NES Replay: BurgerTime

Kurt Vonnegut, the late, great famous author, told a story about his brief time at Sports Illustrated. His first day at the magazine, he was assigned to write a story about a horse that jumped a fence and tried to run away. He stared at the paper for about a half an hour before finally typing, "The horse jumped over the f---ing fence," then left.

That's how I felt while I was trying to write about BurgerTime. "The cook walked over the f---ing burger."

In BurgerTime, you play a little cook that has to walk over pieces of a hamburger, which drops them down to the lower levels of the screen. Completed burgers earn you points. Meanwhile, food items are following you around the level and trying to kill you, and eliminating them only stops them for a second or two before they come back. It's like Guy Fieri's fever dreams come to life.

NES Replay: Track & Field

The arcade cabinets for Track & Field took a beating.

Track & Field is a collection of small olympic-based minigames, and the way to control several of them is by pounding on the buttons as fast as possible. Players tried to come up with various ways of speeding this up, so they used stuff like golf balls and metal rulers to get an edge. Even when it was a popular game, it was very hard to find working Track & Field machines in the wild.

The NES port retains this gameplay, and that makes Track & Field a game that you can only play for a short time. My family used to play Track & Field II together, and after a while everyone had cramps in their wrists. It's hard to keep up such a furious attack on the controller.

About a year later, Nintendo released something that made these types of games exponentially easier: The NES Max controller with a turbo button. The turbo buttons made the system think that you were pressing the buttons on the controller rapidly. That made games like Track & Field hilariously easy. It was like pressing a button marked, "I win." For example, the world record at the time for the 100 yard dash was a little under 10 seconds. With the turbo button, you can complete it in about 7.5 seconds.

However, there are a few games included in Track & Field that won't work with any turbo controls and actually require skill, like skeet shooting and archery. The skeet shooting is especially notable, since they made a really cool decision.

Most developers would have had you move a pointer around a screen to shoot down the clay pigeons. However, Konami realized that a pointer controlled by the controller would be too slow or inaccurate. They could have had people use the Zapper, but that would have taken up a controller port that would have stopped people from playing two-player games, so that didn't work either.

Instead, they had the system auto aim to some extent while still having the player press the button to fire at the proper time. It's a lot harder than it sounds, as you have to quickly press left or right on the d-pad, then shoot before the clay pigeon moves out of range. I couldn't get the hang of it, despite how absurdly simple it was.

Even with all this, though, Track & Field still felt kind of dull. It was certainly done well, but the presentation was sort of lacking. I didn't feel like there was any overarching goal, just a bunch of events that you could play individually. After a while, I remembered how great Track & Field II was, and fired that up instead. I ended up playing Track & Field II for an hour.

So, while Track & Field was certainly on the right track (wordplay!), it wasn't exactly where it needed to be. For a first attempt, there were some admirable concepts that Konami would later expand and deepen.

NES Replay: Rush'n Attack

Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Released: April 1987

For our younger readers, I have a question: Do they still do duck-and-cover drills in school?

If they don't anymore, here's what they were. For years, the US was terrified that the Russians (or Soviets) would destroy us in a nuclear war. For some reason, they decided that the best way to protect kids was by having duck-and-cover drills. We would hear a siren, and all the kids would get underneath our desks and cover our heads so that in the case of a fiery death by nuclear bomb, we would be protected by the nuclear-resistant coating on the school desks [citation needed].

This is what it was like in the US for 50 years. We knew, just KNEW, that the godless communist Soviets were going to blow us up with a nuclear bomb and then launch a full ground invasion so we had to be prepared any way we could. In reality, the vast majority of Russians were just trying to keep their head above water in a horribly corrupt system, but the citizens of the US had no way of knowing this. To us, the Russians were a technical powerhouse and we had to fight them however we could.


So what does this have to do with Rush'N Attack? Read the title of that game again. In Japan and Europe, this game was called Green Beret, but for the US, it was re-titled so that it could play on the fear of the Russians. It's kind of sad looking back on how the US viewed another country, but it's our cultural legacy, and there's not much to do about it except point at it and shake our heads.

In the meantime, how is Rush'N Attack? It's surprisingly good. It's a side-scrolling action game where your main character's only weapon is a knife, and he's faced with wave after wave of bad guys as he infiltrates military bases. Along the way, he can pick up a gun, an RPG, and other momentary powerups.

Rush'N Attack feels like an early draft of Contra. I mean, if they would have replaced the hero's knife with a gun, it would be halfway there. It also feels like an early, early draft of Metal Slug, if you can believe that. I don't know if anyone who worked on Rush'N Attack worked on Metal Slug, but I wouldn't be shocked if there were.

Konami demonstrated that they understood completely how controls had to work in a game. The controls are responsive, and there's never a sequence where I felt that I died because the system didn't respond in time. I died for many other reasons, like getting shot or kicked in the head, but it was almost always my fault.

I also have to give a special shoutout to the ladders in Rush'N Attack. Yes, the ladders. When your player jumps at a ladder, he automatically grabs the ladder in mid-air, which can save you a second or two. In other words, you don't have to be standing on solid ground in order to climb, or jump and press the up key on the D-pad, but just jump at the ladder. It was a way to rethink controls and limit the complexity at such an early juncture, and it deserved some special praise in my book.

If there's a flaw in Rush'N Attack, it's that there isn't a whole lot to do but run from right to left and kill people. Sometimes, that's all you need in a game, but as later games would show, there was a way to do that without veering into repetitive territory. Still, Rush'N Attack really works, both as a time capsule into a strange period in our history and as, you know, a game.

Final Rating:

NES Replay: Volleyball

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: March 1987

I love playing volleyball in certain environments. Basically, if no one's keeping score and all of my friends are just having a good, relaxed time, it's the best game in the world.

Something happens every single time I play volleyball: Someone starts keeping score. Then, that person starts trash talking, and then someone else does, then my old, familiar competitiveness kicks in, and then I have to quit because I get too angry. Even just thinking about it makes me mad.

Why do I get so frustrated? Because volleyball is meant to be fun. It's played in sunny places, on the beach, with people throwing frisbees nearby. It's not supposed to be a hyper-competitive trash-talking game. If you're playing volleyball and you don't have a Corona with a lime wedged into the rim of the bottle waiting for you on the sideline, you're playing it wrong.

Understanding this about volleyball is key to understanding why Volleyball is such a waste. Volleyball is supposed to be fun! Getting hit in the face with a volleyball while someone screams through a net at you isn't fun.

Volleyball forgets this. You get three game modes: Men's volleyball, women's volleyball and practice. Men's volleyball is much more difficult that women's, which is insulting and sexist in and of itself. The computer team will routinely spike balls right into your player's faces, giving you no opportunity to block them. Playing against the women's team is easier. Even still, whomever you play as, Volleyball is horribly difficult to control.

Playing the practice mode shows why the controls are so bad. Whenever your opponent hits the ball to you, some, but not all of your players can go get the ball. In the practice mode, the players that are eligible to hit the ball light up so you can easily tell who's supposed to get it. You'll see that the players you can control are, frankly, a little random. At least in this mode, though, you can make the right decision as to who you can move and when.

However, in the regular mode, the players don't light up to show that they're eligible. You might think that one player is eligible, but when you try and move them you find that it was the opposite player who was eligible, and now you've made a huge mistake. In a game where a split second makes a huge difference, it's a pretty big oversight.

The weirdest thing with Volleyball, though, is the title screen. In a first for a Nintendo game, a person named "T. Hashishita" is credited alongside Nintendo. That's really odd, isn't it? Not even Miyamoto gets that sort of credit. Who is "T. Hashishita"?

With a big hat tip to the forms at lostlevels.org, Tomoshige Hashishita was a programmer. He also programmed Ice Hockey and worked on Time Twist, a game only released in Japan. How did he get on the title screen for a Nintendo release? It's really hard to say. Did he just insert his name in there? Did Nintendo agree to credit him? If so, why? It's one of those weird quirks that have been lost to history.

However, with the way Volleyball turned out, if I were Mr. Hashishita I wouldn't really want to take credit for it. Even if someone would master the controls, I don't see how it could be fun for more than five minutes. It's not as laid-back as a volleyball game should be, and it's impossible to play on any higher difficulty levels without reenacting the pool scene from Meet The Parents over and over.

Final Rating:

NES Replay: Soccer

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: March 1987

They say that soccer is the Beautiful Game. Being raised as a 'Murican, I was disinclined to agree for a long time. How can a soccer match that ends 1-0 be more interesting than a football game that ends 24-17?

Now that I play soccer more, though, I get it. Playing a game of soccer requires outstanding stamina and balletic skill. Unlike sports like football, baseball or basketball, soccer doesn't stop. Everyone is always running at all times. Your footwork has to be impeccable or you'll end up looking stupid out there, so hours of practice has to go into flexibility and movement so that you can apply those skills when the time comes. Also, because goals aren't as common, each one is either amazing or devastating, depending on which team you root for.

It's the world's most popular sport, so naturally developers have been trying to make soccer video games almost from the beginning. One of the earliest attempts was on the Atari 2600, with Pele's Soccer. Pele's Soccer showed the field from a top-down view, and all the players sort of looked like blobs. Next, the seminal Football Manager games came out for the PC starting in 1982, and it was very popular. (It has no relation to the current Football Manager series.) However, the player couldn't control the match while it was in progress.

So, yes, in the early years there were soccer games available, but none that really approximated what the actual game of soccer was like. Understanding this is key, because if you compare Soccer to modern games it feels really bare-bones. For its time, though, it was the best soccer game available for consoles.


In Soccer, you can pick from one of seven teams that all play identically, then play a match against a computer player of varying difficulty. There's also a two-player mode which seems like it would be a ton of fun.

For an early game, they did a lot right. It's not full 11-on-11, with just five men to a side and a goalie. but the field is small enough that you barely notice. There's an offsides rule, annoyingly enough, but offsides is a part of soccer so whatever. You can also aim your shots on goal, which is kind of a huge leap forward.

So what's missing? Well, there's no tackling. (For those who don't know soccer, that's not a joke. "Tackling" in soccer is when you dive, feet-first, towards the ball. It's a tricky skill to learn, since you have to avoid hitting the opposing player instead.) I understand why they maybe couldn't put it in to Soccer, but it's such a big part of the game that it should probably have been there.

Another problem is that the player you control changes depending on where the ball is, but it almost seems like you control two players sometimes without your knowledge. Like, you'll pass the ball while running downfield, and then you'll find that your offscreen player who was supposed to be receiving your pass is also running downfield, away from the ball. Once you realize what's happening it's easy enough to correct, but still, the first couple of times it's really annoying.

Finally, when you finish a match, that's it. There's no additional modes, no additional fields, no season mode, nothing. All that's in Soccer is the ability to play a single-player or two-player match and that's it. As I mentioned before, though, the two-player mode seems like it would be both a hoot and also a holler.

All that being said, Soccer was probably the best soccer game available at the time. Considering what was released beforehand, Nintendo did an outstanding job of bringing soccer to the NES. They would improve upon it later, but that's an article for a different day.

Final Rating:

Review: Yoshi's New Island

Developer: Arzest
Publisher: Nintendo

Nintendo keeps on crapping on the Yoshi's Island series, and it bothers me.

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island was one of the most innovative games to come out of the SNES years. The music was great, the levels were smart, it had a totally unique aesthetic that no other game could quite copy, and it was fun.

Nintendo handed off the series to Artoon for 2006's Yoshi's Island DS, and the results were disappointing. It looked like Yoshi's Island, certainly, and the controls were lifted wholesale from Yoshi's Island, but it didn't feel like Yoshi's Island. The bosses were rehashes of the first game, the levels weren't as innovative, and it just felt... off. It wasn’t a terrible game, just limp.

Fortunately, Nintendo cut ties with Artoon, so Yoshi's New Island wasn't going to end up in their hands. A new developer, Arzest, turned out to be the developer of Yoshi's New Island.

But wait, where did Arzest come from?

They're old developers from Artoon.

Crap.

Arzest threw out the unique style of the first two Yoshi's Island games and switched to a more watercolor-esque look that more closely resembled the N64 game Yoshi's Story. Yoshi's Story was the worst Yoshi game, so I don't understand why they would consciously try and emulate its look, but the look of Yoshi's New Island is actually the least objectionable part of it. Most of the time, Yoshi’s New Island looks good, if not great.

No, the art style isn’t what hurts Yoshi’s New Island. What makes Yoshi's New Island problematic is that it brings nothing new to the table. Nothing at all. For example, the worlds follow the same progression: World 1 is a grass land, World 2 introduces Koopa Troops, World 3 is a wet jungle with monkeys, World 4 is in a sunset landscape, World 5 is a snow world, and World 6 is going to the castle. This is the same progression from the first two games. The final boss is even an enormous Bowser, for goodness sake! I mean, the first time you fight him in the original Yoshi's Island, it's amazing. After that? Much less so.

A few other quibbles that add up to a big deal:

1. Yoshi delays for a split second before throwing an egg. In the first two games, he didn't have to "grab" an egg, he would just have it immediately in hand when you pressed the button. In this one, he has to grab an egg and then throw it. That little delay throws off the timing of experienced players, which makes it that much harder to line up shots.
2. You don't get a score at the end of a level anymore. Instead, the game tells you if you got all the coins, stars and flowers and checks them off for you on the map screen. This is a big, big deal. For example, if you only get 86/100 on a level or 46/100 on a level, the world map shows both level as looking the same. Granted, in the grand scheme of things the most important thing with each level is, "Did you get all the coins, stars and flowers?" Still, knowing the difference between a level you juuuuuust missed and one you were way off on is huge, and they excised that for no good reason.
3. Yoshi’s New Island's big addition is "giant eggs," and they do nothing important. At certain points, Yoshi can pick up really large eggs that he can throw and break barriers. They only can be used once, and just in those specific areas. In other words, they're not a new gameplay mechanic or a new idea, just another thing that the original Yoshi's Island did better.
4. The "transformations" are pointless. In the original Yoshi's Island, there were times where Yoshi would transform into a helicopter, submarine or car for a bit. They weren't that exciting, but they changed up the gameplay for just a bit. The transformations in Yoshi's New Island, though, are pretty drab. You go into a door, change into something like a jackhammer and then drill your way through a maze. It's a race against time to get to the end of the transformation area, which means that important stuff gets missed unless you want to go back through the level, which you won't. You also have to tilt your 3DS to get through these areas, which is ridiculous and makes something frustrating even more so.

These complaints, taken individually, aren’t a big deal. When you add them all up, it just underscores the fact that Arzest has gotten further away from what made Yoshi's Island great. Yoshi's Island was a wild experiment from a mad scientist that just happened to work.

I mean, none of the original game should have worked. Yoshi’s Island had a weirdo art style that was widely panned before release, a strange egg-throwing mechanic that could have been too complicated, a baby that would cry like nails on a chalkboard if you got hit by an enemy, and bosses that were way beyond what people were used to. Somehow, it all came together.

The Yoshi's Island series has lost that experimental edge, preferring just to run over the same territory laid down by Miyamoto all those years ago with minor changes that just ruin it. So why would Nintendo willingly allow Arzest to rehash Yoshi's Island while still calling it "new?" Beats me. Maybe they assume that most people haven't played the original, but the people who are interested in a new Yoshi's Island game are interested because the original generated so much goodwill. By pointlessly redoing Yoshi's Island over and over, they ruin what made the first one so good.

So, if you've never played a Yoshi's Island game before, maybe you'll like Yoshi's New Island. If you've played the original, though, and you're wondering if you should play Yoshi's New Island, you might enjoy it if you lower your expectations. Like, way lower.

Final Rating: D

NES Replay: Pro Wrestling

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: March 1987

The last thing I wanted to do after the twin terrors of M.U.S.C.L.E. and Tag Team Wrestling was play yet another wrestling game. Yet, there was Pro Wrestling, standing in my way. Something happened, though: I found that Pro Wrestling is really, really fun.

So what's the difference between Pro Wrestling and those other, terrible games? Controls, controls, controls.

When someone first picks up a fighting game, the controls are unknown. Oh, sure, you can look in a manual and read the buttons to press, but the timing necessary to pull off moves can only be learned by playing the game. It takes a little bit of training to figure out the timing, but in the meantime a novice player can "button-mash." By doing things that they think might work, they're usually able to pull off some moves and be mildly successful.

Some "hardcore" players think that fighting games shouldn't allow players to button-mash, but this period is crucial. Without a brief window where a player can get used to the controls and achieve a little bit of success, they give up. Having novice players quit on you is great if you want your favorite genre to die out due to lack of interest. A regular, fresh influx of players is the only way to keep a genre afloat.


Now that the player's interest is piqued, they're going to dig a little deeper. That's when they find out how they were doing those moves, how to counter moves with other moves, and then they're hooked. The fighting genre has another devotee.

Pro Wrestling was designed by the late Masato Masuda, who later worked on the "Fire Pro Wrestling" series of games. He died recently at the young age of 48, but he left behind a legacy of some of the best wrestling games available, no mean feat for the young NES and the nascent fighting game genre. You can clearly see the bones of future games in Pro Wrestling. It's easy to pick up and play, with a lot of depth for players who want to dig deeper. It looks excellent to boot. Bear in mind, he was only 20 at the time that this game was developed, which really should impress upon everyone what a great natural developer he really was.

Another great thing that Pro Wrestling does? The players actually play different from each other. This sounds really basic to us now, but early fighting games weren't this way. I remember an early boxing game for the Colecovision where you could select from nine different characters. We randomly selected one that we called "Sheepherder" for some strange reason, and no one used him. I decided to play as Sheepherder and found, to my dismay, that he was exactly the same as everyone else.

But here, in Pro Wrestling, there was variance. Each character has a unique special move that they can activate in a certain situation. Some took a little more skill than others, but they were all slightly different. That was a huge step forward.

So I guess I was wrong. In a previous article, I complained that there were no good fighting games on the NES. Well, here's one, and it's a doozy. Pro Wrestling holds up remarkably well all these years later, so I guess a winner is it. Thanks, Masuda-san.

Final Rating:

Review: The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

A Zelda game set in the same world as the SNES classic Link to the Past is just inviting criticism. Link to the Past is one of Nintendo's finest games, and frankly, one of its proudest achievements. Any game set in the same world would have huge expectations, and any misstep would be a disaster. A game set in that world would have to be near perfect in order to stand on its own. It feels like, at worst, a symptom of creative bankruptcy and at best a fool's errand.

Ladies and gentlemen, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is almost perfect. It holds specific charms if you've played Link to the Past, but the previous game isn't required to enjoy Link Between Worlds. As great as Link to the Past is, it still bears some of the fingerprints of old game design philosophy, with its emphasis on grinding and esoteric puzzles. Link Between Worlds takes what was great about Link to the Past and removes anything that's not necessary to the actual playing of the game. It's another masterclass in design from Nintendo.

What's fascinating is the way it builds on the player's knowledge of Link to the Past while expounding and deepening it, subtly nodding in the direction of the original while standing on its own two feet and bringing some of the most remarkable changes to the Zelda series in a while. What are some of these changes?

First, they've emphasized non-linear progression throughout the game, meaning you can go through the various dungeons almost in any order you choose. This really helped me out, since I always have a tendency to get stuck in Zelda games. This way, I was able to fiddle with different dungeons and pick the one I wanted, then move on to a different one if I was feeling overwhelmed.

Next, they've put in an item store. Instead of getting items in dungeons, you can rent or buy items using rupees. (I didn't even rent items, just waited until I had the money and bought them.) You would think this would ruin the game, since Zelda games are supposed to be about finding the item you need to progress and moving onwards, yet it doesn't. Here's why: You get so many rupees that you don't need to run around and grind for money. Then, because you can use any item you wish, you're never faced with an obstacle you can't find a way past or that block off large chunks of the world.

There's another huge change with Link Between Worlds that no one is really talking about: There's no more inventory management. You don't have to watch how many arrows or bombs you have, or how much magic power you have. Instead, it's all handled by a meter that refills on its own gradually. This works great, because you're never in a position where you don't have bombs and need to scramble around and grind for them, but at the same time you don't have "unlimited" uses either. If you lay down bomb after bomb after bomb, you'll have to stop and wait for your meter to refill. It's not so bad that you have to babysit your meter, but it does force you to use your weapons responsibly while still allowing you to experiment.

Now, Link Between Worlds makes a few small missteps, but they're so minor as to be nitpicky. For example, because Link Between Worlds is nonlinear, there's no difficulty curve after a point. Nintendo made up for it by making each dungeon wildly unique and memorable instead of making every enemy progressively more difficult, but the feeling of gradual progression is slightly missed. Link Between Worlds also feels short, but that's mostly because it's tight as a drum. It took me 16 hours to complete, but I was farting around with sidequests for a while before I got back on the main quest. Speaking of which, in the end, the sidequests weren't as important as I thought they were going to be. They were still fun, though, and I'm glad I did them.

Honestly, though, the fact that Nintendo would willingly invite comparisons to one of its finest classic games, then go on to exceed or beat those expectations is astounding. Anyone who thinks Nintendo has lost "it," whatever "it" may be, should play Link Between Worlds if only to find out how wrong they are.

Final Grade: A

NES Replay: Trojan

Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Released: February 1987

Capcom was so skilled in the early years of the NES that even crappy games had something that almost redeemed them. Case in point, Trojan.

Trojan was developed by Takashi Nishiyama, the same person who developed Kung Fu and later made Street Fighter and was extremely influential at SNK. Trojan and Kung Fu are almost spiritual cousins. In Kung Fu, you saw the outline of the fighting game genre: High attack, low attack, punch, kick. In Trojan, you saw another evolutionary step, as blocking became a major component.

Trojan's gameplay is very similar to Kung Fu. As you move around in the level, enemies will come at you from the left or right and you can attack them high or low. Some enemies take more hits, though, so you have to anticipate their attacks and block with your shield.


Something else makes Trojan notable. While the name "Trojan" may conjure up images of Greek warriors battling hoplites on the way to a siege, Trojan is actually set in a post-apocalyptic world where you're a lone warrior setting out to destroy a violent gang. Capcom does a fantastic job and making the game feel like a coherent, ruined place. The buildings look broken-down, and the muted colors stand in stark contrast to the vibrant enemies and your hero. Each level flows very easily into the next, so that it feels plausible that this could have been a normal 8-bit city until the 8-bit apocalypse destroyed it.

Alas, while there's a lot to like in Trojan, there's an equal amount that still needed work. Like Kung Fu, you only have a melee attack, but your hero in Trojan really needed a longer range attack owing to the fact that more enemies have long-range attacks too. Yes, you can block those attacks, but in order to really put a stop to them you have to get up close and personal. When you get close, many of your enemies have melee attacks that are too fast to block properly, so that puts you back at square one. It's especially problematic with some bosses. If you could attack from across the screen with a projectile that would even the playing field, but otherwise, you're wildly overmatched.

I think that Capcom thought they could get away with this solely because of the block function, but blocking doesn't really level the playing field when you have a split second to decide whether or not to block an attack. The pace of Trojan needed to be much, much slower in order to justify adding that layer of complexity.

That said, Trojan is definitely noticeable as another evolutionary step for Nishiyama's nascent design philosophy. The fast pace carried over to his later SNK brawlers, and while Trojan may not have been entirely successful, the art design almost pushes it into good territory. Almost.

Final Rating:

NES Replay: 1986's Games Ranked

17) Tag Team Wrestling - If the only good thing to come out of your game is a name that gets used years later, you've made a bad game.

16) M.U.S.C.L.E. - I still get mad when I think of this game. Let's move on.

15) Karate Champ - Got your nose!

14) Urban Champion - Punch someone a couple of times. Keep punching. Repeat until bored.

13) Chubby Cherub - Coincidentally, "fat angels eating food and running away from dogs" was what I saw last time I mixed medications.

12) Ninja Kid - A great idea squandered by poor execution.

11) Gumshoe - Nintendo rethought what the Zapper could do, and it ALMOST worked.

10) Balloon Fight - A Joust clone with a few good ideas added in.

9) Mario Bros. - Not polished enough and too dull to enjoy.

8) Popeye - Interesting but dull.

7) Donkey Kong 3 - Yes, it's polished. Yes, it looks great. However, yes, it's hard to play and not fun.

6) Commando - A varied shooter with some major technical problems that hold it back from greatness.

5) 1942 - Fun, but repetitive.

4) Donkey Kong - Almost a perfect arcade port. Almost.

3) Ghosts'n Goblins - Incredibly hard and incredibly fun.

2) Gradius - PEW PEW PEW

1) Donkey Kong Jr. - A perfect arcade port of a great game.

NES Replay: Gauntlet

Developer: Tengen
Publisher: Tengen
Released: 1987

Gauntlet is frequently viewed as one of the first mainstream action RPGs. However, if you try and play it like you would play a modern action RPG, you're gonna have a bad time.

In a modern action RPG, killing enemies gives you experience points, which then increases your strength, helps you progress further, and makes you more attractive to the opposite sex. In other words, killing more enemies gives you access to better loot, which allows you to kill more enemies, which allows you access to better loot.

Gauntlet's not the same way, which is disconcerting when you first try and play it. In Gauntlet, killing enemies is a sidebar to picking up the gold bars scattered all over the levels. Picking up gold increases your power and helps you progress. Your weapons don't get better, and the only resources you have to manage are your health and your magic.


However, your health meter is where Gauntlet gets problematic. The NES port has the bloody clawprints of the arcade game all over it, since your health drops automatically as you play, and health pickups are rare. This sort of worked in the arcade, even though it was a little manipulative. When you play Gauntlet in the arcade, it's easy enough to get around this limitation by pumping quarters into the machine. On the NES, though, putting quarters into the machine just results in a strange burning smell and a small electrical fire.

What we're left with, then, is a game that's nearly impossible unless you're playing with another player who can take some of the heat off of you. That's a sign that Tengen really should have rethought Gauntlet for the NES, but maybe Tengen figured that making major changes would have caused Gauntlet to stop being, you know, Gauntlet.

With that in mind, though, Gauntlet still pulled off some amazing feats. There are times where the screen is literally filled with enemies. There are movable blocks, secret passages and all other sorts of stuff, and this was all before The Legend of Zelda was released.

So was Gauntlet a little shortsighted in parts? Yeah, a little bit. But even if Gauntlet is hard to play today, it still needs to be appreciated for what it was able to pull off on the NES, and it represented a major stepping stone for action RPGs in general.

Final Rating:

NES Replay: 1987

There were some good games for the NES between 1985-6, but in 1987 the NES exploded. In one year, Castlevania, Kid Icarus, The Legend of Zelda, Arkanoid, Metroid, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! and Mega Man all hit the NES. That's an amazing run of games probably unequaled since, all in one year on one system.

Even more impressively, Nintendo didn't need to prop up the NES anymore. In the beginning, if a good game needed to come out for the system, they had to make it. Not so anymore. Nintendo now had the flexibility to lay back and make games at their own pace, investing more time and money into providing big experiences instead of tossing games out just because something had to be released.

The downside of this was that other companies started to take notice. From this point on, the highs of the NES would get higher and higher, but the lows would get lower. The NES looked like a big, fat sack of money, and making a game for the NES could make you rich. This brought out the opportunists and cynics, who put crap on a cartridge and expected it to sell. Sadly, a lot of times it worked.

However, that shouldn't temper what turned into one of the best console years ever. We'll anoint 1987 as the Year the NES Came Around.

Notable events:

January: Aretha Franklin is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

March: U2 releases The Joshua Tree.

April: The first Simpsons cartoons are televised.

June: Margaret Thatcher is elected to a third term.

June: Ronald Reagan tells Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."

August: Michael Jackson releases Bad.

September: Star Trek: The Next Generation premieres.

November: Workers rebel against the communist regime led by Nicolae Ceaucescu.

NES Replay: Gradius

Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Released: December 1986

Gradius was the first classic shooter for the NES. It's got an awesome progression system, it's challenging even if you have every possible weapon upgrade, and it's relentlessly interesting. It also looks fantastic.

So what's so great about each of these parts? Let's pull them apart and look at them.

1) The powerup system.

In most early shooters, a power-up will automatically improve your ship. In Gradius, picking up a power-up fills a meter at the bottom of your screen. If you have only one power-up banked, you can upgrade your ship's speed. If you have more bonuses banked, you can apply the bonus to things like a missile that attacks below you, extra drones that fire along with you, and a shield that protects you from damage temporarily.

There's a risk/reward dynamic involved in this system. In order to get the really good upgrades, you have to keep picking up bonuses and not using them. Can you survive long enough with some of the vanilla powers? Or will you give in and take that speed power-up instead of getting the extra drone? It's a really well-made system that Konami would use in other shooters.


2) The challenge.

Even if you have every upgrade, your skill in Gradius will determine your success. While having all the upgrades will certainly help you, bullets are flying, enemies come from all over, and one false move will get you killed. Balancing everything together will keep you alive.

3) The varied environs.

Yes, Gradius is a typical side-scrolling shooter where you're flying from left-to-right and destroying everything in your path. However, the way the challenge is framed is constantly changing. In one level, you're killing weird moai statues that regurgitate blue discs, in another you're fighting for your life against raging volcanoes, and in another you're blasting through barriers that are surrounded by turrets.. There's always something different, which keeps Gradius fresh.

4) The graphics.

Konami did something fantastic with Gradius. Remember, the NES could only have so many sprites onscreen at once. However, Konami still wanted to have lots of bullets and enemies onscreen. How could they get around the limitations of the NES?

Brilliantly, Konami used sprite flicker to their advantage. By making the bullets and missiles flicker on purpose, they could alternate bullets and missiles and have the screen filled with danger without sacrificing graphical fidelity. Since old CRT TVs held on to images for a split second after they were displayed, the flicker would be barely noticeable for most people.

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So Gradius did a lot of things right, but there's one final stroke of genius that deserves mention. Gradius is very hard, obviously. The player is only given three lives to do the impossible. How would they do it?

Konami included something by accident, a secret code that would gain ubiquity. During the making of the game, a programmer found that Gradius was too difficult for him to play through. To get around this, he included a secret code that accidentally slipped through production and ended up in the final game.

Long after our civilization is destroyed by marauding Slagafarian Raiders in the Great Umber Wars of the 32nd century, a lone wanderer will be searching a cave for supplies when he will see etchings on the wall. Peering closely, he will angle his torch to see mankind's greatest triumph, a simple sequence that will bring tears to his eyes:

↑↑↓↓←→←→BA

He will pass this information down from one generation to the next, eventually rebuilding the world in this image. Finally, we shall see the stars. Finally, we shall ascend the path to transcendence, all thanks to one little code.

Final Rating:

NES Replay: Karate Champ

Developer: Technos Japan
Publisher: Data East

Karate Champ is either frustrating or hilarious. There is no in-between.

The point of Karate Champ is that you're in a one-on-one fight against another karate master. There are different arenas: On top of a cliff, in the trees, in the desert, etc. You throw a variety of punches and kicks at your opponent, and the first one to land a blow wins the match. Win a few matches in a row, and you move on to the next karate master.

So what makes it frustrating? Well, when you're throwing kicks and punches in the direction of your opponent and you can't tell whether or not they're going to land, that's frustrating. For example, if both players throw a punch at the same time, does either one land? If I'm kicking, and they're punching, does either one land? What if I'm kicking low and he's punching high? There doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to them landing. This leads to less of a karate fight and more of a flailing competition.

The controls are fantastically borked too. Press B, and you'll attack to the left. Press A and you'll attack to the right. This is stupid, right? Shouldn't your attacks always be aimed in the direction of your opponent? Is there ever a good tactical reason to attack the air behind you?

To be fair, this was a minor evolutionary misstep in fighting games that took a while to resolve. Developers had trouble figuring out what to do with both buttons. One button worked as an attack button, but the other one could be used for... ? This was a problem that took a while to sort out, but as the fighting game genre grew developers realized that they could use that extra button for something else, like a punch, kicking or even blocking. Technos Japan made a different choice, and that's a big reason that Karate Champ is so terrible.

Even if they would have sorted out the controls, though, Karate Champ would still be bad. The collision detection is so awful that none of your attacks matter at all. Attacks appear to overlap each other, blocking is a chore (although the computer player can block anything it wants to) and doing a jump kick never, ever works. While some other fighting games we've touched on could conceivably be better in two-player, the collision detection would undoubtedly lead to both parties frustratedly throwing down the controllers and going off to play something more fun, like "let's pull our eyes out with fishhooks."

However, I'm about to make your day. Remember when I said that Karate Champ can be hilarious? I discovered something glorious about Karate Champ, and I would like to share it with all of you.

When each round starts, the computer player will walk toward you at the same pace, never stopping. Press the attack button at the right time, and you will hit your opponent in the face every single time. It's tricky to find that sweet spot, but if you start getting it right, it makes Karate Champ a great "Got your nose" simulator.

Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present to you the following video. It's the only good thing to come out of Karate Champ, I assure you.

Final Rating:

NES Replay: Ghosts N' Goblins

Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Released: November 1986

Ghosts N' Goblins has a reputation for one thing, and one thing only: Difficulty. It's a really tough game, and that difficulty is compounded when you reach the end and find out you have to play through the whole thing again to get to the "true" ending.

Yet, people talk about Ghosts N' Goblins fondly. For such a punishing game, that seems strange. Why do people like it so much? Is this is a case of gaming masochism? Do the blinders of nostalgia cause people to think better of Ghosts N' Goblins than they should? Or is there something we can learn about difficulty?

There's a very good reason that people still like Ghosts N' Goblins. Ghosts N' Goblins, while a very difficult game, still feels fair. It's such a tough balancing act, but Capcom managed to nail it in a way that few developers can manage. Here's why.


A lot of developers at the time artificially inflated difficulty by making your character difficult to control, giving your player a limited range for their attacks, or making each character take hundreds upon hundreds of bullets / punches / fireballs before it dies. However, Ghosts N' Goblins bucked that trend by keeping the main character, Sir Arthur, completely functional. His spears travel as far you need them to, enemies mostly die with one hit, and Arthur moves quickly and responsively.

Also, Arthur can also take two hits before dying, which is incredibly fair for a game of the time. Once again, Capcom gives the player every possible chance to succeed. However, they did something incredibly evil: When Arthur gets hit, his armor falls off so he has to run around in his underwear. Your powers don't change and you don't become weaker, but just that one thing makes it feel like you lost. It's a great, great, way to mess with players.

So, Capcom gives you every opportunity to win, and yet Ghosts N' Goblins is still tough. How? What makes Ghosts N' Goblins so difficult is the relentlessness and number of the enemies. You have to keep moving or you'll get swarmed.

This is brilliant, because our human nature makes us stop and try and fight the enemies, but in Ghosts N' Goblins, that way lies madness. In order to proceed, we have to fight our basic inclination to stay and do battle. For lack of a better way to explain it, the way to play Ghosts N' Goblins is to play it like Run Away: The Game. I mean this in the best possible way. Ghosts N' Goblins is winnable only if you swallow your fears and venture into the unknown. That's awesome.

Once again, the whole time Ghosts N' Goblins gives you every advantage. You're presented with a near-impossible task, but you have all the tools to achieve that task. That's something that a lot of developers didn't understand back then and some of them still don't get, and it's a marvel that Capcom understood it back in 1986.

It certainly doesn't hurt that Ghosts N' Goblins has style oozing from every pore. They manage to make an environment that's as oppressive as the difficulty level. More amazingly, they accomplish this while using every color at their disposal. It's not just a game full of blacks and grays.

So, there's a very good reason that Ghosts N' Goblins is still a highly regarded game. It's brutal, but fair. It's asking you to do something completely crazy, gives you the tools and gets out of your way.

Final Rating:

NES Replay: 1985's Games Ranked

Here's a brief (and belated) ranking of the NES launch games.

18) Clu Clu Land - Poor controls and needlessly complicated instructions doom this one.

17) Stack-Up - So what exactly am I doing in this game again? I'm doing what with the what now?

16) Ice Climber - Poor collision detection and terrible jump physics ruin a good concept.

15) 10-Yard Fight - An eye-opening game, because it managed to make the fast-paced sport of American football boring.

14) Hogan's Alley - Boy, people were easily amused back in the day.

13) Wild Gunman - It's not a great light-gun game, but at least it gives you a challenge.

12) Donkey Kong Jr. Math - Because what makes more sense than combining a giant barrel-throwing ape and math?

11) Tennis - At least it's not Pong.

10) Gyromite - A great co-op game that happened to include an unnecessary robot.

9) Golf - A revolutionary game that's almost unplayable today.

8) Mach Rider - VROOM VROOM CRASH AIIIEEEE SO MUCH BLOOD WHY ARE THE ORGANS NOT GOING BACK IN

7) Baseball - Really bare-bones, but it's at least fun.

6) Pinball - One of the better pinball games at the time, and it still kind of holds up.

5) Excitebike - Some missed opportunities, but fairly decent overall.

4) Duck Hunt - SHOOT THE DOG.

3) Kung Fu - Ahhhh, so you have come to this dojo seeking a fight.

2) Wrecking Crew - "Mr. Mario, tear down these walls."

1) Super Mario Bros. - This little-known indie game may have a future, you know.

NES Replay: Commando

Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Released: November 1986

At the beginning of every console's life cycle, there's a period where developers aren't sure what a console can really do. During this time, you'll see games that aren't really optimized for the system they're on, or games that overreach the bounds of what the new system can do.

This is not a new phenomenon. Back in 1986, Capcom did that with Commando.

Commando was ported over to the NES from their original arcade game. It's a top-down shooter where you play as a character named Super Joe while he infiltrates and destroys a series of enemy bases. Bullets are flying, enemies shoot mortars and run everywhere, there are motorcyles, grenades, secret doors, and all sorts of other fun stuff.

When Capcom ported Commando to the NES, they tried to make it as close to the arcade game as they could. However, since the NES obviously wasn't as powerful as those arcade machines were, Capcom ended up with some bizarre technical problems.

The most notable is that sometimes enemies will simply disappear. Like, vanish. I want to stress, when this happened to me, it's not that I killed said enemy, and therefore he disappeared. No, the enemy would literally vanish into thin air, crossing over into some strange alternate dimension, never to be seen again.

I wasn't sure if this was just a glitch of my emulator, so I went ahead and watched a video on Youtube where someone played through the entire game. Sure enough, there were cases were the player started moving to shoot an enemy, and the enemy blinked out of existence like they were caught by a Weeping Angel. That reassured me that it wasn't just me.

So how does something like that happen? Let's recap what we know about the NES, taken from my previous article on Popeye:

"There are very few enemies onscreen at once in Popeye, and for good reason. The NES could handle 64 sprites onscreen at once, but only eight on any given vertical line at once. If there were more than eight, the ninth would disappear."

In this case, my best guess is that Capcom exceeded the 64-sprite limit, which caused one of them to vanish, but I can't be certain.

Did Capcom need that many sprites onscreen at once? Not really. Unless you try and kill every single enemy, which would be folly, you'll end up with about four or five enemies tailing you, just running behind you like Secret Service agents. They're completely unnecessary, like a TV on a honeymoon or a hotel in North Korea, yet there they are.

This was an example of Capcom trying to take a fairly advanced and action-packed arcade game and squeeze the whole thing into an NES cartridge. We've seen that some older arcade games, like Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr., could fit into a cartridge. More recent arcade games, though, really couldn't be stuffed into the NES.

Still, even with these goofy issues, Commando is still a lot of fun and has a lot of character. There are cowardly commanders, broken bridges, and all sorts of mayhem. It actually captures the feel of a lone soldier desperately trying against enormous odds to capture enemy bases. It's definitely fun, and even more fun if you imagine a rip in space-time carrying off enemy soldiers to a world beyond ours.

Final Rating:

NES Replay: Tag Team Wrestling

Developer: SAS Sakata
Publisher: Data East
Released: October 1986

Name one good fighting game for the NES. Go on, I'll wait.

How come the NES didn't have good fighting games? There were a couple of reasons, but one of the biggest ones is that the NES simply didn't have the ability to make that many calculations so quickly. That's so important in a fighting game, because without the ability to allocate some programming to AI, the AI either needs to cheat like mad or be brain-dead.

That didn't stop developers from trying to make fighting games work on the NES. In the first wave of third-party games, there were two wrestling games. Between the two of them, the absolutely terrible M.U.S.C.L.E. was the better of the two. That should tell you how bad Data East's Tag Team Wrestling is.

It's terrible for two big reasons. The first reason is the same one that plagued M.U.S.C.L.E.: Tag Team Wrestling cheats constantly. The second the computer player is within a pixel of your character, it'll grab you and do something horrible to you. You don't even have a chance to defend yourself before you're thrown against the ropes or somehow injured.

Tag Team Wrestling is also awful because it's ugly as sin. If you've been following this series, you'll know I'm not in the habit of picking on 8-bit graphics. If done right, they're fantastic. If done wrong, they make you want to murder yourself with a George Foreman Grill to the face. Tag Team Wrestling falls into the latter category. The characters are so indistinct that half the time you can't tell which character is which. Of special note, the walking animation is the worst I've ever seen. Just look at this:

Who decided that the characters should walk that way? Nobody walks like that. When something as obviously awful as that gets into a game, the only explanation can be laziness. There's simply no other way that someone sees that walking animation and says, "Yes. That is how a human being walks." Someone saw that and said, "That's good enough."

However, one good thing came out of Tag Team Wrestling. In 2000, some animators were trying to think of a name for a villain in their new web series. Finally, they pulled a name from Tag Team Wrestling:

And history was made. So that's one good thing out of all the bad stuff. Just the same as every cloud has a silver lining, I guess you could say that every cartridge has gold connectors, even if you have to clean all the corrosion off of them first.

Final Rating:

NES Replay: Ninja Kid

Developer: TOSE
Publisher: Bandai
Released: October 1986

We're kind of sitting at an incredible point in gaming. At this point, anyone can make and sell a game without worrying about system limitations, distribution issues or other petty problems. It really is a great leap forward in the industry.

There was an earlier great leap forward back in the 80's driven almost exclusively by the NES, but it was tempered by the fact that developers really didn't know what they were doing. For the first time developers could make games that matched up to their lofty ambitions, yet they didn't have the rules of the game quite figured out.

That leads us to today's example: Ninja Kid. Ninja Kid is a platform game with some minor random generation. Every time you start a new level, the game will pick one of a few different choices, each a little different and each totally unique. For example, in one level, a flame follows you and you have to light several candles around the level while avoiding enemies. In another, you have to collect floating spirits, and in another you have to kill a set amount of enemies. There are some others too, and it's neat seeing what the developers came up with.

Ninja Kid had a ton of potential, but never quite matches up to it for a few reasons. For example, like many games of this era, one hit will kill your character. However, frequently enemies will fire at you from off screen, and the controls are too sluggish to avoid their projectiles. It's such a frequent problem that there are only two ways to progress: Spend an inordinate amount of time playing Ninja Kid, or pound away on the save/load state keys in your emulator. That's not a sign of a well-made game.

It's also very random. Some stages, like the candle-lighting stage, are really easy. Some, like a side-scrolling shooter where Ninja Kid rides a kite, are incredibly difficult. It all depends on what you get. Then, once you beat a stage, you're presented with two doors. One door goes to the next level, and the other to an incredibly difficult miniboss. Sure, there's an item that will help point the way to the right door, but picking the wrong door still leads to a world of hurt. You can lose due to a flip of a coin, basically.

I really wish I could recommend Ninja Kid, because I love unearthing lost classics and bringing them to light. I was really incredibly pumped to play it because it sounded so great on paper, but it ended up as an example of a company that had a great idea but couldn't pull it together quite like they wanted to.

Final Rating:

NES Replay: M.U.S.C.L.E.

Developer: TOSE
Publisher: Bandai
Released: October 1986

Anyone who's played games for any length of time knows what "ragequitting" is. It's that moment when you can't take any more of a game, and you angrily hit the power button and yank out the disc/cartridge. A ragequit really sticks with you too. Just thinking about one is enough to make your blood boil.

M.U.S.C.L.E. caused me to ragequit twice, and it made me think: What's the anatomy of a ragequit? What causes us to shut off a game rather than keep pressing onward?

At its heart, a video game is designed to present us with a goal and the tools to accomplish that goal. They're goal-generating machines, essentially. The best games present reasonable goals along with tools that are uniquely suited to meet those goals.


We make an agreement when we play a game that we'll expect a certain amount of difficulty in exchange for our time, and there is a certain element of "fairness" that has to enter in to the equation.Some games, like Dark Souls or Ninja Gaiden, tell you up front that the game is going to be wildly unfair to the player. Other games, like the Kirby series, tell you up front that you're not going to have a hard time. Now, if you flip that and make Dark Souls as easy as a Kirby game and a Kirby game as hard as Dark Souls, what happens? The person playing Dark Souls is bored, and the person playing Kirby is frustrated.

So, what's unfair? I would posit that one of the things that make a game is "unfair" when the opponents have access to skills, abilities and advantages that the player doesn't. For example, in Mario Kart, it's exceedingly difficult to hit an opponent with a blue shell right before they reach the finish line. The computer player, though, has no trouble doing it over and over.

Now, here's another wrinkle: Let's say I place a chocolate chip muffin on my desk. It's just your average muffin, nothing special. Between you and the muffin, I put a death-defying obstacle course with scythes, tigers and a rabid puma. Are you going to attempt to get the muffin? Of course not! It's just a muffin. It's not important.

Likewise, when a game's goal is minimal yet the difficulty is excessive, we quit. Why bother doing something insanely difficult for no good reason?

M.U.S.C.L.E. commits both of those sins. It's a typical wrestling game, where two fighters rassle for dominance. However, periodically a character who walks along the edge of the wrestling mat will toss a power-up into the ring that gives the player super speed and strength. The computer player inherently understands what angle and speed the power-up is traveling at and moves over to where it will be as soon as it's released.

Once the computer player gets the power-up, they rocket around the ring at insane speeds. They seem to be able to catch up to you and figure out where you're going to be, and once they hit you with one move, they do not stop. On the off chance that you get the power-up, the computer player avoids you like a plague rat, and of course you can't move at the same high speed as the computer player. To be fair, the NES didn't have a lot of clock cycles for AI. In mano a mano games, they had to cheat a lot to give the computer a fighting chance. That being said, there had to have been a better way to do things.

On top of that, if you win a match in M.U.S.C.L.E.... who cares? You're just going to have to fight again against some more wrestlers who are going to do the same thing to you over and over again. Why bother winning a match? It's the chocolate chip muffin on the other side of the abattoir: The reward doesn't match the effort you put in to get to it.

I've already spent a lot more time talking about M.U.S.C.L.E. than the original developers put into it, but this is a game that really angried up my blood. Maybe writing about it will be a catharsis. Let me check.

Nope. Still angry.

Final Rating: