NPC - A.C.Sativa - Chiller/Baby Boomer & BONUS!

It's time for the review that's always packin' heat (Down where? Down HERE!), the Unlicensed NES Zapper Games!

I'd NEED drugs to witness this scene first-hand. P.S. Yes, I beat this piece of whale nut.

Before I even get started, there's one thing I'm kicking myself over leaving out of the Wally Bear review: There was actually a number you could call that would let you hear about the evils of drugs. 1-800-HI-WALLY. "So what?" you're probably thinking... Well, this number was active until... wait for it... October of 2007! I'm not the first person to review the game and miss that, but I feel REALLY stupid about it, having done tons of research on the game, even calling the number (it's just a busy signal now), and still leaving it out of the review. No matter how many times you proofread something, as soon as it gets online, you just say "Fuck!" 

Break yo'self!

Back to serious business, Mike asked for Chiller, and markusman64ds from the Digital Press forum asked for Baby Boomer, and I figured that since they are the only 2 unlicensed Zapper games I'd just do them together. Plus, markusman gave me the idea that will end this piece, and will hopefully be a regular thing.

"Mommy, what the fuck's an emulator?"

I just want to point out something here real quick: I'm playing these games on Nestopia, by far and away the best NES emulator out there, using the "point-and-shoot" with the mouse instead of the actual Zapper. Even if I had copies of the games, I don't own a TV that works with my Zapper. It's just sitting in a box in my garage thinking "Fuck these new TVs, I still work (Tested him on my buddy's antiquated CRT TV when I bought him), they're the ones that suck…" Mr. Zapper might be lonely, but at least he can say he hasn't totally fucked up his life on coke and heroin like the rest of the 80's child stars. TMZ can suck his dick!

(Chiller, 1990, American Game Cartridges)

CHILLER: As we saw in the Wally Bear review, this was a ported Exidgy arcade game from 1986, released in 1990 for the NES. The arcade game didn't do very well in the U.S., and for good reason. It's without a doubt the most fucked up sadistic violent video game ever, outside of garbage like Super Columbine RPG and that horrible Virginia Tech game, both of which were free-to-download PC games that were created just to piss people off, and hang a digital sign around their creator’s necks saying “I’m a complete piece of shit”. Chiller was created to make money, and when arcade owners saw a game that let people use a gun to blow people away limb by limb and shoot devices like racks and guillotines to torture people they wisely passed. I’m a firm believer in the “If you’re offended, don’t buy it” school of thought, but if I was a parent in 1986 and saw Chiller in my local arcade right next to a few pinball machines, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and the rest of the kid-friendly fare I’d be pissed off about it. Shit, imagine playing this in a bar, and then trying to by one of the cute women a drink…Did Mace exist back then? (Yep, sure did). The NES game is pretty faithful to the original, outside of the fact that the levels are reversed (the last level in the arcade version opens the NES version), and some very slight censorship. Almost reverse censorship actually, on the first level (last in the arcade) it was changed from a monk pushing a cart full of body parts to a nun pushing a baby carriage.
The fuck? That’s supposed to be better?

Oh dear, what the COCKSNOT is going on here?

So how does it play? Pretty well, actually. You don’t need a Zapper to play, you can just use a controller, though anyone who has played Lethal Enforcers on the Genesis without the light gun knows how bad that sucks. It’s also a 2 player game, be it 2 Zappers, 2 pads, or one of each. 2 player mode is where this game gets fun. Playing by yourself is boring, but seeing who can get the best score between whoever you’ve sucked into seeing “Saw: The Game” is the way to go, turning it into a social thing instead of a training program to be a future subject of an episode of Criminal Minds. AJ Cook, if you’re reading this, e-mail me! The game plays on one screen at a time with a bunch of shit to shoot, you start off with 15 targets to hit and a bar draining as time passes. If the bar runs out before you get the targets it’s game over. The game is not really about hitting moving objects, but finding what to shoot at, which makes it perfect for the “click-and-shoot” method I’m playing it. The first 2 levels are pretty tame. Level 1 is a graveyard with a bunch of heads on spikes and a half-buried body to shoot off piece by piece, and some hands coming out of the ground, and the aforementioned nun. Level 2 is just a hallway with some ghosts going side to side that you gotta blast. Its levels 3 and 4 (the torture chambers) where it gets really fucked up, with people tied up in racks and other medieval shit, that when shot give you points for ripping their legs off or decapitating them, and then you get points for blowing off what’s left of the individual parts of their bodies one by one. Beat level 4 and you’re back at the start, Donley Kong style, with the shot count upped to 25 Every level has “talismans” that if you hit them all on every level unlocks a bat-shooting bonus stage when you finish level 4. I really can’t describe this horrible shit in words, but it would be totally over the top for a 360/PS3 game, much less a NES game. Seriously, this is some fucked up repugnant shit, and would instantly get the dreaded AO rating if they tried to release it today.

...and people said Sweet Home was fucked up?

OVERALL SCORE: 6/10. Unlike most of the shit I’m going to review here, this is more than playable, and that’s what really matters. If I were to do a list of “Top 10 Unlicensed NES games”; this would be, at worst, the last one to miss the cut. And 2 player mode is pretty fun. BUT, if you really want to play this I’d recommend seeking out the Maxi-15 multicart instead of Chiller. They’re both rare as hell to the tune of about $150, but Maxi-15 has Chiller AND 14 other shitty games.

(Baby Boomer, 1989, Color Dreams)

Baby Boomer: Quick and easy here: It sucks donkey dick, at least from where I’m sitting. Point here is that you have to shoot a bunch of shit that’s in the way of a scrolling baby. My problem with the game is that the “Gun” is REALLY inaccurate, with shots that are clearly hitting the target counting as misses, killing this game right out of the starting gate. On one hand, it might be an emulator problem, though the “Zapper” was working fine for Chiller, Duck Hunt, and everything else I tried it on. On the other hand, this is a Color Dreams game, leading me to believe it just sucks. (I’ll get to that awful company in the next review. Suffice to say, Color Dreams is the reason that you’re seeing “A.C. Sativa” v. “Unlicensed Garbage” on this site). So it very well might just be horrible…

If you think this game is any more than what you see here, you'd be very mistaken.

OVERALL SCORE: 2/10. Kind of call this one incomplete, though I find it hard to believe that this could be anything but total shit, given the people involved with the cart’s production.

Don't shoot the...wait, what???

BONUS PIRATE GAME REVIEW!: TOM AND JERRY 3
Ahh, pirate NES games, the real cream of the crop of total shit. It should be said here that Mike is doing every NOA-approved NES game, and I get everything else. But even I have my limits. “Unlicensed Games” refers to these games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nes_games#Unlicensed_games. Not the 110/64-in-1’s, not the Sachen “If Vince Russo booked the NES” games, none of that “Sonic on the NES” shit, and none of this garbage. Why markusman asked for this game, I’ll never know know, and I won’t ask, because when you say “Got any unlicensed crap you want me to take a shot at? Let me know…”, you gotta make good on your word, and just be happy that someone likes your writing enough to bother… So from here on in, there should be a BONUS PIRATE GAME REVIEW! I need a shower, I fucking feel dirty even going this far…

Oh A.C., you had balls of titanium to try this one.

For those who weren’t around during the NES days, it’s not like it is today. Back then you could take trademarked characters that you didn’t have the rights to, and use an Atari ST or a Commodore 64 and actually make video games and sell them. Well, not really sell them here in the U.S. (though pirate games and Hong Kong multicarts did make it stateside in the blackest of black markets. As in you got a 64-in-1 cart with every ounce of weed you bought back then), but they sold like crazy in the Far East, and did really well in South America too.

Tom looks more like one of the Rockin' Kats

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OVERALL SCORE: 0.5/10. Oh yeah, the game itself? Best thing I can say about it is that it’s not as bad as Action 52. But it’s damn close. Jerry Mouse actually looks like his TV counterpart, and as a huge fan of the TV show that made me smile. Worst thing I can say is that it sucks worse than all the Sachen games put together, and the graphics are barely Atari 7800 quality. It’s almost a rip off of the licensed T&J games, only with the controls shot to hell and the usual “let’s try to do Mega Drive graphics on the Famicom” nastiness that defines the HK bootlegs. Just awful, and a disgrace to the NES.

Well, I'll be a warthog's nutsack, this game had an ending!

NEXT TIME: Bible Games, and what might be the only game worse than Action 52 featured in the BPGR!. After that: one of the BEST unlicensed NES games, and the only pirate game that’s any good. Let me know what’s next in the comments…