FTR, X-Men for the NES may be bad, but X-Men for the Game Gear was one of my favorite games ever. I miss it badly.
Silver Surfer and X-Men are two EVIL games. If I decide to continue with the developer chronology, I’m gonna put off LJN for as long as possible!
Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers, Capcom, 1990, 15 minutes
For furry fun, this is more like it. I used to own this game, and played it with my friends all the time (it’s a great 2 player game, on the same level of Contra), and it all came back to me really well. You can rush through this game really fast as long as you jump over or immediately chuck a box at any enemy in the way, and don’t stop to collect items, since you’ll have more lives than you need anyway. This game is based on the Disney cartoon that was on in the late 80s, and reproduces the show really well, with most of the characters. You need to save Gadget and then take down Fatcat, and there’s a map where you can sometimes choose between 2 stages (and some paths have extra stages, so I alway took the shorter path), and each stage is totally unique (a kitchen, a library, a casino) but shrunk down to chipmunk size.
Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight, Capcom, 1990, 52 minutes
First of all, despite sharing the name of two other Capcom series, this game has absolutely NOTHING to do with either Street Fighter or Final Fight. It’s a futuristic action side scroller, where you’re hunting down some alien gang, and you warp from planet to planet. In order to warp, you need to collect a certain amount of energy - in some stages, you can collect enough from the regular enemies, while others require you to find and fight a boss first. Once the warp opens, you have 7 seconds to get into it before you die, which can be a problem is the warp is on the other side of the stage or in a hard to reach location. This game is a good case-study for how to make a really bad game. First of all, you choose a title that is extremely misleading. Secondly, you give it a lame story with engrish-filled dialog “HOW DO YOU PURSUE ME?”. Next, you add really bad play control - one thing your character can do is grab onto walls and platforms, and climb them. However, whether or not he actually grabs them seems to be totally random - I died plenty of times from jumping at a wall, him not grabbing it, and falling to my death, meanwhile he would grab platforms at points when I was trying to jump through or around them. Another problem is that the character cannot duck, but if you hold down and fire, he will shoot UP at an angle. Your character can also NOT move at all when you are in the middle of firing a shot, which leaves you a sitting duck if there’s an enemy coming at you while you’re killing another one. Hey, at least you can change directions when jumping! While the difficulty is lower than Ghosts 'N Goblins (mainly cuz you have a 5 bar energy meter, even though it only gets refilled after every 5 stages or so), it just doesn’t have the fun appeal of that game, and it makes it way more frustrating to complete.
The Little Mermaid, Capcom, July 1991, 20 minutes
The next in the line of Capcom-made Disney games. This game was extremely easy (which wouldn’t have been surprising, if it weren’t for Capcom’s reputation of making really decent Disney games) but was still fun to play. It’s a swimming action game where you control Ariel and have her go through various ocean stages. Like Rescue Rangers, it’s better to just ignore everything and just try to get through the stages as fast as possible. I don’t know it the items make the game any different, but I didn’t need any of them to finish it. Holding B will make you swim slightly faster, and A will make her whack her tail, which shoots bubbles which will turn fish into holdable weapons which you can throw at other enemies. Most bosses require you to throw fish at them. Strangely enough, this game only somewhat resembles the movie, since you remain in mermaid form the entire time. I probably could have finished this game in under 15 minutes, if it weren’t for an extremely cheap thing in the last stage.
The last stage, in Ursula’s palace, is a maze with doors connecting the rooms. However, the only way to get through the maze is to reenter one of the doors that you just passed through, as it goes to a new room, rather than to the previous one.
one last Capcom-Disney game for today
Darkwing Duck, Capcom, June 1992, 42 minutes
This game reminds me a lot of Mega Man, just without passwords. The gameplay just seems really similar. It also lets you choose the order of the stages, although this time it doesn’t seem to make any difference which stage you choose to do first or last. I never really watched the show, so I’m not sure how closely the game relates to the series, although it does baffle me that there was a major Disney character with a gun. Ok, speaking of the gun, for some odd reason the regular gun is actually WAY WAY more effective than any of the other weapon upgrades, with limited ammo, that you can get. The only upgrade that seems to serve any useful purpose is the Arrow gun, which was stolen from Mega Man 5. This game also features the ability to grab platforms, similar to SF2010, except this time the control scheme makes more sense - press up to grab it, press down to release from it. Like SF2010, this game suffers horrible hit detection, so you’ll take damage from an enemy that doesn’t even come close to hitting you. Fortunately, with the exception of the construction tower, none of the stages are that difficult. Although each boss is different, they all follow the “chase him around three heights” pattern which I was never a big fan of.
Duck Tales 2: The Quest for More Money, Capcom, April 1993, 51 minutes
This is a direct sequel to the first Duck Tales, and is an almost exact clone of the first game, so everything I said on the first game applies here. Scrooge McDuck has 5 more stages to go through collecting treasure - a Bermuda Pirate Ship, Egyptian Pyramid, Scottish Haunted Castle, Niagara Falls, and a place called Mu which is familiar to the Amazon stage from the original. This time, the stages have more puzzles to them, which makes it a slightly more difficult game. There are also upgrades to your cane that you can get, and you can actually spend money to buy other upgrades too. I have a feeling that once I get more familiar with this game, it can be beaten in about half the time.
Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers 2, Capcom, January 1994, 32 minutes
Like Duck Tales, this is another sequel that is almost exactly like the original, except this time they removed the map, making the game linear, and added in A LOT of boring and useless dialog. They also took away the red ball that was used in the original to fight bosses, so now you have to find your own weapons to use, and some bosses are VERY stingy when it comes to giving up blocks to throw at them. Aside from some of the boss battles, this game is just as easy as the original, but still a fun play.
it’s been a crazy last couple of weeks, of course, but I’ve gradually been working my way through some games, but this is the first chance I’ve had to do writeups…sorry these are so short, but my memory is hazy on a couple of them:
Mighty Final Fight, Capcom, July 1993, 57 minutes
This is an NES version of the SNES/Arcade game, a beat-em-up very similar to Double Dragon. Capcom took all of the characters and made them cutesy looking. There are three characters you can choose to use, and I went with Guy, the martial arts guy (Cody is more of a street fighter and Haggar is a wrestler). Two things I remember about playing through this game - the stages are EXTREMELY easy, but some of the bosses are extremely hard and can only be even damaged by hitting them at the right time in their pattern, also it’s pretty much impossible to NOT beat the game if using a turbo controller.
Final Fight was the last of the non-password Capcom games. I decided to do the chronological Konami next. Gradius was the first USA Konami NES game, which I already played and beat earlier in this challenge.
The Goonies, Konami, 1986, 35 minutes
This game was based on the movie, and has Mikey going through caves and underground forts trying to rescue his friends and collect 3 keys to get to the next stage. In the beginning you can only kick, but you can later find a slingshot, and you can also get bombs which are used to open the doors. This game later got a much better, and much longer (it uses passwords, so I’m skipping it for now) sequel a year later.
Stinger, Konami, 1987, 42 minutes
This is part of the Twinbee shooter series, which was mostly not released in the US. It’s somewhat similar to Gradius, except it takes place over the surface of the earth and has cutesy enemies (watermelons, water faucets, etc), similar to the Paradious series. Unlike Gradius, there isn’t much in terms of weapon upgrades, which gives the game little variety. This was one of the first NES games I ever played.
Rush 'N Attack, Konami, 1987, 20 minutes
Another one of the first NES games I ever played. This is a side scrolling run-n-gun…err…run-n-knife where you’re a soldier running through a Russian military base, killing anything in your path. One of the big problems with this game is that you die if an enemy touches you AT ALL…which means if one is climbing down a ladder and you’re under him, you’ll die. As a bit of trivia, one of my friends uses the RushNAttack SN.
Castlevania, Konami, May 1987, 35 minutes
Ah, the game that starts off one of my favorite game series ever. You are Simon Belmont, headed out to Dracula’s Castle in order to defeat him. This being the first, is one of the simpler games in the series, being mostly a side scroller, with a haunted castle setting. You use a whip, and can whip candles to collect throwable weapons, and hearts which serve as ammo for these. Each boss is one of the famed monsters (Frankenstein, Mummy, Grim Reaper, etc) and each stage is a different section of the castle (tower, dungeon, garden, etc). Great graphics and music, and the gameplay is great aside from the inability to control your jumps - once you start jumping, you must complete the entire jump, and can not change direction. In this play through, I used a couple of the tricks to bounce off flying enemies in order to skip small sections of some stages.
The next game up is Top Gun, the first and only video game I ever bought and then demanded a refund for an hour later…wish me luck…
I know I know, I’ve been really bad. But between all the different dramas going on in my life this month (all of which probably have a separate thread on here), I haven’t had much videogaming time.
Screw Top Gun, it’s run-n-gun time!
Contra, Konami, 1988, 16 minutes
Everybody knows this game, so I don’t really need to give a description, do I? And most everybody I know who knows this game claims they’re good at it. And most of them who say that also cheat with the infamous UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A code. Some of them even claim that you’re SUPPOSED to use it, and Konami doesn’t expect you to beat it the honest way. I’ve even heard claims that Contra is the hardest game ever made without cheating. Contra isn’t even the hardest KONAMI game ever made (that would go to either Top Gun or Bayou Billy). And since one of the rules of this challenge is NO using cheat codes, I beat it the old fashioned way. And to further prove that Contra is only a hard game until you learn to play it, I also didn’t use any save states. Well, I made it through without continuing and I only died 3 times - at both trucks at stage 5, which always give me trouble, and by the fire field on one of the annoying jumps in stage 6. Once the game jumped back to stage 1, I had 7 lives left over, since if you shoot everything that moves (and isn’t that the point of Contra?), you’ll get a high enough score for 1 or 2 extra lives per stage. Honestly, this game is NOT that hard - you just have to learn the layout of the game, because it plays exactly the same way every time. It also helps to have a turbo controller…
Super C, Konami, 1990, 20 minutes
After my no cheat code adrenaline rush, I decided to tackle a game I’ve actually never beaten before, the Contra sequel. The game is very similar to the first one, except rather than a couple 3d stages, there are some over head stages, and there are stages that alternate between horizontal and vertical scrolling…one stage even scrolls down. Otherwise, it’s the same ole Contra. However, this one IS a lot easier than the first one, so much that they didn’t even include the 30 live code. Yes, I died a couple times, and most of them were related to cheap hits that I would have missed had I been more familiar with the stages, but the combination of the Spread Gun and a turbo controller got me through this one almost as easily as the original. Super C is a very worthy sequel, but it just doesn’t have the same nostalgia level as the original. And you can really tell that they toned down the action…I guess there really ARE that many people out there who found the original too hard?
I’ll get back on Top Gun…someday…that game scares me. It also has NOTHING to do with the movie, aside from military jets being present.
FTR, I just scored a Super Nintendo (my first one was smashed to bits with a sledgehammer in front of me in 2003–and with Super Mario World in it too!) and dusted off my old games. I just beat Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (Konami 1992), in 25 minutes yesterday on Easy and in 32 minutes today on Normal. I jacked up the extra lives, though (which you can do in the options menu without cheat codes). The game is hard (for me, anyway–I played it for a looooooong time before beating it as a kid) and even though it plays the same way every time, it has a lot of replay value. For those who are curious, it’s a side-scroller which plays out more like Turtles II than Turtles III (both for the Game Boy), but a lot harder.
I just have to say Fusoya, you are the man.
A frustrated co-gamer?
Nope, my dad.
oh wow, nice to see this thread already made the move. Well, so far in 2008 I’ve had to conquer my girlfriend moving here, getting a new job, and a nasty bout with the flu, and I’m STILL trying to conquer Top Gun. This hasn’t been much of a year for gaming for me, but on my way home from work today, I decided I was gonna play one of my favorite games ever.
Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse, Konami, 1990, 1 hour, 15 minutes
Even though the NES stuck around another 3 years after this release, I have always considered Castlevania 3 to be the high point in both graphics and sound for the system. This game had its own graphics & sound chip installed on the cartridge to provide extra performance power, and is a great benchmark ROM to see how advanced an NES emulator is (this was one of the last games that emulator programmers were able to get working, although Nestopia handles it perfectly…nesDS will play it, but the audio is awful and some of the enemies will not appear). It, simply put, looks and sounds beautiful. Oh yeah, the gameplay kicks ass too. Set a couple hundred years before the original Castlevania, Trevor Belmont sets out to destroy Dracula and bring down Castlevania. This time, getting there is half the fun, as the game starts out in the village and you must travel through multiple stages before getting into the castle. One of the charming things about this game is after certain stages, you can choose between two paths - do you want to invade the castle over the moat, or do you want to go up the mountain through the abandoned mines under the castle (that mine stage STILL gives me nightmares just from thinking about it, and I chose the ship/moat route this time)? Each playthrough, you’ll only play maybe half the total stages in the game, which really adds to the replay value. Aside from that, you can get help from other characters who can be swapped in for Trevor (who plays exactly like Simon from CV1) but who are only found at certain points in the game - Grant, a pirate who can climb walls and ceilings, and actually has decent jumping skills (but doesn’t have much in term of attack power)…Sypha, a wizard with weak defense but who gets incredibly strong attack spells…and Alcuard, Dracula’s rebeling son who shoots fireballs (just as long as he isn’t on the stairs) and can turn into a bat. I went with my buddy Grant, who makes the game really really fun to play, although all three bonus characters add a new perspective to the game, increasing the replay value even more. This game really is no picnic. At least until Circle of the Moon came along, it was definitely the hardest Castlevania game, and I have hundreds of hours of memories of playing this game with one of my friends (about half of which were spent on that damn mine stage, waiting for the screen to fill with falling blocks), and although much of the gameplay did come back to me, it was a real workout. The game does have a password system, since it’s a particularly long game for those of you who don’t know where you’re going…and there’s also the infamous HELP ME code, which I didn’t use per the challenge rules. Excellent, excellent game, one of my favorites.
I thought I needed to fill in this gap:
Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest, Konami, 1988, I played it over 3 sittings and didn’t keep track…but I know it can be beaten in about an hour if you know exactly what you’re doing.
This is probably one of the most controversial games ever released for the NES. Like Super Mario 2 and Zelda 2, it holds the reputation as being the sequel that was too different from the original. This time around, it isn’t a stage-based action game, but a side-scrolling action RPG. You don’t start at the courtyard of Castlevania, but in a town, with people (deranged liars, but still people) to talk to, and shops to go into. Some people hated it, others loved to hate it, but I loved the game. After Zelda 1, this was the first epic game I ever owned, and I was really on my own with it. There was a Nintendo Power review of the first half of the game (the infamous Dracula’s head issue), but the second half of the game, which could only be reached by
equipping the red crystal, and ducking at the cliff for 8 seconds, which will activate a tornado which will carry you up the mountain
was not touched on at all, and my 9 year old self was stuck exploring the land of Transylvania on my own, and I definitely got my money’s worth, as I remember playing the game for many months before finally finishing it. Simon’s quest is to enter the five skeleton-guarded mansions which hold the various body parts of Dracula’s body, collect them all and return them to Castlevania, which will put Dracula’s soul to rest once and for all (at least until the next game). There is a big world to explore, and this was one of the first, if not THE first, games to introduce the element of day and night - at night, enemies get stronger and the towns are deserted, except for the zombies which roam it. This game also has an experience system, which raised a moral question for this play through - you gain experience by collecting hearts, which are dropped by enemies about 50% of the time…since I allow save states in my challenge, would it be cheating to restore/rewind the game so that EVERY enemy drops a heart? This was also an awkward play through, because once you KNOW everywhere to go and everything to do, the game can be beaten pretty fast, aside from when you need to stop and collect hearts to buy things, which slows the game to a halt. Infact, CV2 was the first game I ever time-attacked…about 10 years ago, the now-gone site zophar.net had contests to see who could beat a particular game the fastest - we would have to submit movies of us playing the game, no cheating allowed. I trained for a week on CV2 until I could beat it in about 50 minutes, which included spending the first 10-15 minutes fighting enemies in order to build up experience and hearts, and then timing everything so that I would arrive at the towns during the day. Some of the strategy has been forgotten over the years, but most of the time line plays itself so that
if you fight in the forest next to the first town all day, and then fight the zombies at night, you will have enough hearts to buy the white crystal & holy water in the first town first thing in the morning, and then have enough hearts for the chain whip by the time you get to the second town. Then hit all 5 mansions in order and the game pretty much plays itself
For those of you who haven’t played this game before, I recommend that you consider whether you want to invest so much time in it. It is a password game, and you definitely will NOT beat it in one sitting unless you know exactly what to do. However, it really is required playing for NES and Castlevania fans, and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys action RPGs. Just remember that there is as much that was different from CV1 & 3 as there was the same…
I remember castlevania 2. It was the first CV game I played, and I had a video tape with a mini-walkthrough on it.
I think that was the first epic game I ever finished. I remember standing really close to the wall spikes and jumping up. You would kind of glitch out and float in the air, because your feet were standing on a spike, but the hit detection didn’t make you take damage if you stood in the right spot.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Konami, 1989, 45 minutes
I consider TMNT1 to be the #1 most overrated game in the history of the NES. It’s not a BAD game, but it didn’t deserve any of the praise it received. It came out during the height of TMNT craziness (the 80s version of Pokemon), which was enough to sell titles, were it not for Nintendo Power giving it a 3 issue feature, and then naming it best game of 1989 (Mega Man 2 was 10x the game TMNT was…). I really don’t know what Konami was thinking, making a game that was obviously going to be marketable to kids, and would be bought by casual gamers, and then making it damn near impossible. You essentially get 4 lives, one for each turtle, and you can switch turtles whenever you want (each has their own lifebar), except that Michaelangelo and Rafael totally suck (I use them on the swimming stage), so Leonardo and Donatello are the only characters worth protecting. This game is riddled with maze-like levels (I had to consult Nintendo Power to figure out the correct path through the air base stage) and crazy jumping, and buggy stages where enemies appear and disappear out of nowhere, and often turn into different types of enemies. Also, aside from some bosses, the enemies in this game are mostly weird aliens that had nothing to do with TMNT’s comic or cartoon. Fortunately Konami will get things right with the sequels.
No Rare games yet?
You have to do Snake, Rattle n’ Roll and the Battletoads series next!
still working on the Konami chronology. Remember, this is the company that had so many games to release, they had to start up a second company (UltraGames) to get around Nintendo’s 5 titles a year rule.
Ah, Little Nemo. The movie was absolutely INCREDIBLE. I don’t understand the furry references, though. I don’t remember anything like that from the anime.
I watched a guy play that through. It’s doable.
Mike Tyson’s Punch Out might be a bitch on an emulator. I beat it when I was a kid on an NES with regular nes controller, but with a keyboard, it might be too tough.
Battletoads was one game I always had trouble with as a kid. But I have seen people beat it on an emulator.
Legend of Zelda is a good one to try, as is Adventures of Link (I never did beat Legend of Zelda, but Adventures of Link is very doable in one day).
Contra with 3 guys is also possible. Hard as hell, but possible.
Bionic Commando is an easy one. Just make sure you take the rocket launcher into the stage with the big wall at the beginning. I don’t remember with board that was, but use save states before entering any of the latter stages.
Mega man was tough, but doable as well.
Let’s see here… Ghosts and Goblins was frigging HARD. Good luck with that one.
If you’re up for a 12 hour adventure, you could do Final Fantasy 1 in one sitting. You’d have to rush a bit, but it should be possible.
Double dragon… Kid Icarus… Bubble Bobble (although I’m not sure how to even beat that)…
That’s all I’ve got for now. It’s 5am, and I’m only here because I couldn’t sleep. I’m gonna go try and get another couple hours.