Mega Man 5

As far as NES games go, this one was gorgeous and continued to push the limits of the hardware. The music was slightly tweaked with this version, the first major revision to the familiar tunes since MM2.

The Wikipedia entry for this game sums up the rest: “Mega Man 5 was met with a positive critical reception for its graphics and music, while receiving criticism for its lack of innovation in its plot or gameplay.”

It wasn’t particularly groundbreaking and was more or less, the same ol’ same ol’.

Mega Man 4

In case you were wondering: yes, playing these games is repetitive. But it’s my goal to check out and attempt to complete all of them.

The fourth iteration of Mega man somehow still pushed the graphical limits of the NES. The charging “mega buster” was the latest innovation, and in today’s political climate, some might be happy to know the Russians were to blame with this plot, as Dr. Wily is supposedly dead!

I enjoyed this, but MM2 and MM3 are still the defining games. MM4 was a little less difficult, at least until the stages following beating the robot bosses. (Which, BTW, featured one of the LAMEST robots in all of the series: Toad Man!)

Another one bites the dust… onward to MM5!

Contra Force

I have no idea what Konami was thinking when they released this game. My initial thought is that they developed a game that sucked and had to slap the word “Contra” on the box to get some sales.

Contra Force has zero ties to the first two Contra titles released on the NES.

And I do mean zero.

It feels like your typical side-scrolling action game and nothing like the other Contra titles, with exception of the overhead style levels which are closer to what was seen in Super C, but even those feel more like akin to a game like Commando with the side-scrolling ones in the vein of Double Dragon when it comes to the size of your playable character and the enemies on-screen. (With bosses being absolutely huge and annoying to defeat.)

The graphic direction is different. Entirely different. Gameplay is too, where different guns are instead replaced by upgrades given when finding briefcases. Like the others you lose those upgrades when you die, which is far too often.

Your weapons are instead dictated by choosing which character you want to take into battle. There’s a submenu to change characters or even use a computer-controlled partner, assigning a strategy of how they operate. You can get around the three lives limitation by switching within this menu, though unlimited continues help.

The worst part of this game, aside from the cheap kills familiar to NES players, are several areas with nearly impossible jumps. I spent a great deal of time in one area attempting a single jump: I couldn’t imagine doing so without the benefit of save states.

Therefore, this game gets a thumb down. I completed it. It was cheesy. It was buggy. It was gimmicky. And most importantly, it was not Contra. It was a slow-paced game borrowing a popular title. It’s playable but it’s not that much fun. The only appeal is being able to say you’ve played another “Contra” game.

Mega Man 3

I have to admit a few things about the sequel to Mega Man 2:

It had some equally crappy portion of the game that were near impossible to beat, but far less of those and a tad easier in difficulty than MM2
The bosses (and their corresponding upgrade weapons) were incredibly lame creations (Snake Man???)
The easter eggs and storyline were really darn cool
The ability to slide added to the game
Graphically it raised the bar so high, the remaining games nearly like identical

I’ve played through all six NES Mega Man games now, and if I had to choose, MM2 and MM3 are the “must play” games (in that order too, for reasons mentioned above).

More Mega Man coming soon… because there’s a ton of these games!

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out! is without a doubt one of the greatest games of all time. Few games come instantly to mind when you mention “button mashing” but this one does. It also offers quite a bit of strategy, comedy relief, and anxiety.

This is a timeless classic, and the first game I can remember with a celebrity/athlete tie-in as a kid. There were others, including games based on movies, but most of those were terrible.

I had forgotten how hard this game could be until giving it another run-through. Mike Tyson is especially impossible, and even with a massive amount of cheats and save states (after giving it a legit “go” that lasted maybe a few seconds) I think it took nearly twenty minutes to topple “Iron Mike”.

That’s a heck of a boss and some major bragging rights back when games were still evolving. Other sports games were rather lame, but Punch-Out! fit the boxing genre to a “T”. It’s highly recommended if you’re into retro gaming.

Punch-Out!! (Featuring Mr. Dream)

One of the more odd games of its time, this version of Punch-Out! is exactly the same as Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out! minus one thing…

Mike Tyson.

Punch-Out! Featuring Mr. Dream came out after the Mike Tyson version but wasn’t a sequel. Instead, it was a way for Nintendo to continue publishing the same game but without the title character. From what I’ve researched on the game, Nintendo had a three-year contract with the boxer, and following the expiration of the deal, the gaming company decided to replace the prizefighter with a fictitious one of their own.

Some people believed this was due to Tyson’s rape allegations, but that occurred later. By the end of the contract he had lost his title to Buster Douglas, but they were working on a sequel of Punch-Out, which ended up being a different game altogether when Tyson was later sent to prison. (I’ll post that game in the comments – it sucks!)

Therefore, the only difference between the two games is the “Dream Fight” which occurs after your fighter “Little Mac” wins the championship bout. The replacement boxer is called “Mr. Dream”, a boxer whose record and resemblance are close to that of the real-life Rocky Marciano.

Game-wise, Dream is fundamentally different than Tyson was to play against. You can land punches on Dream (unlike Tyson) but he’ll quickly regain his strength by beating the crap out of you. This made him harder to bring down and nearly impossible to beat within the time limit. Even with cheats, I found Dream to be a harder foe than Tyson! (And we all know how hard it was to beat “Iron Mike”.)

Alas, fighting Mr. Dream is the only reason to play this version of the game. The lead-up to this fight is identical in every way to the Tyson version and no different of an experience. (See the screenshots from both games for comparison.)

Super Mario Bros. 3

If I could only tell you how many times I played this (and what game I bought when this came out INSTEAD of getting SMB3!)

Like the others, I played through every board here too with the exception of 1-2 of those options “auto side scrolling” (which drive me insane, sorry!)

I forgot some details of this game too. The frog suit is embedded in my memory, but I often forget about the statue “feature” of the Tanooki suit, or the music box (which was useless). This was a true successor to SMB and a definitive title on the NES. So many staples of Mario were introduced in this game, from chain chomps to boo. (For any sad soul who hasn’t played it – do it now!)

Pac-Man

One of the most beloved video game franchises of all time, I had a difficult choice to make when deciding which version of the original Pac-Man I wanted to play as part of my reviews.

Originally an arcade game, the mega popular Pac-Man has been released on practically every gaming platform known to man. It was released for the Atari 2600 a year following its arcade release, and then saw releases for other Atari platforms, the Apple II, Commodore 64, IBM PC, Intellivision, NES, Game Boy, Game Gear, heck, it even has a Windows Phone release.

Sticking as close to the original source as possible, I felt the NES version was superior to the Atari 2600 experience and stuck with it. As far as I can tell, the controls are tight, the graphics and sound are both faithful to the arcade version.

As for Pac-Man itself, yes, I love this game. But after a while? It can be challenging.

Heck, even a few levels in it’s a challenge! Never mind the fact there are over 250 of them!

Regardless, the beeps and boops of Pac-Man chomping pellets is the stuff childhoods were built from. I still love this game to this day and it’s a “go to” when introducing young kids or new players to the wonderful world of video games.

One more fun fact about this game: it’s one of three officially licensed Nintendo titles produced by Atari’s subdivision Tengen. Tengen eventually reverse engineered the security lockout features of the NES and began producing games for the console without paying Nintendo’s royalty fee.

According to Wikipedia:

Tengen manufactured both licensed and unlicensed versions of three of their NES games (Gauntlet, Pac-Man, and R.B.I. Baseball). Their cartridges for unlicensed games do not come in the universally recognizable gray, semi-square shape that licensed Nintendo games come in; instead, they are rounded and matte-black, and resemble the original Atari cartridges.

Super C

Do you like Contra?

Want to play a sequel with upgraded graphics, sound, and difficulty?

Then check out Super C, a game which I’d guess was the cause of many broken controllers back in the day. Holy cow this sucker is HARD…

But thanks to modern technology old folks like myself can enjoy this game with a little less frustration and play them through.

The premise, shoot as many bad guys/aliens as possible, continue the Contra tradition of being a mix of one-part Rambo, one-part Aliens. The weapons, the controls, pretty much everything in this game is the same as its predecessor, which isn’t a bad thing.

Enemies fly at you in swarms from every direction. Newer enemies, like these floating bubbles, are a major PITA too. The inclusion of slopes, and some HUGE boss battles are highlights (I won’t spoil some of them).

However, I’ll caution potential players that the “overhead” level they added is pure hell to be avoided at all costs. It’s incredibly difficult and removes the ability to jump.

I really, really enjoyed this game. Check it out!

Super Mario Bros. 2

Shortly after getting my Nintendo my uncle took me to Children’s Palace to buy more games for my system (since of course, I only had the Mario/Duck Hunt cartridge). He didn’t realize the cost of games when he blurted out he would get me “several” and ended up settling on this and one other game that was on sale. (Gold star to anyone who could guess the other!)

Even as a kid, I thought this game was… bizarre. It didn’t fit the first Mario game at all, and the entire series was turned upside down. (Anyone who knows the backstory knows why this game was released the way it was.) Regardless, it holds a special place in my heart and I absolutely loved it… except for the fact that my dad was the only one of us who actually beat it!

I got to beat it years later, but wanted another stroll down memory lane, playing every single level beginning to end. I had forgotten about some of the enemies (Fry Guy, Clawful) and boards (riding the Albatoss across the entire level).

The final castle is mammoth too, especially if you’re not familiar with where to go.