NES #21: Life Force

It doesn't seem like there are that many good flying shooters on the NES. You can tell because people often put Legendary Wings on their list of favorites from the system. The only reason you would put that on the top of your list is because you didn't have any other games to choose from. However, when you dig a little deeper into the NES catalog you start to discover that there are some good ones to be played like Zanac and Dragon Spirit. Although they are fun games very few of them are well known.

Life Force is the exception. It is probably the most famous of the flying shooters on the whole system. It also has quite a reputation. People usually put this game on their best of lists to represent the whole genre. I guess it does have a lot going for it. It's made by Konami, who could do almost no wrong at the time. It has some of the coolest graphics of the era, especially those swooping flames in level three. It also has an interesting weapon systems that requires you to think a little bit. I guess it's easy to see why it represents a whole genre. It does everything so well. Okay, so there is one thing it doesn't do well, but I will get to that in a minute.

I remember playing this game all the time in college. It was one of those games that my nerdy friends thought was too hard, so I wanted to beat it. I remember playing that game over and over again and finally beating it after months of off and on play. It's a tricky game because it has so many things popping up. You scroll both vertically and horizontally, and it is not uncommon for things to be coming at you from three or even four directions. You also never know what to expect as the screen scrolls. Trust me, those curving flames will kill you the first time, and probably up through the 20th time as well. The best strategy in this game is to play through it enough times that you know what's going to happen next. Thankfully it's fun enough that you won't really mind.

Remembering the difficulty level I was surprised by how easy of a time I had beating this one again. It really only took me a few tries. By the time I was good enough to make it to the level I had about eight lives and hadn't even used a continue. And it's not like I had it very well memorized either. I only had a good memory of levels 1 and 3 which are the ones that I died in the most. I really don't have an explanation for it. I think I just got lucky or maybe all this Nintendo playing has got me into some kind of zone. Whatever the reason it was nice finding a game that I was still good at.

So what was the one flaw I was talking about earlier? The end of the game is too easy. It really doesn't have much of a final boss It just has this snake thing flying around in a big circle. All you gotta do is shoot him a few times and he's down. It's really odd for a game that has such big, tough bosses. After that you gotta fly through some really skinny spots which isn't a problem if you have some lives saved up. Then there's not even much of an ending. It's kind of a shame for a game that is otherwise great.

Well I guess that's about it for Life Force. It's another example of a sequel that I'm better at than the first installment. I've never been able to beat Gradius, the first game in the series. I've also never been able to beat the original Mega Man or Castlevania despite getting through all the other ones. There are different reasons for this, but in the case of Life Force it's because it is designed much better. In Gradius you pretty much can never get hit. Once you've lost your power ups you're done for. In Life Force it seems like you can always get by until new power ups arrive. Not enough shooters are like this. I never once felt hopeless. Okay I guess I can end this entry now. I guess this is a pretty good game to represent a genre with. I sure can't think of a better one.

NES #20: Super Mario Bros.

I decided to close out my summer vacation by playing something really iconic. I had originally planned on playing through SMB 3, but that game takes way too long so I will save it for another day. Of course it doesn't get more iconic than the original Super Mario Bros. It's only grown in stature now that all of us that were kids when it came out are adults now. It's the game the most people play to get nostalgic, and it has been kept alive by countless dumb t-shirts and a few cool ones. It's just hard to top those good illustrations from back in the day, and it really doesn't help things when you add a dumb slogan or a joke. Anyway, I'm getting off topic.

I have a lot of memories about this game. When we got our first Nintendo back in 88 or 89 the multi cart with SMB and Duck Hunt was the only game we had. I don't think we got another game until the next Christmas, so for the first year it was all we had to play at our house. I think it took us about 4 months until my dad was able to get all the way to world 4-1. I remember that being a really exciting day at our house. That was also around the time the Mario tv show started. I used to watch that in the mornings during my kindergarten year. I also had a Mario lunchbox that I'm fairly sure still exists somewhere even though my brother hit it with a hammer. To this day I am not sure why he did that, but I don't think he meant any harm by it. So that first year of video games was pretty much dominated by Mario. Of course we only had one tv back then, so we weren't able to play that much and one game lasted a lot longer. However, when I look at my shelf with 250 Nintendo games and about 500 games for other systems it makes me chuckle a little bit when I think about only having one game.

Another significant memory I have of this game is during my freshman year of college. I used to have a friend that would play this game every single day. This went on for almost a whole semester, and possibly even longer than that. He played just about every inch of that game, and did just about every trick and glitch. I saw him go to the minus world about a dozen times. In all that he never got tired of this game. I guess it's how he would unwind after class. This was 2002 so he had plenty of other games to chose from. I guess I'm not the only one who takes comfort of the games from my youth.

I'm actually really glad that I went back through this game again. We got this game so early in my life that I couldn't remember if I had ever beat it legitimately or not. I know I had seen many of my friends and relatives do it, and I'm sure that I finished it sometime in there, but I don't remember for sure. I couldn't guarantee that I hadn't used a cheat code or warp zone back then. This time I decided to do it for real and end the debate once and for all.

What probably surprised me the most about playing through it again was how easy it was for me. I guess it's like riding a bicycle. I was really expecting this one to be hard as I hadn't played it in years and never found it to be all that easy to begin with. However, I never even died until world 7-4, and I don't think I ever had less than 10 lives. It also surprised that my girlfriend had it memorized even better than I did. It sounds like she spent an even longer amount of time with only one game. So I got to the end and defeated Bowser. Hopefully the next time around he doesn't leave that axe so close to the bridge.

Well there's not too much left for me to say about this one. I still don't understand the cover of this game. Why did they decide to have Mario jumping against a wall? And can you even shoot a fireball through the bricks? Anyway, I'm getting off topic again. It was nice celebrating the end of my summer vacation by playing our most iconic childhood game. I'll have to go back tomorrow and teach to kids who were born after the Nintendo 64 came out. If that wouldn't make a person feel old than I don't know what would.

NES #19: Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Trouble in Wackyland

I'm not wasting any time. This game is bad! I've only had it for a week or so, and it's already one of my least favorite games. Everybody knows that Gogo Dodo was the best character on Tiny Toon Adventures. He was the wild and absurd one. We had to sit through cartoon after cartoon of Buster acting smug and self righteous just for a few seconds of Gogo, and it was well worth it. So much time was wasted at that school when we could see the entrance of Wackyland on the map. I knew something awesome was happening in there, but Stephen Spielberg and the gang didn't want the world to see it. Finally in 1993 Konami of all people released this game for the NES. We were finally gonna get a glimpse inside. There was only one problem. THIS GAME HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WACKYLAND!!!!!

This game is nothing more than a cheap ripoff of Adventures in the Magic Kingdom. Yeah that's right, it's an amusement park game. We've got a roller coaster, bumper cars, a log ride, a train ride, and finally a fun house. WHY DID THE DEVELOPERS THINK THAT WACKYLAND WAS AN AMUSEMENT PARK?? Is it because it had the word land in it? Wackyland was its own self contained world with all kind of strange creatures in it. Porky flew there in the classic Bob Clampett cartoon, and I don't think there were any bumper cars in it. The amusement park in Tiny Toons was Happy World Land, not Wackyland. What's worse is that Gogo's no a playable character. Actually he's not even really in it. You only see him walk by during the credits. He doesn't even have a supporting role like he does in better games like Buster's Hidden Treasure. What the hell happened here!?

I could probably give this game more of a pass if it was fun, but it is far from it. The object is to get into the fun house and beat Montana Max. You get there by getting 4 golden tickets or 50 regular tickets. Each other attraction costs a certain amount of tickets, but when you can trade in your points for regular tickets at the ticket booth. Here's where the game gets really bad. The bumper cars and train levels are pretty easy and only take 1 or 2 tickets. The roller coaster and log ride are much more difficult and take 3 or 4 tickets. When all you need are 50 tickets there's no point to playing through the harder levels. Honestly the train stage was about the only one I could stomach, so I just played it over and over. I think I played through the level seven times before I saved up enough tickets. Then I went to the final stage.

Yeah that's right, you can get through this game by only playing two levels, one of the regular levels and the fun house. I bed you'd love to spend 50 dollars to buy a game where you only have to play 2 levels. At least the fun house plays more like a regular game. Of course keeping with the theme there's nothing funny inside of it, and you play as Buster. All you get is a confusing maze with some doors on the ceiling and some upside down walking. Then you get to Montana Max and easily beat him. Then you turn off the game and never play it again, but I doubt you'll be able to forget about it so easily.

Well that's about all I want to talk about this one. I know that I only got it a week ago and it's made for little kids, but I'm sure I would've been just as furious then as I am now. Kids aren't dumb, especially when it comes to their favorite shows. Everyone who was a fan of the show would know that it wasn't Wackyland. I doubt there's a kid alive who would fool themselves into thinking that this was anything but a lazy money grab. I guess I can't really blame Gogo for not showing up. I wouldn't want my face in this game either. I'm just thankful that I've got 20 or so better Konami games to play through on my NES. This game isn't exactly Contra.

NES #18: Dragon Warrior

It was a relief playing through Dragon Warrior again. Sometimes I play these old games and discover that they're not as good as I remember. Dragon Warrior is one that I still enjoyed playing. It's hard to say exactly why though. By all accounts this should be an exercise in tedium. Somehow, though, it still manages to be fun and engaging.

This game came out in Japan in 1986 making it one of the earliest console RPGs. Over there it was called Dragon Quest, and the modern US games have taken on that title now. It didn't come out in America until 1989 by which time it must've already seemed a little primitive. The original Final Fantasy came out in 1990 in the US and I think it's interesting that while we only got the one NES Final Fantasy out of the three made we got all four 8-bit Dragon Warrior games in this country. Enix was very dedicated to their flagship series.

The gameplay in this game is very interesting. If it wasn't so slow and time consuming I might call it arcade style. Everything is simplified compared to most RPGs. You only control one character, and he only fights one monster at a time. The battles are mostly text based with no monster animations. You start out very weak and slowly gain levels to become stronger. I'm not sure if there is an RPG that is more centered on level gaining. Basically you are gaining enough levels to go to the next town so you can buy new equipment. There are some puzzles and treasures put in there to make things more interesting, but they don't seem to be the main focus in this game.

Describing this game makes it sound like it's going to be boring, but for whatever reason I really enjoy it. It's one of those rare exceptions where I probably like it more now than I did when I was a kid. At the time when I first played through it I had a insatiable appetite for RPGs, and I would play any of them that I could get my hands on. I originally played through Dragon Warrior while I was also playing through several other similar games like the SNES Final Fantasies. It got lost on the shuffle due to its primitive nature. I still remember playing it for hours and hours, but I don't remember it standing out to me like it does today.

It's not a perfect game though. As usual I do have some gripes. I hate how you can only save at the first castle in the game. It's really annoying having to go back and forth all the time. It's also the castle that you start back at after you die or continue your progress. So you're going to spend a lot of time walking away from the castle getting attacked slimes and ghosts which give you very little gold or experience. It's not till much later in the game when you have spells that take you to the castle and repel those weaker enemies. However, there isn't a spell that takes you away from the castle, so if you want to save your game you'll still have a long trip back to where you were. You can also get back to the castle quickly by dying, but while you keep your experience points after death you lose half your gold. It gets pretty annoying.

And speaking of death, I think it's kind of funny that after you die you appear in front of the king. He tells you that you should not have died and so he has brought you back to life. The king can bring people back from the dead! You would think with godlike powers like that he could kill the Dragonlord by himself. Or at the very least he wouldn't lost his daughter so easily.

Dragon Warrior is often called the game that started the console RPG, and although there are a couple of older ones this game certainly took the genre a long way. While the series is still only a moderate success in the US it is a craze in Japan. At least that's the image we get over here. It's a lot of fun going back to the series' roots and seeing how it all started. Dragon Warrior is an unusually slow paced game, and it certainly has its faults, but it's still a classic. It's almost 25 years old now, and it's still fun to play today. That really makes this game seem like something special.

NES #17: Strider

Well here's yet another Capcom game. It seems like they made half the games I've finished so far. I'm not sure if that's because they are especially easy or that I played them so much as a kid. Either way I appreciate Capcom for making this blog a little bit easier. Many of their games are easy to get through and fun to write about.

So Strider was a game that I absolutely loved as a kid. I always loved non-linear games with deep story lines. This game also reminded me of Bionic Commando which was my absolute favorite game. Looking back on it though the two games don't seem all that similar. Maybe I thought they were alike because of the world map and menu screen. They both just seemed a little more advanced than the average Nintendo game.

Anyway, this game is about a group of Striders. Or are the bad guys the Striders? I have to be completely honest with you. The story in this game makes absolutely no sense to me. The storytelling is a little clunky, so it's hard to tell what's going on. First you're supposed to go kill Kain, then you save Kain, then he goes crazy, and your sister is in there somewhere, then there's a guy named Faceas Clay (get it!), then all your friends die and you appear to be fighting against the Striders. It's all very confusing.

The gameplay is set up in an interesting way. Some of the levels you will pass through more than once. Along the way you will get key cards and special items that help you get further into levels. It's sort of a pre-Symphony of the Night layout. It sounds like it would get a little tedious, but the levels are set up well. The new sections are usually placed in the earlier parts of the levels so you don't have to travel long distances over the same terrain. The only thing I don't like about the levels is that, like a depressingly large amount of NES games, you keep having to fight the same boss over and over. You got this big alien robot computer thing that you fight about a half dozen times. It's easy the first time and never gets any harder. Oh, and there's also a part where you are in Australia then you go through a small tunnel and are in China, but I'm gonna let them slide on that one.

I just have a couple of nitpicks with the game play itself. First of all it is way too hard to do a wall jump. You're going to need to quite a few times in this game, but the jump controls are really stiff. The first time I attempted to beat this game I must've tried wall jumping a hundred times before I ever did it successfully. It's even worse when you have to do two or three of them in a row. The other thing that bugs me is that the special moves you get are almost completely useless. I never remember using any of them except for the plasma shot and the health recovery. There's also nothing on the screen that tells you when you've got them. I guess it's not much of a problem since you'll never use them anyway. It does make for a cool looking menu screen though.

Although I've played Strider a million times, this was the first time I ever beat it. It surprises me some to say that because the game isn't very hard. It's also quite short for a password game. I doubt it took me more than a couple hours to beat it. It's probably about half the length of Super Mario Bros. 3 if you skip the warp zones. This is certainly a good weekend afternoon game for when you can't think of anything to play among your 250 NES games and you're in the mood to play through one you haven't beaten before. I'm sure that kind of thing happens to you all the time.

My Sporcle quiz

No full entries tonight. I just wanted to let you guys know that I made a fun Sporcle.com quiz. I found a bunch of Nintendo quotes and you have to guess what game they came from. It's fun!

http://www.sporcle.com/games/nester/nintendo_by_quote

NES #16: Kirby's Adventure

Kirby's Adventure was another game I remember getting on Christmas '93. I also got Final Fantasy and a couple non-NES games that I can't remember off the top of my head, so I kinda hit the mother lode that year. I'm sure my brother did get some good presents, but I do remember that he got Rocky & Bullwinkle for the NES. I guess you can't win them all.

I guess the difference between Kirby and the other games I got that year was that it was brand new and the other ones were reissues put out to cash in on the end of the system's life. Kirby was just about the last high profile game I can remember coming out for the NES. It was one of the last shining moments in childhood where talk on the playground went back to my favorite dying system, and I didn't feel like the world was passing me by. I don't remember Zoda's Revenge or Mega Man 6 generating nearly as much buzz around school the next year. In a lot of ways this was the system's last hurrah.

I remembered being excited about Kirby after seeing commercials for the Game Boy game that came out a year or two earlier. I know that the Game Boy sold about a zillion units, but back then I didn't know anybody who had one and therefore had no way to play Kirby. I know that there were a lot of kids with the same situation waiting for the big console version to come out so they could actually play it. I always felt like this was one of the main reasons they decided to go with NES instead of SNES. People actually craved the 8-bit graphics from that Game Boy game they never got to play, and the developers felt like it would be an easy transition.

Although when playing it today you can tell that they really wanted it to be a Super Nintendo game. It's got all the hallmarks of those great early 16 bit platform games. It's got a big, interactive world map with plenty of branching paths and bonus levels. The graphics are pushed about as far as they can go as well. You're not going to find too many games on the NES that look better than this one. It also keeps track of your completion percentage which I thought was a really nice touch when I was a kid. I'm sure there are games that did it before Kirby, but it's certainly the first one I can remember.

The downside to all this is that the control also seems like it was meant for the SNES. It's a little to complicated for the two button controller. Pushing up on the controller to float is easy enough, but it drives me crazy that Kirby will start floating too often when jumping. This really slows down the game. The B button is used both for sucking up bad guys and using the weapons you get from them. This makes it a little weird when you're trying to get other weapons or using other attacks involving objects on the screen. Sometimes it's much more effective to suck up one enemy and shoot it at another enemy and it would be nice to be able to save my weapon while doing this. However, the only way to do this is to push select and get rid of your weapon so you can suck things up again. I guess they had too many functions to fit into 2 buttons so they had to improvise a little.

So how does this game play in 2010? Actually I think it holds up pretty well. The gameplay is still pretty unique and fun. I was surprised how many different weapons there were. It seems like they were throwing new ones in there right up till the end. The main quest is still really easy, but they make up for it by having so many hidden levels and rooms. Even though you'll breeze right through it in a couple days there will still be plenty to do after the final boss has been beaten. It probably has the most depth of any NES platform game that you don't have to finish in one sitting. It's certainly worth picking up.

So as I said, this game will always have a special place in my heart. When I was a kid I really hated to see things changing. I knew I had it good and someday my life would be mostly about working and trying to get by. Even though I loved my Super Nintendo the transition was really difficult for me. There was no toy that I loved more than my NES, and by 1993 it was really fading away. Kids would make fun of you for even having one. This game helped me hold on to my childhood a little bit longer, and even though it's not my favorite NES game I'll always appreciate it for that.

NES #15: Metroid

This is one of those famous NES games that I remember playing quite a bit as a kid. Usually we would rent it, and I would quickly get lost and not play it anymore. My parents got a little upset about me renting it all the time just to play it for half and hour, but that didn't stop me. I just loved the way the game was set up. It had such a unique look and feel to it. I really felt like I was on another world fighting aliens. It was pretty unique at the time, and it must've been stunning when it came out in 1987. I mean, when this game came out the Atari 2600 was still about 4 years from calling it quits. It was an amazing jump in technology.

So as I said, I really wasn't very good at this game as a small child. It wasn't until a few years later when I got this game for Christmas during the waning days of the NES that I was able to get through it. I will admit that I used a map to help me though. This is something that I feel bad about today. I really wish I could say that I beat it completely legit, but it's a decision I made when I was young and I can't take it back.

One thing that still surprises me about this game is how non-linear it is. Basically you have three objectives: kill Kraid, kill Ridley, and kill Mother Brain. How you do this is entirely up to you. The time between is spent exploring and getting power ups. The only other game like this at the time was The Legend of Zelda which came out at the same time, but even that had 9 dungeons and more orderly gameplay. Metroid was a radical departure from the early side scrollers and arcade hits. It was truly revolutionary.

Now before I heap too much praise on this game it does have one very serious flaw. One that never seemed to bother me until going back through it again. The problem is that whenever you die you only start back with 30 life. At first this doesn't seem so bad, but think about it for a second. In the game you collect energy tanks that raise your total life by 100. I believe there are 9 or 10 of these total. If you get killed near the end of the game it is possible that you will will have to collect 970 life points to fill yourself back up. This is really hard when most enemies other than metroids either give you 5 or 20 health back. To help deal with this the game designers did a couple of things. There are long upward corridors near the beginning with plenty of easy enemies to kill. There are also large holes in the ground that bugs fly out of which you are able to shoot away at. Of course this could still take you 15 or 20 minutes just to get your health back. Why couldn't they start you out with more health? This seems to take up about half the gameplay time. I guess the best way is to plot a course where you get energy tanks when your health might be getting low and just never die. But can you imagine how hard that is?

However don't get me wrong, I do love this game. It can't really help being imperfect. It was made in 1986. I loved it then and I still love it now although probably not as much. It's interesting how Samus' identity was kept secret unless you get one of the better endings. It would've been nice to have a female lead character out in the open at the time. As it is though it's still one of the great 80s games and one of the defining moments in Nintendo history.