Stats time!
Total Play Time 30m 41s
Total KO’s 395
Total Points 8543
Stage Stats
Stage 1
KO’s 61
Total Points 1409
Clear Time 2m 46s
Stage 2
KO’s 26
Total Points 1501
Clear Time 3m 9s
Stage 3
KO’s 78
Total Points 1615
Clear Time 4m 25s
Stage 4
KO’s 138
Total Points 1797
Clear Time 7m 7s
Stage 5
KO’s 92
Total Points 2221
Clear Time 13m 12s
It’s time to look at the next NES title. Slowly but surely I’m cranking down on the rest of these NES games. At the time of writing this I have around 22 left I believe which is pretty good. At this rate I should have them all done by the end of June and then I’ll be eagerly awaiting Nintendo’s announcement that they are adding more. The other good news is that now I’m getting to the big games. Gone are the sport games, now I’m up for more of the plot type games or at least ones that have more in the way of gameplay.
I recently played River City Girls so it was pretty fun to go back and play the original. This is a game that has definitely aged quite well. First off we’ve actually got a plot with cutscenes here. The main character’s girlfriend was kidnapped by a bunch of thugs so the hero is off to save her. Along the way he will have to defeat 9 different gangs so it’s going to be a long day for the hero. Fortunately you can utilize just about everything you come across as a weapon and you also pass by a lot of malls to replenish your health.
One impressive thing about the game is that it has a full open world much like River City Girls. The game isn’t linear so you choose where you want to go first. Each area has a boss once you beat a lot of the minions and presumably once you beat all 9 then you will clear the game. Open world is a concept that has always been a lot of fun although there is still something to be said for a more linear experience. I wouldn’t say that either is better as they each have their positives but open world can be a little more dangerous if you have the potential to get stuck. I’ve had that happen to me in the past and it was pretty dicey. That actually happened in this game as well.
See, you don’t actually seem to trigger the boss if you bypass the henchmen. After I beat the first boss I figured, why not run to the school since that’s where the hostage is being kept right? So, I made a beeline over there including jumping down from a cliff and entering a passageway. I made it to the school, but nothing was happening even after I beat all of the henchmen a few times. So, I had to go back and clear the other levels but the problem is that you can’t actually go back once you cross the cliff. It’s an interesting design choice and one that seems a bit fatal depending on how fast you go through the game. Perhaps there is a way to get unstuck there and if so, kudos to whoever figured that out. I was going to go through the whole game but since it’s not really linear anyway and finding all of the bosses would take a while I figured I’d stop here.
There are few games where I would explore a whole labyrinth to find answers and one of those would be Metroid for honor. At this point that game’s personal. River City Girls took this game’s premise and really ran with it though. The best new addition that game had was a big map system. If you ever got lost you could consult that. This game has no map which is understandable since that would have been difficult back then but I would have definitely enjoyed it.
The combat is definitely a lot of fun here. You can really hit people with combo after combo, but the computers don’t just sit there and take it either. They actually block quite a lot which is pretty impressive and when they lunge at you it can be hard to react in time. You definitely have to stay on your guard. I really like the Baseball bat and highly recommend equipping it as much as possible. There are a ton of stores so you definitely want to buy food at them. Not only does it increase your health but it can also increase all of your other stats like attack power and speed.
The graphics are definitely pretty solid. I like the character designs for the various characters. They look tough as you’d expect such a character to be. These guys are clearly not messing around and that’s a good thing. Whatever threat comes up, the hero is ready to squash it. The soundtrack is also pretty catchy. It’s nice and fast paced and definitely gets you into the moment.
Overall, River City Ransom is definitely a pretty fun game. The fact that it has a real story is pretty cool and the gameplay is pretty solid. There’s a good amount of content here to playing through the game could last you an hour or two. The only thing holding is back is really the lack of a map feature and the point of no return. Just make sure you take out all of the goons in each area without skipping any and then you should be fine. Slow and steady wins the race as always.
Overall 6/10
It’s time to look at a classic NES golf game. Golf is one of those games that is hard to make all that fun even in modern titles. The only one where I could say I really felt pumped up was the Mario Golf game for Gamecube and even then it got stomped by the other Mario sports. Needless to say I wasn’t a huge fan of this one either. I do see that some decent effort was put in here but it still wouldn’t be able to keep me in there once I’m done with a tournament.
When you boot the game up you’re given a screen with Mario and Peach getting ready to be crushed by Luigi and Daisy. I assume it’s Daisy at least but admittedly she looks quite different here. After that you see the various game modes. To this title’s credit, there are actually a few different modes when a lot of these games would just have one back in the day. You can jump into a tournament, free play, or a single player run through of all the holes. Naturally I went for that one, I wasn’t about to have to watch the computers throw me around when I was just starting right?
The controls are not too crazy once you get the hang of it. You move the stick in the direction you want to hit the ball too. Once you do that then you tap the a button twice when you’ve got it in the right part of the moving bar. From there you just try to angle your hits and select the appropriate power so that you get the ball to the flag in as few hits as possible. This is one of the few games where you actually want to have the lowest score possible. The higher score you have the worse you played the game. You definitely don’t want to see a +9 as that is about as bad as you can be.
The graphics here are pretty fun. Not surprisingly since Nintendo was really the ones behind this game it looks a lot better than most of the other NES titles. When they throw Mario in it seems like Nintendo really tries to give the game an extra shine to it. The soundtrack is also very peaceful. You feel like you’re ready for action and to have a good time. That’s the ultimate goal of the games right?
There’s a reasonable amount of replay value here since there are a lot of different stages. You will probably need to also replay the stages quite a bit to really get good and to hit your rhythm. It’s not something that will happen overnight after all. I averaged around a +6 for each hole so I got a ways to go. Ideally you want to be around a -1 or -2 for them to really secure the win. The toughest part about golf for me has always been all the different variables. You have to account for the wind and you have a ton of different clubs to hit the ball with and they all have their own range. What this means is basically no matter what you’re going to have to do a lot of memorizing to know what you want to do. Mario Golf handled this well with giving you a preview of how the shot would go while this one plays it a little more on the level. You just need to know the yards left to go and plan accordingly.
This is definitely a tough game so you can expect a good challenge. Of course with the rewind feature you have backup to an extent but either way this is not a game that you can expect to beat very easily. It’ll take some time and you’ll have to see if the game is fun enough to spend that time. At the very least I am glad that Daisy got into the picture a lot earlier than I would have expected. I’m not sure if you can play as her, but I certainly hope so.
Overall, NES Open Tournament is definitely a game you don’t want to miss if you reeeeeeally like Golf. Otherwise I’d say you should just bypass this one. There are a ton of other quality NES games to enjoy on the service so there’s no need to stick with one for very long if it doesn’t hit it out of the park for you. I don’t think there’s a whole lot more they could have done with the concept here so I’ll give them props for the attempt. That being said, Golf just needs something to give the games a little more pop in their steps.
Overall 4/10
No stats this time!
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