Tag Archives: NES

Quality Control, Reviews, Video games

Quality Control – Batman (NES)

Get Batman for the NES from eBay

Get Batman for the NES from eBay

Alright, I’m doing something slightly different this time. I’m not going to be doing the review as full text. Instead, I’ll be doing this primarily as a youtube video with narration – particularly since this time I fixed the problems with the game audio intruding on my voice over. If this works better, let me know either on the comments here, or on YouTube. Hopefully, if I get a job soon or find if the site starts to make some money, I’ll be able to get a real mike and work on improving the sound quality of my voice over.

Standard
Video games, Where I Read

Where I Read – Nintendo Power #10

Magazine Nintendo Power - Batman V2 #4 (of 6) (1990_1) - Page 2We’re on to issue #10 of Nintendo Power, for January of 1990. It’s a new year, a new decade, but not a new volume, though we’ve got a new hand-held system coming out. Our cover story for this issue is for the Batman game, featuring The Dark Knight small and in the background, and Jack Nichelson’s Clown Prince Of Crime large and in the foreground. Well, much like in The Dark Knight, it’s the Joker who steals the show. This issue’s a little longer than the last one, about 100 pages long.

Letters: We’re starting off with letters about the changes to Mario’s nose – and accusations of plastic surgery? *headdesk*

Batman Strategy Guide: Excuse me for a minute while I break out my Danny Elfman playlist (a track by Mystic Knights of The Oingo Boingo starts playing) No, the other Danny Elfman playlist! (Elfman’s main title for Batman starts playing). Much better! Anyway, we get maps of some if the first few stages (1 through 3), as well as notes on the last two episodes (4 and 5). Not much else here. They don’t even have any notes on what the power-ups do. Admittedly, often times these notes will be included in the manual, but it’s still useful to have that information in the magazine article, as the magazine is physically larger than the manual, making it a little more difficult to lose the magazine. Continue reading →

Standard
Quality Control, Video games

Quality Control – Willow (NES)

Get Willow for the NES from eBay

Get Willow for the NES from eBay

Well, my latest Quality Control column is ready, and this time I have video and audio ready. Excellent! I still shall, of course, have the text recap, for those who are at work and can’t listen to the video, or what have you.

The Premise:

Willow, a little person, must use all his skills in swordplay and magic to free the land from the grasp of the dark queen Bavmorda.

The Good:

This is a decent action RPG in the vein of Ys, with pretty good control. The graphics are alright for a NES game from this era, and sound isn’t totally awful eather, though I don’t recognize any of the music from the film.

The monster design is alright, and the monsters who shoot flame and other missles at you do have a discernable pattern, and the “bullets” are slow enough that if you spot the pattern you can avoid them. Also, upgraded weapons and armor come fairly regularly, and as the game is from a top-down perspective, it doesn’t run into any of the problems encountered by an Action RPG like Faxanadu. Continue reading →

Standard
Quality Control, Video games

Quality Control – Duck Tales (NES)

Get Duck Tales for the NES from eBay

Get Duck Tales for the NES from eBay

Alright, so after trying our hand at a Falcom action-platformer/RPG, that was part of the insanely long Dragon Slayer series, our next Quality Control column (as I mentioned yesterday), takes us to a more traditional platformer – Duck Tales, from Capcom, part of a long series of Disney themed platformers from Capcom, this one based on the TV animated series, which featured Scrooge McDuck going on various Indiana Jones-ish adventures, plus having to contend with more conventional enemies like the Beagle Boys (who want to steal his money).

The Premise:

It is the first part of the show’s description that the game is based on.  As Scrooge McDuck, you travel around the world, to the Amazon Rainforest, “The African Mines” (presumably meant to be King Solomon’s Mines – just shortened to fit the NES’ character limit), Transylvania, the Moon, among other places, retrieving various legendary treasures, among other stuff, while going up against such classic Duck Tales foes as the Beagle Boys, Magica DeSpell, and Flintheart Glomgold. Continue reading →

Standard
Quality Control, Video games

Quality Control: Faxanadu

Get Faxanadu from eBay

Get Faxanadu from eBay

Falcom is known for two major series – the Dragon Slayer series of games, and the Y’s series of games. The game I’m trying this time is from the former series. I’ve played one game in the series previously – Legacy of the Wizard.  To be frank, I enjoyed the game, though I had no idea what I was doing, and I had a lot of problems navigating through the levels, but I had fun.

I did not have fun with Faxanadu. Continue reading →

Standard
Quality Control, Video games

Quality Control – Cobra Trangle

Cobra Triangle Box ArtSo, my Quality Control for this issue is Cobra Triangle from Rare. This is, basically, a speedboat racing/shooting game. There’s no story to the game. Basically, you go through a series of about 25 stages, cycling through a 8 different stage types: Reach the end of the stage with boats trying to stop you, reach the end of the stage with obstacles (like whirlpools and log jams) trying to stop you, reach the end of the stage while jumping over whirlpools, (and for variation) collect as many power-ups as possible within the time limit, keep as many people as possible from being taken by enemy boats within the time limit, hit as many targets as possible while making your way to the end of the stage, take a number of mines to goal within the time limit, and defeat a boss within the time limit.

Being that 5 of these level types require you to either kill things, or have you fending off attack while completing the goal, the game is kind enough to give you some power-ups, using a Gradius-style power-up bar, with options for a speed boost, missiles (which actually work a little more like a split attack) and temporary invulnerability, among others. Continue reading →

Standard
Quality Control

Quality Control – Hudson’s Adventure Island

Hudson's Adventure Island Box ArtHudson’s Adventure Island (originally released in Japan as Master Takahashi’s Adventure Island) is an interesting game. Having never played any of the Wonder Boy games (the game series that Adventure Island is a clone of), I came into this positively cold, not knowing what to expect. I have to say that it’s not the best game I’ve ever played, nor the easiest, but it is interesting. I managed to actually record some video of a play-through this time around – I’ll get it up on my vodPod sidebar once GameTrailers is finished processing it.

The Premise:

You play as Master Higgins (in the Japanese version, it’s Takahashi), a guy whose girlfriend has been kidnapped by an evil chieftain while on vacation on a tropical island, and you have to go to rescue her. Continue reading →

Standard
Uncategorized, Where I Read

Where I Read – Nintendo Power #5

Why couldn't the cover have been like this?

Cover for Nintendo Power #5

Cover for Nintendo Power #5

 

So, we move on to Nintendo Power’s 5th issue, for March and April of 1989, with the cover game being Ninja Gaiden. I must admit the cover image isn’t as good as the images of the past 4 issues. It’s a guy in stereotypical Ninja black pajamas holding – I’ve got no freaking clue what he’s holding. If anyone who worked on this issue of Nintendo Power is reading this and you know what he’s holding, please let me know in the comments. This issue weighs in at about 106 pages, with a new section related to game previews in addition to the “reviews” (aka Strategy Guides) we’ve gotten previously.

 

Mail Bag: Well, as we reach the end of Nintendo Power’s first volume, we’re coming to one of our first notable changes in the magazine, one that I would say brings it more in line with most other video game magazines – they’ve moved the letters column to the front of the magazine. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it does a have a psychological impact – putting the focus early on to reader feedback, and their responses to the feedback. There are a lot of letters here from parents, and from senior citizens as well. Again, let it not be said that Nintendo consoles have, in the past, been unable to appeal to the moms and grandmothers demographic through hardcore games. We also get an letter from an honest-to-god educator (Steve Gibbs, an English teacher) praising Nintendo, particularly Legend of Zelda and Zelda 2) for promoting critical thinking skills. Continue reading →

Standard
Quality Control

Quality Control – Skate Or Die (NES)

 

Cover of Skate Or Die

Cover of Skate Or Die

In the annals of skateboarding games, the first game most gamers, even those who grew up in the 16-bit generation of gaming, think of when they think of skateboarding games is Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. However, when you get to the 8-bit generation, the signature skateboarding game of the time, and the first game to be exclusively focused on  skateboarding (technically the first focused “extreme sports” game) is Skate Or Die! for the NES.  Coming out in 1989, while it is not the first game to depict skateboarding (an honor held by California Games), to a certain degree this is one of the first major sports games that were based off a real-world sport but not one that was either an Olympic sport or team sport. Continue reading →

Standard
Quality Control

Quality Control – Blaster Master

Cover Art for Blaster Master

Cover Art for Blaster Master

Blaster Master is a game I’ve heard abunch about when I was a kid, and when I ended up accumulating a bunch of bookson video game strategies – none of which were officially licensed, including a few written by Jeff Rovin, who would later go on to write Tom Clancy’s Op Center series. The game interested me, though often the books I was reading didn’t have pictures to show me what the game looked like, so I had to make assumptions on what the game looked like.

So, when Nintendo Power #3 had a preview of Blaster Master, I felt like it was woth giving it a try. The premise of the game is fairly simple. Your pet frog is mutated by radioactive waste and goes down a giant hole in the ground. You chase after him and fall down the hole yourself. There is no sign of your pet frog nearby, but there is super-high tech tank nearby, which you hop into to rescue your pet and hopefully bring him back to normal. Continue reading →

Standard
Quality Control, Reviews, Video games

Quality Control – Life Force

The box art for Life Force

The box art for Life Force

So, for Issue 2 of Nintendo Power, I picked for my game of choice Life Force by Konami, which was billed as the spiritual successor to Gradius.

To be frank, it has a lot in common with Gradius – both in terms of the ship design, most of the weapons in the game (laser, missile, option) and the power-up system in general.  In general, the game controls pretty well, though I’m playing this with the X-Box 360 controller rather than the the NES controller, so I have an Analog Stick to work with. Anyway, the weapons work very well, and the game’s new weapon, the pulse cannon, works significantly better than the similar weapon from R-Type.

Ultimately though, if you want to make a good shump, what you need is good combination of solid controls, good level design, good weapon selection (and the weapons don’t have to be original, necessarily, they just need to be useful),  and good enemy design – with both the generic enemies and the bosses, and both in terms of their movements, and in terms of their attack pattern (how do they move, do they fire bullets, if so how many bullets to they fire, how fast do they travel, and so on). Oh, and you can’t have slowdown. Continue reading →

Standard
Video games

Video Game Review – Vice: Project Doom (NES)

US Cover Art for Vice: Project Doom

US Cover Art for Vice: Project Doom

When one thinks of cinematic action-platformers for the NES, the first one that comes to mind is Ninja Gaiden. It is, probably, the first game to feature out-of-engine cut-scenes in-between levels, to frame the story. To be frank, not a lot of games during the 8-bit era aspired to the heights set by Ninja Gaiden in the presentation of its story (which was, to be fair, ankle-deep at best).

One of the few that tried to go where Ninja Gaiden went before was Vice: Project Doom for the NES from Sammy. It tries to expand on Ninja Gaiden both in terms of story and gameplay by changing the setting to something closer to 3o-seconds in the future (with an police officer protagonist), and by adding additional gameplay elements such as driving shump sequences and shooter segments. Does the game achieve the same level of quality attained by Ninja Gaiden, does it exceed it’s quality, or does fail to attain those lofty heights?

Continue reading →

Standard