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.