just wrote about 30,000 characters worth of reviews for the NES games that were put out for December, and then for absolutely no reason at all, i wound up losing ALL of them after an accident, so what i'm going to do is post these (extremely rough) drafts of them because that's all i have and i'm just super frustrated and wanna be done with these
not that anyone CARES but if you happen to read these and think "wow these are extremely poorly written and difficult to follow" well yeah it's because they're raw and unedited and unproofread so yeah sorry about that
in summary: all of these games are pretty good by NES standards. play them.
Originally released in 1994,
Wario's Woods is probably not the kind of game you'd expect it to be based on the title. If you're at all like my childhood self, you're probably imagining some kind of cool platformer like
Wario Land 3, but if that's case, prepare to be disappointed. It's actually a tile-matching puzzle game where you play as Toad (you know, everyone's favorite Mario character), and Wario himself spends the vast majority of the game completely offscreen. Yeah. How fucking lame is that? If they had called it "Toad's Tree Tumble" or some shit, I would've known not to bother, but they knew that putting a cool character like Wario in the title would make the game seem all the more enticing. And it
was, so I bought into it. It was probably the first time I had ever been disappointed with a
Mario game—and yes, just in case this all sounds a little familiar, they pulled the exact same shit with
Yoshi four years earlier.
My perception of
Wario's Woods has always been negatively biased because of my childhood disappointment, but having it available on the NSO NES service has inspired me to give it another look from an adult's perspective.
I've concluded that it's an okay game. It may not have the catchy, memorable music of
Dr. Mario or the sheer addictive simplicity of
Tetris, but it's a passable effort nonetheless. As mentioned before, you play as Toad inside of a large tree hollow—which is to say, unlike a traditional tile-matcher, you do NOT have direct control over where each tile gets placed. Instead, bombs are dropped haphazardly by a fairy above, and Toad has to run around at the base of the tree, catching the bombs as they come, so he can place or stack them wherever they need to go. Unlike in
Mighty Bomb Jack, the bombs actually have a function. The tree hollow is infested with these cutesy little monsters of different colors; they're completely harmless to you, and can even be picked up and stacked in the same way that the bombs can. The object of the game is to clear out the hollow of these monsters using the bombs.
Matching any three tiles of the same color together (in any direction) will cause them to disappear, and "tile" encompasses both monsters and bombs. So, if there's one red monster, you need two red bombs. Two red monsters, one red bomb. Typical tile-matching mechanics apply here—chain reactions are a thing, and of course, you get a few neat bonuses for matching more than just three tiles at once—but the primary difference, and what makes the game especially unique, is having to scamper around as Toad as he physically carries each of the tiles over to where they need to be.
Pressing "A" will have Toad grab the tile (or the entire stack of tiles) directly in front of him, or have him set it back down. Pressing "B" allows him to grab just a single tile, in case he doesn't need the whole thing. Pressing down will make the fairies start dropping bombs faster.
Toad's maneuvers in this game are surprisingly extensive and satisfying to operate. He can't jump, but he can run up walls, so if he finds himself in a position where he's between a wall and a big stack of monsters/bombs, just hold right or left as you would normally, and he'll be able to run all the way up to the top (unless he's already carrying shit). When climbing up a stack of tiles, the "B" button becomes very useful for selecting individual pieces that you need, since Toad will carry it back down with him. If he gets buried by tiles, he can force himself to the top as well (which is weird, but whatever). Finally, Toad can kick tiles so that they slide over and fall, in case you need them to, which has its occasional utility.
As the game takes place, a portrait of Birdo can be seen, but if the player takes too long to finish a level, this portrait will get replaced with Wario. When Wario shows up, he'll start bashing his shoulder against the portrait, causing a large block to come sliding down the tree hollow, which threatens to box the player in. If this happens, the game is over. Additionally, an annoying-ass bird will appear to spawn more monsters for you to get rid of, just to undo all your hard work. Having to clear each level before this shit starts happening adds a nice layer of tension to the experience.
Later levels will introduce monsters that are trickier to get rid of, such as monsters that have to be bombed twice before disappearing, monsters that change color, and monsters that only disappear when bombed
diagonally. There's a billion trillion levels—I've only made it as far as level 40, and apparently I'm not even halfway there. Thankfully, this is one of those rare NES puzzle games that records your progress (there's even a basic name entry screen, which is kinda nifty, if completely unnecessary), so there's no fear of ever losing your progress (though, of course, having access to suspend points makes all of that redundant anyway).
There's also a "Game B" where, every ten levels, the player gets to engage in a weird boss fight. A boss character will appear inside the hollow, you have to match tiles against it repeatedly to drain its life. It's kinda weird, clunky, and awkwardly paced. I'm not sure if I'm that into it, to be honest, but it's certainly creative. Naturally, there's also a 2-player vs. mode which is good solid fun for five minutes if you're able to find someone willing to play this shit with you.
This game is also notable for being able to win you at least two points in a Nintendo-themed trivia game: not only was it the last officially-licensed NES game to be released in North America, it's also the first and only NES game to have ever received an ESRB rating ("K-A," back when that was still a thing).
In general, it's not one of my all-time favorites, but it's quite decent. It has the polish that you'd expect from a game released so late into the console's lifespan, but the gameplay isn't horribly exciting and it does get quite old after a few minutes. I would only continue playing it on the basis that the game does have a story with an ending, and I'm trying to beat every game on the service at least once. Beyond that, though, I wouldn't recommend spending too much time with this one unless you're a fanatic for old puzzle games.
Overall rating:
3/5
Originally released in 1989,
Adventures of Lolo was once the flagship franchise of HAL Laboratory—at least, until
Kirby came onto the scene in the early '90s. In fact, dedicated
Kirby fans will no doubt recognize Lolo, because he (along with his female counterpart, Lala) tends to show up as a boss in several
Kirby games (albeit renamed as Lololo and Lalala, for whatever reason).
Yet another member of the puzzle genre (but thank god, it's not another tile-matcher), the game is actually a rebranding of an older series of MSX computer games also featuring Lolo called
Eggerland, released throughout the mid-'80s and spanning four installments.
Adventures of Lolo compiles all (or most) of the puzzles from these games, and doesn't actually contain any new or original levels of its own; therefore, the game can be thought of as an
Eggerland "best of" collection.
This one's gonna be rather difficult for me to describe, as
Lolo is easily one of the more unique puzzle games I've ever played. It's similar to
Solomon's Key in the sense that the levels do not "scroll." Each and every level (or room) only takes up a single screen's worth of space, which means you get to see the entirety of each stage (and everything that's happening in it) at all times, all at once, and from a bird's eye perspective. That probably seems like an awfully mundane detail, but bear with me. I think it's an important thing to note, given how the game is played.
In each room, your goal is to unlock the door to the next until you reach the top of the castle, where the damsel Lala is being held captive by the Great Devil. There are ten floors, and each floor has about five rooms. You'll know you're about to make it to the next floor if the current room you're in doesn't have any doors; so, naturally, a staircase going up to the next floor will appear in these rooms instead.
Every room has a chest containing a jewel that grants access to the next room when collected, but the chests will only open once you've collected all the room's "Heart Framers" (as the manual calls them), which are just squares with hearts on them, and basically serve as the game's primary collectible—only, you must collect all of them to proceed. As you could imagine, every room is guarded with enemies, but Lolo doesn't really have any means of defending himself. So, the game is all about figuring out how to safely collect each Heart Framer when the enemies are strategically placed to make this task as much of a science project as possible.
Unfortunately, this is one of those games that basically requires you to read the manual going into it, because if you jump in without knowing how the enemies work, you're practically guaranteed to have a bad time. For me, this is the game's biggest flaw. Once you do learn the basic rules, though, the game actually becomes quite fun and addictive, where each solved level feels like a genuine accomplishment. Yet even after reading the manual, there are still certain minor quirks about the game that seem fair enough from a gameplay standpoint, but are not always immediately intuitive and can take some trial-and-error just to learn. I'll try to go into some of these later.
The enemies themselves are very interesting in terms of their behavior. There's Rocky, a cute little grey square-shaped golem monster thing that walks in a set pattern and will quickly rush up to Lolo if he happens to cross its line of sight. It can't actually hurt Lolo; instead, it will just try to push him against the nearest wall in order to box him in. He's too heavy for you to push back, so if you're not careful, and it manages to shove you into a corner, you're gonna be stuck there.
In the event that Lolo does get permanently stuck, either because of a Rocky or because you fucked up a puzzle beyond repair, the developers were kind enough to implement a catch-all solution for these snafus: A fucking suicide button. By pressing "select," you can sacrifice one of Lolo's lives so you can start the puzzle over again. He literally just dies, right then and there, at the push of a button. And you'll be pressing this button very often, too. I don't know, maybe I'm alone on this, but I just find that incredibly amusing. Fucking up a puzzle is one thing, but there's something very cruel and sadistic about obliging the player himself to personally commit to the demise of his own player avatar.
Other enemies, like Medusa, are completely stationary, but fire these full-range projectiles in all four directions (think of a rook in chess) that will instantly take Lolo's life if he dares to step anywhere in its sights without sufficient cover (normally a boulder, block, or another enemy). Don Medusa, a scarier variety, does the same shit, except it slides back and forth rather than being stationary, increasing its range further.
Some enemies will only awaken and become dangerous once all the Heart Framers in the room are collected, like Skulls and Gols. Otherwise, they're harmless and stationary. One enemy, Snakey, doesn't do anything at all. It's just... there.
My favorite enemy is the Leeper. It runs about all over the place, gravitating towards the player, but similar to Rocky, it cannot kill you directly. Instead, if it makes contact with you, it'll fall asleep on the spot and never wake up. It can't be moved, so it does have the potential of trapping you, making it a real nuisance. But with a bit of cleverness, you may be able to lure him into sleeping in a spot that actually gives you an advantage.
As Lolo, your powers are quite limited. Movement is gridlocked in four directions (including half-steps), and you have no special attacks or maneuvers to defend yourself with beyond your own wits. As such, enemies in general must be strategically avoided altogether. A select number of rooms will give Lolo single-use power-ups for collecting a certain number of Framers, such as bridges for crossing rivers or hammers for smashing boulders. Most rooms have green blocks called Emerald Framers (which I'm just going to call "blocks") which can be pushed around as a means of trapping enemies, or giving Lolo some cover. Some levels have special Heart Framers that give Lolo the ability to fire a couple of Magic Shots, which can turn enemies into eggs that can be pushed around just like the blocks, but will hatch after a set period of time. Eggs can even be ridden on if you push them into a ravine, at least until they sink.
Your Magic Shots are limited, of course, and shouldn't be used frivolously. They shouldn't even be thought of as an offensive technique at all, really; just another piece of the puzzle. There are no roundabout solutions. Every room seems to have only ONE very specific and watertight solution, and fucking up the smallest thing often means having to press the suicide button. That might sound irritating to play, but the game is actually built rather intelligently around this.
You see, even though the game does utilize lives, they don't really matter that much, because you have infinite continues. Losing a life just means getting to redo the puzzle. "Game over" just puts you back at the title screen, where you can select "continue" and be right where you left off anyway. If you have to stop playing, every room in the game has a simple 4-digit password associated with it, so there's no chance of you ever losing your progress (and yes, suspend points render this totally redundant, but still). They gave you a suicide button because they knew you were gonna fuck up a lot; it's okay. There's no pressure.
The way the game is built heavily encourages you to take your time planning out what you're gonna do for each room, and this ties back to the observation I made earlier about each room only taking up a single screen's worth of space. Not only that, but at the start of each room, all the moving enemies will be completely frozen, allowing you to slowly and carefully take in and parse all the information on-screen at once and plan out exactly what you're gonna do. doing this will become necessary for 75-80% of the game's puzzles. It's a very slow and meticulous process, but you'll find that bumrushing through the room like a dumbass will do nothing but frustrate you. You have to take your time; unlike
Solomon's Key, the game doesn't have a timer, so you can literally examine each room for as long as you want.
It's this style of gameplay that I look for when it comes to puzzle games. It's incredibly satisfying to go into each room with a plan, only to have it all fall into place as a reward for my patience and observation. There are still a few minor hiccups here and there, though, and it has to do with some of the game's internal logic and its more obscure rules. Some of the manual's enemy descriptions, for example, are pretty piss-poor and don't accurately describe how the enemy behaves at all. It's never explained that it's possible for Lolo to stand over a chest, which becomes an important tidbit of knowledge for at least one room, and it's also never said that enemies can be used to block projectiles in the same way that boulders can. Among other things.
The manual does an okay job of explaining the bare basics, but as for the finer details (which become increasingly important in the game's later floors), it's left up to the player to figure out for themselves. Which isn't necessarily bad—in fact, that's normally
good—but it's not always intuitive, and that's the issue. Players want to learn shit on their own, but the only way they're gonna do that (generally) is if the game's rules are logical and make sense intuitively, and this is just one of those games were not everything makes perfect sense. You just kinda have to roll with it at times.
That being said, I think this might just be my favorite puzzle game on the service right now. It could easily be better than
Dr. Mario, but I'm gonna rank it one step below for now in case I don't change my mind later. The music is pretty good (but not AS good), and visually, it's rather nice as well. I like the cute and cuddly aesthetic that HAL is known for. I'm iffy on the story being a stupid damsel in distress plot, but I'm also inclined to not take that aspect too seriously.
In terms of overall quality of gameplay, I'd say it's about on-par with
Solomon's Key, but in terms of ranking, I think I probably have to give the edge to
Lolo on the sole basis that it allows you the luxury of infinite continues and has a nifty password system. On the off-chance that someone is opposed to using suspend points, knowing that
Lolo has an in-built failsafe for players who are interested in actually progressing through the game is worth acknowledging.
This game is a test of patience in the best way possible, but if that doesn't sound particularly fun to you, I'd stay away.
Overall rating:
4/5
Originally released in 1988,
Ninja Gaiden was probably Tecmo's most treasured property of the NES era, before it was picked up and reimagined by Team Ninja in 2004. The NES game was released very shortly after the arcade version of the same name, but whereas that version was a
Double Dragon-style beat-'em-up, the better-known NES version is a high-octane action platformer that focuses less on mindless combat and more on speed, momentum, and finesse. It's easily my favorite title of the December batch.
The player takes control of Ryu Hayabusa, a young Japanese ninja who travels to America to avenge his fallen father, whose life was lost during a duel with an unknown shinobi shown in the opening cutscene. It's a well-known fact by now, but
Ninja Gaiden was one of the earliest games to extensively feature cinematic cutscenes to engage the player in its narrative, with a directorial style and aesthetic that, according to James Rolfe, combines aspects of anime and film noir, which I think is an apt description.
This scene in particular is synonymous with the word "iconic."
Another well-known fact about this game has to do with its unforgiving difficulty, but we'll get into that later.
I know a lot of people seem to have issues with how the game feels to play, but to me, it feels orgasmic and extremely similar to
Castlevania in several different ways. It's easy to sum it up as a more fast-paced version of that title, where rather than being rewarded for playing extremely cautious all the time, you're encouraged to focus more on fast and aggressive (yet smooth, attentive) play. You still can't be sloppy if you want to win, but infinite continues means the game never really ends, so even if you're constantly getting fucked up, as long as you keep working on your mistakes, you'll eventually see yourself slowly improve over time. You might even enter this zen flow-state where you're flying through entire levels without taking a single hit—and that's REALLY fucking fun.
Ryu's Dragon Sword has a deceptively long reach, and unlike Simon Belmont's whip, it comes out near-instantly, so it's extremely satisfying to cut fuckers down with it. It does stop him in his tracks when he swings it for a brief moment, but when used in conjunction with his jump, it's possible to get attacks out on the first frame. Sometimes, though, it's not quite enough, which is why the game provides you with secondary weapons like shuriken and fire spells that you can find by breaking objects in the background (again, just like in
Castlevania). Ammunition is limited, of course, and most enemies have a tendency to respawn if you try to sit there and camp, so the weapons must be used
very wisely. Mastery of the secondary weapons will become essential if you want the levels to become a breeze.
The game is quite short at six areas, with anywhere from two to four levels per area, so with patience, it's possible to beat it entirely in less than an hour—but only if you're really good at the game, and you're probably not.
With respect to the game's difficulty, I actually don't think it's that bad. The first five areas are very doable, and while they do get exponentially harder, the fact that you get infinite continues means you're never in a position where you can't get better at the game. A lot of people aren't into the trial-and-error of it, and that's understandable, but I think whenever the game's enemy placement seems like unfair bullshit, the solution always ends up being fairly obvious, and it's almost always on the player for not being able to pick up on it.
For example, there are several moments in the game where you're having to cross a gap between two platforms by making a leap of faith. However, doing so blindly will often result in a bat or some other flying enemy popping up out of nowhere and knocking you back into the pit, killing you instantly. The first time it happens, sure, it's annoying, but literally all you have to do to adapt to this is just wait at the edge of the platform for the bat to come, and as soon as it appears, THEN make the jump, and you'll be able to make it. This also teaches the player to cross gaps carefully and to pause for a brief moment before just rushing into things like an idiot.
That said, there
are some legitimate grievances to have with the game. As cool as the graphics are, and as fun as wall-jumping is, it can be a little bit janky at times. The level of detail in the graphics can actually make it kinda difficult to tell what you're able cling onto in the first place, and this can result in some deeply frustrating scenarios where you're sticking to walls without even wanting to do so. This has never been a game-breaking issue to me, but I can definitely see why it could be seen as cumbersome. It's also kinda awkward how the ladders in this game still use wall-jump mechanics, so when you make it to the top of a ladder, you have to jump OFF of it rather than climb up to the top. But that's a nitpick.
There are also some issues with the game's collision detection and overall polish. I mentioned how Ryu's sword has deceptively long reach, which is true, but only horizontally. The vertical hitbox of the weapon, especially when using his aerial slash, does have this annoying tendency to completely whiff grounded opponents when it counts, usually as a result of imperfect timing. This issue doesn't rear its ugly head all too often, but it sure sucks when it does.
My biggest personal issue with the game is how boss fights are handled. None of the bosses are particularly difficult in and of themselves; their difficulty arises from the extremely questionable design choice of having you go back to the beginning of the entire area just for losing against them. To understand the implications of this, let me try to illustrate in detail exactly what happens when you die in this game. If you're on stage 6-3, and you die in a particular section of that level, you'll start again at the beginning of that very section. Not 2-1, or the beginning of 2-3, but the
specific section of 2-3 that you made it up to. However, if you get a game over, you
then start at the beginning of 2-3. That's your punishment for losing all your lives.
If you die against the boss, however, you don't start again from 6-4. You start from 6-1. That is some cockamamy horseshit right there. Not only is it simply obnoxious to have to start back from that point in the game, it also makes every subsequent attempt at the boss a clean slate, because whatever you may have learned or picked up on during the fight (which probably lasted around ten seconds anyway) will either be forgotten or not enough to have a substantial chance against him. In other words, there's no way to practice. And since there are no passwords or anything like that, back in the '80s, that means you have to be prepared to beat this game all in one go from 1-1.
Lucky the game is so fun and engaging anyway, otherwise that mechanic would be nearly unforgivable. And, again, it's hard to bitch about a game that gives you infinite continues, even if it is heavily flawed. The game's excellent soundtrack has a way of pumping you up with enough adrenaline and willpower to get better at the game, just as it should, and the cutscenes also provide a great incentive to keep trucking along against all odds, even if the story is very cheesy and predictable (in a way that I find charming). If this game's bigger issues were ironed out, this would be an easy 5/5 for me.
Overall rating:
4/5
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