Donkey Kong Jr.

This screen is so boring, I forgot to caption it
when I initially posted this.

Publisher: Nintendo
Year: 1986
Genre: Platform

In this thrilling sequel (prequel?) to the original Donkey Kong title, you are Donkey Kong Jr., and you must rescue your father from Mario, who has locked Donkey Kong up, possibly for kidnapping Pauline in the previous game. Naturally, therefore, the best course of action would be to release him and allow Stupid Monkey to continue his rampage, possibly at an oversized greenhouse. I digress - as his son, it is your duty, and if you should knock some fruit down or injure some plumbers along the way SO BE IT!

You'll notice that vine is just slightly too far away
to grab - it's cheap tactics like this that remind me
what Nintendo Hard means.

John's Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0. It's quirky, but generally loveable. It's not exactly the sort of game that amounts to "hours of fun," but I'll often settle for "minutes of enjoyment" or "moments of nostalgia" in a pinch.

Donkey Kong 3

THIS IS THE BEST TITLE SCREEN YET!

Year: 1986
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Action


I should probably do Donkey Kong Jr. first, as it is technically the second game in the Donkey Kong series and also was released chronologically before this one, but as the games don't exactly lead into one another, I feel little to no remorse about sticking with alphabetic order. Having said that, Donkey Kong 3 is a game wherein you spray a monkey's hindquarters with insecticide in an effort first to drive him away, then to mash his head into a bee's nest, presumably out of spite over his attempts to teach his son math; all this while attempting to protect flowers and avoid bee stings.

This game features a surprisingly merciful lack of poo.

John's Rating: 3.0 out of 5.0. This is a solid, albeit simple, action game, all things considered, and stands as proof that familiar characters can be transplanted into unfamiliar gameplay without making a game suck by default. Mind you, Super Mario Bros. 2 and The Adventures of Link both prove that, but they're hardly unanimously accepted. Also, BEES!

Donkey Kong

Year: 1986
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Platform

As a wise man once said, "Everything is better with monkeys." By "wise" of course, I mean "drunk," and by "said" I mean "imagined," but the principle still holds true: EVERYONE loves monkeys, with the possible exception of people who give them Xanax.

But how could they have anticipated that using
potent drugs to remove a violent xenophobic
predator's inhibitions could possibly have
negative repercussions?

Balloon Fight

Year: 1986
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Platform

Remember when you were a kid and balloons, powered by your imagination, could hoist you off the ground and into the stratosphere? Well, screw you, kid! That requires about a fafrillion balloons because physics, bitch! But you know where one can frequently take refuge from the doldrums of everyday physical reality? Video games, that's where!

Moar liek physics atrocity, amiright?

Star Ratings

I have just added the star rating widget to all my posts in this blog. I wish to encourage my readers to rate the games you have played according to the rating you think they deserve. Just to clarify - this isn't meant to reflect what you thought of my writing or my review, but rather the rating that you thought the games deserves, even and especially if you just up and agree with me.

Also, please don't just rate games you have heard of. We all know that, for example, Heroes of the Lance is widely regarded as rubbish - that doesn't mean that everyone should just slap a one-star rating on it without a second thought. That's just not how we roll here.

Commando

There will come a day when title screens are
interesting and eye-catching, I promise.

Year: 1986
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Shmup

While it may well be the first game I have encountered with poor response on the title screen, Commando is a strong proponent of the shmup truism, "You never run out of bullets: just grenades." It's a respectable title as far as top-scrolling walking shmups go, but, as should be expected of the era, brings very little to the table as far as what we modern folk think of as originality (although, for its time, it was probably groundbreaking).

I don't remember which stereotypical army wears
gray uniforms, and it's just as well, 'cause I'm not
in the mood for ethnic jokes.

John's Rating: 2.5 out of 5.0, because it's kinda fun, but not something you can maintain significant interest in - that is to say, it's in the video game "friend zone."

Chubby Cherub

Year: 1986
Publisher: Bandai
Genre: Platform

In this game, you're a worthless stupid baby-angel who flies around like the world's slowest mosquito trying to avoid being raped to death by dogs. That's the most charitable description of this game I could write.

It's much worse than it looks.

John's Rating: 1.0 out of 5.0, because this game is a steaming turd.

Dark JCO's Rating: 1.0 out of 5.0. How does a game like this even get made? "I have this great idea for a game! You're this chubby little angel guy who flies around and eats all these foodstuffs, but there are these dogs who try to stop you." "BRILLIANT! Send it to presses!" "But we're still in the concept phase..." "No, no, we only have five minutes. Send it to presses!"

Lord Nightmare's Rating: 1.0 out of 5.0. So it's a game about a fat angel? A fat angel who flies around eating what appear to be random foodstuffs. Is he naked? And he's being attacked by... the dog from Duck Hunt? Oh, that dog! if I see that dog one more time...

1942

This screen has almost as many numbers as letters.

Year: 1986
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Shmup


It's World War II and you're a U.S. pilot flying a super-plane to Tokyo to destroy the Japanese air force! I have to admit, I initially had some serious misgivings about any game by a Japanese company about destroying the Japanese air force, and had to wonder whether it was the opposite in the original Japanese (and the game was, perhaps, called "Happy Pearl Harbor Fun Time Airstrike!"), but as far as I can tell (and according to Wikipedia) the Japanese just sometimes make games about destroying their own airforce.

Is that a Mitsubishi G4M? Almost certainly not...

John's Rating: 2.0 out of 5.0 - this game is about as vanilla as a shoot-'em'-up can possibly get. As far as I can tell, there's exactly one power-up, which basically makes your guns wider, and a grand total of three different enemies (not counting pallet swaps).