finding the optimal conditions. Unfortunately, the documentation around this feels incomplete. This is my best guess at what you need to do to set it up properly, at least for Bad Street Brawler. Get your arm into that sweet spot I mentioned above: In the center of the sensor zone about 5-6 feet away from the TV screen. Press Start to get to the menu, hold your glove in position, center it, make 2-3 gentle fists, center it again, then start the game. On the intro screen, test out all your moves. Make more fists and re-center as often as needed. Now, I couldn’t get it to work consistently well so this is still not optimal. I would say, at best, I was operating about 80% as efficiently as I would with a controller. The Glove Zap is quite helpful when used strategically, closing that control gap a tiny amount. If I could get the calibration routine right, really homed in my Power Glove dexterity, and keep the glove from going out of whack randomly in the middle of a level, I could definitely see me beating the game this way. But that’s just too many factors that have to line up to make it happen, in any sensible timeframe at least.

I understand why Bad Street Brawler was selected as the first of the Power Glove Gaming Series. It is an inherently simple game. Simply walk left to right and beat up a few bad guys using rotating move sets. It’s not a great game though. The graphics are okay, but the color choices are garish are unappealing. The music is just okay. It’s a little bit catchy at times but the tunes are short loops that may become grating. The controls work well with a standard controller and poorly with the Power Glove. The gameplay, despite trying to vary things, is essentially repeating the same things. Some of the enemies, even the early ones, can cheap shot you unfairly. While it is fun and encouraged to stun lock enemies, getting stun locked yourself is frustrating. Overall, this is a below average game. It has kind of grown on me though and I do like it a little bit.

#130 – Bad Street Brawler

Get ready to continue the adventure of your lifetime.

Featuring over a dozen characters!

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 5/7/19 – 5/12/19
Difficulty: 4/10
My Difficulty: 4/10
My Video: Wall Street Kid Ending

Sometimes I wonder how a game gets greenlit as a concept and makes its way to store shelves. Wall Street Kid is pretty much exactly what it sounds like – a stock trading game. How did this game ever come to fruition? Why did someone think this was a good idea? Who is the target audience for this game? Kids probably aren’t interested in stock trading, and why would an adult play a game about a kid getting into the stock market? I don’t think I’ll ever understand how this game was made and put on an NES cartridge, but here we are. It’s a real game, I’ve played and beaten it, so now I get to share it with you.

The history of Wall Street Kid begins with The Money Game, an August 1988 Famicom title published and developed by SOFEL. It must have performed well because a sequel came out the following year. Money Game II: Kabutochou no Kiseki was released in Japan in December 1989. This game was localized in North America as Wall Street Kid. It was released on NES in June 1990. The game was also both developed and published by SOFEL.

You play the role of the Wall Street Kid in this game. Of course. You are set to inherit billions of dollars under the condition that you prove you know how to manage wealth and uphold the family’s standard of living. You start off with half a million dollars in seed money that you must invest in order to spend it on certain expensive items over the course of four months. Basically, you buy and sell stocks strategically to make a profit. There is an overarching story you follow that guides you through the purchases you are required to make and the life events you experience over those four months. If you meet all the requirements through that time frame, then you inherit the big money and win the game.

Just a normal day at my desk.

This game is set up as a point-and-click adventure game. The game begins on a Monday of the first week of April as shown as you sit at your desk. Just by sitting there, time slowly advances 15 minutes at a time. Your business day is from 9am-5pm. You can perform various interactions by moving a cursor around your desk and clicking on objects to do different things. Just move the D-pad around and press A to interact. At the top of the screen you see how much cash you have on hand as well as how much money your stock portfolio is worth. The lower part of the screen is for dialog that occurs when you receive phone calls or do some reading. Each interaction and event eat into a little bit of your allotted time. As soon as 5pm hits, you go straight to the next day.

Every day starts with reading the newspaper. You will want to pay close attention to the news as it gives you clues on how the stock market might perform. The paper tells you about where interest rates are moving, which types of stocks are poised to grow, which specific stocks have been hot lately, and other news about what is going on in the community. All this information is needed to help you make good decisions during your business day.

Most of the icons on your desk let you perform an action. I’ll start with the pink icons on the screen. The dollar icon lets you visit the bank. Ruth, the banker, lets you make loans or pay off loans. This option is not helpful right away because you cannot take out a loan without having collateral and you don’t have any because you haven’t made any big purchases yet. The question mark icon sends you over to the consultant Stanley. For a small fee, he will give you generic advice about stocks, how to purchase them, how to make decisions, etc. This might be nice to do once just to get a feel for how to play the game. The exclamation mark connects you to your advisor, Connie. If she has a hot stock tip for you this day, you can pay her some money to hear it. This tip may or may not be helpful to you and you may have to read into it a little bit to figure out if it is for real or not. Finally, the pink clock at the top lets you finish your day immediately.

You can hang out with your girlfriend instead of making money.

There are two other factors you have to consider while playing the game. First, you have to keep up communication and go out on dates with your girlfriend, Prisila. Click the flower pot icon to choose between going on a picnic, going shopping, or going to the carnival. Each event takes up a few hours of your time. Secondly, you have to keep yourself in good physical shape by exercising. The icon you need looks like a small computer or cell phone, but evidently it is a barometer. Click the barometer to choose between swimming, hitting the gym, or going hiking. You have to keep up with both your girlfriend and your health regularly during the game, otherwise you may lose the game outright due to neglect. It’s not enough in this world just to earn money. You also need to consider what you read in the news to decide which activity to do.

The meat of the game is in stock trading which you can do from your desktop computer. From here you can buy or sell stocks, view your portfolio, and look up information on each available stock. Your portfolio view shows which stocks you own, their current price, starting price from when you purchased it, and how many lots of 1000 you own of that stock. You can only have up to five stocks in your portfolio, including multiple records of the same stock if you purchased them at different times. Selling stocks uses the same portfolio view so you can select which stock and how many lots you wish to sell.

When choosing to buy stocks or view stocks, you bring up a separate screen listing all twenty stocks available to purchase. Here you can see the company name, the current value, and the percentage change of the value of the stock since yesterday. You can tell the development team was really creative with their fictitious companies. Buying stocks is just like selling stocks where you choose the one you want and how many lots you want to buy. The game will calculate the maximum number you can purchase with your current cash. The information screen shows data about the company, the current stock value compared with its initial value from the very start of the game, and the category of stock. There are four stock categories: Blue chip, cyclical, growth, and speculative. There are five stocks in each category.

Who knew YBM was so valuable?

Very early in the game, you receive a phone call from a real estate agent that has the perfect house for you costing a million dollars. He will first call you to let you know the house is getting prepped for sale, then he calls you every week asking if you are ready to buy the house on Saturday. You can choose to accept early or you can keep putting it off a week at a time for a month until you get your last chance to buy. Use the business days Monday through Friday to do your stock trading so that you can earn money toward your big purchase. Sometimes you will get a call from Prisila asking you to buy her something on Saturday. There is no business on Saturday so that is the only thing you will do. For whatever you are buying, you get two different options in price and a third option to not buy at all. I always made sure to buy the most expensive thing. I imagine you can get away with not buying anything a couple of times but that it eventually affects your relationship, so you should try and give her the best as often as possible.

Sunday is reserved for giving you a password. I’m giving this special recognition here because this is a candidate for the worst password in any game I’ve ever played. Passwords are at least 40 characters long, usually mine were 42-43 characters long. The character set is awful. You have numbers 0-9, capital letters A-Z, and capital letters again from A-Z but in reverse colors. Normal letters are white text on black background while the others are white squares with black character text. There are also a couple of punctuation marks in that reverse color. It is truly terrible. Nowadays, since I use my camera to take a picture of the screen to save passwords, it is not that bad. Imagine trying to write that down on paper, though. There is a lot of room here to make a mistake with the password, both in writing it down and entering it in on the screen. You can hold Select and press either A or B to move the password cursor around in case you make a mistake, which will probably happen. On top of everything else, once you get the correct password entered, there is a long loading time for the game to start up. I get that there is a lot of data involved that needs to be parsed out of the password, but still this is a bad, error-prone system that could have been made a bit better with some better characters.

Everyone wants to talk to you all the time.

Once you get to where you are forced to decide on buying the house, one of two things will happen. If you don’t earn enough money or forget to cash in enough money to buy the house on that Saturday, you are scolded and scorned by family, and you get Game Over. The screen is locked here and you have to physically reset or power off. If you do have the money, then you get to buy the house and enjoy a little cutscene about your accomplishment. The game continues from here with another big purchase you have to make. Now you can go to the bank and get a loan against your new house, providing you with extra cash that you can invest smartly for the next thing. The game continues like this the rest of the way, though there are some special events like holidays and such that help break up the monotony a little bit.

This was my first time playing through Wall Street Kid. Point and click games like this are not my style and so I barely even tested this cart out when I bought it. I think this game was a $3 purchase from my local game store several years back. It is still a cheap cart and readily available online.

I did not get the hang of this game at first. I understand the concept of the stock market, that part is fine, but I had difficulty earning enough money for the house that initial month. First, I messed up by trying to buy the house one week earlier than was necessary. The way the game is written they make it seem like you need to buy the house before you miss your chance. I fell for that. Really you get four weeks no matter what. The other issue was that I was just not profitable enough. You need a million dollars but I always ended up in the $800,000-$900,000 range. I picked decent stocks and made some money but not the right ones to earn big. It took me several tries but eventually I figured out the trick. I had no trouble after that. One weird part later on is the auction scene. The way the auction is run and how you bid is not that clear. I ended up bidding against myself most of the time. Once I realized what I was doing, I put the password back in and tried again, only to end up with a higher winning bid once I played the auction straight. Maybe that part is random and I got unlucky the second time. I pushed forward and ended up winning the game from there anyway.

It’s very important to pay all your debts.

Here’s the big trick to beating this game without any trouble. Consider yourself warned in case you are spoiler sensitive. I am not completely sure if what I’m about to say is true, but it worked out this way for me. The stock market appears to be completely scripted. Stocks seem to rise and fall the same way on the same days. With this knowledge combined with the password system, it is easy to take advantage of the market. Run the game for a week and take note of the best stock, either by the stock tables or the newspaper’s hot stocks. If you already put all your money into the best stock already, great! Otherwise once you get to Sunday, reload your game from your old password and invest everything you can into the stock you noted was the best. In every case, that stock performed the same way and I maxed out on what I could possibly earn. If you take it one week at a time like this, you will make it. You can try and save yourself some time and make an educated guess on which stock will be the best earner that week. The newspaper tells you the two stock categories that should do well that week. I looked up all stocks and sorted them into categories. The cheapest stock of those categories is often the best earner, especially since you can buy more of them with your money.

I have a few more minor tips. Always take the bank loan when you can. The more cash you have on hand, the more you can earn! Just don’t forget to pay it back on time or you lose. You can pay off the loan and immediately get a new one too, no problem. Don’t forget to exercise and date your girlfriend every week. It might be a good idea to always buy the best item for Prisila on shopping Saturdays. I didn’t want to leave anything to chance, and I always had enough money for my big purchase anyway.

Wall Street Kid was a pretty interesting game, but I’m more happy now that it’s over than I was when I was playing it. The graphics are pretty good, even if most of the game is the same static screen and menus. The music was alright. The game controls very well. Everything is responsive and the simple controls almost always make sense. The gameplay is just simple point-and-click activity with menus. In this case, the game doesn’t do enough to vary the experience so the whole game kind of drags along. It’s not a lengthy game, but it is tedious to work through, especially entering in those awful passwords. Wall Street Kid is definitely a weird game to have on the NES. I’ll file it away as more of a curiosity than something that’s worth playing.

#125 – Wall Street Kid

#125 – Wall Street Kid

Just your everyday police officer.

Street Cop is a good cop.

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 2/27/19 – 3/2/19
Difficulty: 5/10
My Difficulty: 4/10
My Video: Street Cop Longplay

We are dipping back into the world of Power Pad games for this one. Street Cop by name alone would not provide any indication that this is meant for the Power Pad. It seems to me like it would be some kind of action or adventure game instead. It turns out that’s exactly what it is! There is nothing else like this game on the NES and I’m excited to share it with you today.

Family Trainer: Manhattan Police is the sixth game in the Family Trainer series of Power Pad games on the Famicom. The game was developed by Sonata (later known as Human Entertainment) and published by Bandai. The Famicom version came out in August 1987. The NES version, renamed Street Cop, was released in June 1989. The NES versions of the Bandai Power Pad games did not appear in the same order of release as Japan. Super Team Games, for instance, was the next game in the Family Trainer series in Japan but appeared on NES several months before Street Cop debuted.

Street Cop is an action/adventure game that uses the Power Pad controller. You play the role of “Little Ben,” a new police officer fresh out of the academy. He always hoped from a young age to be a detective, and you get to help make his dreams come true. In this game, you take to the streets of Manhattan. There are six stages in the game, each one featuring a bad guy on a wanted poster. You beat the game once you arrest all six main criminals.

Gonna take a walk in the park real quick.

Before we get into the game description, let’s recap briefly on the setup for this game. You will plug a standard controller into the first controller port on the NES. Then plug in the Power Pad to the second controller port. This game uses Side B of the Power Pad. In this configuration, there are three rows of four buttons each. All buttons are numbered from 1 to 12. The first row contains buttons 1 to 4, the middle row is 5 through 8, and the last row is 9 to 12.

Here is how you control Little Ben with the Power Pad. The neutral position is standing on buttons 6 and 7, right in the middle of the Power Pad. Alternate presses by either walking or running on those buttons to move forward. There are three different running speeds depending on how quickly you move. If you jump in place, Little Ben will jump, but you need to be standing on both buttons before you jump and sometimes it doesn’t respond like you would expect. You face either left or right and you are locked into that direction. To turn around, step once on either 10 or 11 in the bottom row. To move sideways, step on either 5 or 8 to sidestep one time in that direction. You will move in or out on the screen depending on the direction you are facing. If you need to walk into a building or down an alleyway, turn right by standing on 3 and 7 or turn left by standing on 2 and 6. The idea is you need to turn your body and face in the direction you want Little Ben to turn. The corner buttons are for using items. Thrown items can be tossed by pressing 1. Little Ben wields a baton at the bad guys by stepping on 4. Either 9 or 12 is used for any secondary items you may be holding. You also have the option to use the controller for a couple of options. Press B to use throwing items and press A to swing the baton.

Not sure throwing bombs is legal, but whatever.

All six levels have similar structure. In each stage, you see a wanted poster with the main bad guy you need to arrest. At the bottom of the wanted poster are images of some cohorts of the criminal along with a count. First you need to track down and capture all the cohorts. Then you will be able to track down the primary baddie. Some levels have two different types of cohorts. Each stage has a different layout you must explore.

The bottom of the screen shows information you need. On the left is the stage timer and Little Ben’s health meter. You get ten minutes to clear each stage. In the middle is the map of the level. Your position is represented as a blue dot, while an X appears where a bad guy is located. The right side shows how many cohorts are left to track down, as well as ammo for any items you find.

Capturing criminals can prove to be a little tricky. You can only go after one at a time. If his or her position shows up on the map, you first have to chase them down. When you catch up and see them, then you have to line yourself up with the criminal. The city streets have three running lanes. You can do the sidestep maneuver to change between those lanes at any time. The bad guys also switch lanes frequently. Once you get lined up with them, then you need to draw close enough to use either your throwing items or your baton. While enemies move relatively slowly, it’s tough sometimes to get everything to line up while navigating the controls. An easier way to catch a criminal is to knock them down by running into them at full speed. It doesn’t always trigger, but it works often enough that I found it to be the preferred method of fighting. Many enemies take more than one hit to defeat. Sometimes it works out where I can run into them once, and when they get up they walk right into me so I can baton them.

There is some straight up platforming here.

Each stage has a unique criminal to capture as well as some minor differences in the gameplay. In Stage 1, you capture Snatcher Joe. This is a basic level with only one strip of street to explore. This is a great introduction to the controls with plenty of time to meet your goal and get acquainted with the movement. As you walk through the city, there will be other pedestrians walking around, but you don’t interact with them and just walk right past them. It should be clear enough who is good and who is bad. Along the way you may find soda cans. Just walk into them to collect them, then press 1 to throw them. This simple stage does have one little trick to it. You might meet up with the enemy on the map but don’t see him walking around. In that case, he is hiding in one of the trash cans on the top row. Go up to the trash can and smack it with the baton to lure the bad guy out. He won’t hide again unless he goes off screen. Once all the cohorts are gone, then track down Snatcher Joe. He takes several hits to capture.

Stage 2 has you looking for Speedy Louis. This stage is more expansive than the first one, with a larger map connected with various alleyways. You will need to learn the turning controls to proceed down those paths. Another thing you need to learn is watching yourself on the map to make sure you are going the way you expect. When on the top row of the map, if you run to the right for example, your position on the map moves left instead. Just something to be aware of. This stage introduces a couple of new elements. There are some sewer entrances as holes on the street. Avoid them. Falling into one is always a setback and there is nothing down there for you to find at all. If you get stuck there, you need to move all the way to the right, jump onto the rightmost step, and then jump again to get out of the sewer. This level also introduces some other powerups. A clock adds one minute to the stage timer, up to the initial ten minutes. Picking up a can with a heart on it refills a portion of your health meter. Specific to this stage, you will find throwable bombs used as projectile weapons. One guy also holds a V-Max Turbo Drink. Just having this in your possession lets you run fast enough to chase down Speedy Louis.

You can just walk in and take the mustard.

In Stage 3, you must locate and capture Animal S. This stage consists of two long streets connected by a warehouse. If the enemy shows up on the other side of the street, then you need to cross through the warehouse. That section is a pure side-scrolling area with a single lane through to the other side. You’ll have to jump over boxes to get across. This stage has oranges you can pick up for throwing weapons. You also find a hyper drink useful for capturing Animal S. Animal S is one tough character. He has a charge attack that knocks you down on contact. He is very tough in a straight up fight. Here you will want to press 9 or 12 to use the hyper drink. You will turn red for a short time and Animal S can’t hurt you. Throwing items are also effective, especially when the drink effects wear off.

In Stage 4, you go after Big Burger. He can be found at the top of a skyscraper under construction and you will need to climb up after him one floor at a time. This level features stores that you can enter. Go inside and look for useful items. Mustard is the throwing item of choice in this stage. You can also find dog whistles in pet stores. Pressing one of the rear corner buttons blows the dog whistle, calling a dog on screen that attacks any bad guy in sight.

Stage 5 features Bloody Betty. She likes to shop so you will find her in one of the stores. You’ll need to explore all the doors here looking for items and her cohorts. The special items in this stage are throwing bombs and dog whistles. This level also features the subway. If you find Bloody Betty but let her get away, she will escape to another town. In that case, you will use the subway to travel over there, but you’ll have to search for her and defeat more cohorts all over again.

Bosses can be hard to find and tricky to beat.

The final stage squares you off against Don Mayonecheese. This level is a tricky one. There are three separate towns in this stage connected by the subway. Each town has a hideout where you might find the final boss. First you need to defeat the baddie that holds the key to the hideout. Then you can enter the hideout and search for Don. Of course, you have to defeat all the cohorts first per usual, both on the streets and in the hideout. You’ll be able to find bullets for your gun in case of a shootout as well as dog whistles in the stores. However, neither of those are effective against Don Mayonecheese. You’ll have to use all of your skills plus a little luck to finish the game.

There are no passwords, saving, or lives in this game. You can run out of health or run out of time, and then it’s Game Over. The good news is that you have unlimited continues. The bad news is that, if you are like me, you will need a rest break in between attempts. This is a more cerebral game than the other Power Pad games I’ve played so far, but it can still wear you out with all the footwork needed.

This was my first time playing through Street Cop. I didn’t bother testing out any of the Power Pad games beyond making sure they booted to the title screen. I remember watching TheMexicanRunner play this game so I already had an idea of how it works. This is an uncommon game that sells for around $20-$25. The only copy I’ve ever seen in person was the one I bought. I think I snagged it for around $8. This was at a game store where the owner didn’t yet understand how to value games using the Internet, so I ended up buying several uncommon games there for great prices before he caught on.

This is why he really wanted to be a cop.

I am glad that this ended up being a Power Pad game that I didn’t have to completely exhaust myself to play. I can’t help but break a sweat playing these games, but Street Cop took longer for me to get to that point. I even played it while I was a little bit sick and that seemed to have no effect on me. Once you get a handle on the controls, this game isn’t too difficult. You are free to pause with Start at any time to take a quick break. The enemies move slower to compensate for your lack of reaction time. The only real danger was running out of time, which happened a few times. I only had to continue at most twice per level before I cleared it. When I recorded my video longplay, I didn’t need to use any continues and only took small pause breaks in between levels. The only blemish on the run was skipping a cohort in the fourth stage. I was able to find the final boss in the second building I tried. Quite a solid run overall. I noticed I have the best completion time for this game (I can’t imagine that many people would try speedrunning it) so I have submitted it to speedrun.com as a new world record! I wonder how many more accidental speedruns I am going to get out of this project.

Street Cop is a basic action game. The graphics are simplistic but carry the idea well. The music is fine, nothing special. The controls work well and are more responsive than I would have guessed. The only tricky move is jumping which doesn’t always trigger. The gameplay is simplistic, but that’s what you want when playing a game with your feet. This is a notable game because this is the only game on the NES, and maybe one of the only games ever, with this kind of control scheme and gameplay merged together. There is strategy and exploration in what amounts to a fitness game. I think the developers did a great job of varying your goals and designing the stages. Sure, combat is usually the same, repetitive action, but there’s just enough variance and some clever boss encounters to make this game worthwhile. Good on the developers to try something different while getting it to work well. While it is tough to recommend any of the Power Pad games today, if you happen to own one and are looking for something that’s a little bit different, I think you might have fun with this game.

#115 – Street Cop

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

Hear the calming waves and feel the ocean breeze.

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

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

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

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

Just look at that character lineup!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the sweet spot!

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

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

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

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

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