Tag Archives: NES

Ikari Warriors Review

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It’s time for one of those really old NES games. This one wasn’t all that good though and feels very dated in the wrong ways. Some retro games have a real charm to them so you just want to go through as many levels as possible. This one doesn’t quite match up to that and the gameplay just isn’t fun enough to keep you going. It’s sort of like an old school bullet hell.

The games starts with your chopper crashing so the main character has to now get past a whole army with his gun. It won’t be easy though as the opponents have tanks and other powerful weapons at their disposal. Additionally the main character can run out of bullets while the enemies have unlimited ammo. That doesn’t sound very fair right? Well, that’s just how it goes here and it shows you just how difficult it would be for one man to beat a whole army.

You are able to commandeer any tanks you come across though which is handy. The catch is that you will lose a life if the tank is destroyed while you are in it. That is fair I suppose though. I would say the toughest part of the game is how one hit from any attack will defeat you. There are bullets everywhere and they move awful fast. You have to try and stay out of firing range while blasting the enemy but this takes a ton of precision. You get 3 lives per playthrough but you will have a hard time even making it past the first level. This is not a game for the faint of heart by any means. This game is meant to really bring you to the brink of destruction with each fight.

The graphics are pretty decent though. This is a very bright game and the villain sprites really stand out. It doesn’t feel low budget in that respect so I appreciate that. The soundtrack is more on the forgettable side. It’s the kind of classic themes you might expect so they aren’t bad but you won’t remember them by the time you have completed the game. There is also a good amount of replay value here since you can keep playing the game over and over again to try and improve your score.

That’s the angle this game is going for but the gameplay was still lacking too much to make this fun. I like when I can play a game long enough to really test my skills and feel the progression. In a game like this, you may die extremely early on if you take a wrong bullet and then that’s it. I’m not necessarily saying that the game should have been easier but that the style should have been different. Bring in some objects that you can use to block the bullets or a good old fashioned shield. That would really go a long way here. It would let you actually play the game more instead of constantly having to dodge.

The other big issue with the game is the fact that you can actually run out of bullets. There is seemingly no way to reload your ammo either until you get to the next level which is no fun. That means you now have to measure your ammo and be careful when you fire. This stuff all starts to really add up and just becomes annoying instead of fun. I’m trying to just have fun playing an arcade type of game. This turns the game too much into a simulation instead of focusing on just being a fun game.

I’ve said it before but the top priority for any game is to be fun. Everything else is absolutely secondary and so this game forgot that rule. You could have the best technical elements in the world but if the gameplay isn’t fun then that will be game over. This one ends up being well below average as a result because it’s just too unrelenting in a way that feels like it is partially RNG. Good luck reacting to every hit at least.

Overall, Ikari Warriors was really not my kind of title. I tend to like overhead beat em ups. I liked Black Hawk Stryker from back in the day on PC. That one had unlimited ammo and a ton of fun power ups though. It remembered to be a game first and foremost. I’ve played many other titles like that which were just a whole lot of fun. It’s too bad that this one couldn’t match up but I suppose some titles inevitably have to fall short at some point. If you have the Nintendo Switch Online then you should probably check this one out at some point. It’s effectively free at that point so why not right?

Overall 3/10

The Tower of Druaga Review

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This is easily one of the worst NES titles that I’ve played. I’m afraid it just hasn’t held up at all. Any game where you have a missable item that makes completing the title almost impossible is definitely going to be a thumbs down from me. It’s a super obscure gameplay decision but this isn’t the first time that I’ve run into this. So that’s already a bad thing against this title. The gameplay actually had some potential too so that’s what makes this one sad.

There are 50 levels in the game. You essentially start off in a Pac-Man type of maze. You have to find the key that is scattered somewhere within the maze and then use that to unlock a treasure chest. When you’ve done that then you will have completed the level. Rinse and repeat for 50 levels. There are various enemies and ghosts that will try to get in your way. If any of them touch you, then you lose a life. You seem to be able to slash at them and can defeat most enemies but it is unclear on exactly what enemies you can defeat. I didn’t have very much luck with defeating them.

So far this doesn’t sound so bad right? It means you will be getting a good amount of exploration done and you have to move quietly and carefully so that you don’t bump into the enemies. Well, the main problem comes midway through the game when the title suddenly turns the lights off. Now you can’t see anything and it turns out that the reason for this is because there is an item you have to get from one of the minions. This would have worked as a flashlight of sorts and by missing it, you are now in big trouble. With the help of rewind I was able to power through 2 of the dark levels but it takes an incredibly long amount of time to do that in each instance. It’s definitely not easy, to put it mildly.

This was an absolutely massive misstep by the game. It makes the later levels virtually unplayable as a result. Not only can you not see the various paths but you can’t even see the enemies in some cases which causes you to bump into them. Your only recourse is to start the game from scratch. When that is the only thing to do, you have essentially failed at being a game. There should never be a case where you are effectively soft locked like this.

To an extent you can get a small pass on this in strategy games but even then it should be something that is difficult to achieve. For example in Fire Emblem games it is absolutely possible for this to happen but in general I would say that it should be rare. More the exception to the rule if you would. In this game, odds are very high that you won’t get the light because defeating enemies is already very difficult.

The game incentivizes you to skip them and to focus all of your attention on the key. So now you have a gameplay mechanic that goes against the game itself. There also could be more gameplay mechanics like that within the title. I don’t know about them because I didn’t make it to the end of the game but it certainly feels likely to me. This is a game that is all about punishing the player and that’s a problem.

The gameplay also isn’t very smooth which is part of why defeating enemies is so difficult. It is very ease to just move too quickly or to miss something. If you really want to make a game about finding things and going backwards, well then I’d suggest making a rogue-lite kind of game. The kind of title that encourages you to play over and over again with quick runs on the back-end. If you develop a game like that, then you could have game ending scenarios. I would still recommend not making it quite as easy to fall into as this game though. No matter how you look at it, this feels too excessive.

As for the graphics, well it looks okay. The game is definitely old and the graphics reflect that but at the same time it doesn’t look below average or anything like that. I would say it fits in with the rest of the games well enough. As for the soundtrack, it’s certainly on the bland side but that was the case for a lot of the NES titles back in the day. So even this is more par for the course really. The technicals are not holding the gameplay back, it is simply the game design which did that.

In terms of replay value, well I believe the game does loop after 50 levels so you can keep on trying to play it and see how far you go. That’s the only kind of replay value here though and the original 50 levels should only take you around 2-3 hours to get through. As long as you don’t lose or miss any items. The amount of content here is about up to standard as well.

Overall, If you have the Switch Online then you have access to hundreds of other great games. I would recommend playing those instead of checking this one out. It’s easily one of the weaker games that I’ve played through and that’s saying something. It is definitely not the kind of game that will become your favorite franchise going forward. Trust me on that one. That said, maybe I’ll check out another game in the series because it sounds like it is a very different kind of experience. You can only go up after a title like this as well. It’s pretty rare to play a game that I would say is downright “bad” so in a way that will end up making this one fairly memorable, more so than if it was actually good.

Overall 3/10

Mendel Palace Review

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It’s time for one of those retro NES titles. I definitely hadn’t heard of this one before, but granted, I suppose a lot of these were really before my time. The game is decent, it has a very unique style to it. That being said, I don’t think this would end up being a game that I would seek to replay. It’s not like Mario or Pac-Man where the gameplay is just super solid. The gameplay is original and can be fun but isn’t super great or anything like that.

Basically you are on a checkers board of sorts. You can move across the tiles and flip the ground which sends a little shockwave in the direction that you are facing. You will be faced off with 4 opponents and your goal is to shockwave them into one of the walls. Once your opponents are slammed then you move onto the next level. Each world has 10 levels to it and there are around 8-9 worlds. Each one introduces you to a new enemy until the final world where you fight them all. Now that is definitely a real ambitious final world, I can tell you that.

The levels range from being a few seconds long to several minutes. It really depends on the different tricks that the villains are using and a little RNG sprinkled in as well. The gameplay is simple so you can really just focus on positioning and being in the right place at all times. There are also different kinds of floors which becomes more of a factor as you play through the game. You have star spaces which cause shockwaves in all directions and other tiles that cannot fire shockwaves.

The most annoying kind of tile is definitely the portal which allows enemies to infinitely summon new versions of them. You need to flip these tiles over immediately or the levels will get much more difficult. You have no health bar so if any villain touches you then you lose a life. Additionally if a shockwave hits you, you will lose a life. So there is absolutely no margin for error here. For the most part you can react to any kind of attack, but one exception is when enemies bump into each other and then get sent into a bunch of different directions.

You just have to try and prevent this from happening in the first place because you will really not be able to prevent this from happening. There are simply too many enemies and they are all over the place. One wrong step and that is game over. Each enemy has a different movement style, some are easier to deal with than others. You have the sumo wrestler for example who can resist the shockwaves pretty well. You need to land lots of hits to take him out and he counters after each one. If any counter hits you, you don’t die but you get sent across the field.

There’s the swimmers who…well they swim across the riles which isn’t a problem since you can still hit them with shockwaves. You even have other “players” who move and attack in the same way that you do. For the most part they aren’t a big problem but you definitely don’t want to underestimate them. After all, they only need to land one good hit on you.

The graphics aren’t bad in this game. It’s definitely basic NES stuff but it’s not under average or anything like that. It’s good enough and it’s not like this is a very complicated game either. So as long as you can see what is happening, then you’re good. The game delivers on that front. Then for the soundtrack, well that is more on the forgettable side. There aren’t any tunes that you will be humming to yourself later or anything like that.

In terms of replay value, there isn’t a whole lot here. There was a score display at the top so I suppose you could try to get a higher score. This doesn’t feel like a game that is really made for replay value though. You would need to really enjoy the gameplay style a whole lot for that to be possible. Ideally that is what will happen though. The main game’s length isn’t very long but that’s usually the case for an NES title.

What the game could have done to be more fun would have been to not have the teleport tiles. I feel like those were the cheesiest with how they kept spawning new monsters. If you’re going to add that in, at least don’t make it infinite. I think that would have gone a long way to making the game feel more balanced. The levels would be more on the straight forward side, compact and not too crazy all around. Without rewind this game feels like it can just be a little too unforgiving. Maybe if it took more than one hit to defeat you, that could have been another way to enhance the game a bit. So some good ideas in here, but it’s clear that the title was a bit rough around the edges and that’s why it didn’t end up being the next big thing. Nobody’s really heard of this title which means that it was fully forgotten to history.

Overall, This isn’t the kind of game that I would play a whole lot of but if you have the Switch Online then you should check it out. After all, it’s effectively free at that point so why wouldn’t you want to give it a quick shot right? If they ever made a modern remake of this game, they could probably do some cool things with it. Throw in a fun story and then you’re really off to the races. It does beat the next NES title that I will be reviewing though so prepare yourself for that.

Overall 5/10

StarTropics Review

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StarTropics is one of those games that definitely comes off as real strange and different. It’s certainly not your average title but at the same time this also means that it can often times be a little too ambitious for its own good. There are a whole lot of puzzles here after all and they tend to break up the gameplay. The gameplay itself isn’t bad for the most part but some of the bosses can randomly get annoying. It’s the type of game that you probably would not have had a whole lot of fun with if you had played it without the rewind feature.

The story is at least pretty crazy in a way you wouldn’t see in newer games. You have gods and monsters, robots and aliens. All kinds of different lores smashing together here where a kid has to basically contend with all of them as he travels across the world trying to find his uncle who went missing very suddenly. You’d think a boy and his yoyo would not go far but that would just mean you never played Earthbound. This main character is as tough as they get and even knows how to pilot a submarine.

The game is wacky and fast paced so if the gameplay could keep up then we would be all set. Mainly it uses a top down style like Legend of Zelda although some of the fights become more turn based. It’s a game that desperately needed more quality of life features though. For starters the game isn’t always very clear on where you are supposed to go next. It is extremely easy to get lost and the NPCs don’t tend to offer very clear advice.

It’s not as if the world is huge so you will eventually get unlost but it isn’t always even about the location. Sometimes you have to talk to people more than once in order to get them to open up and really talk to you. It puts you in a paranoid state where you have to keep on talking to people over and over again just in case something is different. I got stuck early on because I didn’t realize you had to talk to the chief twice in a row. Yes, you heard me right “Twice in a row”.

So if you talked to him and left the hut, when you got back he would still start with the first line. You had to click twice and I don’t understand how anyone is expected to reasonably know this. The game has a lot of moments like this where it feels like the rational move just wasn’t thought of. The game design just shouldn’t work like that as nobody normally talks to NPCs twice. At the very least, I can say that I don’t tend to go out of my way to do anything like that.

It’s why the best kind of puzzles are found in games like Professor Layton. You use clues and logical deduction to put the pieces together. It’s a puzzle that has a concrete beginning and ending. You aren’t just told to go find something in the distance. You have a puzzle in front of you to solve and then you solve it as smoothly as possible. It’s why puzzle games stick to their lane and you shouldn’t mix the genre with platforming. That just doesn’t tend to work.

The graphics aren’t all that bad. Yeah they definitely look super old but the game itself is very old. The art direction for it was about what you would expect and there’s nothing wrong with that. The soundtrack is on the forgettable side as well. In short, it’s not the kind of game you would generally pay money to play nowadays. I’m not sure if I would have paid much money to play it back in the day either to be honest but the times were different.

Overall, I want to emphasize that this isn’t a bad game. It’s just not a good one either. It’s the perfect example of a game that would end up falling right in the middle because it just goes through a lot of stretches where it isn’t very fun. It really can feel like work to solve those puzzles but at least the story was good and it could have been worse. The technical details don’t really help it either. So right in the middle makes a lot of sense to me. Maybe some tropical music could have helped the game at least be more memorable in the long run.

Overall 5/10

The Mystery of Atlantis Review

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It’s time for another really retro NES title. This one actually didn’t get translated but it’s a platformer so it’s not like there is really a lot of dialogue anyway. It’s a pretty fun title, they did a good job of emulating that classic Mario style. At the end of the day the fact that it isn’t sequential does hold it back a little and I prefer always having a straight forward level vs the puzzles but it lands way more wins than you would expect.

So I can’t really say much about the story but you play as a guy who looks like Indiana Jones and you’re wandering your way through a maze of 100 levels. Each level will have you running and jumping over obstacles. The only weapon at your disposal is the pocket grenades. The cool thing about them though is that they damage anyone on screen. So if you throw it and miss, the enemy will still take damage in most cases. Some enemies take 3 hits to take down but most go down in one hit or two. It can be tough to angle the weapon just right so this helps to alleviate that pressure a little bit.

There is a really fast timer that is going on the whole time so you need to keep that in mind though. If you forget about it for even a moment then you might be in trouble here. The time is just as deadly as any enemy you will face and in some levels I barely had any time left at all. When you jump, the momentum will keep you going the whole time so it is hard to change directions in mid air. This means one fall can set you back a whole lot or even when you bump into any of the walls. You need perfect control of your character in order to make it through these levels and it takes a whole lot of skills.

This game can be deceptively hard in that way. Then you also have the fact that levels have more than one exit. So this can launch you far into the future or it can even send you back at times. Imagine picking the wrong door and having to go through a level again? That would be rough and a lot of the levels are so relentless that one mistake will cause you to be completely defeated. There are also several “dark” levels where you can’t see anything. These levels were incredibly difficult for me to navigate. The trick in the end was to keep blowing up your grenades which causes the level to appear for a split second.

Of course this doesn’t make it easy in the end either though. You still have to time your jumps perfectly so one wrong step and you will end up falling to your doom. This is definitely a game for platforming vets. So why is this game good when it’s so difficult? Well, it feels difficult in a way that is generally fair the whole time. Additionally the levels being colorful and fast paced helps out a lot as well. You will never be just totally stuck waiting for something to happen.

So the graphics are above average for a NES game which is good and the music wasn’t bad. It’s no Mario though but it was good enough. The game feels very well balanced. It is not without faults of course but easily stands above most of its peers. If you are looking for a fun time then you should definitely play this while you have the Switch Online. Of course it would probably not be as fun without the rewind feature but that’s just how a lot of these classic games go. Each level is around 1-2 minutes so even with 100 levels it goes by quickly. I would even say some levels are under a minute because I knocked them all out in around 90 minutes. Of course, skipping levels helps quite a bit with this.

Overall, The Mystery of Atlantis is a good game. It gets a little too clever for its own good by the end with some of the gimmicks but it was certainly creative. I would say it pushed the NES hardware pretty far. Especially with 100 levels. Yes, they have a lot of levels that are pretty similar and reuse assets but this is still really impressive. I’ve played several games that basically just had one level after all so it’s not particularly easy or anything like that.

Overall 6/10

Cobra Triangle Review

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It’s time for one of those old school NES titles. It’s been a little while since I played one of these so that was definitely nostalgic. You have to grant the titles some slack because they’re ancient of course but the NES has delivered some good ones over the years. This one just tries a little too hard to be the next big thing and ultimately doesn’t pull it off. I appreciate the effort though.

Basically there are around 5-6 different gameplay styles in this one. All of them involve you piloting a boat. The main gameplay style is that of a race. You have to drive through the course and make it to the end within a certain amount of time. During the race, other boats will be trying to blast you away so you need to take them down. As long as you drive fast you should be able to win this one. It’s easily the easiest kind of gameplay style in the title. Ironically it is also the final stage where I was stuck at. There are some jumps that are introduced later on and if you don’t have enough speed you will lose. The problem? You need upgrades to get to that level of speed so if you made it to that part of the level without any, then you’re sunk.

Another gameplay style is about defusing bombs. You have to grab a bomb and then push it over to your side of the field like a soccer game. The other boats will try to steal the bomb back and bring it to their side. So you have to really try zigzagging a lot to keep them off your trail. It’s not easy but you’ve definitely got this. As long as you shake a whole lot while driving they usually won’t be able to steal the bomb.

You’ve also got the boss fights which is the toughest ones if you ask me. Each boss has different patterns and touching them at all will cost you serious damage. It’s extremely hard to maneuver the boat without crashing at least a little bit and then usually the vulnerable part of the boss is very small. So you really have to adjust for absolutely everything which doesn’t really leave a whole lot of time to yourself to get things right. This took a whole lot of tries to get right.

Along the way you will also have to dodge more and more traps as the game goes on like whirlpools that spawn out of nowhere and a ton of glaciers that appear from underneath the sea. They really went all out like I said before but sometimes you can just overdo it and this is one of those cases. They should have taken it a little easier on all of this and that would have made things a lot better.

The graphics are pretty good for its time. There is a lot of color here and it is absolutely in better shape than I have seen for other titles. The soundtrack is pretty much nonexistent but the themes that were there weren’t bad. Nothing to write home about. There are 25 levels in the game so that adds up to a reasonable amount of value here. It’s not a game that you would just complete overnight or anything like that after all. Well..I guess if you’re really good at it then you probably could. Technically each level is only about 1-2 minutes long, you can just expect to die a whole lot of times before you get to the end. Particularly if you intend to try and beat the game without rewinding. Me personally? I don’t recommend doing that but if you really love the game then it is definitely a way to make it last longer.

While I prefer to be able to just zoom my way through the levels and pit my speed against some opponents, I know some people like to be able to experience a lot of obstacles and having to get through them. So for those cases, this will probably work out pretty well. It’s certainly different compared to most other racing games, I can tell you that much.

Overall, Cobra Triangle isn’t really a game that I would play again. The main problem is ultimately that it’s just not too fun and of course that is a huge problem to have here. Without the rewinds you’d be dying hundreds of times to the most random RNG-esque obstacles. There is always a whole lot of dodging so you rarely get to actually just drive and have a good time. You want to strike the right balance with a game like this and unfortunately Cobra was not up to the task.

Overall 5/10

Urban Champion Review

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It’s time for one of those Nintendo games that was unfortunately very weak. I appreciate that they were trying to make a fighting game and of course this is very old but it just didn’t really land at all. The game is way too limited and there is virtually no replay value to be found here. The entire time you’re just hoping there is something you may have missed but ultimately that is not the case. Definitely give this one a full skip and you will be glad that you did. It is not worthy of the champion’s title.

The game really only has two modes. 2 player mode and then single player mode. In each mode, you only have one stage. You have to knock the opponent out 3 times in order to win. When you knock him into a manhole or off the block, then the fight continues with the same kind of background, except they change the store’s name. Yeah that’s not exactly what I would call top budget now is it? I expected better from Nintendo. Both characters are really the same sprite, only slightly color swapped so even that isn’t very original.

The controls are simple as you have a high punch and a low punch. That’s it, there are no other controls here so I hope you enjoyed throwing those shots. Beyond that you just aren’t going to have much left in the tank. I imagine playing with someone else will add a little bit of enjoyment to the game overall but probably not enough to leave a real dent. I don’t think almost any game can pull off the enjoyment factor with a single stage. Pac Man was one of the original games with 1 stage and probably the only one that could pull it off. The thing is…this isn’t Pac Man. It’s definitely not built for that level of success by any margin.

So the graphics aren’t particularly solid, the soundtrack is forgettable….we’re not looking at a very positive game right here. There are no unlockables so there is no replay value. I guess you could say that it’s fun to see the character sort of looking like Mario as he’s throwing punches but that’s just not enough of a hook to get you to play the game. Also you can cheese the main mode a bit by spamming the punch button. Often times the opponent will not be fast enough to block your moves which means you can completely bypass the strategy elements of the game. Not that there is a ton considering there are only two kinds of moves but clearly the intent was there with how the blocking system works. When you don’t move, you block automatically so that’s something to think about.

Overall, Urban Champion is not a good game. It’s one of those titles that you will forget right away because there’s nothing memorable about it. There is no aspect of this game that has held up well over the years at all. I would like Nintendo to consider a modern remake of the game but at the same time there would be little point. Just restart the series from scratch with a whole new name and brand. If you think about it, that would really be the only way to handle this unless you wanted to target the real hardcore fans for nostalgia. Even for free I wouldn’t bother playing this game. There’s just no reason to do so and it’s so limited that there isn’t even much to talk about for this title. Trust me, you’ll know what I mean if you ever decide to play this title.

Overall 3/10