Sega Master System #2: Great Football (1987)

(Get used to dumb looking covers. The Master System has a million of them.)

I’ll always find it funny that Sega did a whole series of lousy sports games on the SMS and gave them the name Great. It’s almost like they knew their product was weak so they decided to just have fun with it. I guess it’s always been a warning that games with superlatives in the title are usually not very good. A good game doesn’t have to tell people it’s a good game in the title. All together there were seven Great sports games, and they are certainly not well liked by collectors. If you want the thole US set you gotta get all seven of them and you’re not going to end up playing them much. There are only 114 US games, so more than six percent of your collection will be these boring sports games. Great Football is definitely the strangest and hopefully the worst of the lot. I hope it is the worst because eventually for this blog I will have to play through all seven. Isn’t there another Alex Kidd game I could play through instead? (PS there is! I’m still gonna play these sports games though.)

(This game is about football so here is a picture of football.) 

I have never played anything quite like Great Football before. The two player game is typical mid-80s football, but the one player game is odd to say the least. It’s reminiscent of my childhood when a friend of mine only would let us play “over the plate” baseball. What that meant was that we weren’t actually allowed to pitch the baseball making it an all offensive game. In Great Football all you do is play offense. The computer never touches the ball except on a turnover, and when that happens you are just penalized and get the ball back. So how can you loose? Well game actually picks up in the fourth quarter with the player’s team behind by a certain amount of points. So it’s a football game where you only play offense, only get to play the fourth quarter, and have to overcome and imaginary deficit by a team that never even gets the football. Huh?

I was determined to beat this game on my first try because I didn’t really want to play it again. I picked the Bombers because that was my high school mascot and played against the Spartans because I live in Lansing just a couple of miles away from Michigan State University. I ended up with a twelve point deficit which didn’t sound too hard to overcome. I used the same strategy with this one that I used with 10-Yard Fight. I was determined to never pass the football. Since I never had to worry about turning it over on fourth down there wasn’t much to lose by just running it. As time went on I made things even simpler than that. I kept using the same play over and over again. It seemed to always result in either short gain or really long gain. This led to a couple of fairly long third downs which made the game almost exciting, but I didn’t have to worry about losing the football so I couldn’t get that into the action. The only time I tried to kick the football it went exactly sideways so I usually ran it in instead after a touchdown. Just to add to the weirdness the two point conversions are only worth one point. They just couldn’t get anything quite right in this one.

(Good ol' #7. Nothing beats that!) 

Home football gaming turned a corner when Tecmo Bowl came out. That’s really the first game that got American football right on consoles. Great Football fits into the group of lesser football games that came out before Tecmo Bowl. However, even among that group it stands out in a bad way. Even the original Atari version let you play defense. 10-Yard Fight was no masterpiece, but at least the computer opponent gave me a challenge and I had to switch up plays. Nobody wants to play a game that only needs one play to be won. With its odd setup I felt like I was only playing 1/8^th of a real football game, and that’s not good. Hey at least I had fun playing it with my brother back in the day.

I am happy that I finished this one because I don’t finish SMS games very often. I feel a little bad because the two games I have written about have been two of my least favorite. I may try to replay a few I actually like and write about them because I really do love the SMS. I am also going to try to keep track of my game completions on the side of the blog as an attempt to increase my output. It probably won’t work, but I like to keep trying. Of course with all the games I have already beat I could keep this blog stocked with about 400 more articles. Looks like I need to get writing!

PC #1: Ultima

A couple of things happened to me here at the tail end of 2019 which really show off what a weirdo I am. After 20 years of computing I finally got my first PC. It’s not a complete transformation for me. I just needed a cheap laptop that I could use around the kids. Of course when I unboxed my new computer my thoughts quickly turned to games. There is a whole world of PC games out there that I have never been exposed to. So what’s the first game I bought with my GOG account? The very first Ultima. Yes, the first PC game I ever bought was the first Ultima game in 2019. It looks like I have some catching up to do with my CRPGs. It’s the kind of game that pushes all the right buttons for me. I love RPGs and the early history of media. I have seen dozens of silent movies and have sampled jazz music all the way back to the 1910s. How could I not want to play one of the earliest examples of my favorite type of game? I know that Alakabeth came out even earlier, but that one might be too archaic even for me. At this time Ultima is as far back as I can go. So how was my Ultima experience?

(Note the nifty air car. The graphics look so nice because this is the updated mid 80s version) 

Honestly I couldn’t believe how much fun I had playing this ancient game. It’s primitive and quirky as all get out, but Lord British was on to something. The story is about as traditional as it gets. There’s an evil wizard out there and you have to go stop him. How are you going to do that? By going to visit kings and doing their quests. The game has a surprisingly large overworld which is separated into four continents. Not bad for one of gaming’s first overworlds. There are also dungeons scattered throughout, and this is where most of the level grinding takes place. So we have quests, money and experience, an overworld with dungeons to explore, and a few NPCs to talk to. Most of the classic RPG elements are all in place, but there are still some quirks that would quickly be abandoned in the series but nevertheless make this game one worth experiencing. 

Experience points are almost pointless. Supposedly when you gain lev

(If stats went to 9999 I would still be reading this sign)

els there will be some different monsters and shop items, but I never noticed. Experience is more like a total score than anything else. I maxed mine out at 9999 which actually does make me feel accomplished. The stats are gained in unique ways. To gain HP you either pay a king or fight in a dungeon. Every time you leave a dungeon you will get an HP bonus related to how many monsters you defeated. You don’t really have a max HP, so you can stay in the first few levels of a dungeon and go up and down until you feel like you have enough HP to take on the world. The rest of the stats are increased by completing quests and finding signposts. Anytime I got frustrated in this game I would sail between signposts and raise my stats. I found it cathartic.

Oh and did I mention that you go into space and blast alien spaceships? Because you totally go into space and blast alien spaceships. It’s a bit hard to comprehend for people who are only familiar with the later Ultima games, but the first two games are sci-fi adventures. The shuttle that you see for sale all over the place is in fact a space shuttle. You use it to fly into space and play a simplified version of Star Raiders. The princess won’t help you travel through time unless you are a space ace. That’s fair enough I suppose. It’s jarring after hours of dungeon crawling to suddenly be in space shooting down aliens, but in a weird way it works. The hardest parts are remembering to wear your vacuum suit and managing your fuel. The trick is to not chase after the ships. I tried to do that thinking they would fly away and not come back, but every screen has a set number of ships so it’s best to just wait for them to come to you and conserve your energy. It took a while, but I eventually shot the required 20 and became space ace. I never get tired of saying that.

(Sadly most NPCs have very little to say. There's not even a button for that)

I did make it to the endgame and defeat the evil wizard, but it did take a little help from the internet. Still it’s not as confusing as many 80s RPGs. I’m surprised by how efficient it was. For such a large world it was easy to navigate. The caves are random grids, but even those could be traversed without mapping. Really all the quests can be completed in any dungeon so don’t waste any graph paper on this one. I did play it with a world map on the side of the screen, but even that was probably not necessary. I’m just not that good with directions.

I think I played this game for about 10 hours, and I enjoyed every one of them. It does a great job of capturing the time and place that it was created. Ultima was the beginning of more personal gaming. You can’t tell much about the creators playing an arcade game like Space Invaders. Even bigger games like Atari’s Adventure don’t paint much of a picture. However, playing Ultima really says a great deal about Richard Garriott. His interests and personality are right there in the game. At the time he probably didn’t know he’d be spending the next two decades making Ultima games, so he put as much of himself as he could into this first epic quest. Even after almost forty years it’s a journey worth taking

NES #49: The Magic of Scheherazade (1989)

I had the opposite experience with this game as I did with Gilligan’s Island. Whereas Gilligan’s Island was a bad game that I nevertheless had fun playing, The Magic of Scheherazade appears to be a good game that I didn’t enjoy playing very much. There are a few reasons for this. I mostly played it at night after the kids were asleep so I was already tired and couldn’t focus on a confusing action RPG. It’s also a game that I had attempted to beat before so this time through I was just trying hurry and get it over with. I played the bulk of it in two long sessions and probably went past the point where I was enjoying myself. I’m curious to know if this actually is a good game or if my love for RPGs runs so deep that I just assume it is good. Let’s look at the evidence.

It certainly has a good setup. It’s based on the Arabian Nights making it one of the few games of the era with a Middle Eastern theme. Its story includes amnesia, evil wizards, and time travel which of course are all the best plot points. It switches between Zelda-style action sections and turn-based RPG combat. It also has a large cast of quirky characters. Many of them are playable in the RPG section giving it a very large cast for an NES game. So far it sounds like a slam dunk, but there are parts of the game that really bring it down.

(It's gotta be good if it looks like this, right?)

The first problem is that the turn-based battles are no fun, and they always seemed to happen when I wanted them to the least. They happen unexpectedly between screens, so they always snuck up on me when I was trying to go somewhere. As the game goes on they do become easier with better party members and strong matchups, but every time I got into one of these battle I rolled my eyes. It’s basically just my party slowly attacking and then waiting for the opponents to slowly attack. It doesn’t have any of the strategy or tension of good turn-based combat. The action based combat is better, but still nothing special and too often turns into button mashing. I wish the developers would’ve picked one method of fighting and made it excellent instead of having both and making them mediocre. The game, however, does have some excellent bosses that require strategy and take up most of the screen. They are some of the biggest bosses I have seen in an NES game. So at least they got that part right.

(One of those big bosses I was talking about)

It’s also one of those games that is both too hard and too easy. Like most 8-bit RPGs it can be quite cryptic at times. Dungeons often feature mazes and hidden pitfalls. I hope you are paying attention to what all the NPCs say as well, because you will need some knowledge to solve puzzles too. Of course in an RPG wandering can be a good thing because it gives you a chance to level up without resorting to just grinding. Unfortunately there’s just not that much leveling required. Every world caps the levels gained at five which is never hard to accomplish. You get money from combat too, but items are not that expensive. Most regular monsters die in one or two hits to begin with, so the challenge level throughout is fairly low besides the bosses. So when you’re stuck in a dungeon you are mostly fighting the same monsters over and over without much sense of accomplishment. It once again shows that the developers wanted to make an RPG but didn’t really understand how they are supposed to work.

I hope I am not being too harsh on this one. It’s certainly one worth checking out if you are at all interested in 8-bit RPGs especially since it is much more affordable than many other similar NES games. It’s just not one that really elevates itself to the “lost classic” or “hidden gem” category that many modern reviewers place it in. It is a game that strives for depth in a field of simple action games. It’s also a game that misses the mark with all the RPG elements. You will not be challenged by the combat. You will not enjoy the turned-based combat very much. You will have to use the internet to get through some dungeons. At the same time, you will probably enjoy the quirky characters, intricate story, and well designed overworlds. It’s not a lost classic by any means, but it’s still a decent NES experience. I am certainly glad I played it, but I wasn’t too sad it was over either. Hey if you’re looking for definite conclusions than you are reading the wrong blog. I’m just some dude on the internet.

NES #48: The Adventures of Gilligan's Island

(No complaints about the box art. That's pretty much Gilligan's Island right there)

This is one of those “more fun to dunk on than it is to play” games that people who write about games love to make fun of. On the surface it’s not too hard to see why. By the time this game came out the series it was based on had been canceled for almost twenty years. It’s not like there’s ever been a big market for games based on sitcoms either. Is there another example of a game based on a tv show that had been off the air for decades? Even The Addams Family had a movie to promote when they got their own game. So it already has one strike against it for being based on a very silly show that had been off the air for a generation. It also came out right at the peak of the NES in 1990 when people were too busy playing Mario 3 to care much about such and odd licensed game. It would be more understandable if it came out a couple years earlier when the system was desperate for games, but instead it was destined to collect dust in a rental store beside Tom Sawyer and Wall Street Kid. So just how is this game which seems to be aimed only at uncles? Well as an uncle myself I was determined to find out.

(The 60s sexism was left intact)

I have to say, for a game that’s 95% backtracking it’s pretty good. Each level is set up like an episode of the tv show, although I have no idea if they were recycled from the show or original to the video game. The setup, for those of you who didn’t watch TBS in the early 90s, is that every episode they would think they were getting off the island, but for typically Gilligan related reasons they never did. It works just the same in the video game. The levels will start out with a plot-related discussion and then you spend the rest of the levels talking and gathering things for the other castaways. You play as the portly skipper who doesn’t really look like any other video game hero besides maybe Fred Flintstone. Gilligan follows you around to make sure that you never accomplish anything. He mostly falls in holes and supplies funny dialogue. Unfortunately he only has about three pieces of dialogue so don’t expect this game to provide that many laughs. There is some combat, including a surprisingly hard final boss, but the meat of the game is hunting down all the required items for the different castaways before time runs out. There is a map to help you find where everyone is, but sometimes they can be hard to get to. It drives me crazy that some places require you to float in the water, but the water always hurts you. There’s nothing worse than a required part of the game hurting you. When you finally reach the end of the level you get the joy of thinking you are going to get off the island only to find out that Gilligan has inadvertently thwarted you again. I suppose it is fairly unusual for an old game to be so full of downer endings. It might be disappointing for someone not familiar with the show to find out that they never get off the island, but don’t worry. They eventually make it off then go back later and watch the Harlem Globetrotters play basketball against Martin Landau’s evil robots. I only wish that plotline made it into the game.

(A common reaction when playing this game)

Honestly I had a pretty good time playing this one. I know I shouldn’t have, but I just can’t help myself. Maybe a lifetime of playing bad old games has hardened me. Maybe it’s because of the intricate levels with world maps. As you know if you’ve been reading this I love a good world map. I enjoy these old games that have baffling layouts where characters will be hanging out in dangerous caves for seemingly no reason. 1990 was probably the peak year of my Gilligan’s Island obsession, but I wouldn’t even play this game until 28 years later making my enjoyment of it even more baffling. I guess that when you spend years and years hearing snarky comments and reading bad reviews about a game you are surprised when you turn it on and it's a real game that you can actually play. There’s always something comforting about playing such a legendarily bad game and finding out that it is both playable and beatable. I took a risk and played through Gilligan’s Island without the need to be snarky or hateful, and for some reason that makes me feel like a slightly better person.