#267 - Gradius

Not at all inspired by Star Wars. I mean, c'mon, would George Lucas include anything as silly as an Easter Island head in his movies?...

Getting some lean back, listening to Steely Dan. Easter Island, everything's a cool groove, baby.

Let's be honest: when one thinks of Gradius, what you're really thinking of are Easter Island heads that spit out blue raspberry candies at you. Don't deny it! I love that Konami took a very mysterious stone statue and turned it into hordes of enemies in an otherwise innocuous shooter. I won't be so bold as to say Easter Island heads are the only thing worth enjoying in the game. In fact, I quite like the simplistic upgrade-or-don't shooter contained here. All that's required is to be on your toes at all times. Outside of the first level which is quite reasonable, the remaining six levels will turn your ship into so much scrap metal if you let them. Honestly, even the upgrades like missiles, lasers, and a shield (located at the bottom of the screen and accessed through collecting red orbs dropped by enemies) don't help much, unless you have all of themequipped at one time. I'm not sure the latter is possible without a code, but either way, I highly recommend it. I don't think you can make it through the game without them, to be honest, and therein lies my one real frustration with the game. Should you die anywhere past level 2, you may as well restart the entire game. The onslaught of enemies and projectiles that will face you and the vulnerability of your ship after a sudden death can not be over-emphasized. Needless to say, the game is ridiculously hard. It's 3 lives, no continues, buddy, so enjoy those Easter Island heads while you can. This is space, not Halo.

B-

#266 - Gotcha! - The Sport!

   I enlarged this cover so you could all see the maximum homoerotic overtones.

Paintball Wars were about as gangster as the late Eighties got, aside from Public Enemy, of course.

With a name like Gotcha!and a cover that reeks of failed hopes and dreams, I expected little to nothing from this game. A bunch of grown men playing a hybrid of capture-the-flag and paintball in the woods? I would love to do this in real life, but it sounds like it would be an awful, potentially hilarious gaming mess. Well, shock the monkey: despite its brevity and the relative ease with which the game is completed, Gotcha! stands out from the other Zapper games by offering you more control. Instead of automatically scrolling levels, you must manually scroll the level along with the D-pad, while shooting guys that pop out of random places along the way. It's surprising what a large difference this makes. The game gives you complete control to go back and forth across the level as you see fit. Granted, you're going to want to move forward as quickly as possible, due to the time limit. The whole goal is to capture the other team's flag, then move back to the other side of the screen before time runs out. One can get bogged down in shooting every person that runs on screen, so it's better to just shoot the guys who aim their weapons at you or guys who carry ammo. Unfortunately, there are only three levels – a forest level, a city level, and a snow level – and while the levels repeat, it still feels like the game is over far too fast. There are three difficulty levels, but even the hardest difficulty is only mildly challenging. If Gotcha!would have accelerated the difficulty across each level, added at least seven more stages, and thrown a couple bosses in the mix, this could be one of the quintessential Zapper games. The fun that's had in Gotcha! is only eclipsed by the potential that was lost. Shame.

B-

#265 - The Goonies II

                                             Too... much... Sunkist... flavor!!!

                  There's not a lot going on in this scene or in any scene, really. 

 When I was a child, seeing The Goonies II at my local Blockbuster without The Goonies I by its side never made much sense. I knew there was an original Goonies arcade game. I had played it at Pizza Hut on one of those sit-down arcades, dag nab it! Strangely, Konami never ported that to the NES (only the Famicom), instead choosing to make a sequel and let the past sort itself out or something. So how is The Goonies II as written by Konami and not Spielberg? Let's explore.

I know you're all dying to hear a retro gamer's take on a retro movie, like "The Goonies." RIGHT? Well, here it is: it's fun and goofy. I have no special ties to it, nor do I rewatch it every year in my cult movie group (note: I don't actually have a cult movie group because I'm too concerned they'll have John Waters' marathons). I don't know if it's earned its "classic" status, though. It's a better-than-average 80s movie and I'll just leave it at that before Chunk punches me.

The Goonies II is pretty much exactly like its predecessor: a map-based puzzle game that requires you to collect items in one part of the map, and use them in other parts. It's really that tedious! I wouldn't have a problem with non-linear gameplay, but this game is hugeand warp points are rampant. I never really knew where I was after I went in one. I can see it now: the hordes of poor children making their own maps in 1987 (pre-Nintendo Power) desperately wanting a game based on their precious Goonies to not be so blah. Non-linear frustration aside, the game is really boring. Who likes flinging yo-yos into spiders and hired goons? Climb that ladder, little Billy, but make sure you climb reaaaallllyyyy slllloooooowwwww. There are doors everywhere. Some of them contain the aforementioned warp points, others contain items useless and otherwise. I really wish the game would have played like a standard point-and-click adventure, as there's more promise in these short segments than the rest of the side-scrolling malarkey. Then again, I don't really care.

D-

                                           

#264 - Golgo 13 - Top Secret Episode

Just as only you are able to prevent forest fires, only you can help Golgo save the world. You've got a lot on your plate, I'd say.

Before embarking on his top-secret mission, Golgo-13 decides to buy a fresh purple suit and strut about town for one last night of drinks, dames, and death.

"Top Secret Episode," eh? How top secret can it be when it's the only episode packaged into a surreal, almost-wonderful-but-mostly-hideous Golgo 13 game? The "top secret" handle – where the story's really top-secret except for anyone who plays the game – is just a small example of this game's overwhelming paradoxes (yes, I'm really reaching for a beginning, but this is just how life goes, sometimes beginnings come naturally, other times you have to reach deep within the recesses of your brain and STILL NOTHING).

As with most of life, we should really start at the beginning: wonderful cinematic cutscenes containing a tried-and-true 80s action-movie plot - complete with explosions, mysterious but awesome protagonist, and Russia-fingerpointing - begin the game. Already I'm into Senor Golgo... then I start to play the game. First thing I notice are the graphics. Did Vic Tokai spend all their budget on the opening cutscenes? Golgo 13 looks like he has blocky parachute pants on, for crying out loud. Later on, I meet with a man who literally has a Lego head. My conclusion? Cutscenes = well-crafted; rest of game's graphics = five-year-old sneezing pre-chewed crayon flecks onto a programming screen. Actually getting through the game is a massive chore, which is strange because not much really happens. Walk across the screen, duck into a building and look for someone to talk to, shoot a couple dudes – or rather, attempt to shoot a couple dudes. Shooting is fine, except you can't duck and shoot like your enemies can. This means you take numerous bullets to the kneecaps and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Is it that hard to copy from the Rolling Thunder playbook? On the other hand, sometimes the game randomly enters you into a scrolling sniper mode, which has you shooting helicopters and really bouncy guys (presumed to be Russian ninjas). The sniper mode is incredibly fun, while the side-scrolling portions are overly cheap. Your only hope in the latter is to jump over their bullets, but that only gets you so far, especially when there's more than one enemy on the screen.

If Golgo-13 wasn't so concerned about contradicting itself at every turn (it's as if Vic Tokai really didn't know whether they wanted to make a good or bad game), this could have been an exciting hybrid of Rolling Thunder and Mission Impossible. The finished product, sadly, remains cow dung filled with pockets of frosting. Make of that what you will.

D

#263 - Golf Grand Slam

This is a far cry from Atlus' future, where demon summoners and angsty teens roam the earth.

                                                       What do ya know? Golf!

Despite Nintendo's attempt to destroy the sport of golf with the poorly designed and "creatively" named Golf, Atlus brought it all back home with Golf Grand Slam. Save for one burning irritation, this is how video game golf should play. You are presented with a couple different options: do you want to pump your nine iron and get some Training in, or do you want to throw caution and (hopefully) balls to the wind and enroll immediately in the Tournament? Once you begin to play, you're presented with a scrolling view of the entire hole, the wind speed/direction, etc. A "+" cursor allows you to choose where you want to hit your shot. After you select that, you enter a menu and very carefully choose which club you want, your standing stance (seriously, with shoe markers and everything), the direction you want to hit the ball, etc. The latter menu is the most sim-like aspect of the entire game and can be intimidating. Truth be told, I'm not sure if shifting any of those options really changes how you hit your ball, but they're included regardless. After that, you enter what I like to call the "God-help-you" portion of the game. A small screen comes up in your menu that shows an enlarged golf ball. Now within that golfball, another tiny golfball will appear and dart around like a frantic fly. Whenever you decide to press 'A', the tiny golfball stops and whatever area of the larger golfball it stops in, that's the direction you will hit your ball. It's ludicrous, and coming directly after the sim elements, feels a little cheesy. I don't want to lie: most of the time you'll hit a decent shot. But if you're like most gamers, you'll want to hit the best shot you can and that's almost always impossible. Still, it's a far cry from the diabolical WTF-ery of Golf's power meter. Most importantly, the game feels like a real game of golf... except not real because you're holding an NES controller instead of a club while you play... and you're probably not a middle-aged white guy with terrible fashion sense... and you definitely won't win any money from playing and winning the tournament. But yeah, real enough.

B

This is a call...

Hello friends,

As you may or may not know, I recently passed the third-way mark of my quest. In other words, I am approx. 33% complete with this bad boy. I am pleased with the response I've been getting from other committed gamers, retro or otherwise. This blog has gotten more page views than I would have believed even a year ago. You know what they say, though: with more traffic comes more responsibilities. In particular, I'd like to revamp the site's look. I should point out that my knowledge about designing blogs comes purely from copying and pasting HTML, so I'm quite limited. This is why I'm putting a call out to people who know how to re-design blogs or know someone that knows someone - anything like that. I don't need an overwhelming NES theme. I want something simplistic, even minimalist. Mostly, I'd like to revamp how one can search for games. Right now it's divided by year and by month, which is incredibly inconvenient when you're searching for one game. There is a search bar at the top, but I'm not even sure how many people use that or even care to.

Anyways, my own personal opinion is that the site as is doesn't look bad, but it could look better. Again, if anyone would be interested in helping to re-design the site's look and enhance its efficiency, drop me a comment and we'll exchange e-mails (privately, of course). I'm not sure about money and how much a project like this would cost, but we'll talk about that too.

Cheers,

Dylan

#262 - Golf

Mario soon lost some weight and shrank in stature. Princess Peach remained committed to him, stunning millions in the Mushroom Kingdom.

                            I expected good things. Good things I did not receive.

Open wide for some... golf? Only if you have a thing for hideous pants and racial inequalities. Golf transcended boundaries back in the day, in that, it was the first golf game made for a console where you could sort of see what was going on. I'm not sure if any of the Ataris or Colecos had golf games, but if they did, I can only imagine how horrible they looked. In other words, Golfwas a golf game that was playable, in that, you could read the course layout and have an idea of what you were supposed to do. Even Mario decided to join in on the golfing "fun" long before he had the financial wherewithal to create his own tournament. So Golf is visually acceptable, but how does it play? Well, let's just say Baseball runs circles around this stinker. Obviously the goal of the game is to play golf and win. You have a wide selection of wood and iron clubs, and a power meter that determines how hard you've swung. You press 'A' to start the blue-colored meter and 'A' again when it has reached the small, white-colored portion. Well, I've hit that white section time and time again, and have yet to obtain par on any of the courses. The ball, and the power with which you hit it, seems to do what it wants to. Sometimes it goes far, sometimes it barely goes anywhere. Putting can be obnoxious as well, but for me, it was just annoying trying to advance in the game without feeling like Roger Fox from "Foxtrot." Despite the relative simplicity of Golf, other golf games that actually, you know, play like golf have come along and are far, far superior. This one can't even summon a "nice try" golf clap.

D-