NES-a-day challenge

The Game Room
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The Chessmaster, The Software Toolworks, January 1990, 10 minutes

The Chessmaster has been released so many times over the years, and the NES version is not much different from the others. It’s got tutorials, hints, 16 levels of difficulty, and various ways you can customize the game. However, the one major difference is that the NES is REALLY stupid. I played on difficulty level 8 of 16, and still had no trouble checkmating in 10 minutes, while the computer only captured 4 of my pieces (2 pawns, a knight and a bishop), and made a lot of moves that didn’t make any sense. Just for the heck of it I tried the highest difficulty next, but the computer went into “thinking” mode (yeah, the cursor actually turns into a lightbulb) on the first move and after waiting a full minute it still hadn’t decided what to move, so I said screw it and turned the game off. As far as I could tell, there weren’t any tournament modes or progression, so I declared this one beat after getting the checkmate. Aside from the crippled AI, it’s not a bad part. Even has some 8 bit victory themes for each piece.

Perhaps I’ll give Battle Chess a play next and see how good the AI is on that one…

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You should try The Guardian Legend. Kind of a mix between The Legend of Zelda and a flying game, by Broderbund (are they even around anymore?). The thing about this game is its length and the pretty spectacular music. I loved it and played it several times back when my NES was working, and played it a few times on emulator.

And I see you have Gradius on your list but not its sequel, Life Force. I always felt that was underrated as well, and it has a bizarre plot about being inside a giant salamander.

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I did Life Force…

The Guardian Legend was always a weird game to me. That one might take more than a day…

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Ooops, missed it on the list.

You won’t regret TGL! The flying parts are well done and the addition of huge list of special weapons helps to break up the typical shooting game.

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I’ll also throw in suggestions for Ninja Gaiden 2 and 3. Same basic concept, but easier because you get better weapons (the shadow clones and big slashing sword make the games a lot easier than the nightmare that was Ninja Gaiden 1)