By the time I got around to writing up the October games, the November games snuck behind me.
Originally released in 1991, this is just one entry in a surprisingly large library of golf games for the NES. It all started in 1984 with a game simply titled
Golf—notable for being one of the earliest games ever programmed by Satoru Iwata, as well as for being an insanely detailed and robust electronic golf game for its time. No, seriously. You would think a thirty year old golf game for the NES would be almost mind-numbingly basic, but you'd be surprised to discover how nuanced it actually is. Not only are there loads of different clubs to choose from, terrains to watch out for, and unique courses to play on, you also have to account for all these weird little variables like the
wind to play the game well—which I think deserves a lot of credit.
Apparently, someone at Nintendo did, too. There was a short period of time when Switch users could actually download a free ROM onto their system when certain conditions were met, presumably as a tribute to the late Iwata. One of the requirements had to do with performing one of Iwata's iconic hand gestures with the Joycons, or something. It was a nice little tribute, and a cute Easter egg, but sadly, as of the latest firmware patch, it doesn't seem to work at all anymore. This could be because the second requirement involved setting the game's internal clock to the date of the man's death, which could be seen as... a little morbid, if not outright disrespectful, even if the intentions were good. Unfortunately for me, by the time I even learned of this secret, it had already been patched out. Shame.
Anyway, that was quite the diversion. Back to
NES Open Tournament Golf, I suppose. I believe this was Nintendo's second golf game for the system, with Iwata at the programming helm once again—but this time, with over five years of game development experience and knowledge of just how far the NES can be pushed.
Gameplay-wise, I mean, it's fucking golf. What do you want? If you don't care about golf at all, then this isn't the game for you. I certainly don't give a shit about golf, but I do have a general appreciation for well-crafted games no matter what genre they happen to be in, and this is definitely what I would consider a well-crafted game.
Remember how I was saying the original
Golf for NES was surprisingly nuanced and robust? Well, this game is basically the same in every way, just better. Prettier visuals, an actual soundtrack, seemingly better physics, more course variety, more satisfying gameplay, and more modes to choose from. Also, Mario actually looks like himself this time around. The number of variables you have to account for when making the perfect shot has only increased—this time, not only are you accounting for wind, terrain, and club type, but even the speed at which you hit the ball, how high or low you hit it, and even
the exact point on the ball that you stroke it so you can account for how much it spins when it actually lands. If you suck and don't always have your ball on the fairway, you'll have to watch out for trees—if a tree is in your way, you're basically fucked, because your ball is going to bounce right off it.
Just like before, when aiming your shot, you get a nice bird's eye view of the entire course, which shifts to an over-the-shoulder perspective when stroking. The way all the elements on the map get displayed during these segments is pretty cool—if you're stroking just near a lake, for example, you'll be able to see just a part of it off in the distance while making your shot. I wonder how difficult that was to program at the time, considering that we're not dealing with 3D models or anything.
Naturally, the overhead view of the course zooms in when the ball reaches the green, but the coolest part comes around during the putting process. When putting, you get a nice shot of the ball rolling up into the hole, but from the
hole's perspective, so you get to see a sprite of the ball getting closer and closer as it succeeds—or fails—to sink. It'll bounce off if it was struck too hard, or careen to the side if the contours of the hill weren't properly accounted for.
In terms of modes, there's actually quite a few things to choose from—single player stroke play, a standard solo golf game where you're just hitting bills into holes on your own in as few shots as possible. Single player match play is when you face off against an AI (either Luigi or a bunch of no-name generic losers) to see who can sink balls faster. Two human players can face off, as well, but there's also a tournament mode. You have to register for it, and it's essentially you versus every increasingly-difficult CPU opponent in the game. You only get to select between a limited number of clubs, so you'll have to master each one to suit your purposes, which is actually pretty interesting.
You could even save your progress—which isn't a big deal, considering that we have suspend points now—but for the time, having a save feature was a big deal. Not many games had it, and the ones that did were a blessing.
All in all, I'm not terribly into golf, but I definitely respect all the care and effort that went into this one. My score might seem surprising, but I'm just trying to be fair. I know it's not the sexiest game they could've added to the service, but I don't think that means it lacks any merit whatsoever.
Overall rating:
4/5
Originally released for arcades in 1986,
Solomon's Key was developed by Tecmo and ported over to the NES in 1987.
This is honestly such an underrated little puzzle-platformer. It received little fanfare back in the day, even though I think it has a lot of clever ideas going for it. You play as a wizard called Dana who has the ability to conjure or destroy a block, with which he can use for a variety of purposes. The object of the game is to clear all the levels by finding the key that unlocks the door to the next screen, making your way through fifty of them.
Each room is a puzzle, most of which contain infinitely-spawning monsters that you have little in the way of fighting power against—certain pick-ups, such as blue potions, give you access to a fireball spell that will ricochet across the room and kill everything it touches, but these are a limited and precious resource that should only be used when absolutely necessary. Extreme caution and ingenuity should be used to avoid the enemies instead, as taking a single hit will result in loss of life (and you only get three to start with).
Every screen is, indeed, just one screen in size—so you'll always be able to see everything that's happening at all times. You can't idle for long, though, because you do have a limited time to make your way through each door. And if you're not careful, enemies can drop from below if there's a window above your head.
Pressing "A" will conjure up a block in front of you, but by stepping at the very edge of the tile you're standing on, you can create a block up to two spaces in front of you. Crouching and pressing "A" will conjure a block below you, assuming there's any room, and the same edge-of-the-tile trick can be performed this way as well. Pressing "A" near a block will dissipate it. If you have any fire spells, you can press "B" to activate them after aiming, but it's unlikely to bounce where you want it to without a little bit of practice. It's actually kinda hard to explain the rules behind how it works, but it's intuitive enough. In general, just face the thing you want to kill and press "B." The ricochet effect is important, but only for players of the highest IQ.
The block creation is the coolest thing about the game, really. There's no limit to how many blocks you can conjure up, and they can be used for lots of different things, like creating platforms, walkways, staircases, barricades, or even to trick certain enemies from walking on top of them—only for you to dissipate them from under their feet, causing them to fall to their deaths. Creative use of this tool is what gives the game its life, really. Oh, and certain enemies are strong enough to break the blocks you create, too, so it pays to be mindful of that.
Since this is a platformer, you can obviously jump. But since the game already assigned uses for both "A" and "B," that means this is one of those weird games that has you press UP on the d-pad to jump instead. Some may find this very awkward, but I'm fairly used to it. It's a wimpy little jump, too—enough to just barely go over a standard enemy and cross little gaps, but nothing too far. Fortunately, you are able to angle your trajectory to an extent, and it can even be used to break blocks up above you, like Mario (though, he needs to do it twice—the first time will just crumble them).
There are hidden secrets in each room—most of which are fairies, or hard-to-reach special tiles that will send you to a bonus stage if you manage to collect them. Fairies are often trapped in different ways and require you to try many different things in order to rescue them, like dissipating naturally-occurring blocks or killing certain enemies. Once at least ten fairies are rescued, you'll get an extra life, so they actually become pretty important for you to look for.
The music is pretty cool, and the animations are relatively fluid, making it overall the "smoothest" in terms of overall game feel out of the three October games, and definitely my favorite of those three.
Oh, and I have to talk about the game's scoring system. For a little while, when game developers thought people still cared about getting a "high score," Tecmo actually tried to be "different" with some of its games, implementing their own unique system for evaluating a player's aptitude for a select few of its earliest games. They called it "GDV" (Game Deviation Value), and to be honest with you, I don't have any fucking idea how it works. I read the game's original manual and everything—it doesn't explain shit. Just that it's a special system patented specifically to be unique and confusing. For Solomon's Key, I've never gotten a GDV higher than 56, so I guess that's pretty bad or something. I don't know, because there's no way to tell how it works. What an ingenious system.
Anyway, I just thought that was pretty funny. The game is still pretty good. Of the 26 games currently available for the service, I'd rank it in the top 10 for sure. The biggest problem, especially when compared to the best puzzle game available at the moment,
Dr. Mario, is that the game's difficulty is too punishing for you not to have access to some kind of level selection.
Dr. Mario lets you do that, as well as
Ice Climber. In my opinion, this would've been the perfect game to have that feature, because there's fifty levels. Just about nobody is gonna want to play through fifty levels in one sitting, but because they don't have that contingency in place, you basically have to start all over from the first level if you restart the game or lose all your lives. That kinda sucks.
Oh well, I guess that's what suspend points are for.
Overall rating:
4/5
Originally released for the arcade in 1987,
Super Dodge Ball is actually the second installment in the long-standing
Kunio-kun franchise, following the beat-'em-up forerunner
Renegade and preceding the previously-reviewed
River City Ransom. However, despite being caught between two entries in a very particular genre, this is not a beat-'em-up game at all—it's a sports game, albeit one that flirts with a few beat-em-'up elements.
Just like other games in the franchise, the NES version of
Super Dodge Ball was vastly altered during the localization process in order for it to suit its Western audience better. Just like in
River City Ransom, you play as Sam—or at least, Sam's dodge ball team—and play against a number of international teams in a sequence to eventually become world champions.
Now, when I played dodge ball in middle school, the rules we went by were extremely different from the ones used in this game. For one thing, if you get hit by a ball just once, then that means you're out. If you manage to catch the ball before it hits you, then the person who threw it is out. These are the standard rules that I'm used to.
In this game, however, each of the three players in the inner court has a life bar, which varies from player to player. When a player gets hit, they lose a number of hit points depending on how hard the ball was thrown, or something—there's normal tosses, running tosses, jumping tosses, and running+jumping tosses. There's also special tosses, where the ball does crazy shit in midair depending on your timing, and these balls are not only hard to avoid, but do crazy amounts of damage. It's very cartoony, but even so, it may take a number of hits before all players on a team are down.
There are six players to a team—three of them in the inner court, three of them in the outer court. Only the players in the inner court have life bars, so those are the players that need to be knocked out. The outer court players are only there for support and putting extra pressure on your opponent, should you choose to pass the ball over to them (which is risky, of course, as this can invite your opponent to go for a pick).
Catching a ball that was thrown to you doesn't result in an out; it just gives you the ball, and you're given a very generous frame window to catch each and every ball that is thrown to you. It's so easy, it practically makes dodging pointless, because dodging a ball basically just gives your opponent's outer court players to get their hands on it. It's smarter to just catch it every time. This has a tendency to make each game pretty damn repetitive, making them feel like a somewhat more intense game of catch. Fortunately, the AI is too shitty to catch the ball every time you throw it at them, so beating the campaign on normal is a cinch if you know what you're doing. An actual game against a human player might be pretty miserable if you're both competent, however.
The graphics and overall pace of the game are somewhat shoddy. Because there's always at least six different characters moving on screen at once, this will often result in graphical flickering in the most irritating way, and there's not a whole lot you can do about it. The game struggles to process its own shit, which is never a great sign.
I think the game has a lot of personality and charm to it, though. The fact that the individual players on each team all use different names, faces, and even have unique stats to set them apart is definitely really cool, and landing special shots is extremely satisfying, even if the AI sucks. It's not like the game has nothing going for it. It's just a little too rough around the edges for me to consider it one of the greater games for the service.
Overall rating:
3/5
Originally released in 1986,
Mighty Bomb Jack is a Tecmo platformer, and sequel to a 1984 arcade game I've never played, simply called
Bomb Jack. You play as the eponymous Jack and make your way through 16 levels inside of a giant treasure-filled pyramid with randomly spawning enemies inside of it.
Far from being Tecmo's best, this is genuinely one of the most bland and milquetoast platformers I've ever played in my life. There's really not a whole lot else to it beyond what I described. Mechanically, besides simple running and jumping, you can rapidly press the "A" button while in midair to float around and slow your descent, which makes it an invaluable maneuver to avoid enemies with. Holding up while jumping lets you do a super jump, while holding down results in a lower jump. Oftentimes, Jack's high-ass jump will get him killed, since it's so fast and difficult to control while ascending, so the low jump comes in handy quite often. It's not quite low enough to always be useful, however.
Each shoddy and haphazardly-designed level will contain randomly spawning enemies without rhyme or reason. Sometimes, you'll be in the middle of a jump, only for an enemy to spawn right above you. And yes, this will result in a death, because in classic Nintendo fashion, there are punishing one-hit deaths in this game with—you guessed it—just three lives to work with.
The game is called
Mighty Bomb Jack, but the bombs you find in each level don't seem to play a huge role in the gameplay. You'd think he'd have bomb-based attacks, or something—but no, you just collect them. As far as I know, they don't even
explode. They're just there for you to collect, and once you've collected them all, you can proceed to the next level. The only way you can fight enemies, then, is by opening chests—most of which are opened by jumping after standing on top of them, which is weird enough, but some of them are locked. A key won't open them. Instead, you need to find a certain item that will cause Jack to change color, and if Jack's color corresponds to the chest, he'll be able to open it. Some of these chests will contain a power-up that changes all the enemies in the room into coins, which is Jack's only means of defense, as far as I've been able to figure out.
It's all just a bunch of stupid nonsense, really, and overall, it kinda sucks. The ONLY reason I don't give the game a negative score is because of one reason: the Torture Rooms.
This is actually a really stupid mechanic, but I personally find it hilarious. For all its flaws and eccentricities, the game manages to have a bit of a sense of humor that I appreciate. Most of the chests, when opened, will simply contain items and things that get you points. Most players shouldn't care about points unless they're used for accruing extra lives, but I'm one of those players that likes to impulsively collect everything in a room.
To my surprise, however, the game actually
punishes you for doing this. If you collect too many coins, the game will stop to call you "greedy" and force and trap you into the Torture Room. This is basically an insane hell zone that forces you to avoid three slowly-moving enemies as a mysterious timer in the background counts down. The only way out is to avoid the enemies until the counter reaches 0, or die. At first, I thought it was a decelerated clock, but I recently discovered that it's actually counting jumps. So, you have to jump fifty straight times without dying in order to get out of this room. Once you do, you get to survive, but you lose all your coins. So, uh, don't be greedy, kids?
It's the stupidest thing in the world, but like I said, I find it incredibly amusing, which is enough for me to give it a middle-of-the-road score. Otherwise, this would've been an easy 2/10.
Overall rating:
3/5
Originally released for arcades in 1985,
TwinBee is a vertically-scrolling Konami shmup that was ported to the Famicom in 1986. Curiously, the game was never actually ported to the NES, making the Nintendo Switch version the first time it's ever been officially playable outside of Japan. You may have been able to play a modern version of it on the 3DS, or something, but this is the first time the 8-bit Famicom game has been playable over here.
Unfortunately, that's the most interesting thing about it. In terms of gameplay, it's pretty basic and self-explanatory as far as shoot-'em-ups go. It just has a cutesy cartoon theme, whereas the vastly superior
Gradius has a cool sci-fi theme and horizontal flying, which I've always preferred. It's decent, but it's not really doing too much for me.
The most exciting thing about having this game available on the service, however, is that it opens the door for other unreleased Famicom games to finally get their due localizations, each one about 30 years behind schedule. I wanna see the original
Fire Emblem game,
Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, to get a translation after all these years. That would be amazing.
Overall rating:
3/5
This is one of those games that should've been available on the service from day fucking one. It's a bit late, but it's very nice to finally have it now.
To this day, it's still one of the premiere titles for the NES, and everyone knows it. With immersive and satisfying gameplay and an incredible soundtrack, which takes full advantage of the system's limitations to create a deeply sinister and atmospheric sound that's unlike anything I've ever heard before. It seriously might just be the coolest and most unique soundtrack out of all NES games. The
Alien-inspired story and darker tone helped make this game feel special when compared to other Nintendo flagships, and to this day, it's considered one of Nintendo's creepier and more mature franchises.
Oh, yeah, and the whole woah-Samus-is-a-girl thing was pretty groundbreaking at the time, too. We take it for granted today, but it's important to remember that female heroes weren't so common in games, and though Samus may not have been the first, she was definitely one of the earliest to star in a big epic game like this, even if her gender was kept a secret until you finally beat the game. I don't know if people at the time would've scoffed at the idea had they known Samus was female from the start, but the fact that it's treated as a "plot twist" of sorts brings home the idea that it doesn't actually matter what Samus is. Guy or girl, she still kicks ass, and that's what makes her so cool.
The game is pretty far from perfect, though. Playing it back once more has shown me its age in some dishearteningly unpleasant ways. For one thing, my favorite game of all time,
Super Metroid, eclipses this game in absolutely every single way. That game has spoiled me to the point where my enjoyment of the original title is somewhat limited. For one thing, there is no quick and easy way to refill your energy tanks—they all have to be refilled manually by grinding enemies, and once you've collected more than two tanks, it can be a real pain trying to get them all filled back up again. That's my biggest issue by far. The other is having to learn important techniques, such as bomb jumping, but then making it extremely fucking difficult to do. It's been years and years, and I still have no fucking idea how to consistently bomb jump in this game. The rhythm is extremely erratic and makes no sense, making it rather tedious to perform.
Oh, and all the original game's passwords seem to have been overwritten, too. You used to be able to input a code called "JUSTIN BAILEY" to start a game where Samus wears a pink leotard instead of her power suit, on top of having most power-ups, but that code doesn't seem to work anymore. Nor do any of the others I can name from the top of my head, which is kind of a shame.NEVER MIND, THEY STILL WORK FINE, I'M JUST STUPID
Most people only know this outfit from the password, but it can also be obtained legitimately by beating the game in less than two hours (or something like that).
Beyond these hang-ups, though, I wouldn't stop you at all from trying this one out. By all means, please check it out, it's an all-time classic—just know that
Super Metroid is, more or less, everything this game is... but so,
so much more. At the very least, play the original title out of respect. It's a pretty good time.
Overall rating:
5/5
Show Posts
