NBA Jam: Tournament Edition
One of my favorite all-time arcade games is NBA Jam. When it first released, it gave you the thrill of a rookie Shaquille O’Neal breaking glass backboards along with actual NBA players in a fantasy 2-on-2 setting.
The series jumped to the forefront with an announcer who parodied the NBA’s popular play-by-play guy at the time Marv Albert, using one-liners such as “He’s on fire!”, “Is it the shoes?”, and “Boom-shaka-laka” all becoming commonplace in pop culture.
Getting the game on a home console was like Christmas every day, where you no longer had to pump quarters into the arcade to play each, um, quarter. Like Mortal Kombat, which was also developed by Midway, the translation to home was produced by Acclaim – and it came nearly complete with the same digitized faces/actors that made both series memorable mainstays in the 90’s.
Unfortunately, the home versions (and later arcade revisions) snubbed some of the more popular players from NBA Jam’s rosters. Due to licensing with other game titles, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and the aforementioned Shaq were absent.
While I wanted to review the plain jane NBA Jam, I learned my lesson from the Mortal Kombat series to just jump right into the best of the bunch – that also happens to be the successor to the first title, NBA Jam “Tournament Edition” or “T.E.” for short.
T.E. brought new innovations to the series, including expanded rosters (you could switch your two players between a mix of three total per team – and could “sub” between quarters too). A tournament mode kept things at a competitive balance for the most hardcore players while “hot spots” and other additions made T.E. the pinnacle of the original NBA Jam games, much in the same way Mortal Kombat peaked with MK2.
The best of the 16-bit era games was actually a 32-bit port, to the mostly unsupported and largely abandoned Sega 32X. The top-heavy add-on was still cartridge based, but had built upon the superior Super Nintendo translation in every way to make the most arcade-worthy port of the T.E. games (until Sony’s PlayStation landed, that is).
Yet, the 32X is worth mentioning here as there are few games that were released for it and T.E. could’ve been a killer app if not for overwhelming their own market by flooding it with Jam available for nearly every console imaginable (including the Game Boy and Atari’s Jaguar!)
But without the CD loading waits (read: long waits) of the PSX, T.E. best lives on with Sega’s 32X as the definitive cartridge console version of its era. It’s well worth revisiting if you have the time, if only to walk down memory lane and play with some of the game’s many hidden characters!
Super Punch-Out!!
I feel really bad saying this, but I thought this game was much better the way I remembered it. The obligatory upgraded everything with “Super” attached, Super Punch-Out!! took the game to the next level graphically, but the gameplay leaves something to be desired.
The NES original was a classic button masher which had a sense of urgency and intensity. You knew you could be wiped out if you didn’t have a certain rhythm, or if you didn’t time the opponent’s specialty punches.
In Super Punch-Out!! the specialty punches feel like a gimmick. They take the borderline feeling of being able to win (much like one or two of the Mario Kart games) and gets gimmicky to a point where the game is all about those punches: win or lose.
In this way, it feels cheap and underwhelming. Don’t get me wrong, I still like this game and feel it’s worth playing, but some of your standard punches are going to make it through, whereas the older game was all about ducking, dodging, and timing.
And for some reason, Doc Louis (Little Mac’s trainer in the NES original) is MIA too. (Actually, the fighter in the SNES version isn’t Little Mac either… he’s called whatever you name him.)
The saving grace is the flashy graphics, added animations, and audio.
There’s a little less of that here, and it looks more or less like the arcade title, but the game is still worth checking out if you’re doing the retro deal too.
Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball
I used to get terribly made fun of as a kid for many reasons. One of those was being the owner of a Super Nintendo while all of the “cool kids” owned a Sega Genesis.
For a period of time, that meant no cool games for poor little Joe. No Joe Montana Sports Talk Football. No World Series Baseball. No blood or violent fatalities in Mortal Kombat.
Then a game dropped out of the heavens that gave me some major bragging rights about the console I felt was superior. Nintendo partnered with Ken Griffey Jr., the biggest name in baseball in the mid 90’s, and created one of the greatest sports games ever.
While it’s true that Griffey was the only MLB player to appear in the game, due to a lack of MLBPA license, the real teams names, logos, and most importantly, stadiums, were all here. And honestly, that was the major appeal – aside from being the only true baseball game in town on the SNES, the audio track of the game had a pseudo play-by-play with “strikes” and “balls” being called on the clear console audio chip, but it was the near-to-life stadiums each team played in that really hooked me as a kid.
Fenway Park had the Green Monster. Orioles Park at Camden Yards had the warehouses in the outfield. The Royals field had the fountains in the outfield, among countless other special touches. Some homeruns were easier to hit where the ballparks had shorter fences, and even the Expos wall had the distance in metric unit measurements listed rather than the American “feet” distance.
And if you play in Canada, expect the Canadian National Anthem to play in lieu of the Star-Spangled Banner to open up games!
I never realized a few of the generic ballparks, such as the Pirates, weren’t as authentic due to space limitations on the cartridge, but that didn’t seem to matter: they played on Astroturf at the old Three Rivers, and as such, there was only dirt around each base – which helped mask that there wasn’t more detail for a couple of teams.
Even with a lack of “real players” the game used real stats and simply substituted each roster’s with a theme. For example, the Mariners used names of Nintendo of America employees, while the Phillies had a mix of local landmarks (L.Bell) and celebrities (R.Balboa and A.Creed). That lent to the arcade/cartoon style and feel of the game, with muscularly jacked up homerun hitters down to smaller base stealing players.
A roster editor built into the game allowed you to change the names of these players to their real-life counterparts, and anyone with a baseball guide or card collection could connect the dots to put in most of the player’s real names, further expanding on the depth of the game.
And speaking of detail: umpires and base coaches were even included on the field!
The controls were rather tight, and you could play a full season all the way through to the World Series. (Back then you played for the pennant!)
An added homerun derby mode, something which was a newer addition to the All-Star Game back then, was included – and you could also play the All-Star game too!
In all this was one helluva game that still, to this day, has a cult following akin to Tecmo Bowl with football. If you’ve never played any of the games in this series, they’re definitely worth checking out.
Note: Game is listed as “incomplete” in my ratings because I wasn’t going to play 80+ games – I had already done that several times as a kid! 😉
Mega Man: The Wily Wars
The second of the two Sega Mega Man titles, this one will also seem as obscure as the Game Gear title because it was only released in Japan and Europe as a cartridge: with the American release being available exclusively via The Sega Channel…
Remember that service?
Wow, that could’ve been cutting edge! It was Netflix for video games delivered directly to your Genesis via a modem… but who had the capability back then?
Okay, back to the game: it’s a sequel and it’s not.
Wily Wars includes the first three NES Mega Man titles completely revamped with new graphics and sound. Think of it like Super Mario All-Stars is to the NES Mario games… which, Mario All-Stars also included a fourth game, and so does Wily Wars: the “Wily Tower”.
Wily Tower is unlocked after completing the other three games and retains the same look and feel as the remakes. The remakes themselves, compared to their NES originals, appeared to play faster; the music is fantastic, and graphically, I like this rendition of Mega Man as opposed to the NES appearance which was rehashed for MM9 and MM10 on later generation consoles. (Those games looked very generic by comparison of this 16-bit collection.)
Another great feature is when you begin Wily Tower. You are brought to a menu screen where you select eight of the 22 weapon upgrades obtained by beating the other three games’ bosses, plus an additional three items. This is the coolest idea I’ve seen in any of the Mega Man games I’ve played thus far and adds some replayability and strategy to the status quo. (This being the 16th Mega Man game I had played to date.)
The Wily Tower itself is short but can be difficult. There are three robot masters, but plenty of other goodies once you get to the Wily stages. Cameos occur and the game was just so much damn fun I’m not sure what else I can say about it: even if a great portion is mostly a remake.
It’s kind of disappointing that this title doesn’t get more recognition. I actually prefer its reboot style to the NES originals. The addition of Wily Tower, despite this game being released in 1994, should be a heads up to other developers with classic IP to reboot their series by packaging the old games with an updated look and then adding new challenges.
In summation, this is one of the better classic Mega Man games to play. Unfortunately, the cartridge itself is rare and a properly translated North American ROM can be as equally challenging to find: due to the translation of both the English language as well as the proper speed/framerate for NTSC (versus PAL systems it was released on).
Regardless, if you can obtain a way to play it, Wily Wars is an incredible trip down memory lane that definitely needs revisited even by the most casual of Mega Man fans.
Contra: Hard Corps
Holy %$&^! Is this game freaking amazing!
While I really liked the original NES Contra and Super C and while Contra 3 for SNES upped the ante for the series, Contra: Hard Corps showed what an accelerated, mature-themed, arcade upgraded style of Contra could really be.
I’m surprised more of the games in the series didn’t take a cue from this one. It had a rocking soundtrack, catchy visuals and finger-blistering action. Bosses take up large portions of the screen and the entire game feels like you’re in a non-stop Hollywood action film.
Some of the gameplay is a bit different than the traditional Contra titles, but that doesn’t take away from the fun. Rather than upgrading guns or even switching between two, there are four main weapons which you can switch between once you’ve acquired them. Bombs are also included and while this is a side story without the main characters, it actually adds to the Contra lore.
Honestly, this may be my favorite Contra game played to date. I feel like it was a forgotten title and doesn’t get the love it deserves. I even considered changing my rating system for two thumbs up, that’s how good this is. Try it sometime!
Mega Man IV
The least innovative and least creative of the Mega Man games I’ve played on NES and/or Game Boy thus far. The collectible items were new, but also a tacked on, and mostly useless feature. You purchase those add-on items from Dr. Light’s lab, by using “P Chips” as the currency… those are found by defeating enemies throughout the different levels, but the lab itself is an annoying side attraction, with far too many dialog windows to you can easily be trapped into by hitting B instead of A or vice versa.
The enemies are lifted straight out of MM4/5 (NES) again, but I suppose the rematches are “new” to the GB versions. Capcom usually has a way of making each of these games worthwhile, but this one nearly had me quit the series. Chief among them a new feature requiring capturing the letters “W-I-L-Y” to open the final stage!
It was far too repetitive and boring… good thing I didn’t stop though! (More on that in the near future.)
Mega Man V
I really panned MM4 for Game Boy as being unoriginal and a bastard child mashup of two of the NES versions. It was so plain and just run of the mill that I nearly didn’t play MM5… but I’m glad I did.
Talk about a complete turnaround! MM5 for Game Boy is the same MM formula but with some fresh ideas. The robot bosses are (mostly) original and there’s an addition of a robot cat assistant just like MM’s dog Rush.
This still carried over some of the annoying “P Chip” system from the previous Game Boy game, but I could live with it as it wasn’t mandatory to get any of the items to complete the game, nor was it a prerequisite to collect the “WILY” letters either.
To top it off, this was the only version to support the Super Game Boy SNES add-on, and as such, had color support. That tremendously helped in laboring through the last of this console’s editions.
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!