NES-a-day challenge

The Game Room
81

Dost thou love me?
‘no’
but thou must…Dost thou love me?
‘no’
but thou must…Dost thou love me?
‘no’
but thou must…Dost thou love me?
‘no’
but thou must…Dost thou love me?
‘no’
but thou must…Dost thou love me?
‘no’
but thou must…Dost thou love me?
‘no’
but thou must…Dost thou love me?
‘no’
but thou must…Dost thou love me?
‘NO GET THE HINT ALREADY!’
but thou BANG

If you want true pain try out Platoon one of the first times I bought a game and felt really really cheated. It’s insanely hard well not to beat but to deal with rubbish controls and to even care what’s going on.

82

whoops the above post was me not my wife. I’m on her laptop at the moment and forgot to change the log in

83

S.C.A.T. - Special Cybernetic Attack Team, developed by Natsume, released April 1991, competition time: about an hour

An interesting story behind this game. There was an old NES site which I was looking at just before I started this challenge. There was a cool graphic on it of lightning flashing in a cave. I KNEW I recognized it, but I couldn’t place which game it was from. I asked a friend, and he said he thought it was from Silkworm, which was the first game in this challenge. I played through Silkworm and didn’t find that image…but I was curious how it could have been from it anyway, since I’d never even heard of the game. Anyway, this led to the idea of me trying to gradually beat every NES game, and I wanted to start with shooters because my friend (who has beaten the majority of NES games himself) remembers it was from a shooter. Anyway, even though I’m sure I didn’t play this game, SCAT was the game that graphic came from. I’m now starting to think that what I was thinking of was the nighttime cave background from Castlevania 2, which was somewhat similar.

Okay, as for the game - SCAT is a BITCH. It’s definitely the hardest shooter I’ve played on the NES so far (although I still need to get to Legendary Wings again). It’s a basic story - takes place in the future, aliens are invading earth, and you’re a bad ass marine with a flying suit of armor and you go around the city blowing shit up. You have two orbs which rotate around you and shoot missiles. By pressing the A button, you can make them stationary, so that they’ll continue to fire at the same angle, and pressing A again will make them start rotating. The B button is for firing your gun, which only fires straight (and turbo is CRUCIAL for this game). You can upgrade from a regular gun to a laser, which fires a continuous stream, like the lasers from the Gradius games, as well as a wave gun (like Metroid’s), or a Bomb gun, which sucks. Figures there are more Bomb gun upgrades than the others, and I spent most of the game trying to avoid them. This game scrolls in all four directions, sometimes changing direction in the middle of the stage. This is also a rare shooter where you can turn around and shoot behind you. Some stages scroll extremely fast, particularly for an NES game. There are a couple of things that make this game really hard. First of all, you only have ONE life - you get an energy meter, but if you crash into something or get forced off the screen, you die, and then it’s back to the beginning of the stage. And some of these stages are LONG - if you die at the boss, it’s up to 12 minutes of backtracking! Not only that, but once you restart the stage, you’re back to your regular gun, giving you the same disadvantage that dying in most shooters have. Also, when you complete a stage, you do NOT get your energy meter refilled. I began to find that if I finished a stage with 1 health, I’d just crash and start over fresh. Another thing about this game is that some of the bosses absolutely refuse to die. I was fighting the second stage robot-snake boss for what felt like 15 minutes. This game only actually has 5 stages, but they really make you work to finish them. There’s supposed to be a 2 player mode, which I’m sure makes the game much easier, particularly during boss fights.

84

Breakthru, developed by Data East, released 1987, completion time: 9 minutes!

Breakthru is a game where you drive a dune buggy through enemy war territory, in order to recover a stolen plane. Unfortunately, once you recover the plane, the game doesn’t let you fly it. Although this IS a very short game, it’s also very difficult, and in the vein of Contra, it’s probably very hard to beat unless you’re either using save states or have memorized the entire game (or if there’s a 30 life code). The B button shoots forward (strangely, this is the first game I’ve ever encountered where if you turn turbo on, you can’t fire at all! I’ve heard of PSX games locking out turbo mode, but never NES games!) and the A button jumps. You should NEVER jump in this game unless it is over a cliff, because it’s very difficult to control your dune buggy mid air and odds are you are going to land on either an enemy or a bullet. Left and right accelerate and deaccelerate you, so the game isn’t entirely an autoscroller. One hit and you are dead, and you have 3 lives, but can collect more. A warning to anybody who attempts this game - I don’t know if it was just my emulator being screwy (PocketNES) or if there’s a huge bug in the game, but if I paused the game, as soon as I unpaused it, it would return to the title screen, forcing me to start over from level 1! So if you play this game, be absolutely sure to save state!

85

I think I remember that game. If you hit “select”, your dude gets out of the buggy, right?

86

This differs from the original arcade version- in the arcade game, you were trying to get home to Earth. The arcade version had no defined ending, much like most arcade games at the time- you just kept on playing until you died.

87

I’ve been slacking, but I’m still going

Adventures in the Magic Kingdom, developed by Capcom, released 1992, completion time: 24 minutes

Despite that the main character who is a kid dressed as a cowboy, this is probably the most Disneyfied game ever made. It takes place in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, and you need to help Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy find 6 keys that open the gate for the Main St Parade. Each key is located in a different part of the park - Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tomorrowland Racetrack, Space Mountain, and Main St USA, and you must play through each ride as if it were a action ride - you kill ghosts in Haunted Mansion by throwing candles at them, Space Mountain actually has you flying through space (even though it’s really just a simon says game), etc. The railroad is the hardest stage, because you actually have to memorize the track layout because if you make a wrong turn, you can’t beat the stage. Having each stage be different gives a good variety to the game, and like most Capcom Disney games, they don’t let gameplay suffer in order to appeal to younger kids. If it weren’t for the Railroad stage, I probably would have finished in under 15 minutes.

Ninja Gaiden, developed by Tecmo, released 1989, completion time: 45 minutes

Here it is, the one everybody keeps daring me to play. The thing is, I HAVE beaten this game before, and I’m still familiar with most of the really evil spots, and know how to deal with them. One of my friends owned this game and we played it all the time. This game has a well-deserved reputation for being evil. You could easily write a top 10 list of “Ninja Gaiden is evil because _____”. However, the #1 most evil thing about this game is once you get to the final boss, if you happen to die against him (which I did, and which you will), even though you have multiple lives, you do not get to fight him again. Instead you get brought back THREE stages where you have to play through the final stage AND fight another earlier boss before you can get another opportunity to fight the final boss again. Despite this extremely cheap and unforgivable gameplay mechanic, Ninja Gaiden is still a great game. It was the first NES (and probably first ever) game that really got the feel of being a Ninja - having a katana, throwing stars, doing flips, climbing up buildings, etc as well as having an actual story with turning points between stages. You are Ryu, son of the ninja master Ken (no, not THOSE Ryu and Ken), and after your father is killed in battle, you try to hunt down the person who killed him…you run into some of his old friends and find out that there’s a lot more to him than you thought. There are animated sequences between stages, a rarity for NES games, which probably doubled my gameplay time since I stopped to watch them all. While really only the last boss is a tough battle, it’s not endurance that makes the game hard. It’s a lot of crazy jumping sequences, and the way that enemies love to team up on you and either knock you into a cliff, or bounce you between them until you run out of energy. One of the most annoying things about this game is that the faster enemies that coming running or flying at you will continue to appear over and over again until you’ve moved a certain distance across the screen. However, you can also use the ole’ Mega Man trick of quickly moving back and forth to scroll the stationary enemies off the screen. Every serious gamer needs to play this game at some point in their life, and if it’s been 15 years like it has for me, give it another shot. Just be prepared to be driven insane by those birds!

Least Original User Name Ever - you’re thinking of Blaster Master. Go back to page 1 of this thread.

88

Ah yes. Blaster Master. It’s been a minute since I’ve played it.

89

Fantasy Zone, developed by Sega (believe it or not!), released 1989, completion time: 23 minutes

Man was this a weird game. It’s the type of video game I’d imagine if one of the characters on The Simpsons got high off of something and then sat down to play a game. You fly around in this little ship with flapping wings, and everything is pink and neon green. Each stage has 6 pods which must be destroyed to reach the boss, and shooting enemies gives you gold, which you can use to buy a faster ship, and better guns which run out of ammo in 10 seconds. Yeah, the stages are stupid, but the boss battles are each pretty unique, and sometimes it’s not immediately obvious how to defeat each boss. Once you go through about 8 of these stages, there’s a boss on parade mode where you must defeat all of them again, in a row, before facing a final boss which is a cross between a lobster and the snake game. After that there’s an ending screen written in yellow text on a neon green background which is nearly impossible to read, but it said something about saving the Fantasy Zone from the invading force, and being sad that your father was the leader of the enemy.

90

Bad Dudes, developed by Data East, released 1989, completion time: 27 minutes

Bad Dude…bad game? Not quite, but this game has a reputation for a reason. There is not even one line of dialouge in the entire game that is not fucking hilarious.

THE PRESIDENT HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED BY NINJAS.

ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO RESCUE THE PRESIDENT?

George Bush: HEY DUDES, THANKS FOR RESCUING ME! WANNA GO FOR A BURGER?

and of course “I’M BAD”, proof again that digitized speech held no place on the NES. This is a sidescrolling beat-em-up which borrows from Double Dragon in almost every aspect. It also has Karnov as the first stage boss, complete with his theme song. The game never gets very hard, and there are safety spots for fighting some of the bosses. There is a boss on parade level at the very end of the game, before a final boss who doesn’t put up a fight at all. The only hard part is keeping your composure as you try not to laugh as you see your character fighting on top of a semi truck that says DUDE on the side.

91

Ah, I remember that truck that says “DUDE” on the side.

See how POW treats ya.

92

One of my friends used to own POW…I remember it being a LONG game for a beat-em-up. We had an inside joke for that game which I can’t repeat on this board…but notice WHO shows up every time you find a gun. I’ll give it a go the next time I have an hour to kill.

Kid Niki: Radical Ninja, developed by Irem, released 1987, completion time: 33 minutes

Well, aside from swinging around a katana like it’s a marching baton, there isn’t anything very ninjalike with your character. This is a standard side scrolling action game with pretty good music. One hit and you’re dead. OCCASIONALLY you’ll be able to temporarily upgrade your twirly katana to a throwing sword. The one unique thing about this game is that with all of the bosses, if you don’t hit them in the correct spot (and sometimes even if you DO) it’ll knock the sword out of your hands and you’ll have to go get it before you can keep fighting. Keep in mind that everything, no matter how cute or unmoving, is evil and will kill you. Yes, the cute little birdies sitting in the tree will kill you if you jump into them too. This game has more overuse of the word dude, coupled with the word rad and radical, and more bad speech (FOOL! GET HIM!), and one of the bosses literally throws words at you.

93

Yeah, I’ve never beaten POW without cheating. Good luck, senor.

94

Karate Champ, developed by Data East, released 1986, completion time: 15 minutes

This is the type of game that would have been exempt from my challenge, had I known it didn’t have an ending. Infact, it doesn’t really have a middle. This is just simply a BAD game, definitely the most boring of all the games I’ve played in this challenge so far. It’s a one on one karate fighting game, possibly the first street fighting game. You can punch and kick, although it’s seemingly random as even when I “finished” the game, I still hadn’t figured out the controls. One you get a punch or kick in that isn’t blocked (I also never figured out how blocking works, but it seems to be totally random), you win that round…win so many rounds (scoring is just like tennis) and you win the match, and then go on to a bonus round where bells get thrown at you, and you must dodge or jump over them - and their hit detection is so high that they can knock you down if you are nowhere NEAR them. It doesn’t matter how many you dodge, since this bonus round NEVER ends, and there’s apparently no reward for how many you get through. Anyway, the next match is against the same character, but in a different location. After about 10 of these, it goes back to the first location. I declared it beaten by that point. I imagine this game might have been more fun for 2 players back in 1986, but 1 player mode just simply sucks.

Karnov, developed by Data East, released 1987, completion time: 20 minutes

I needed Data East to redeem themselves after Karate Champ, so I pulled out this old favorite. Karnov holds a special place in my video gaming history, since it was the first game I bought after getting my NES. This game has achieved a real cult status, so either you’ve never played it, or you know all about it. Karnov is this fat, bald, circus strongman who can breathe and shoot fire from his mouth. He’s on a quest for gold, and is travelling through the ruins of Babylon. Along the way you can find various items, such as a ladder and high jumping shoes, and there’s a swimming stage and a flying stage. Every stage has the same song, but it’s a very catchy tune and is on the short list of famous NES songs (both Karnov and the song make an appearance in Bad Dudes, as mentioned above), but each stage is a completely different environment (desert, icy mountain, pyramid, etc) which keeps things fresh. It is a sidescrolling action game, with the occasional vertical climbing section, but most stages have multiple paths, all of which lead to the end boss, but some paths are easier and have more items. Back on page 1, Karnov was offered as a challenge, comparing its difficulty to Bayou Billy, but i made it through the whole game without dying once. I guess after 20 years of playing this game (with a 10 year break), it’s still like riding a bike to me.

95

POW, developed by SNK, released 1989, completion time: 48 minutes

Okay, the challenge has been met. This game actually isn’t THAT hard as long as you can avoid the grenades and use a turbo controller. This game is a beat-em-up in the tradition of Double Dragon (your character even somewhat resembles Billy Lee) but set in a Cuban military prison camp. Like Double Dragon, the enemies occasionally drop weapons, and this time it includes guns, although they are rare. There are also rooms you can go into to fight 3 enemies and then get a weapon or item (usually, if the item is a life refill, you’d have lost more life fighting for it than you get as a reward!). I used to own this game, although it was one of the last games I got, as part of a trade, before I gave up on trying to get my real NES working and moved on to PSX. I think I only ever beat it once before, since it is a long game, particularly for this genre. However, this game does have the most CHEAP boss in the history of cheap bosses. The second to last boss resembles The Terminator, and throws grenades. Not only will these kill you (you get three lives before you have to go back to the start of the stage) but this boss will actually time his grenade throws to land and explode RIGHT when your next life starts, so that you can lose all 3 lives in a 10 second window, without even a prayer!
Well, so far I’ve completed 32 games within a 55 day period, so I am falling behind on this A DAY challenge…but it is actually pretty remarkable to think that I’ve beaten an NES game on the average of every 2 days, some of which I’ve never touched before. It makes me wonder just how the attention span was kept when these games were new! Of course, games like Karnov, Double Dragon and Ninja Gaiden I played for many hours, days and weeks before I completed them the first time, and didn’t have the option of loading a save state if I made a big mistake.

96

On a scale of one to ten, how big is the “save state” feature for your quest?

97

I only use them as needed, primarily so that I don’t need to repeat entire stages. Like in POW, I’d restore a state if I got blown up by a grenade by accident, but not every time I got punched. I don’t want to use them so much that I don’t even feel like I’m playing a game, but I also don’t want to spend too much time trying to get through a tough area. I consider it a substitute for training (which is the main reason that most of these games DID have a longer play value than an hour or so), since some of these games really do require practice and memorization if you only get 1 (or 3) chances to get through an area. I still consider it a step below using game genie or internal codes, since at least this way I’m still getting a straight-through play, the way it’s meant to be beat (just repeating some sections over and over until I do it right, instead of entire stages).

I can tell you that I didn’t use save states at all for Adventure Island, Double Dragon 1 (or the second time I played Double Dragon 2), Duck Tales, or Karnov.

98

I HATED it as a kid. HATED. I bought it for the cool cover.

99

well, I’ve been busy reading the new Harry Potter book over the last couple days, but earlier this evening I ran a bubble bath and settled in with a little game of…

Jackal, developed by Konami, released 1988, completion time: 20 minutes

Out of all the jeep-based, overhead run-and-gun games made in the 80s, something about this game just made it the funnest. The object is to drive around enemy army bases, running over foot solders and blowing up everything else, including prison walls so that you can recuse your soldiers, and then drop them off at the helipad (while you park as a sitting duck while they slowly unload one at a time)…once you’ve rescued a certain number of soldiers, you can go fight the boss. Repeat 5 times. This game has the classic NES Konami style music that we remember from Contra, Gradius and Castlevania. I do have fond memories of the two player mode, especially speeding forward so that your partner gets stuck scrolled into a corner.

100

Gonna tackle Adventures of Lolo?