Activision Patch Project #1

Okay so let's see what patches I can attach to my virtual jacket this time around.

River Raid - 15,000 points
This seems to be one of the easier patches to get, although it might be because I've played this one so much. It doesn't seem too unusual though that the more popular games had easier challenges. Getting the patch so easily would likely get someone hooked and then move on to the less revered games like Laser Blast and Oink. I really don't have too much to say about this one. You've probably already played it if you're an Atari fan, and if you're not than you probably don't care too much anyway.

Megamania - 45,000 Points
Megamania is one of those games that I start to get good at and think I can play forever, and then I'll quickly get to a level that completely wipes me out. I always do this with Atari games. There are people out there that are so good at them. I just want to be one of the elite someday! This point thankfully came after I got the required points for my virtual patch. This game is actually better than I remembered. I used to think that it was nothing more than a Space Invaders clone, which it is, but it does have more variety and some original ideas thrown in there. I do wish that the patch itself was a little more interesting. With a name like Megamania I was expecting something really zany. Instead I get a couple of random shapes spinning around on the screen just like they never do in the actual game. Oh well at least I have the satisfaction of earning it.

Sea Quest - 50,000 points
Now here's what I was talking about with River Raid. Sea Quest is probably one of the lesser games in the early Activision catalog, so it has a higher score to obtain. You'd probably see it in the store and think "well it doesn't look that fun, but just think about how awesome the patch would be." Then you get the game home and find out you gotta get 50,000 points! Some games they just didn't feel like making as many patches for. It was actually just a medium challenge, and the game isn't actually too bad when you get used to it. At first I though it was gonna be a real endurance just to play it long enough to get 50,000 points. So yeah I get an okay patch for it. It's sorta got a sideways thing going on. Green rainbows are always nice I suppose. Yeah, I'm probably gonna put this one on the armpit of my Atari jacket. I guess something needs to go there.

NES #14 Guerrilla War

Seriously folks, this has got to be one of the easiest games ever made. I remember renting this one often as a kid because it was one of the few games I could actually beat with only a couple of days to play it. I was really proud of that back then. When you're a little kid without many skills you'll take whatever little victories you can get. Last week I played through it once again and the whole experience only took about fifteen minutes. I probably should've saved this game for a later time when I was starting to run out of games to beat. Now there will probably be blank spots in this blog. Oh well, I don't think there's many people reading it anyway.

So when you first start the game up it doesn't seem like it's going to be easy at all. The gameplay is very similar to Ikari Warriors. It seems like there's always four or five guys shooting at you at once, and you of course die in one hit. When I came back to this game after an 18 year absence I died very quickly and thought that maybe my memories were wrong. I thought that maybe it was like Rush'N Attack where I remembered playing through it with the Game Genie only to find out that it's actually a very difficult game. However, after playing this one a little while I figured out that I was right all along.

So what makes a game where you die every 15 seconds so easy? Well there are two very closely related things. The first one is that you have unlimited continues. The second one is that after you continue you start back in the exact same spot you died in. This really takes the strategy and challenge out of the game. You can just run blindly forward and die 50 times but still win. You don't even have to shoot anything until you get to the bosses and you'll still be fine. And all those hostages you have to save? All they do is give you bonus points which will go away after you get a game over. You could conceivably kill all the hostages, leave all the enemies standing besides the bosses, and still win. What kind of a game does that?

Okay so I guess I can see where the developers were coming from. They probably thought the game was too hard at first. Nobody would even be able to get past the first level if they didn't make it the way they did. However, this really takes the fun out of it. There's no reason to do anything except run to the finish line. Who cares if you get shot up along the way? They could've at least made the game with checkpoints. That way you would have to clear a certain amount of terrain before you could continue again. That would at least make things a little more interesting.

So this entry ended up sounding a little more negative than I expected. It's just that this game isn't like I remembered it. Well actually, I guess the problem is that it's exactly how I remembered it. Blindly shooting and winning without a challenge is the kind of thing that appeals to a 7 year old, and not so much to a 26 year old. I guess I should just say that this game brings back memories but is not as much fun all these years later and leave it at that. But seriously, why did you do it SNK!! That game could've been a blast!!

NES #13: Faxanadu

Okay so it looks like Faxanadu is the next one up, and this is kind of an odd one. It's also a game that I always really liked. There are a lot of things that are interesting about this one. First of all I'm not sure why Nintendo published this game. It was made by Hudson who were publishing quite a few NES games at the time. In fact, they published four games on their own the same year Faxanadu came out. I think that even under Nintendo's strict publishing policies they could've released another one. Maybe Nintendo felt like they needed another first party RPG style game in lieu of a new Zelda game.

Another thing I always thought was interesting about this game was its look. This game has a really earthy look to it thanks to the heavy use of browns and greens. The world itself also has a unique look to it. I love these old 8 bit RPGs because they have such interesting worlds. Where else would you find a town at the top of a hollowed out tree or at the end of a cave? Its sorta like like in Battle of Olympus where you will go through a door of a cabin in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden you're in the middle of the city. The graphics aren't all good though. The shopkeepers and other characters in this games are a real rogue's gallery. They're supposed to be elves, but there's nothing elfish about them. I'll show you what I mean.

The key salesman looks downright depressed. He's also a very sweaty nicotine addict. I guess I can't blame him for being so sad when his whole day consists of sitting behind a barrel and giving people a key with a K or a J on it. Of course this is one of those worlds where after you use a key once it disappears. Also, since most of the locked doors lead to horrible dungeons only brave heroes have much need for keys. No wonder he looks so sad. It's also one of the rare times you see smoking in an NES game. This was unusual for Nintendo, but fairly common for Hudson.



Now I don't know what the deal is with the meat man but he kinda gives me the creeps. He's got that weird smile on his face at all times, and it really looks like he's wearing his butcher's robe with nothing on underneath. Put a shirt on guy! I just want to buy some dried meat!

So that's enough about the graphics. As far as gameplay goes this one is a mixed bag. On the more negative side it is a bit on the short side. There's only about half a dozen towns, and most of the dungeons are small. The thing that stretches out the game is going back to town to buy more keys. There's also not enough monsters. For most of the game the dungeons have the same two bosses repeating. Would it have been too much trouble for them to make a new boss for every dungeon? Now the last two dungeons have unique bosses, but that's a little late to start adding variety. Also, the password system drives me a little crazy. They aren't ridiculously long, but there are way too many characters that look the same. If you're writing them down make sure you double and triple check them. My advice is to take pictures of the passwords with a digital camera. At least that way there won't be any mistakes.

I do think that this is a game where the good outweighs the bad. Other than the cool look of it there are several things I like. I like that it moves with a logical flow, and it's easy to figure out what comes next. Many NES RPGs are ruined by being far too cryptic and confusing. I also like that when you get new equipment your character on the screen actually changes. This is an innovation that is still somewhat rare today. How hard is it to make the character on the screen look like he's wearing a new suit of armor?

I actually had a pretty good time playing through this game again. It moves at a quick pace so I never got bored. This was one of my favorite games to rent when I was a kid, and it's pretty easy to see why. I always was a sucker for a decent action RPG. I'm still not sure why Nintendo published this one, but I'm glad somebody did.

NES #12: Mike Tyson's Punch-Out

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out is another one of those games that is such a classic that I don't really feel like I need to describe the game all that much. Most of you out there already know about this game with its rhythm based gameplay that requires more brains and faster reflexes than just about any other game. Even today telling people that you beat Mike Tyson always impresses. I'm happy to say that I've beat him twice, and more impressively Mr. Sandman a bunch of times.

Oddly enough I never played this game during the NES era and knew very little about it. The only time I remember hearing about it was on the cartoon Captain N the Game Master. That was the game Kevin was playing when he was pulled into game world. The show also featured King Hippo as one of its villains. I never actually got to play the game until the NES was dead and I was just starting to get into collecting. It's probably just as well because I doubt this game would make any sense to a seven year old.

So I beat Mike Tyson for the first time when I was in high school, probably 10 years ago or so. I never played it again until recently when I picked up a copy of it at a thrift store. This makes it much easier to compare my first time through as a youth and the second time as an adult. One thing I quickly noticed was that I still had it. I got through the Minor and Major circuit without even getting knocked down. Bald Bull didn't even give me any trouble like he did 10 years ago. Glass Joe gave me the most trouble, and that was just because I had to get used to the controls again. I also found out that I will never forget the password to get to the world circuit. It's one of the few passwords that I've ever memorized, and I'm not exactly sure what it's so ingrained in my mind.

It could be because I had to use it about 10,000 times. One thing that hasn't changed about this game is that the last three fighters are some of the most brutal battles in all of gaming. Even though he's the first, Mr. Sandman is probably the hardest of the three. He always gets me with his Dreamland Express punches. He throws three punches in quick secession, and I've only been able to avoid all three of them twice. The first time through my goal was to only get hit by one of the three. If I didn't get hit by a single punch the rest of the match than I could sometimes win. Super Macho Man, the World Circuit champ, was never much of a problem for me as a kid, but this time through he gave me fits. If he hits you once with that super spinning punch than you're down, and he can spin over a dozen times in a row. I think you can only get knocked out three times, so once again the best strategy is to not get hit by anything ever.

The reward for all this is the match with Mike Tyson, and he's quite an imposing figure. He does his deadly dynamite punches for the first minute and a half, so it's quite possible to lose the fight in about 15 seconds if you don't know what you're doing. I lost count of how many times I fought him this time. I tried it for an hour or two on three separate occasions. Every time he knocked me down I just got madder and more determined. Finally after about 50 tries I won by decision, and the experience was just as exciting now as it was back in the day. I know I'm just playing a silly old game on a tv when I could be doing something productive, but I really feel like I accomplished something. How many of your friends have beat Mike Tyson?

Well I guess that's about it. I don't have many gripes about this one. Some of you might have played this as plain ol' Punch-Out, but it's basically the same game. They took Mike Tyson out of it when he lost the title and started getting into legal trouble, but Mr. Dream uses all the same moves. Well okay I have one gripe. Why did they decide to put Don Flamenco in the game twice? He's lame the first time and just plain boring the second! Were they that happy with the gag about his toupee? That's about the only thing I can figure. Anyway, I don't want so sound like I'm nitpicking, so I'll end it there. It's still an excellent gaming experience.

NES #11: Yo Noid!

At last a game that I actually have things to say about. I guess I'll come right out and say it. I think Yo Noid is a pretty good game. This game gets picked on all the time, but I'm not exactly sure why everybody hates it. I think it's one of the better licensed character games that Capcom made. I certainly like it better than Mickey Mousecapade or Adventures in the Magic Kingdom.

I guess it really just comes down to the main character. The Noid was a claymation character created by Oscar winner Will Vinton for Dominoes Pizza commercials. In other words he was created to sell a product. For some reason this really upsets gamers out there as if video games were a legitimate art that wasn't created to make money. I hate to break it to you guys, but every video game character was created to sell a product. For most of them that product is video games, but they are sill marketing tools. I honestly don't see how The Noid is any less entitled to star in a game than Mario. I mean, his face is on about a thousand awful shirts with stupid sayings on them. So seeing some college kid born in 1991 wearing a Mario shirt, perhaps with a picture of a mushroom with the phrase "the original magic mushroom" on it doesn't offend anybody, but having a pizza spokes character appear in a video game does? Some people really need to get some perspective on things.

So anyway, while I was thinking up this rant I was actually playing the game. As I said, it is pretty good. I was surprised by how hard it was, especially since I just went through it a couple of years ago. This was actually going to be the third game I wrote about, but because I was having such a hard time with it I put it aside for a while. There are really only a couple of things that annoy me about this game. They are the skateboarding and flying levels. For the most part I like how they tried to do different things with the levels, but they really could've worked a little bit harder on the collision detection. On the skateboard you can only kill things if you hit them with the back of your board while jumping. It can be hard to judge sometimes. This is only the third level, and I imagine it's where many people give up. The flying levels are tricky because you and your vehicle take up so much room on the screen. You fly the thing by tapping A, and this makes it really easy to run into things. The other levels are decent side scrolling platform levels with a pretty good amount of challenge. I enjoy the pizza contests in lieu of regular boss fights because they make you think a little bit. However, this does cause you to constantly use your yo-yo in the levels to find hidden powerups, but it doesn't get in the way that much. I really can't think of anything else to criticize in this game actually.

So what we have here is kind of an underrated game. Not exactly a masterpiece, but an enjoyable platformer. Most people stumbling upon this game today will probably have no idea who The Noid is, so the criticisms of old don't really apply. I'm surprised that this game was marketed to kids though, because it is really difficult. Although looking at the booklet it also describes Mega Man as a kids game and that one's damn near impossible without that pause cheat. Anyway, when I was a kid I did love this game, so maybe they know what they were talking about. And don't accuse me of being too sentimental about this one. There are plenty of games I played as a kid that I don't like now. I know Monser Party kinda sucks, and Rescue Rangers leaves a lot to be desired, but Yo Noid actually holds up pretty well, and I wish the people out there would give it a better chance. I just wish that pizza crusher showed up more than once. It sure looks cool on the box.

NES #10: Toki

For the big 1-0 you would think that I would pick a game that gave me more to talk about. This game is kind of obscure so I don't have too many stories about it from my childhood. I don't recall ever seeing it at a rental store either. I actually remember this being a Lynx game. Both people I knew who had Lynxes had this game, so I thought of it as the Mario for that system. Back then every system needed a side scrolling mascot. I have no idea if this game was popular for the Lynx though. Back then it could be hard to tell.

This is the first game on the list so far that I haven't previously beat. Although considering the difficulty level I probably shoulda. In this game you play as a Tarzan type jungle man who gets transformed into an ape and has to win his girlfriend back. It's a familiar story. The instruction manual describes Toki's attack as a weapon, but really he's just spitting little red balls at everything. Of course who wouldn't want to be an ape that goes around spitting on everything till it dies. The Genesis version of the game even goes so far as to call this game Toki: Going Ape Spit. This shows you that not only do the developers have a hilarious sense of humor, but that they're really into the whole spitting theme. I also think it's a little odd that you can shoot enemies with your weapon and jump on them to kill them. Usually when you have a weapon all contact with enemies hurts you. At first I tried to avoid them all, but then I found out that the only way to get a lot of the 1ups and other special items is to jump off of an enemy. I hate it when games are confusing like that.

So there are only six levels in this game, and none of them are particularly difficult. They all have typical themes. I like how even in a game that takes place in the jungle they manage to sneak in an ice level. Why does every game have to have an ice level!? I guess they already had caves, lava, and water. What else were they going to make a level out of? Anyway, if you feel like playing through this game it shouldn't take you very long to complete. I only played it for an hour or two and it didn't give me much trouble. At least it doesn't have unlimited continues. Some games really need them, but I do think it can add to the challenge when you've only got a few to work with.

Well that's enough for Toki I suppose. It's just about average in every way. It's a little bit quirky, but not really enough to make it worth talking about. It's a little bit rare, but it's still pretty cheap. I guess on NES you pay more for quality than quantity.

Activision patch project

So here's a new project I'm going to work on. Back in the day Activision used to give away patches for good players. To earn them you would have to get a certain amount of points or complete some special task. I know they gave away patches for Intellivision and 5200, but right now I'm going to stick with 2600 for now because I don't have the games for those other systems. So here's the games and the goals.


1. Barnstorming - 33.3 seconds game 1/ 51 seconds game 2/ 54 seconds game 3
2. Beamrider - 60,000 & sector 20
3. Chopper Command - 10,000
4. Crackpots - 75,000
5. Decathlon:
Bronze - 8,600
Silver - 9,000
Gold - 10,000
6. Dolphin - 80,000
Society of Dolphins - 300,000
7. Dragster - 6.0 seconds
8. Enduro - survive 5 days
9. Freeway - 20 pts./game 3 or 7
10. Frostbite - 40,000 pts.
11. Grand Prix - 1:00 on game 2 / 1:30 on game 3 / 2:30 on game 4
12. H.E.R.O. - 75,000
13. Ice Hockey - beat the computer
14. Kaboom! - 3,000
15. Keystone Kapers - 35,000
16. Laser Blast - 100,000 pts / 1,000,000 pts
17. Megamania - 45,000
18. Oink! - 25,000
19. Pitfall! - 20,000
20. Pitfall II - 99,000
21. Plaque Attack - 35,000
22. Pressure Cooker - 45,000
23. Private Eye - solve case 3
24. River Raid - 15,000
25. Robot Tank:
4 squadrons/48 tanks
5 squadrons/60 tanks
6 squadrons/72 tanks
25. Seaquest - 50,000
26. Skiing - 28.2 seconds/game 3
27. Sky Jinks - 37 seconds/game 1
28. Space Shuttle:
4 or 5 missions with 4500 (pilot)
6 missions with 7500 (commander)
29. Spider Fighter - 40,000
30. Stampede - 3,000
31. Starmaster:
3,800 pts/game 1 (order of the supreme starmaster)
5,700 pts/game 2 (leader)
7,600 pts/game 3 (wing commander)
9,000 pts/game 4 (starmaster)
32. Tennis - win one set vs. computer

Some of these seem pretty easy, but others are quite difficult. I want to see how many of these I can finish. The instructions don't say anything about the difficulty level, so I will probably play them with whatever level I feel comfortable. I guess it was too hard to tell what difficulty the players were using when they just sent in pictures of their screen. So that is the task. I want to see if I would've been able to make the nerdiest Atari jacket in the world.

NES #9: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

So what was your favorite part of Tom Sawyer? Was it when he was flying in a cloud or when he was fighting Injun Joe riding on the back of the Lock Ness Monster? Video games have a long history of not following along with their source material, so I guess it should be no surprise that Tom Sawyer isn't anything like the book. There's no whitewashing the fence, treasure hunting, or anything else familiar to the character. The closest it comes is the level where you're floating down the Mississippi(which is really more from Huck Finn) and the final level in the cave. I guess it's alright that it doesn't follow the book very closely because after all it's only a dream. . . or is it??

When you get right down to it though this game is a textbook case of what not to do in a platform game. It's got everything you hate in it. You want some blind jumps? How about falling objects that seem to have no pattern? How about an awkward weapon that has difficulty hitting its target? And the worst part is that even if all the control and gameplay flaws were fixed it would still be a mediocre game. The game only has five levels, and it can be finished pretty quickly thanks to unlimited continues. So I guess what I'm saying is that this game has bad controls, terrible gameplay, a dumb storyline, and worst of all it is far too short. It seems like there's a joke in there somewhere.

I'm going to cut this one a little short today. This game doesn't make me feel very creative and it leaves me with very little to write about. I will say that I didn't have a terrible time playing this one again. I enjoy playing the more obscure games, and it's not like it took up a lot of my time. I actually had some fun playing it. Just keep in mind that this is kind of a lousy game. My cousin made fun of me for renting it as a kid and I don't blame him. I guess when you're a kid you'll rent just about anything.