NES-a-day challenge

The Game Room
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Most of these games I am playing on my DS using nesDS and a memory card. When I started this challenge, I was using pocketNES with my GBA and flashcart. Occasionally i’ll play a game (like Castlevania 3) on my PC, using Nestopia and a Saitek P2600 gamepad. I’d never dream of trying to play console games using a keyboard!

Some of the games you mentioned I’ve already completed, and posted on. Ghosts N Goblins is definitely the toughest of then.

I’m skipping Top Gun for now (having 3 lives and NO continues…and seemingly unavoidable death by missile at least once a stage makes this the most impossible game yet, even with save states. I wonder if Top Gun 2 was any easier?) and so my next game up is Life Force, the Gradius sequel.

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I seem to remember Top Gun being laughably easy once you figured out how to land. All you have to do to breeze through it is keep pushing down on the controller to fly as high as you can. As long as you keep your nose up at the top of the screen no missiles can hit you.

I may be mistaken though, its been a loooong time.

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landing isn’t my problem. My problem is avoiding the “DANGER!” display, which means in 20 seconds I’ll get blown out of the sky by a missile. No matter what I do, I can’t avoid some of these, which means I’ll always run out of lives before I can complete the game.

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Just go all the way right, then all the way left, then all the way right again, and you should be fine.

ETA: Ok, maybe not just three times, but just keep going as far as you can to one side then the other until you shake the bogey.

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Life Force, Konami, 1989, 30 minutes

The sequel* to Gradius, in which the gameplay, graphics and sound have been pushed up a couple of notches. The Vic Viper ship is back, and this time it’s out to start a ginormous space snake who has been gobbling up planets. You fly through the snake’s body, intending to destroy it’s heart (you kill its brain at the end of stage 1, but apparently that’s not enough)…strangely, the game isn’t very consistent with the “inside the giant alien” thing, unlike say…Abadox (and wasn’t there another game I reviewed that had an “inside the giant alien” setting too?) since some stages have you fighting through volcanos and pyramids. Anyway, you know the drill.

  • = some of the craziest fanboys I have ever talked to are the ones who insist on their mother’s grave that Life Force is not only NOT the sequel to Gradius, but has absolutely nothing to do with Gradius. Technically, Konami considers it a “spin-off”, since the real Gradius games are flying through OPEN space, but how anybody could not see how it’s 90% the same as any other Gradius game is beyond help.
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This thread is back from the dead! Actually I was in the mood for some NES gaming a couple weeks ago, but at the time the search was disabled, and since I couldn’t FIND this thread (and didn’t have it bookmarked), I was unable to revive it sooner. Lately I’ve been playing more GBA and DS games, including playing through Metroid Zero, which brings me to this game:

Metroid, Nintendo, 1986, about 2 hours (all in one sitting, but I paused a couple times to take care of some things…thankfully this game does have passwords)

I was very surprised and saddened when I discovered that the only two Metroid games which have sold over 1 million copies were the Prime games. I guess it takes a pretty hard-core gamer to appreciate this series. This is the one that not only started off one of the best series in the history of video gaming, but also introduced some very innovative features which would influence some of my favorite games of all time. It was also one of (possibly the first?) to feature a female main character, Samus Aram. Of course, being covered in a space fighting suit, you’d never know.

It is the year 2003. Samus has been sent out to stop the Space Pirates (note that in this game, none of the pirates aside from Kraid, Ridley and Mother Brain appear…all other enemies are weird but animal-like space creatures), who have been experimenting with a dangerous alien life form known as the Metroids, in order to use as weapons. Although this is a side/vertically scrolling game, it does not have linear stages, but rather 5 different worlds on the planet of Zebes. There is no set direction to go, and infact you are often presented with multiple choices. Some will advance you, or at least lead you to item upgrades, while others are either dead ends, or paths which can not be crossed until you get some better items (high jump boots, bombs, ice beam, etc). The most frustrating thing is how this game does not have a built in map…if I was less familiar with this game (I grew up playing it), I would have had to either draw my own, or refer to a strategy guide. This game rewards exploring too, as many areas, shortcuts and items are hidden, and require bombing or shooting walls and floors, or just assuming that some can be jumped/walked through. Two very fustrating things about the NES version, which were fixed in all later sequels, is that Samus can not duck (although she can turn into a ball to squeeze through tight sections, but can not fire her gun when in ball form), and when you die or input a password, you start off with almost NO energy, and after you’ve gotten a couple of energy upgrades, you’ll almost certainly never get back to 100%. This game was later remade as Metroid Zero for the Gameboy Advance, which has the same storyline and worlds as the NES version, but has been expanded with even more weapon/armor upgrades and hidden areas. Also note that Super Metroid for the SNES contains some sections of the world from this game as well.

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Again, I’ve been too busy with newer-gen games to play much NES stuff lately (unless you want to count Mega Man 9), but I really need to get back to my roots again, starting with a game I played through in ONE SITTING on a train ride today.

Dragon Warrior, Enix, 1989, 2 hours 30 minutes*

Ah, the original, simple RPG. Save the princess (if you want, you don’t HAVE to…) and then kill Dragonlord. Aside from that and building a bridge, there isn’t that much to do in this game. About 90% of the game is raising levels and collecting gold by wandering around and killing enemies left and right. That makes this game lose A LOT of points, as it gets so dull that I had to play the game on fast forward just so I didn’t feel like I wasted TOO much time on it. To its credit, it was a HARD game, especially with the limited light dungeon mazes. Damn those Axe Armors!!! This was the second NES menu&experience RPG ever released in the USA (after Ultima Exodus which faced the similar lack-of-plot-quest problem), but was a HUGE deal for its time - Nintendo Power even sent a free copy to anyone who renewed their subscription, in hopes of making RPGs more popular in the states. It really hasn’t aged well (although its sequels ARE fabulous AND plot-driven) but it’s worth a play through for old times sake, or just to see where the genre got its start.

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How appropiate for Veteran’s Day. I FINALLY conquered the NES game that has been haunting me since I was 8 years old!

Top Gun, Konami, 1988, 1 hour, 20 minutes

Top Gun is the worst game ever made. It doesn’t even have ANYTHING to do with the movie that the title comes from, aside from the air force setting. I got this game back when I was 8 years old, and returned it to the store an hour later and got Karnov instead. Yes, it was THAT bad. Earlier in this challenge, back when I was on a role and beating an average of 1 NES games a day, I decided to do the chronological Konami, which meant I knew this game was coming up. Try as I might, I was UNABLE to beat this game, even using save states, and it frustrated me so much that I lost the ambition to continue on. Well, I got some pointers from a friend about how to conquer this game, and gave it another try, and I finished it! This is a flying shooter/sim, taking place from behind the cockpit. A fires the regular gun (unlimited ammo), and B fires one of 3 missiles (which should be saved until the boss). The problem with this game is that even though it’s fun to dogfight, and shoot down enemies, it is IMPOSSIBLE to win if that’s how you play the game. The only way to win is to play totally defensively - you need to avoid having any enemies on the screen at all. If you see one, fly out of the way. You can’t be hurt by what you can’t see. Aside from the bosses at the end of each stage, there’s no need to shoot down ANY enemies. Occasionally you will get locked on target, in which case you can escape by alternating between left and right a couple times. Once you get up to the boss, get the target to go red and fire missiles like crazy. After that comes the most famous part of the game, landing. Best way to land is to just IGNORE all of the instructions and just make sure the landing strip is in the target and that your ship looks level. Same thing when you have to refuel - it’s easier to IGNORE the instructions and just look at the radar. After all the trouble this game gave me, it didn’t even have a decent ending.
I actually beat Top Gun!!!

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Top Gun 2: The Second Mission, Konami, 1989, 32 minutes

Apparently enough copies of Top Gun were sold (possibly under the ET effect?) for Konami to want to make a sequel. Well, fortunately, the game is somewhat different than the original. Rather than flying around for 5-10 minutes until you reach a boss, the entire game is dogfights - sometimes with other planes, sometimes taking out a navy, and one weird sequence where it’s you vs trees. They also made landing a lot easier. It’s a much better game than the first one (hell, ET is a much better game than the first one), but still isn’t too great.

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Monster In My Pocket, Konami, 1991, 52 minutes

One nice thing about the NES is that it left behind games that are the sole memory of fads from the 80s and 90s, such as the Monster In My Pocket action figures. This is a pretty basic platformer. It reminds me a lot of Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers due to the miniature house settings. You can choose between a Court Orlockish Vampire, or Frankenstein’s Monster (or both, if you’re playing 2 player), who both play exactly the same. The game starts out pretty simple, beating up other monsters around the house, but it gets more and more difficult as the game goes on, and the last level is totally evil:

It starts with enemies that take 3 hits to defeat, usually leaving them enough time to get a hit in too. Then there’s a parade of bosses from the first 5 stages with NO life refills in between them, followed by a new boss. Then the game goes into the ending sequence, only to get interrupted by the final boss returning for revenge. If you run out of lives at any point in this sequence, you will get brought back to the beginning of this stage!

Be sure to use a turbo controller for this game, as your character’s attack (fiery punches) can get tiring very fast. Killer soundtrack, btw.

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Dragon Warrior 2, Enix, 1990, est. 25 hours

This was the only DW game for the NES I never got around to completing before…the whole “where is the prince now?” quest at the beginning of the game scared me off back in the early 90s. I feel very accomplished, as this is an RPG that really requires a lot from you. Like the first DW, it was innovative and set the stage for future RPGs. Even more-so than the first game, it is very non-linear. Infact, once you get the pirate ship (which occurs about 1/5 into the game) you can go pretty much anywhere in the game, and complete it in any order you choose (including back to the world of DW1, complete with the same music). The goal is to round up your family to create a party, and then collect 5 seals which will allow you to enter Rhone, the icey world where the head badass lives. For the most part the game is pretty easy, with the only real challenge figuring out what to do next, but once you get to the final area, the difficulty level jumps up like CRAZY, and I spent the last 5 hours finally leveling up just so that there wasn’t a good chance I would die in every random battle! Like the first DW, it is pretty lacking in actual story, and it isn’t really that fun being told at the VERY beginning how the game is going to finish up, as it really takes away from the excitement level of an RPG’s progressing story (The folks over at Squaresoft set the bar for THAT aspect).

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An ancient post, but:

Jesus, why?

(My own dad accidentally threw out my NES and SNES in 2004, but there wasn’t any malice involved)

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If I could nominate a couple of favorites to add to the challenge: Conquest of the Crystal Palace and Captain Skyhawk.

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Dragon Warrior 3, Enix, 1991, est. 60 hours

Yes, it actually took me this long to beat this game! This game goes on, and on, and on…and on. It’s one game that you definitely get your money’s worth, and is a really decent RPG, especially for the NES era. I bought this game used back in the early 90s, and did manage to complete it back then, except not really since it came with a saved game near the end which I just picked up on and finished. DW3 completes the trilogy of 1-3, although it isn’t exactly clear how when you start playing. There are actually some pretty good spoilers, which of course got ruined by the Nintendo Power review I read before ever owning the game

[spoiler]

  1. Right after you defeat the last boss (which is far enough into the game that an unknowing player really WOULD think he’s just beat the game - it even starts the ending sequence), you get warped to Alefgard, the world of DW1 (and which also appears in DW2). At this point you essentially play through the entire storyline of DW1 again, except with an already leveled up party. The thing is, there are some hints dropped that this is a different time period than DW1-2, and there are some subtle differences that show this is in the past - like the town of Harkness not being destroyed yet.

  2. Once you beat the game for real, it gets revealed that you are Erdrick/Loto, who is referenced over and over in DW1&2. Probably not that big of a surprise with all of the clues that were dropped. [/spoiler]

This game was HUGE when it first came out (especially in Japan, where so many kids were skipping school to play this game that there were policies passed about when in the calendar future RPGs could be released). The unique thing is that this game, unlike the rest of the DW’s, has one scripted character, and you can choose who to have as your 3 teammates (similar to Final Fantasy 1), all of which can be recruited at the beginning of the game. I went with a party of a Thief (has scouting skills, can steal items, and uses weapons like boomerangs which can hit the entire set of enemies), a Fighter (has limited armor choices, but gets critical hits more often, and gets his best weapon in the game really early if you can actually manage to make it in and out of the damned Pyramid alive) and a Wizard (uses black magic, and can later get a class change to a Sage who learns white magic and can use swords). One of the things that makes this game so long is that pretty much the entire game is open-ended in the plot, so you REALLY have to pay attention and do a lot of exploring to get everything accomplished that is needed to complete it. There are also a bunch of side quests which aren’t needed to beat the game, but will help build your arsenal. There were a couple of times where I gave up and had to consult gameFAQs. Also, this was the first DW game where most dungeons have real actual boss fights at the end of them, and while the last castle really wasn’t that difficult, the final boss (and there are 4 others guarding him) was really no picnic. I beat him on my 4th try.

Now I’m debating whether to get started on Dragon Warrior 4. I actually did beat that game back in the 90s, and it’s even longer than DW3, believe it or not…I know there’s a remake for it on the DS.

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So one of the gifts which I got for Christmas is a NES-USB Retrolink controller. I plugged it into my computer and booted up Castlevania 3, and just played the most perfect game of it ever, despite having no turbo, save/load, ff/rewind and getting the same hand cramps that the original NES controllers gave me when I was a kid (very sharp edges). I think I’m gonna be using this controller to do some NES marathoning over the next couple of days. There’s something about the feel of it that brought me back to 1990, with my 1990’s skills.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the same story with Contra. Even though I can easily finish that game with the 3 lives I start with…the lack of turbo shooting makes a whole new challenge.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game, Konami, 1990, 40 minutes

This summary brought to you by Pizza Hut.

After the disaster that was the original TMNT NES game, this time things seem much more familiar. A pretty faithful port of the TMNT Arcade Game, which was based off of the television cartoon, TMNT2 is a totally different game than the original - a button-mashing beat-em-up. Again, you can choose any of the 4 turtles (I went with Leonardo) even though I think they all play the same this time. You mostly fight foot soldiers (about 10 different kinds, each with different weapons) along with other characters from the show. This game is much much better, easier and funner with 2 players. Unfortunately I didn’t have that luxury tonight, although I have some nice hand cramps from my new NES-USB controller. One big complaint I have with this game - what’s with all the Pizza Hut Ads everywhere? I mean, it’s one thing to have Pizza Hut billboards when on the streets of NYC, but what are they doing in a Shogun Temple or inside the Technodrone?? I remember the back of the instruction manual even had a coupon for a free Pizza Hut.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: The Manhattan Project, Konami, February 1992, 1 hour 10 minutes

More of the same of TMNT2, except this time each turtle has his own unique attack (Raphael’s stolen from M.Bison), which costs 1 health point but will kill any enemy it hits, and you can change turtles each time you die. While I thought it was an improvement on TMNT2 (possibly because I played 2 to death, both in the arcade and on the NES, while I’ve never played 3 before), the game was way too long and tedious (I mean, 90% of the enemies are foot soldiers!). There’s a particularly cheap part where you’re on a conveyor belt, with friggin laser beams in your path AND you have to fight foot soldiers (who can’t even be hurt by the lasers!) At least the bosses are a lot more interesting in this one - there’s more to it than just running up to them and mashing the B button. I do love that they brought back Krane’s theme song, since it’s one of the catchiest NES songs ever. Interestingly, although Zanramon is featured on the box art, he does not appear in the game.

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I’ve heard the 4th one is the best of the NES games, by the way. I have only played 6, which was a huge game as well. I think it took me over 70 hours to beat. It’s on the SNES, though, which only got two main DW games.

Ever play 7 or 8?

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I played 8 a little bit, and plan on getting back to it after I play 5-7…who knows when that’ll be. I’ve been slowly playing DW4 on the DS.

Kid Icarus, Nintendo, 1986, 2 hours, 7 minutes

Ah Kid Icarus. Probably better known from the Captain N cartoon show than the gamicus. This was one of the first NES games I ever owned, and it was the first NES game that really pwned meicus. The thing about this game, it gets easier the farther you get into it - by far the hardest thing to do is beat the very first level (and levels 2 and 3 aren’t much easier), but once you get up to world 2 (4 total worlds, the first 3 have 3 regular levels and then a castle, and the fourth is one short level before the final boss) the rest of the game is a breezeicus. This is because this was one of the first (maybe the FIRST?) games to have experience points, which will make your character have stronger bow&arrow attacks, and will give you more hit points when you collect enough experience (strangly, you only get HP upgrades after completing a level, and you get strength upgrades by entering certain rooms - which my friends & I used to call thinking rooms because we’d walk back and forth and wait for something to happen ,since the rooms would be empty if you didn’t have enough experience for a weapon upgrade). Aside from that, you can also enter training rooms, which will give you additional weapons (choice of fire arrows, longer shooting arrows, or diamonds which act as a shield) if you can fight flying plates for 1 minuticus. Despite the initial challenge (as well as the maze element to the castles), this is a very fun game - you play the angel Pit who is out to destroy Medusa and her fiends, which include enemies which will pop up underneath you (incredibly cheap), and the eggplant wizard, who will turn you into a walking eggplant who cannot attack (and thus cannot defeat the castle’s boss) until you find a nurse to heal youicus. Like the levels, the bosses get easier and easier from world to world, and you can beat Medusa without getting hit at all just by standing in the right place and shooting. Interestingly, one of the ways that you can heal is by drinking wine, which I would wonder how it made it by the Nintendo censors were it not for the fact that Nintendo MADE this gamicus.

Number 1 rule of playing Kid Icarus - NEVER press the down button, or you wil DIEICUS!!!

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Forgive my laziness of not re-reading the thread(I’ve participated for awhile, even as a lurker), but have you played Fester’s Quest.

Also, everyone who likes this kind of gaming should check out “Until We Win” by LordKat.

He plays NES and other games all the way through, using no cheats and explains how to do it. is Dragon’s Lair playthrough is amazing.

Until We Win

His Battletoads playthrough was great, too. :slight_smile: