Super Mario Bros. (All-Stars Version)
For those of you who haven’t played the SMB remakes on the SNES “Super Mario All-Stars” cartridge, these were graphically revamped games that also removed some of the bugs/glitches.
The main draw is that Nintendo revamped the graphics and music. It’s odd, but I like these almost equally as much as the originals. Each holds a fond part of my heart because once my NES was disconnected, as this is how I continued playing the original games for many years.
While I like the upgraded graphics, it just feels weird to play the original Super Mario Bros. with the new style graphics. In my honest opinion, I would’ve preferred that Mario not look so weird. When you play the other remakes, they feel a lot more genuine as opposed to “Mario 1”.
Still, this game is fun and worth playing through just to see where there were changes or updates made. The controls are still tight and several of the strategies used in the original hold true here too.
Leave it to Nintendo to go the same path as Disney and get us to pay for the same game more than once. (And enjoy it!)
Sonic the Hedgehog
Having not owned Sega consoles growing up I have a new appreciation of this series. The three-button Genesis controller layout was so foreign to me and I don’t think I ever quite had enough time to sit and understand how the Sonic games worked.
Going back and playing them now, I absolutely love them… at times.
Spikes, lava, and randomly placed cheap obstacles (enemies who make you lose all of your rings) definitely makes me think of other games of this era. It’s not always a bad thing and adds to the challenge of simply speeding through each board as fast as possible. (A gripe of mine with some of the Game Gear iterations, which are NOT ports despite sharing the same name with may of their Genesis siblings.)
The first Sonic is definitely groundbreaking. Graphically, it looks as if it pushes the boundaries of the Genesis hardware while giving the “blast processing” myth some credence with the fast-paced gameplay.
Once you have the hang of things, the game isn’t extremely difficult to defeat. It’s on par with Super Mario Bros. as far as platforms are concerned, which isn’t a wonder why Sonic became the face of Sega for the better part of the 90’s.
Star Wars Episode I: Racer
I had nearly forgotten about this game if not for a recent re-release of the PC version a couple of months ago.
Keep how you feel about Episode 1 to yourself: this game is not only a great racing game, it’s also a great Star Wars game! Taking advantage of the N64’s RAM pack to expand graphics memory, Episode 1 Racer is a gorgeous game on a platform that otherwise looked blocky and choppy at times. Yes, it can still be a bit of a strain on the eyes, but the nearly 700mph arcade-style racing action makes it feel right.
Admittedly the Dreamcast version looks even better, but this was one of the few N64 titles I actually owned back in the day. That’s because I found it in a bargain bin somewhere and took a chance on the game. If I recall correctly, it was priced at $7 or $8!
And it was well worth the money spent! I played this game for hours as a teenager, trying to master each track. Admittedly, as I do with most racing and fighting games, I don’t replay these to completion: just enough to get the feel for the game and beat one of the competitions. (They get progressively harder… crazy hard actually.)
As for replay value, there’s a lot here. There is a slew of podracers (many of which were barely seen in the movie) that you can play with, each with different style pods. A large assortment of tracks, vehicle upgrades, and some cool cutscenes along with voice acting make the game feel complete and polished.
If you’re a Star Wars and/or arcade racing fan, I highly recommend giving this a go. It’s a fun game that still hasn’t lost its appeal nearly 20 years following its release.
The Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda is yet another in a long line of titles that have become a cornerstone series for Nintendo.
The original NES title was unique and somewhat bizarre to the uninitiated. Upon opening the box, which had a vague looking shield on the cover, you’d find enclosed a gold painted cartridge and a big foldout map of the entire overworld within the game.
Both were unique to “Zelda” (as it has become known as). Receiving an instruction book is one thing but getting an entire map to nudge you in the right direction of your next step within the game was groundbreaking.
The gold color cartridge was also something entirely new as all Nintendo games were in a drab gray plastic case prior.
As for the game itself, it was not a platformer. Zelda took an overhead approach ditching any jump buttons. Players could move in any direction on a single-screen before moving to another single-screen. Bit-by-bit, piece-by-piece, this is how the game was stitched together. (As opposed to scrolling left-to-right or up-and-down like Super Mario Bros., Metroid, and others.)
The start screen would pause the game but also offer the ability to see and change the assignment of what the A and B buttons did for the various items you would retrieve throughout the game. Those items would be necessary to unlock and/or access further areas.
The dungeons, nine of them, had puzzles and hidden area to access as well. The pause screen, if already found, would also show a dungeon map (or at least your progress if you didn’t already find the map for a specific dungeon).
The level of difficulty was as such that upgrading the hero, Link, would progressively give you the necessary tools to defeat the game. The final dungeon, Death Mountain, is far from a cakewalk yet is one of the more satisfying victories.
That’s after dumping hours of time into the game, which also had a new feature for that era which helped you walk away and continue at a later date: a battery backup. Instead of leaving your NES on as you ate dinner or went to school, you could save your progress and return back to the game at a later date.
Needless to say, if you’ve never conquered this classic, it’s a must-play. Easily one of my favorite games of all time.
Mega Man
Continuing the video game bucket list… I started a new series going back to the original MEGA MAN!
Here’s a series that I really only know from Mega Man 2 on the NES (also a mother to beat) and the Mega Man X series on SNES. Therefore, I wanted to go all the way back and play through these from the beginning… bear with me, there’s a ton of them!
Let’s start with the original. This game was #$@&%*! ridiculous to beat, and I’m saying that even with cheat codes.
It’s literally an hour’s worth of a game without all of the cheap jumps that could kill you, the equally crappy bosses (of which you have to face all over again in the final level… on top of multiple extra bosses) plus the fact that if you mistakenly start the wrong stage over again, there’s no way back to the main menu without losing all of your lives to “continue” the game. (I also forgot the random weapon you MUST have to beat the final level but wouldn’t know how to acquire without being told!)
All in all, it’s still a fun, groundbreaking game which introduced weapon upgrades and a free-flowing style to choose whichever path you wanted to play.
Now I look forward to nearly breaking my controller with the sequels!
Contra
Is this game better known for being fun, difficult, or because of the Konami Code? (Which was a necessary evil when trying to beat it back in the day!)
Regardless, I tend to think Contra was pretty groundbreaking. While arcade style games were all the rage, Contra took the shooter genre and slapped it into a bowl mixed with the Rambo and Aliens movies.
Rather than make some overly complicated game (of which many will be reviewed here) Contra stuck to the basics:
- There is no timer. (Good!)
- One hit kills you (Meh)
- One button shoots
- One button jumps
- You can’t go backward
The placed onus on moving forward, be it horizontally or vertically, while upgrading weapons, avoiding every enemy and enemy fire, and jumping between different platforms/areas within each level.
The boss battles are in your face. At the time this was practically unseen on the NES. Large enemies which took up a third or more of the screen, which made for tight quarters to attempt to beat the board.
Did I mention you could play with a friend simultaneously? That was probably the best part of this game.
The worst part? Dying easily.
It was just so hard to beat this game without perfecting every nuance. However, doing so was satisfying. Even the ending has a little something “extra” besides showing credits or defaulting back to the start screen.
That makes Contra a cornerstone of any video gaming library.
GoldenEye 007
This was the game to have back when I was in high school! Between this and Perfect Dark, it was the sole reason to buy an N64 when PlayStation was starting to dominate the landscape. (And the Sega Genesis already trolled Nintendo as a “kiddie” system.)
There was a lot to question when this game came out. Rare is making a first-person shooter published by Nintendo? And with a movie license? (Back when licensed games were dumpster fires!)
This game really broke down some barriers and introduced all of us to why the N64 had four controller ports built in! Many nights were spent on the missions or packed in a room with friends playing four player split-screen games.
Whoever got the golden gun first, look out!
The boards are all memorable. The unlockable items were as well. This was just so great of a game that it’s definitely one of my favorites of all time.
Notes for my emulation enthusiasts
This ran better on my PC than a second-gen Fire Stick, so beware. N64 games tend to choke on certain hardware. I actually played this through with some lag (major lag in certain spots with explosions or large open areas) but then ended up starting it over on the PC.
I just can’t put this game down!
Super Metroid
One of my favorite games of all time has been consistently regarded as one of the greatest video games ever made.
I became a Metroid fan early on as my mother picked up a copy of the game, likely recommended to her by someone at whatever store she was shopping at, at that time. Being a kid, I had no idea what Metroid was. It came in a silver box with blocky sci-fi artwork. It’s a new game, probably a birthday or Christmas gift, so you’re definitely going to pop it into the NES and give it a try.
Mind. Blown.
That was literally the open-ended world of Grand Theft Auto before such a thing existed. A monochrome sequel followed on the Game Boy before the Super Nintendo version, Super Metroid, released.
“Super” was used to describe just about every game that came out for that console, but it was more than appropriate for this title, which just kicked down the doors of in-game exploration precedents which were set by the original game.
Graphically the game was state of the art for its time and still holds up well today. The audio is immersive and overall there just isn’t one bad thing that can be said about this game, other than you could waste an awful lot of time trying to figure out what it is you’re supposed to do next! There are a few hidden goodies, and maybe even the hardest area to figure out (where you use the hyper run into a jump) has a clue built within the game. (Kudos for that developers!)
Overall my verdict on this one is MUST PLAY!
Bad Dudes
Ninjas have kidnapped the President.
That’s all you need to know about Bad Dudes, which plays on the steroid-infused action hero of the era in which it was made. You can play as one of two “bad dudes” complete with a tank top and baggy pants plus bulging muscles.
Like other beat-em-up games, this one is a button masher. All of the usual culprits are here: palette swap enemies, end-level bosses, a stage timer and health meter. (For some reason all of these games felt BOTH were necessary!)
The difference with Bad Dudes is that you can actually beat the game. The difficulty is there, but it’s not so over the top ridiculous that you can’t win. I have fond memories of completing this game as a kid, which were brought back after defeating each boss and hearing a poorly digitized “I’m Bad!” sound byte play.
But the cheese factor isn’t the only reason this game feels nostalgic after all of these years. Data East actually went through some effort to differentiate itself while at the same time being somewhat of a parody. The plot is stupid simple. Ninjas were all the rage too. Yet beneath it all lies a solid game, with excellent controls and really good graphics for its time (moving backgrounds almost feel like a SNES title at times).
There are also levels which you move right-to-left or in “backward” order than you may in another game. One is on a moving truck, another on a moving train, and then, of course, an epic helicopter fight near the end too. You can wield weapons and the entire thing just feels, dare I say, satisfying to beat even thirty years later.
Super Mario Bros.
This wasn’t really a bucket list item, as any child who grew up with a Nintendo in their living room had (and beat) this game multiple times. I just wanted a quick Sunday stroll down memory lane and to play from 1-1 through 8-4 with no warp zones.
This game was and still is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. I love the small variations in the levels, like the night time worlds and the silver pipes.
PS – was there anything more annoying than the springboards?