NES #45: Wizard and Warriors (1987)

Wizards & Warriors is one of the truly classic NES games. It's such a classic that I'm baffled by its lack of post 8-bit sequels. There are three games on NES and an oddly titled one on the Game Boy and that's it. It's hard to think of another series that had three NES games and none on any later systems. Well I guess there's also Adventures of Lolo. Oh yeah and Ikari Warriors. Maybe it's not that uncommon. Anyway, my point is that Rare has been doing this for the last thirty years. They have never been a company to drive a franchise into the ground even when it's probably a good idea to do so. Didn't the world always want another Banjo-Kazooie or Conker game? So instead of making sequel after sequel they stopped after Wizards and Warriors III. Because of this the series will forever be associated with the NES. It probably gives thirty year olds just as many warm feelings as Mario and Zelda without the recognition of seeing the characters in more games through the years. This makes it one of the more quintessential games even among the more famous ones that came out around the same time. Mario may be a Nintendo franchise, but Wizards and Warriors is an NES franchise.

(Who wouldn't want to play this forever?)

The game came out right at the tail end of Nintendo's breakout year of 1987. This is the year that saw Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, Mega Man, and Kid Icarus all get released. It's probably the most important year any Nintendo system ever had. At first glance a weird sword and sorcery platform game doesn't sound like it has much of a chance to stand out, but it doesn't take long to figure out that this game is special. It's a very hard game to put into one category. You play as a knight so the first thing you would probably think is action rpg, but it only has a few rpg elements. There are keys to find and items to accumulate, but that is about it. It's not a traditional platform game either because the levels don't just move from one side to another. They require some extensive exploration. The main object of the game is to find the right items to be able to progress past obstacles and then fight some truly zany bosses. They love floating heads, skeletons, and large things that burst into tiny versions of the same thing. But who doesn't, right? Sometimes a game that doesn't fall into one specific genre can end up being a mess, but in this case it's what makes the game so playable. You never quite know what's around the next corner so it never gets boring. It shows that by this time third party developers were thinking bigger and bolder.  

I talk about how much of a classic this game is, but honestly I only played it for the first time a couple years ago. Even though it's the type of game that is right up my alley I somehow missed it. I never even played it as a rental when I was a kid. I was finally able to play it thanks to my wife owning a copy. It's another great endurance test for the NES. It plays differently than games like 1942 though because it is always changing. The play mechanics stay mostly the same, but environments change vastly from level to level. This caused me to frequently rethink my strategy. What works in a cave doesn't work in a cloud. Sometimes the game requires long jumps and sometimes there is lava to keep you more careful. The continues are infinite, so it encourages the exploration of every nook and cranny. Why not get that extra treasure chest? It's not like battling through monsters to get it is going to cause permanent death. The game actually gets more fun as you get closer to death because the low energy music is so entertaining. It's not an annoying beep like Zelda. It is a cheerful tune that seems to be encouraging you to venture further. This game is one of the most inviting on the whole system.

(This bat drove me crazy. I will admit that)

This game took me right around an hour and a half which is starting to seem like the average for NES endurance games. It was made a bit easier by my wife's advice of skipping the treasure chest which contained the practically useless Boots of Force near the end of the game. It was a fun, very old school feeling afternoon. I usually sneak these games in on the weekend and start playing much later than I should. I had a day off when I played this, so I was able to finish it at a reasonable hour without getting too frustrated. I have talked about Rare before as being one of the great game developers of the era. This was the first in a long string of classics for Nintendo systems right up to their infamous buyout by Microsoft in 2002. In the future they would develop Battletoads, Goldeneye, and Donkey Kong Country just to name a few. Wizards and Warriors was the first indication that they were going to be something special. They were able to live up to the hype and more over the next twenty years.

Atari Jaguar #1: Flip Out!

Every time I play Jaguar I get a little depressed, and it's not really because the games are so bad. I remember when this thing came out I thought it might actually save Atari. Even in the early 90s I was a nostalgia junkie who dreamed of all those great old Atari games. When the Jag hit the stores I couldn't be more excited. Sadly nobody wanted to make games for it. I don't know if the thing was just hard to build for or if there was too much competition, but Atari would take just about anything they could get. This led to a slew of extremely odd games that could only have existed on Jaguar. I wish I could say this was because of the high res graphics, but in reality it was because no other home console would take games so weird and difficult to play.

Flip Out is a prime example. It is so weird that I am not even sure how to explain it. On simplest terms it is a puzzle game, but it really isn't about solving puzzles. See you got all these tiles flipping around and you gotta get them in the right places to match the colors. You do this by getting the tiles to switch places by pushing a button. The trick is to always keep one in the air. It is sort of like juggling in that respect. Yes that's it, this game is like juggling.

Of course if it was only a juggling simulator it would only be bad and not Jaguar bad. What gives this game that Jaguar feel more than anything is the setting. Your main levels take place on the Cheese Planet. It is inhabited by little aliens who mostly just get in the way. In between these levels you get to rearrange other things like Easter Island heads and Mt. Rushmore. Try not to get Jefferson and Washington's eyes mixed up! The whole game is set up like a contest, as if these aliens have nothing better to do than to get squished by rotating tiles. They should really be doing some cheese related activities. Anyway, you do this for quite a few levels and then take on King Fluffy. Does this all sound fun to you?

Actually the strangest thing is that this game really isn't too bad. It is certainly unique and challenging. It just seems to be going too far out of its way to make people not like it. Sometimes I wonder if there was a conspiracy against Atari which made everybody purposely ruin their games. A simple color matching action puzzler would've been a refreshing entry into the Jaguar library. It would've been a nice compliment to the excellent Zoop. Unfortunately, it is a confusing game where you are a space juggler on Cheese Planet trying to avoid a bunch of annoying space bugs who keep getting squished. How could this game not be a metaphor for Jaguar's failure? Yep, I think I'll go back to being sad again. I've thought about this game too long.