Let's See If I Can Win The Holy Grail...

I am, without a doubt, an avid video game collector; I especially love my collection of the old school Nintendo Entertainment System games.

When I read that JJGames was having a sweepstakes to win a copy of Nintendo World Championship, I flipped out; for years, I've literally dreamt of owning a copy of that legendary game.  The holy grail of video game collecting, Nintendo World Championship is most worshipped and sought-after game in existence.  Considering it's immense value and the massive number of people who are bound to enter the sweepstakes, the chances of my winning it are slim; this, however, is an opportunity I cannot afford to miss.  Not to win the copy of Nintendo World Championship would be disappointing; not even to try would be foolish.  If I do win, however, I will be sure to show my gratitude by loyally patronizing JJGames and spreading the word to all of my friends....not that I'm sucking up or anything.  =)

Metroid (NES)

Metroid's release in 1986 marked the birth of one of Nintendo's most successful franchises. In Metroid, you play as the bounty hunter Samus Aran, who is one of the first major female game characters.

Let's address the negative aspects of the game first so we can go ahead and move to the positive. At the very beginning of the game, you have the option to go left or right. I don't know if it's just I or if most people do this, but I usually choose to go right. If you go right, you'll be running around for hours trying to figure out why it won't let you proceed. Not until you try going back and going left do you figure out that there's a random orb onto which you have to jump in order to proceed over to the right (the left is a dead end). Another problem is that you don't start off with full health. You start with like 30 hp I think. As for the music, it's pretty epic, but it repeats over and over and over and over again and it drives you INSANE. A lot of the time, you're in some massive collumn that keeps going up for like a gazillion miles. At this point, the levels become somewhat non-linear, which is just confusing as anything. When your health gets below like 20 or so, this god awful beeping starts, and it won't stop until either Death welcomes you into his warm embrace, or you find enough health to shut the freaking thing up.

Anyway, now on to the good aspects of the game. Metroid has a fun, addicting quality that will make the controller hard to drop. One aspect of the game that makes it a bit easier than some games to play is that you can aim up as well as left and right. Unlike some games, the boundaries are well defined and the graphics aren't confusing.

Presentation - 8. For an NES game, the title screen is fairly epic, especially with the epic background music

Graphics - 8. Good ol' 8-bit graphics, but not confusing.

Sound - 5. Here's the game's major drawback; the music is great...for the first 90 seconds. After that, you'll want to break the cartridge.

Gameplay - 9. The gameplay is epic and addicting...Oh yeah, and fun, too.

Lasting Appeal - 9. Oh, you'll keep coming back to this game over and over again, no doubt.  I mean, it's Metroid; it's a legendary franchise for a reason.

Overall Score - 9.5

Dragon Spirit: The New Legend (NES)

When Dragon Spirit was released in 1987, it was originally released as a Namco arcade game, though it was later ported to Amstrad CPC, Commodore Amiga, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Sharp X68000, TurboGrafix-16, and ZX Spectrum under the same name.  It was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System under the name Dragon Spirit - The New Legend.  I have no idea why they tacked "The New Legend" on, since the gameplay seems to be the same, but hey, whatever; it's on Nintendo, and that's all that matters.

As I've said said before now and will continue to say, the story is quaint, but it's a good kind of quaint.  Quaint like reading by candle light, not quaint like sacrificing a pig everytime you do something wrong.  Anyway, the story....After a millennium of captivity, a serpent demon named Zawell escapes imprisonment and kidnaps Alicia, princess to the kingdom of Mitgult. A young, crafty soldier named Amul is selected to rescue the princess and destroy Zawell. In praying to the gods for strength and courage, he points his sword high toward the heavens. Suddenly he is transformed into an all-powerful blue dragon, bestowed with special powers; a gift from the gods to aid him in his quest.

Dragon Spirit is one of those games that you never forget after you play it just once. It's story is rather cliché and the names are strange (Zawell?  What...?), but the game is an unforgetable experience. There are 12 levels to the game if you include the very first part that you don't even have to beat to proceed, though not many people count that, bringing the level total to 11. Anyway, you're a dragon flying around killing stuff. You have two attacks; an aerial attack and a ground bombardment. I think this sort of dimentional distinction is pretty impressive for the 8-bit Nintendo, even if you can't actually change altitudes. After each level, there is a boss at the end, and the levels are all WAY harder than the bosses. Like. WAY harder.

Presentation - 8.5.  From the title screen to the pointless intro level, this game has "EPIC" written all over it, and they make sure you know how epic their game is.

Graphics - 8.  For the NES, they're really not bad. 8-bit was capable of more, as we saw in later games like Mario 3, but by no means did Dragon Spirit have poor graphics for the time and system capabilities.

Sound - 9.  The music on the title screen and text screens isn't bad, and the music in the game itself is pretty chipper and upbeat. Cool music + Good game = One happy old school gamer.

Gameplay - 9.5.  This game is way more fun than one would expect when watching someone else play it, and it's addicting. Being able to continue from the level at which you died makes one want to persist and beat it.

Lasting Appeal - 9.5.  You won't forget this game. If you play it once, you won't forget it. You might forget the story or the names or the order of the levels, but the gameplay itself is so great, you'll always remmber.

Overall Score - 9.2

Bomberman (NES)

When Bomberman was released on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987 (1985 in Japan), it started a series that would include a game on almost every system to come, all the way up to Bomberman Land for the Wii and Ultra Bomberman for the Playstation 3.

Bomberman was first released in Japan for several early computers in 1983.  Within 10 years, Bomberman would be a popular and well known franchise making huge profits from games across the game console board.

The story is that Bomberman is a robot who works in an underground bomb factory and is the best bomb maker in the factory, but he hates his job.  He heard a rumor that any bomberman who makes it out of the factory gets a wish, which he wants to use to turn all bombermen into human bombermen.  Apparently, the ballons, gum drops, and other strange enemies are some manner of security guard set on preventing his escape.  If you somehow manage to beat level 50 (I never got past level 43), you become human.

Bomberman for the Nintendo Entertainment System is definantly one of the more influential titles ever released, given that it spawned a massive series including games on almost, if not every system since 1983 when it was originally released in Japan. In the game, you are a robot who is trying to kill all of the security guards (who look like ballons and rain drops) in the underground bomb factory so you can escape. Once you defeat all of the enemies, you have to blow up random bricks until you find the exit, which gets really boring and stressful when you being to run low on time and still haven't found the exit. It's pretty much the same thing after every level , but it's a fun little game.

Presentation - 6.5.  The box art is pretty cool with some robot guy running out of an explosion, but it's nothing amazing or epic or anything.

Graphics - 7.5.  The graphics aren't anything amazing, but for NES standards, they're not bad either. Pretty average for the 8-bit era.

Sound - 7.  The music is REALLY repetative and REALLY monontonous. It gets stuck in your head and haunts you like Goatse. The sounds are all rather plain and unremarkable but not terrible.

Gameplay - 8.  The gameplay's not bad and pretty fun at first. It just starts to get old pretty quickly. It's pretty much just more bricks and more enemies from level to level.

Lasting Appeal - 8.  Bomberman is not one of those game you'll play over and over again like Mario or Metroid, but it's not one of those games that will haunt you to your grave like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Overall Score - 7.7

Batman (NES)

Batman for the NES was released in 1990 and was developed and produced by Sunsoft.  This game is REALLY tough once you get past the first few stages.

The game starts off being pretty good.  Stage 1-1 is a pretty easy level, about what you would expect from the first level of a game.  Stage 1-2 is a lot harder, but still not too bad.  It's more of the "Oh yeah, this is a good, fun challenge" type of hard, not the "HOLY CRAP OH EM GEE I'M GONNA DIE" type of hard.  Stage 1-3 and you're already fighting a boss, but this boss is really easy; 3 hits with your spinny tri-circle thingy of death (actually called batdisks) and the boss is dead.

Stage 2-1, and you're like "Wow, this is really getting hard...."  After some frustration and a lot of trial and error, though, it's beatable.  Stage 2-2 is really hard, but again, beatable.  Stage 2-3 and you're screaming "OH MY GOD, DOES THE MADDNESS EVER END?!?"  Stage 2-4 is the stage 2 boss, and after you die and get sent back to the beginning of 2-3, you're like "Whatever.  I'm sick of this game."  I rarely get past this boss.

The graphics aren't bad at all for an NES game.  The gameplay is REALLY good; it's just really hard.  The music is nice and dramatic, and the sound effects are good.  The only real problem is that starting with stage 2, the levels are way too hard.

Another thing I don't like is that they managed to reverse the buttons!  I'm not talking about the A button attacking while the B button jumps (it's like a law of nature that B attacks and A jumps).  No, they got that right.  I'm talking about the most obscure button screw up I've ever seen in my life; Select pauses the game while Start cycles through your weapons.  What the heck?  I've never heard of that.

Presentation - 8.  It's got a cool title screen and nifty Batmobile cut scenes.  It even shows Batman shooting his way through a garage door with a machine gun on the Batmobile after Stage 1-3.

Graphics - 8.  For an NES game, the graphics are quite good.  Still not sure why Batman explodes upon death as if he were a robot, but the graphics are good.

Sound - 8.  The music is pretty good and very fitting.  The sound effects aren't too bad, either.

Gameplay - 8.  The gameplay itself is very good and really fun.  Despite the fact that the game is really fun and addicting, however, it's REALLY HARD.

Lasting Appeal - 7.  Ohh, you'll definitely remember this game; you'll remember how incredibly difficult it is.  It is a fun game, though, and worth replaying, even if only for the first two stages of the game.

Overall Score - 8