That game was a bitch. It was work, for sure.
one last game for this weekend…
Adventure Island, developed by Hudson, released September 1988, completion time: about 50 minutes
Originally known as Wonder Boy in the arcade and on the Sega Master System (where it had better graphics and sound), this was the first of a series of side scrolling action games staring Master Higgins, the tropical island version of Super Mario. His princess was kidnapped by the witch doctor (or was it The Others?), which just so happens to be on the opposite side of the island. He throws axes and can ride a skateboard (always wearing a helmet and kneepads - safety first!) and has this tendency to slide when landing from jumps, which makes the play control the biggest enemy until you get used to it. Similar to Chubby Cherub, you need to collect fruit to keep your energy meter up, even though you still die if you get hit (the skateboard will absorb a hit). Once you get used to the play control, the game never gets very hard. It’s pretty long for a sidescroller, but it also moves fast, compared to most NES side scrollers. Also, the developers were pretty lazy as every single world boss is the same guy, just with a head of a different animal!
A hearty second for Adventures of Lolo (and it’s 1 or 2 sequels, I forget how many they did.) (it does have passwords, though, so it may not fit your 1 day criteria)
The one that constantly frustrated me as a kid was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I could get all the way into the technodrome with relative ease in something like 30-60 minutes. But then there was this one corridor full of flying guys with ray guns that got me every single time.
Adventure Island is a lot like Super Mario Bros.- don’t forget that in Mario, Mario had to face Bowser at the end of every level. (Sort of- in the first seven stages, the Bowser is an impostor- Mario can hit him with fireballs for extra points and see the villain fall out of the “costume.”)
I’ve done the Lolo games before. You need to be in the right state of mind to play those games…
I’ve been pretty busy with work and other projects over the last week, so I haven’t quite kept it a game a day, but I got a couple games in over the weekend:
Amagon, developed by Vic Tokai, released April 1989, completion time: 30 minutes
Cavemen with guns!! Yeah, there’s very little plot to this game, and what it has doesn’t make much sense, but it’s a fun platform action game. You’re Amagon, a caveman with a shotgun who can also (when you pick up the right items) turn into a giant strongman guy who punches instead of using the gun, but has actual hit points instead of dying in one hit. I honestly prefered the gun, except when fighting bosses. You’re trying to get across your island, filled with dinosaurs and aliens to get to your viking ship. It’s a pretty easy game, especially considering the maker, but fun the first time around.
Kabuki Quantum Fighter, developed by HAL America, released March 1990, competition time: 22 minutes
I remember reading about this game in Nintendo Power back in 1990, and thought it was insane that a game was made where you use your HAIR as a weapon. One of the rare NES games developed by an American company, which ironically has a very Japanese sounding name. Not that the story really matters to the gameplay, but you’re part of some science experiment to transfer your brain into raw binary code, to go inside an enemy computer and fight. Didn’t Keanu Reeves make a movie similar to this once? For some crazy reason, when you’re fighting inside this computer, you use your long red hair to swish at enemies, and you can also pick up chips which are ammo for various weapons you can fire (you get a new kind of gun each time you beat a stage). Your character also has ninja traits, since he can climb up walls and swing from hooks attached to the background. Despite not having a very interesting storyline, there are cut scenes between each stage. Didn’t somebody suggest this challenge earlier in the thread? Challenge is a laughable word. Let me put it this way - I finished the game in 22 minutes without dying once, and I didn’t even realize until halfway into the game that you had the ability to fire ammo by pressing select! What makes the game so easy is you have WAY too much energy available to you, so it’s hard to get it low enough to die. There also aren’t any cliffs, so if you miss a fall, the worst that’ll happen is you’ll land in spikes or fire and lose the same amount of energy as if an enemy hit you. The interesting choices of attack and maneuverability make this a unique, and still somewhat fun game.
I guess the interest in this thread is starting to die down, but nether less the challenge continues.
Dragon Spirit, developed by Namco, released 1990, completion time: 40 minutes (most of which was spent on the last stage)
I originally played this game in the arcade. As fun as it is to just pretend you’re an ass kicking dragon, you’re really a knight with the ability to change form, so you change into a dragon to rescue a bunch of princesses. In short, this game is basically 1943, if you change the graphics to a medieval setting. It’s a vertical auto-scroller, where your best friend is a turbo controller. However, it has some unique features to it. Instead of getting gun upgrades, your upgrades turn you into a different type of dragon, with different types of firepower. I found that the three-headed green dragon was the best. Until you learn what the orb upgrades are by appearance, its easy to get downgraded to a worse dragon form. The B button fires ahead, and the A button fires at the ground, since there are both types of enemies, and it isn’t always obvious which are which. Speaking of enemies, this game has a unique type of enemy - anybody who has a samsung cell phone or has ever played with QBasic for DOS has played the Snake game, which is represented in the form of an enemy in this game, which was fun to fight. Each world has a different theme, although the “graveyard” stage should have been called the desert stage, since that’s what it was This game never gets TOO hard…that is, until you get to the castle stage, and then it gets insane…not so much for the enemies, but because it turns into a wall maze, and you can easily get autoscrolled into a wall, and your death…not to mention all those damn spears coming out of the walls.
Double Dragon, developed by Technos, released 1987, completion time: 25 minutes
Ah, Double Dragon. Who hasn’t played this revolutionary beat-em-up? It was one of the games reviewed in the very first issue of Nintendo Power, and was famous for the millions of bugs present in the game, which the magazine exploited on a monthly basis for about a year. I used to get such a thrill playing this game as a kid. In my twisted pre-pubesant years, the ability to beat up on women (including the opening scene where William punches Billy’s girlfriend and then slings her over his shoulder and carries her away) made this one of the funnest games in my arsenal. Billy Lee is a martial arts master. His brother Jimmy is the leader of the Black Warriors gang, and being jealous of Billy and Marian’s relationship, has her kidnapped. You go through 4 levels (the third of which seems to never end) beating up everybody you come across. to rescue her and her cat. You build experience with each punch and kick you throw, eventually learning new abilities, like jump kicking and elbow punching (which I found to be the strongest attack, although not very accurate). You also learn the crucial over-the-shoulder throw, which cuts the game play time in half if you can find a cliff to throw enemy after enemy over, which leads to the old inside joke among my friends “Next!..Next!..Next!”. You can also find some extremely powerful weapons along the way, which are carried on screen by enemies, but can be knocked out of their hands with one kick. Another huge inside joke among my friends was “never play with knives!” as throwing (or getting hit) by a thrown knife is an instant, bloody kill. The throwable cardboard box also makes one appearance, at the beginning of stage two. This game carries two big distinctions in NES history - as a bonus game, it contains what might be the first “street fighting game”, as you could do one on one street fighting with all of the characters in the game. It also contains what is probably the first guitar solo in video game music.
Okay, I think I’ll give this a shot… now I just have to try to catch up 
I decided to finish off the trilogy…
Double Dragon 2 - The Revenge, developed by Technos, released 1989, competion time: 27 minutes
This game picks up shortly after the first. Billy and Jimmy have reconciled their differences and are now working as a team. However, The Shadow Warrior gang goes after Billy’s girlfriend again and shoot her to death, so the Double Dragons are seeking their revenge. While gameplay, graphics and music are similar (although somewhat upgraded) to the original, there are some changes. The biggest is the two player team mode, which I didn’t get to play (although I did when I first rented the game back in 1989). This is also the only Double Dragon game with awkward controls - rather than the B - kick, A - punch like the rest of the series, B attacks to the left and A to the right, and you can only kick behind you. Gone is the level gaining mode and the elbow punch, but the secret weapon in this one is the knee kick, which kills most enemies, including bosses, in one or two hits. I actually had to beat this game twice - since I am choosing normal difficulty for all games with different modes, I was only able to play to level 8 and not get to fight the last boss, since he can only be defeated in difficult mode (which honestly is NO different from normal mode in any way I noticed!)
Double Dragon 3: The Sacred Stones, developed by Technos, released 1991, competiton time: 40 minutes
This is one of the few NES games that I owned, fresh out of a new box, but never finished in the time I owned it. I got CLOSE, getting up to the last boss a couple of times, but never quite there. This was the only Double Dragon I really needed to rely on save stating to finish. It’s quite different from the other two. Although the second game HAD a two player mode, the third was pretty much MADE for it, with lots of two player moves that Billy and Jimmy (and the other characters) could perform together. This is one of the reasons that one player mode is extra hard, not to mention that you face the exact same number of enemies in two player mode, making the game much shorter and easier if playing with a friend. In this game, a little old Japanese woman comes forward and says that Marian (sorry, if you didn’t play DD2 then pardon the spoiler) has been kidnapped yet AGAIN by the Shadow Warrior gang, and this time they want Billy & Jimmy to collect the three sacred stones as ransom. Rather than kicking the woman’s ass, they listen to her and follow her around the world, only to find out that SHE was their leader and wanted the stones herself. Surprise surprise. The most unique thing about this game is that you meet two new characters - Chin, a Chinese martial arts master whose secret weapon is the bellyflop jump, and Ranzou, a ninja, who become playable characters once you defeat them as bosses. They also serve as extra lives, as once a character dies, they’re dead for good (I learned that the hard way when I let Chin die in level 3). This game really has the difficulty reved up from the first two. There are droppable weapons, but they are completely USELESS since they take too long to pick up, and do no extra noticeable damage compared to fists and kicks. There are also special weapons (nunchucks, iron claw, throwing stars) that DO extra damage but only get limited uses per stage. This game was tough, even for an experienced player, but if you can handle Bayou Billy, this game is nothing.
Bimmy and Jimmy. (NSFW: language)
I would have to second this nomination. I know you said that you didn’t want to just play game after game, but in Tecmo Bowl (not to be confused with its later, brilliant progeny Super Tecmo Bowl), there are only 12 teams. You beat each team once, you win the “Championship” (certainly not the Superbowl 
). Considering the games only take about 15 minutes or so, you could easily bang it out in about 3 hours.
Now for the challenge part: take Indianapolis.
No LT, no Payton, no Montana. Good luck!
That’s Tecmo Super Bowl, as in the name of the developer combined with the trademarked name of the NFL championship.
You are correct, sir. I am suitably chastened.
(It really was an awesome game, though. One of the first where you could play a whole season and it kept the stats, and had injuries carry over from game to game. For the OP, I’d suggest taking the New England Patriots all the way. But if you can win with Indy in the original, you’re already a Tecmo stud.)
Guerrilla Wardeveloped by SNK, released 1989, completion time: 33 minutes
Another run-and-gun vertical birds eye scroller, with an emphasis on the run. This game is very similar to Commando, but is a better game. You’re one soldier vs an enemy army, blowing away enemies and saving (or shooting) hostages along the way. You lose 500 points each time you shoot a hostage, but it’s way easier than stopping your fire, and points don’t even matter. You can get various weapon upgrades…the flame thrower is great since it kills most enemies in one hit, but is also very slow on the reload. This game also has a two player mode, and again, I never got a chance to try it out but I’m sure it’d be fun. This game also suffers heavily from too-many-enemies-on-the-screen slowdown. I’ve found that rather than stopping to fight, it’s better to just keep moving, since once you run past an enemy, they often don’t even try to keep up with you. The most evil enemy in the game are the landmines, since they often aren’t detected until you are close to them, and you don’t even have to step on them to get blown up. The final boss in this game is also a bastard, especially since most other bosses can easily be defeated with safety spots and a fire, dodge, repeat strategy. Another strange concept is that a couple bosses are muscle-men, who will pick you up, swing you around, and apparently throw you to the next stage.
Can’t find a working NES emulator to save my life…for now, I’ll just list some noteworthy games that I was able to beat clean (i.e. no Game Genie).
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out: Oh, man, this was a blast (especially at my tender, pre-Beatmania IIDX state). I once played this for, like, two hours straight, pretty remarkable considering only fourteen different fights. Pure vintage 8-bit videogaming, nothing but reflexes and patterns and nerves. BTW, the toughest opponent is Mr. Sandman. Once you’ve beaten him, taking out Super Macho Man and Mike Tyson is just a matter of time.
Master Blaster: Yeah, this was a real bear, but somehow, it held my attention just enough to keep soldiering on. Beat it a total of three times, IIRC (plus at least a couple of heartbreaking close calls).
Adventures of Bayou Billy: It took me a while, definitely hit or miss, but I got it. I dunno; I’ve dealt with so many ultra-painful insane psycho bonecrushing games, this never struck me as all that special. Some tips: Complete the practice stages, which give you much-needed benefits (when the game says “You’re as powerful as Gordon!” or whatever, you’re good to go). Learn the jumpkick; it’s the key to beating the hand-to-hand scenes. In stages 1 and 3, get an Ugly Stick at the first chance and hold onto it; forget the ineffectual Footlong Blade. Against Luis Tor-Ture, do nothing but punch furiously, and he’ll go down in short order. Memorize the locations of the rocks in stage 4, which are a far greater threat than traffic or bombs. Most importantly, DON’T DIE in stage 7. That way you can take a whip and bulletproof vest to stage 8, which, trust me, are an absolute must. As for the final bosses, go to the bottom right, jumpkick until one of them grabs you (he’ll face the wrong way, so you’re safe), run away and circle back to the corner, and repeat. You can also just use the whip if you have it, but that takes forever.
NARC: Like most of the later arcade ports, it lost a lot in the 8-bit conversion, but it was still a decent game. It’s actually pretty easy since there can only be 3 enemies onscreen at a time. My only tips are: 1. Really rack up arrests for both big points and lives, and 2. against the final skull boss, move near the top of the screen to get the point you’re supposed to be hitting in the proper position; you’ll NEVER get it otherwise.
Castlevania 2, Simon’s Quest: This was an adventure game, so victory was largely a matter of finding all the items and learning what was effective against which enemy. And you get some extremely powerful weaponry, including an upgrade which DOUBLES the strength of your strongest whip. The unfortunate result is that all the bosses are pathetically easy by the time you get to them, including Dracula himself, who I demolished in roughly 10 seconds.
Double Dragon 2, The Revenge: I struggled with this for a while mainly due to the speed of some of the enemies (don’t waste a moment using those weapons!). It got a lot more managble once I learned the continue codes and a trick for gaining a few extra lives. The absolute, stone cold, lead pipe cinch 100% most important thing to remember is that the Hyper Uppercut ALWAYS connects. Big, small, ducking, leaning, cartwheeling, doesn’t matter, there’s no escape from that punch. So make good use of it (immediately after a whiffed Hurricane Kick is always a good time). The last boss really is no big deal, especially since you get two free lives before facing him. Just keep Hurricane Kick-ing or even plain 'ol back-kicking. He’ll do some damage but give out far before you do.
Should I even get into the games I almost finished? Ah, perhaps another time. In the meantime, anyone know of a good, reliable NES emulator?
The Karate Kid, developed by LJN, released 1987, competition time: 12 minutes
First of all, next to A Boy and His Blob (which is a much longer game until you know what you’re doing), this is the quickest I have beaten an NES game, and this one has no excuse. The game has FOUR levels, and the first level is just a 1 on 1 karate tournament, which can be beaten in one minute by holding down turbo B. After that, there are 3 levels of side scrolling action (I can’t really call it a beat-em-up since every enemy dies in one hit), where A punches, B kicks, and UP jumps – which makes it extremely annoying to jump in this game. This game is very comparable to the game Kung Fu, except that Kung Fu never requires jumping to the left or right. Another odd thing about this game are the multiple height levels - at any given time there are up to 6 different platforms you can be standing on, and if you are higher than the enemy, you must duck to kill it. The third stage is pretty unique, since it is taking place during a rain storm and the wind is pushing you back, which also has one of the most fustrating parts of the game where you have to jump up about 5 platforms, and if you get hit at all, you have to start over. I probably would have beaten the game in 5 minutes if it weren’t for this one place! I know I really shouldn’t expect anything else from LJN, but this is simply a bad game in every form, and I feel really badly for anybody who paid $40 for a new copy back in 1987. The fact that it takes 12 minutes to beat made it more tolerable, but just shows how lazy LJN was when they made it!
Gunsmoke, developed by Capcom, released 1988, competition time: 35 minutes
If Dragon Spirit was 1943 with Dragons, Gunsmoke is 1943 with Cowboys & Indians. This auto-scrolling shooter brings back memories, since one of my friends owned it and it was possibly the first NES game I ever played. I’ve never seen the show the game was based on, but I’ve seen plenty of cocksucking Deadwood episodes. Basically you’re a bounty hunter cowboy, shooting up western gangs and taking down their leaders for reward money. Infact, you can’t fight the boss until you buy or find their wanted poster (interesting side note - if you buy the wanted poster, which you should never do since they’re easy enough to find since they’re ALWAYS next to a barrel, you spend twice as much as the reward, meaning your character would have been better off just staying home!). B shoots 45° to the left, A 45° to the right, and both buttons fire forward. There are a couple of gun upgrades you can get, but they’re actually pretty silly since the normal gun (another interesting sidenote - this game was where I first learned what the infinity symbol is, represented by the # of bullets left with the normal gun) does the same amount of damage as the special guns with limited ammo. You can also find or buy a horse, which will absorb 3 hits. After those 3 hits, the horse drops dead, leading to one of the oldest inside catch phrases among my friends: “but he was such a nice horsie!” Interestingly, this is an auto scroller that does NOT punish you for getting forced off the bottom of the screen. Instead it’ll just move you to the first available unblocked spot, so that it can actually be to your advantage to hide behind buildings. It’s a fun game, but at times it seems to drag on. The all Indian stage never seems to end…and why the hell is there a Ninja boss? I don’t recall any cocksucking Ninjas in any fucking Deadwood episodes!
Gyruss, developed by Konami, released 1988, completion time: 43 minutes
Yet another space shooter. The twist with this one is big - your ship (which closely resembles the Gradius Vic Viper) spins around the edges of the screen, and all enemies appear in the middle of the screen, in a fake 3D style. The funny thing about this game is that enemies can not hit you at all until they come to the same edge of the screen that you are. Some of them aim for where you are to purposely hit you, but this gameplay method makes the game laughably easy. Infact, if there weren’t a quota kill rate to complete stages, you could probably beat the game just by dodging enemies (or shots) that come at you. Infact, the very last stage basically consists of rapidly dodging indestructible mini-suns, which is definitely the hardest (possibly only hard) part of the game. Like most shooters, there’s very little story. Just save the universe - you start out on the outside of Neptune (since it came out in 1988, Neptune was the farthest planet) and have to fly to the Sun, by playing stages named after the 9 planets, but having absolutely nothing to do with them - for the Mercury level, chunks of ice get flung at you! The unique playing style is fun, but it gets very tedious to beat, since overall there isn’t much variety to the game, and some stages go on way too long.
OK, that’s probably the only thing they got right, but I have to respect that. It was common knowledge among nerds that Pluto was temporarily closer than Neptune at that time, but I don’t think it ever really hit the mass awareness.
Hey, fusoya, give POW a whirl.
Here’s a recommendation for TGL. It’s a pretty fun combination scrolling stage/walkaround with a plot somewhat reminiscent of Metroid.
The “TGL” code features just the flying stages and requires some deft trickery and excellent ammunition management to survive. Not for the feint of heart.
(And, gods, I hated Dragon Warrior. I wanted to kill that supid useless princess. )