Ikari Warriors

Publisher: SNK
Year: 1987
Genre: Shmup, Top-Scroll

Old school top-down shooters are pretty generic - endless waves of faceless enemy drones trying to stall your efforts as you steadily plow your way across the battlefield. They're more notable in their differences than their similarities. Ikari Warriors is one of the first, and has a number of features that worked very well, and others that were, perhaps, not so well considered.

Making player 1 the pink one, for example

Gotcha!: The Sport

Publisher: LJN
Year: 1987
Genre: Side-Scroll, Zapper

So much punctuation they can't
put it all on the title screen

Gotcha!: The Sport is a paintball capture the flag game based on, apparently, the film Gotcha!, which is in turn based on a variant on live action simulated assassination games, so the departure from source is made all the more conspicuous by the source's departure from its own source material, and I've already talked about the origins of this game more than it deserves. This was a different era. They were willing to make video games out of any movie. We don't do things like that anymore.

You control the game with both the d-pad on the gamepad and the Zapper gun. This isn't especially clumsy, as it's relatively easy to hold a Zapper in one hand and manipulate the d-pad with the other, but playing the game made me wonder why they bothered. For one thing, even on the highest difficulty, I had no difficulty simply holding the pad to the right or left (depending on whether I was on my way to get the flag or on my way back from getting it) and shoot the enemies as I went. Heck, on the beginner level I didn't NEED to shoot them - sometimes, simply by moving continuously, I could outrun them all.

The underground urban paintball scene.

John's Rating: 2.5 out of 5.0. It might be an interesting novelty experience, but the game doesn't offer much in the line of variety. On top of that, there are a lot of counter-intuitive quirks, such as ammunition only being reduced by misses (or being shot) and enemy hitboxes that disappear behind soft cover. This might be the sort of game you play once or twice as a curiosity, but it's not really good for ongoing play.

The Goonies II

Publisher: Konami
Year: 1987
Genre: Platform - Side-Scroll, Adventure

You remember the Goonies, right? Beloved 1980's cult flick involving pirate gold, Cyndi Lauper (along with some pro wrestlers) and truffle shuffles? Remember the sequel where the Fratellis kidnapped all of the Goonies except Mikey as well as a mermaid, and Mikey had to rescue them with the help of a colorful cast of characters such as an old man and woman, a fish man and an eskimo?

NO?!?!

Elevator Action

In Elevator Action, you are the letter "N"

Publisher: Taito
Year: 1987
Genre: Platform - Top-Scroll

The Elevator Action manual says that you are "Super Sleuth," "Agent 17," "Codename Otto," but let's face it: none of that has any bearing on the game whatsoever. In Elevator Action, you are a guy who tries to get to the bottom of a building after, for some reason, deciding to use a zipline to start at the top of the building. On the way down you can go into some doors and come out with paperwork, which scores you points. You can also shoot and jump-kick enemies.

I'll be frank about this game - it can be fun, but there's really nothing to it. It comes from an era when video games were still finding their footing. The controls are clunky and cantankerous, the enemies are slow and predictable and the game itself is vanilla flavored bland. If you fail to get the paperwork from one of the red doors, you are magically teleported back up to that floor when you get to your sporty little car at the bottom. However, if you DO get all of them, you are magically teleported to the TOP and the building changes color. Each iteration gives you enemies that spawn slightly more readily and are slightly more eager to shoot you, but the layout, gameplay and arrangements don't change.

I wanted to show you a riveting action scene,
but I was playing Elevator Action

John's Score: 2.5 out of 5.0. The game isn't unplayable (although the touchiness of positioning may prove infuriating at first), but there really isn't a compelling reason TO play it. Once you've made your way through the building once, the game is genuinely out of things to offer.

Double Dribble

A sports game named after a rules violation.
Good sign, that.

Publisher: Konami
Year: 1987
Genre: Sports

"The thing about video game basketball is that the computer decides whether or not the ball goes in when you shoot. So say you’re playing against the computer team, you’re down by one and let's say you take a last-second shot to win the game. It’s the same program you’re playing against that decides whether or not the digital ball goes through the digital hoop on that final shot. So it can arbitrarily make you lose or arbitrarily let you win." - John Dies at the End

While the above is obviously applicable to a wide variety of video games (essentially any game with a random element), it is especially true of basketball video games in a peculiarly infuriating way. Yes, there is a significant element of skill involved - you do, after all, have to control your little basketball player man as he runs down the court and make sure you don't accidentally commit offensive charging or some other foul. At the end of that court, though, you leap up to shoot a basket or make a dunk and the game decides, completely on its whims, whether your shot is successful or not. That isn't to say that some shots aren't more or less likely to go in the basket, which, of course, gives you the illusion of control. In the end, though, I've had a series of seven or more dunks fail in a row while a single half-court shot sinks instantly.

In Double Dribble, the exception appears to be free throws - when you shoot a free throw, there's an indicator that shows you when you should hit the button to successfully take the shot. Why isn't there a timing based element to every shot? Hell if I know.

If your sportsball team gets the most goal-ins,
a winner is you! 

John's Rating: 2.0 out of 5. It's not an unplayable game, it just doesn't have any enduring element of fun. Once you're proficient at moving on the court, the game has one of two outcomes - you beat the computer consistently, thoroughly and viciously, or you lose completely on the computer's whims. Why? Because it gets to decide.

Satan, Censorship and Turbo Fish in Hell

While the Nintendo certainly wasn't the first video game system, during its run, video games were still a relatively new arrival to the arena of personal entertainment. The issue of media censorship as anything from necessary evil to patriotic duty still came up in the United States, and even with media-friendly video-game-loving Reagan in the White House, it was clear that combating any PR snafu would be an uphill battle.

Nintendo's headquarters in Japan had already instituted strict guidelines for their video games prohibiting sexual imagery, but Nintendo of America took this all a step further and released strict overarching content guidelines that included things like prohibitions against depictions of domestic violence, drug or alcohol use and, most notably, religious imagery. Though exceptions were allowed for video games such as Castlevania (which has crosses), Ghosts 'n' Goblins and a few others that may have been intentional or may have simply slipped in under the radar, the general rule was obeyed to the extent that crosses were on some occasions removed from tombstones and other only vaguely religious depictions.

As such, a game in which you are a green monster using crosses and Bibles to combat a speedo-clad Satan would be a hard sell to say the least.

Deadly Towers

Publisher: Broderbund
Year: 1987
Genre: Action Adventure

In Deadly Towers, you're a knight or prince of some sort (it's in the opening cinematic, I just forgot and refuse to waste my time reading it again) and everything is trying to kill you. Fortunately, you throw knives. Knives that can kill anything. Fire attacking you? Stab it until it dies! Blue orb? Stab it until it dies!

The game is, for the most part, a collection of poorly thought out or incompetently executed game mechanics. You have 100 hit points to start with, but it probably wouldn't help you to have a million hit points. The game has mercy invincibility, for example, but it lasts for less than half a second and paralyzes and knocks you backwards in the process. If you are against the wall, the enemy hits you again immediately, and you're doomed. If you fall off a cliff, you die, and enemies can and will push you off. And speaking of enemies, it's also worth noting that the game has, essentially, four enemies with dozens of different skins and palette schemes. Oh, look - it's the knight guy from the last room, only now he's inexplicably a dragon-headed man. Oh, look - it's another kind of bat with the exact same movement pattern as all the other varieties.

I have nicknamed these creatures "Murderbears"

John's Rating: 1.5 out of 5. Deadly Towers is a game that has been hailed by some as the very worst Nintendo has to offer, and while I heartily agree that the game is terrible, it sadly wouldn't even make my top 10 list of worst Nintendo games of all time.

Castlevania

Publisher: Konami
Year: 1987
Genre: Platform Adventure

Few names in the video game world are associated with so rich a canonical history as "Belmont," the surname of the vampire-hunting family from the acclaimed Castlevania series of games, and though the storied background and heroic legacy of the Belmont family has been expounded in the sequels, prequels, interquels and alternate timelines, this is where it all began.

Right here - at the least shitty NES title
screen of this whole blog.

BurgerTime

Publisher: Data East
Year: 1987
Genre: Action

"In a world without sanitation regulations, one man stands ready to give the people what they want: delicious piping hot burgers. This master chef prepares his creations the only way he knows how: through the power of stepping on food. But when a group of rogue hot dogs and fried eggs threaten to put him on the grill, will he be able to turn the tables on the food rebellion, or will BurgerTime be seasoned... with death?"
-The back of the BurgerTime box, except not actually.

Alternately, this could be Upton Sinclair's
The Jungle: The Game

The Controllers of My Youth

I'm going to babble in a non-review capacity for a moment. Feel free to ignore this post if this isn't what you're here for.

New NES Games

Just the other day I was lamenting to my old pal The Admiral regarding my apparent inability to keep up with this blog. He patted me on the shoulder in a manner at once condescending and sympathetic and said, "Don't worry, you'll catch up - it's not like they're making any new games for the NES." While I appreciate the sentiment, and I certainly don't think that it's an altogether unfair statement, what about...

BreakThru

I know I complain about title screens a lot, but
when this is my introduction to a game, it's
really hard to get my hopes up.

Publisher: Data East
Year: 1987
Genre: Shmup Side-Scroll


In BreakThru, you are the driver of a jumpy car (a fairly common video game theme even today) who must drive into enemy territory, assault their base and recover a top secret jet of some sort (top-secret jets are also a fairly common theme). Along the way, you'll battle enemies that shoot constantly into the area you have to occupy to even have a chance to shoot them, parachutes that prevent their precious cargo from ever reaching all the way to the ground, and chunky controls that will kill you more effectively than any of the enemies can hope to.

Jumpy car, meet... some kind of tank with an
antenna and also I think it's got wheels?

John's Rating: 2.0 out of 5.0. There's not too much mechanically wrong with this game, it's just hard to pinpoint anything this game did right. The graphics are lackluster, the gameplay is bland and unsatisfying, the enemies are dull yet difficult, and although the sound is not overly annoying the best that can be said of it is that it is forgettable.

The final season of Little House on the Prairie was
decidedly more violent than the others.

Bomberman

Dystopian futures have terrible fonts.

Publisher: Hudson Soft
Year: 1987
Genre: Action


Bomberman is a game about a little robot guy who, presumably, lives in a dytopian future where sentient robots are relegated to menial production jobs and all structures are comprised of a combination of bricks and blast doors. Bomberman's deepest wish is to become human, and he heard a rumor that any robot who makes it to the surface becomes human and gets to star in a considerably less fun game. As such, the bomb-making droid sets out on a quest to escape his dull factory existence and kill everyone in his path, a plan that is, frankly, awesome.

"Feel my fiery wrath, orange lightbulb! I *will*
become a real boy someday!"

John's Rating: 2.0 out of 5.0. Playing this game is often a comedy of errors due not only to the scarcity of power-ups, but also to the dull playing fields, touchy bomb placement and ugly graphics. Fortunately, like a surprisingly large number of dull games with one redeeming mechanic, it inspired man fruitful, glorious sequels, all equally filled with that awkward moment where you bomb yourself into a wall.

My God, what have I done?!?

Athletic World

Family "Fun" Fitness

Publisher: Bandai
Year: 1987
Genre: Power Pad


Do you own a Power Pad? The answer to that is, "No, you do not own a power pad because no one does." The Power Pad was part of an insidious plot to convince us to use video games as a way of staying fit and healthy. How stupid is that? So stupid that DDR made huge amounts of money off the idea. So stupid that all three major game systems of the 21st century are courting that same fitness nut "gamer" crowd through motion sensing cameras and motion capture controllers. It's all part of conspiracy to make gamers use games as exercise, and it finds all its roots here.

I "won," but at what cost?

John's Rating: 0.0 out of 5.0, because I don't have a power pad, and I'm not going to get one.

Athena

Athena will get the hang of winking someday.

Publisher: SNK*
Year: 1987
Genre: Platform


The gods must be crazy retarded. Athena is a game about the Greek Goddess of Wisdom a princess and her quest to rid the land of evil make really stupid life decisions. The plot begins with her opening Pandora's Box the Door Which Shouldn't Be Opened at Mount Olympus Victory Castle, leading her to enter the Underworld Fantasy World to battle some evil guy named Dante... no wait, that last one's right.

At least the best armor isn't a chainmail bikini.

John's Rating: 1.5 out of 5.0. Athena jumps a randomly determined height when you hit A. Let me say that again - you jump a randomly determined height when you hit A. It doesn't matter how long or short you hold the button, Athena either jumps very high or makes a tiny near-useless hop. Nothing I can figure out influences which one it will be. That alone would be a game-breaker, but it also suffers from obnoxious music, poor hit detection and a collection of nearly useless weapons that replace your useful weapons if you so much as look at them wrong.Oh, and levels have no check points. You're welcome.

* I know their first two games haven't been very promising, but SNK was a great company, I swear!

Arkanoid

Publisher: Taito
Year: 1987
Genre: Breakout Clone


Every day, people in the civilized world encounter, at bare minimum, four walls (presuming they have a coffee can in their bedroom to poop in), and you know what? Sometimes, we don't like it. Sometimes, a man just has to say, "You know what, Mr. Wall? Who the hell are you to come into MY house and tell me which of MY rooms are partitioned from one another?" For those of you who, like me, have found themselves injuring some portion of their anatomy in a furious tequila-fueled attempt at libero cubiculum, Arkanoid may well prove to be the cathartic experience you need.

"Hey, kid - wanna eff up some walls?"

Alpha Mission

SNK gets better, I swear.

Publisher: SNK
Year: 1987
Genre: Top-Scroll Shmup

Polygons, polygons everywhere.

Space Shooters are a staple genre of the NES. You might recall me giving Gradius the first perfect score of this blog, so I'm certainly not biased against that. Having said that, there are certain qualities I expect in a space shooter. The first is variety - repetition is a huge game killer for any sort of Shmup, so a large variety of environments and enemies is a must. The second is graphic consistency - if a game takes itself seriously, it should make an effort to do so throughout the entire experience, keeping powerups - for example - looking like part of the environment rather than annexes to the games graphic library. The third is a aesthetic quality - the audio and visual experiences should be unobtrusive if not pleasant. Alpha Mission is a generic space shooter example of not working very hard on any of this.

John's Rating: 2.0 out of 5.0. The only thing that stands out about this game to any meaningful degree is how annoying the music is. Beyond that, it's pure vanilla paste.

The 3D Battles of World Runner

The 3D Battles of
Most Elaborate Title Screen to date

Publisher: Square

Year: 1987

Genre: Action

It might surprise you to know that 3D imagery achieved through stereoscopy dates back to before the American Civil War. Yes, it's true: 3D images have existed for nearly two hundred years now. So while the 3DS has garnered considerable hype, it should come as no surprise to even the youngest most naive reader that it is neither the first 3D Game System, nor the first example of 3D games. The 3D Battles of World Runner might not be the first 3D game (although, to my recollection, it was the first one I had ever heard of and I can't find any predating examples), but it exists as a much-overlooked technical triumph of its time. At any time during gameplay (or even during the opening animation), the player can press select to change the view to a 3D anaglyph view appropriate for use with the old-school cyan/red 3D glasses.

The pink hair-dye of you-can-get-hit-once.

In the 3D Battles of World Runner is about a space cowboy named Jack who fights giant space worms. Given the track record for (almost) all things involving space cowboys, you'd think that I would be thrilled by a game that lets you be one of these brave hombres. To be honest, though, the cool concept and 3D graphics are really all the game has going for it. The gameplay is bland and forgettable, featuring little more than endlessly running forward and jumping over pits until you fight a simple boss so you can progress to a slightly different color scheme. The powerups are simple at best (such as the blaster gun and potion of lets-you-get-hit-a-second-time) and useless or horrible at worst (such as the mushroom of kills-you-instantly-by-exploiting-your-Mario-instilled-assumptions and the molecule of makes-you-invincible-for-all-too-short-a-time). The enemies all looked like they were borrowed from one of Dr. Seuss's more forgettable volumes, which I'll leave open to the reader's interpretation.

John's Rating: 2.5 out of 5.0. The game is playable and technically sound, and I remember renting it as a child and playing it for hours, but it really doesn't stand up to the test of time. Once you get over the novelty of the 3D images, it all runs together into a vanilla bean paste of bland-flavored bland. If you played this game as a child, it might provide a nostalgia injection. If you are a scholar of changing technology, it might be of interest to you as one of the first 3D games.

See you, space cowboy...

1986 in closing

The year 1986 saw some of the worst man-made disasters in world history: the Challenger disaster, the Chernobyl meltdown, the Sumburgh crash, the release of a new Slayer album, Hands Across America and the sudden emergence of awful one-on-one fighting games for the Nintendo.

The world would recover, however, and go on to make 1987 the best year that ever happened!

Urban Champion

Nintendo really raised the bar for this title screen.

Publisher: Nintendo
Year: 1986
Genre: Fighting


In Urban Champion, you play one of two apish street brawlers who punch one another for no readily discernible reason. You have two attacks, a weak on that's quick and a strong one that sends your opponent tumbling like an extra in one of West Side Story's musical numbers. I have heard it said that tragedy is when I stub my toe and comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die. If this is indeed the case, then Urban Champion has one of the funniest endings of all time!

Yeah, Barber Shop made me want to
murder people, too.

John's Rating: 2.0 out of 5.0. It's a fun game for a very short period of time, but it lacks replayability, primarily because if you lose at this game, you probably just suck at video games.