NES

Just finishing off the NES retrospective with a few links and thoughts…

• FCEUX: An easy to use and feature rich NES emulator that I used to get most of the screenshots for this series of posts. The best feature is the ability to save your game state anywhere during a given game. Since most Nintendo games didn’t have this feature natively, it became a godsend when playing longer, relatively complicated games like Metroid or Zelda. It’s amazing to me that there are still games made today, even on the current console generation, that don’t allow saved games (or employ a nifty checkpoint system, etc…) NES games didn’t allow them (or provided limited functionality) due mostly to technical reasons, though I guess it also gave kids bragging rights for some of these insanely difficult games. But for someone like me, save states are pretty much a necessity. While on the subject of save states, Kernunrex recently played Castlevania and made a similar point:
  

  I have no idea how anyone ever did this in the era before save states. … I can’t imagine the gallons of tears this game must have generated from ’80s children who had parents mean enough to buy it for them. As an adult, I had to make a save state after every successful hit on Dracula. Even then, it took me 30-40 minutes of work. Yeash.

  Indeed!

• JSNES: It’s no FCEUX, but it’s a pretty neat little javascript based NES emulator that runs on an HTML page. It’s pretty impressive, though it only works really well in Google Chrome (other browsers have varying levels of lag).
• Two honorable mentions I inexplicably forgot: Super Mario Brothers and Bionic Commando. Alas, I don’t have a ton to say about Super Mario Brothers, except that I never really got into all the sequels (though SMB3 seemed pretty cool) or spinoffs (though I do like Mario Kart). The original came is pretty cool and did indeed engage me for weeks after getting the NES. Exceptional music and that peculiar early NES design aesthetic are true classics though (I mean, seriously, the game is about mustachioed Italian plumbers who are seeking to save a Princess from a giant, turtle-like monster called Bowser by eating mushrooms that make them larger and flowers that allow them to throw fireballs). A lot of the classic games like SMB draw from archetypal sources, which lends them power, I think. For instance, in SMB’s case, one of the primary sources has to be Alice in Wonderland. Ok, so I ended up saying more than I expected about SMB. Sue me. As for Bionic Commando, I said my piece on that a few weeks ago in a post on Bionic Commando Rearmed, the rather excellent current-gen remake (though by all accounts, the current generation Bionic Commando game is rather sucky).
• The Games that Defined the NES: A nice sampling of iconic games on this console – a lot of overlap with my list and… crap, I forgot to mention Excitebike. I did enjoy that game, though it was mostly because of the fact that there was a track editor that came in the game… which may have been a first for me. Anyway, the list has a few other games that are worth mentioning, but which I never really owned or got into (i.e. Kirby and Kid Icarus, though I may have played that one at some point – it seems very familiar).
• Duck Hunt is another I forgot to mention, though it’s primary claim to fame was that it came with SMB and was the only game I ever owned that used the Light Gun. This is actually interesting to me because it’s yet another Nintendo game that matches really well with a peripheral that was never really used so well again. Kinda like the Wii, where the single best example of a Motion Control game is still Wii Sports (though I guess you could argue that Wii Sports Resort has superseded the original… on the other hand, it’s pretty much the same concept and it also requires an additional peripheral). But I seem to have digressed away from the NES. Moving on…

And that about wraps up the NES retrospective. It was fun! Next up in the list of retrospectives will probably be my family’s first IBM compatible computer, a 66MHz 486 Gateway computer, and the various games I played on that (This will be very imprecise though, since there are classic games that I never played until much later on different computers… but given the personal and subjective nature of these retrospectives, it probably makes sense to focus on what I played on what machine… so when I leave out Sim City, don’t worry, it’ll probably be on the next computer on the list…) Hopefully, I’ll get to that series of posts much quicker than I got to the NES (i.e. hopefully within the year).

The NES has so many good games, any list is bound to be incomplete, but here’s a few I haven’t mentioned yet.

• Blades of Steel: Sports games still didn’t quite have the appeal back then, but they could be fun and somewhat memorable, in a simple way. Blades of Steel had that awesomely lame attempt at play-by-play commentary that ended up making the game hard to forget. It would be far surpassed by later games, but this represents the first true playable hockey game…
• Contra: It’s got guns and aliens. What else do you want? Also infamous for the Konami code, which allows you to start the game with 30 lives instead of the usual 3 (and even then, I don’t think we ever won this game, though we did get pretty far).

  

• Double Dragon II: The Revenge: This game is not nearly as good as I remember it, but this brawler was a lot of fun at the time. I believe this second game was the one I owned, and I’m pretty sure I even beat it. Later games would improve considerably on the formula set by these games though, so there’s that.
• Gauntlet: A port of the arcade game, it was still a lot of fun, and very hard in the later levels. What can I say, I was a sucker for the swords and sorcerer stuff.
• Mike Tyson’s Punch Out: That’s right, I said it. Mike Tyson. Not Mr. Dream. Who the hell is that anyway? Even to this day, this game is amazingly fun to play (I haven’t played the recent Wii version, but I gather that it’s pretty much the same game with a few extra fighters and updated graphics, which is all it really needs). One thing that was obvious even to my younger self but which is so blazingly strange about the game is the absurd racial stereotyping that each fighter represents. It’s still a great game. Also, when you win a title match and you start training, the music is incredible, some of the best for the NES. Later boxing games improved graphics and realism, but I think this might remain the best.

  

• R.C. Pro-Am: Did you know those were supposed to be radio controlled cars? That’s what the R.C. stands for. I always thought this was just a regular racing game. And a really, really fun one. For all its simplicity, it’s a really great game. That I was never able to beat. Dammit.

  

• Shadowgate: This is almost a throwback to those old text adventure games, but it’s more formalized for use with a gamepad. I remember being completely consumed by this game when I got it, but it’s the sort of game that doesn’t do so well upon replaying. Once you know the secrets, it gets a bit boring. Still, it’s one of the more memorable games I played.

  

Again, there are probably dozens of other games I should be mentioning (Double Dribble? Excitebike? etc…), but this series of posts has to end somewhere… Perhaps one more wrapup post next Wednesday…

Like the action/adventure games described in the last post, this post contains a few standouts from the RPG genre. I’m sure there are a few others that were popular at the time, but these were my favorites. Unless you consider old dungeon crawlers like Temple of Apshai a full blown RPG, these are really my first experience with the genre (at the time, I was also getting my feet wet with tabletop RPGs as well, though I never progressed that far there).

The three games listed below are remarkably similar. At least, that’s how I remember it. I didn’t get very far in replaying, well, any of them. One of the features of the games I’ve covered so far is that they were very difficult and required a lot of time playing and replaying various aspects in order to defeat the game. The same thing goes for RPGs, but here it’s more systematic. A common feature of these game is something called grinding. I did this in Zelda II and Metroid, to an extent, but neither really approaches the levels of these RPGs. I spent countless hours trolling forests and dungeons, picking fights with imps and slimes in order to gain experience points and leveling up my characters. I didn’t really recognize it then, but this was my way of cheating (grinding for a long time will make your characters more powerful than they are required to be). I honestly think that more recent games where the enemies’ power is proportional to your power (for example, Oblivion), while eliminating the tedious and unfun grinding process, also take some of the fun away from the games. You didn’t really need to grind as much as I did, but I did it because there was a benefit to it. It made the world more open to exploration for me, and as I’ve already established, that’s a big part of what I like about games.

For the most part, the game mechanics are the same. There is a top-down overworld of sorts (similar in some ways to the original Zelda) where you lead an adventurer (or a team of adventurers). You will randomly encounter enemies, at which point the game enters a combat screen in which you engage in a turn-based battle with enemies (i.e. for each adventurer, you select which enemy you want to attack, then the game plays out your attacks, followed by enemy attacks, and so on, until one group is completely killed). When you defeat enemies, you get experience and loot. When you get enough experience, your characters go up a level and you get new abilities, etc… And when you defeat powerful enemies, you get better loot. Usually there’s some sort of epic story of a land beset by a powerful evil and a chosen warrior (who you play) chosen by the king to defeat the enemy. Pretty standard stuff, really. But if you enjoy exploration and the steady improvement of your characters through experience and magic items, these games can be addicting. So here are my favorites:

• Final Fantasy: This is really a great game, from start to finish. You start with a team of four characters, each of which from a different class of character (usually combining the offensive strength of a fighter with other types of fighters and magicians) and begin exploring the various areas. Most of the time, you are funneled through choke points, forcing you to face off against a boss in an area before continuing. You are also prevented from exploring to certain areas because of the power of the enemies you face there (hence the aforementioned grinding). Many of these bosses are memorable and challenging. I distinctly remember several, including the first boss named Garland (which I borrowed as a name of one of my D&D characters, a ranger if I remember correctly). A later boss was the Kraken. I remember it being very difficult to get to the Kraken without depleting your energy too much, to the point where I kept my NES on for a few days (i.e. I didn’t want to turn it off because I got so far in good condition). Of the games mentioned in this post, this is the only one I’ve actually completed. For some reason, despite loving this game, I never played any of the sequels or spinoffs (of which there are over a dozen at this point), though I have to admit a certain anticipation for FF13.
• Dragon Warrior: This game actually predates Final Fantasy by a year or so (and I’m sure it influenced the makers of FF) and is very similar. To be sure, I don’t think I ever got that far with this game, but it introduced me to the franchise and I remember playing this game and Dragon Warrior II at a friend’s house often.
• Dragon Warrior III: When I finally saved up enough money to buy one of these games, Dragon Warrior III had just come out, so I ended up purchasing that game. This game expanded upon the others by including a massive amount of content. A larger world to explore, more and varied enemies to defeat, and a massive amount of special items to collect. Indeed, I remember it having an absolutely huge instruction manual and a big map of the world with a list of magic items and creatures on the back (such things were common then). The game was huge, so despite enjoying it, I don’t think I ever finished it. I did get pretty far though, and I had a lot of fun with it…

Well, that about wraps up the RPG portion of this series. The Six Weeks of Halloween series of posts will be starting up this weekend, so I’ll probably be finishing off the NES posts with an honorable mentions post and some final thoughts on the coming Wednesdays…

Like any game genre, there were tons of great action/adventure games for the NES, but to me, it really comes down to the following four games (and a few other implied games).

• The Legend of Zelda: I’m surprised at how well this game holds up, even today. Sure, the game is very difficult and requires a level of mastery I rarely attained, but the game’s mystique has always kept me interested and wanting more. This is yet another proto-open-world game (I’m beginning to see a pattern here in early games that I consider great), where you simply begin playing in the middle of a gigantic video game world. In the Zelda games, these are referred to as the “overworld” and you navigate up there to find various dungeons, fighting monsters in order to find and reassemble scattered fragments of Triforce. Once you have all the fragments, you fight Gannon and save the princess.

  

  Link navigating the overworld

  The overworld is a masterpiece of game design. It’s mostly open, meaning that you can go almost anywhere at any time. There are some areas that require an item or two to reach, but even then, you’re given surprising freedom of movement within the gameworld. The thing that keeps you out of certain areas are all based on how powerful the enemies are. Sure, you could head over to the graveyard at the beginning of the game, but chances are that you’ll have some trouble surviving there long enough to get anything good. I haven’t played much of the newer Zelda games, but there seems to be a distinct lack of “overworld” style gameplay that really causes the newer games to suffer. Like Metroid (another pseudo-open-world), the original Zelda is a game that places a premium on exploration. The world is huge and filled with secret rooms, stores and dungeons. The game doesn’t make you feel as isolated and alone as Metroid (you encounter many NPCs in Zelda), but it does a lot of similar things.

  

  Link entering a dungeon

  One of the greatest things about the game is the music. It’s amazingly good. Despite a decent amount of repetition, the music never really seems to get boring, which is kinda surprising (the dungeon music is perhaps less brilliant than the overworld stuff, but it’s still damn good). Likewise, the visual design of the world and the various creatures that inhabit it are excellent. The world is bright but not overly cheery and the dungeons are all ominous without being suffocating.

  One other thing that seems silly, but which definitely differentiated this game from all the others was that the physical game cartridge was gold in color (rather than the standard, boring gray). Normally, I would think of gold as being gaudy and obnoxious, but the Zelda cartridge, manuals, and packaging all seemed to be somewhat classy. So perhaps I was just buying into the hype of the day, but hell, it worked.

  

  Zelda’s Gold Cartridge

  This is actually a game I never owned as a kid. Winning the game was a group effort undertaken by several kids on my block, and it was a lot of fun. Due to various time constraints, I only got about halfway through the game as of this writing (that’s even relying on my tendency to cheat at video games), but it’s something I definitely want to finish replaying at some point. Other games in this series of posts (or this post itself) won’t be so lucky. But Zelda is a true classic, one of the best games of all time.

• Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: Having loved the first game, I naturally moved on to the sequel, which ended up being a very different game. There was still an overworld, but that was not the main arena for battle. Instead, you used the overworld as a way to get from one dungeon/cave/town to another, occasionally running into some enemies along the way, something more typically seen in RPG games. Indeed, this game built on the RPG elements of the original Zelda in many considerable ways, instituting an experience points system, allowing various magic spells, and of course, expanding upon the concept of collecting magic items and other special abilities. The other huge change in this game was that all of the combat took place in a side-scrolling action/platforming environment. This is a rather large change in gameplay style, though my young self didn’t seem to have any issue adjusting (the new and expanded RPG elements were enough to placate me). This game was made rather quickly after the first game, so perhaps Nintendo wasn’t sure if the original game’s top-down view would continue to work. In any case, the game’s controls were relatively well balanced, making it easy to pick up and once you got some of the more advanced abilities, the game gets more fun. It’s also worth noting that the overworld had more significant obstacles and choke points, making the game progress a little more linearly than the original. This was mitigated by the sheer size and scope of Zelda II’s world, but it’s something I found a bit lacking.

  

  Zelda II’s Overworld

  From what I can gather, this seems to be one of the least favorite Zelda games in the series. Having played only 3 myself (the original, this one, and Twilight Princess Wii), I’m not really a good judge, but I loved this game when I was a kid. I played through it at least 3, maybe 4 times. One time, a friend got his save files corrupted after getting pretty far into the game, so I volunteered to play the game up to that point for him so that he could continue on.

  The music for this game was good and more varied, but somehow not as iconic as the original (which isn’t to say that it’s not iconic in its own right). The visuals and enemy design were a definite improvement though. The boss fights, in particular, seemed to be more memorable. One distinct step down in this game was the way it handled character deaths. In the original game, if you died in a dungeon, you would start back at the beginning of the dungeon. In Link, you’re given 3 lives, but if you die that many times, you end up back at the beginning of the game. So dying is more of a pain in Zelda II.

  

  I hate fighting these guys

  Now, replaying this game, I’ve only managed to get to the second dungeon (due to the way the overworld is constructed in this game, the dungeons/caves/towns are the star of the game, so that’s what everything gets associated with). This is mostly because I didn’t have time to figure out the appropriate cheat codes, but it’s also because this game is extremely long! At one point, you get to a screen that very much resembles the overworld of the first game. Malstrom has speculated that Zelda I was perhaps just a close-up view of a piece of Zelda II (See the map in his post – he also mentions that most of the new Zelda games are lacking in the overworld department).

  Despite any complaints above, this game is still a classic and one of my favorites of all time. I’ve probably logged more hours on this game than any others in this post, which is pretty impressive. I doubt I’ll have time to completely revisit this game in the near future, but it would be worthwhile if I did.

• The Battle of Olympus: Given my undying love for Zelda II, it’s no wonder that I ended up loving this game as well. It’s basically a Zelda II clone in terms of action and fighting gameplay, only it uses Greek Mythology as a base. There’s not much of an overworld to the game (there is a map of sorts, but I wouldn’t call it an overworld in the Zelda sense), but it’s not a completely linear experience either. There are branching paths and backtracking, just not as much as we’ve seen in games previously discussed.

  

  Visiting a god

  Despite stealing gameplay elements from Zelda II, the game feels very distinct. I think a lot of the power of this game had to do with its reliance on Greek Mythology. You play Orpheus, a real figure from Greek Mythology, who goes on a quest to the Underworld to save his beloved Eurydice from her afterlife in Hades (if I remember correctly, the game is a somewhat less tragic retelling of the story). Along the way, you meet up with familiar gods (Zeus, Apollo, Hermes, etc…), mythological beasts (a Cyclops, a Minotaur, Cerberus, the Lamia (which I find amusing considering the current season of True Blood), a Siren, a Centaur etc…), and you collect various legendary items (Apollo’s Harp, the sandals of Hermes, etc…) All these familiar elements lend a timeless quality to the game, even if it isn’t the most innovative of it’s time (something that God of War would much later cash in on as well, though that game is probably more timeless than this one).

  All of that said, this isn’t really as good as Zelda II. The platforming and fighting controls are a little more floaty and difficult to master, and some of the enemies in this game are ridiculous. In particular, I hated battling Cerberus. He has three heads, and you have to destroy each one to defeat him. The only issue is that after destroying one head, you have to be really fast because if you wait too long, it will regenerate. On the one hand, this was annoying as hell. On the other hand, it really stuck out in my head, and once I did manage to defeat him, there was a real sense of accomplishment.

  

  I didn’t get very far in replaying this game, so it’s hard to say for sure, but I can see the appeal to my younger self. The game very clearly depends on a love of mythology and Zelda II, but given that I enjoyed both, I have very fond memories of this game. It’s probably not something you’ll see in a lot of best-of lists, but it holds a special place in my gaming history.

• Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse: Having played the first two Castlevania games at various friends’ houses, I ended up getting this game when it came out. I never really got far in either of the previous two installments of the game, but I really liked the feel of those games and the prospect of vampire hunting seemed fun to me, so I took the plunge with this game. Technically a prequel to the first two games, you play Trevor Belmont, a vampire hunter on a quest to defeat Dracula. Pretty simple stuff.

  

  Trevor Belmot and his trademark whip

  As gameplay goes, this is more similar to the original Castlevania. It’s more of a platformer than anything else, though it’s not completely linear. You can take different paths to get to Dracula’s castle, and depending on your choices, you can pick up companions along the way. These companions apparently wind up being pretty important throughout the game series, but for the purposes of this game, they’re pretty great (well, two of them are). The first one you could encounter is Grant DaNasty, a pirate who was corrupted by Dracula (which is kinda funny considering that pirates aren’t exactly saints themselves). Once you defeat him, he becomes human again and you can choose to have him come with you on your quest. He gives you the ability to jump higher and further than Trevor and he can also climb on walls, making some previously inaccessible areas available. He was one of my favorite characters and became the basis for a D&D character I played for years. Another character you could play was Alucard, who is actually Dracula’s son. Alucard would go on to star in what is often considered the best game of the Castlevania series, Symphony of the Night. If you chose to use him as your companion, you got the ability to use a fireball attack and you could also change into a bat. Finally, you could also play Sypha Belnades, who didn’t have much of a physical attack ability (and thus was probably the least useful of all the characters), but she made up for it a bit with some magical abilities.

  Visually, the game was decent, though not exceptional. Same thing for the music, which is memorable and contains that iconic Castevania theme, but is otherwise not particularly special.

  

  Grant jumps onto a swinging pendulum

  In replaying this game, I have to admit that I’m surprised it held my interest so much back in the day. Granted, I do still love the mythology of the Castlevania franchise. Dracula is a fantastic villain in any medium, and video games are no exception (and the game makers certainly made that final bossfight count – it took me forever to beat him). The addition of Grant and Alucard (and to a lesser extent Sypha) also did a lot to help my interest in this game (I mean, come on, did you know that Dracula had a son? Holy shit man! That’s awesome!). I don’t necessarily shy away from a challenge, but man, the platforming and control scheme in this game is just plain shitty (things are improved a bit with Grant, who has a bigger leap and his ability to cling to walls also comes in handy). Unlike previously discussed games like Metroid and Zelda II, the controls here seem quite poorly balanced. So a big portion of the challenges in this game are only challenging because the controls are crappy. I do remember eventually finishing this game and yes, it was quite a good feeling of accomplishment, but looking back at that now, I’m still a bit surprised.

  Aside from the platforming annoyances, it really is a good game, and apparently an influential one on the rest of the series. Alas, I’m not that familiar with other games in the series (I remember playing one on the PS2, but that game wasn’t very good), but perhaps I can change that in the near future. I have a lot of fond memories about this one, so perhaps a more lengthy visit in the future would be warranted.

Well that about wraps up this installment. Next up are the RPGs. I will be traveling this week though, so they might get short shrift (which is probably for the best, considering how much time I spent playing those damn games – time that I would never get away with these days).

Emergency order. Defeat the Metroid of Planet Zebes. Destroy the Mother Brain.

–Galaxy Federal Police M510

One of my favorite games for the NES is the non-linear, action/adventure game Metroid. In revisiting the game, I realized several important things. First, not only did I never finish Metroid back in the day, I didn’t get very far into the game at all! At best, I had gotten to one of the bosses, but that, of course, is nowhere near the end of the game. The game was indeed hard, but it’s interesting that I did fall in love with it nevertheless.

In replaying the game, I actually managed to win. Of course, I cheated. I used maps, walkthroughs and most importantly, I utilized my emulator’s ability to create saved games. That last one, more than anything else, made the game about a hundred times less frustrating to play. I recognize that the hardware limitations of the NES made it difficult to allow saved games (this game was released before the batteries that allowed saves on newer games), but Metroid was incredibly punitive. It often seems like the game is constructed to waste time, something that would infuriate me in a game today (and indeed, I was not a fan of Metroid III). So the ability to save the game at any time made things a lot easier. I know this isn’t a “fair” way to play the game, and I’m sure purists are leaving my site in disgust, but I have to say, the game was a lot of fun.

So why do I love this game? I think a lot of it has to do with the atmosphere of the game. There’s not much of a story, but it’s clear what you’re supposed to do. The music is evocative, the character and monster designs are fantastic for an 8 bit game, and the gameworld is sprawling, open and varied. Again, there’s no real narrative in the game, so when you see various designs, you’re forced to come up with explanations of your own. For instance, whenever you find a power-up, it’s being held by some bird-like statue. Why? Who knows? When entering various boss’ lairs, there is a weird alien creature’s head that is evocative without being too cheesy.

Samus entering Kraid’s lair

This is an action game with platforming elements, but the primary gameplay element is actually exploration. One of the most shocking and subversive things this game did was that it forced you to go left. Indeed, in order to start exploring past the first screen, you need to go left first and gain a power-up. This might seem trivial or silly today, but it was revolutionary back then. The notion of going left-to-right is so ingrained in our consciousness from reading (and other video games), that the concept that we not only could go left, but that we were required to do so, was amazing. The game was also one of the first to use backtracking as a key element. In addition, the game is filled with secrets, hidden barriers, and tricks. Furthermore, these secret barriers were necessary in order to win the game, making the process of exploration that much more fun. Despite the punishing difficulty of the game, the focus on probing captivated me, even when I was younger (and now that I can mitigate the difficulty with saved games, the focus on probing and exploration is that much more rewarding).

Samus finds a new weapon

Like other games of the era, such as the Zelda series, Metroid required you to collect various items, weapons, and abilities in order to strengthen your character. And as you gained various powers, additional areas of the map became accessible. The sprawling, open-world design of the world was quite alluring (I’m also a big fan of precursors like Pitfall II and successors like GTA III) and again, the game’s atmosphere really draws you in. It’s funny, but part of the allure is the solitary nature of your character. You are literally the only person on the planet. A planet infested with all sorts of nasty creatures and lava pits and all sorts of other crazy obstacles. The design works well, emphasizing the solitude and desperation, yet somehow retaining a fun experience.

One of the things that really struck me upon replaying this game was just how excellent the platforming elements of this game are. Many platformers of the era had floaty, unresponsive controls (I’m looking at you, Castlevania!) which at the time were considered part of the challenge. Not so here. The control and freedom of movement of Samus was quite liberating compared to other games. You could even control a jump while in mid-air. And later powerups like the Super Jump and most importantly, the Screw Attack (one of the best video game weapons ever), made the experience that much better.

Samus is a woman!

One of the things I never realized about Metroid (perhaps because I never finished it back in the day!) was that there actually multiple endings to the game, based on how long it took you to complete the game. Three of the endings revealed something that was pretty shocking at the time: the character you had been playing for the whole game with the awesome power armor? It was a woman! The version I got had her take off her helmet to reveal her long hair. Other versions included her taking off all her armor to reveal a leotard or even a bikini. Then there are the versions where you took too long to complete the game. Those had her keep on her suit (in effect not revealing her identity) and in the “worst” ending, she turns her back to you and covers her face in shame. The fact that the game had different endings based on how quickly you finished started a trend of people doing Metroid Speed Runs, attempting to win the game as quick as humanly possible (The best time right now is just over 18 minutes, which is pretty insane).

It’s interesting that the original game has so many elements that I don’t especially like in games, but it makes up for any shortcomings with exceptional visual, sound, and gameplay design. It definitely isn’t my all-time favorite game for the NES, but it’s up there with my favorites .

More screenshots and comments below the fold…

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MetroidRead More »

Several years ago, I started a Video Game Retrospective, beginning with my first video game console, the Atari 2600 then moving on to the Commodore 64. In typical Kaedrin fashion, I have thoroughly ignored the series for a little over two years, so it’s probably time to get back on the horse. I was reminded of the series during my recent bout with Bionic Commando Rearmed as well as accidentally stumbling upon a box with a good portion of my old Nintendo cartridges (along with reams of paper containing various passwords and maps, etc…)

So this third installment will be focusing on the classic Nintendo Entertainment System (aka the NES). My memory on exactly when I got an NES is a bit fuzzy, but I can say that it was at the very earliest 1989 – this is actually somewhat late in the life cycle of the NES (the Genesis was introduced within a year, and the SNES not much later than that). Despite this fact, I played quite a bit of NES. The multitude of available games ensured I always had something new and interesting to play, and these games tended to be better, deeper, and more fun than the previously discussed Atari and Commodore games. In addition, the transition to the 16 bit era seemed to take a bit longer than other transitions in the history of gaming (at least, from my own subjective memory of such things, which is probably not very reliable). Most of my friends had an NES, and even the fancy ones who got newer consoles still had and played the NES.

Something that never really occurred to me until recently is just how revolutionary the NES controller was. There really hadn’t been anything like it up until that point. Both of the previous systems I mentioned had joysticks of some kind. I remember that I had some weird handheld football game (not sure if those match exactly what I had, but it was close Update: It was an Entex: Color Football 4…) that had a sorta gamepad style control (i.e. buttons for up/down/left/right) and I’m sure some arcades had similar style controls, but the dominant controller at the time was the joystick. The gamepad was a huge innovation and it’s something that survives to this day (even Nintendo’s new fancy motion-controllers double as old fashioned NES controllers, which is actually kinda impressive). I don’t want to get into a holy war regarding the history of video game controllers, but it does seem like Nintendo has always been an innovator in that realm. Sometimes that hurt them (I believe the N64 controller was the first major console controller to feature an analog stick, but Nintendo wasn’t sure how that would work out, so they also included a standard gamepad style control, which resulted in a weird three pronged controller), sometimes they scored big (the wiimote). In any case, the classic NES controller is pretty awesome, despite the blocky, non-ergonomic design.

The previous two installments were an interesting exercise in nostalgia, and I had some fun revisiting those games, but for the most part, those games were severely lacking. The NES generation of games was the first generation that utterly enthralled my young self. I can still remember the excited anticipation as my parents drove me to Toys R Us to pick up the action pack, and the giddy joy as I played Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt well into the night. I fondly remember hours of grinding through RPGs, mastering various keyboard combos and maneuvers, taking notes and drawing maps on pieces of paper(!?), and other things that I’m amazed I put up with. I remember the strange problems with the top loading cartridges and the silly-yet-seemingly-effective countermeasures (such as blowing on the cartridge or using the Game Genie as an intermediary). Most of all, I remember having a lot of fun, which is what this is all about, right?

The way these retrospective series have gone is that I do an introduction, then I pick one favorite game, then I post several honorable mentions, and conclude with a few links and additional thoughts. Because the NES has so many incredible games that totally blew me away during my formative years, choosing a single favorite would be impossible. As such, I’m not really sure how many posts I’ll get out of this, but I plan to be done in a couple of weeks (at which time the annual six weeks of Halloween will commence). I’ve been revisiting my favorite games on the Virtual Console of my Wii and also on an emulator on my computer (much easier to get screenshots that way, and the emulator offers certain functionality that makes the more frustrating aspects of some games more bearable (i.e. the ability to save – which, yes, is a cheat, but sometimes I like cheats)). A tentative schedule of posts is listed below:

• Metroid
• Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and The Battle of Olympus
• Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, and Dragon Warrior III
• Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse
• Honorable Mentions
• NES Links and Thoughts

Depending on time, I might even check out some games I didn’t play much (or games I never played at all). In a lot of cases, I’ve played only one game in a given series. For instance, I never cared much for Mario, and as such I only ever owned the one that came with my system. Sure, I played part 2 and part 3 from time to time at friends’ houses, but I was never really down with the series. In other cases, when I got my hands on enough cash to buy a game, I ended up buying the latest incarnation of a series I know I liked (Castlevania III is a prime example, but there were several others).

In the end, I’m sure my retrospective will be woefully incomplete from any objective standpoint, but as with my other retrospectives, this is a) a subjective list and b) limited to my experience playing video games as a youth. That being said, feel free to list your favorites or make suggestions in the comments. I’m doubting that I’ll have a ton of time to devote to them, but you never know…