#112 - California Games

This cover contains all the evil wrought in the 80s. It must be destroyed.

When sidewalks fight back...


Before Rare blew our collective gaming minds in 1994 with the graphical powerhouse Donkey Kong Country, they blew their collective programming chunks in 1989 with the underwhelming, oft hilarious California Games. Apparently hackysack, surfing, BMX bikes, skateboarding and other Xtreme sports were only available in California in the late 80s; at least that's what the British-based Rare implies with this particular gray cartridge's titular title. Plus, it does sound better than Florida Games or Wyoming Games or some other crap. Whatever you call California Games, though, this game is crap; in the 80s, in 2011, and forevermore.

I will rate each game in order of least to most crappiness because I can:

Foot Bag is probably the least crappiest game, if only because I was so amused at seeing virtual hackysack in a NES game. Control an androgynous young something and do tricks and twirls with your sack for as many points as possible. I have also never heard hackysack called “Foot Bag,” which, to be honest, offends me.

Flying Disk would be interesting if it went anywhere. Control your speed and and your angle and let your frisbee rip. Must Rare be so stuffy? “Yes, let's go out for a jolly good game of golf flying disk, mates!”

Surfing is serene and there's not much to really say about it. Get on top of the wave and stay there. I think sharks come along sometimes, but once you get on the wave, you don't need to worry about anything. Bland, useless, etc.

BMX started off ok. You're basically pedaling along a track, avoiding obstacles and trying to do tricks. Problem is, the BMXer is only capable of doing one of the aforementioned. Try to do both and you will fall down, while text at the bottom of the screen insults your abilities with quips like “Bummer!” and “Way to biff!”

I probably should have included Skating lower on this list because it features my favorite “biffing” animation. When the young girl on rollerskates fails to jump over a crack in the sidewalk, her whole body and face smack down hard onto the pavement. I'm pretty sure more time was spent making that animation then this entire game. Other than that, Skating is no more Californian than the rest, and I'm not sure what that means.

Last but not least, the crème de la suck, the Half Pipe. Nowhere at any time could this ever be considered fun by anyone. The controls are nigh impossible to figure out. Your character will continue to fall and slide across the halfpipe like a war-torn crash dummy.

The real reason to seek this game out is if you're an insane Nintendo collector who happens to have two multi-taps, eight controllers, and lots of booze for the people you want to play California Games with you. Yes, up to eight people can play this game. Considering the time period in which this was released, it's pretty ambitious, though no parent in their right mind would have blown hundreds of dollars for California Game parties back in the late 80s. This game has a literal replay value of nil. You can trust me on that because calculating the sum of “nil” takes awhile. Dude!

F

Statistics for the letter "B"

The letter "B" was where I learned to confront my gaming demons head on and take the worst games with a smile and a nod. A million baseball games in a row? No problem! The Blues Brothers? Why not! A Boy and his Blob... I'm confused, but carefree! Yes, the letter "B" was where this quest really started to hit its stride. Here are some meaningless, but interesting statistics:

The letter grade awarded the most: B – how appropriate!

The letter grade awarded the least: A – only five times

# of times an "F" was given: 11- only one off from the amount of D's given

# of baseball games played: 12 – most of which were strangely good

# of fishing games played: 2, although I'm sure there's plenty more to come!

# of games that contain the word "battle": 7

# of games played that begin with the letter "B": 67!

# of times I questioned the sanity of myself and of the developers of these games: 55

Some choice reviews to pique your interest: Bandai Golf: Challenge Pebble Beach, Barbie, Beetlejuice, Battle City, Battle Tank, Bible Adventures, and, oh yes, Bubble Bath Babes

My journey with the letter "C" continues ever onward!

#111 - Caesar's Palace

 She had man hands...

Not pictured: thousands of ravenous senior citizens.

 Here's a confession: I've never been to Las Vegas. Here's another confession: I don't really care. Sure, I'm as big a fan of neon lights as anyone and I've flown over it several times during the night, and yeah, it looks pretty boss! The thought of blowing through a bunch of money in an hour doesn't really set my loins on fire with excitement, though. Even if you stick to the dollar slot-machines (which you won't because you're in Vegas), you still have to think of food, shelter, and if you're not gambling, drinks. Also, what if you win a bunch of money and the casino owners hire Celine Dion to kill you while you sleep? What then?! YOUR HEART WON'T GO ON, I CAN TELL YOU THAT!!!

With Caesar's Palace for NES, the virtual gambling world is your oyster. No need to worry about running out of money, anorexic hit-women, or even fun! Caesar's Palace accurately recreates, in loving 8-bit, what it may or may not mean to be in a casino titled Caesar's Palace. The title screen flashes and a large building surrounded by glowing blue fountains appears. You know you're in for some Siegfried and Roy action now! Continue on and a woman gives you a thousand dollars in chips before scooting you out to the casino. You have your pick of several games, many of which aren't that fun: try a slot machine priced anywhere between one and five hundred dollars, spin the wheel of fortune or play roulette, hit up some video poker or blackjack, and most importantly, hit up the men's or women's restroom. For the latter, the game really doesn't discriminate. It's up to you to not be a dirtbag!

The way you wander around the casino floor is clunky. Instead of controlling an actual person (in 2011, a character creator would be included for this game), you control a cursor and “click” on the different areas where you want to go with the 'A' button. Once you get into a game, though, the cursor works out well. The problem is, four out of the five games are pretty boring and blackjack already received its own game which I reviewed some time last Month. I feel like my question with that game is the same with this one: why would you gamble virtual money if you can go waste your life savings down the road at an Indian casino? Blackjack at least has some tension (am I gonna get 21???!!@@!#@$@) but the rest of the games – especially the slot machines and roulette – are as banal as it comes. I can see why senior citizens go buckwild for days at casinos. I say, I'll pretend my arm is a slot machine, and you can just keep feeding me dollars if you want to waste your money.

Once again, Nintendo has authorized a game that may or may not teach kids how to be old cranky curmudgeons, enjoy buffets, and blow their money accordingly. I'm not sure what it is with the fine folks in Japan and gambling games. Are they just trying to subversively undermine us as revenge for World War II? In the late 80s and early 90s, it was pretty obvious that they had conquered the electronics market with their affordably priced, but still well-built devices. Isn't that enough, Japan? Do you need to take away our children from us too?!

D-

#110 - Cabal

You're the best... AROUND! NOTHING'S EVER GONNA BRING YOU DOWN!

The army men never knew what was coming.


I've always wondered what war would be like if governments looked to movie producers and video game developers for inspiration. “General, we have an entire army at our disposal, but we really only need... one man.” If that isn't the tag line for Cabal, it certainly should be. Now for some real talk: besides sounding like a type of exotic underarm deodorant intended to lure unsuspecting girls into goofy men's beds, a “cabal” is defined as a “conspiratorial group of plotters and intriguers,” which totally goes against what this game stands for. If Rare had the decency to name a game “Cabal,” they should at least look up the definition of the word first.

Then again, I doubt much thought or effort went into this game. From what I understand, during the NES days, Rare was cranking out about a game a month, which is both impressive and terrifying. The results are mixed, surprisingly. One would expect a level of LJN quality for all of the games, considering their quick production. As far as Cabal is concerned, it's a fairly average run-and-gun action game that easily feels like it could have been conceived, produced, and shipped within a month. Your whole purpose is to take on the entire military of some foreign country – probably South American or Middle Eastern, given the game's release date of 1990 – and leave no prisoners. You're equipped with guns, grenades, and more guns to get the job done.

What makes the game different than, say, Contra, is the perspective. Instead of a side-scroller, you're attacking the enemy from a third-person perspective. In other words, your protagonist is in the foreground, and the enemies come to do damage from the background. It's a cool idea, but it isn't executed well. The enemies come at you like you're Arnold, Sly, and Van Damme combined, and all you have to hide from their onslaught of bullets and Molotov cocktails is a piddly little wall. The wall breaks down over time, and eventually, you're in the fray without any place to hide. The first couple levels aren't so bad, but the game ramps up the difficulty quicker than you can say “snot rocket.” It also doesn't help that your shooting cursor is always a couple steps behind you. You control your guy's movement with the D-pad, but you also control the cursor this way, and as a result, the cursor lags which can result in abundant deaths and frustration for you. The enemy bar at the bottom of the screen is the only way you know if you're doing damage. Obviously, the bigger enemies you destroy – tanks, helicopters, buildings, etc – the more life you take off.

The game is pretty generous with five lives and three continues, but there's no password system to move further in the game. This would be ok if the game seemed to take actual skill to beat – again, if it were like Contra. Sadly, it feels like just a random mishmash of decent ideas that don't congeal well into an actual game, regardless of if it's a mindless shooter or an action-RPG (which is a genre that didn't technically exist yet, unless you count Zelda, but the term hadn't been coined then, so it's hard to sa-).

C-

#109 - BurgerTime

Who's the witch doctor that authorized such madness?

For hot dogs and egg yolks with legs, those buggers can move fast.


I'm pretty sure that "Ratatouille" was loosely based upon BurgerTime, and I believe I can prove it through a series of analogies. "In Ratatouille," a mouse gets stranded in Paris and sneaks his way to the apartment of a budding young chef. All the mouse wants to do is cook and be a part of the food scene. Coincidence? FATE? I THINK YES!!! The mouse essentially teaches the young chef how to cook awesome, pretentious food, win over the toughest food critic in Paris, and yes, get the girl. It was one of the highest rated movies of 2006, but I really didn't see what all the fuss was about. It was cute and clever at moments, but it tried to push for realism in a way that didn't suit the premise of the movie.

In BurgerTime, you don't have a rat to help your own endeavors, but that's ok because you're constructing burgers as large as some states, not disgusting French food. You play a young, budding chef whose only goal in life is to make burgers. A strange goal, perhaps, but not that surprising, given the bulbous gut that the chef possesses. Pieces of the burger – bun, meat, lettuce, condiments, etc. - are trapped on various levels of the stage, which you access via ladder. To make matters worse, you have to run across the pieces completely to make them fall to the next level. At the bottom of the stage, your burger awaits. The only thing that stands in your way of making the world's largest, most mouth-watering burgers is other food stuffs: running hot dogs, little egg-halfs, and other miscellaneous nonsense (MUCH LIKE IN RATATOUILLE WHEN THE CHEF WAS ACTUALLY BATTLING FOOD WITH A SWORD [that may not have happened, but it would have livened up the movie a little bit]). In Burgertime, your only defense mechanism against the evil food is some salt (I wasn't aware hot-dogs were composed of slug-like properties), but you only get five dashes throughout the whole game. Bonus items appear here and there and they give you extra salt, but it still seems like a limited amount. Hey, I don't have high blood pressure. I want some salt, dangit!

For a game that inspired a Pixar movie, I had a difficult, non-crowd-pleasing time with it. The enemies are belligerent and numerous. Your best bet in getting through each level is to get to the top of the stage, run across the top half of the bun, and pray that the pieces that fall will hit some of the enemies. This is the only way to get rid of them completely, and really, the only strategy one can offer in this port. Despite the difficulty, the game is strangely addicting as only arcade games from the early 80s can be: a ridiculous concept coupled with high difficulty makes for good replay value.

Ok, so my "Ratatouille"/BurgerTime comparisons fell a little flat. Nevertheless, I feel like BurgerTime should be the next video game adapted into a Hollywood motion picture. One could flesh out the story by having the chef be seduced by one of the hot dogs, then trapped in one of his own large pieces of lettuce, before ending with a thirty-minute action sequence where he rides a large hamburger bun down a steep mountain slathered with ketchup and mustard, salting his foes this way and that. The salt has explosive properties, of course, and his foes will disintegrate into meaty chunks of nothingness. It will be rated PG-13 to appeal to the teenyboppers and add to its box office gross.

C+

#108 - Burai Fighter

 Covers can lie, but this one doesn't. This game is solid.

  
Holy smokes, this game is hard.


So the name Burai Fighter sounds retarded. I have been known to judge in haste, though, so I discovered, through the power of Google, that the word “burai” means “villain” or “villainy.” Replace “Burai” with “Villain/y” and you have “Villainy Fighter,” which sounds much, much worse. Burai it is, then! For such a silly, misguided name, Burai Fighter is a solid little schmup. It doesn't really break ground in the genre, but it does give me pleasure to die repeatedly in my many attempts to beat its stages.

You play Chuck Thunderstone, retired mercenary for hire. You've been called out of retirement for one last space run. Seems some “villains” have been running amok in space and you're the only one who can “fight” them; floating stingwrays and such – the real baddies of the galaxy. Your task, which you can and will accept, is to destroy everything you can whilst in space. None of the above might be the actual story, but I did summarize the gist of the game. Instead of piloting a spaceship, you are simply a floating body in space with a gun. If you see something that moves, shoot and destroy. There are the standard weapon upgrades to prevent you from getting bored with your weaponry, but apart from that, this is standard stuff.

The whole concept of a man floating in space and shooting works better than it might sound because Senor Thunderstone can turn in eight different directions. That's right: instead of simply being able to shoot to the right in a straight line, you can shoot up, down, left, right, and diagonally. When I first realized this, I was stunned. Surely an NES shooter couldn't be this ahead of its time! The controls work well, although they take some getting used to. Strangely, for a schmup, there aren't a lot of enemies, but that works to your advantage. Since you, as a person in space, are a larger sprite than most ship sprites in other games, it is easier to navigate around the enemies and their blue projectiles they spew at you. Also, unlike most schmups, you can touch the foundations of the level and not die. For example, if you hit a wall in the level, your man will not explode into a million pieces; only enemies can do damage. Beware: your size is a hindrance when you're fighting bosses. There's about a zero percent margin of error you can make in your movements, so deaths will come quickly and without mercy.

Had Burai Fighter been able to distinguish itself more from some of the other schmups of the day (R-Type, Raiden, Life Force, etc), it could have become a solid little franchise. Unfortunately, compared to a lot of other schmups, it lacks any real graphical prowess or a distinguishing feature to call its own. If you're a schmup fan, though, don't write it off. Underrated and undiscovered gems are always a blessing to find in this slowly disappearing genre.

B

#107 - Bump 'N' Jump

I'm not sure you would bump cars with your girlfriend hanging out the side, but hey, the 80s were a crazy time!

I'm a little concerned that the red car isn't jumping yet...

 Everyone knows the Burnout series, and if you don't, I highly recommend it. It's a racing game where the goal is to crash into as many of your opponents as possible. The more cars you destroy, the more points you get. Even if you're not a fan of racing games, some element of Burnout should charm your heart with its wanton acts of destruction. The concept of Burnout – crashing into cars to destroy them – is nothing new, certainly; I remember crashing around back in the N64 days, with the awful port of Cruisin' USA. Burnout certainly perfected the art of virtual crashing in the PS2 generation, though, a feat that has yet to be matched in this current-gen. Without having done any extra research, I can honestly say that Bump 'N' Jump is probably the closest to a spiritual successor that Burnout has on the NES: it's relatively fast for eight-bit standards, it's simple, arcadey fun that anyone can pick up and play, and you bash the crap out of your opponents.

There is a story here – save your girlfriend or something – but let's face it: getting your girlfriend back is just the icing on the awesome cake of crashed cars in your wake. Drive around, get your speed up as fast as you can go, destroy as many cars as you can to rack up the points, and jump over obstacles, like bridges or long stretches of water. Lose any one of those elements and the game would be less than it is, but the combination of all of them is wonderful. Beware: the cars will do all they can to make you crash into the side of the stage. There are different styles of cars, as well, but only the tank (for obvious reasons) is immovable. Avoid him and the random blocks of green and red on the road, and you will conquer this game.

Well, conquer is a strong word, perhaps. This game is pretty bumpin' hard. You only get three lives, no continues. There's a somewhat complicated password you can input using both NES controllers that will allow you to continue from where you last left off, but I didn't have the opportunity to try it out. Besides having no continues, the third level's roads grow more narrow from time to time, allowing the dad-blasted CPU to bump you into oblivion. It only gets harder from there, but considering it's a fairly short port of an arcade game, the difficulty is welcome.

After smothering my face in two craptacular Bugs Bunny games, it's a warm and welcome respite to play something as simple and fun as Bump 'N' Jump. Since I really have nothing else to say about this game, I'm gonna “get real” for a moment, if I may: I'm currently on a cross-country trip around America for reasons you can find here, BUT that doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing these reviews. It may mean, however, that they won't be as funny and fancy-free as before (assuming that you find them good, of course). Basically, when I write out of my comfort zone, I don't write as well. Since these reviews are hastily thrown together as it is, that means the reviews in the next two months may be chaotic and messy and crazy. But hey, that's life. In the meantime, play Bump 'N' Jump because it may lower your blood pressure.

B-

#106 - Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle

You see how the Seal of Quality is tilted, like it's trying to run away? Yeah, it's a sign.

Uh... yeah.

 Just so you know, when you turn on the game, the title card states that this isn't just Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle. This is The Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle, just so you know Bugs ain't frontin'. Apparently, there are a lot of Bugs imitators out there running around, setting up their own crazy castles made of sand. Rest assured, Bugs has built his castle out of rock and it's not going anywhere. From what I understand, in 1989, Bugs knew his 50th Birthday Blowout would be fast approaching in two years, and he wanted to build a castle where his friends could throw a party for him because he's just that vain. The resulting castle is a nightmare, and though it still stands within the confines of a gray NES catridge, it should be avoided at all costs.

I wish more NES games came with warning labels: “Warning! This game will bore you to tears, when it's not sucking the life out of you with its cheapness!” Yes, you play as Bugs Bunny, and you traverse through sixty levels of his castle in an attempt to resuce all of his carrots. Various Looney Tunes thugs show up along the way (Wile E., Yosemite, Sylvester, etc) and run around maniacally because they can. If you touch them, you die. No problem, you say? Just jump over them, you say? Hah! The game features no such thing as a jump button, and as far as I can tell, it's for one reason only: if Bugs could jump, there would be no challenge to the game. You could jump over every enemy in your mad quest to get the carrots and call it good. Something's wrong with your game if you have to take a normal feature of any NES action game – like jumping – and take it away in order to add so-called depth.

The level layouts are abominable, especially as you progress. Go up stairs, collect a carrot, go down stairs, go across the screen, collect a carrot. Oh! Watch out for Sylvester, run away! Go back up stairs, wait until Sylvester follows you up, then jump off the side and go back to the other side of the level. There, now that you've read that, you don't need to play the game. Simple as pie. The later levels are even worse because, instead of two enemies, you'll have four or five coming after you. The levels don't get bigger to accommodate for the extra enemies, either, they stay about the same size. It's true, the game gives you items like bank safes and crates to drop on the heads of passing enemies, but it's rare for you to actually land them.

Two things that disturb me a little bit about Crazy Castle: a lot of people have fond memories of this game. If you go onto GameFAQS, there are no user reviews that score this game less than a 6, and in fact, many give the game a score as high as 9. If they were to play the game today, I'd hope they would smash their rose-colored lenses on the ground, rip their clothes, and wail. Second, the Crazy Castle series continued on Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance, to the extent that there are actually four more Crazy Castle games. Four! Does anyone really want to collect thousands of carrots and avoid Yosemite Sam through hundreds of levels? Ugh, it disturbs the soul to think that these games were profitable. There's absolutely no substance to them whatsoever.

F

#105 - Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout

SPOILER: Bugs doesn't actually wear a tux in the game.

Once you collect a carrot, it morphs into the Warner Bros. logo.


I remember when Bugs Bunny and his friends formerly known as the Looney Tunes were cool. They shot each other, blew each other up, smoked cigars, cultivated racial stereotypes, dressed in drag. Being born in the mid-80's, I caught the tail end of their politically incorrect hijinx and it tickled every section of my funny bone. I know Bugs and co. are still around now, but their antics are muted, tamer. It's true, cartoons don't have to be crass and violent to be worth our time, but it helps... ah yes, the review! I tend to trap myself on memory lane when I begin one of these things. You see, for me, the first and the last paragraph are always the hardest because I have to come up with some cockamamie way to tie the whole review together, and sometimes (all the time?) it's just easier for me to unload some random thoughts and gibberish that's mildly associated with the subject I'm writing about. The more you know!!!

In one of the greater stories told on the NES, Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout - or Bx4, as it will be called henceforth - has Bugs attempting to reach his fiftieth birthday ceremony thrown by some of his biggest fans. Unfortunately, all of his fellow Looney Tunes feel neglected, hurt, and angry that they weren't invited and are attempting to sabotage Bugs on his way to the party. One would think this would involve traps, guns, bombs, rockets, and other well-laid plans, but no. It involves exploding alarm clocks, walking mallets, juice boxes, among other strangely designed enemies; Kemco was going for a more avant-garde Looney Tunes game, apparently. The enemies, while obscure and confusing, don't do much to hurt you. It's usually by mistake when Bugs gets hit. The bosses are, of course, the other Looney Tunes, but their attempts to stop Bugs are poor at best. Why does Tweety think that throwing a tomato at Bugs will stop him dead in his path? Bugs has a mallet and Tweety is a dumpy little bird, easily squashed by mallets and other blunt instruments. All this to say, this game is incredibly easy.

Not only is the game a cinch, there really isn't a goal, per say, other than to collect obscene amounts of carrots. At the end of each level, you play a bonus game to get extra lives, and the amount of times you play are based on how many carrots you collect; other than that, the carrots serve no purpose. Like all early platformers, the game is really trying to emulate Mario - collect carrots instead of coins, destroy goofy lookin' enemies, go down misshapen block chunks that resemble pipes - but what made Mario stand out was the level design. Here, the environments are wide open and boring. While there are some secret areas scattered about, they usually just revolve around getting more carrots. The game's repetitive and can be boring, BUT!... for some reason, I found that my quest to collect all the carrots I could drove me further into the game than necessary. Perhaps I, like Bugs, had become addicted to what rabbit scholars call "orange crack."

Once you play through the game, eating and collecting all the carrots you can stomach, there's really no reason to revisit it. The levels are bland and uncreative, the boss battles are uninspired, and the game can be beaten in a couple of hours. Bx4 came out a mere five months after the debut of Super Mario Bros. 3 and it shows, although the latter could crush the former with the mere tap of a Kuribo Shoe. Poor Bugs Bunny: if this game was worse, we could chalk it up to another cartoon license lost to the winds of greedy developers. Instead, it's a merely average game riding on the coattails of a better game. Bugs could have gotten a worse present for his fiftieth birthday, but this is hardly a worthy homage to one of the great cartoon characters of all time. Sad, that.

C

#104 - Bucky O' Hare

I wouldn't buy the game based on this cover, but trust me, it's awesome!

What you should take away from this image is that the game ain't frontin'. It's tough.


I'm pretty sure I watched every early 90's cartoon back when I was a child and judged them all with an eagle eye. I definitely weeded out "Bucky O' Hare" as something that did not interest me. The concept of an interstellar space rabbit and his justice team against a band of toad ruffians (the enemies should have been tortoises - GET IT?! THE TORTOISES AGAINST THE HARES IN A RACE AGAINST TIME!) was played out new-jack horse crap. Give me "Rocko's Modern Life" or "Inspector Gadget" any day of the week! Nevertheless, Konami, nimble developers that they are, have made a fantastic platformer out of said crappy license.

Yes, it's simple run, jump, and shoot action, but with enough variety to make your head sprout rabbit ears! First, in one of many Mega Man references, the game gives you a choice between levels in the form of planets. Each planet contains a different number of "acts" and, once you defeat the boss, you acquire one of Bucky's crew and all of them have their own useful abilities. Blinky the robot blasts through blocks made of ice and stone, Deadeye can scale walls, Jenny has a homing bomb, etc. Their specific attributes help you get through the ridonkulously hard levels to follow. Seriously, these levels are controller-rattling tough and you better sing praises be for the unlimited continues that Konami gives you. They also have a password system, for those who have been worn out by the toad menace and just need to set the controller down for a spell.

In traditional platforming fashion, there is a traditional green planet, a fire planet, an ice planet, etc, but that ain't all folks. The first four levels seem to shoot by in a breeze, albeit a breeze designed to rip your earmuffs off your head. As you progress, though, more levels keep coming... then more... and more. The game won't end and it just keeps getting harder. For a game based on a children's cartoon, Konami really pulled out all the stops with the difficulty. Much like Mega Man, though, it's manageable difficulty that requires you to really learn each and every character in and out in order to progress. It's difficulty that makes you want to keep going, which is an attribute found in only the finest of NES platformers.

I don't know what it is about the misadventures of Bucky O' Hare for my Nintendo Entertainment System, but I couldn't put it down, even though I kept dying. Each of the levels within the respective planets had enough challenges and variety in the layouts to keep me going. The references to other classic NES games are awesome, as well: the aforementioned Mega Man, of course, but also Konami's own line of classics, like certain weapons from Contra and an homage to the level in Turtles 2 when you're on the boogie boards. Also, the toad enemies look like squattier versions of the Battletoads. Radical! If it's sadistic platforming action you crave, but you've Megaed all the Men and Ninjaed every Gaiden you can think of, give Bucky O Hare a whirl. It will toast your eyeballs.

A-

#103 - Bubble Bobble Part 2

Yup, that just about sums it up.

The story of Bub and Bob actually takes place in ancient Greece

 Back in the Eighties and Nineties, the concept of a sequel to a piece of entertainment – whether it be book, movie, or game – was really solidifying into something marketable and profitable. Case in point: all the Eighties horror movies or early successful Nintendo games. Thanks to these previous decades, in the Aughts and the Tens, sequels are now expected from any movie, game, or book that turns a profit; whereas once a sequel was something hoped for, now they are shoved down our throat repeatedly ad nauseum. Bubble Bobble Part 2 is a curious piece of gaming. For one thing, it was released five years after the original near the tail end of the NES' lifespan, basically relegating it to a cult classic. For another thing, it's called Bubble Bobble “Part 2,” instead of simply Bubble Bobble 2. This makes me wonder whether it was supposed to be a companion piece to the first game, and simply wasn't released until later in America. Or if Taito simply held the Bubble Bobble franchise to loftier standards, deciding that a snooty “Part 2” was more befitting. Who can tell and, in the end, who really cares. Bubble Bobble Part 2 is the exact same game with a fresh coat of paint.

I suppose if you pick up the sequel to a simple game like Bubble Bobble, you're not looking for ingenious new game design with mind-bending levels and skull-crushing enemies. You want to blow some cutesy enemies into bubbles and pop them, possibly with a friend, and more power to you. Some variety in the gameplay might be nice, though. The changes I could discern were the unfortunate and confounding loss of the password function, and the addition of bosses and mid-bosses every few levels. The bosses seemed like a nice touch, until I realized that there's no technique or strategy in destroying them. Simply blow an insane amount of bubbles at their weak points and they die. Everything else remains the same, which is great if you have an extra person by your side willing to bobble while you bubble, but if not, prepare to be bored.

Like most games released later in the NES' lifespan, Bubble Bobble Part 2 looks pretty good. It's fun, bright, and colorful, and Bub and Bob are a lot easier to control than the first game. Instead of simple black backgrounds on top of pixelated goofy/clever level designs, the backgrounds are bright and contain trees and clouds and all sorts of fancy free images. The stages all seem to have themes, i.e. the first ten stages have a woodsy theme, with the levels constructed out of branches. The themes switch the farther you progress – level 11 had a “fall colors” motif – and I think, as you descend down to the “Cave of Monsters,” things get darker. I never found out because I wasn't about to waste hours of my life blowing and popping only to get a bad ending, because I'm not popular enough to take on the game with a friend.

Once again, as a solo gamer, I can't recommend these games. They're tedious and repetitive and the only real joy I get from playing them is wondering how quickly I'll beat the next level. I can't fault the overall game, though. For what it is, it's well-constructed, and it's meant to be played with two people. A time trial would have given this game an extra injection of beef – see how fast you can beat the whole game or just various levels, compare scores with your friends, etc. - but that would have required more effort on Taito's part, and in 1993, there was no point in exerting extra effort for a game about to be released on a half-dead system. Oh Bubble Bobble Part 2, you so crazy!

C

#102 - Bubble Bobble

"Two hungry Dino-Mights"?! How retarded do we think America's children are?

Space Invaders!!!


These days, the mildly cute dinosaurs Bub and Bob are more known for their legendary, outdated puzzler series, Bust-a-Move (seriously people, stop buying those games - the formula hasn't changed for fifteen years!). But before they turned bubble-loaded crankshafts with the greatest of care, they were spewing out bubbles, bobbles, odkins, and bodkins onto enemies in the "Bubble Bobble" series. Truth be told, this is another one of those "classic," always mentioned NES games that I never spent much time with, so I was glad to finally sit down and play it in full. My feelings are definitely mixed. On one hand, I believe it's probably one of the best co-op experiences on the NES. Going solo, as I did, I'm decidedly less enthused about its repetitive gameplay.

The main bad guy's name is Super Drunk (ya rly), which leads me to believe that the Taito developers were having a wild night out when they came up with the concept for Bubble Bobble. The game makes a lot more sense if you think of it as some random drunken Japanese idea. The goal is to successfully trap the enemies of each stage in bubbles, pop them, collect their remains in the form of vegetables, and move on to the next round. Easy enough, but there are over 100 levels, and if you beat those, Super Bubble Mode gets unlocked and you have to go through 100 more levels. I will give Taito this: I'm pretty sure this is the first NES game I've come across that has multiple endings. Go through the game solo and you receive one of two bad endings. The only way to get the "true" good endings is to go through all two hundred levels with a friend. Yes, this game has replay value up the bub, but how much bobbling can one person stand?

For me and mine, I could only bobble my way through twenty levels. Yes, the levels grew harder as I went on, but I didn't stop due to difficulty; the game features a handy-dandy continue option and password system, which is definitely necessary if you want to go deeper into the abyss. I just grew bored by putting enemies into bubbles level after level. It's true, the level and enemy designs were cute (some level designs even allude to old Taito games, like Space Invaders) but it wasn't enough to make me want to continue playing. Had I another person, I believe the game would have been a lot more fun. The levels are just big enough and include just enough enemies, that throwing another dinosaur into the mix would be chaotic fun - especially since you can bubble your teammate.

Alright, yes, it's obvious the game was made for co-op. Otherwise, Taito wouldn't have made the good ending available solely for two brave warriors trudging through two-hundred levels of bubble paste and smeared vegetable carcasses. But if this is the case, I'm going to go out on a limb and say they shouldn't have even added a one-player mode. Then again, in 1988, one couldn't get better replay value for their money. Two-hundred levels?! Even if one-hundred are just harder repeats, that's good stuff. Argh, I don't know. I'm conflicted and tired. The game's boring, but it's probably really awesome if I play the way drunken Taito developers want me to. BAM!

B