I hope you play Total Recall first!
#1. Kung-Fu - The Quick Verdict: It's still good.
Kung-Fu was one of the first generation NES games and wasn't much more complex than any of those other early games. Your character walks across 5 floors of a dojo. He is a master of Kung-Fu as he knows two moves. A punch and a kick. He can execute them while standing, crotching, or jumping for a total of 6 different attacks. He fights off various minions as he walks to the end where he eventually fights a boss. If he wins, he climbs the stairs to the next floor. If he loses he gets laughed at, by a really creepy digitized laugh. And if he beats the 5th boss, he gets to rescue his girlfriend. And then you do it again and again and again. Like I said, it's a pretty basic game.
But you know what? While it is basic, the game really mastered those basic features. The moves are simple, but controls are very responsive. The character sprites are all large and easy identifiable. The boss fights feel unique and take a bit of study before you can beat them. It's all simple fundamentals, but it's good. When I played through I made it to Mr. X (the 5th and final boss), and while I wasn't able to beat him I was happy to replay the game and give it another shot. It won't blow anyone away, but it's good simple fun. Kung-Fu holds up people!
travo said:I hope you play Total Recall first!
Nope. But you can see what was first.
aspro said:In my experience. Very rarely can you "go home" when it comes to games.
I've been prepping this for a few days and have gone through about 8 games so far. It's a mix of games I used to like, games I never played but wanted to, and games I never even heard of. So far it hasn't been an wholey unpleasant experience. I've gone in knowing full well that these games are going to be rough (and they are), but I'm actually finding a few that aren't too bad.
#2. Fester's Quest - The Quick Verdict - Not so good
When I first found this game many many years ago I was confused as hell as to why it existed. The Addams Family movie hadn't come out yet, and by the late 80's reruns of the old 60's TV show were very difficult to find anywhere on TV. The closest thing to relevancy the Addam's Family had was guest starring on Scooby-Doo in the 70's. And a game about it featuring Fester as the main characters? It would be like someone deciding that we need a Married with Children video game, and they made Jefferson the main character (apologies to anyone who doesn't understand that reference but for those of you who do get it, I know you're nodding your head in agreement). I'll just say that it was odd, but I kind of liked it back then, but god it was hard.
Anyway that was then and this is now and the game has not gotten any easier. The basic combat controls are fine, and leveling up your gun is pretty simple, but it's easy to take damage and there are swarms of monsters. And when you die (and you will often) the game gets fucking unforgiving as hell. There are unlimited continues, but start-points are few and far inbetween. If you don't make serious progress you get pushed back really far. Boss battles are insanely difficult too. I had to save and cheat a lot to progress in this game, and even with cheating I still can barely make any progress. The one item in the game that's a genuine equalizer is a whip that Morticia gives you and you can use it in place of your gun. Unfortunately you have to get over halfway through the game to get it, and that's a herculean task.
So the game isn't as bad as I thought it would be. There's a nice idea here, and parts of it do in fact hold up today, but not enough to make it fun. Totally doesn't hold up, but you can argue that it didn't hold up when it was new.
Kung Fu was so short but I never noticed back in the day because I played it over and over again.
#3. Ghosts 'N Goblins - Quick Verdict: No... just fuck no
Back in the day Ghosts 'n Goblins was the game that separated the men from the boys. Well that's not fair to say. I only knew one person on the planet who was able to complete it without cheating, and I don't even know if he was able to get the real ending by beating it twice. All I know is that the game was hard. I wasn't good at it then, but I could usually make it to the halfway point around level 4 or 5 before I died. Today, I'm even worse.
I tried. Seriously I tried a lot. Do you know how many times I got to the Red Devil and died? For 15 minutes I'd play, get to the Red Devil and die over and over and over. For anyone who says the Souls games are hard, I say go fuck you mother. THIS is what hard is. I had to quit. I barely made it into the second level. The game just got too mind bendingly tough for me. I have no idea how anyone ever beat this game. What I do know is that I cannot.
As to whether or not this game hold ups, I honestly don't know. All I know is that it's hard. If you're looking for a game that's next to impossible go ahead I guess it's held up. It seems unfair as hell, but some masochists like that I suppose. Any decent god fearing person should avoid it though. I say stay away from it. In the same way that modern man is no longer able to hunt a giant ferocious monsters with sticks, we are no longer able to beat Ghosts 'n Goblins.
I miss the old Capcom box art.
Old Capcom and old Konami box art was great. It was a nice easy way to identify the quality that you knew you'd get from those companies. Sadly, there's no need for that today..
Hard? But it can be beaten in under 22 minutes without dying!
robio said:Old Capcom and old Konami box art was great. It was a nice easy way to identify the quality that you knew you'd get from those companies. Sadly, there's no need for that today..
100% agree.
I'm waiting for you to get to Star Tropics.
Foolz said:Hard? But it can be beaten in under 22 minutes without dying!
I refuse to believe that's real. He used an invincibility code.
Archangel3371 said:100% agree.
I'm waiting for you to get to Star Tropics.
It is on the list.
#4. Strider - Quick Verdict: No, and that's a shame
Strider was a hell of a game in the 8-bit era. It was an ambitious title that Capcom made at their NES peak. It's about a futuristic ninja/secret agent who goes on an adventure around the world trying to solve a mystery regarding his best friend and the organization that he works for. The player visits different countries and finding clues as to what's going in the story, and ultimately revisits the area as he acquires items that allow him to more fully explore the area. It's like a more linear version of Metroid, though there's a hub world and each area you visit is self-contained so you don't have any of the frustations of getting lost and inevitable moments of not knowing where to go that come with Metroid. The combat is the most memorable aspect of the game though. You're a ninja after all and you're armed with a big ass sword that makes a kickass "CHIK'ING" noise everytime you weild it. No matter how anyone feels about the game today, there's no question that Strider's Cypher blade is one of gaming's coolest swords of all time.
So Strider's story is still pretty fun to play through, the soundtrack is very good, and the graphics while a little muddied are decent enough. Unfortunately, the biggest problems that the game has these days are all about the combat and action. It suffers from screen flashing and slowdown when the action starts to get hectic. The NES controller couldn't quite accomodate all of the moves that the devs tried to assign to it. A slide kick is needlessly complicated, and the triangle jump (wall-to-wall jump) is one of the hardest moves to pull off in the world of gaming. It's definitely a victim of over-ambitious developers. That's part of the reason why the game is so memorable today, but definitely makes it tough to want to play today. It definitely hasn't held up, but I will say if Capcom is set on making more and more HD remakes, the original Strider really needs to be at the top of the list. Just a few tweaks to the controls, and some updated graphics would really make this a classic.
Legacy of the Wizard - Quick Verdict: Yes, if you download a FAQ
Legacy of the Wizard is a great example of why instruction manuals used to be so important. Not only are they great bathroom reading, but in early games they were often the only source of information you'd have regarding the game's story and characters. Without one, you more often than naught would be walking through the game blindly without so much as a clue on what to do as there would be absolutly no narrative until you make it to the end of the game. So if you're going to play Legacy of the Wizard you sure as hell better come prepared. Download a FAQ to at least review all the characters, items, and abilities. And for the sake of your sanity download a map because this game is huge. Near scale the scale of Metroid I think.
I first tried going into the game without the preparation and while I did enjoy the simple but solid gameplay, I didn't have a fucking clue what I was doing. I'd just run around killing monsters and gathering items, until I needed to find an inn and heal myself and then repeat the process. And that god old quickly. Once I took 5 minutes to do a little research, suddenly the game did in fact become fun. It's a little daunting, given the size of the game, but for players who don't mind the primitive graphics it's really not bad at all. To throw out an equally obscure game for a worthless comparison, it's kind of like Solomon's Key if it were an adventure game. It's certainly not for everyone, but with some extra direction this game does hold up.
Oh man. I so did very much enjoy Strider for the NES. Robio did you ever play the recent Strider game made by Double Helix? It's very good.
I'm not sure if I ever played Legacy of the Wizard but I have played Broderbund games before. I wonder what ever happened to them.
i own Kung Fu for the Atari 2600. It's actually a very good version of the game too.
Archangel3371 said:Oh man. I so did very much enjoy Strider for the NES. Robio did you ever play the recent Strider game made by Double Helix? It's very good.
Never played it. The art style kind of turned me off. I'll grab it at some point though.
Makes me wonder what's happened to Double Helix though. Amazon bought them to do first party development for their bomb of a microconsole. That didn't seem to work out.
No, I'm not talking about a woman's rack at the age of 50, I'm talking about 8 Bit NES games. So many of those games seemed like masterpieces when we first played them, but how kind has Father Time been to them now that 20 to 30 years has passed since they came out? I don't think many people will argue that the majority of them have aged as gracefully as your average pornstar's meat curtains. Still there are some gems out there. The Super Mario games really seem to have stood the test of time, as well as the Legend of Zelda and a few other high profile games. But what about the others? What about those games that didn't get a dozen sequels over the years and have faded away from our immediate recollection?
So I've decided to go panning for gold this summer, and have chosen 100 NES games. I will play them until either I've finished them, I'm not longer having fun, or I've decided that the particular game sucks donkey ass and will not be getting any better no matter how much time I put into it.
Basically I've got a lot of time on my hands this summer and not enough to fill it with.