#400 - Mechanized Attack

                               I've had a vendetta against dogs and divers for years...

                                   Your battleship can't help you now, unholy diver!

In the late 80s and early 90s, the arcade scene was exploding with shooting games. These were games that allowed you to use realistic replicas of guns in order to shoot whatever was on screen. They were ridiculous quarter munchers that allowed you to feel like a badass with a gun in your hand for as long as you could survive. With the Zapper, then, one would think that the NES would be rife with arcade shooting game ports, but sadly, this was not the case. Thank God, then, for games like Mechanized Attack. SNK's corpse-fest may not be perfect, but at least it's a break from duck hunting, clay shooting and Hogan's Alley.

Yup, it's you against the world in Mechanized Attack. Equip your Zapper (or controller – equal opportunity shooting) and go to town. You have about nine cases of bullets, which you can replenish by shooting bullet icons. There are also grenades and rockets for bosses and larger enemies. Each level auto-scrolls you through jungles, trains, sewers, and delivers an onslaught of crap for you to shoot. There's always at least three soldiers or robots or dogs for you to shoot on the screen at any given time, and the second you shoot 'em, they've already been replaced. I can't remember the last time a NES game forced me to concentrate as much as Mechanized Attack has. It's easy to get overwhelmed, but thankfully, plentiful continues will ensure you see the end credits in an afternoon or two. Perhaps the only improvement SNK could have made was a two-player option. Who wouldn't want double Zapper action? Nevertheless, Mechanized Attack is the rare Zapper game that actually feelslike a game and not a tech demo. For that, we should be thankful.

B+

#399 - Maxi 15: Part 2

                                  The final seven games reviewed for your bemusement!

                                                              STAKK'M

                               There's that yum yum stakk'um I've been longing for

 Please won't you stakk'm... for the children? This is another one of those "falling block" games that all the kids like to tweet about on their iPhones during recess. Each block is a number from 1-9, and the goal is to stakk up three of the same numbers (like 3, 3, 3) or three numbers that go in order (like 7, 8, 9). Stakk'm vertically, horizontally, diagonally, any ol' which way one can stakk things. Completely and utterly "there."

C+

                                                               DEATHBOTS

                                      I shoot because I care, you stupid deathbots!

It's like if the movie "Tron" only believed in metallic grey and substituted Jeff Bridges and creativity for legions of evil robots shooting at you, Joe "Bluesuit" Sixpack. The whole goal is to run through creepy corridors and shoot robots, but you can't avoid robot lasers, which means your death will be swift and glorious. Embrace it.

F

                                                      RAD RACKET: DELUXE TENNIS II

                                             Wimbledon ain't what it used to be.

I've chucked many a tennis racket in my day, many of them fine companions, but never have I been bold enough to call a racket "rad." My loss, I suppose. Rad Racket Tennis gives you three court choices, six different players, and a lot of back-and-forth hitting of tennis balls. It really resembles Nintendo's Tennis, except with a woozier, Nyquil feel. I prefer Referee Mario and there was never a Deluxe Tennis I. Liars.

C+

                                                              CHILLER

                            

                           That is one disgustingly short time limit you have there.

What makes a man, my friends? Is it shooting old women with baby carriages? How about entering a torture chamber, and instead of helping the torture victims, shooting them? These are the costs Chiller asks you to count before picking up a Zapper. Personally, if I were a woman and my man wanted to vindicate his manhood before me, he'd shoot this game because it is the epitome of garbage. Oh yeah. That'd get me going.

F

                                                             SOLITAIRE

                                                    Behold... Solitaire!

If you've ever laid hands on a computer, regardless of if you're a toddler or an old soul just waiting for their final breath, you've gone round for round with Solitaire. The only difference between this particular Nintendo-flavored version is that it's a tad slower than, say, playing it with your fingers on a tablet. Solitaire technology has made tremendous waves over the past couple decades. It's still fun, but it's only one step above playing with an actual deck.

B

                                                       MENACE BEACH

                                       Menace II Society: Long Beach Ninjas

Your girlfriend's been kidnapped by Demon Dan (obviously not a real demon because Dan is a very non-threatening name) and she'll throw vicious barbs at you until you get her back! Seriously, what's a fun-lovin', skating dude gotta do to get some respect? I say, let your girlfriend hang there. The controls are awful, the levels are a mess, and she's givin' you no regard, no regard at all.

F

                                                          SHOCKWAVE

                                  And I think it's gonna be a long, long time...

Mining for crystals in space? Thank goodness it's just a one-man expedition, and not chock-full of slavery. Shockwave is a surprisingly complicated little puzzle game that consists of shooting blocks to move blocks that are next to the blocks you just shot. It's strange, but it makes sense as you shock along. If I didn't know better, I'd say this is the most interesting game of the bunch.

B

ORIGINAL REVIEWS:

F-15 City War

Krazy Kreatures

Double Strike

Dudes with Attitude 

Deathbots 

Chiller

#399 - Maxi 15: Part 1

The Maxi 15 cartridge give itself five out of five stars. "I'm awesome!" it declares.

The unfortunately titled Maxi-15 takes it to the hoop with fifteen games of varying quality. All of the games, save for two (Rad Racket Deluxe Tennis II and Stakk'm) were previously released as stand-alone titles WHICH MEANS some of these games (F-15 City War, Chiller, Dudes with Attitude) I've already reviewed, while others (Pyramid, Solitaire) will eventually get the "full write-up treatment," such as it is, later on in the quest. For now, enjoy one blurb per game and be glad you aren't playing Maxi 15.

                                                               F-15 CITY WAR

                                                              Not on my asphalt...

Nobody wants to go to war, especially not in a city, but don't tell this wacky F-15 fighter! He fights and strikes on paved streets until he runs out of gas, which happens to be around level five, when the war's already over. The shooting action is solid, but repetitive, and for a war centered entirely around a large metropolitan area, there's not a whole lot going on. Average at best.

C

                                                                  PUZZLE

                                                          Shuffle that, player!

Geriatrics rejoice! It's time to solve picture puzzles! Each level shows you a picture and then scrambles it. You have a time limit to return the picture to its original form and set the universe back in order. For some reason, there's a rock, paper, scissors game included. If you win, you get to swap two tiles completely (steady those pacemakers!). For a game that lacks any sort of creative vision, it's actually quite playable and dare I say, enjoyable. But I do like a glass of good prune juice, so what do I know.

B-

                                                                   PYRAMID

                                                         Sweet Moses, help us...

 I've never wondered what Tetris would have been like with shapes that are nigh unusable, yet Pyramid desires to show me, you, everyone who would dare select it from the menu. While the Sphinx backdrop is cool looking and the music has a puz-tacular feel, the game essentially asks you to play Tetris (blocks fall, put a bunch together, they disappear weeee!!!), yet provides askew shapes that rarely fit together. The designers recognized this and thoughtfully give you five bombs that you can use at random to blow chunks out of the pieces. I suppose when your game is shot to hell, explosions are always the answer.

D-

                                                            TILES OF FATE

                                                         That's a 'B,' alright...

Tiles, tiles everywhere, so let's all have a drink. That's exactly what I wanted to do after a few rounds of trying to match up tiles with other tiles on this Mahjong-inspired romp. There's anywhere between six to ten different shapes on the board, and the goal is to match up the tiles of the edge of the board. The ridiculously short time limit and the parameters the game sets in order for tiles to be eliminated make this one crazy hard game. Worth learning, though, if you have the time and booze money set aside.

                                                   KRAZY KREATURES

 
                                           A bunch of boogers need tending to.

Hordes of helpless creatures get chucked into a black playing field and you have to arrange them in rows or else they get put to sleep! These unlicensed game developers are truly vicious bastards. Clearing out animals in rows of three, four, five, etc. is surprisingly addictive, and there's enough levels to occupy you until you eventually get bored. A significant time-waster.

B-

                                                            DOUBLE STRIKE

                        Plane goes up, plane goes down, plane goes up, plane goes down.

Eat your Wheaties and get in the plane, soldier! You've got a butt-load of fighters to shoot down, and they won't go without their weight in bullets. Double Strike is quite the generic horizontal shmup (or as I like to call them, "progressive" shmups), but unless you have a vendetta against games that make you shoot stuff, it's hard to hate.

B-

                                                      DUDES WITH ATTITUDE

                Nightmares of all the decades-old gum I touched under desks as a child...

 

I'd really like to play a game called Dudes Sans Attitude and see if it would be any less ridiculous than this jewel-collecting, pre-chewed gum destroying pseudo-puzzler. You control a head that never stops moving, and can change colors if it passes through the correct Jolly Rancher cube. Said color change is needed to collect the colored jewels. Only a blue head can collect blue jewels, green for green, and through the color spectrum. It's a disturbing game that's much better than it should be.

B-

                                                  VENICE BEACH VOLLEYBALL

                                    Chet and Biff's Wild Volleyball Experience

This is not the finest volleyball experience you'll find on the NES, but for game eight out of fifteen on an unlicensed multi-cart, it's not half-bad. Basic two-button volleyball made a touch easier thanks to automatic partner switching, depending on the location of the ball, and a cursor that shows where the ball's going to land. Spikes are your best friend, unless your best friend's in the room with you and you're playing two-player. Then things might get a little awkward.

B-

 

#398 - Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu

                       The Lesson of this cover is that drunkards always come out on top.

                                                            Gimme dem yin-yangs!

Well, round about the Far East, there were these two fellers, Chu and Hu. Both were Masters with a capital 'M' which meant they knew how to throw little mini fireballs real good, jump real high, and take on ancient, destructive gods like Shiva. Unfortunately for ol' Hu, Shiva's head games and overall shenanigans left him withered and fried, and wouldn't you know, he took to drinkin'. Master Chu, on the other hand, remained stone-cold sober and decided to rid his village of Shiva's evil spirits once and for all. Sounds enticing enough, don't it? Problem is, Shiva fights dirty. Despite Master Chu's capital 'M' Master status, it's incredibly difficult for him to avoid Shiva's never-ending waves of spirits. Why? Because he don't jump like a normal feller. He jumps by pressing 'Up' instead of 'A.' Now, where I come from, that's akin to heresy, but this here being the Far East, I reckon some forgiveness is in order. Let's just call it plain annoying. In order for Master Chu to fight Shiva's head spirits or "bosses," as that drunk son-of-a-gun Hu calls them, Chu has to collect eight yin-yang talismans in an area picked by Shiva. These talismans are sometimes out in the middle of the road, other times they're hidden. Chu's fireball powers are important to find those hidden bastards. Usually, Chu will just blow up a lamp post or a pot or some other random antique in order to uncover 'em. Once Chu beats nine of Shiva's most ferocious entities, it's on to Shiva herself, and let me tell you, that god is not a pretty sight. Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu's journey is a dark and short one, filled with frustration and trial and error, and it's in this here storyteller's opinion, that you take caution with this tale. Perhaps it's not as bad as you may have heard, but ain't much good neither.

C

#397 - Mario's Time Machine

Mario blissfully ignores Abraham Lincoln's cries to turn the time machine around and pretend this game never existed.

                Ugh. They couldn't even get the original Mario Bros. layout correct.

Less than a year after Mario's disappearance, Software Toolworks and Radical Entertainment teamed up once again to deliver Mario's Time Machine. This time, it's Yoshi who's been kidnapped by Bowser, and the only way to get him back is to return historical relics to their place in the space/time continuum. Or something. It's an excuse to learn about history, while pretending you're having fun because you're playing a "Mario game." Basic premise: Mario explores a series of doors in Boswer's castle. Behind each door lies Koopa Troopas (in a layout ripped straight from the original Mario Bros.) and a time machine. Mario must hit and destroy three Koopa Troopas, grab the historical item, jump into the time machine (essentially a microwave with a pipe sticking out), select the time period where the item belongs (i.e. Isaac Newton's apple – 1687), then return the item in levels that can only be described as the shortest, most inane, worthless stages Mario's ever been forced to frequent. The levels are literally about two screens long, filled with randomly placed blocks and enemies that, try their hardest, can never hurt Mario. I wouldn't doubt that the children this game supposedly caters to can craft better Mario levels out of their Duplo blocks. Worse yet, if you fail to put the historical relic in the historically appropriate place, the game will scold you and send a bird to take the item away. This means you have to go all the way back and hit the Koopas again to get the item (much more frustrating than one would think). Despite trying to mix an educational Mario game with side-scrolling elements, Mario's Time Machineactually ends up worse than Mario is Missing. Everyone involved in this atrocity should have known better.

F

#396 - Mario is Missing

This cover makes Luigi look like an absolute idiot. HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU LUIGI!

              "What is this?" An admirable question when one plays Mario is Missing.

Mario is missing, alright, along with the typical ingenuity, creativity, and good taste that define an average Mario game. Software Toolworks and Radical Entertainment are the parties predominantly responsible for Mario is Missing, but it's certainly alright to blame Nintendo. For whatever reason, back in the early-to-mid 90s, Nintendo licensed their most beloved character out to third-party companies eager to use Mario's visage to sell their crappy "edutainment." Most children weren't fooled, but parents were, which is why sales of Mario is Missing were strong enough to justify Mario's Time Machine, and a triumvirate of crappy teaching games, all titled Mario's Early Years! (exclamation point added by Software Toolworks in a poor attempt to excite preschoolers).

Admittedly, unlike the other aforementioned games, Mario is Missing has a brilliant hook: Mario is kidnapped and Luigi must rescue him. Not only does it thrust Luigi into the spotlight for the first time ever, it sounds like a promising adventure. Instead of capitalizing on Mario's absence, the game forces Luigi to travel around the world and rescue artifacts stolen by Koopa Troopas. I'm still not exactly sure how returning the world's artifacts to their respective locations allows Luigi to find Mario, but Software Toolworks doesn't seem concerned with a clear story. Getting the artifacts back requires nothing more than approaching Koopa Troopas and stepping on them (the buggers don't even hurt you when you touch them), then collecting the bag they leave behind. Once Luigi's collected the three artifacts in a given location, you find the information booths in the city. The women (?) behind the booths ask you historical questions (the only "educational" part of the game). Answer the questions, drop off the artifacts, and Luigi's done with that city. In order to beat the game, you have to do this exact same task for fourteen cities around the world. At first it seems doable, but by the third or fourth city, your soul will grow weary and yearn for freedom.

But wait, there's more to complain about! You can't just walk up to people – who look like misshapen acid rain victims, by the way - and talk to them. You have to select the ? Mark panel, which shows up at the top of the screen, then while you're standing next to them, press 'Start.' It's clunky and needlessly complicated. Yoshi has a supporting role in this game, but for no apparent reason, every time you enter a new city, you're separated from him. In order to get Yoshi back to Luigi, you have to enter a separate world map, guide Yoshi to the city Luigi's in, and Luigi will be reunited with him. Luigi needsYoshi to talk to the woman at the information counter. Otherwise, he'll be too short to talk with her. Yes, that's right: Luigi can approach the information counter as many times as he likes by himself, but without Yoshi acting as his booster chair, he won't be able to speak to the woman and advance the game. In Mario is Missing, Yoshi's only role is to act as a booster chair for Luigi. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The only thing Mario is Missing taught me as a young boy was to avoid any Mario-themed games not made by Nintendo. Until today, I had never played the NES version, but had wrangled with the SNES version. Outside of better graphics and slightly less complicated controls, they're almost the same games. A definite miss.

D-

#395 - Mario Bros.

I still don't understand Nintendo of America's need to replace the original goofy Mario Bros. Mario with the Super Mario Bros. Mario sprite. Continuity, sure, but it's cooler to see how the character evolves.

                                       This is more like it. Ah, sweet Famicom covers.

                                                     When sewers strike back...

They're the Mario Brothers, and plumbing's their game. Certainly in 1983, before there was any mention of Princess Toadstool or the Mushroom Kingdom or Koopa, the Mario Bros. were two regular joes just trying to earn a living, and Mario Bros. reflects just how low-income said living was. Both brothers run around in an underground, pipe-ridden world, stopping turtles, crabs, flies, and ice from gumming up the sewers. The creatures can only be hit from the bottom up. Once hit, they turn over on their back and can be done away with (crabs take two hits - one hit only makes them crazy and demon-possessed). Coins can be collected for points. Fireballs will pop up if you've been on a platform for too long. Once you complete eleven stages of pest control, the stages start to repeat ad infinitum. Eventually, Mario and Luigi realize that their lives are meaningless. They could try to keep the sewers pest-free until they die, but it wouldn't matter because the sewers, by definition, can never be clean. They discuss amongst themselves what actions they could take. Should they enroll at the community college, take some business courses, and try to seek out a better life for themselves? Surely if they could open their own plumbing business after the whole Donkey Kong debacle (thank God the courts didn't officially recognize him as "Mario"), they could make headway into more lucrative ventures. Real estate, capital investment, international banking – careers where the money would flow as quickly as the five o'clock sewer tide. After twelve grueling hours of head-busting, neck-cracking, blue-collar madness, the Mario Bros. come to a decision. They pick up sewer mushrooms and eat them together. The rest is hallucinatory history. 

B-

FUN FACTS ABOUT MARIO BROS.

• This is the introduction of Luigi into the Mario canon. Sure, in Mario Bros. Luigi's just a green palette swap of Mario, but it wouldn't take long before Luigi was typecast as the lanky, wussy younger brother.
• Many elements of Mario Bros. made their way into Super Mario Bros. and beyond. The fireballs that pop up out of nowhere became the fireballs Mario can shoot, with the help of the fire flower. Coins that you can collect from the pipes have been featured in almost every Mario game. The turtles in Mario Bros would eventually become the Koopa Troopas.
• There are three pseudo-followups to the original Mario Bros.: Mario Bros. Special, which involved getting to the top of the level instead of killing every enemy; Punch Ball Mario Bros., which was the original Mario Bros., but with a weapon called a Punch Ball that you could throw at enemies; and Mario Clash, a "sequel" for the Virtual Boy that contained similar gameplay, while making use of the Virtual Boy's ability to have a foreground and background. Mario Bros. Special and Punch Ball Mario Bros. were licensed to Hudson Soft and only released in Japan for the NEC PC-8801, FM-7, and Sharp X1.