Top Gun: Impossible To Land

When looking through a pile of old NES games, the last game I ever want to see Top Gun.  It is indicative of an owner that had no taste in games, and would likely purchase any licensed schlock that was released for the popular console, and generally lowers any expectations I might have had for the collection.  There are some excuses for owning the game, like receiving it for free or writing a blog about playing awful games, and sadly I fall into both of those categories.  It is games like this that defy the entire idea of a Nintendo Seal of Quality.

Ancient Aliens: Mushroom Kingdom

As a part of the nostalgic memories of many people's lives, Super Mario Bros. is rarely looked at with a critical eye. The problem is, upon closer inspection, much of the game just does not add up. How did all these worlds get here? Who is Mario and what are his goals? There are a great deal of unanswered questions that Mario historians have not been able to answer. These historians have rejected the facts right in front of them because they are unable to accept these facts without compromising their established world view. I believe that many of the mysteries of Mario's worlds can be explained by the intervention of aliens in the past.

A Brief Look At Gundam Games

Video games based on Gundam have a terrible reputation, and it while it is not entirely undeserved, there are a great deal that goes completely overlooked. There are a lot of games that are awful, a lot that might be good for fans of certain genres, and some that are incredibly satisfying for fans of the series. As a fan of the franchise, I can understand how readers may not consider me a reliable source, but there are good Gundam games, and it bothers me that people seem to completely dismiss any game with the Gundam on it. This is by no means a complete guide, but I think it covers a good deal of important titles.

Mighty Bomb Jack: From The Dark Early NES Days

Mighty Bomb Jack is an NES sequel to Tecmo's first game, Bomb Jack. Released in 1986, it is a game from a transitional period in the NES's history from arcade-style games to more modern console era games. I don't know if Jack is supposed to have been a mascot for Tecmo, but the character has a bizarre design that is a mix between a superhero and cereal mascot. In a lot of ways the game straddles the line between those to styles, and the result is a game that is mostly just frustrating and annoying.

Back to Paperboy's Future

Here is some advice that could potentially save you tens of dollars. If you ever see a game with the LJN rainbow logo, especially if it is an NES game, don't buy it. I don't care if it only costs a dollar, chances are really good that the game isn't worth that much. What brings this topic on is the impressively terrible Back to the Future for NES. It was developed by Beam Software, a company that has made a lot of crap, but also a few interesting titles, such as the SNES version of Shadowrun. It doesn't really matter, it was payed for by LJN, and it is based on a movie license, so it clearly has a 0% chance of being any good.

Eliminator Boat Duel

I'm beginning to think I purchase too many games based on how goofy their name is. Even with the goofy name, I knew pretty much what I was getting in to when I got Eliminator Boat Duel. If you're playing a boat racing game on NES, you're probably playing some sort of top-down, Micro Machines-like affair. A bit of coincidence, this game was published by Electro Brain, the company responsible for the game inthe previous post, though it was actually developed by Sculptured Software, the makers of Metal Mech.

Dick Tracy's Least Absurd Incarnation

One day I will write about Dick Tracy for Genesis, but that day is not today. I don't know what happened to my copy of the game, so I'll just have to repurchase it. While the superior version, programmed by Sega, is a game I have such fond memories of, in the mean time I'll have to make due with this NES version from Bandai, which was programmed by Realtime Associates, whom have been around for a long time but never made anything noteworthy. I wanted to like the game because Dick Tracy is cherished, though inexplicable, part of my childhood, but the whole thing is just sloppy.

 

 

One of a few games that were seeking to capitalize on the 1990 Dick Tracy film, the NES one isn't fun. At least the concept for the game was ambitious. On paper it seems really neat. You play as the titular detective, and it is your job to solve the case, find the responsible criminal, and bring him or her to justice. There are multiple suspects, and you have to figure out which is responsible by traveling through an open world and discovering clues. Sometimes when going from place to place you need to deal with random enemies. When investigating an area, you need to show restraint and you can't just go shooting everybody you see.

 

 

So, I guess if someone were to do an NES demake of L.A. Noire, it might be remarkably similar to Dick Tracy. The problem with all the game's lofty goals is that it just doesn't work, and maybe it would have never worked on the old NES hardware. The game is split between overhead GTA-style traveling and standard 2D side-scrolling sections. While the amount of freedom allowed is impressive, there is just know way to figure where you actually need to go. The driving is awkward and you always feel like you are on rails even though you have complete control over where you go. You can fire a gun straight forward from the car to deal with other cars, and you can get out of the car and walk around in order to enter buildings and have better control over shooting, which is useful for dealing with the snipers on building tops.

 

 

In the side-scrolling sections, which are generally pretty small, you have to deal with enemies and find clues. If an enemy is unarmed, you have to punch them out, because if you shoot them you'll lose health, which is more annoying than interesting. Tracy has the usual skills of crouching and jumping, which you need to do in order to climb stairs, unlike the more logical Castlevania method of walking on them. While it is nice that you are able to shoot straight or at an upward or downward angle, because there are many enemies at different heights throughout the levels, it would have been nice to have been able to shoot vertically.

 

 

The combat isn't very fun. It is difficult to the drop on enemies and kill them without taking a hit, and that is frustrating because Tracy has very little life, and the game has no extra lives or continues, though it does have a password system to skip back to the various cases. Maneuvering seems sluggish and the Tommy Gun upgrade is just the same gun but it wastes ammunition faster by spraying a bunch of bullets when it doesn't take make to actually kill an enemy. A game that mixed the investigation/text-adventure format of Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken with a more action-based exploration style could have been really interesting, but Dick Tracy isn't successful at either of those things, so I'll just stick to the arcade-style action of the Genesis game.

Low G Man Is Not A Half-Life Mod Featuring Lil Jon

I friend of mine purchased Low G Man: The Low Gravity Man for me for. . . some reason. I guess just to see me write about it and add to the poverty collection. He probably chose this game in particular because it cost two dollars and it has oddly simple box art. Low G Man is a 1990 NES game developed by KID, the people responsible for Burai Fighter and partially responsible for Mendel Palace. Oddly enough, the game's most unique feature isn't the gravity.

Milon's Secret Castle Full of Money and Honey

Often my reasons for selecting old games for purchase is completely arbitrary and stupid. Sometimes I'll buy a game because it has a goofy title, but most often I throw down my dollar on a game simply because I've never heard of it. In this case, I bought Milon's Secret Castle because its label was in nice condition. This wasn't my only reason, of course. It is a Hudson game, and as someone who hasn't really played many Hudson games, I felt like I should give one of their older NES title a try. The name of the game sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place it. As it turns out, I had not only seen the game before, I had played it, or at least a hacked version, as a built in title for the Power Games, though not for much time.

Gotcha! The Sport! The Exclamations!

In spite of the two exclamation points in the title, Gotcha! The Sport! is not a very exciting game.  Compared to other NES game I received from my brother’s trip to a retro game expo, The Mafat Conspiracy, this is downright dull.  Considering it is a game from LJN I guess I should just be thankful it isn’t a complete unplayable mess like all of their licensed Marvel games.  I first heard about this game in Chrontendo, but when I was handed the cartridge I couldn’t remember it at all.  You’d think a paintball based light gun game would be more memorable.

Golgo 13 in The Mafat Conspiracy

My brother recently to some sort of retro game expo, so I told him to bring me back something cheap that he's never heard of. This is how I came into possession of The Mafat Conspiracy for the NES. I had never heard of the game either, but as it turns out that it is the sequel to Vik Tokai's Golgo 13: Top Secret Mission. In Japan, that title was called Golgo 13 Episode 1: Twilight of the Gods, and this one was Golgo 13 Episode 2: The Riddle of Icarus. While the original game is fondly remembered for being relatively Mature for an NES title and for generally being strange, it must not have sold particularly well for Vic Tokai to have decided to remove the Golgo 13 branding from the packaging. It's not surprising considering the obscurity of Golgo 13 in the US.

Shatterhand: Exploderobot

When I asked a friend what game I should play, he told me Shatterhand, and I thought he was just making shit up. As it turns out, Shatterhand actually exists, and it's a neat little NES action game from Harvest Moon creators Natsume. In Japan it was turned into a licensed game for on of their many Power Rangers-like shows, Super Rescue Solbrain, but it was an original IP with some hilarious box art. It's a typical looking guy with a plain white t-shirt, but he's got these goofy sunglasses you'd only see in the 90's and his hand is tearing away to reveal he's a robot or something.

Dr. Chaos: His Doctorate Is Not Actually In Chaos, That Is Just His Surname

I don't know where to start with Dr. Chaos because it is such a strange game. It is an action-adventure game developed by a company called Marionette, whom as far as I can tell hasn't made any other games that people in the US have heard of. In Japan it was released on the Famicom Disk System, published by a company with one of my favorite names, Pony Canyon. Of course, in the US it was released on cartridge for the NES, so it was one of those games that you could save in the Japanese version, but had to remember passwords for the US version. One thing that was surprising to me was that the box art for the US and Japanese version were basically the same, and it pretty much depicts the stuff that is in the game, which I think is rare for a 1988 NES game.

Mendel Palace/Quinty

A friend of mine left Mendel Palace at my house with the assurance that it was a game that ate up a large amount of his childhood. I thought this was weird because I had never heard of the game, but after playing it for a bit I can see the appeal. Known as Quinty in Japan, this game is probably most remembered in retrospect as the first game from Pokémon developers Game Freak. Oddly enough, the two friends who recommended this game to me were also my two friends who were bit hardest by the Pokémon bug back in the 90's, but I don't think they knew they were both designed by the same guy.

Metal Mech: Man & Machine & M's Of All Kinds

I purchased Metal Mech: Man & Machine because it has a silly title. I don't think it's a stretch to say that most large death-shooting mechs are made of metal, so the title seems redundant. In Japan it was released under the name Metal Flame Psybuster, which is exactly the sort of name you would expect out of a Japanese mecha game, especially since it is so nonsensical. Metal makes sense, I would guess with Flame they were going for Frame because there is no fire in the game and referring to the mech as a Metal Frame makes enough sense. I'd guess it's called Psybuster because it sounds cool, because there wasn't any psychicing or bustering going on. Japan must like the name Psybuster, because Cybuster is a staple original unit from the Super Robot Wars series that was popular enough to get its own anime series.

Jurassic Park-athon Part 2: Rampage Edition

This is the 2^nd part of my Jurassic Park-athon, where I plan to play every Jurassic Park game in roughly chronological order. I was trying to come up with a combination word like Chrontendo, but I've got nothing. Anyway, you can find part 1 here. Today I hope to get through all of the games from around the time of the first film.

Wall Street Kid: 80's As Fuck

I seem to frequently say that the game I'm writing about is weird, but in this case it is really weird. Wall Street Kid is a stock market simulator for the NES. As far as I know, this is the only stock market sim released on US consoles. In Japan, before this there was The Money Game, and then there was The Money Game II: Kabutochou no Kiseki, which this game was a localization of. I remember playing Wall Street Kid at a friends house when I was a kid, and at some point his copy of the game ended up in my collection with the rest of his NES games. I'm quite surprised the game was of Japanese origin, because the is so 80's business America that I'd expect the game to have a cocaine meter.

Legacy of the Wizard

Legacy of the Wizard is an NES game that people would probably only put up with in the NES era. It was known as Dragon Slayer IV: Drasle Family in Japan, where, as you might be able to tell from the title, was part of a series of games. It's not a series that I am familiar with, but I guess some people remember Faxanadu fondly, which it was a sequel to, though in the weird world of US NES releases, Faxanadu was released later. The game was originally developed and published by Nihon Falcom, but according to Wikipedia the NES version was made by Quintet, whom later made Actraiser and Illusion of Gaia. The fact it was Nihon Falcom doesn't really change my impression of the game because I've never spent much time playing any of their games, but the connection to Quintet disappoints because I've liked their games.

Dungeon Magic: Magic and Dungeons

Don't get your hopes up, I'm not writing about mid-90's fantasy themed isometric arcade beat'em up from Taito that was pretty fucking cool, I'm writing about the late 90's fantasy themed first-person NES RPG from Taito that was pretty fucking boring. While the RPG was known everywhere as Dungeon Magic: Sword of the Elements, the beat'em up was called Lightbringer in Japan. Another difference between the two games (other than the fact they are different games entirely), is that while the arcade game was developed by Taito themselves, Natsume developed the NES game for Taito back before Natsume became the Harvest Moon company.

A Quick Word About P.O.W.

I'm going to keep this brief today because I got my 3DS today, and that pretty much took up my whole day. P.O.W.: Prisoners of War is a 1989 beat'em up by SNK for NES. It's a port of an arcade game of the same title, and is the earliest SNK port that I can think of that isn't complete shit. I don't know if they did this one themselves or if Micronics just got better, but I'd put my money on the prior. The music is pretty catchy and the graphics are pretty good.