Metal Storm [NES]

There are many games out there that play with gravity. Strider and Strider 2 have you walking on the ceiling and flinging all over the place at times. Metal Warriors has an item that lets you put yourself up there as well. Even the more recent Prey has you walking on walls and ceilings like so much Fred Astaire. However, usually you have no say in the matter when gravity manipulation is present, or, when you do, the choice isn't that long lived.

And then there's Metal Storm. Metal Storm is an obscure title from Irem featuring a mech going through some base shooting up stuff in a futuristic platformer environment. Stuff we've all seen before. However! There is something that Metal Storm has that sets it apart from all the rest (and I'm sure you've already figured it out from the article's lead-in. I'm not exactly the master of literary deception.); gravity control. At any time you can choose to jump up or down to the ceiling or floor. And many times you have to; to get out of the way of obstacles, to get past spiked surfaces, to open doors that orient themselves accordingly to how you have yourself oriented, and to take care of enemies that you wouldn't be able to head on. You're constantly moving yourself up and down and it never becomes gimmicky. It's both a joy and a challenge, and refreshing to see it used so well. It sets what would otherwise be an average game above all the rest.

T&C Surf Designs [NES]

*vomit*

Fuck you even more, LJN. Fuck you even more. Jesus. Go play California Games instead.

Various gameshow games [NES]

Gametek, your games were bad and you hopefully felt bad!

Kickle Cubicle [NES]

A somewhat rarish puzzle game. Control Kickle, who can freeze enemies and create unpassable pillars of ice. The enemies, when frozen, can either be kicked to create more land or just simply shattered. The ones that are to be shattered are out to mess you up by either kicking the frozen blocks of enemies before you can or running you over or shooting you or freezing you or just otherwise menace you. Do all this to collect three dream bags per stage before the time runs out. Yeah, dream bags. Did I mention this game is for kids? Not only does it have bags of dreams, it has princesses and talking fruits, vegetables, cakes, and toys. All the graphics, enemies (except for some spike balls that run around the edges of the field trying to run you and everything else over), sounds, and music are all cutesy. At least for the NES. Even the challenge level is set for kids. While I kinda struggled when I was younger, I can clear the story in about an hour or thereabouts with some minor frustration. Except after you clear the story, you're given a bunch of bonus levels, and let me tell you that the difficulty is ratcheted up on them. The thing is that it's all done very well so it's still enjoyable even if you're past the age where it can offer any real challenge. If you like puzzlers, it's a fun game no matter how old you are.

Bucky O'Hare [NES]

This game is hard. When people talk about "Nintendo hard," they're talking about this game. Some of it comes from cheapness (most bosses have at least one way to kill you instantly. What the fuck?), some of it comes from bugginess (clipping issues mostly), and some of it comes from genuine challenge. This makes it kind of hard to review, since everything else is good. It looks good, it sounds good, and it controls well (when you're not running into the aforementioned clipping issues and such). You can switch characters as you rescue them (the crew of the titular Bucky's ship have been kidnapped and scattered) and they all have different weapons and abilities, such as clinging on walls and jet packs. With all that, is it a good game? ...Well, obviously, no. When you're constantly hitting brick walls that will make you create all new curse words because you've used up all the others, all enjoyment gets drained. Fuck this game. Even if I can't stop going back to it.

Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six [NES]

Lord, this shit is awful. It looks and sounds awful, and coming out in '92, this is pretty inexcusable. Everybody else who put out games at this time knew how to push the system to its limit in terms of graphics and sound (seven years of developing games on a system can do that). Of course, it was crapped out by LJN, the geniuses behind the NES X-Men, so what can you expect.

And it controls horribly as well. It's freaking Spider-Man. If you're going to include his ability to climb walls, you better make him able to climb anywhere, yet here one can only climb on the outside of buildings. What? And who decided that Peter's main attack should be a jump-kick? A hard to aim jump-kick at that. You can attack with punches too, but they're slow and hard to pull off, so why bother? So is swinging around on webs, which is also hard to aim, so, again, why bother? Fuck this game.

Darkwing Duck [NES]

This is one of those aforementioned "great Capcom licensed games" that I was talking about. This is like Mega Man dumbed down. Kinda. The challenge is toned down, but not too much. It looks really good. The music is some of the best I've heard. There's some strategy in which secondary weapons you pick up. The only thing I don't like is the overuse of bottomless pits. Those are annoying.

Bottom line: play it!

Game-A-Day: Classic - Twofer!

Irem Skins Game [SNES]

The title is a lie! It's not about skin, or about people showing skin, but is instead about...golf. And as far as golf games go I guess it's...alright. The swing meter goes super fast though. Hard to get it down.



Castlequest [NES]

A puzzler/platformer that features a short, stocky prince that jumps floatily and has a stubby little dirk. Not...not that great. I really couldn't get that far because of that stupid stiletto.

Game-A-Day: Classic - Binary Land [NES]

This is a great puzzle game from Hudson Soft. You have to guide two penguins who are in love to the end of a top-down maze filled with spiders and their webs. However, they're both separated by a wall down the middle, and when you move one the other mirrors the moves. You also have to get them at the goal at the same time, so no getting one then the other. They're both armed with bug spray to take care of the webs and spiders. If you run into one of the webs, your penguin gets stuck and has to be freed. If they both get stuck, you're fucked.

Wow, that's a rather ham fisted description. Oh well, no matter, as this is an awesome game. The only thing that I didn't like about it is that like almost all games of the age (this coming out back in '85), the music is a digitized version of a classical song and it repeats for the whole game. But what do you expect; they're programmers, not musicians.

Lode Runner [NES]

Oh sweet Jesus. This is the worst fucking version of Lode Runner I've ever played. It doesn't show the entire level, and it only scrolls when you're about three blocks away from the side. This makes it very god damn easy to run into enemies. Everything good is negated by this. This...this is just horrible. Fuck you, Hudson Soft.

Game-A-Day: Classic - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom [NES]

Spoiler: The only thing related to Indiana Jones that I've seen is Young Indiana Jones.

The sad thing about this game is that it could have been really good. What brings it down is the poor graphics and counterintuitive controls. The graphics make what you're doing a bit confusing since you don't really know what level you're supposed to be at to swing across. And with the controls I keep on jumping down into lava instead of jumping forward. And, even though as I said earlier that I've never seen the movie in question (I really need to get on that), I get the feeling that if this wasn't based on a movie it would have had an intersting story. There's also the fact that I didn't know what the hell I was supposed to do until I actually went and looked it up.

I really want to blame the shortcomings of this game on the limitations of the system, I really do, 'cause, to paraphrase Jeremy Parish, bad games and good games hampered by the limitations of its time are easily confused, but I can't. This is just a plain bad game brought on by poor execution. Though, it's really not surprising considering this came from Tengen.

I give it a (very, very) generous low

Game a day: Classic - Batman - Return of the Joker [NES]

Has okay controls, good graphics, and good music, but this is all brought down by horrible, punishing level design with hidden traps, off-screen enemies, and unavoidable hits. This is all made worse when you compare it to the original NES Batman, which was utterly fantastic. Fuck this game.