Nintendo World Championships
One of the rarest cartridges in circulation, I’m not even sure how this ROM exists! However, it’s such a short game to play (and requires the use of emulated cheats to get it running) but was really cool to tackle.
It’s quite amazing how it’s put together and just the thought of trying to compile a high score is really fun.
I could end up playing this over and over again for hours!
Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight
No joke, this is the game that is technically Street Fighter 1’s “sequel”. Capcom had created the first arcade Street Fighter and then re-badged this game for the North American market as some pseudo-sequel to that game by renaming characters and implying that Ken in this game is the same as the one from the arcade fighter. (Note: This game actually came out before Street Fighter II fever swept the world.)
I can’t honestly fathom a world where this game was actually popular. I do recall one of my best friends had it, but it felt like a knockoff of other games at the time such as Contra. (And equally as frustrating to play!)
The levels consist of “targets” which Ken must take out. They’re small boards, and in many cases, just a single screen. The targets repeat often and there’s not a lot of variety. Littered between levels are cutscenes similar to the Ninja Gaiden series. They’re just as cheesy, suggesting futuristic technology in the year it takes place (2010) and also includes a heavy dose of outer space and aliens.
Each stage you must kill the target to gain enough power to open a portal, which then only stays open for seconds. Miss the opening and start over. (Like other games you only start with a small number of lives too.) The main character, Ken, can also gain power-ups to strengthen his “Hadoken” which looks more like a laser/wave weapon than how we’ve come to know it.
Mega Man 2
This almost ended up with being on my dreaded blacklist!
After playing the original Mega Man, I can see how part two was a genre/series defining title. Several improvements were made to this sequel, but none more than the graphic makeover. Capcom really found a way to squeeze some life out of the old NES hardware (and would continue to do so with other Mega Man iterations after).
I also imagine the difficulty of this game squeezed the life out of many children! This game is just setup for your to fail at every turn. However, the better bosses, the storyline, and the graphics mesh well with how hard this game is, and really leaves you with a sense of depth and accomplishment.
I’ll have some notes for the NES sequels in the coming days.
Final Fantasy
This one is many years in the making. I finally beat Final Fantasy.
I had the original cartridge for Nintendo and twice, I played through the entire game only to have it crash upon entering the final board. The only way out of it was to power off the console, which subsequently, both times, erased my saved game.
I nearly didn’t invest the time in replaying this but having not finished it in my youth made this all the more worth it. (Even if a combo of cheat codes and/or save states may have been used!) I absolutely loved this game (always did, even with it crashing, as noted). It was like having Masters of Universe, my childhood version of Dungeons & Dragons (since I was born after that era) Willow, or just pick one of the 80’s fantasy movies that were out in that era and Final Fantasy wrapped it all nicely in a neat bow.
My only gripe with this game, and it was corrected and then some in the sequels, is that the menu-based combat was super slowwwwwwwwwww. I seriously could’ve beaten this game hours sooner if not waiting for every little dialogue box to painfully scroll through. In fact, I broke my first Bluetooth controller I bought to complete my bucket list because of pressing the A button too much!
In all, this is a classic game in which everyone should give a try, provided it’s your cup of tea.
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.
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?