The Karate Kid
Love The Karate Kid movie? Awesome. Me too. It’s a classic!
I won’t even ask if you love The Karate Kid video game… it’s not a classic.
This may be one of the earliest movie to crap video game conversions ever. Don’t get me wrong, the game is playable and it brings with it themes and overtones from the first two Karate Kid movies, but that’s about where it ends.
The first level is the protagonist, Daniel LaRusso, fighting in the All Valley tournament. Except, the four rounds feature no opponents resembling the Cobra Kai bullies he faced in the movie. This first level will take you all of 90 seconds to complete.
You may never complete another level in the game after…
The second level whisks you away to Okinawa, where repetitive fights with the same animated goons will wear you out because the controls for this game suck. You’ll often get hit by the goons who you can’t always make contact with yourself.
B kicks. A punches. You get a special “crane kick” and “drum punch” you can pickup during three different bonus levels hidden in doorways you enter throughout the last three levels: a balance beam, ice block break, and catching flies with chopsticks.
None of them are easy.
You can pickup the special moves after defeating some enemies, as a “C” or “D” floats in the air for all of two seconds and disappears. Often, going for these special moves will cause you more harm than ignoring them, as enemies just don’t respawn, they auto-spawn constantly – the only saving grace is, I figured out its sometimes easier to outrun the opponents than fight them and have more spawn, as only two are on any screen at a given time!
The second level ends rescuing a girl above a tower. As with the jumping mechanic necessary to get around in the levels, you press up on the d-pad and hope the game responds with a jump that doesn’t send you to your insta-death.
The third level is pretty unique: it’s just the second level during a storm, with darker background textures and “wind/rain” that pushes items that hurt you and pushes you constantly throughout the stage.
Survive this and you reach the fourth level, which looks like it’s in desert mountains – the enemies look somewhat different and some brandish spears now and require an extra hit to kill.
True to the movies, the Okinawan goons will also throw vegetables at you sometimes.
But all of this is for nothing if you don’t save the girl at the end, who for some reason slides backwards during your final fight with Chozen, and if she falls off of the platform you have to start all over!
I hate to say this, but even if you’re a die hard fan of the movies and video games that suck badly, you may still want to avoid this title. It’s that frustrating to play!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Ask anyone who grew up with this game as a kid about it, and the likely reaction is repressed feelings and nightmares.
Unlike it’s (far) superior arcade cousin, the first TMNT game on the NES was a total disaster. Most of the non-boss enemies were not taken from the cartoon or comics, completely ripped out of nowhere. That would be so bad if the collision detection and controls weren’t horrid.
Some of the regular bosses took multiple hits to kill – and they would respawn soon as you went back in a stage, something which is vital on many of the boards. Worse, some of the bosses had second variations where they’d die and then something would float around the screen waiting to be killed. You could not duck or dodge from many of them, resulting in death.
Oh yeah, you can choose between each of the four turtles to play with, but once one died, that was it – unless you braved rescuing one in the scant few areas you can do so in the game.
Then of those four turtles, those with the shorter weapons (especially Raphael) were useless because you couldn’t get close enough to an enemy to hit them, resulting in damage (and more death).
Adding to the frustration are areas which require a precise jump despite imprecise controls and respawned enemies, resulting in you falling and starting over. And if that’s not enough, the frame rate drops to stuttering slow and unresponsive when there are too many enemies on the screen at once!
Then there’s a stage where the boss isn’t always in the same location, causing more backtracking through frustratingly difficult areas.
If you can make it to the final battle with Shredder, a feat in and of itself, he can instantly kill you with his ray gun.
When anyone brings up hard games of my childhood, this is among the top of the list. If you’re brave enough to try it, use save states and cheats – or else “say your prayers Turtles!”
Super Mario Bros. 2 (Japan)
If you ever wondered why Super Mario Bros. 2 was so freaking weird compared with the other SMB games, it’s because it wasn’t the true sequel to the original game, rather, a conversion of a non-Mario game due to decision makers rejecting the release of the much more difficult Mario 2 in North America.
The real sequel eventually found it’s way to the U.S. as part of the Super Nintendo collection “Super Mario All-Stars”. Branded as “The Lost Levels”, this version included revamped graphics and music, much like the other re-released games on the same cartridge.
I wanted to play this original version and not the “Lost Levels” remake. Fortunately, it was recently translated into English language markets via the Wii’s Virtual Console.
The Mario 2 as we know it may be an imposter, but it likely salvaged the franchise (and possibly the video game industry stateside) as this true successor to SMB was graphically and mechanically similar to the original game, but increasingly cheap and difficult in practice.
And I do mean difficult!
I highlighted many of these frustrating changes in the screen captures. Among them are wind (blows Mario off of platforms or makes it harder to jump), enemies in areas you wouldn’t expect (fire, Bloopers, Hammer Bros, Bullet Bills, you name it), gaps which required precise button taps and timing, and possibly the most famous addition, poisonous mushrooms which shrink/kill you!
It’s a great play to see what may have been, but I’m glad I didn’t own this as a child. Save states were necessary to get past many areas (some took me as many as 30 tries for a series of precise jumps). You could also get lost in areas where you’re looking for hidden blocks, warped to the start of the level, or worse, warped back SEVERAL worlds!
The payoff though is a special “fantasy” World 9, where Mario swims through the board as if it were a water level.
There are other secret levels, but I will address those in my review of the Lost Levels remake… as well as some other rare/little known Mario secrets in the near future!
Double Dragon
Alright, how many of yinz are going to admit playing this in single player and beating it with no cheats?! Huh?!
That’s what I thought!
This game would’ve made me cry as a kid… As an adult, it nearly brought me to tears still the same!
This is as painful of a memory of how hard video games were during my childhood. (Ain’t a wonder that Tradewest had a hand in producing this AND Battletoads!)
There’s one specific jump in a gear/factory room on one level that took me HOURS to perfect, even with the aide of save states. That’s why this game gets a “thumb in the middle” because I couldn’t imagine playing to the time limit, limited health, plus the wonky jumping mechanic (you have to hold both A and B buttons, since individually those are assigned to “punch” and “kick”).
Then there’s the enemies and the final level, which are beyond crazy. I can’t even fathom putting quarters in the arcade version, as it would bankrupt a family.
Yet, this game has fuzzy memories for some. More than likely I’d surmise that you got a lot of “replay” value from this game trying to actually defeat it! Today’s kids would just let it collect dust and never try, but seeing as we all had four or five cartridges at best until the next holiday rolled around (if we were lucky) I can sense that’s one of the reasons this is a cult classic. (The other being the height of karate/ninja themed media in the 80’s!)
Nintendo World Cup
I’m bringing some more complaints to my video game bucket list… this time it’s a game I really enjoyed as a kid, probably because it was the only thing available!
World Cup Soccer is more arcade than realism. That’s the part that made it fun. The only thing is, I didn’t realize just how repetitive the game can be. It’s probably best played with a friend (or more, since it was released with the Nintendo four player adapter in mind).
There are no rules. There are 13 teams with 6 field players and a keeper. You get to tackle and knock players out a la NBA Jam, plus use special shots on goal. There are also special fields that have rocks you can trip over or another that’s entirely ice (and slippery).
This sounds fun, and honestly, I nearly put it on the blacklist because what ends up happening is that you control a single player on the field and try to give commands to your computer teammates. That means your player may not be on the screen most of the time and you find yourself dribbling around in circles to try to win or watch helplessly as your AI teammates get crushed by the better AI opponents.
It works when playing against the first opponent (Cameroon) but you’re sure to get cheated out of victory in later matches. That’s the borderline between fun and frustration, and I found myself more frustrated that I spent my limited time trying to relive this childhood memory.
Otherwise, if I had loads of time and this was one of few games I owned, I could see spending hours trying to master it…
Kirby’s Adventure
My entry into the Kirby series was ages ago as a youth playing Kirby’s Dreamland on my Game Boy. That game was fairly simple to beat way back when, and I guess that level of practically doing nothing but wasting time entering and exiting stages was carried over and expanded in the NES version.
Sadly, I got bored with this game. There’s technically nothing wrong with it.
Yes, it’s easy. Yes, there are more features. And yes, it’s a gorgeous game for playing on the original Nintendo. However, it’s so repetitive that I just can’t forge forward to complete it.
That doesn’t mean I’m done with the Kirby series, but just hope the next entries aren’t as much of a chore to play.
With that said, if you want to see how hard the Nintendo hardware could be pushed, this game (as well as the final NES installment of Mega Man, Mega Man 6) take the console to its limits. As one of the final titles released for the aging hardware, developers truly found incredible ways to push the game graphically as well as with sound.
The result is a pleasure for the eyes and ears, and a game that doesn’t look like it fits the 8-bit mold whatsoever.
For that reason, I can’t give it a thumbs down – but boy, is the game play monotonous!
Final Fantasy II
Talk about the game that never ends… So many times I thought I was finally completing the last objective only to have something else happen. It has its drawbacks, but overall a game that feels like an epic journey and leaves you with a sense of accomplishment at the very end… which, the credits roll for longer than some blockbuster movies too!
Ninja Gaiden
Holy cow! Yes, this game is very difficult, but I never really remembered much of it due to not being able to progress very far (because, really, a timer?)
The story line and game play were likely second to none way back when. It even pulled me in here in 2018 (the time of this writing).
If I forgot to mention, the game is crazy hard, but I really enjoyed it. I highly recommend it for you classic gamers out there.
Ghostbusters
Raise your hand if you hated this game!
There was nothing worse than the impossible ending (26 flights of stairs where 3x touching ghosts would kill you) or actually trying to beat Zuul… or running out of gas and have to push your ECTO-1 as you mindlessly chase ghosts to acquire cash for useless upgrades.
I had somehow beat this with a Game Genie ages ago on the actual console, but this was a bugger to even beat with cheats this time around. WTF?! Possibly the worst movie/cartoon video game translation aside from TMNT!
Mega Man 6
Admittedly, this game just feels like a direct phone-in attempt by Capcom, replacing MM5 with new characters. There is a really cool “suit/armor” mechanic, which gives Mega Man a “big suit” that can break boulders, etc.
Overall, the music and everything really is MM5 with a new coat of polish. This was the final MM NES game and you can tell they were pushing the console to it’s limits. A small change in the storyline as usual keeps it a bit fresh, and if you’re like me and played through the others, you have to complete this one too.
In order of my favorites on the NES: MM3, MM2, MM4-6, MM1… MM1 is really awful by comparison and incredibly difficult. You also can’t fully enjoy MM3 without playing MM2, but that’s the reason why MM3 is much more fulfilling (storywise). That’s why it’s my favorite.
Onward to more games, including (gasp) the Game Boy versions of Mega Man!